At Home With Dad

Worms… Yeah, I like composting with worms. The downside to the worm – even the 5 tray worm factory I use – is it is pretty darn slow. It can take months to turn food scraps into compost. So I looked for an alternative and found the black soldier fly!

These little black soldier flies – or more specifically their grubs – can break down food scraps in just days! Right now I’m adding a large salad bowl of scraps each day to these little guys and they are eating it all!

The BioPod houses the little guys and makes life a little easier for me. Before my BioPod, I built a house for my little friends and it worked pretty well, but I wasn’t able to catch them when they would make a run for it. See, these little dudes are much like humans. Once they hit puberty, they sneak out of the house to procreate. It is at this time – much like the father of a teenager – that I want to catch ‘em.

Why?

Well… I feed them to my chickens. The little grubs make a perfect protein for the chickens. Besides, at this stage of their life they are ready to morph into a fly, mate, and die. Then, their short little life cycle is compete. As for me, I let some escape to sow their royal oats and keep the life cycle going. And, others become chicken food.

I love these little guys so much I’m thinking of letting my worm factory go completely. The black soldier fly composts so much faster and easier – not to mention my chickens love ‘em. Sorry worms. It was a good run.

Learn more about the black soldier fly at Black Soldier Fly Blog and Wikipedia.

The situation is dire.

Even lettuce and spinach – the easiest plants to grow – have eluded our green thumbs. So we are left with only two choices: (1) walk away from the garden entirely, or (2) bring in some knowledgeble folks.

We chose door number…. 2!

Paul and Julie always have nice produce growing outside their house, so we decided to see if they wanted to join us in our gardening adventure. Which really means, they will grow stuff while we watch. Just kidding. Well, sort of. But, we are hoping that through the combined effort we learn to grow produce as well.

While showing Paul the garden this morning, he already made several observations that should result in better soil. I also noticed a few looks that seemed to say, “What in the world were they thinking!” I guess we deserve that as well.

Yep.

After $200+ dollars of top grade soil, $100+ worth of lumber, $50+ worth of seeds, and too many hours to count working on the garden, here is our summer crop’s results! One watermelon.

The kids had a lot of fun with it all though… Bring on the Fall crops!

The organic garden has been much more difficult (and expensive) than we would have ever guessed. Given, we did try to start our garden just as summer was about rear its ugly head on the poor thing, but still we had high hopes. We believed. We watered. We waited. We prayed. We watered. And, well…. Nothing.

The best growth we saw this summer was a rather large tree-like weed that reached about 3 feet high to our disgust and embarrassment as other gardens just walked passed shaking their heads.

So you can imagine my surprise last week when I found a couple of cantaloupes and a watermelon taking shape. Yes, there was real growth in the garden. The little-garden-that-could has begun to bear fruit. Real fruit. Now, we wait and, hopefully, soon enjoy the most expensive fruit we’ve ever eaten in our lives.

The garden is doing well. We are about 2 weeks after planting and have plants. The beans are doing the very best as you can see in the lower right of our garden.

The kids are so excited about it all and are ready to eat the goodies. They are also planting everything they find in the backyard, so we might have some new growth there too. Of course, they are planting tree branches, peach pits, any seed they find, cars, shovels, and anything else they want to increase in their life. (I snuck out there and buried a dollar just in case.)

Michael Pollan lays out his premise of his book In Defense of Food right in the introduction. He presents a manifesto. Simply stated his manifesto is: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

It doesn’t get much easier to follow than that.

A buddy at my community garden mentioned the book to me last week and I finally got around to checking it out. Pollan’s premise is right up my alley and tackles many of the issues surrounding food and how we get it. He is skeptical of the food industry (and probably for good reason) and seeks to get back to food that doesn’t come packaged, boxed or shrink-wrapped.

Here are some of the more interesting quotes:

“If you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.”

“Most of us no longer eat what our mothers ate as children or, for that matter, what our mothers fed us as children.”

Pollan’s point here is that we eat food that is packaged. Gone are the soups, casseroles, and other goodies made fresh in our kitchens. They’ve all been replaced with processed food that is made quickly and cheaply, but is it food? That is the question.

“In January 1977, the committee [the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs chaired by South Dakota Senator George McGovern] issued a fairly straightforward set of dietary guidelines, calling on Americans to cut down on their consumption of red meat and dairy products. Within weeks a firestorm of criticism, emanating chiefly from the red meat and dairy industries, engulfed the committee… The committee’s recommendations were hastily rewritten.”

Call me a skeptic, but I really believe the lobbyists continue to dictate our country’s health recommendations and policies. When someone steps forward recommending a dietary change, they had better hope there isn’t a well funded lobby group for any product that might see decreased sales as a result of the recommendation. Michael Pollan offers several examples of this in action in American politics.

As a result of this incident, McGovern and his committee began to focus on nutrients rather than specific foods. No more mention of red meat or dairy products, but rather focus on reducing fat intake.

Mentioning foods specifically took a back seat to the specific nutrients in food. Don’t eat more carrots, but get more beta carotene. Don’t stop eating red meat, but lower your intake of fat.  This begins to explain why there are all these specific pills for the newest “thing/nutrient” we all need to give more attention (Omega 3, carbohydrates, fish oil, etc.).

The food lobbies are just too powerful to be called out. Instead, our government started dissecting the food into its various parts. Problem? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll have to keep reading to see where we land on the issue. (But, I think I see where he is going.) Interested?

As the pond enters its second year, we have several blooms taking place as we enter Spring.

Our Community Garden Plot

Another View of Our Community Garden Plot

Our plot at the Lake Highlands Community Garden is coming along quickly.

This past week, we built up the garden bed to make the soil deeper insuring better root development for the new “death row inmates” – I mean veggies. Compost is going to be delivered Thursday and then the planting can begin.

The kids are so excited about the whole process and are learning a ton about plants in the process. They even helped hammer together the supports for the garden box.

On tap for planting:

• Summer Squash
• Watermelon
• Pumpkins
• Cucumbers
• Black Turtle Beans
• Some Marigolds

Wow! The last couple of weeks have been filled with nothing but gardens and campers.

Gardens…

The indoor lettuce growing has attracted every fruit fly within a six mile radius into our house. After Rachel finally broke down and said she could take no more, I moved the indoor vegetables to the garage. The flies remain… I’m hoping with time, they slowly disperse elsewhere or pass into another life.

The Lake Highlands Community Garden plot continues as well. The plot is almost ready. Right now, I am working on building a raised bed for the garden, which means building a square box above the ground. Seems like a simple task, but it is definitely getting the best of me right now. Compost deliveries are coming into the garden as well. We should be up and growing very soon.

Campers…

The new Jayco 23B is awesome! We took a test camp last weekend and was amazed at how easy it was to set-up and get camping. Towing was the biggest challenge, but only because it required me to slow down driving down the road. I’m just not used to driving 60mph on the highway.

Equipping the camper with plates, bowls, can openers, pillows, etc. seems like it will never end. This weekend we are going to take it out again and see if we got everything we need.

The kids love the trailer as well. Having a potty with 4 small kids is a God-send. Walking back and forth to the restroom used to be an hourly activity and now is just like home. We love it!

My indoor lettuce experiment is going very well. All the lettuce is potted and sitting in various window sills around the house.

Some of the larger growth is from transplants and not the seeds. One seed is doing much better than another, but both types are still sprouting well.

Transplant lettuce mixture.

Seedlings & Transplant in back corner