i'd love to move, but i want to improve where i am while i'm here. we have some plans for trees and sunflowers or amaranth on that side, but i think it's a "both/and" situation rather than an "either/or" for me.
hamtron5000
joined 2 years ago
yes, that actually is my very long term strategy, but the trees are not in place yet. my wife and i had a permaculture analyst suggest plants that produce edible foods for our area, so there are some plans for that and maybe also sunflowers or amaranth to do a natural block. but for today, i'm thinking awnings.
yeah, i'm thinking (tentatively) about trying to get some non-plastic, manually retractable cloth ones. then i can leave them fully extended for the hot-as-balls summer and dial them back for other seasons.
i wanted awning before that video, but that video made me start pricing out my options! ha.
verdict: it was not terribly helpful. gonna try Hugo next. https://gohugo.io/getting-started/quick-start/
https://stripedspatula.com/gallo-pinto/#wprm-recipe-container-7474 was quite tasty when we made it the other night. also https://www.ruchiskitchen.com/vegan-spicy-peanut-noodles/#recipe. both good!
i don't know if this link is great, but it's one that i'm going to read and try to follow along with. https://stablepoint.com/blog/how-to-host-your-own-website
to answer my own question, i have planted two rows of potatoes this spring - my first garden that i've ever been involved with! and yes, two rows of potatoes is barely a "garden" but it's a start. i want to grow food i will actually eat, so we planted an apple tree last fall and potatoes this spring. i am hoping to also do a three sisters garden this year, but we'll see. i also potted a Scotch Bonnet plant that i bought accidentally online while trying to buy actual Scotch Bonnet peppers, ha! this will be great for the Nigerian-style jollof rice i make on weekends, and anything Caribbean inspired that i cook which calls for that specific flavor and heat profile.
i also started a Calibreserver based out of my home server setup, which will be accessible to the neighborhood i live in - i bought a domain name and am learning about what all is necessary to statically host a website. this is the first part of my dream to start being a community sysadmin for my neighborhood, where i can provide resources that are freely available to my neighbors, and we can all add content and features as time, skill, and desire allow.
finally, i have dusted off Laika, my old trusty two-wheeled steed. she belonged to a coworker's husband who never rode, so i got it for free last fall! I have not historically been a cyclist so I am working towards it. I bought a rack i need to add to the bike, and hope to get some different tires. add in a trailer, and you have a great errand-runner, which is my goal here.
oh man, this is a great question. i'd rest, first and foremost, for kind of a long while. i'm chronically exhausted right now. then, when my body starts to feel like it can do things again i'd love to grow food, write poems, play music, hike, explore, and interact with people over shared food and conversation.
oh yeah, the Praxis test! I remember that from back in the day when i was in school to be a teacher. that's the subject-matter test, right? like, if you're going to be a math teacher it's the test that proves you can do math?
i'm no expert, but what we ended up using as mulch were wood chips from a tree we had to get removed from a fenceline. it seems to have worked for us.
crossposted from Reddit:
hi all - my wife and I are doing our best to amend our terrible soil in climate zone 6b/7a (western Colorado, near the Utah border). our logic and philosophy is that at this time we can only do what we can do, so that's making our home as solarpunk and permaculture-centric as possible right now (without losing sight of building collective resilience and empowering the disenfranchised).
to that end, our soil: it's pretty abiotic. to grow food, which is a future goal, we need healthier soil. also we're not flat broke but we're relatively close; being frugal and cheap is a necessity. so we determined that we're going to try to amend our soil using cheap, locally sourced, and recycled things - and maybe more sweat equity than I'd love, ha! we elected to go with the lasagna method.
the lasagna method is to lay down different strata of materials to encourage the breakdown of "brown" and "green" materials, in composting terms. also our yard currently is mostly dirt with a few weeds for good measure, so even if we eff it up, it'll be okay.
I work in IT and my wife's a librarian, so we have access to a LOT of cardboard. I've been collecting it slowly over the summer, and today we decided to lay down our first layer.
here's the plan: lay down a layer of cardboard (brown only, tape and labels as removed as possible) two sheets thick. soak the cardboard so it doesn't blow away in the wind. cover that with a layer of wood chips, which we happen to have from removing a tree along our fence line with our neighbors and chipping it up. the wood chip layer is about two to three inches thick, and then we soak that, too. finally, we cover the wood chips with a layer of greens; for us, this is getting on our local Buy Nothing group and asking for lawn clippings. we are also going to plant fall cover crops and once they have grown in the spring, do a chop-and-drop layer of that.
over time, we will plant a few trees (looking at either a local growers apple variety or a multi-graft we can buy online) and have a rotating group of garden beds.
so that's our plan: a bit of couples labor each weekend over a long period of time, with the hopeful result of improved soil biology and then the growing of native.plants and flowers and food crops.
I hope this is solarpunk enough to warrant this post!
good growing to us all.
that's where i saw that video! appreciated.