You Grow Your Own Food? Harvest 9-29-12

Beans (snapped already), and tomatoes

You Grow Your Own Food? Harvest 9-26-12

Lettuce, beans and tomatoes.

The final rhombus pumpkin

You Grow Your Own Food? Harvest 9-24-12

Beans, tomatoes, and lettuce

You Brew Your Own Beer? BIAB Moravian Pale Ale

Go little enzymes, go forth and convert

The mash

Grains so heavy…

Chickens love spent grains. Chickens give eggs. Little House on the Sand Pit loves eggs. Win win.

Chill

All tucked in

Got some miscalculation on this batch. Ended up with an extra gallon which means the OG, ABV, and IBUs will be much lower than planned. Oh well. It will be beer. Serves me right for not brewing for so long. I put the blowoff from the main batch into 2 one gallon jugs. The yeast went in the main, we’ll see if the blowoff can get the overflows stated fermenting as well.

Fichin’ not catchin’ but still feedin’

Went fichin’ with the boy at the Canal today. We were still fishermen, not catchermen. But next to us a guy hauled in a few. His last one while we were there was a keeper. He asked Justin if he wanted it, which of course was a resounding yes! Feed my family? Yes please! People can be really great sometimes.

The views are just horrible, no?

If the lure ain’t in the water, it can’t catch no fish

Horrible, horrible views.

You Grow You Own Food? Winter gardening preparations part 2 – how we built low tunnels

Almost done with the low tunnels, I just have to hay the beds, plant them, and cover with plastic when cold.

Today’s cost: $0

I scavenged some strapping to make the stakes, even took screws off the pieces for some of the clamps, the rest from my random screw jar.

You Grow Your Own Food? – Harvest 9-22-12

The haul

Beans, tomatoes, beets, cayenne

Lettuce, hops I let go too long

Basil

Pumpkin

A buncha punkins

You Grow Your Own Food? Winter gardening preparations part 1-How we built low tunnels

I made my low tunnel hoops today out of electric conduit. Tomorrow I can hopefully get them up in the garden. Here is what I did:

I used a post we already had in the ground as the center point at the top of the hoops. I laid out a straight board to represent the center line of the hoop.

I measured my bed at 4′ wide so I measure 2′ on each side of the center line. I took a piece of 1/2″ pvc conduit and bent it into an arc. and figured roughly where the ends would be. I put in a stake at each end put in a long screw about 1/2 way.

Here we are figuring out where the stakes should go.

I had to add two outer stakes to keep the pipe in an arc. The open ends went onto the ends of the screws. This will allow me to put stakes in along the inner edge to serve as a template.

I put a bunch of stakes in to serve as the bending template. The stakes go on the inside of the pipe.

I put a clamp on the center of the post to help hold the pipe when I bend it.

<img alt="" src="http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff173/daddymem/LHSP/LHSP%209-22-12/P1030083_zps3268fa97.jpg" width="480" height="360" /Here is a 1/2″ electric conduit on the template. It wasn’t hard to bend the pipe around the stakes.

Gavin showing one of the bent hoops.

Here are all the bent hoops. Tune in for part two-assembly.

Pretty cheap so far:
10 1/2″ electrical conduits @ $2.00 each
1 1/2″ pvc pipe @ $1.73
1 pack of two ended conduit clamps, 25 units @ $2.69

You Grow Your Own Food? 9-19-12

The haul

Lettuce, tomatoes, cayenne

Beans

Basil

Store bought lettuce butt starting to regrow in the windowsill.

You Grow Your Own Food-Harvest 9-16-12

The haul

Lettuce, eggplant, tomatoes

Beans

Basil

A stowaway!