Square Foot Gardening on a Deck

One of the most popular gardening books of recent times (according to the Jung Seed catalog) is Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening (SFG).  The technique involves dividing a garden space into four foot by four foot beds with aisles in between, and further dividing each section into one foot by one foot sections.  This methodology is supposed to make the task of weeding more manageable (since the entire garden bed is easily reachable from the aisles), and is supposed to decrease the temptation to pack too many plants into a given area.  One of the things Mel points out toward the end of the book is that the technique is feasible even if you don't have any land to work.  With our front and back decks providing a cumulative total of 0.0024 acres and no actual "ground" to work with, we were especially excited about the prospect of building some 'raised' beds to Mel's specifications for growing some of our own veggies!

It turns out the construction of such beds is ridiculously easy and can be done in an hour or less if you have a clear plan.  We decided to make one for both our front and back decks, and do make them six inches deep.  The shallow depth limits our ability to grow carrots, but we didn't want to test the weight bearing abilities of our third-floor decks too much! (And we can grow carrots in other, deeper pots.)

To make two 4' x 4' blocks, you'll need:

For the bed:
1 sheet of plywood, 4' x 8'x 7/16"
4 boards, 1" x 8" x 8'
40 screws of at least 1.5" length
24 small nails or screws
Small pieces of scrap wood to raise the bed above whatever surface will support the bed

For the trellis:
4 pieces of 1/2" aluminum electrical conduit, 10' long
8 semicircle brackets 
4 electrical conduit pass through 90° elbows
4 electrical conduit 90° elbows

Tools: saw, drill, screwdriver, pipe cutter.  Some home improvement stores may be willing to cut the conduit to your specifications if you ask them.  In that case, you wouldn't need the pipe cutter.  Similarly, if you can get them to cut the plywood in half, it will be easier to fit in your vehicle (or bike trailer) and you get to skip to step two below!  Oh boy!

Procedure:

(Thanks to Google Sketchup for making it possible to show what we forgot to take pictures of last year when we were building these!  Some of the photos below are from our SFG on the front deck, and some from the back deck, so apologies if the changing background is confusing.)

1. Cut the plywood in half the short way to generate two 4' x 4' panels.  These are the bottoms of the raised beds.

2. From each 1" x 8" x 8' board, cut two 1" x 8" x 3'11.25" pieces (ok, the first two dimensions will actually be 0.75" x 7.25" if you're using standard dimensional lumber, but don't panic.  It will be ok!  The length is what's important.)  Use these pieces to form a box and make sure they fit your piece of plywood properly, like so:

It might not be super important for the shallow depth of soil here, but forming the boards in sort of a pinwheel configuration around the edge is supposed to make a stronger box since outward forces of the dirt always have to fight a set of perpendicular screws.  (If you made two longer and two shorter ones, outward forces would have to fight two sets of perpendicular screws in one direction, but only two sets of parallel screws in the opposite direction, making it easier for the boards to pull away from each other.)

3. Screw the sections of 1" x 8" together with two screws in the end of each board.  Drill pilot holes for the screws first to avoid splitting the boards.  Then flip the whole thing over and screw the plywood onto the box you just made with the boards, adding three screws to each side.  While it's upside down, drill several holes in the bottom for drainage.  Try a 0.25" drill bit--big enough not to get clogged too easily, but small enough that all your dirt won't run out with a hard rain!  Then you can flip it back over, putting your wood scraps underneath to further help the drainage and keep your wooden deck from rotting (if that's where you're putting the SFG).

4. If you want to grow climbing veggies like cukes or pole beans, or unwieldy veggies like tomatoes, you can add a trellis.  Cut the conduit pieces into a section of about 6'3" (leaving the remainder about 3'9") for the trellis.  Use two 10-foot sections of conduit per block, connecting with the elbows and tees.

5. Attach the trellis to the box with the clamps as shown.  It helps to have another person hold the trellis up while you screw in the clamps.

