I hate buying eggs

Fall vacation is over, so it's time to come back to reality and tidy up the urban farm for winter. My compost bins are full, so a lot of the plant material has been worked back into the garden beds (burying it under soil, where it can break down over time). The tomato plants, however, always go to the municipal yard waste composting facility. My home compost piles just aren't hot enough to kill all of the disease-causing microorganisms that hang out on tomatoes. And those nasties can survive over the winter in soil, only to infect next year's crop.

Interesting how our city's compost facility is now owned by Purple Cow. (In the past I spent a lot of money buying compost from them.) So it does pay-- except for tomatoes and any diseased material-- to compost as much as possible at home.

All that's left outside are these few kale plants and some leeks that need to be harvested soon. Leek soup anyone?

The hens are also going through their first molt and they have many missing feathers and are very grumpy (and likely a little concerned with so much skin showing and next week's temperatures going down into the 20s). But once their molt is finished, they will look better than before and should have their best year of production ahead of them, which is good, because I haven't gotten an egg from them in well over two weeks.

Looks like I'll be supporting the local egg produces for a few more weeks.

This high protein food should help the hens grow feathers faster. Without added protein, chickens have been knows to eat feathers to add protein to their diet (and losing more feathers is not at all what we're going for!). 

And with the cooler, short days, baking is on my mind...

In Sweden my favorite fika treat were the kardemummabullar, which are cinnamon rolls with an almond and cardamom filling. They are the best things I've had in a long time! With all the cool weather, this is the perfect time of year to practice my indoor homesteading skills and bake my own breads and treats.

Have a great weekend!

Payoffs of the urban farm

The harvest continues but is winding down quickly. My last boxes of veggies have been delivered to my land partners and I'm starting to take down fences and compost plants as they start to die back. With fall comes amazing food, though, and I wanted to take a few minutes today to realize some of the tangible values of urban farming other than beauty, enjoyment, the great outdoors, butterflies, and a feeling of living closer to the land. Fall is a time of thanksgiving, of reflection of the growing season, of preparing for winter... and it's lovely weather, too!

I know it's fall when the popcorn is ready to harvest. (Must also be time to store the summer clothes and dig out the mittens and wool socks!) Popcorn is so cheap to buy that people sometimes wonder why I bother. I grow it because I love to harvest it and it saves well all winter. Nothing beats a big bowl of fresh, hot, homegrown, heirloom popcorn in the middle of a snowstorm!

Carmen peppers are my absolute favorite variety! They are super sweet and a beautiful red! We've harvested a lot of them this year, so at $4.99 a pound we've come out ahead. They also freeze well, so we'll be eating them for months to come.

Tomatoes are ripening more slowly now, but we're still enjoying them daily (a money saver, but more importantly, nothing beats a ripe, garden tomato--and as you can see in this grocery store photo, home-grown, vine-ripened, heirloom tomatoes have superior quality--transportation issues are the main reason why modern, commercial varieties are pretty but tasteless!). Since we have so many, I'm canning again this year (see below).

This was almost a perfect year for tomatoes in the southern half of Wisconsin. I only irrigated one time and disease pressure at the urban farm was minimal. 

There were so many tomatoes this year, even the yellow, heirloom slicers got to go into the spaghetti sauce!

I'm still a novice canner and always looking to perfect my technique and recipes, but my sauce is pretty tasty!

Until our maple tree decides to turn red, I'm enjoying the leaves on my walks. Happy fall, y'all!

**Side note about composting from my walk last evening:

Greens and browns, people, greens and browns...not sticks. Just sayin'.

Farming as a workout option

Two Wheels Urban Farm update

We have our first transplants in the ground! Today I put in the sugar snap pea sprouts, hoping to take advantage of the upcoming rains and warmer overnight temperatures. If all goes well, I should have some to bring to market in May.

Peas are in the ground!

Transplants are looking good. This little plant is kale.

Working out on the urban farm

This week my dad and I used shovels and a wheelbarrow to move 8 cubic yards of compost into the urban farm's garden plots (that's roughly 10,400 pounds of composted manure!). The compost is super important for the health of our crops and our soil's fertility and structure. It also combats pesky weeds and helps to hold moisture. All that hard work means tastier veggies this summer!

Our huge pile of compost-- I was so happy to see it arrive (and so much happier when we finished moving it!).

One of the benefits to this type of work is to the health of the farmer. According to my super scientific Googling, the average American office worker gets an average of 3,000 to 5,000 steps per day (this is supported by the office worker in our household who averages 4,000 steps). On just one of the days when we moved the compost I got 19,121 steps (this total does includes the 1/2 mile round trip walk to World of Beer for a much needed happy hour) and over the day I burned 3,062 calories. Not too shabby. And along with getting something important done, I didn't have to put on spandex!

