Some Sad Thoughts About Using Roundup (And Why I Do)

A piece about weeds appeared in the New York Times recently and readers erupted when the article's author mentioned the usefulness of Roundup. Granted, many of the respondents are not small farmers; they only have to deal with pests like poison ivy on a quarter-acre lot. 

 Our fence-lines are full of the pesky plant, and we are taking over 1000' feet of fence and growing. That's small by most small-farm standards. Then we have invasive vines and other plants that become "Copperhead Road" in breeding season. That means getting things done before 8am many mornings. We work hard to keep the fences clear. Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup keep them that way for a few years, when applied correctly.

Beekeeping was long a concern for us as we battled weeds in the fences; we are winding that down because the summers are simply too hot and the miticides too potent to make us want to work hives in July and August. We'll keep our gear but our last hives will go to a younger beekeeper. For native pollinators we continue to plant for them, and our limited use of herbicide does not occur on plants they frequent.

As for the weeds, Hot water and other organic solutions won't work. A burning torch would, but not if it starts a wildfire. Reluctantly, I began to apply Roundup as directed on the bottle of concentrate, spraying the plants early in the day when the wind is still. 

I'd welcome other solutions that work on the scale of a small farm. Our extension agency was NO help, a biologist suggesting we spray a field we want for native plants with $10,000 worth of Roundup to kill everything and start anew. It would get rid of invasive Stilt-Grass all right, but the environmental and monetary costs are beyond our desire. Instead, we'll bring in Mountain Mint and other plants that stifle the invasive.

 And so it goes in strange times, ones likely to get stranger in years to come.

Image: publicdomainpictures.net 

Weeds And My "Carboard Hack"

One day a former neighbor came by to help with something. He said "I saw you out front weeding around your trees. I like your cardboard hack!" In short, I was putting broken-down boxes around our plantings and covering them with mulch.

Experienced gardeners know this trick, but if you don't, here are some pointers I learned. I did this because 1) I have a lot of Chewy boxes delivered 2) I'm a cheapskate and 3) It saves work.

Here are the basics:

1. break down your large cardboard boxes and remove as much packing tape as possible. Don't fret if you miss some. It will come up to the top of the soil later and you can dispose of it.
2. One layer of cardboard works great. If you have wind, weigh down the corners with old bricks or stones until you have the mulch on.
   
3. Spread your mulch of choice. For ornamental plants up front, that means pine-bark mulch. In the garden? Straw, hay we cut, even dried-out weeds that have not set seed.
4. We go a few inches deep in mulch. Here's an area we covered up a bit late, after the weeds had gotten really tall.

This system really cuts weeding in our humid, hot, and too often like this month, smoky summers. You can safely go in and weed around the cleared area. Copperheads often rest in tall grass and weeds near mating season (August in our part of the world). So bring a hoe to check the area first.

The cardboard will be saturated with the first rain and in time becomes permeable. It cools the soil under it and retains moisture. You can get clever and arrange the pieces to channel water into row-crops and other plantings. I just use it to give me paths that are weed-free, so I don't step on a Copperhead. Here's an ideal finished area.

 In the cool months, or when the garden goes fallow, we let in the chickens. They demolish mulch and cardboard in a few days, eat any remaining bits of plants, and they hunt for bugs. I don't even have to clean up. Any leftover tiny cardboard scraps, save for stray packing tape, disappear after 8 months or so. 

You can find expensive and labor-intensive alternatives. Weed-block fabric works fine for a year, but we'll never use it again. Wire-grass and some other invasive weeds set their runners into the fabric, locking it in place. I had to use a reciprocating saw to cut it out. Black plastic is not permeable but it does block weeds. We have used it in a few spots and covered it with gravel. 

Cardboard does not have the problems outlined above. Give it a go, and save yourself a recycling trip in the process.

 

 

Slowing Down To Do Better Work

When my childhood friend Dominic made a heroic decision to try organic farming after a layoff, just a year after Nan and I moved to the country, I paid close attention. He stayed at it for the better part of a decade, using antique equipment. His experience taught me a few things that I have brought to my own gardening and tending rural land. 

Of all I learned, one lesson stands out most, a principle I call “slowing down to do better work.” I wish that Dom and I had read Wendell Berry’s essays sooner. Berry’s thinking about local culture, agrarianism, and the proper use of tools would have saved us time and money while adding pleasure and better stewardship of the land. The scale of Berry’s economic model maps well onto my personal belief that Distributism can replace corporate capitalism in a century that will see, thank goodness, declining human population.

First, though, some specifics before thinking big and long-term. Central Virginians, save during drought, must mow grass close to the house weekly all Spring, Summer, and most of the Fall. Fields get fewer mowings. Dominic noticed how the old-timers near him in Hanover County would mow their fields slowly with the throttles set high. This burns more fuel but means cleaner cuts when creeping over the fields at the pace of a slow walk. We have here the antithesis of “mow blow and go” suburban lawn “care,” nearly always farmed out to a company these days. I see the kids who do this on zero-turn mowers that race over a yard. I suppose the homeowners are too busy after work to tend the yard, off playing golf or chauffeuring the kids (who would be better off in a neighborhood pickup game) to kid-sports events.

Many suburban lawns are often a toxic nightmare, anyhow, so let’s move on to something sane. Most of us are not Berry with his horse-drawn equipment yet the same philosophy can guide our work. For the rural mower who aims to protect and improve the topsoil, the slow-speed, high-rpm method means that grass and weeds are cut cleanly, not torn by the blades (assuming the blades are sharp). Yes, it takes longer but when I gathered and stacked the hay, I found it clean and superior to what I had formerly done in haste. The hay goes to our garden or chicken run, where the birds scratch it around and eat the seeds.

