A Community Garden at Community Seeds, and me

I keep getting sucked into these things. Only this time it’s something that I think can really make a difference in this town. The only thing that can keep it from working out is if the folks that really need it don’t participate.

What I’m talking about here is the community garden that Community Seeds is trying to get going. Coop pulled me into it because I think someone told him I like to garden. I do. My back, my knees and my feet don’t, but I really do. I also have all kinds of ideas, have found some really neat web sites and other information sources dealing with gardening and, yes, even farming. The reason I haven’t been able to put much of that into practice on my land is obvious to anyone who knows me. A serious lack of funds coupled with an even greater lack of people power. You see, a lot of the idea’s I’d like to see used require a lot of standing, walking and bending. All things I can no longer do very well or very much of.

Then along comes Coop with Community Seeds and this idea for an organic community garden that he hopes will: 1) produce enough food to help feed some of the folks here in town who are hungry, 2) will teach them, through participation in the gardening, how to grow their own, and 3) will also teach the local youth to be able to feed themselves and others by getting them involved as well.

This past fall Community Seeds set up an area for square foot gardening. It’s a small plot out behind the old school house at the end of College Street. There are nine, four by four little plots ready to be filled up with soil, compost, seeds and a little water. The only other thing needed are about eight families to act as caretakers for these plots and enjoy the harvest from them. I say eight because I’ve got my eye on one of them!

There are also plans afoot to till up a good deal of the rest of the land back behind the school for row crops. If you know about farming in this area, if you know what kind of edibles grow best here, Community Seeds can sure use your help and/or your suggestions. Just remember this is to be an ORGANIC garden. That means no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers. Yes, such can be done. The Amish farmers do it all the time. It also makes for safer and tastier food.

Folks who have piles of already composted horse, cow, goat or chicken manure can help us out as well. That stuff makes great fertilizer! If you happen to be a Master Gardener or be trained as a Permaculture Designer that kind of help would be invaluable. After all, while I have pretensions in those area’s I am neither a very good gardener nor a Permaculture Designer. That last, in particular, requires some expensive training that I have neither money to pay for or to get to as the nearest place I could get it is in Ft. Worth. That boils down to the simple truth that while I can talk a lot about this stuff, and even might think I know about it, in reality I don’t know, well, you know what.

I am, however, dear readers, still quite full of it and will continue to voice my opinions as if I actually knew what the heck I was writing about.

Community Seeds will be working on the community garden this Saturday, the 26^Th starting at one in the afternoon. Come on by and help out. With me on board they will need all the help they can get.

As I post this, I am recovering from nearly a half day spent bending over helping to spread some beautiful soil in the nine plots mentioned above. Reverend Coop had obtained a lot of cold weather plants and seeds to put into that soil. I, and two other folks who actually garden and know what they are doing, were there along with about eight or ten teens from one of the local churches youth groups along with their adult leaders.

During the three or four hours of hectic activity, all of the plots were planted, seeded and watered. Now all we have to do is wait and let nature take it's course.

From the 2011 Seventh issue of the Lone Oak Newsletter

Well, there are finely no extra horses in my pasture. I hope to keep the number down to one or less for the foreseeable future. Why? Because for the past couple of years it seems that I have been talked into helping folks out by letting them keep critters on my land. In some instances it worked out. In at least one it did not.
Once folks had animals here they started bringing in more “just for a while!” and “We’ll pay you!” Some did pay. Others did not. In any event because of my foolish inability to say no, my poor pasture is grazed down to darn near nothing. I know. I finely got up the courage to try walking out there. I paid for it that night and the day after but I got a good look at the damage.

If the land is let alone it might recover on it’s own. I dearly wish I had the money to start digging swales and building berms to hold water on the land instead of letting the soil wash away into Lake Tawakoni. No. Plowing it up and planting seed will not do. The land slopes too much. Plowing it up will only help erosion. Broad casting seed and then mowing down the weeds to cover and protect them might work, but I find I can’t convince anyone else of that. Most who do offer to help suggest chemicals of various stripes. Poisons for weeds, fake chemical fertilizers, and possibly even poisons for bugs and snakes.

