Hoe, Hoe, Hoe [ how-to/ ]
For ages, now, I've been wanting one of these. See, the problem is that I garden using the Deep Bed Method (about which I shall pontificate at a more apropos time.) This means that a lot of plants get spaced much more closely than recommended by All Manufacturers. In particular Onions and Garlic are a Perennial Problem2. They hate weeds, and suffer them poorly. But they're so closely spaced that any form of conventional hoe is a non-option.
"What to do? What to do?" Enter the Revolutionary Micro Hoe. I managed to bum a bit of scrap off the local metal merchants4 to (finally! eventually!) implement the implement: the Plan I've had in mind for months5.
The metal bit is only about 5cm wide, and sharp enough to shave a sheep, meaning it will fit between cramped rows of Onions, severing the roots off Terrible Weeds without damaging the pencil-thick Onions.
Fields trials seem to show that this one is a winner. Took me less than ten minutes to hoe a 10m2 bed full of Weeds (and a few Onions). It snicked through the weeds like... Oh! Enough with the similies!... It cut through them really easily.
I don't have the angle of the blade quite right, yet. It needs to be a bit more acute an angle (contrary to all expectation) than it is. On the other hand, that involves dismantling the entire contraption, re-sawing the slot in the handle, and re-setting the blade. More than I can face today. In use, the handle has a disconcerting tendency to twist anti-clockwise, and that gets a bit uncomfortable after using the Hoe for a time. But I can live with that, considering how much quicker it is that Hand Weeding!
If you're a Real Human Person wanting to build your own MicroHoe to my design, go ahead with my blessing. If you're a Company seeking Fortune through the manufacture of MicroHoes, please fuck off. It's my design, hereby Open Sourced for Real Human Beings. Only!
[1] Just some random cardboard box, mind you. No guarantee that the MicroHoe would fit into it, or anything.
[2] AKA a Pain In The Arse3.
[3] "Ass" for the 'Merkins.
[4] Too unhip to even have a website!
[5] Could be years, actually. My Scotch-addled brain glosses over time like... well... like something very glossy6!
[6] ...had in mind something along the lines of "like gumboots on a duck-beshitten lawn", but I couldn't make it scan.
Space: The Final Frontier [ how-to/ ]
Serendipity Happens: A 48-hour power outage last week set me thinking about food preservation. Without the freezer. Today my feed-reader plunks Sharon Astyk's post on Low Energy Food Preservation onto my plate. Her blog is always interesting, packed with detailed information and deep insight. Honestly, I don't know how Sharon finds the time for such prolific posting!We mostly rely on the freezer for preserving our produce, but then, as last week, you begin to wonder whether an entire Summer's harvest is going to survive and ever-lengthening power failure... Forgetting the old permaculture principle, were we: Critical functions must be supported by more than one element. Honestly, it's just too easy to fall into a comfort-zone and stay there.
So we're starting to look at and learn about other ways to preserve food. The catch, of course, with all this preserving of produce, is that you need somewhere to store it all. One of the most serious gaps in our original planning was in not providing for sufficient storage space. Despite having added two small sheds and a garden "cupboard" to our storage, despite using chunks of the 3-car carport for storing bulk chookfood, rotovator, mower, various toolchestsfull of crap, we're still perpetually short of storage space.
Not only do you need somewhere cool and out of direct sunlight to store preserved produce, you also need to store all the empty jars and bottles (and their lids!) until you're ready to fill them up. And you need lots of them! Then you need somewhere cool, dark and dry to store self-saved seed; somewhere where labels and containers won't get mixed up. It's pretty easy for conventional farmers who typically buy-in their seed, and only need to store a few varieties for a short period of time; quite another for a self-sufficient holding, where you regularly keep dozens of plant varieties.
