gardens

Completely off topic but how many of you have their own veggie patch these days? Even in the countryside, very few of my neighbours bother because supermarkets are so easy despite the very real contamination with banned chemicals and lack of nutrtion. I recently watched a reputable TV show where random samples of top brand supermarket food, sold as fresh or snap frozen was tested. MOST of it, cheap or expensive, had shocking amounts of pesticides and chemicals banned worldwide for decades, toxic amounts as they do not pass out of the system and build up over time, and that included the control test on so-called certified 'organic' produce!!! It also showed a serious lack of nutritional value (especially the china-sourced vegetables). You are what you eat.

I have always had a garden of some sort or other but because of my back injuries and marauding wallabies and rabbits and parrots, it gets neglected. But this year, although all the cherries got pinched by birds, I have just eaten my first ever nectarines! Small but sweet - and now the black figs are ripening ... I also just harvested cucumber and the first tomatoes along with some garlic and salad leaves. Nothing beats the taste of fresh, organic produce, of sun-warmed and ripened tomatoes especially! I am not a gourmet in any way, I hate all the TV cooking shows filling the air-waves these days as eating for me is just a chore, but this changes that a little. The health I still have, despite injuries and neglect is, I am convinced, because I was raised on almost only garden and orchard grown produce, no chemicals, just soil and shit and water and sun. In those days in UK after WW2, everyone drank water, ate from their garden and the neighbours shared around any surplus. All that was bought was bread and milk and some fruit as a treat.

I wish I could do more. From time to time I manage a whole meal of home-grown food including maybe a rabbit I have shot with the bow or far more rarely, a wild goat kid. Those meals, when coupled with wine from my neighbours' vinyards are the best!

Maybe I do a veggie patch in year 2015. Should actually do it before. I have a place for it and everything just near a lake and Sauna! I will first just have to become more enthusiastic of self-sufficiency regarding food.

That sounds really nice Jape. I wish there were more options here, it's depressing to eat chinese tomatoes. They barely have any colour and taste like water. Same with all the veggies, they have no taste. Good luck finding anywhere to grow something in shanghai though, even the roaches have trouble surviving here...

i understood that the Chinese use 'night soil' on everything, so the tomatoes must taste of something ...

For me, on the 20th floor in a colony of a dozen or more 25-35-story buildings, the opportunity to have a garden is a dream. But it's a dream I plan to turn into reality, not here in China but on a family parcel in a redwood forest overlooking the Pacific 3 hours north of San Francisco. I know stuff grows there -- pot anyway -- not that I've done that. We've had poachers.

And, though I don't know the laws on this, I would certainly consider applying night soil to my garden, provided it's been allowed to compost or whatever you have to do to it. If that makes any visitors uncomfortable we can go eat at Bridget Dolans in downtown Elk, population 250.

cheers

I know a few eco types who use it but they say there are two rules, never raw on ground near food you eat that takes it straight in (like greens) but OK round fruit trees, and never when you take meds or eat processed food. Me, I'll stick to cow shit/sheep manure, but the fruit trees do get overflow run off from the septic tanks with no problems, in fact the figs are superb!

When you going to live the dream Jeff? don't leave it too late, you need some physical and emotional strength to put it together.

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Originally Posted by jape

When you going to live the dream Jeff? don't leave it too late, you need some physical and emotional strength to put it together.

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I'm starting this year, even though I'm just now starting a new business in Shanghai. Fortunately, the business is largely consulting, and will involve to some degree bridging Chinese doctors with major medical teaching institutions in the US, so there will be scope to spend longish spells in the US, and working via laptop/internet. So I'm already shopping for travel trailers on craigslist, and am delighted to learn you can find 30x8-foot trailers that are essentially a 240 sq ft self-contained apartment for US$5k or less. There's electric and phone along the access road, and I was delighted to learn that in the past year the phone line has been upgraded for DSL. There are two year-round springs, so water is not an issue. Septic is a question mark, so I'm indeed interested in the night soil question. Folks I know in the area say you just bring in a back hoe and run some trenches for a septic leach field, and you are good to go. Simpler yet would be an outhouse with removable tank -- assuming there's a way of processing the night soil. There's a lot of lore on this on the internet these days. Google "human waste composting" or human waste fertilizer" and you'll see lots of creative solutions.