6. Fill the box with dirt, or compost, or whatever your favorite growing medium is.  Four feet by four feet by six inches deep works out to eight cubic feet if you're going to buy dirt (e.g., if you're desperate like us and had to).  Adjust the box to it's final position before adding the dirt, because it is much harder to move when full.  We used high-organic matter potting soil to keep the weight down, but it tends to dry out quickly.

7. On the outside or top of the boards, measure one foot increments from the edges and pound a nail partway in at each increment (or sink in a screw partway), then make a grid with string, twine, jute, or whatever you prefer.  Tie six strings across the nails/screws marking the one-foot increments (three one way, three perpendicular) to make a grid of 16 one-square-foot patches.

On the side with the trellis, it would be better to put the grid nails/screws on the outside rather than the top.  That way it's easier to anchor any strings you tie to the trellis to help support the plants.

Also tie strings from the top of your trellis to the nails/screws you added on that side to complete your trellis and give your peas and cukes a leg up!

9. Plant all the stuff you meticulously planned out with your garden spreadsheet and keep an eye on it.  One thing about having such a thin layer of soil is that it constantly needs watering.  We set up a gravity-fed drip irrigation system that we'll talk about in a future post.

10. Wait for the veggies to grow up, then gobble them down.  Yum yum!

Do you have experience with square foot gardening?  Do you prefer this type of set up or deeper containers for growing vegetables on decks and patios?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

Cleaning Pans of Burnt Food

Here is a story about learning to cook.

One day, a boy (let's call him "Jake") decided to cook a lovely breakfast for his special lady friend (let's call her "Katie").  He planned out the perfect meal, and he knew Katie would love it.  (They had been dating almost ten years, after all, and Jake knew what foods Katie liked.)  He set about to frying a mess of sliced potatoes, a thick slab of maple-flavored bacon, and a panful of the most glorious scrambled eggs ever invented with tomatoes, peppers, green beans and extra-sharp cheddar cheese.  Oh, the cheese!  The kitchen was filled with a harmonious collaboration of breakfast smells, clanking pots, and banjo music streaming from a laptop on the kitchen table.

Now, being as it was early morning, the potential for wildlife-based distractions was high.  And sure enough, Jake looked casually out the window toward his lush garden oasis.  What did he see?  A ne'er-do-well cottontail rabbit working his way through the rows of green beans that had just begun to ripen.  Didn't that varmint know better than to work in the beans while there was still dew on them?!  This situation simply could not be allowed to unfold without intervention.  Jake grabbed his trusty home-made blow gun and snuck out to the garden, intent on adding some rabbit to the breakfast menu.

Despite his best efforts, Jake got to the garden just in time to see the rabbit disappear through a hole in the fence at the back corner.  "So that's how he'd gotten in!  Well, I better fix up this fence right away or he'll be in there again by the time I get back to the house," thought Jake to himself.  He went to the garage to get the pliers and wire cutters, and a shovel to re-bury the bottom part of the fence.  Fifteen minutes later, there's no way that rabbit's getting back in here!  Hey, what's that smell?

Uh-oh.

The potatoes, eggs, and bacon were barely recognizable.  The harmonious scents of breakfast had turned to an acrid cloud billowing from the stove; the banjo music from the laptop was now part of a cacophony that also included a roommate's alarm clock (forgotten to turn off before leaving for the weekend) and every smoke alarm in the house.  So much for surprising Katie with breakfast in bed!  She's probably standing outside in the designated meeting area waiting for the firetruck to show up.

If you've been cooking for more than a few months, you might have a similar story about burning food (maybe without the banjo music and blow guns).  After finally convincing the smoke alarms to shut up and airing out the house, the typical follow up question is, "How am I going to get this mess out of these pans?"  A quick web search reveals that people have probably been trying to answer this question since the beginning of time. 