Berry writes about this philosophy of farm work in his essay “Horse Drawn Tools and The Doctrine of Labor Saving.” He decided to forego the purchase of a used 8N Ford tractor and mow with a team of horses and an International horse-drawn mower. He found that his equipment made better hay than did his neighbors’ tractors. His story will perplex those farmers who consider even the 8N a bare-bones machine as outmoded as a horse and best seen in a museum. I can attest that my own 1952 8N is a bulletproof, simple machine that has needed nothing in the 20 years it has been in the family, beyond fluid changes, fuel, two tire tubes, some paint, and a few sets of spark plugs. I learned to plow and mow on the machine and it still does useful chores, including cutting where we gather hay to stack in our barn after it cures.

While I have no plans to farm with horses—we raise chickens, not row-crops—some of Berry’s ideas have influenced me deeply. We looked at expensive hay-baling gear for small square bales. For now, it saves us money to buy straw and store just enough hay that we can manage raking, tedding, and transporting manually; we might get a dry stack the size of an SUV in a good year and need 30 square bales of straw as well.

I contrast this to what our Deere dealer talks about: air-conditioned cabs, round bales so huge we would need hay spears and plastic wrappers to move and season them. No thanks. The last thing we want is more complexity and more unsustainable materials on the farm or going to the landfill. Speed breeds those things, and Berry rightly sees the debt-trap they set for a small farm. 

Some expenses are inevitable, of course. When Dominic was still farming, I encouraged him to find one reliable modern diesel tractor in place of his handful of sometimes unreliable gas-powered antiques. But even with new or nearly new equipment, a farmer should start small. A dealer often tries to sell “just in case” power and attachments. They can be added later. I did recently spend $500 to set our utility tractor and implements up with Deere’s iMatch hitch, so I can hook up the rotary mower in a minute, then drop it to get a different implement. As I age and have arthritis in my left hip, such accommodations have proven to be a godsend.

Yet I waited 14 years to upgrade the tractor, after 600 hours of service. We might all apply Berry’s philosophy that way. It works off the farm too. We are today using AI to enable us to do more work in a shorter span of time, but what gets lost in all that haste? How much poorly-conceived “good enough” work, like poorly-mowed fields, gets completed as a result? Berry states that instead of building good soil, hasty farmers impoverish the land. With generative AI and other purportedly labor-saving technology, what are we doing to improve our minds and spirits? What are we doing to make our clients’ lives and our work better?

The next time you are asked to hurry a job, reply that you want to do good work.

When drafting this post, I wrote it first by hand. Checking Duck Duck Go, I verified the location of an e-text of Berry’s collection of selected essays The World-Destroying Fire, then used that e-text to help me find and annotate passages in my paper copy. No contradiction here at all. Using the technologies of print and Internet together led me to work methodically and do better work. If you want to see what Berry advises, you can find the essays here.

I turned off the AI assistant too.

The Last X You Will Ever Buy

Sobering, isn't it? At age 65, I confront a strangely comforting dilemma: Many of the thing I buy or do will outlive me. That Deodar Cedar in between us and the road? It will be big when I'm in my 80s, but if climate-change and future residents allow, it will still be growing bigger in the 22nd Century.

If my tree-planting is for the next generation, as well as an "up yours" to the greedy idiocy of denying human-driven climate change, then buying things that last a long time constitutes a statement about economics and frugality. 

Every time we acquire a vehicle, and I'm addicted to clean used vehicles, I say "this one will be here when I ain't." And now when a tool wears out, I start shopping for something that will be in my estate sale. I've written here about the wisdom of getting only vehicles that are friendly for DIY work. That philosophy applies to many things, big and small.

Last week, the first circular saw I'd every owned, a basic Skil purchased in the early 1990s for under $50, gave up the ghost. I could have ordered a new trigger (the motor works still) but stands far from my late father-in-law's Porter-Cable belt sander, a Gibraltar-like device that commands reverence and weighs about 40 pounds. I got a new trigger for that one. It should last another 40 years. The Skil is a cheap tool that lasted a long time because I am careful with my tools, cleaning them and never, ever loaning a tool or vehicle to anyone unless I use it for the borrower.

The saw's replacement is a DeWalt saw. Instead of an $80 Skil, I spent another $100 and got a saw that rips paneling like a hot knife though butter. The handle fits my big hands well, and the trigger design is sure and solid. These features matter after you work with a saw for a few hours.

I really like the DeWalt's corded tools, but I've sworn off the cordless ones because the company changes battery designs regularly and I had to find third-party batteries from China (when I can in these crazy times) to keep a set of 2008 tools running. 

Planned obsolescence violates every fiber of my being.There was a time when a good tool meant a lifetime investment; that's the case for the sander I noted, as well as some of the shop tools we own. My Bosch Miter-box and Delta table saws should survive me (I bought the latter from an estate, in fact). I attended a farm show where a craftsman used a spoke-shave from the middle of the 18th Century; George III was boss here when that tool was made. He told me it would go to a child with an interest in woodworking, as it has been passed down for over 250 years.

I just wonder: if we thought of purchasing as much as possible items that would outlast us, how much healing would that do for the environment? Moreover, how much would it rebuke the purveyors of cheaply made, disposable goods? We would have to save up for a quality item. Wendell Berry made that this sort of durability and longevity tests for a sustainable economy.

When the current stupid era ends with an inevitable economic crash, I wonder if we might return to the Distributist principles of localism, frugality, and durability.

I'll be cutting boards and waiting to see. 

 

Old School Tools: Percolator Perfection!

