Jordan's Croft
Musings about life, writing and politics from a small farm in Kentucky.
Friday, September 27, 2024
A Very Old Memory
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
'Back to the Land' -- What's That?
I've got some favorite YouTube channels, like Roots and Refuge and Gold Shaw farm .
I need to say that I was raised on five acres in the 1960s, my father might have quailified as a Doomsday Prepper because we had a basement full of canned food. In addition my Aunt, Uncle and two cousins were part of the Back to the Land movement of the 1970's. I read the Mother Earth News and the Foxfire books in my early teens. So it was natural for me to want five acres of my own even as a kid.
When I got to Kentucky I started looking for a place for my horses, my husband and I found the blank slate of Jordan's Croft in 2005 and have been here ever since.
So here's the topic I want to address: What does it take to go back to the land? Do you have to say goodbye and live in the wilderness, build a log cabin and swear off electricity and flush toliets? Do you have to grow your own food, never setting food in a grocery store again? What markers do we need to hit in order to say we are 'back to the land.'
I don't think it requires a purity test.
I think what matters is finding a connection to living and growing things. Walking in a park, hiking a trail, growing a plant in the windowsill, and even going fishing are all legit activities that take us back to the land.
Feeling connected to the planet, our Mother Earth, is a quest fit for the 21st Century. It does't take a farm in Vermont, or acreage in North Carolina, or a Croft in Kentucky. It takes effort to find places to ground our souls. But finding these outdoor spaces is more critical than ever for human health and sanity. We need to feel -- well -- grounded in order to function.
When I was working full-time with an hour to work and home, I wasn't feeling very grounded. But my time with my horses refreshed me, even when it was just feeding time and few pats.
Now that I spend a hour or so each morning on the porch and puttering around the house, I find it's easier to focus my energy on what needs doing, and my priorities are changing once again.
I've got the time to listen to these podcasts, see how other people set goals and work things out. I watched Geoff Lawton work on his Greening the Desert project for ten years. Then I've seen how a little lady named Abla made amazing progress with her little patch of ground in a desert.
These people make me think about what my Croft means to me, and decide what to do next. My rock garden was a mess, but two years of digging and fussing has made a big difference. My kitchen garden has suffered from neglect, but I've got someone to help with the water situtation, and I intend to have a workable solution for next year.
I can't imagine becoming a Doomsday Prepper. But I can figure out ways to get water to my garden besides using a water hose. I can sell a few eggs on the side to buy rain barrels or an exhaust fan. I can make small improvements that expand my little gardens so I can give some tomatoes to friends.
It all adds up in the end.
Saturday, August 3, 2024
Garden in July
Well now, things are looking up in the rock garden area. I’ve been working a few hours a day on that area, and it’s starting to look really nice.
I also put in two small beds, against the house, for herb gardens. Since I’ve had no luck with other plants in that area, I used old horse bedding to fill a raised bed. It might be enough to kick start the plants, but this soil is so dead, from decades of being farmland, that it needs all the help it can get.
As you can see in the photo, the two hosta plants are looking good. They appreciated the new chip mulch. The strawberry plants are alive, and that’s about all I can report. No runners, no flowers. There were larkspur in the spring, and little hyacinths, they all went dormant by July. I’ve got one chamomile plant blooming industiously.
I’ve weeded that area for two years in a row. I dug out two huge clumps of pampas grass in 2022. They were semi-circles of live grass around a center of dead grass. It took all that summer to get it all out. But I got the weeds, mint and grass out of the garden bed and kept puttering in it ever since.
This year, I was able to get wood chips, so I filled the bed with wood chip mulch to keep the weeds down. We’ve got a large number of stepping stones stacked in the garden, and I’ve started putting them down. So there’s a path from the porch to the rock garden.
The dogs love the rock garden, it is shady and cooler than the lawn. Trouble likes to lay in the chips, and nose around the rocks like he’s hunting. Our new pup jumps around the stones, scratching and digging little holes, though her favorite activity is chasing chickens.
This flock of chickens is 18 hens and a Buff rooster. The hens came from an egg farm and have no fear of predators. So in this case, a pup who chases them is a good thing. The pup will teach them to run to the rooster for safety, and he will learn to defend the flock.
I don’t like to let the hens out of their pen, but we’ve got too many slugs in the flower beds, so the hens need to get out enough to clear the yard of slugs.
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Sparky the Chevy Bolt - Part 1
I've had a PT Cruiser for many years. I loved that little car. But, alas, it developed electrical problems, and needed to be replaced. After driving such a cute little car for 16 years, it was depressing to look at newer used cars. Cars are expense, they all look alike, and are uninteresting, except for the rare hybrid. But then I stumbled across a 2017 Chevy Bolt.