Then there's somewhere to stash tools. And it's not good enough to just say "tools": There are general small tools -- hammers, pliers, vice grips, screwdrivers, measuring tapes and set squares -- specialised and power tools, plumbing-specific tools, gardening tools large and small, powered and handraulic. Some are pretty specialised to a self-sufficient setup: I am planning to make an oil-press and a solar-dehydrator, aiming to acquire a flour mill; they'll all need places to live. Some of these more specialised tools get used only once or twice a year -- the ridging hoe is only needed a few times in Spring.
But they all need safe, dry storage space. Turns out that the one wendy-house outside the kitchen door is not as dry as we expected it to be. Result: a lot of hand tools furred in a fine rust needing cleaning. Trying to be self-sufficient demands a lot more storage area than I expected.
I'm thinking of enclosing a piece of the carport...
Technorati Tags: self-sufficiency, storage, food-preserving, seed-saving
African Rat Trap [ how-to/ ]
Tempted to title this post "Oh Rats!" or "Getting Ratted"...A Rat Plague of Near Biblical Proportion has descended upon us. It happens most years around this time; I guess that all the Rat babies born in Spring or Summer are now fully-grown, leaving their parents burrow to set up home for themselves for the first time. And, of course, the Veggie Garden is the local Rat Supermarket.
I have heard it said that, "Where a Human Being is, there is a Rat within 20ft." I believe it. Certainly the first thing I saw upon landing in Boston was a Rat. And likewise for Johannesburg, London or pretty-much anywhere else I've been (except Switzerland[1]) just so you know I'm not picking on anybody.
The first few years I tried conventional Rat traps -- the kind that go SNAP -- but freely confess that they scare me shitless. For days after setting one of those things I harbour nightmares of my fingers getting SNAPped, worry about The Dog getting her pretty (though excessively long) snout SNAPped. They're humane, though, the SNAP traps. The real downside is that they get at most one Rat and then need resetting and re-baiting. Quite often, too, the Rats would make a Clean Getaway with The Cheese.
I once tried poison -- the kind that comes in waxy blocks -- well tucked away from Dogs and Small Children in a scrap of irrigation pipe. The label claimed that it was "safe" in not causing secondary poisoning of any unsuspecting creature that might eat a Rat carcase. I have my doubts. Anyway, the stuff disappeared within a couple of days and didn't seem to have any effect.
Read and Learn:
First dig a hole in the ground, of a size and shape to bury a large-ish bucket to its brim. Place said bucket in the hole, and fill the bucket a quarter or a third full with water. Place a piece of wire across the centre of the bucket, suitably baited with something Yummy To Rats. I believe that people in Zimbabwe use Peanut Butter. It certainly worked well for me, but I seem to have Vegan Rats who far prefer a chunk of Carrot. Empty the bucket periodically of drowned Rats.
See, the Rats stretch along the wire, trying to get the food, but not being trained for the High Wire, they lose their balance and fall into the water. Frequently they actually do get a nibble, so at least they don't die hungry! I've had such a trap deal with as many as eight Rats in one night.
Seems a tad cruel, yes, but very effective. And we're talking about Bubonic Plague and stuff, so Rats are the one thing I won't abide. Then, too, the presence of a plentiful Rat supply will inevitably be followed by a Plague of Snakes, and pretty dangerous ones, too. The Rats also eat the bark off numerous trees, including our fruit trees. We've already lost a 2-year-old Avocado tree this year. Not to mention that they're playing merry hell with my Nantes Carrots that I'm supposedly growing up for seed (barely visible in the pics due to having had their tops eaten off.)
Cue Monty Python: Has it got any Rat in it?
[1] I believe that Rats are strictly Verboten in Switzerland unless properly Licenced and Taxes Paid, and that they get a severe Talking To and Finger-Wagging if they wiggle their snouts inappropriately. Local Canton rules may apply, though.
Technorati Tags: rats, rat-trap, vermin
Breadmaking Day [ how-to/ ]
It occurs to me that I started a "Sourdough Breadmaking" thread, but have utterly failed to follow through. When I wrote about "Making Your Own Sourdough Starter," I also neglected to describe the actual recipe and process for making the bread from which your starter evolves. Now I get to fix all that...Time for a bread-baking day, today, and, approaching the end of a delicious, dense, dark rye loaf, decided it's time for an ordinary, no-frills, wholewheat loaf.