Unlike me, my late father-in-law was not picky about coffee. Yet when I perked some for him using a stovetop peculator, he ordered one himself from The Vermont Country Store. I'd ruined him on weak and tepid Mr. Coffee, forever.

I inherited his pot, and I have my original too. It's time I got those old pots out more often. I tend to use them when we have company. And when I smell that coffee, good things happen to my mood. My mom used an electric peculator, and I liked that coffee a lot too, partly from the smell of brewing and also from memories.  Mom's coffee maker had no off switch; you leave an electric or stovetop on too long, and you can smell the ruination. You only do that once.

On some dreadful days, my parents and I would brew coffee and enjoy it in dainty stoneware cups and saucers around the kitchen table. It was a rare moment when my dad's guard was down and we could talk about serious things. When mom was in the hospital once, I showed dad how to make coffee (he got very good at it, too). I also recall that after dad passed, mom and I would fire up the peculator and share a few cups. This ritual eased, for a little while, her grief.

But it also united us around a favorite beverage. Mom hated coffee machines for producing weak brew. So do I. So did my sadly departed friend Steve Gott. For him, old-school percolation was the only way to make coffee.

Today we have wasteful coffee-pod coffee going to our landfills, whereas I have been composting my Melita filters and coffee, from a plastic cone I've had since the early 1980s. But the peculator! It's even less wasteful; it has a metal basket where I dump my grounds into the compost bin.

 Now, with only one coffee drinker in our house, I think smaller. This means that I have a Goldilocks dilemma.

My favorite pot is made for a LOT of coffee. My other peculator is a cafetera from Madrid; it reverses the process by pushing the boiling water up, under pressure, from the bottom of the pot. It makes a superb brew. I bought it in 2002, to replace one I'd lost in the late 80s. Sadly, it makes one tiny cup. I need two cups every morning.

Now I need a coffee maker that is JUST right. As for the design? Those stovetop and electric percolators, like safety razors or car controls from before about 2005, perfected a technology that has only gone downhill with each "innovation" since. I'd claim that everything afterwards just tries to empty our wallets. 

I'm not talking about a cappuccino machine; that's another form of perfection. I lack counter space for that, alas.

Pressure Washers: Why WOULD Anyone Not Want Electric?

In keeping with my recent post about our electric lawnmower, I'll post an update about another useful tool: a pressure washer.

I simply despise gas-powered ones. They have proven finicky and fragile in my experience, and they are noisy. They emit pollution I don't wish to breathe.

A year ago, I pressure-washed the stupid vinyl siding (I hate the stuff!) that we have not yet removed from our house. We still have it on the back of the home. Being old-school by nature, I would rather paint weatherboard or at least Hardie-Plank siding. They both hold paint well and...do not look like plastic.

In any case, a neighbor loaned me his 2000 PSI plug-in washer. I used a transfer pump from the bottom spigot of a rain barrel to get water. The results were astounding. It looked like I was respraying the vinyl white as it stripped off dirt. I used a cleaner that does not harm plants near a house, which you should research before letting a washer go wild near your hostas.

This year, I purchased my own 3000 PSI electric washer for under $200, ahead of the ludicrous and self-destructive US tariffs against Chinese goods. I've since purchased a 24' telescoping wand to clean second-floor areas without venturing onto a wet ladder. It includes a scrub-brush attachment.

Folks PAY money to have their homes washed. I suppose it lets them watch more TV shows or play golf.

I'd rather do it myself. I get to use up surplus stored water in the fall, as the garden winds down. The house looks great for the holidays. I still don't love vinyl siding, but it looks nice when clean. 

If it's above freezing, get outside and put on waterproof clothes. Let the water fly! As with any tool, practice. Using the wrong nozzle (read the instructions!) can peel paint. With the right nozzle and technique, my washer can blast farm equipment clean or remove gunk from the underbodies of vehicles. 

Bob Vila offers some reviews. We opted for a generic unit something like the Earthwise shown in the reviews. I now see no advantage now to gas-powered units except their use away from an electrical outlet. For ease of starting, sound, emissions, and power, electric washers work just fine.

Creative Commons image by Debbie Wolfe from Bob Vila’s site. 

 

 

Six Months With An Electric Lawnmower

A full month slipped by without a post, but we got busy with several projects as soon as the heat broke.

One thing that did not break? Our new push mower. I am utterly delighted with my first cordless electric grass-cutter, a Stihl RMA 510V.

We needed a unit that would handle about 5,000 square feet of patios and edges where the tractors cannot mow; I know those figures would have boggled my mind 20 years ago, too. On rural land, one thinks about acres of open space if one has pastures. I'd love more in woods right up to the house, but then the copperheads might come indoors. No, thank you.

A political aside: How did getting a vaccination or an electric lawn mower become an act of civil disobedience? Well, I did both this year. For the grass, I spotted a Stihl landscaper-grade mower in the dealer where I buy parts for our gas-powered weed eaters (My saws are all Husqvarna now). One selling point, beyond being on sale and coming with an extra battery? That it would cut all our patios and more on a single charge. Stihl promises that the batteries would be supported long-term. That matters a great deal. I have a nice set of DeWalt tools for which batteries are no longer made. Luckily, I found re-manufactured ones from China (with the stupid tariffs now, I'm not sure I can get more). In consequence, no more cordless DeWalt for me.

With this lawn-mower, there's no more replacing carburetors, no more running out to get ethanol-free 93 octane (or at least as much of it). No oil changes, no smell of gasoline or breathing exhaust. Just sharpen the blade once a year, and clean the underside of the mower at season's end. It's so quiet I do not wear earplugs.

