seanlloyd.org

Cold Frames

2011-12-17T14:16:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to setting up cold frames. A couple years ago, I bought one made with a cheap metal frame and clear plastic sides. It didn't take much for the wind to whip it around until the top broke. Last winter, I had some clear plastic sheeting laying around. I also some PVC hoops and binder clips I used in warmer weather to keep pests out (mostly squirrels and cats). So I put that all together and watched the soil temperature rise. This year, I expanded the experiment to two 8x4 beds, costing $12.

2011-11-24T20:42:00.000-05:00

My conversion to permaculture was in the making for the last few years as my interest in gardening grew deeper. I started with fussy gardening that micromanaged the 20 essential steps to producing a specimen pepper (and mostly failed). I evolved into a more hands off approach that allowed some bad things to happen, watch the relative impact and weighing it against the level of effort required to stop it. Some plants died and many more thrived. I even had carrots grow big and straight in the compacted soil between my raised beds.

Then lightning really struck last winter after reading Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway. Suddenly, a whole new world opened to me, one where design and a understanding of biological ecosystems can lead me to a highly diversified and functioning garden less work. My professional background is in software systems large and small, so I have an appreciation for understanding how all the details come together in a functioning whole. In permaculture, the whole really becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

From Gaia's Garden, I tapped into a large body of books for knowledge and inspiration.

This Thanksgiving, I'd like to share my appreciation for the works of these great souls who have shown me a much fuller and rewarding path than I've ever known.

2011-11-23T20:24:00.001-05:00

I finished mulching the garden paths between my raised beds. This year's experiment letting the paths go wild was a problem for access to the beds, especially for my daughter. I decided on free mulch from the landfill and avoided weed block fabric. Before my enlightenment, I placed that fabric in various spots around the yard, only to find that eventually good soils forms on top and pioneer plants have no trouble establishing themselves. Not long after that, the more tenacious plants actually root through the fabric from the top, making it darned difficult to weed or remove the fabric. The mulch looks nice and garden paths are the only place I use it. I don't think it has a place in garden beds or around bushes, trees, or flowers. Not to mention that letting a lot of the "weeds" grow has actually helped some of my plants by shading soil and keeping moisture where it belongs.

2011-11-19T08:02:00.001-05:00

I was up early this morning, watching the sun rise and listening to the house wake up. The dog stood in front of me staring of seemingly into space. There is nothing like a quiet house. Even the world outside is quiet, ever so more with the cold weather. No cars or people passing by. Nothing... Until everyone wakes up. Then, like a lightning bolt my daughter will run down the stairs and we will play until breakfast.

Greed

2011-11-05T00:03:00.003-04:00

With the Occupy movement setting up camps in major cities all over the country, I've been reflecting on the word "greed." Its overuse and abuse render it almost meaningless--it can be all things to all people...and it holds very strong connotations for most of us. We all see it in other people and rarely see it in ourselves. Maybe the word itself is a window into all the contradictions that make us Americans.

Let's start with some possible definitions:

Wikipedia: an excessive desire to possess wealth, goods, or abstract things of value with the intention to keep it for one's self. Greed is inappropriate expectation. However, greed is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power.
Merriam Webster: a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed

These definitions are really just a lengthier version of the colloquialism "I know it when I see it." We all draw our own lines around what is excessive, selfish, and inappropriate. Normally the lines are gerrymandered to exclude ourselves and people like us.

Liberals see Conservatives as greedy. Conservatives see Liberals as greedy. They're both right.

My definition of greed is both more expansive and more specific: Greed is any desire for anything that comes at the expense of someone else. It isn't just about wealth, it's also about power and influence and stealing and a lack of concern for other people. It's a selfish one-way street that sees separation, rather than commonality, with other people.

Obvious and lesser-so examples of greed:

Making loans to people who can't afford them.
Demanding that government perform the functions of community, like caring of the needy so we don't have to.
Downloading illegal copies of music and movies.
Giving away free digital copies of books online that are not yours.
Demanding work bonuses even if it means someone way more deserving gets less.
Demanding salary increases when you are over paid and some colleagues are clearly underpaid.
Wanting your lawn mowed or tomatoes picked by cheap labor but opposing illegal immigration and amnesty.
Wanting a cheap, new cell phone that was made in a sweat shop.
Requiring extremely cheap vegetables from China or Mexico instead of from your neighbor farmer.
Slandering and hyper-exaggerating in politics to gain leverage in an election or policy discussion. The ends do not justify the means. And the toddler logic of "they do it, too" is equally wrong.