They think I’m nuts you know. Probably because I don’t think a few weeds are a bad thing, though I do admit I have far too many. My idea for weed control is less sexy, and slower than a big ol’ dose of herbicide.

My idea is to just keep the place mowed. Mow down the weeds before they make seeds. Then mow them down again when they sprout back up, and before they can make seeds again. Then keep doing it until only the low growing grasses that will hold the soil in place are thriving.

Why do I not think weeds are all that bad? Think about the weed. It grows anywhere, in any kind of soil, under drought conditions and flood. The weed sends down roots deeper than most of the other plants around it so that it can tap into water and nutrients the civilized plants can’t reach. . . And it brings those nutrients up to the surface. Knock down the weed. Let it compost in place and it will give those nutrients to the grasses you want to grow.

Besides, a patch or two of nice healthy weeds forms a haven for bugs. All kinds of bugs. Bad guys and the good guys that like to eat them. So the bad guy bugs get into your garden. If there’s a patch of weeds harboring bugs nearby then there will be good guy bugs handy to come eat the bad ones up. Besides some weeds produce seeds that birds like to eat as much as they do bad guy bugs.

The thing is though, it is a balancing act. You have to get the right balance of good and bad bugs, and of weeds and forage for these things to work together as they should. One way to do it is to just walk away and let nature take its course. The problem there is that it takes time. Time, during which, that much more valuable top soil washes into the local lake with the run off that could have stayed on your land, and watered your crops and animals.

That’s where people come in. Humans, the great manipulators of the environment. We’ve done a wonderful job of trashing the planet, the soil, the very air we breath. But there are simple, low tech, admittedly high labor, methods out there that can be used to save the air, the soil; and yes, even the planet.

No one likes these low tech ways to save the planet much though because they aren't quick, easy or even sexy. These low tech methods take thinking, planing, foresight, hard work and patience. All of which are, sadly in short supply nowadays.

Sixth article of the year.

It is Thursday as I write this, and I can tell you for sure that I am more than eager for this cold stuff to go away. Here’s an opinion I’m sure a lot of my fellow Texans agree with. The only place there should EVER be any ice is in my freezer, my tea, my cola, or my Margarita. A virgin Margarita, but still a Margarita.

I mentioned the day above because yesterday, or maybe the day before as I neglected to pick up my mail on Tuesday, I received one of those envelopes from my bank. You all know the ones I mean I'm sure. The scary ones that are so thin that it's obvious there is only one sheet of paper in it. Maybe even just one little slip of paper that happens to be just the right size to fit in an envelope.

We all know what those usually mean, don't we? It usually means some body, some where, screwed up their arithmetic, and we are in deep kha-kha. We also know who's fault that usually is too. Even if we are absolutely sure it wasn't us who messed up, we know who will be blamed and who will have to pay.
Needless to say, there was a big fist full of mail in my mail box along with this scary envelope from the bank. So being a red blooded American I did what anyone else would do. I put off opening that possibly pocket book breaking envelope until I'd finished with all the rest. Then, I girded my loins and ripped the sucker open.

Seconds later I was blinking in confusion. The bank wanted me to come in, and personally pay on my loan? What was going on here? They'd been happy, until now, to pull the payment straight out of my checking account. I've gotten used to just setting the monthly payment aside in my check book along with all the other bills that come out automatically. I do this right after I enter my monthly disability check from Uncle Sugar so that I'm sure that money will be there when my creditors start siphoning off my money.

I puzzled over the banks missive a bit longer and finely read the words "Maturity Payment Due" and then a little further down the words “Final payment must be submitted . . ..” Huh?! What wuzzat?! Did that really say "FINAL PAYMENT!!!" I reread it. Yep. That's what it said. It said that, alright.

Wow. Final payment.

That means I'll have a nice little chunk of money (emphasis on little here so don't come asking to borrow any!) next month that I can do with as I please! Not only that but I'll have it every month after that too! Oh my! Oh MY! What to do with this windfall?