This model has a self-propelled feature with enough torque to scare me when I first engaged it. It's a landscaper model, after all. It will roll on a bit after I disengage the driving wheels, but we plan for that, as we do when mowing pasture with a Ford 8N: you learn to give the machine a little room to stop. After mastering that trick, we learned how to run the mower, quickly.

The driving wheels are shielded from long grass, unlike our old Craftsman, which would get wire grass tangled around the axle and grind to a halt. On flat ground or downhill, the self-propelled feature need not be activated, but I have several grades to mow where a tractor won't fit. This proved a godsend for my back and stamina in hot weather.

We found we can cut everything without running down the battery past 50%, even though our patios exceed the square footage Stihl estimates. We did run out of juice once, because we'd not recharged the mower. In any case, the chassis has space to carry a second battery.

You'd do well to consider an electric. If you like having all your tools using the same battery, this unit's batteries work for Stihl's lawn tools and latest chainsaws.

If electric chainsaws had enough run time to cut up a big tree, I'd switch tomorrow.  

It Ain't the Heat...But the Humidity Can be Tamed

I recently installed two large dehumidifiers, at a cost to me of under $500, in a building that simply is too large to air-condition. I've been pleasantly surprised by the results.

Our large out-building is cinder block with a metal roof. The ground floor was built into a hill on the southeast side, which provides some natural cooling at the cost of being damp, causing mold to form in spots on our camper as well as anything else left there. The upper floor bakes in summer, and until later year, could be difficult to enter on a hot day. Last year I added more circulating fans, which did help move air around on both floors, but the humidity persisted.

Now with the dehumidifers running, for a few dollars each month, the entire building is dry and pleasant (downstairs) and tolerable to pleasant (upstairs). I can now work on cars, farm machinery, or carpentry projects without dying of heat stroke.

I set the target relative humidity at 60% for each floor. The units have a garden-hose adapter and the water goes under a garage door to the outside. These units can remove tens of gallons of water from the air daily, but there's not enough of a drop to collect the water in a barrel, something I'd like as I use distilled water from our home AC to flush the radiators in our cars, when I change coolant. I will figure out a system later. Note the starting humidity after I had the bay doors open for 30 minutes. Within half an hour of closing the doors, we were back at 60%.

Such adaptations won't solve all problems, even when I install solar on our property to reduce our carbon footprint. Meanwhile, parts of each floor remain more humid that others, though the circulating fans help reduce that problem. For those like me with a large garage but little money for HVAC, this solution may help you as human-driven climate change makes our summers ever less pleasant. 

 

Pumpitude For Your Rain Barrels

 

The Zen Koan for "before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment...same thing" can be applied in my semi-retirement. "Chop Wood (From Fall to Mid-Spring) Pump Water (other times)."

 

I enjoy more unharried time, free from the dreariness of campus politics and trifling administrivia, to focus on three things: writing, teaching a single class, and working on our farm. All stimulate different parts of my being: they are intellectual pursuits, though one is more social  than the other two, and only one includes physical labor.

That labor need not be onerous, especially as one's body ages. Watering a big (5,000 sq. foot) garden takes about 40 gallons at least weekly, often more in on a high summer evening, just as the lightning bugs start their show. How to get that all from rain barrels far away? Drip irrigation works for big operations but costs a lot of money and is not portable. It may work for you. All you need is water uphill and fixed beds for the system.

Or carry water in buckets and cans, oh Enlightened Sage. Not me. I let a pump do that. You see the two types I've tried. Both have their advantages and shortcomings.

 

The green pump, a cheapie from Harbor Freight or Northern Tool (I forget), has become my favorite, even though I damaged it by letting it run dry. It still works but now I let the weight of water in the rain barrel do the work for the pump, by connecting barrel's spigot to the pump's inlet (I had to make a female-female connecting hose). This same technique can be used for our pressure washer. I mounted the transfer pump on a small piece of 2x6 treated wood to keep it level and off damp ground.

 

Transfer pumps tend to be lighter than the submersible black one, also a really cheap Northern Tool purchase. Both pumps have grown old and cranky as I am doing, likewise acting up at times, needing only a tap from a hammer to get them running. That may be my fate one day. Bonk bonk on the head.

 

But as I said, they are cheap pumps. Submersibles work great if the top of your barrel or cistern (ours is a copious 500 gallons) is not crisscrossed with bracing, as some of our barrels are, and (strongly recommended) you get a submersible with a float that will shut the pump off as soon as the water level falls too low (again, running dry burns out the pump motor in short order). We had a pump with float, a promising stainless steel model, but it's now at the scrap-dealer's pile. Also a cheap pump, it gave out after 2 or 3 years of powerful service. It never ran dry.

 

Why not buy a nicer pump? I will next time. $100 is not too much, even $200, for one that will last many many years with proper care. Or you can spend $40 to $75. Be sure you have a hammer handy. 

 

Which type of pump is for you? My hose runs 200' from the barrels to the garden, or from cistern to barrels uphill when we transfer water from deep storage. 

 

Unless a hose kinks, the water-flow is powerful and the source sustainable (we have a shallow well we don't use to irrigate. Rainwater only). I use the nozzle shown below to save water. It's a powerful jet nozzle (a tiny one) of solid brass. I can dial it to a stream or spray. The only issue involves debris that can clog the jet. When that happens, I crimp the hose (no 200' walk in July, please) and remove the nozzle and crank it fully open. I then visually inspect it and either puff up my cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie and blow out the debris, or I find a piece of straw from the garden mulch and clear the jam. 

 

Then I watch the plants grow. Now that's enlightenment, Grasshopper. Happy Gardening in 2025. 

 

Semi-Sufficent? Is that Enough?