And in case your wondering...yes, I'm guilty of being greedy.

Cover Cropping the Front Yard

2011-11-04T22:40:00.001-04:00

In an effort to build soil over the long abandoned gravel driveway, I planted a cover crop mix of Bell Beans, BioMaster Peas, Dunsdale Peas Purple Vetch, Cayuse Oats, Lana Vetch; and Common Vetch. This blend has loads of nitrogen fixers, which are needed as a first step to repairing the land. I planted this in with a deep bedding of straw as an experiment. I was happy to see that germination was not overly impaired. I tossed the seed directly on top of the straw, then used a broad leaf rake to shake the seeds into the straw where the climate was damp. Hopefully, the blend of carbon and nitrogen pays off.

This photo is from mid-October and the cover improved over the last couple weeks, even with the early snow.

Over the winter, I will design a cutting flower garden with my wife, followed by installing the beds in March.

From the Library

2011-11-04T21:53:00.000-04:00

Another reading round-up. I'm continuing along the path to understanding agriculture, ecology, and how to design whole ecosystems into my gardening. The subject is complex and rewarding enough to be a lifelong pursuit, which it may just turn out to be for me.

Here are some books I'm currently reading or recently enjoyed:

Joel Salatin: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
Dave Jacke: Edible Forest Gardens, Vol 1 & Vol. 2: Ecological Design And Practice For Temperate-Climate Permaculture
David R. Montgomery: Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

Self-Experiment #1: Paleo Diet

2011-01-24T14:49:00.005-05:00

My first radical self-experiment was a complete overhaul of my diet. It started with some changes my wife was making after our daughter was born. I just went with the flow like many changes in the house, but my interest sharpened dramatically after a discussion with my doctor. “You must feel like crap,” he said after reviewing my bloodwork and hormone tests. Any other doctor would have said I was a totally healthy guy. What did my doctor see?

Low testosterone (4x too low)
High estrogen (8x too high)
Low cortisol (a flat line from morning to night)
Low blood sugar (40 when blood was draw, but probably dipping lower when hungry)
Low immune system

His advice was to consider this an “intervention” and make some serious changes. My body essentially shut down, was converting testosterone into estrogen and had lost its ability to handle sugar. With my wife and daughter present as witnesses, I signed up for the following changes:

No grains (especially those with gluten)
No sugar
No caffeine
No white potatoes
Emphasis on grass-fed beef
Emphasis on protein every couple hours (preferably meat)
Vitamin D supplement
Adrenal supplement
Vitamin B-complex supplement
Cod liver oil
Catalyn multi-vitamin

Going gluten free can be pretty hard, especially when the crutch of gluten-free goodies are off limits, too (they’re mostly made from rice, which can be even worse for blood sugar and insulin response). Not to mention, try going out with the guys and explaining you can no longer drink beer.

Later, I discovered there was already a fast-growing community of people with similar ideas on what makes for healthy eating, what they call a Paleo Diet. They basically argue that our bodies never evolved much beyond a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The result of our strong beliefs in modern food is obesity and disease in a million forms--with gluten-containing grains being the biggest problem.

No grains
No dairy (some make exceptions for raw, grass-fed sources)
No legumes (especially soy)
No processed foods, vegetable oils
No caffeine
Minimal alcohol (the less the better)
Grass-fed beef, free range meats
Lots of fat from good sources (grass-fed, coconut, avocado)
Lots of vegetables and greens
Free range, omega-3 rich eggs
Lots of sleep (generally 8-9 hours) and waking up without an alarm clock
Lower stress
Short, intense sessions of exercise
Minimize long distance running, biking and other long, low cardio exercise

After a couple additional minor changes that my doctor endorses, but does not require, I’m now on a strict Paleo Diet.

Verdict

Continue for the rest of my life.

