Pinching Lincoln Too Hard

Fall planted Tatsoi

I suppose if you’re reading my blog we can assume that frugality is a way of life for you already.  Pinching pennies, or being frugal comes in many forms.  It might be something so simple as eating the delicious stalks of bolting brassicas.  I’m not much of a fan of the mustard family when they bolt in mid-summer, but now?  Eating these tender leaves in the shoulder seasons far outweighs a trip to the grocery store for fresh greens.

Winterbor kale

Leaving these kale plants to sprout new growth only makes sense, I could have pulled the plants and fed them to the chickens, but squeaking out more meals for us makes is more in keeping with frugality.  The chickens can have them when we are done.  Even if I started kale yesterday (which I didn’t) it would almost two months before I could begin robbing new leaves.  These plants were seeded last July and planted in August, they can stand me harvesting them hard.

In terms of using heat mats, the practice is certainly not free, but I can use the space to my advantage.  Slow growing plants like herbs, flowers, and some veggies like celery root can be started in these small cells.  My flats are all the same size to fit the mat of course (unlike hot dogs and hot dog buns).  On the right you see a 200 cell insert, on the left is a 48 cell flat, making use of 6 packs, because that is what we have from plant sales, and we reuse them a lot.  Plants with like germination times are grouped together.  It’s not wise to put bok choy which will sprout in about four days with celeriac which may take twenty-one days to germinate.  Follow me?  Bok choy will be in the ground before the celeriac has a set of true leaves.  In simpler terms, the celeriac and herb flat may sit on that heat mat for three weeks, and the bok choy being cold tolerant can move to the side off the heat and make way for a succession seeding of something else.  So yes the heat mat and flats do cost some money to purchase and to use, but I can use them efficiently or inefficiently.

February 10, 2016

Besides rotating the plants across the heat mat and off to a semi-warm place in the greenhouse, I can simply turn it off the heat during the day, on a mildly sunny afternoon the temperature is quite high inside.

Plant tags can be made of wood or plastic, and we have chosen plastic.  Both have the pros and cons.  We reuse these tags so many times, I am sure they paid for themselves a long time ago.  Mostly we use them for the greenhouse and for plant sales, we don’t need them in the garden.  There are some recycling concerns, but…who doesn’t have plastic somewhere in this modern life.  I would like to meet that person.  The jokes we can make out of these names too, are not to be sneezed at.  Laughter is the best medicine, and sometimes a little levity on a long seeding day is much appreciated.  Only a plant nerd would laugh at a Cobra onion tag reused and placed wrong side out in a kale flat.  See?  Easily amused.

Sometimes frugality can come in the form of just putting away a tool. Drip irrigation is a wonderful thing, but it’s not uncommon to see miles of this stuff lying around near gardens and on farms.  I know mine was until yesterday, just taunting me to get on the tractor and mow it by mistake.  While inexpensive really to set up, it still is a cash outlay for the farm or homestead.  The savings come with lowered labor, ease of use and smaller allocation of water compared to other methods of irrigation. To keep those savings in your pocket though, you need to put the stuff away in the off-season.  Yesterday, using my home-made drip winder, we made bales of drip tape that can be easily stored until it is time use them.  For even more labor savings, we divided the number of lines by two, with the thinking that we will not start irrigating the entire garden at the same time.  These bales are labeled for each garden so we know where to use them when the time comes.

Winter killed Sorghum-Sudan

Other savings may be realized with a living mulch.  Seeds are relatively inexpensive and easy to sow.  Comparing this greenhouse cover crop that successfully winter killed to buying weed-free straw and spreading it, I think we saw a significant savings here in labor and expense.  Not to mention ease of application.  Fifty pound small squares of straw require some muscle and fuel to haul, store and then spread.

I talked at length (too much I fear) about wasting hay in that flurry of blog posts last month.  With livestock you can spend an awful lot time doing unnecessary chores or wasting money, sometimes both.  Most of my hay wasting comments come from seeing round bales stuck out in a feeder in the rain (or even worse round bales stored out in the rain) for a few cows.  Sure that is as convenient as all heck.  The cows eat what they want, crap on the rest and there you go.  You dump off the hay, go back in a week and move to the next bale.  At best it’s called bale grazing…at worst it called a gigantic pugged up mess in a field.  Apologies to those of you who live in frigid areas where your ground remains frozen all winter.  Storing hay outside here in the Pacific Northwest is a waste, and some folks can absorb that loss.  I can’t.  A note too, if you are buying hay and the seller stores his hay outside, his calculated loss is figured into the price when he sells his hay.

I think many times folks get the meaning of automatic and automated mixed up.  I been taken to task before in emails for feeding my pigs with a self-feeder and having them on a nipple water system rather than pouring buckets of water for the swine.  Same with the chickens.  Many fear a return to feedlots and automation, or that their meat customers will think less of them if they aren’t slogging through the mud, snow, sleet whatever to nurture the livestock.  That is all well and good if you’re the nurturing type, but keep in mind that an animal that has to go wanting for water or food, will not gain as well or be as happy as you think they are when the are clamoring at the fence when you show up on your schedule.  Of course, they are glad to see you, they want water and food.  And unlike us, the pigs and hens won’t overeat to the point of obesity, so worries about the feed bill are unwarranted.

We don’t keep pigs during the winter, just hens and cows, but I make sure that I look at the hen’s water bucket that delivers water to their gravity waterer.  Same with the pigs in the summer, they have a nipple plumbed to a 55 gallon barrel of water.  It might last 3 days, it might last a week, I look every. single. day.  Are the birds flighty?  Are the pigs squeaking at me?  Stuff goes wrong.  Just because we have set up easy automatic watering systems we can attend to with a hose doesn’t mean something won’t get plugged or broken.  And I have to say, systems like these scaled down from the big guys ensure clean water.  Who can argue with that.  And who wants to carry buckets of water in this day and age when you don’t need to?  Wouldn’t it be considered frugal to save our bodies?  Save on injuries, instead of being stubborn and holding to some strange, rigid ideal of work that work must be painful or it’s not meaningful?

I think if we think of ourselves as a resource (mind and body) to be protected, be frugal with ourselves in regards to labor, tasks, and our pocketbook we can all feel successful in whatever we choose to do.