Buying The Farm

More Swedish animal keeping: This time, a rabbit hutch made from a metal Ikea shelving system.

http://iheartprettystuffs.blogspot.com/2011/07/our-rabbits-diy-rabbit-hutch.html

Aquaponics meets utilitarian Scandinavian design. I like this, though I wonder if the fish it can hold would be enough for good eatin’.

http://www.conceptualdevices.com/2011/06/malthus-a-meal-a-day-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-the-food-and-love-the-population-bomb/

The beauty of the Internet: I can go from total ignorance of biogas generation to a YouTube video of some guy making one at home in but a few clicks.

I’ll need more steps in a how-to than Lord Vaader here provides, but it’s an excellent start.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LordVaader#p/search/3/aju_kNKNtXw

Mother Earth News always gets the gears turning in my head. Here’s a detailed essay from 1974 about their creation of a methane-producing anaerobic digester. One load of cow manure kept a gas-powered farm going for a few months, and even its waste provide useful to feed back into the soil. I’ll have to look at something like this if I ever own a homestead.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=64546

The home I’m considering buying has a concrete backyard, so the idea of container gardening is suddenly very appealing. I was trying to search for crops that would work well in a sub irrigated planter, and it occurred to me that EarthBox would probably be a great source for this info. I have no intention of spending the kind of coin they ask for their planters, but it’s a good guide on what kind of crops will grow.

http://www.earthbox.com/resources/what-to-grow/

This site offered some interesting point form notes on what worked and what didn’t with an urban gardening experience.

6. Parsley does best if you plant it in stages. Start one set of seeds, then start another 3 weeks later, then another 3 weeks after that. That way, when you’ve depleted your first set of parsley, you’ll have plenty more on the way.

http://urban-green.livejournal.com/7735.html#cutid6

This site offers plenty of suggestions on building “flow through” vermicomposters (which should save plenty of time fiddling with screening out the worms) and has lots of good tips from people who are trying out new systems:

May i recommend you put the barrel on wheels before it gets too heavy. I put mine on a pre-made caster setup made to put tool boxes on. It was guaranteed to hold 2 thousand pounds. Got it at Harbor Freight for 20 Bucks.

Next I transferred all the contents of a 2 week old storage bin wormery (bedding, worms & food). I will cover all this with a wet, thin cotton sheet (cut up t-shirt) to discourage fruit flies

This was a useful how-to:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/verm/msg042040421641.html

I like these designs especially:
http://vermicomposters.ning.com/photo/albums/sues-96-gal-grey-monster-flow

http://vermicomposters.ning.com/forum/topics/my-new-flow-through-bin-with

http://vermicomposters.ning.com/photo/01-the-farm?context=user

http://vermicomposters.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-flow-through?xg_source=activity&id=2094123%3ABlogPost%3A43518&page=2#comments

“No power tools needed” always gets my attention, and I love the simplicity of these vertical supports.

http://www.insideurbangreen.org/2009/11/garden-update.html

This is inspirational for cities in the Rust Belt, where warehouses and factories are empty, but populations still need to be fed. This company grows the fish and processes all the waste into fertilizer. I’d be interested in seeing if they also make stock from the remains and grind the bones for gardening. All parts of the buffalo, or yellow perch!

Bell Aquaculture is a vertically integrated company. From fish egg to table, Bell maintains its own broodstock (fish used for breeding purposes), produces its own fry and value added products such as frozen breaded fillets and Cajun nuggets, and manages its own grow building and processing plant.

http://seedstock.com/2011/05/31/yellow-perch-at-sea-in-the-cornfields-of-indiana/

I’m always inspired by natural solutions like this one:

Gunthorp also raises his own feed. His animals eat non-certified, but organically grown grains in addition to the feed acquired from grazing. Gunthorp even started growing mulberry trees for the pigs, while most farmers would be cutting them out of the fencerows. According to Gunthorp, “mulberries are one of the most nutritionally complete foods for pigs and chickens. The pigs will sit under the trees waiting for the berries to drop.”

http://seedstock.com/2011/07/20/gunthorp-farms-survives-and-thrives-on-creativity/