After a few weeks, I felt a sublime sense of well-being. I went from being quick tempered, to being in a zen-like state.

After 6 months, my estrogen was cut in half and my testosterone notched up a peg. A huge change, but still some road to travel here. I’ll have another test in a couple months, which would put me at about 18 months since the “intervention.”

The bottom line is I’ve never felt better. I sleep better, have less stress, feel much more calm, and have solid energy throughout the day. I also believe this helped to change my marriage from passable to deeply enjoyable.

Resources

A couple great books are The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson and The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. Both of them also have great blogs with vibrant reader communities. Robb Wolf also has an extremely informative Q&A style podcast.

Self-Experimentation

2011-01-24T13:43:00.003-05:00

Toward the end of this year I became interested in the idea of self-experimentation. I started tweaking small things to see what kind of impact they had on my health and happiness. Some of them began out of a conscious effort, others were more accidental. Some I’ve been up to for over a year now, while other began just last week. They all started from the idea that there is loads of conventional wisdom swirling around us that either waste our time/money or even worse, degrade out quality of life. In upcoming posts, I’ll lay them out on the table for all to see (and ridicule!).

2010-11-29T22:28:00.001-05:00

I'm contemplating homeostasis as it pertains to idealism vs materialism and religion vs science. There are some pretty profound implications of bridging different viewpoints as part of a larger whole, with the most stable point in the middle. Really, any given viewpoint is an incomplete, partially reliable tool.

2010-11-29T22:17:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure where the time came from, but lately I've been finishing a lot of books. Here are the books I recommend.

Recently read:

Hardcore Zen (Brad Warner)
Primal Blueprint (Mark Sisson)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)

Currently reading:

To Meet the Real Dragon (Gudo Nishijima)
Paleo Solutions (Robb Wolf)

2010-11-07T19:58:00.001-05:00

A great weekend, indeed. Spent all of Saturday in the yard with my daughter. Watched a marathon with my daughter this morning. Attending a Master Gardener's presentation this afternoon. I'll finish tonight with zazen and a trip to the sauna.

2010-09-20T21:01:00.000-04:00

From Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss. To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain. It is a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that you are a human and therefore joined by kind to all that hates the world and hurries its passing -- the violence and greed and falsehood that overcome the world that is meant to be overcome by love.

2010-09-19T19:35:00.002-04:00

From Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.

Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart. It is like a bird that has blundered down the flue and is caught indoors and flutters at the windowpanes. It is like standing a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.

But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is and you pray it. Sometimes you just trustfully and easily pass into the other world of sleep. Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening is an opening and it flies away. Sometimes the shut door opens and you go through it into the same world you were in before, in which you belong as you did not before.

If God loves the world, might that not be proved in my own love for it? I prayed to know in my heart His love for the world, and this was my most prideful, foolish, and dangerous prayer. It was my step into the abyss. As soon as I prayed it, I knew that I would die. I knew the old wrong and the death that lay in the world. Just as a good man would not coerce the love of his wife, God does not coerce the love of His human creatures, not for Himself or for the world or for one another. To allow that love to exist fully and freely, He must allow it not to exist at all. His love is suffering. It is our freedom and His sorrow. To love the world as much even as I could love it would be suffering also, for I would fail. And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart.

2010-06-30T20:41:00.000-04:00

Here is something that just makes the world a better place. In listening to one of my favorite public radio shows, I heard the story of Mark Johnson and Playing for Change: Peace Through Music. He traveled the world recording local musicians, one at a time, singing the same song. Then he merged all the different versions together. The result is something incredible moving as an example of human oneness. Here's what came from covering Stand by Me.

2010-06-24T11:44:00.001-04:00

I've had a few notable failures in the garden this year. Not a big surprise given the amount of experimentation.