What was I thinking ordering so much?!? 

I hope you all have a terrific week and a happy early growing season!

No leaf left behind

Fall has not typically been my favorite time of year. I'm not a huge football fan, I really miss the warm and bright days of summer, and fresh tomatoes are missing from my salads. But autumn does bring one gift-- leaves! I do love the beautiful trees, especially the maples that turn brilliant red, orange, or yellow.

Our red maple provides cool shade all summer and then its naked branches let light into our south-facing windows all winter long.

When the leaves have just fallen, they are like a colorful carpet!

But what to do with all those leaves? Our neighbors, for the most part, rake them up and the city hauls them away to a compost facility. In the past I have done this as well, but I realized I could put them to good use (and save money, too).

I could also go on and on about how much fuel the giant trucks use to drive around and suck up leaves or how many leaves end up in the lakes because they get raked into the street and go down the drain. And those things are indeed true, But really, when it comes down to it, I like to pinch pennies until they scream for mercy, so I just can't see throwing free mulch/compost away and then turn around and buy it at the store.

And using leaves is really easy, especially if you have a bagging lawn mower. Just set the lawn mower on the highest setting and run over dry leaves. Then use the bag to move the chopped leaves where you want them. Alternatively, you can wait until the leaves are brittle and put them into a bin and crush them (or stomp them like grapes!).

A few ideas on how to use your leaves:

• Mulching around perennial plants
• Spreading over garlic
• Raking into existing vegetable or flower beds
• Using as a "browns" layer when sheet composting/lasagna gardening or in a traditional compost pile or bin

Because my lawn mower is broken, I've been picking them up in buckets, crushing them by hand, and moving them around. When the lawn mower is back from the shop, hopefully the ground will not be snow covered and I can mow them up into smaller pieces. If not, no worries. Nature is amazing at breaking things down.

These leaves were spread over the garlic about a month ago and are already composting nicely.

In other news...

A big shout out to my friend for letting me babysit her Red Wigglers and learn all about worm composting. Hopefully I'll learn a few things and blog about it later this winter!

So enjoy fall everyone! Watch football, get your favorite sweater out of storage, or do what I do and go for a nice crisp bike ride. 😊 And think about putting at least some of your leaves to good use. You may be pleasantly surprised!

The urban farm as a system

Urban farm goals: surplus of healthy food, enjoyable levels of labor, rich soil to maintain high yields, a neighbor-pleasing space that is supported by the community.

Permaculture: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems (Merriam-Webster).

Over the winter I took a short intro course at my local community college on permaculture and came away with many ideas and goals on making the urban farm into a system that could support itself, both in terms of lower levels of physical labor and fewer outside inputs. Someday I'd love to take a full length permaculture course, but for now we're starting small with a few ideas and projects that will hopefully lead to setting up a whole system.

Chickens

This chick doesn't know it, but she's very important to the health of the urban farm.

This spring we spent too much money buying compost. This was mostly due to the big farm expansion and not having enough of my own compost to fill the new raised beds. In the future I'm hoping to be able to use urban farm-made compost, thus saving money and the hassle of having it delivered and dumped in a big pile on the driveway.

Our chickens are going to be a big part of this system. Not only will the hens provide a delicious protein source for us with their eggs, their waste is probably even more valuable. Chicken manure, when composted, is nitrogen rich "black gold" that will feed all of our vegetables. Also, we can take our bags of grass clippings, weeds, and even dinner scraps and give them to our hens, keeping these "waste" products within our system and turning them into something useful. This will not only make the chickens healthier, happier animals, it will reduce the amount of feed we need to purchase.

I have two bins: this one and something similar given to me second hand.

Rain garden

A nice example of a rain garden.

Bees are all over the news this spring, and for good reason-- most of the fruits and vegetables we eat need insect pollination to produce fruits or seeds. One way to attract pollinators is to plant native species close to the vegetables or fruits that need pollination. This summer we are installing a rain garden in a drainage area that remains wet much of the year. The rain garden will be close to the raised beds, so the bees will have plenty to pollinate, which will increase our food surplus.

This natural area in our urban farm will be dual purpose, since it also will hold water on our land instead of allowing it to flow down the hill and into the street (and then directly into our local lake, Lake Mendota). Also, it will be beautiful and will attract butterflies, birds, and humans.

The more we can re-purpose materials, items, and areas on our urban farm, the more resources we can save, making the farm that much more valuable!