First, the price was under budget. Second, I could actually plug it into a wall socket for a slow trickle charge. Third, while the lithium batterys are a bit tricky to deal with, my house is full of lithium battery devices. I have a friend who works with automotive tech, and he was very positive about EV cars. And most importantly, I'd been watching Chevy experiment with electric cars since the 1990's. Unlike a certain Tech Guru's brand, Chevy tech is tried and true.
After 24 hours of research, I closed the deal on the Chevy Bolt and brought it home.
Serious reflection on my first week with Sparky.
I knew going into this that getting charged was gonna be interesting. And it has been. Swope Toyota in E'town has been gracious about us charging there. Bob bought his RAV4 there. We have breakfast and charge Sparky at the same time. This time it was 12 hours, but there's a software switch I can throw to charge faster.
McDonalds in Radcliff was not so gracious. They said their charging station was exclusively for the Manager's car. Interesting...
Freddy's Custard stand has a Tesla Charger, which is likely why their manager keeps his Tesla Cyber Truck parked there. Handy, that.
Next week I'm going to look on Fort Knox to see what kind of charging stations they have. There are 8 stations at one location and 4 stations at another.
Toyota has a ChargePoint charger, so I have that on my phone. So right now, I'm gonna keep to that one software.
Sparky's software claimed that a full charge is 250 miles. This is about 2 weeks travel for me. So if we charge every Monday, I should always have about 200 miles of range.
There are several Blink chargers listed on Google, Kayla Anderson found them, but I haven't figured out where they are physically yet. So this is what I've learned in my first week of owning Sparky, the Chevy Bolt.
Let's see what next week brings.
Thursday, June 27, 2024
More on the Garden
I've got four young Moscovie hen ducks who are laying up a storm. But my barn is still stuffering from a rodent infestation. Baby birds don't have much of a chance against any kind of predators. It's not a good idea to raise them in the barn.
But I can raise them in pens, outside the barn. I did it before, had great success raising both ducklings and chicks.
This is the new idea. Collect up some fence panels, get a water barrel, and put the momma ducks and babies close to the house, but far from the barn. Double fence the low pens, give each hen ducks some space and let the ducklings grow up.
I'm gonna need to get a rainwater source. Make a new rain barrel, and have everything ready by the time the duck eggs hatch. Should be August, if I remember correctly.
Start with a rain barrel. Get the fence panels down to the garden, with the gate and some posts. Fix the old pen panels, find stakes to hold the pens together, then shade the pens from the hot July sun.
I have 30 days to get this together. Let's see if I can make it happen.
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Garden Projects
So I acquired some alpacas from a very nice woman who had some breeders to retire. I just want fleece, so these ladies are perfect for me. They’ve surprised me with their constant travels around the farm several times a day. A pasture that held 3 horses and 7 alpacas, yet was still lush enough to cause problems, isn’t gonna have any trouble supporting 5 browsing elderly alpacas. I love the way they constantly nibble on the fence line. They are slowly eating down the brambles, roses and little trees that I had to have removed at quite a considerable expense.
Which brings me to the current project: I want a raised bed garden, one that doesn’t need constant weeding, one that will produce food for winter, herbs, berries and some fruit, too. We picked up our first load of woodchips, and the ladies got a nice layer for their leanto. I gave a small load to the chickens, but they need a lot more. Since this is a city of Elizabethtown perk to the people, we can get wood chips whenever we need them.
That’s likely to mean a trip a week for awhile. The goal is 4 raised garden beds. I want plenty of room to plant kitchen herbs, like garlic, onion, shallots, carrots and potatoes. Fall crops, to start, because it’s gonna take time to get all this set up. Then next spring, it wil be a snap to get it going.
As for why I’m going to all this trouble, well, I don’t live in a vacuum, and I’m quite worried about the near future. Not just for myself, but for the people around me, things are difficult and times are hard. I sell my eggs, and a few plants, at a Farmer’s Market. I plan to use that money to invest in the garden, to buy plants and trees. This garden spot is quite large, and I have plenty of room. It’s time to get it up and running, just in case things on the east coast get really, really weird this fall.
I’d like to garden organically, but my farmer neighbor uses more sprays than I can keep track of. He’s got the biggest sprayer I’ve ever seen, a monstrous device that has a 40’ wingspan.
Mothra has nothing on that big creature.
Everyone has to adapt to their environment. In their own way, and at their own time, so I’m adapting.
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Senior in the Saddle - 3
A Very Old Memory
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