Inter-planting radishes with carrots did not work. Perhaps it was the varieties (Daikon & White Icicle). Their leaves grew so big they blocked out the carrots. The carrots grew tall and leggy to reach the light. When it came time to pull the radishes, many carrots came out in the tangle.
Turnips take up much more space then I thought.
Rabbits left everything alone except the beans and a few beets. The bean plants look like they were all topped by scissors.
The cauliflower looks a little loose. I'm wondering if was a little late with the transplants or if this is when I'm supposed to blanch them.
The cucumbers are having a tough time competing for light with their neighbors...squash in one area and tomatoes/broccoli in another.
Only a few parsnips germinated (maybe 10%). Nearly none of the onion seed germinated. I think this had to do with lack of watering. The soil improvements I made to the clay to improve drainage was more concentrated to the top in that bed. The soil may have been too dry for the germination to happen. I'm going to try a round of fall onions by starting them in trays next to the house where I can more easily regulate their conditions. I'm also considering onion sets next year instead of seeds.

The good news is a lot of great things are happening...

Lettuce and peas were great.
Kale is ready.
Broccoli is forming nice heads (much bigger than a fist right now). Compare to last year when the plants were 4 feet high with tiny buds (buttoning?).
Rainbow chard and cabbage are coming along.
Squashes are stretching out all over the place, especially acorn, butternut, and spaghetti.
Pole beans are managing to stay one step ahead of the squashes.
Pepper plants are healthy and bushy.
Tomatoes are 5-6 feet tall and have loads of green fruits getting bigger by the day.

2010-05-22T23:40:00.001-04:00

I just finished watching The Garden, a movie about South Central Farm, a community garden in Los Angeles that rose out of the ashes of the Rodney King riots. The garden thrived for 12 years before it was torn down in 2006. It is a story that shows people are capable of creation and destruction of beauty. As the documentary weaves through the story of back room deals and politics, words like "community" can be contorted and abused. How a 14-acre community garden can be anything other than beautiful, essential, and central to a deprived community like South Central LA astounds me.

My heart truly empathizes with them. When I saw what the bulldozers tear up a corn plot, I teared up. Having started my own plants from seed and cared for them until harvest, I know love is as important as skill.

The upside is the campesinos (farmers) did not lose their connection to the most important thing we humans have...soil. Some of them started a farm just outside LA. The city gave others seven acres under power lines to farm (though they've received only three so far). The former community garden is still a vacant lot, so hope is still alive for them.

2010-05-22T09:04:00.000-04:00

This week was back to work after a hugely satisfying two week vacation. We took a camping trip to Charlottesville, VA to see Monticello, especially the vegetable garden. A few days later, we charted course for Ripley, WV to catch up with my wife's aunt and uncle, the highlight of my time off. Beyond that, there was a lot of yard work, gardening research, and transplanting/seeding the remaining crops.

I love my job, but taking such a long break made it obvious just how many administrative tasks are required. My work is interesting 66% of the time. The remaining third is theoretically valuable paperwork, which means that cutting it in half improves the odds that any single task is worthwhile.

2010-04-24T12:29:00.002-04:00

The garden is coming along. It's deeply satisfying to see my seedlings coming along. Here is where the raised beds stand:

Peas are several inches high.
Radishes and carrots are sprouted.
Turnips are sprouted.
Some beets sprouted.
Parsnips are still sleeping. (I need to keep them damper.)
Kale transplants look great after one week.
Lettuce, cabbage, and broccoli transplanted today.
Celery, cauliflower, thyme, oregano, parsley, and chives began hardening off today.

Coming up next weekend:

Plant cilantro and dill.
Transplant everything that began hardening off today.
Harden off tomatoes, cucumbers, leeks, pumpkin,

I've learned a lot of lessons for next year (duly noted so I don't forget). So far, here are some key findings:

Get some ladybugs next year to eat aphids. This is the second year aphids attached my seedlings (mostly tomatoes and peppers). For this year, I'm spraying the seedlings with a mix of canola oil (saved for just such an occasion), dish soap, and water.
Create better conditions for germinating spinach. I only got two out of six to germinate. I think the problem was I started them in the same tray as squashes, which came up right away. Spinach can take a couple weeks, but I had to take the lid off for the squash before the spinach had time to sprout.
Protect the lower light shelf from the cats. The cats destroyed half of my cauliflower seedlings last weekend. That was really bad timing. I bought some extra seedlings at Whole Foods to cover for the shortfall.
Tuck extra seedlings in sunny spots around the yard. This year, I'm going to try chard, cabbage, and kale in with the bulbs I planted last fall. I planted the bulbs too far apart. These leafy plants may fill in nicely and keep the bed from being overcome by weeds.
Keep celery damp. I nearly lost everything by delaying watering for two days.