Gotta Make'a Dough
This is surely the simplest of breads. If you don't have sourdough starter, this is a good bread to use to get one going. Just use a sachet of instant yeast where I have used sourdough yeast, and add quite a bit more water.
Yesterday, quite late in the day, I took the sourdough starter out of the refrigerator, and, after giving it a half-hour or so to warm up to room temperature (not strictly necessary, but I like to), added a couple of cups of (white bread) flour and a bit of blood-temperature water -- just enough to make a stiff batter. Leave the mix in a covered bowl overnight to grow. I prefer to use white-bread flour for this step simply so that the starter doesn't accumulate too many bits of bran and junk. On the other hand we're not fanatic about it, and have used brown and whole flour in the past when we've been out of white-bread flour.
This morning, removed a couple of cups of sourdough yeast to put back into the refrigerator for next time, thus keeping the sourdough going. Our starter by now has quite a different nature to how it started out; it seems much calmer and steadier, stronger though slower, smoother and more mature.
Into the remainder of the sourdough yeastie, add 450g of whole-wheat flour, a couple of tablespoons of oil, a generous teaspoon of salt, and a handful-and-a-bit of brown sugar. Any kind of oil will do -- I used sunflower oil today, but grapeseed oil, olive oil, peanut oil (if you can afford that) are all fine. I am working on getting some sort of flour mill organised so that we can buy grains in bulk (as a prelude to growing our own) and mill our own flour. Whole-milled flour is just so much better tasting than anything you can buy, but does need a bit more work to knead.
You might notice that my measurements are *cough* very precise. It is important that you use exactly a handful-and-a-bit of sugar, for instance. Self-sufficiency demands that you develop your own judgement, trust to your own senses, especially your "common" sense, and your sense of what's going to work. Mistakes are good! How else do we learn?
The Art, Science and History of Kneading
Added a bit of lukewarm water to the dough -- perhaps a half-cup -- as it was a bit dry. Then knead. As a wee lad I was taught to knead bread by Nanna, my late grandmother. She had a wonderful, wide enamelled bowl that she used for breadmaking. I would love to find a similar bowl, but all I can find is plastic rubbish, so I knead on the kitchen counter. Nanna was fanatic about cleanliness for breadmaking; lessons that have stayed with me to this day. Before getting my hands into the dough, I scrub-up, doctor-style, using a nail-brush and not just for the fingernails, using antiseptic soap, then make very sure I rinse the soap off very thoroughly.
Initially the dough is very poorly mixed. Mush, mush, mush with the fingers until it's all gluing together, then tip out of the bowl onto the (clean!) counter-top dusted with a bit of flour.
Push the dough around with the heal of your hand until it forms a coherent ball; add a bit of flour if it seems too wet. You're aiming for a slightly-sticky-but-not-sticking-to-hands-or-counter consistency. Today's bread is going into a baking-tin for the baking, so can afford to be quite soft, as it doesn't need to hold its own shape. Initially, as you work the dough, the flour absorbs moisture, and the mixture becomes stickier as you work it. Chuck a bit more flour onto the counter if the dough starts sticking too badly. On the other hand, if the dough seems too stiff and dry, poke some holes into it, throw a little water into the holes, and work the water into the dough.
Then knead: push your knuckles into the dough, using a twisting motion, folding the dough back on itself now and then. Beat it up. This is a quite vigorous style of kneading. Kneading releases the gluten in the flour, which holds the bread together around the holes of gas that the yeast makes. After about 12 minutes the dough will start fighting back. Keep kneading! Knuckle kneading becomes more difficult, and you likely want to switch to using the heals of your hands to push the dough about as it becomes spongey and springy. You're done after 15 minutes. As you gain experience with bread you can dispense with the clock-watching and just go by feel. Actual times vary depending on the condition of the flour, humidity of the weather, and myriad other factors. But when you're just starting out, do it by the clock!