It seems that there are five commonly attempted routes to get food residues off pots and pans:

Add acid
   Vinegar (acetic acid)
   Cream of Tartar
   Citric acid
   Barkeeper's Friend (oxalic acid)
   Soda (carbonic acid)

Add base
   Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
   Oven or drain cleaner (sodium hydroxide, or lye)
   Ammonia cleaner

Add solvent  (can't recommend the last one)

   Alcohol (as in deglazing a pan with wine)
   Detergent such as soap or dishwashing liquid
   Nail polish remover (acetone)
   Gun-cleaning solvent (hydrocarbon cocktail)

Add oxidant (also can't recommend the last two)

   High heat (above 900 °F or 500 °C)
   Bright sunlight
   Bleach (sodium hypochlorite)
   Oxyclean

Add abrasive (and scrub)
   Scouring powder
   Salt
   Eggshells

Another one that shows up occasionally is rapid heating and cooling of the soiled pan, which is likely an attempt to take advantage of the difference in coefficients of thermal expansion between the metal pot and the carbonaceous film coating it.  Since the difference is probably pretty small, and most films are somewhat malleable anyway, this technique is probably not going to be more efficient than the above mentioned ones.

Explanations of why each of these methods work chemically are few and far between, but there are plenty of anecdotal descriptions of each not working in some cases and working like a charm in others.  The variety of experiences probably comes from the varying combinations of food types and pans, conditions of forming the residue (temperature, aerobic/anaerobic conditions, cook time), and patience level of the anecdote suppliers.  In truth, the exact mechanism of each route probably hasn't been conclusively determined, but we can get some insight by considering what types of chemistry are likely going on.

When food 'burns' on a stove, it normally starts (in our experience) as a few spots on the bottom of the pan that darken.  What reactions produce this darkening depends on the type of food in the pan.  The food is undergoing a complex process called pyrolysis, which happens in limited oxygen and consists of food molecules simultaneously breaking down into smaller compounds and building up (polymerizing) into larger compounds.  The temperature and oxygen availability help to determine what the ratio of 'breaking down' to 'building up' is.  Higher temperatures and more oxygen lead to more 'breaking down.'

For the potatoes in the story above, which are mainly composed of starch (a carbohydrate polymer), the reactions are mainly hydrolysis and dehydration reactions, converting the carbohydrate polymers first into simple sugars like glucose (or glucose anhydrides), then dehydration products (oxygen-functionalized aromatic molecules (e.g., phenol) and re-polymerized sugars), and eventually, carbon.  For the eggs and bacon, which contain a lot of proteins, an analogous depolymerization and further reaction of the amino acid chains occurs, but incorporates many nitrogen-containing functional groups in the aromatic molecules (e.g. benzonitrile) as well.  The bacon grease, which is made up of triglycerides, breaks down first into glycerol and fatty acids; the glycerol dehydrates like a carbohydrate, and the fatty acids can polymerize or break down into smaller hydrocarbons.  The proteins and carbohydrates can also react together through the Maillard reaction, which makes that nice golden brown color, but also less healthy compounds.  There are also minerals like potassium and calcium carbonates and hydroxides involved, but these components are probably not the main concern in your carbonaceous mess.

Example of how milk protein can go from a nutritious component of a white sauce to a useless black glob stuck to the bottom of your pan.  Fortunately, you can remove it with an alkaline solution (pH > 7, but easier with 9 < pH < 12), e.g. with baking or washing soda.  Image credit: Wikipedia.

The general trend is that the higher the heat and the longer the cook time, the closer to pure carbon you get.  Concomitantly, the closer to carbon you get, the less effective each cleaning technique becomes. In fact, pure carbon is typically insoluble in acids, bases, and most common solvents, so the only real options if you get to that point are oxidation and abrasive cleaning.  In each case, the problem to solve (ba-da-bum!) is the chemical bonds formed between the food and the metal pan (e.g., iron or aluminum).  You have to convince the metal and the food that they should not like each other.  The trick is that the different types of food respond differently to the different treatments.  For example, the Arizona Department of Health Services discusses that protein residues respond well to addition of basic components, while adding an acid can actually make the problem worse.  They offer this guide to clarify what will typically work to clean your pans based on what type of food you were trying to cook.