Not sure what's legal in California, though I'm not too worried about this. Since the land is essentially redwood forest, I can get away with lots of "temporary facilities" that do not fully comply with local building codes, by invoking "agricultural use" provisions.

The first encampment likely will involve little more than a surplus 40-ft shipping container to use as a secure staging structure/garage. And possibly a travel trailer. All this could come this summer. Would be great to have a little 250cc parked there for "riding the periphery" like a dog peeing on trees...

Yes, this will require physical and emotional strength, but even the thought of this project seems to give me both.

cheers

Although I have 'been there done that' a few times, including a tipi and later a rail carriage in the welsh woods, a log cabin in Aus and now my own shack and 6 acres - I am very envious! The fun is in doing it mate. You just don't find trailers or caravans or old buses or anything for that sort of money in Aus. The land you are going to be in sounds great, redwoods! wow!

Composting toilets do work very well, both the ordinary 'rot away with sawdust or wood ash' type, or the powered electrical ones. No chemicals. Many folks round here use them and the local council passes them as meeting building code too. No more expensive than a septic system of any kind and they do not smell! Another low tech type that works fine is just what is called a 'long drop', you can imagine why. Basically a deep trench with a moveable hut over the top! The trick is that you keep it sealed and light-tight and you get no flies or smells. Just the odd snake.

Jape, I'm excited as hell. Here's an example of what's available. I actually emailed this guy and he was such a dick I didn't even reply. And he's dropped the price by $500.

All I'd need to do is get this up to Elk, a very careful drive of maybe 8 hours behind any reasonably powered pickup truck.

Here's a satellite view of Elk. The address is for the Griffin House Inn and Bridget Dolan's Pub. Zoom back, and draw a straight line to Cameron Road, and imagine a rectangle of redwood forest, sitting atop a ridge above the Pacific, one quarter mile on a side. Zoom back another click or two and you can see it's equidistant to the Navarro River on it's final twists before being swallowed by the Pacific.

OK, here's a couple of pictures....

http://euphonius.smugmug.com/Landsca...37_kEjnc-M.jpg

http://euphonius.smugmug.com/Landsca...12_kMuUW-M.jpg

http://euphonius.smugmug.com/Landsca...94_uFCk9-M.jpg

http://euphonius.smugmug.com/Landsca...87_sANpz-M.jpg

http://euphonius.smugmug.com/Landsca...83_cFCay-M.jpg

http://euphonius.smugmug.com/Landsca...70_fRXyg-M.jpg

That is pretty amazing Jeff! Close enough to drive into town, remote enough hopefully for some peace and quiet.
Getting a trailer like that is good value, I have had a few over the years. You can get them a fair bit cheaper again if they are not roadworthy, making the last trip on a truck back so to speak. I don't know how experienced you are with such things but they are incredibly flimsy, usually just 2x1 (yes) frame with a ply or similar sheet inside and aluminium cladding outside, thin fiber glass inbetween. In summer hot/winter you would be cold whatever they say about insulation. But you cab get a couple, join them with a porch, add extra tin roof over the top, build under a hay shed - all sorts of things for cheap improvement. I know of families live in them in Welsh winters once insulated etc.

if you want an adventure I would recommend earth-covered shipping containers (they come in a couple of sizes) which also protect you in fire. Another one is 6 meter section concrete pipe or silo section, or large culvert (surprisingly cheap, again, two foot minimum earth covered), you glaze the whole front under an overhang and put steel shutters then fireproof. That sort of earth insulation means a small log stove is the most you will ever need, and that rarely. I have been looking at all these alternative homes like this for years, even built a few. Building code is usually the problem but workshop/studio/fire shelter/secure lock up usually satisfies.

Ah dammit, I want to fly over and do it with you - got a great two-storey 'A frame' built out of reclaimed telegraph poles, rail road ties and railroad steel in mind, one end fully-glazed overlooking the view, other end two-storey (mezzanine), bath sunk into floor, under-floor workshop, green house built in, etc. etc. .......... but that would be MY fun not yours. I retired too soon.