If you're wanting to make a sourdough starter, now is the time to break off a knob of the dough to use for that purpose as described here.
Rising Up
I moulded the dough into a sausage shape, then rolled the sausage through a scant-handful of sunflower seeds, just for a bit of entertainment. Plunk the dough in a greased loaf-tin. Cover with a cloth, and place in a warm spot -- but not too hot, or you'll kill the yeasties. It will take most of the day for the bread to rise -- much longer than when you use bought yeast, but the bread has a much stronger, more elastic consistency for it, not to mention the sourdough taste.
Around 4:30 or 5 this afternoon we'll get around to...
Baking
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C, then gently -- you don't want to knock the bread about, now that it's so beautifully risen -- place the loaf in the middle of the oven as quickly as possible. You want to disturb the temperature of the oven as little as possible -- avoid having oven elements switch on if you can.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. When its ready, the loaf will make a hollow sound when you tap the underside of the baking-pan.
Tip the loaf out of the tin as soon as it comes out of the oven. This allows excess moisture to escape, giving you a nice crispy crust. Let the loaf cool for 10 or 15 minutes before you cut it. In the early days of our breadmaking we never could wait that long, it smells so mouthwatering! But the bread really is better for being allowed to rest a little when it comes out of the oven.
Wow That's A Lot Of Work
Not! Let's do an accounting:
- Preparing the sourdough starter: 2 minutes
- Mixing the dough: 1 minute
- Kneading: 15 minutes (I lie; I only really kneaded for about 12 minutes, today)
- Cleaning up afterwards: 2 minutes.
Technorati Tags: bread, sourdough, whole-wheat, baking, self-sufficiency
How to Kill a Chicken [ how-to/ ]
I started this as a reply to "Chicken anyone?" but it got long enough for a post in its own right, and is, in any case, something I've been meaning to blog on for a long time...Killing chickens is a necessity if you're going to keep more than one or two birds. If you allow them to incubate their own eggs, you're going to end up with half boys and half girls, and too many roosters is not good for the flock. Besides, you probably want to be a bit selective about which chickens you breed from. We carefully select our veggie seed for saving so that we eventually end up with strains that are well adapted to our local environment, soil and climate, resistant to the local pests and diseases. We should be doing the same with our animals. We don't really want some fancy breed of chickens from America or Europe; we want our local Big Black Mommas bred by J!
So, whilst I don't relish the job of chicken killing, I accept its necessity. It's also about taking responsibility -- what I generalise as "dealing with your own shit." I have little patience with people who are quite happy to buy and eat slabs of dead FactoryCow from the supermarket, just as long as nobody reminds them that it was a real animal that lived under appalling circumstances and die in the most demeaning and degrading way imaginable. No. Our chickens range free -- often too free! and die as quickly and with as little stress as we can possibly arrange. They die with respect, and with our thanks, so that we can eat. I take the responsibility. Then, too, they taste a hell of a lot better than bought chicken -- even so-called "free range" chicken is soft and tasteless in comparison.
In the past I used to break their necks by hand: tuck the chicken under your arm; hold their head in your other hand with your hand facing out, and snap down and twist -- very quick, very effective. But a rotator-cuff injury makes that painful for me now, and with some of our big roosters I didn't quite have the reach for as quick and clean a break as I would prefer. Then, too, we have bred-up a really big, healthy, self-reliant strain of chickens (to the point where we are a preferred supplier of livestock for people wanting to start their own flock) and their necks are very strong!
So now its a tree-stump and a blunt chopper. "Chicken anyone?" talks of using a meat cleaver, but my feeling is it would be too sharp, and will cut the head right off. A pretty messy business! The point is to break the neck, not necessarily to chop the head right off. Its a bit of a ticklish thing, judging the strength to use. On one hand you want a clean break, instantly killing the bird on the first blow. On the other you don't really want to break the skin, thus avoiding quite a lot of messiness. Two people makes the job easier than just one.