Why do basic solutions work well for multiple types of food?  The key lies in the versatility of the hydroxide ion, OH^-.  When bases dissolve in water, they release a hydroxide ion into solution, which can react with many types of organic molecules.  With fats and greases, the hydroxide ion is able to catalyze the saponification reaction, which essentially turns the grease into soap.  (...and which is also why lutefisk can tend to taste soapy).  So in this case, you get both a detergent and a dissolution effect from the base.  The carbohydrate-based residues can be removed by the saponified grease.  The hydroxide ion also interferes with the chemical bonding in protein residues (especially of sulfur-sulfur linkages), which denatures the proteins into water-soluble pieces. Triple whammy!

Table with recommendations on how to clean up food messes depending on their origin.  Adapted from Arizona DHS.

The acids typically work best on mineral deposits, but can also act as a solvent (think of the acetic acid in vinegar as kind of a hybrid between water and acetone).  Both acids and bases may also serve to corrode a thin layer of the metal pan, which can release the food residues.  Also for both acids and bases, the rate at which they work their magic goes up with temperature.  So if you heat them in boiling water, they'll work faster.  Stronger acids and bases work faster than weak ones, so lye will work faster than baking soda, for example.  (Ok, it should formally depend on the concentration of each, but practically speaking, lye will work faster).

Oxidation converts the deposits mainly to CO and CO₂, using either an aqueous oxidant, such as in bleach or Oxyclean, or using O₂ with either a photochemically-induced (bright sunlight) or thermally-induced (high temperatures) reaction.  The mechanism of abrasion is pretty self explanatory--you use something harder than the deposit to grind it off.  Of course, be careful with abrasives on nonstick surfaces.

General trends for making burnt food messes and how to clean them up.

Essentially, what it comes down to is that for most food residues, your most practical (read cheap, safe, and easy) approach will probably be to make a concentrated solution of baking soda in water in the pan with the residue, bring it to a boil, and let it sit overnight.  In the morning, try to scrub the residue off.  If it doesn't work, add some kind of abrasive (pending the hardness of your cooking surface) and scrub some more.  If you still can't get it, go the oxidation route.

Do you have any other techniques for cleaning burned food residue off pots and pans?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

WWOOFing?

Last week, Katie reserved Joel Salatin's 'You Can Farm' from the local library.  It has been a very interesting read, a tremendous distraction from doing real work, and we'll probably post a favorable review on here before long.  One thing that surprised us is Salatin's recommendation to not acquire a piece of land as one of the first steps in your farming life unless you already have two things: experience on a farm and sufficient funds to live on for several years while your farm goes through the growing pains of becoming profitable.  In fact, it seems that in his opinion, prior farm experience is the most important descriptor of a new farmer's success.

So, how then to acquire said experience?  The most obvious--and possibly convenient--way would be to approach farmers in your area who do the kind of farming you're interested in (vegetables, dairy, pork, fiber, etc.) and ask if you can volunteer.  It's possible to learn quite a bit by spending an hour or two per day at an endeavor, especially if you can do it year-round and see the operation through all the seasons.  However, it doesn't really give the kind of immersive experience that would seemingly be most helpful when starting your own farm.  Unfortunately, you're probably not going to find many farmers willing to bring you on board for an around-the-clock agricultural crash course...unless...there were some kind of organization set up for the sole purpose of facilitating that kind of connection...

A fun logo for WWOOF.  We found it at Veni Vidi Vici.

Enter WWOOF (World-wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). Started in the UK in the 1970s to introduce new farmers to organic growing methods, WWOOF has since expanded to encompass the whole globe and offers thousands of locations for motivated (but often inexperienced) farmers to learn the trade in a live-in setting.  Host farms in the WWOOF program range from urban farms to homesteads so remote they can only be reached by bush plane.  The idea is that WWOOFers travel to the host farm (WWOOFees?), stay there for a period of time (two weeks to several months), learn some skills while helping their hosts, and then move on.  No money is exchanged between WWOOFers and WWOOFees, but the hosts typically provide a room and meals.  However, since most countries have restrictions about foreigners coming temporarily just to work or volunteer, it's important to note that the experience is supposed to be mainly a visit/vacation with no formal labor arrangements.

