Saturday morning the first set of piglets were born on Okfuskee Farm.  Okfuskee is just a few miles from Circle Acres and the source of the first pigs we raised last year.  This year we are getting four pigs from Okfuskee.  We’ll raise them through November, repeating most of the same process as last year.

This year there is a new shelter, a scavenged bamboo and baling twine number that I built over the course of a few days.  It isn’t much to look at, but it is dry and, more importantly, lightweight.  Moving last year’s pig house was a nightmare.  It was heavy and unwieldy; I cursed it, the pigs destroyed it as they aged, knocking out the floor and the walls.  Now its shell sits with last year’s scarecrow along the forest edge, waiting for new purposes and locations.

The new house is basically a tent with one open wall.  It can be staked down after moving in case it is windy.  But that is all boring stuff… Who wants to see the two day old piglets!

Five weeks from this coming Saturday the piglets will be weaned (according to the Animal Welfare Approved time line).  Shortly after that, the pigs will come home and join the rest of us animals.

We at Circle Acres are committed scavengers. Group dumpster runs are part of the fabric of our collective. These runs provide needed goods for the farm as well as plenty of food for shared meals.

Scavenging also includes gleaning scrap lumber from neighboring demolition projects, concrete pieces (urbanite), old greenhouse plastic, bamboo, hay twine, nails, and irrigation drip tape. Combine all those elements and you get a really decent and basic greenhouse.

The process started with a bamboo harvest – this ingredient was necessary for putting together the top framing as well as the side ribs.

The ends of the greenhouse were built with downed cedar trees that we pulled out of the woods as well as scrap lumber from a demolition up the road from us.  There were also a few pieces from a recent gutting of a few rooms in our house.

The plastic came from an organic farm near the NC coast as did the drip tape that was used to staple through and hold the plastic to the framing.

Photo from Danielle

Total cost for this greenhouse (not including labor of course) is somewhere between $5 and $15 depending on who you ask.  I think the staples were at least $4 for the box, but calculating how many nails were purchased versus how many were scavenged is difficult.

Regardless, the greenhouse is ready for seed flats and a jump-start on the season.  Anyone interested in our CSA?

I don’t like mowing a yard, especially when the yard is on a farm.  It irritates me to push a noisy piece of machinery over a piece of land that yields no food for me or the others living here.  The roaming rooster and guineas glean a little here and there, but there really are not impressed with the selection at this particular salad bar.  A yard is great for a picnic, but I would prefer a pasture for a picnic any day.

I am vowing that this coming year the mowing will be minimized.  Going in are perennial beds, hugelkultur mounds, insectory plants by the hundreds and a kitchen garden for fun.  The front yard outside of mine and Kristin’s door is the first to fall.  Step one is to kill the grass or otherwise remove it. Well, actually step one is to figure out where the beds will go and do some measuring and flagging.

A few years ago I attended a workshop at the annual CFSA conference presented by Susana from Salamander Springs Farm. The workshop was all about building no-till beds on top of grass.  I finally found the notes in one of the piles of notebooks that I have only recently brought together into one pile.  The notes spell out a no-till “Layer Cake” garden bed recipe:

Step one – “The Plate” consists of large sheets of cardboard laid over existing pasture or lawn.

Step two – “The Cake” consists of several inches of manure or compost.

Step three – “The Frosting” consists of mulch such as leaves, old hay, shredded paper and straw.

Step four – “The Baking” consists of letting it all settle and rot for three to four months.

Step five – “The Eating” consists of pulling the mulch back to put in plants and replenishing the mulch as the plants grow.

For our cardboard needs we almost always head to Siler City.  The dollar stores’ Dumpsters are usually a nice jackpot for all sizes of box, not necessarily a requirement to fit most mulching needs.  For larger jobs we would hit furniture and appliance stores.  The boxes are bigger and thicker providing more grass and weed killing power.  For uniformity of boxes, the local ABC Liquor store would be perfect.  Most folks hit them up for packing boxes.  For wax boxes, hit the grocery… Since this particular project was just a piece of a front yard, the dollar store cardboard works well.  The only problem is the tape.  There is a lot of tape to remove and dispose of.

While peeling off tape, you get to see where all the crap products come from and come through.  Most of the importers seem to be in New York City of New Jersey.  The origins are India, China, Korea, Vietnam.  None of the boxes were made from recycled material (no notices on the boxes), so I will probably be mulching with cardboard descended directly from trees, most likely trees from Canada.  That is a long way to go in order to get into my front yard.  The boxes also have loads of staples, fabric tape and heavy duty packing tape holding everything together.

The value of the boxes and its associated connectors is probably higher than the value of the stuff inside the box. I know the value of what I am about to grow on and through those boxes is higher than the box plus the stuff inside.  And then some – mostly because so much comes from the cardboard.  Earthworms tunnel under and through it; pill bugs, beetles and earwigs make their home in the crevices between the layers; fungal mycelia run like branching rivers throughout the whole bit.  All of this activity leads to the decomposition of the still useful organic matter and carbon that is nestled within the cardboard.

What would have taken years to happen with the use of a new log, the loggers, grinders, pulpers, pressers, importers and exporters have made into a readily available haven for all sorts of micro and macro interactions. But the folks at the end of the box-chain would have just thrown it away or possibly recycled it into more cardboard that would eventually be thrown away (nothing against recycling cardboard) whereas we at Circle Acres have really recycled the box and returned it to its rightful place – rotting on the ground and being digested by those who can do such a thing.

The only drawback to this system is that it takes a really long time to build.  For one person, by hand, estimate at least two hours to go twenty five feet.  Then of course there is the “baking” part, but after three or four months the area should be grass and weed free.  It will also be a nutritious place to start off new Spring plants for Summer harvest.

First frost can be a hassle for season extension.  Rows have to be covered with fabric or plastic or buried in mulch.  Our first frost was last Sunday, and not much got covered.  The struggling cucumbers were easily killed as were the sweet potato vines.  Basil seemed to hold up; straw covered tomatoes also stood through the cold air.

Noel read up on how frost can affect sweet potatoes and determined that it would be best if we dug them up promptly.  Another frost was coming, we had the hands needed to get the job done and it seemed like a fun project for a Monday evening.

We had planted quite a few varieties to see how they would come out.  The sizes and yields varied with the only constant being that the roots may have been held back by the thick clay soil.  Sweet potatoes really prefer a light soil and a long frost-free growing season.  Our area is great for the frost-free part but not so much on the for the light soil.

Kristin, Gray, Noel and myself tore up the dying vines, feeding them to the waiting pigs.  Pigs love sweet potato vines. They are great nutrition for people as well.  Next year I plan to try to ferment a few and see how they taste.

With the dying vines pulled up we had to race a dropping sun.  We dug as much as we could in the fading light, but ended up resorting to head lamps for the last hour of harvesting.  I’m not sure if we missed any in the surrounding darkness.  I guess we’ll find out in the Spring when volunteers start shooting up from the soil.

The potatoes spent the night in our room cuddling with the wood stove.  Noel and Gray moved them into the greenhouse to cure for a while.  Curing is a whole other scene…