Then comes the tedious work: Plucking and butchering. I'll leave those for another day...
Technorati Tags: chicken, self-sufficiency, slaughter, culling, food
Loafing About [ how-to/ ]
Bread-making is easy and fun. Once you get the hang of it, you'll never willingly eat store-bought bread again. We've been baking our own bread for (probably) a couple of years now, and yesterday was a crowning moment when we cut into a warm, Sourdough Rye Bread stuffed with Olives, Rosemary and Garlic. So good it needs nothing else.
About a year ago we were still using bought-in dry yeast, but the price had almost doubled in less than a year, and we still had a nagging feeling of not being as self-sufficient as we could be with the whole deal.
So we learned how to make our own yeast starter and to keep it going. As a result we nowadays eat only "sourdough" breads. A short business trip to Johannesburg last week that reminded me just how tasteless, lightweight and unsatisfying commercial breads are. After all, the goal of a commercial bakery is to sell you as much air as possible.
I figure I'll write a few articles on bread-making, but before we can get into some of the more interesting recipes, we need to get going with creating a sourdough starter.
Care And Feeding of Your Very Own Yeastie Beastie.
To make your very own Sourdough Starter, just bake a loaf of white, brown or rye bread, using whatever yeast the recipe recommends. Wholewheat will do, too, but you'll end up with a lot of chaffy bits in the starter. Note that commercially-produced wholewheat flour is but a pale and pathetic imitation of the Real Thing, having been torn apart, bleached, "fortified", purified and then put back together in some way that maximises the mill's profits.
Make a little more dough than the recipe calls for - perhaps an extra cup of flour - or just accept that your bread is going to be a little smaller than usual. When you've finished kneading the dough, break of a lump of dough the size of your fist, or a bit bigger, and place it in a bowl. Cover with a cloth, and leave this in a warm (not hot!) place for three or four days. Bake the remainder of the dough into a conventional bread.
After your lump-o-dough has sat around for some days acquiring wild yeasts from the air, add a couple of cups of white-bread flour and enough warm (body-temperature) water to make a stiff batter. This is your first starter.
You should also add a couple of tablespoons of sugar - brown sugar is better, simply because it tastes better. Or use molasses, honey or malt-extract instead of sugar. What you choose here will have an influence on the taste of your sourdough starter in the long term. Sugar or molasses is sucrose; malt extract is maltose; and honey is a complex mixture of stuff. What you use will influence which sorts of yeasties thrive in your starter, and which varieties of yeast are discriminated against. Some yeasts prefer maltose, some sucrose, and so on. Then, too, the kind of flour you use will also exert a small influence.
Bung this lot into the refrigerator until you're ready to bake your first sourdough loaf. When you do bake, scoop out a couple of cups of your starter into a bowl, add two cups of flour and enough lukewarm water to make a stiff batter again. This lot you keep for next time, and the remainder of the starter you use to make your bread.
For the first several generations your starter probably won't taste very "sour". It takes time for the starter to acquire a distinctive yeast ecosystem. It also means that every sourdough starter is absolutely unique. Nobody will be able to imitate your breads! Very, very occasionally you may get unlucky and find the starter acquiring an "off" taste. Chuck it and start again. Mostly this won't happen though, because you've started with a very strong yeastie population from the commercial yeast in your first starter, and these yeastie beasties will outcompete any of the unpleasant wild beasties that may stray into the mix.
After four or five generations of starter you should have a fine, distinctively sour starter, and you'll never need to buy yeast again.
People who are exceptionally more organised than we might like to try keeping several strains of starter - one lot fed on (say) malt and rye flour, another lot fed on honey and wheaten flour, and so on. Please let us know how it turns out.
Remember and give thanks to the little yeastie beasties who leaven our bread and beer. Without them life would be much less palatable.