Raspberries on a WWOOF farm in Australia.  This is one of the only WWOOF-related photos in the Wikimedia Commons, so if you go and take pictures, please post them for bloggers to WWOOF vicariously!  Photo credit: Wikipedia.

The way it works is this: aspiring WWOOFers (that includes us) pay a reasonable membership fee upfront to gain access to the database of farmers in a given country.  (You can see locations and snippets of information about each farm beforehand, but to find contact info and in-depth descriptions about what the hosts are looking for, you have to pay the fee).  Membership fees go to maintaining the online database.  Each country operates independently, so if you're a U.S. citizen for example, but want to WWOOF in Canada, get a membership to the Canadian WWOOF database.  Once you can see the database, you call or e-mail farms you're interested in and sort of 'feel out' if the fit would be good (they'll be 'feeling out,' potential WWOOFers, too).  If there's mutual interest, you can work out expectations like length of stay, hours of help per day, type of help needed, etc.

The main downsides are that you're on your own for travel arrangements and that ideal stay times are typically longer than most employed people can afford for vacation.  However, WWOOF recommends that the daily time commitment be in the range of 4-6 hours, so if you have work you can do remotely, you might be able to work out a long-term stay while continuing your normal job duties.

The upside is (in our opinion) huge.  Once you get to your destination, you get free lodging, free meals (probably home-cooked), and a free education in organic agriculture.  You get to see new areas of the world and meet interesting new people.  Plus, you get lots of experience that will be invaluable when you finally decide to put down some roots.

Here's the process we went through, flow-chart style, in case it would be useful to you.  We got to the green square, but haven't gotten our membership (yet).  David Wallinga's TED talk can be found here.

Do you have any experience with WWOOFing?  Do you know of any other similar opportunities?  How have you negotiated the vacation time restrictions with your employer?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

Green Onion Powder

Last summer, we had quite a few green onions come out of our garden (more than we were interested in making use of while they were fresh), so we dehydrate a bunch.  We cut them into small sections and set them on the trays, but realized that as 'sections,' we weren't using them up very quickly.  The pieces work fine for casseroles, soups, stews, etc., but not so well for seasoning dishes the way we usually do, by sprinkling the seasonings on.  (We're habitual sprinklers.)  Then we realized that one of our favorite seasonings is onion powder (or granulated onion, depending on what your source calls it).  Now, this is going to seem terribly obvious, but couldn't we just grind up the green onion and use it like onion powder?  Turns out we could (and did), and we love sprinkling it on eggs, toast, steaks...basically anything on which we would normally sprinkle regular white-colored onion powder.  Of course, a quick internet search shows we're not the first ones to think of grinding up our green onions, but since we hadn't heard of it before, we wanted to help spread the word.

One of the green onions in our garden was still kind of a runt at the end of the growing season, so we brought it inside to the aquaponic system, where it flourished.  Just this last week, we finally decided it was time to pick the little guy since he was starting to get a flower bud.  Since we were going to turn it into powder, we thought we'd write about it on here in case anyone wanted to try it with their own green onions!

Here's the fresh starting green onion.  It grew surprisingly well in the aquaponic system, although we're  surprised when anything works around here. :-)

Cut it into pieces large enough that they won't fall through the openings in the dehydrator tray, and dry them for a couple days. 

After the dehydrator, we've found that they're pretty dry, but not quite crispy enough to grind right away.  So we put them in a warm oven for a couple hours (like after we take a loaf of bread out and the oven is cooling down).

Put the über-dry pieces in the mortar.  In this case, the whole onion fit at the same time.

Grind it up with the pestle.  It took about 20 seconds to get to this point.  It's hard to see, but some of the onion is a very fine powder and some is still relatively large pieces.

So we normally filter it to collect the fines, and put the big pieces back in the mortar.

Then grind just the big pieces, now that they don't have the little pieces to pad them from the mortar walls.  Bwa ha ha haaa.  We'll get them yet!