I've written here about the folly of trying to be self-sufficient, instead turning to the notion of self-reliance, an Emersonian virtue I embrace.

Recently I read a fine post from Kirsten Lie-Nielsen, a homesteader, that she and her spouse have left farming largely behind, at least as a full-time, rural venture. This experience, one where she attempted to become an influencer but met hostility for her left-wing political views, gave me pause about how I approach rural life. 

These words in particular strike me as wisdom: 

We have no aspirations towards self-sufficiency, but a desire to experience varied aspects of life while remaining connected to our food sources. I now have a set of skills I can draw on if I find myself in the kind of calamitous situation that sections of the homesteader community are prepping for. I feel a deep appreciation for the labor of food production. I’ve also learned to embrace the freedom of progress.

When this blog began, I thought that I might use my writing skills to follow the path of a farmer like Joel Salatin. Now I've my doubts, and not because Salatin and I are very different animals when it comes to politics and religion. I deeply respect the way he manages the property at Polyface Farms, and I've had two nice chats with him about how one can run a farm sustainably. I no longer follow his blog, however, because of right-wing extremism and Doomerism, mostly by his readers, a similar pattern that led me away from another writer who once used to visit my classes to discuss his work. 

In case of a national disaster, no one is an island, no matter how many generators, solar panels, firearms, or cans of food on hand. Only community and self-reliance might ease the troubles, though I'd prefer we search for ways to avoid them altogether.  

I'll employ a simple example of semi-sufficiency here: the other day, my brother-in-law and I skidded two 12' long poplar logs out of the woods. A huge twin-trunked tree had split in a storm; we wanted to save part of it for his sawmill. Poplar is a delightful wood to work. I've made a good bit of weatherboard for our farmhouse from trees we cut, milled, and planed in years past.

I could never handled that sort of job alone. We used two saws to cut the logs (for when one saw gets pinched and stuck; it happened once to me). We then used a long cable and electric winch to skid the logs across a wet-weather stream at the back of our property, with me walking beside the skidway with a Peavey Tool to roll the logs around when they got caught on something. Finally, I got on my tractor and hauled the logs the final distance to a trailer.

No one person I know could do this. With my spouse still recovering from a broken leg, she couldn't help. So in hard times, who can you count on to help with rural work? My other best helper, who lives nearby, voted for the other side, but we get on well.

Community, despite adversity and personal differences, keeps the Amish on the land, but influencers have followers, not co-workers.

That's the mistake too many misty-eyed homesteaders make who want to be famous. 

Three Essential Natural Chemicals for Your Garden

We think of the word "chemical" in a negative way, unless we work in the industry. Yet even without a periodic table or large fertilizer makers, our preindustrial ancestors knew that soil needs certain things to be productive. Where they got them is another post, but here, for a start today, we need: nitrogen (from compost, green manures, animal manure, or fertilizer), potassium (from lime or ash, usually), and rock phosphate (a mineral).

It's easy to confuse the last two. I found a site providing the basic explanations, as well as where they come from. I think we'll be hearing more about phosphates soon; the trade war between the US and China may endanger supplies of this important additive for fertilizer. The US has some domestic production; all comes from mining.

I would love to find a sustainable, locally available substitute for rock phosphate. It's the missing ingredient in sustainable gardening. Luckily, I have chicken manure handy. When composted, it's a viable substitute, and there are others. These won't work on many large farms, but they provide a godsend for gardeners. Good compost seems able to provide all of the "big three," if it's the right mix of green materials (food scraps) and brown materials (fallen oak leaves, say).

Some plants, like nightshades (peppers and tomatoes in my garden) need a boost of rock phosphate annually. I provide it with a product called green sand, which is just what it looks like. As a mined rock, it's not sustainable. Yet a little seems to go a long way, so my current bag is only the second I've bought in 12 years.

We avoid other bagged commercial fertilizers on our farm; any left from my in-laws got spread broadly and thinly, to be rid of them. They are junk food, in many cases. Our goal is to build good soil longterm, using rotation and amendment and minimal tillage whenever possible.

So as we get ready for Spring gardens, what are you doing to get the soil ready?

 

From "Tree of No Use" to Useful Tree

 

I've written here many times about the Stinking Sumac / Tree of Paradise / Alianthus. I've yet to find a use for it, but there's another tree that many of us dislike that I've come to appreciate, the Sweet Gum. It has those sticky balls that sadistic children would throw at each other or (slowly raises hand) would shoot out of a slingshot.

I don't bean anyone with the tree's seed pods any longer, but I do burn the wood. Yes, I use a tree that many folks who heat with wood toss into the ravine. The wood is hard to split when green, and not much better when seasoned; the grain is crazy, the fibers clingy. It's not a wood to split by hand. But then I have 27 tons worth of splitting power in our gasoline-powered Trobilt.

Gum is supposed to stink when burned. True, if not seasoned. I spoke to my chimney-cleaner, a Good Ol' Boy who knows his wood. Cut it in the winter when the sap is not flowing, then split it right away gum can be burned in 9 months. In other seasons, one needs to wait a year and yes, that wood will give off an aroma. Use a moisture meter to be sure the wood is ready, to avoid creosote in your chimneys.

 I have been burning some of it lately, from a tree that fell in a summer storm in 2023. It gives off a woodsy smell that I get outdoors. Our stove is too efficient to let that scent into the house.

Numbers like the ones from the University of Kentucky do not lie. There's something to be said for Gum. It has a heating value in BTUs higher than pine. We don't all have a ready supply of Hickory or Osage Orange or White Oak. I get a good amount of Oak, but Sweet Gum is so plentiful here! The tree shrugs off urban pollution and drought, though on the down side it does like to shed limbs in storms.

