Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Apple Cider Vinegar for your rumins, and nearly every thing else...

If you fed the animals Apple Cider Vinegar, it will increase weight gain and reduce parasites, flies, and diseases.

Summary, put one pint of apple cider vinegar in every 40 gallons of water.

Here is a great writeup on it.
http://www.pharocattle.com/extrastuff/Misc/Apple_Cider_Vinegar.pdf

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Wholesale or retail?

On http://Permies.com under the farm income forum, Adam Klaus said the following.

I started our farm 8 years ago, it has been a constantly evolving journey over those years. The one surprising development for me, has been my embrace of driving to higher value farmer's markets. I was really set on our wholesale and restaurant customers for the past four plus years. I liked the ease, the paychecks, the volume. But in time, it soured a bit for me. I have found the wholesale angle to be limited by the bottom line motivation of groceries and restaurants. They exist to make money, and will ultimately squeeze me to make more for themselves. They will place 'race to the bottom' with other growers to get the lowest possible price. Things start out good, but it has gotten frustrating over time. 

So this year, I took a chance, skeptically, and started participating in a high-dollar farmers' market. I drive about an hour and a half, to a resort town here in Colorado. The customers come for the good food, and pay a nice premium for everything. Yes, I take a risk in moving my volume. And really, I hardly ever sell out completely. But at the end of the day, I am making much better money. The customers arent trying to squeeze me for every penny so that they can make more profit for themselves. They pay well, and just as importantly, really appreciate what I do and the products I offer. I feel much better as a farmer delivering food directly to the end use consumer. I never imagined that it would be such a positive experience, both for me and my farm, but it has really exceeded my best hopes. The farm market also has much better legal restrictions than wholesaling, so there are many products that I can sell direct to customers, that I can not market through a grocery. My customers know and trust me directly, and do not expect me to have any official certifications, so I save big money and hassle not being organic certified, not having massive insurance premiums, etc. It is a much simpler relationship, that I much prefer. I am building direct relationships with many, many customers, rather than being dependent on a few wholesale channels. It feels much more stable and secure, rewarding and profitable. So I guess I would say, driving to Atlanta sounds like a pretty good opportunity to me! 

http://www.permies.com/forums/posts/list/160/21994

Monday, September 23, 2013

Laundry Soap Recipe

1. One four pound twelve ounce box of Borax {Found in Laundry Isle}
2. three bars of Fels-Naptha soap {Found in Laundry Isle}
3. one four pound box of arm & hammer baking soda {Laundry Isle}
4. one box of arm & hammer super washing soda {laundry Isle}
5. four pounds of Oxy Clean {one small/one large container/laundry isle}
6. Optional: Laundry softener for a bolder scent
This laundry soap is so easy to make!
{Makes 4 gallons}
1. Grate the fels-naptha bars into a bowl
2. dump fels-naptha into a large container {I used a 5 gallon pale}
3. Mix all other ingredients into the bucket.
4. Place into container of your choice {I used a 4 gallon glass jar from Walmart}
-I use about 2-3 table spoons per load { you can use less with this stuff!}
-smells great during the wash, but leaves clothes scent free & fresh.
- Great for sensitive skin & HE washers
-I used chalk paint on the jar to label the laundry soap.
I simply taped off a square and painted it on. simple.
- You can use other bar soap besides the fels-naptha {any bar}
which will also change the scent exd…

Friday, June 28, 2013

Do you want to eat Local?

You get to eat three times a day, Sometimes even more often than that!

Your best bet, to eat local...

And this is where you can find your local farms


Wednesday, June 26, 2013

How big and spread out should a swale be?

I was contemplating some of the swales that Geoff Lawton, The Prince of Permaculture, builds. 
He is building these things 2 yards wide and 3 feet deep.

And I was thinking, "Man, that is just way too big. Can't I just build one that is, oh, maybe a foot wide and six inches deep?"

So, I did the math. Now here in Central Texas, we have a problem of too much or too little rain. Rarely do we get a consistent rain of an inch per week for the months of summer.

It is not uncommon for it to rain like crazy for five minutes and leave behind a half inch of rain.

It is also not uncommon that it can rain for five hours solid and dump 4 inches of rain, and then not rain for two months.

A half inch of rain? That isn't going anywhere. It will wet the top 4 inches of soil.

But the 4 incher? Most of that is going down to the river.

This is where the swale come in.

In five hours, I would expect that one full inch of water will seep into the soil. But three of that will travel downhill.

To catch this in a swale, you need  a cubic foot of swale for every four square feet above the swale.

So if you have 30 feet between swales, you need 30 / 4 cubic feet of "ditch" in the swale. In this case, roughly 7.5 cubic feet of ditch. So here in CTX, I might place swales 30' apart, and make them 1.5' deep and 5' wide.

The general equation would be H x W = d / 4 where H is the height, W is the width and d is the distance between swales. The further apart the swales, the larger they should be.

I would also add that H = W / 2. This is a good rule of thumb I think.

For the math geeks out there, this makes W = sqrt(d/2) and H = W/2;

This will catch nearly all of the largest rains that we have here in CTX.
And rian bigger than this is something that we would only get every few years, and I would only want to design for biggest rain likely in a year.

For a 1/4 acre getting 24 inches of rain per year, that comes to 163,000 gallons of water that you get in a dry year. I think that is a useful quantity of water. Of course we average 30 inches, and our low is probably about 15 inches in a calendar year, but even when we got 15", we got it in 3"+ spurts.
You have got to keep that water on your property.

Note, if you have some yards uphill from yours that drain into yours, then you have a bonanza on your hands, and I would increase the size of the swales to take in that acreage that drains through your backyard.

Site location is important. Design is also important.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Birds and the beeswax

I was at the local craft store looking for some glycerin soap for a soap project. Right next to it was the candle making section. I love candles, sort of. And I noticed that they had wax there. This is a good things since that is what candles are made of. Well, there were two waxes there. One is the old oil based paraffin, the other is beeswax. Both blocks of wax cost $16. But the Beeswax was 1 lb, and the paraffin was 2 lbs. Hmm, said I. How hard can it be to get the beeswax from the hive and turn it into a product?

Turns out that it is simple...

stage 1 - pulling the wax out of the beehive trimmings.

1. put big pot of water on to the heat. Place all the comb into the water. Wait for it to melt.
2. place several layers of cheesecloth across a strainer and pour the pot with the hot water and wax through it.
3. let the new pot cool to room temp.
4. pull off the plug of wax on the top of the pot.
5. Clean off the underside of the wax plug.

Stage 2;  - further refining
1. Use a double boiler to melt the wax.
2. Strain the wax with a very tight weave filter material to remove all the solids. gossimer. is said to work well
3. and place wax into a mold

Yep, that is it.

So you need to melt the wax a couple times, but that isn't so bad.
The question I would have is how would you do this economically with 30,000 pounds of wax a year?

here are a couple of people that have actually done this...

Bernie

fitzpatrickfarm

Monday, June 3, 2013

Another resource collecter

FoodForestRetreat blog

Lady in Austin that is doing permaculture design course from Geoff Lawton at geoflawton.com


Friday, March 15, 2013

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Allan Savory can save the world

I have seen a lot of videos that can show how to save the world...

This one is the best of the lot...


Friday, February 22, 2013

Air Wells

So, someone must have extracted water condensate from air, right?

Here is the summary of the various methods...

Monday, February 11, 2013

Monday, January 21, 2013

I need to pickup nuts

Picking up a couple bags of Pecans from the In-Laws told me one thing.   That is a tedious chore!

Bag-A-Nut to the rescue...

http://baganut.com/