Once everything goes through, put the powder in whatever container you're planning to store it in.  If there's a few pieces that still won't go, add them to the leftover Reuben Strata you're about to heat up for supper (or many other kinds of leftovers).  It's interesting that the fresh stuff is a different color than the stuff we made last fall.  We're not sure why--if the other stuff changed color over the last few months, or if the aquaponic onion is actually a different color.  Time will tell!

Have you made green onion powder before?  What's your favorite food to which to add green onion powder?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

Book Review: Permaculture Chicken - Pasture Basics by Anna Hess

The cover of the e-book.  Reproduced with permission from the author.  Get the book here.

 
The title says 'Pasture Basics,' and that's pretty much what this book is.  It's short and has lots of pictures, but it gives the basics of setting up a pasture for chickens.  I would have liked to see some more of the information promised in future volumes included here, but I am definitely more impatient than most, especially when it comes to information about chickens.  It would also be nice to have a few more in-line references to some of the studies she mentions and a cumulative list of references at the end. (Anna recommends several good books for further reading, but you'll have to write them down as you read.  Or, see the list below with links.) There.  The only shortcomings are out of the way, so we can get to the fun parts!

Overall, it's a great resource for readers aspiring to set up a homestead-scale free-range chicken operation.  Anna does a great job combining personal experience with outside research in this nice narrative of what goes into a good chicken pasture.  Anna briefly takes you through her early experiments with traditional 'coop and run' chicken systems, chicken tractors, and rotational pastures to motivate why she settled on a rotating pasture system as the model for her homestead.  I don't want to give too much away, but in essence, this arrangement maximizes the multi-functionality of the chickens--healthy meat and eggs, pest control, fertilizing, lawn mowing, and no-till soil preparation--while letting them 'express their chickenness' (to borrow Joel Salatin's phrase) and simultaneously reducing their feed bill.

Simple schematic of the chicken management systems Anna has mentions in the book.  The bulk of the book is about the one on the right, since that's what has worked best for them.  Click graphic for larger version.

A hybrid chicken tractor/coop (troop?) can work well on relatively flat land and provides excellent protection from predators.   Mobile fencing can be used to provide a dynamic paddock pasture system outside the enclosed area.  Photo credit: Dad and Mom for top and bottom panel, respectively.

Anna covers considerations for sizing your pasture for your flock size and climate, locating your coop and paddocks, the variety of helpful pasture crops and why they're good (sample list at the end of this post), how to rotate through your paddocks (with seasonal variations), common mistakes that reduce the productivity of the pasture, how to maintain the pasture, and how to convert other types of land into a chicken pasture, with an emphasis on cover crops that have worked well for them.  How they have dealt with seasonal variation is one of the best values of this book, since pasture productivity can vary widely over the course of the year, and 'emergency release valves,' as Anna calls them, outside of the normal paddock rotation scheme are likely to be necessary, especially in winter.  Note, however, that Anna lives far enough south (in Virginia) that she can allow her chickens access to pasture pretty much year-round--if you have snow on the ground for most of the winter, you'll need to make additional arrangements.

Graphic of what pastured chickens have to eat over the course of the year.  Local results will vary; this is just a schematic (not to scale).  Also, forest pastures aren't covered in depth in the book, so that line in the top panel is representative mostly of when nuts fall from the trees and not a particular grazing pattern.  The relative fraction of diet from pasture will also vary a lot based on the specific system--for example, Anna's chickens top out at 30% of their diet from pasture, while Joel Salatin's chickens, which get a lot of protein from bugs in cow pies, forage up to 67% of their food.

One thing to note here is that Anna has built up her system without complementary livestock, so their rotational schedule might require more maintenance (in some respects) than a system with cows, sheep or goats, and their chicken feed bill is probably not reduced quite as much as it could be.  For example, Anna uses a lawnmower to keep unused paddocks in check during the spring when the pasture grows faster than the chickens can keep up with it.  Anna also notes near the end of the book that her chickens forage for up to 30% of their feed (but more typically 10-20%, or even slightly less for broilers), while Joel Salatin's chickens, which follow a herd of cows through his fields as 'pasture sanitation,' can forage up to 67% of their feed.  Anna doesn't seem too keen on the pasture sanitation route since they don't have a lot of open pasture room on their homestead, but I'm not sure I agree that other animals wouldn't be net beneficial.  Sure, Salatin's operation is much bigger, but it can be scaled down to one or two cows and a small flock of chickens on less than five acres of pasture.  In any case, the important point is that there are lots of ways to pasture your poultry and the fraction of feed the chickens find for themselves will vary depending on your specific situation, but almost everyone should be able to see some reduction in their feed bill.