Why does Gum have such a bad rep? I think it's the pain-in-the-butt nature of splitting it, if done by hand.

So don't toss that gum. Find someone who heats with wood and offer it. I'm reminded of "The Tree of No Use" from the writings of one of my old-school influencers, Zhuang Zhou the Taoist philosopher. That tree yielded nothing but shade: no fruit, no wood good for burning. And it lived a long time.

So will our gums, in the era of climate change.

Grandfather's Hammer and Keeping Old Things in Service

Some of you may know the Grandfather's Axe paradox. I encountered it a few years ago. The paradox asks us that if every part of an item is replaced one by one, in the end, is it still the same item? I heard it stated as "this is my grandfather's axe. Since he used it it has had two new handles and one new axe head."

So is it the same axe? The empirical, scientific answer is "no." Every molecule of the original item has been replaced, even if it looks identical.  I'm a Humanist, so I'm going to sail off in a different direction.

The paradox stretches back to ancient Greece, where it was called The Ship of Theseus. I really enjoy logical paradoxes, if you cannot already tell. I am not going to give you my philosophical opinion, right away, but I will talk about an item that evades the paradox because it is pretty much the same as when my grandfather used it.

He was a junk-dealer by trade, an immigrant from Hatay in what is now the southeastern corner of Turkey. Arriving in Richmond in 1911, in time he acquired an old truck and combed the countryside for scrap metal, old broken tools, furniture, or anything that might have some intrinsic value. Somewhere along the way, he found an old claw hammer, or at least the head of one. He fixed it to a length of metal pipe and used a giant nail to hold the head to the new handle.

I found that hammer when cleaning out his basement in Richmond, a couple of months after his passing in 1982. It went into an old tool box I still have in my barn, but the hammer recently re-appeared in my shop, when I found myself in need of something for driving masonry nails in the cinder-block wall for hanging tools, old tin signs, and other bric-a-brac. The old hammer works like a charm.

For years, every time I saw it, my Type-A, rationalist side would say "that old hammer needs a proper hickory handle," but somehow I never quite got around to it. I'm happy about that now. I'm slightly less Type A (and probably less rational) after a dozen years in the country, since farmwork requires a certain amount of clutter and temporary disorder when, say, the garden is bursting with food as it is right now.

We live in a time of fast food, fast fashion, disposable electronics. No thank you. My anti-consumerist, Humanist side wants to stake a claim to keeping old things that work well around as long as possible, even if, especially if like The Ship of Theseus, every single part has been replaced at least once. I recently put new front wheels on an old Woods belly mower that my late father-in-law slung under a 1951 John Deere M tractor he purchased new. In the years that I've been custodian of the machine, I restored and repainted it, replaced the seat, swapped out a new wire harness and battery, put in an electronic ignition. I bought a new mesh inner panel for the grille, a gas cap, and lots more.

Is it the same tractor? Mostly, yes, and it does exactly what my father-in-law did with it. When I'm gone, a grandchild or great-grandchild will get Grandpa's tractor, and one of my nieces or nephews who has a taste for DIY work will get my grandfather's hammer. Perhaps the paradox becomes meaningless if the object's purpose remains the same, and that object gets passed from generation to generation. I hope they don't just use the John Deere for parades or the hammer as garage-art.

It will help if I can get someone to form a bond with the tractor or the hammer, telling the story once a younger person shows interest. Luckily, the interest is there for lots of things that have been family heirlooms, but most of those objects I've handed on have not been tools. To merely hang the hammer on a wall (as I did the mower's old wheels, one of them still quite usable) seems to break a chain.

I don't have a fancy philosophical name for this but "the thingness of things" has been my go-to. I feel the material presence of my forebearers when I get on that tractor, hammer a nail, use a biscuit-cutter that belonged to my late mother-in-law. My favorite skillets are cheap and thin Taiwanese-made ones my mom got me at a Roses store in the summer of 1982, when I was returning to college and an apartment for my final year. I use those pans daily now and think of my mom, gone nearly two decades.

So look around the shop and house at old things your ancestors used to make life simpler: a rolling pin, a favorite casserole dish, the old Buick sedan that grandpa loved so much. Look at the well-made furniture that is not modern chic but still perfectly useful.

Could you still use those things? Why not?

Old-School Tools: Barge Cement Update

 

I do not place advertising on this site. In a time when many driving down what we once called "the Information Superhighway" looks like a tacky highway full of ugly, intrusive billboards, I hope you appreciate that.

I do, however, endorse products that have worked well for me. One of them is an old-timer, Barge Cement. In its original formula that I have written about here, it has saved many a shoe from the landfill, as I found when a pair of slip-on work boots nearly lost their sole. With the parts cleaned and clamped, Barge provide me with years of service beyond what would have been the end of the boot. Here's the form of Barge you might find on brick-and-mortar shelves. 

 

Check the web site listed below for specialty versions, like one I've recently ordered online.

Recently I've another tough job needing adhesives, fixing weather-stripping / dent guards on a farm truck, before I repaint them. Regular Barge, the shoe adhesive, will not bond to all plastics, and who knows what GM used for that piece? Enter Barge Super Stik. I learned that the firm offers a range of cements with differing set-up times and curing times. I recommend checking their chart to verify if the materials to be bonded will work with a particular adhesive.

Fixing stuff is at odds with the ethos of Huxley's Brave New dystopia that we seem to inhabit, but I'd rather mend it than end it. That applied to a 1951 tractor I got back in service a decade ago; I changed the oil and mowed grass with it this week. It applies to shoes and other things, if you wish to say no to a consumerist "paradise" of cheap goods meant to wear out and be tossed into our brimming landfills.

