30 different types of tomatoes to choose from to grow this coming gardening season.
WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY GODDAMN TOMATO SEEDS?
Anyway, of these... which ones are your favorite, or which would you like to try?
My favorites are the Sungold's and the Super Sweet 100s.
My goal is to make and sell things at farmers markets, and my little farm stand (that I didn't put up at all in 2023, whoops!).
Tomatoes are not all I grow... but I will never not be surprised at how many different types of tomatoes I have when I take my seed stock at years end.
If you had a decent amount of 'fuck you' money... what would you do with it?
I want to make an intentional community on lots of land thats both wooded and able to be farmed... hopefully with a river.
I want to have a bunch of year-round yurts in the woods... all connected by wood planks. Some bigger, some smaller.
I'd want people to be able to live in some of the yurts... whether as couples, families, coliving... whatever-- and then I'd want the other yurts to be 'community room' type things. A kitchen, a dining room (maybe together), a rec room or a few, things like that.
On the farmable land, we would do just that-- animals and fruits and vegetables. We would use as much of all of our bounty as possible. The rest could be donated, preserved, composted... etc etc.
I still want an intentional community, and I want to make as much of this come true as possible. I guess I just need the fuck you money.
"In June, yearlings start moving out. Bears that were born last spring and denned up with mom this past winter are now 18-month old yearlings. If all goes well, they’ll be the size of a medium-sized dog by the end of June, although their fur coats can make them look larger. Yearling females are often allowed to move in next door to their mom. Yearling males are strongly encouraged to move out and go find a new territory of their own, so most young bears wandering far from home are males.
No matter how big and furry they look, yearling bears are all trying to figure out how to live without their mom’s help. They are often lonely and lack the fully developed survival skills of an adult bear. They are also hungry and inquisitive and will instinctively check out anything that seems as if it might be a source of food.
Like human teenagers, they are at a very impressionable stage of life. If they quickly discover that human places should be avoided, they will learn to support themselves as wild bears. If they find the backyard pickings are easy, they start down a road that is often a dead end. No matter how cute they look and how hungry they are, the best thing you can do to help yearlings grow up wild is to make sure there’s nothing around your home to attract them. "
There is another annoying climate change thing here... rats. They have moved into the area maybe because it's warmer, I dunno. We never used to have them here. Now they are in everyone's gardens chewing through corn, root veggies.. everything they can. We've always had small rodents like voles and other little critters, pack rats too. But never actual rats. Today, I harvested all my carrots and was happy to find that the rats only had started on the edges of the raised bed. The carrots in the sink all were chewed on so won't last in the root cellar. Those will get scrubbed and cleaned up to be canned. The 3 gallon buckets were all in great shape so are now stowed in the root cellar. Hopefully these will last us the winter and most of next spring.
I spend a lot of time finding and testing recipes to sell online, at farmer's markets, and at the roadside stand I set up on my family's property in the summer.
That is in addition to other things I sell, like stickers and candles.
What are some things you would stop by and check out and consider buying, knowing it was created and produced locally?
I've already got vegetables down, anything excess from my garden I turn around and sell or give away. We also sell our chicken's eggs when we have an abundance.
But what about hot sauces? Baked goods? Home goods you could be interested in? Jewelry?
I don't intend to make a full time job out of selling these items, unless that is somehow how it pans out. Plus, being in Wisconsin, I can't just have a roadside stand up all year.
I slept through a storm last night that was powerful enough to take out the power here for 10 hours. I had the genny going all day for the fridge and freezers. Going into winter, the fridge is not so much a problem but the freezers are unless it is VERY cold outside. And even then, it would be a huge job to transfer all that food outside into a safe space to keep it frozen. It's not likely to get that cold here for at least a couple of months. I try not to keep too much gas on hand because it is hard to get gas that has no ethanol in it which isn't great for the generator. (it settles out in a few months and can mess up the engine) I can buy fuel stabilizer but it's fairly expensive. But if we got a big outage, say a week, it would be hard to have that much fuel stored either way. We would be cooking and canning food like crazy but still some would be lost to spoilage.
This is my weak spot in prepping. I don't have solar yet, because of finances. We are good for water, heat, and light. Until I can install solar for food preservation, the best thing to do is can as much as possible instead of relying on frozen food.
Unless you have bad soil or can't grow in-ground, there's really no reason you should be using those raised bed containers (e.g., Birdies). I see people who have enough land and good enough soil using these raised beds. You're wasting money. Just grow in-ground!
Almost all of my garden is doing fantastic this year. It's probably due to "Cowboy Wayne" and the load of stuff from his ranch that he brought us in early spring. But, this year seems especially amazing. Look at this turnip. These things are usually not good when they get this big but this one is crunchy, juicy, sweet... perfection with humus for lunch.
Did you know that you can freeze fresh sweet peppers? I picked these this morning, chopped and flash froze on sheets. Then pack into larger bags. Great for adding to food that is cooked. Just scoop the amount right out of the freezer bag, and add frozen to whatever you are cooking. This also works really well for mature onions and green onions, too.
An interesting documentary about a mysterious village, which appeared on satellite images out of nothing, in the crater of an ancient volcano in the middle of Madagascar:
Rancho de la Libertad is most definitely going to be adding some goats to the land in the next year or so, but are also considering pigs (for food self-sufficiency, not land restoration, although their manure is compost, too!).
So, #Pigstodon (if there is such a thing), tell me your experience raising pigs! We'd love to hear from some real human beings what they liked or hated about raising them and if it was worth it!
All of you reading this in the Northern Hemisphere - if you want to grow food in your garden this summer, or if you want to grow more food, start planning now! Plan well, buy seeds, read about it, and have dreams!
I thought I had lost one hive but today discovered all 4 of my hives are alive. The one I thought didn't make it has a mouse in the bottom, the bees have moved up under the lid. My next bee task will be fashioning mouse guards for all the entrances. I fed them all good quality pollen patties today, and did another O. A. treatment. 2 of the 4 are very strong, 2 weaker but hanging in there. Considering the absolute clown weather we've had, I am very encouraged.
Tutorials/designs courtesy of Open Source Ecology
https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Hydroponics...