In summary, I'd like to reiterate that this book is a great resource for anyone looking to create a poultry pasture, and I highly recommend it.  I also suggest following Anna's blog, The Walden Effect, to find out when the next volumes in the series will come out, and to follow further discussion of the books in this series.

Additional reading mentioned in the book:
Andy Lee and Patricia Foreman's Chicken Tractor
Harvey Ussery's The Small-Scale Poultry Flock
Carol Ekarius' Small-Scale Livestock Farming
Bill Murphy's Greener Pastures on Your Side of the Fence
Steve Solomon's The Intelligent Gardener
Gene Logsdon's All Flesh Is Grass
Anna's Weekend Homesteader
Anna's Homegrown Humus
Anna's Permaculture Chicken: Incubation Handbook

Other related books:
Joel Salatin's Pastured Poultry Profits
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens

Chicken pasture plants mentioned in the book:
Orchardgrass
Perennial Ryegrass
Fescues
Creeping Bent
Crested Dog's Tail
Kentucky Bluegrass
Timothy
Oats
Italian Ryegrass
Bermudagrass
Reed Canarygrass
Smooth Bromegrass
Switchgrass
Big Bluestem
Indiangrass
Little Bluestem
Side-oats Grama
Eastern Gamagrass
Ladino Clover
Red Clover
White Clover
Alfalfa
Sorgum Sudangrass
Pearl Millet

Chalkboard Labeling

Today's post starts with a question: what's the best way to combine the fourth-best part of elementary school, rustic interior decorating, and reusable storage containers?  That's right--labeling with chalkboard paint!  We like this method more than labeling with the commercial label makers because it's easier to "edit" the label if you change what's in the container and doesn't require a fancy tool or adhesive paper that would have to be thrown away.  We've had good luck with chalkboard labels on the two-gallon glass containers that store our staple foodstuffs like flour and sugar, and also on a scuffed-up dry-erase board that now displays our grocery and to-do lists next to the kitchen so we can easily remember them.  We decided to add chalkboard labels to some of our other containers (like wine bottles) using chalkboard paint, so we thought we'd document the process and show you how we did it!

Here's our starting point: formerly a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck that we "emptied," washed, and filled with our own blend of homemade elderberry-grape wine.  We defaced the label to reflect the bottle's current contents, vintage, and brewery location, but it doesn't look very classy.  Time to start fresh!

First step: remove the label(s).  A little hot water and the brown hard plastic scraper on the right worked pretty well.  Don't forget to write down any information you need from the label because the process takes several days.

Next, mark the points you want to be the corners of your label.  At this point, we realized that it would be hard to see dark marks on a bottle filled with dark liquid, so we decided to do another (empty) bottle, too.

If you have a lot of bottles to do that you want to do all uniformly, it might save a little time to make a series of templates so you don't have to measure each one.

Add tape around the dots you made, or affix your template to the bottle.  Make sure there are no gaps in the tape or template, or the paint will run through.  For example, the left side of the template in the picture above has a gap, so after the photo was taken, we put tape slightly inside the opening to close it up.

Now get out your chalkboard paint and pretty much follow the directions on the label.  If you want colors other than black, there are ways to do it.  Also, if you know of a more sustainable paint option, let us know!

It will probably take more than one coat.  There's a fine line between too thin and too thick (enough to drip), so you'll have to practice a little to get a feel for it--keep an eye on it to check for drips.  The one on the left is just about right, the one on the right is a little too thin.  It's really apparent here because the one on the left has a dark liquid in the bottle and is a little drier than the one on the right, but you get the idea.  Our can of paint said it needed three days before we could write on it.  So we waited...