First thought: "new" truck! Yep, now I could; if I could find one cheep enough, get myself a truck with an automatic transmission and fewer problems. Second thought: Or I could get DSL! Then I wouldn't have to hassle with dial up and could maybe even get Netflix, and TV over the internet! Both of those are a monthly cost but, if I weren't paying out on a new vehicle or a loan I could swing it! Third thought: sigh. I, or rather the critters on my land; my goats, and some horses I don't own, need hay badly.

Fardals.

Well, that's it then. Next month I'll be spending what would have gone to the bank to pay on my loan for at least two round bails of hay. One for my friends horses that stay up close to the house in the barn, and one for the poor critters out in the pasture who have apparently been abandoned by their owner. Hey, maybe the month after that I can get some electric fencing and start moving my goats around to clean out the brush.

But after that; DSL and NetFlix, or a newer truck? Or a once a month spending spree for property upgrades. Maybe a pair of new shoes? Oh well, I'm sure something will turn up to gobble that money. Uncle Surgar if no one else.

Alt Op of 2/4/11

Don't ya sometimes just hate it when the weather people are right! They certainly hit it on the head when they told us the weather as going to get nasty this week.

The only alternative opinion I can come up with right now is about all those folks pointing to all this wild winter weather and asking "What Global Warming?"Sigh.

Look folks this kind of wild weather is just the sort of thing global warming causes! And considering how no body wants to bother the big time oil, gas or coal companies for fear of "hurting the economy," looks like we all better just get used to this kind of weather.

I just don't understand how switching to clean or sustainable energy sources will hurt the economy. Electricity is still electricity no matter how it is produced. It still needs electric power lines to get from here to there. As for all those folks working in the power plants, there will still be some need for some centralized power, I guess. Though I can see those power plants becoming smaller, and growing in number. Though frankly I'd rather see every home, farm, and business in the country producing it's own power plus some and sharing that extra out on the grid.

Oh, the coal miners will have to come up out of the mines but maybe they could clean out their lungs while building wind turbines and setting up solar panels out in the fresh air. Those folks who work on oil rigs could help putting up the big wind turbines that some think we need. Even better, they could use their drilling knowledge and skill to drill for water instead of gas or oil. Water that solar and wind generated power could split into hydrogen and oxygen so that the hydrogen could be bottled and used to run fuel cells, vehicles, or what ever else.

Of course we'd have to get the government to agree to not tax any power generated by sustainable means. That would give folks an even better reason to switch to the green energy producers. Then, guess what. There would be more green energy centered businesses for folks to work at. Okay, they might be small, employing only a few folks. But, if you had at least one of these small business in every small town and several in larger ones wouldn't that employ more folks than say, one big centralized power plant.

If we all had small home power plants then there would also be a need for local folks who could help install them, repair them and maintain them. Oh, looky there: More jobs. Local jobs.

Seems to me that switching to sustainable power sources could really help the economy if we stopped dilly dallying around, and did it ourselves instead of waiting for some big company to charge us out the wazoo to do it for us.

Of course out here in the country, those who have barns and several animals have the opportunity to turn the stuff they clean out of those barns into fuel and fertilizer. The stinky smell that wafts out of the barn could be the smell of money folks. It's called methane and it's the same thing they are drilling for out around Dallas and Ft. Worth. Only you don't have to mess up any aquifers by fracking to get it. All you have to do is figure out how to build a digest that will encourage the stuff you take out of the barn to give off even more of the gas and capture it. What to do with it then? Same thing you'd do with the stuff they pull out of the ground. Yeah. Burning it in vehicles. for heating,or running it through a fuel cell will release CO2 into the atmosphere same as the stuff pulled out of the ground but this will be recycled CO2.

Why is that important? Because it is the excess CO2 that is the problem and that comes from sources where it was 'sequesterd' a long time ago as coal or oil.

Shortly after I wrote this I saw NOVA program on channel 13. It is part of a series they are showing on 'making' things. This particular one was on making things clean and it had a lot in it about the green technologies for power. Look for it. Maybe you'll get some ideas.