Celebrated 40 years of this guys life! Very low-key, at home celebration with very good food: turkey lasagna with a ton of veggies and home-made chocolate chip cheesecake. Oh my. Good stuff.
My nightly snowy walk to close up the Ladies for the night.
Chicken confusion and kerfuffle... "Wait, what is she doing here? Are we eating? Did she bring food? Is it bedtime? Hey, get outta my spot, Dottie! False alarm, she's only shutting the door!"
In other news: I'm obsessing over building a greenhouse this spring. We have a good stack of windows in the garage we bought off craigslist over a year ago. I also just got another 9 or so from a lady in our community whose neighbor got new windows today. I've been watching tons of you tube clips and there's one in particular that totally blew my mind. What looked like a fairly large cold frame was actually a pit greenhouse! Imagine using the earth as your walls! The top was made of hinged windows and when the guy opened it, he walked down a small flight of stairs that led into this long pit greenhouse that was around 7 feet deep. I cannot find this clip again, but really found it so inspiring and cool! Of course one has to take into account where the water table is so that your pit doesn't fill with water... but wow.
As cool as I think a pit greenhouse is, I don't think it's within our means to do that level of greenhouse. I don't have the funds to fork out the grand or so that it would take to get me the real deal big hoop house/greenhouse that I want. I am very drawn to using what we have on hand (and we have a lot of scrap wood and windows right now, as well as concrete blocks). So now we're thinking about doing a lean-to style greenhouse. This would work for us because our only free wall is south facing. That is the wall of the garage.
Here's a clip of a guy in Florida (why do you need a greenhouse is south Florida?!) who built a lean-to style greenhouse with relatively little:
Tell me fellow urban gardeners, what are you dreaming of for this year's growing season in your neighborhood?
Oh did I mention portable herds? Not super possible here in our neck of the woods, but I dream of having little milk goats collectively. Moving them around, taking turns caring for them, milking them, making cheese, sharing, etc. I suppose in the same way that our family shared with all those laying hens and meat birds cooperatively for a couple years before we brought some hens home. We helped build an enormous chicken condo, shared feed, eggs, and meat. Can we do that with goats? Whatcha think neighbors? Anyone already doing this? Anyone WANT to do this? :)
In other news: I'm obsessing over building a greenhouse this spring. We have a good stack of windows in the garage we bought off craigslist over a year ago. I also just got another 9 or so from a lady in our community whose neighbor got new windows today. I've been watching tons of you tube clips and there's one in particular that totally blew my mind. What looked like a fairly large cold frame was actually a pit greenhouse! Imagine using the earth as your walls! The top was made of hinged windows and when the guy opened it, he walked down a small flight of stairs that led into this long pit greenhouse that was around 7 feet deep. I cannot find this clip again, but really found it so inspiring and cool! Of course one has to take into account where the water table is so that your pit doesn't fill with water... but wow.
As cool as I think a pit greenhouse is, I don't think it's within our means to do that level of greenhouse. I don't have the funds to fork out the grand or so that it would take to get me the real deal big hoop house/greenhouse that I want. I am very drawn to using what we have on hand (and we have a lot of scrap wood and windows right now, as well as concrete blocks). So now we're thinking about doing a lean-to style greenhouse. This would work for us because our only free wall is south facing. That is the wall of the garage.
Here's a clip of a guy in Florida (why do you need a greenhouse is south Florida?!) who built a lean-to style greenhouse with relatively little:
Then there's this guy, Garry Entropy who has a whole lot of very cool videos (his wood burning stove turned mod fireplace is especially cool!). His greenhouse is lovely.
Tell me fellow urban gardeners, what are you dreaming of for this year's growing season in your neighborhood?
Oh did I mention portable herds? Not super possible here in our neck of the woods, but I dream of having little milk goats collectively. Moving them around, taking turns caring for them, milking them, making cheese, sharing, etc. I suppose in the same way that our family shared with all those laying hens and meat birds cooperatively for a couple years before we brought some hens home. We helped build an enormous chicken condo, shared feed, eggs, and meat. Can we do that with goats? Whatcha think neighbors? Anyone already doing this? Anyone WANT to do this? :)
3 comments:
Clearly I want to do this, but it would require me having a fence. Maybe I can be in charge of cheese making.
Jamie
Hi, found you through el's site, and of course I have greenhouse envy too (plans in the works though!)
Anyway, I though you might like this link to a earth-sheltered greenhouse, I snipped the article from ME news a long time ago...
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2004-02-01/Earth-Sheltered-Greenhouse.aspx
@Jamie- you will be Master of Cheese when the milk starts flowing. I hope you're ready.
@s- Thanks for the link and for stopping by the blog. I've been at yours many times! :) Keep us posted on your greenhouse!
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