Big Dreams

[greenstorm]

A friend sent me a link to a property listing (pond, fig trees, greenhouse) and said he was thinking about bugging out, what would it take to be self-sufficient and possibly scale up to being able to support some folks.

Obviously I love that sort of thing and pointed out the rocky outcrops under the soil there and put together the ghost of an infrastructure budget and now I'm trying to think it out laterally because while a pig rotational system works well for me here, obviously there are lots of other good systems. And if time is allowed to be an input, well. It was a throwaway remark on his part but it put me back into future-oriented hope mode.

And in that vein...

...One of the earlier seed preservationist people who retired recently is going to send me some Morden corn seed, which is in his opinion the earliest corn in the world, a couple days earlier than my mini gaspe. He's also going to send me more genetic breadth to gaspe. This is amazing. Morden has a significant genetic bottleneck; it would be really good if I could find another source. He's looked around and hasn't, but Morden is the name of an agricultural research station in Canada so I'm going to contact them and probably try to get in touch with some native seedkeeping groups around there and see if they want some seeds back and if they have some for me. This is jumping-up-and-down-in-front-of-the-mirror and randomly-squealing news.

I only just realized last night that I have an abundance of aspens I want to cut down, and I've been meaning to put in some mushrooms. So if I cut the aspens into logs or have them chipped I can innoculate them, they're a pretty good substrate for a lot of things. I have some learning to do on how to make that work: how old the logs need to be, when to innoculate, should I do chips or logs, what humidity ranges are ok, do they need to be under snow in winter for temperature protection, etc. Also some logistics: where are my humid spots, and which ones are out of reach of birds; how do I get some of those trees down and chipped; which mushrooms do I want to try.

I'm sad all the time, but at least that's not the only thing going on right now.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

I've heard that blue oyster mushroom will grow on damn near anything. I have no particular experience in growing mushrooms, but that might be a place to start research.

Have you heard about the Mexican corn variety that was found to have a nitrogen-fixer symbiosis? Weird little gelatinous aerial roots. Very long season, but thought you might find it fascinating if you hadn't seen it already. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/amaizeballs/567140/

[greenstorm]

Yes! Preliminary research suggests that oyster, shiitake, king stropheria, parasol, and enoki might be good bets. I love the part of winter that is planning for spring.

And yes, I've also heard of that corn! It probably won't surprise you that folks are working on breeding it into all sorts of things, I think one of the folks on a forum had it cropping up in his populations randomly too. Nitrogen fixing plant systems make me happy. :)

One of the interesting benefits (?) of being in such a cold climate is that soil nitrogen tends to be conserved, things decay more slowly here and shut down all winter. So there's a bigger pool for plants that know how to access it through soil or for people that can introduce heat and oxygen to speed decay.

[squirrelitude]

Whoa, like popping up in completely different varieties? I guess I shouldn't be *too* surprised, since it's not exactly a recent development.

(I also recently learned that Alder has a nitrogen-fixer symbiosis.)

Interesting about nitrogen sticking around. I guess that makes sense -- it's normally the soil bacteria that would be chewing away on it, and they're not so active in your winters. :-) But I suppose you're also not particularly lacking in nitrogen, what with the pigs doing their thing?

[greenstorm]

Alder totally does -- too much alder cutting can flood streams with fish poison from so much nitrogen. And I think cottonwood does too but not in the roots, instead in the rhizosphere!

Yeah, he had a grex/big mass of a bunch of varieties mixed together, so it was very genetically diverse, and when he started selecting for I think red leaves it brought enough of the recessives out to play is my guess.

I bring in a tremendous amount of nitrogen in the form of pig feed, yeah. It's such a bounty of fertility. <3

[yarrowkat]

that's exciting about that corn! we have a really long season here - i might see if my housemates want to try that one, since most corn is such a heavy feeder.

[greenstorm]

It would be so neat for someone I know to be growing that corn, I hope for pictures!

Do you grow short-season crops deliberately in your heavy-water-plus-some-heat spring season to avoid having to water later on at all?