Technorati Tags: self-sufficiency, recipe, bread, yeast, sourdough
Pump Action [ how-to/ ]
We have two water pumps around the place: one providing irrigation water from the small Earth-dam next to the house, the other pumping our household water from the main storage tanks to a header-tank in the roof of the house. Having installed our own plumbing, and water being a bit important, keeps us very tuned to the behaviour of the machinery we rely upon. Let the water pump cycle even a fraction of a second too short, and I am instantly aware that there's a problem.Over several weeks the house-pump has been cycling in ever shortening durations, and I'm well familiar with what that means...
Digression: The Inner Life of Pumps and Pressure Switches
The pump is controlled by a pressure-switch, which in turn relies on a rubber-bladder inside the pressure-dome. I've also heard it called a surge tank. The rubber bladder gets filled with water, compressing the bubble of air between the bladder and pressure-dome, until there is sufficient back-pressure to overcome the spring in the pressure switch. There are more modern electronic versions of pressure switches that do away with the need for pressure-domes, and I am told they're very reliable, but they were not around when we built and plumbed our house, and I see no real need for another expense to replace a perfectly serviceable setup.Every so often, though, the bladder wears out and develops a pucture, and water seeps through to the wrong side of the bladder. This means that there's less air to make everything work, and the pump trends towards switching in ever-shorter cycles, which, if neglected, will have the pump destroy itself. So everything has to come apart, as pictured here, the bladder replaced, then put back together again. Only this time, I was feeling a bit miffed at a bladder that has lasted a bare 18 months. I should check inside the pressure-dome and check that there's not a rough spot sandpapering through the rubber. The bladders are also getting quite expensive!
Invent Another Way
Out came an old bicycle puncture-repair kit. Puncture located. Patch applied. Whan, bang and we're back in action. If it works.After all, the whole thing is under about 4 bar of pressure. And being flexed and bent all the time. Neither of which is normal for a bicycle tube.
Only way to find out is to put it all back together; suck it and see.
Putting the bladder and pressure-dome back together, bolting the baseplate on securely, and threading the whole thing back onto the 4-way joint that ties everything together without causing any leaks is only part of the story, though. The pressure-dome still needs to have air pumped into it through a tyre-valve on the top. Normally about 1.5 to 2 bar of air pressure is plenty -- this is all about just having the air in place, rather than creating any tremendous pressure. I have tried using a small 12-volt pressure pump such as you might carry in the pickup for emergency tyre pumping, but, to be honest, it takes so long to fill the pressure-dome that I'm better off using an ordinary handraulic tyre-pump.
There's Always Another Job Along the Way
Out comes the tyre-pump, only to find that the hose has perished and broken. It's Saturday afternoon, and the hardware shops are all closed for the weekend.
Close examination reveals that most of the length of hose is still OK -- only one end was badly perished. So, a little action with knife and a hose-clamp, and we're back in action.Now we know why the shed is filled with a rich and varied assortment of plumbing bits, glues, wire, spare parts and piping of various descriptions.
Happily my patch-job seems to be holding well, though it remains to be seen how long it will last. The saving of a couple of hundred bucks was a good win, but more importantly, the feeling that comes of having dealt with the problem, having refused to accept defeat in the face of niggling problems and difficulties -- that's the big win.
Post Script
I do plan to install a hand- or wind-driven backup pump for the house water. That's partly the reason that the plumbing system was designed as a gravity-feed setup in the first place. Right now we have water sufficient for about 3 or 4 days without power to pump water up to refill the header tank. And it has happened a couple of times that we've been without power for that long as a result of storm damage. In these situations we're still able to use inside water, bath, etc. where our much more modern and clever neighbours are forced to do without.
The catch is that I expressly do not want a manufactured pump, but something I can totally build myself from scratch, so that I am not at all reliant on any factory-engineered bits and pieces that would instantly become unobtainable should "everything go Pear-shaped."
Technorati Tags: water, pump, pressure-dome, repairs, diy, self-sufficiency
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