Growing outside the box

What I mean by that is to be growing things that are not usual for your garden. I've talked about growing coffee and tobacco a couple of times and have shared photos but this morning I found a photo tutorial made by a member of a survival forum I belong to. I hope Dilli doesn't mind me "plugging" the tutorial, I learned a good lesson on photo presentation from it. Please, check out Dilli's work, it is quite impressive and leave a comment....

Tobacco Photo tutorial by hillidilli(dilligaf)

Now for what's going on around the farm.....

Cody the coon dog killed a laying hen yesterday and the blue heeler pup wiped out almost all the Rouen ducklings. We saved 2 but I think one of those is going to die too. I spent a couple hours in the grinding room working on the feed mix. Grinding corn and mixing it with the rest of the grains I have. I like to have a weeks worth at a time to keep it fresh and save time on the daily chores. I was serenaded by the sounds of ducklings and chicks in the brooder tank in the corner. I'm worried about them being hatched out so late in the season, cold weather is coming very quickly. The unseasonable warm weather we enjoyed tricked the hens into thinking it was spring. It's harder than you think to convince a broody hen to not sit on a nest. Even taking the eggs away doesn't help much, they just lay more to sit on and gather eggs from other nests.

Did you notice, Queenbuffness made a comment on the chicken feeding page, she feeds her chickens meat scraps with great results. I think I will try it with my turkey scraps this holiday. Thank you Queenbuffness!

I still haven't gotten any of the projects that needed store bought supplies done yet. Seems the bank has a policy where they hold big checks for 2 weeks. Funny thing is, they claim it's because the check is an out of state check. They didn't have any problems cashing the small checks drawn from the same bank as the big one since June...... So add 2 extra days the bank is closed for the holiday to our wait, it will be December before i can have our own money to work with. I've already wrote several checks paying our overdue bills and I'm sure I will receive plenty of overdraft penalties for them. Thieving bastards. Glad they get to collect 2 weeks of interest from the Fed on my money.......

My Seed Savers Exchange seed catalog is all wrinkled up already ;) hubby and I have marked all over the poor thing working on what we want to try in the garden this year. The catalog is all heirloom seeds, some certified organic. Most of the seeds can be traced back to the 1800's.

I also order plants from Starks Brothers and Miller Nurseries. I'm also fond of a couple sellers on ebay. I get exoctic seeds there like coffee, tobacco and oddball fruit, vege and herb seeds either not readily available thru normal channels or too expensive commercially.

I put the nesting boxes in with the rabbit does last night, I should have 2 more batches of bunnies in the next couple of days and another at the end of the month. I need to get a good stock of bunnies up so I can meet what my new customer wants plus have a few for myself. You just can't beat the high protein/low fat of rabbit meat for your diet.

yesterday I tried once again to make some cheese with the poor quality milk. It's just not going to work, no matter what I do. Disappointing for me but more drive for finding my own cow. Cracked corn is just not a good animal feed all by itself. Not enough nutrient in it. While I know this to be true, it's hard to get some of these hard headed cheapass farmers around here to believe me. They think corn is some kind of wonder grain. They starve their animals all the time on cracked corn. Oh well, I know better anyway.......

ARG! This new computer with it's fabulous windows 7 will not support my Kodak program so I am still without pictures from my camera. I guess I will have to wait for the old HP to be fixed so I can share some farm pictures. I know it's a little boring without all the cool pictures from around here, hang in there, I'll have some soon!

Off to get some bread made..........

Sustainable Living with our Habits

Recent conditions created by our government via it's brilliant bailout plan hopefully has you thinking about how much LESS money you're going to have soon if you don't conform to mainstream stupidity. Myself, I am down right pissed off by the fact that a single group of people can force legislation on the rest of us. What am I talking about? Smoking bans and increased taxes put directly on smokers. Hermit wrote a nice blog about it that includes how much our government intends to squeeze out of a small group of people to pay for it's socialist plans.

So, how do we fight back? For me, that's simple since I've been doing it for a couple of years already. Grow your own. Tobacco is not hard to grow, at least here it isn't. It grows like a weed. I like rustic girls webpage for growing directions and wikipedia for a good understanding of how to use what you grow.

There's tons of website out there that will sell you tobacco seeds. What I grow is pretty hardy, drought tolerant and takes the heat and humidity well. There's even types of tobacco that grow well in Canada. If you smoke or like to chew, you might want to plant yourself a little tobacco to support your habit or you may be using your hard earned money to support others instead.

Stay safe and keep Prepping!

gardening surprise, supporting our habits

I received an email from Patrick(thank you Patrick) asking me about something on my profile. I grow my own coffee and tobacco. 2 bad habits I have, one I refuse to live without and the other I just don't want to quit. I looked thru my photo albums and don't have a single picture of either plant growing, hmmm. So, come spring I'll remedy that.

Coffee is an interesting subject! Lots of different strains of coffee you can grow, depending on your tastes. Myself, I prefer the Arabica bean for it's low acid and naturally smoother drinkability. Some types of Arabica plant prefer to be partially shaded, need extra care and attention but there's one or 2 strains out there that grow like weeds. A simple general search on coffee beans will help each person decide what type of plant they want to grow. The seed germination takes a bit longer than say a tomato seed, but once it gets going, you're in business! I started growing my own coffee a few years ago when the price of commercial coffee went way up and stayed up for a while. it's dropped back down somewhat now so stock piling a few cans of coffee while your plants get going is still affordable. It is a good idea to read up just a little on growing coffee before you start, all the help you can get.

Once you get your "cherries", there's a few decent and inexpensive ways to roast them too. You don't have to have an expensive electric roasting machine to get a good cup of coffee. I do mine in the oven. The roasted beans can be ground for brewing in just about anything, even a household blender. The best thing to use tho, is the old fashioned hand crank burr grinder. My preferred choice anyway.

I drink my coffee black but hubby likes sugar in his. Since I am allergic to bees, we don't have a supply of honey here so I grow Stevia. It helps but I don't think he considers it a good enough sugar replacement so we do have a stockpile of white sugar for his coffee.

Now for my other bad habit, tobacco! I've tried to quit just a couple times(thanks kids and the public school system) but I'm just not a quitter. I don't want to quit, I like my morning coffee and smoke. Tobacco is easy to grow, it will grow in just about any soil. The seed takes a little time to germinate but once it goes, you're in business! Think of the money you'd save to prep in other areas if you grew your own. You'll need a bit of space as the plants get big and you'll need somewhere to dry your plants. So, I suggest you read a bit on growing tobacco to become more familiar with the process as I cut corners here, throw up a drying shed at the last minute type thing and everyone will want to do what will work for them.

"Food for thought", if you smoke and drink coffee, your own supply isn't a bad idea!