So be subversive: go out and fix something. Barge is a premium product at a premium price, but if you follow directions you will not be disappointed.

Saving an Old Fence

When we lived in town, I always felt the pressure not to have the worst fence on the block. Now I don't worry about that at my home, but I sure do at our rental.

My tenants are fine folks. One of them used to work for me, so he knows I'm a fuss-budget about fiddly things. When their neighbors got a new fence, part of ours was so rotten (the ground there stays wet) that posts snapped off. The fencing company put up a 4' picket fence but I wanted all the fence to match the 6' privacy fence that we inherited when we bought the place a decade ago.

Treated wood ages like other wood, and soon enough, that fence looked like the set of a horror film. While I don't place advertising on this site or endorse products, I cannot speak highly enough about Behr Solid Deck Stain. We'd used it to preserve the house's deck, and it's a tough product. The company makes lighter-duty stains for siding, but the deck stain seemed a good, if slightly more expensive, option. I'd found that it made old wood look as good as the new replacement boards next to them.

So this post is short but clear: if you need to renew old wood, try this or its competitors. I found Valspar a little more expensive. But to hide the old dark weathered wood, go solid, not transparent.

Keep in mind that you cannot put stains over paint. They will peel. I never use paint on decking or fences, anyhow: I've found that on new or old unfinished wood, these heavy stains last a decade and best of all, clean up with water.

Happy repairs!

Eastern Tent Caterpillars: Living With Them

Last year, for the first time, we had a harvest from our apple trees. Partly that occurred after I sprayed them with sulfur following bloom. Partly because I paid attention to a leaf-eating native insect, the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. They love to form nests in the crotches of trees.

One of our biggest trees got completely defoliated in just a few days last year; it did leaf out again but no apples came from it. I consider it my control, since the trees that I did manage yielded a good harvest.  So this year, I used a long stick, or a telescoping pole with a brush on the end to remove the webbed nests.  Advice from professions such as Penn State's Extension service recommend dropping the nests in soapy water. I did that last year but this year I just put them on the ground and stomped on them.

Penn State gives advice for pesticides, but I don't see the need for such a small and non-fatal infestation; I think that I have removed a dozen nests from three trees.  Our cherry tree escaped this  year, the the caterpillars show no interest in our figs.  I hope that we will again have homemade apple sauce in the larder for 2024. I put put about a dozen jars last year.

In the woods, wild cherry trees are full of the nests. I leave them be, so birds will have plenty of moths in their diet.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

The Forgotten(?) Art of Pollarding Trees

Topping trees to encourage growth has a bad name among tree fanciers like me. The conventional wisdom that it shortens the life of a shade tree has a lot of merit, but then again, don't we prune trees constantly?

As I do most of my heavy pruning in winter, especially late winter, I wanted to talk about a time-honored way of harvesting firewood without cutting down an entire tree. I've begun to practice it in my own woodlot. 

The photo above, from the Wikipedia entry on pollarding, shows a beech in Epping Forest, England. In the old world, where ancient forests long vanished, second-growth trees needed careful management to avoid vanishing. Legal rights to pollard a certain amount of wood were granted to locals.

Pollarding provides a safe and sustainable method, and carefully pollarded trees can live a very long time. The beech above has not been cut in a many decades, whereas a regularly pollarded tree will not produce the huge side branches shown.  For those working with willow for crafts, pollarding leads to a nigh-endless supply of material.

I use pollarding on our fence-lines, where gums, poplars, and other shade trees occur. Some I cut down to a stub 3  or 4 feet in height. The trunks get cut into small rounds for the woodstove, after seasoning a  year. The branches and twig I drag away to make brush-piles at the edge of the woods, to shelter wildlife. Sometimes I pollard very long stems to make beanpoles.

Pines, of course, cannot be pollarded, and once cut, do not return. I knew that but didn't know it as an ancient threat by Croesus from the Persian/Greek wars. Thanks, Herodotus.

If you burn wood in  your fire-pit, fireplace, or wood stove but live where you don't have a ready supply of large logs, you may want to begin pollarding trees. You might find it most handy for trees under power-lines as well. Keeping them short avoids the sort of awful slash/pruning power-companies often do to protect infrastructure. Pollarding provides a way to keep a tree like that gracefully shaped.

 

Image courtesy Wikipedia

Tis the Season: For $90 Fraser Firs

Sorry, Charlie Brown. There are no trees for you at the local lot.

Even folks who sell trees call the spindly ones with a bad side "Charlie Browns," but they are hard to come by. I saw two prices today outside Pleasants Hardware: $74.99 and $94.99. I recall $5 trees on Christmas Eve, whenever possible Scotch Pines, our family favorites. We usually put up the tree Christmas Eve not out of tradition, but to save money. Mine was not a wealthy family in the late 1960s.

Today, a hundred bucks. Gulp. We have not bought a live tree in many years, preferring a Cedar we cut from our land. We remove crooked saplings and selectively thin to promote a healthy woodlot and reduce fire hazards every winter, as soon as the frost means not stepping on a Copperhead. At the edges of the woods, Red Cedars abound, and if they get sun, they usually have only one bad side and a lot of branches.

That may not be an option for many readers. Let's say you don't want to spend a bundle on a cut tree but want something nice-looking and sustainable.

I'd actually argue for a few ideas different from typical Christmas trees today. In fact, some of my ideas once marked the fad of their era.