For those who are visually inclined, here is the garden map. Brown means the plants are in the ground. White means bare dirt (seedlings probably started already inside).

2010-03-05T11:09:00.001-05:00

This morning, some pale sunlight cast a shadow on a Buddha head in the bedroom. When my daughter woke up, her first words were, "Daddy, look...Buddha has a shadow. Can I go and touch it?" I told her that was quite profound.

2010-03-03T20:37:00.004-05:00

I'm ready to go for this year's garden. Below is the map of our raised beds for this year (each block is a square foot). I've already started parsley and celery inside. This weekend, I'll kick off the kale and peppers. In January, we ordered three-shelf grow lights to make it easier to start lots of seeds at the same time. Last year, we made one light do double duty by rotating plants out every morning and evening. The new lights were supposed to arrive in late February, but the backorder was pushed back to mid-March. This isn't a problem, but if they push back much more than that, I'll have to think about Plan B.

"One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race."
-- Wendell Berry

2010-02-18T20:24:00.000-05:00

Always looking for better ways to do my job, today I spent an hour playing around with two applications, Jing and Snagit, both from a company called Techsmith. Over the last 18 months, I've spent a lot of time on client training and education, including teaching technical concepts to decidedly non-technical staff. GoToMeeting has been an invaluable tool for troubleshooting user issues and ad-hoc training. But even these web sessions still have me explaining the same thing repeatedly to different users. This is where Jing comes in.

Jing allows me to easily create short videos with audio that I can send to users for them to watch and follow. The free version handles both video and some lightweight screen capturing.

Snagit picks up where Jing leaves off with screen capturing. The free version is on a 30-day trial basis. Even at a $50 price tag, I have a feeling I'll buy it as it's an indispensable tool for technical writing.

2010-02-10T13:23:00.000-05:00

I spent this morning learning about heat pumps. When I went outside to check on the heat pump after breakfast, there wasn't much snow or ice on it, but the fan blades had several inches of snow on them and there was a bit of snow down inside the case. A rolling stone gathers no moss and a spinning fan blade gathers no snow. So what was going on?

I also noticed that a metal pipe heading into the heat pump had ice on it. Yesterday, I noticed it was warm to the touch. After some research, I learned that heat pumps defrost themselves, sometimes as often as every 30-90 minutes or when ice is detected. I read an HVAC professional recommend turning on the A/C for a half-hour and and see if the heat pump starts to steam from defrosting. Then, if that doesn't do the trick, pouring warm water over it and into the casing to get rid of the snow and clearing the slush that fell underneath. So I tried all that.

No luck.

For several hours the heat pump was making no sounds at all. Then I thought I'd check the circuit breakers. Everything was fine. So I decided to flip the HVAC breakers anyway. After a few minutes I heard sounds coming from the heat pump. Not long after, the fan kicked on.

2010-02-09T15:29:00.000-05:00

After clearing the rest of my driveway yesterday with a neighbor's snow blower, I came into the house and heard that the new forecast for today/tomorrow is 10-20 inches of snow. This round will really begin to cause problems. Houses in this area are not designed for this much snow. Rain gutters are a case in point.

It will be interesting to see what kind of flooding comes out of this. The Shenandoah River has been high for quite a while after the 20 inches we received in December, followed a few weeks later by a lot of rain. This snow may just take it over its banks.

The Federal Government is closed for the second day. At $100 million per day, this will get very expensive. I can't imagine offices will open tomorrow.

2010-02-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Wow, 30+ inches of snow in this area sure does have a huge impact. My street has not been plowed yet. Half of it is untouched, while the other half is eight inches hard-packed snow from trucks making attempts at the road. Now getting rid of the hard-pack is really difficult, while a snow blower can handle the untouched parts.

I'll be borrowing my neighbor's snow blower today to get the rest of my driveway cleared before the next round of snow sleet arrives Tuesday/Wednesday.

Thankfully, shoveling snow for me is like running and hiking: very relaxing, repetitive, meditative.