[yarrowkat]

i'll see if the corn-eaters in my house are into it. i am allergic to corn so i don't feel like i have a lot of voice in the "what variety of corn do we grow" conversation, but i will totally share this with them and see if they are interested in at least a test plot!

no, we generally select for "heat tolerant" over any other quality in seed-selection, whether the season is long or short. most really short-season things (45 days or less) are less heat tolerant. our weather is unpredictably hot in spring these days - freezing, then 80 degrees, sometimes. drives delicate plants kind of crazy. i have an extremely sturdy spinach i'm fond of, that doesn't bolt and seems to handle all our weather. it's 55 days, which is fairly short season for us? we've got some sturdy peas going these days, too, that lasted to the end of June last year, when the temps hit the low 100s in late May and stayed there.

[greenstorm]

Ahhh, I can see how that would be an important selection factor. I know a lot of folks who have been breeding for really intense day/night fluctuation but maybe not also the heat. I know when I lived in Williams Lake we would get sometimes a 40C swing from day to night and it was challenging.

[yarrowkat]

whew, yeah, that's hard and important to plan around.

[greenstorm]

But I could grow artichokes there and not here. Dammit. I want that heat back somedays.

[yarrowkat]

damnit.  <3

[yarrowkat]

also excited to hear how the mushroom log thing goes. we have a bunch of cottonwood logs laying around that aren't good for much - they're terrible firewood, cold & smoky - and recently thought maybe we should see about growing edible mushrooms in them, if we can keep them moist enough. maybe finally finish the root cellar (currently a pit in the back acreage) and do it there.

[greenstorm]

I'm looking forward to settling into the research. I ready something about a shiitake raft, where you bury the logs just below the surface which might preserve humidity? Maybe you could use them to edge irrigated garden beds? There do seem to be shiitakes and oysters that take very warm temperatures. Or where was it your graywater splashed out by the cottonwoods?

I'm so envious of a root cellar. I'll have to live vicariously.

[yarrowkat]

maybe edging on irrigated beds, or maybe they could live in the flood-irrigated acreage, but away from the goats, like near the fire circle or something. the root cellar has a major case of "round to it" - we haven't managed to start focusing on it yet, and it might still be another few years before we do, though Tristan wants to, I know.

greywater goes into mulch basins in a few areas - it's generally best-practice to ensure that it isn't applied directly to any food product, though, for cross-contamination risk.

[greenstorm]

This morning I woke up with the realization that mushrooms in circles are especially neat and those can be designed into a space. Like around a fire circle. Though my design philosophy seems to be more "and" than "or" in cases like this: shiitakes in bed edges, and something else around the fire circle?

I guess that makes sense for greywater. I know mushrooms are good remediators but I guess that doesn't mean they can't hold bacteria on their surfaces.

I'm so interested in how my reaction to SR's social network changes over time. I think this is the first time I've been envious of them, in a "hey it would be neat to have someone living onsite who wants to build a root cellar!" sort of way which coexists with "running something past folks all the time might end me"

[yarrowkat]

oh, i would love to walk around this land and brainstorm it all with you! that would be so much fun.

it totally is neat to have stuff get done that you don't personally put much effort into! my effort into Jenny's projects is usually to direct the attention of volunteers towards them. i am often a person the volunteers turn to, both becuase i'm their first point of contact, and i'm organized, and i'm around, and J hides in their room from all the humans sometimes (for a few weeks at a time sometimes) and is invisible. :) so i will point them at things, like the community house flowerbeds - mostly J's project, that, but it's nice to have it just magically appear! i also love working with volunteers for not only this reason, but definitely this reason. (i enjoy teaching them, and they're often great people, and our educational program is something i can point to every day and say, we are doing Right Work in the world, so it helps me feel like i have a meaningful impact when our efforts feel very small in the face of the climate crisis & looming totalitarianism etc.)

part of building a functional community is building agreements that *don't* exhaust the members, at least not routinely. and then changing them to accomodate new needs as those needs arise, for all members. i think you would need to build community agreements/processes different from the ones we use here for this reason. many models can work just fine, if everyone is genuinely in agreement on the model.

highly reccomend Create an Oasis with Greywater by Art Ludwig for a resource if you are interested in working with greywater. it's downloadable as a PDF i think.