1) Go Lucy van Pelt, not Charlie Brown. We bought, in a moment of irony, a silver tinsel tree. It's only 2' tall but it evokes childhood memories of the basement of Standard Drug in what is now Richmond's Carytown. The basement was only open in those years for the holiday season, stocked with toys and a lot of aluminum trees in one corner. The drug store put out a really nice winter wonderland, with fake snow, lots of ornaments, and colored lighting. It was magical to a kid, especially blue lights on the silver trees. The whole idea of metallic trees fell from favor for many decades but now it's BACK. Mind you, today's fake trees are Chinese made, not from a factory in Hoboken or Sheboygan or San Diego. 

2) Spend a lot on a really nice artificial tree. Not in the mood for a shiny pink aluminum tree, Charlie? A quick look online to find realistic-looking green trees ranging from 200 to 2000 dollars. To be honest, the mid-range ones appear fantastic. Look for ones that are not too regular; I saw a tree for nearly $2000 that had every branch shaped identically. Real trees do  not look that way. Once  you find the right tree, however, it could last you decades. Amortize a $400 tree and you might spend 20 dollars for each of 20 seasons. That's a quarter what a tree-lot example costs, without inflation. Like my tinsel tree, these trees do not need water and won't drop needles.

3) Plant a live tree and decorate it outside. If you have the yard for it, a 6' evergreen can come your way for under $150. For five years or so, until it gets too large, you can add lights and all-season decorations. If it's a dwarf conifer, you might be able to make it your Christmas tree for decades.

4) Get Your Goose (Feather). There's a German tradition of the "Goose Feather Tree" I only learned about today. Take a gander with Mr. Google or Mr. Bing or that Duck Duck Go fellow. The original Goose-feather trees were created by dyeing feathers green to simulate branches, then attaching them to a trunk. You can buy them ready to assemble today, at decent prices. They don't have the density of Fraser Firs, but the sparse branches let you show off large ornaments.They look quaint and cozy to me, like a Walton's tree John Boy brought down the mountain.

5) Become a Druid. A friend who studied modern-day Druidry had a bare branch in her home, beautifully decorated. It evoked the slumber of our current season. It was striking to see and when Yuletide ended, it could go in the compost or wood stove.

I am out of ideas.  But have a tree, whatever your faith. It's a wonderful tradition. A Blessed Solstice, Happy Hanukkah, and a Merry Christmas to  you.

Figs, Figs, Everywhere

My grandfather Sam spent most of his life trying to grow figs, before climate change made it ridiculously easy in our bioregion.

That is the one good thing I will ever say about global warming.

This time of year, my nephew Mike Ryan (as big a madman as I am) will text me with a "hey, Uncle Cheapass! I want them damn figs!" and I deliver, delighted that one person in my extended family at least loves fresh figs as much as my grandfather and dad did. Or as much as my wife and I do now.

Growing fig trees is not that hard, once they get established. Chicago Hardy is a variety that works well here. Further south Brown Turkey is a good bet.

But what to do with the thousands--and I am not kidding--of figs that even four trees can produce in a year? Here's the plan, Stan.

 And where do we go for ideas about how to deal with lots of excess fruit or veg? Why the National Center for Home Food Preservation, of course!

They feature the best canning recipe ever for fig jam. Even non-canners could make this one work. It cans in a boiling-water bath in 5-10 minutes, depending upon the size jar.

We have not bought jam in years, in consequence. Plant some fig trees and give it a try. Sam would be so happy to know that folks are growing figs. Once you get in the habit, you'll never let it go.

That Mighty Fine Old Hose

 Joke coming. Leave now if you wish.

"How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?"

"Only one to change it and five more to talk about how mighty fine that old bulb was!"

Lots of truth here. So when a 40-year-old garden hose finally gave up the ghost, I had my next blog post.

My father passed 21 years ago, and that seems like yesterday. He bought a house in 1975, on Fitzhugh Avenue in the near West End of the City of Richmond, and I only lived there for four years before college, but I came back for a year and a half after. Those were very happy years for us all. About that time, in 1984 or so, he redid the yard and went to a local hardware store. He bought the best garden hose they offered. "Real rubber!" he said, still house-proud a decade later. He as no yard-guy, but he believed in keeping up appearances on a block where the neighbors often went all-out for their little 1/3 acre city yards.  That hose was astounding; it coiled up naturally without kinks and was easily to move around.

Yes, a mighty fine hose it was.

I miss the old man immensely, for all his difficult personality tics. After a life of hard toil behind the wheel of a truck he'd made it, owning a produce warehouse with his cousin Leroy. He was a beloved boss, too. Maybe he treated his employees so well because he remembered terrible privation.

He grew up in desperate poverty in the Great Depression, served in the Navy during World War II, raised a family with my mom in a little row-house. A detached two-story home in a neighborhood full of assistant bank-managers and insurance salesmen, with an Olds or Buick out front? The American Dream. I miss that too. It's gotten so super-sized since dad's day. I am rather glad he's not around to see things now.

That old red hose? It moved with us after mom passed away, and I used it for years until we moved to the country in 2012. Then it served well in our garden, with some fraying finally catching up to it near the end. I used a special leak-stop tape but that only bought me a  year. This summer, the old hose had to go.

Why do we fret over material things so much? In my case, that old hose told a story that only mom and I knew, and maybe my oldest sister. Sis and I are the only ones left. Now I am telling you.

Funny thing, though. This tale has an ending not only happy but sustainable. We found that most of the old hose is just fine, still flexible and intact as ever. I cut off 10 bad feet or so, then another 20 good feet from the far end. That length will help me water trees, attached to the water tank I carry around in my UTV for saplings when the weather here goes into a prolonged dry spell.

 

If the hose lasts four more decades, it will outlive me. And there the story will end, happily in fact.