Finally!  It's totally dry.  We took the tape off after one day.  Doesn't look to bad!  But, you can see that in a couple places where we weren't careful with the tape, the paint ran underneath a little bit.

It's not too hard to scrape the rogue paint off with something sharp.

That looks a little better!

Our paint's instructions said to coat the whole thing in a layer of chalk before writing on it for the first time.  You can see now that the one on the right isn't quite as even as the one on the left because we made the second coat of paint a little too thick.  But it should work OK for our purposes.

Remove the majority of the chalk layer with an eraser or a dry rag, and your labels are ready to go!  You can write whatever you'd like on them

You could paint the whole house if you want!  (But ask Katie first.)

Have you found another way to make good looking labels on label-needing things around your house?  Do you have an easier way to do chalkboard labels?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

Bonus Post: Reuben Strata!

If you have leftovers from your St. Patrick's Day feast like we did, you might be looking for something to do with extra corned beast, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and rye bread.  We thoroughly enjoyed our Reuben sandwiches, and were looking to extend the glory of the Reuben without having to put together such an elaborate sandwich every night for supper (yes, we really are that lazy busy).  Katie came to the brilliant realization that we had most of the ingredients for a strata, which we would typically make with ham, cheddar, and normal bread.  But why not make a Reuben-themed one?  Seemed like it could work!

The word 'strata' comes from the ancient Latin term meaning, 'out of the stratosphere,' indicating that this is a dish believed to come directly from heaven.  (Edit: Katie says, "Jake, you're full of baloney.  It's called strata because of the layers.")  Whatever the origin of the name, it's definitely a dish worth trying if you've got the right mix of leftovers.

Start with a layer of bread in the bottom of a 9" x 13" x 3" pan.  This recipe requires all 3" of height--if you use a shorter pan like we did, you'll have to make another mini-strata (which isn't all bad).  Make sure you cover every square inch of the bottom with bread, or you will get yelled at.

Shred ~1.25 pounds of Swiss cheese and 3 c. cooked corned beast.

On top of the bread, add layers of sauerkraut, corned beast, and Swiss cheese.  If you have a deep pan, try to use about half of each in the first layer.  If your pan is only 2" deep, use about a third.

Add a second layer each of bread, sauerkraut, beast, and cheese.  Make sure to put cheese on top, so it will get all melty and golden brown when you bake it.  You can see the second dish we had to use in order to fit everything in.

Make up a mixture of six beaten eggs, 3 c milk, and a half-teaspoon each of garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, salt, ground cloves, and dry mustard.  Pour the mixture as evenly as possible over the layers already in the cake pans, and refrigerate overnight (or at least several hours).  This recipe is modified from the original (best ever) ham strata recipe, which is a secret closely guarded by the Methodists of Waldo, WI.  If you want to know their recipe, join the church (quick, before Easter Sunday breakfast!) or wait until their cookbooks go on sale again. :-)

After the strata has hung out in your fridge for a while, bake it at 375 °F for 50-60 min until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the cheese is golden brown.

Let it cool for at least 10 minutes when it comes out of the oven if you can, or it will probably get mangled when you try to take the first piece out of the pan (we couldn't wait, we were too hungry).  Top with Thousand Island dressing if you like, and serve with leftover boiled veggies from cooking your corned beast.

Have you made a strata from leftovers before?  What else have you done with St. Patty's Day leftovers?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!


Recipe
2 loaves (9"x5"x4.5") of caraway rye "shortbread" (or less if the bread rose like it was supposed to), sliced
3 c. cooked and shredded corned beast
1.25 lb. shredded Swiss cheese
3 c. sauerkraut
6 eggs, beaten
3 c. milk, minus the juice from the sauerkraut
0.5 t. garlic powder
0.5 t. onion powder
0.5 t. ground black pepper
0.5 t. ground cloves
0.5 t. salt
0.5 t. ground mustard

Layer bread, sauerkraut, corned beast, and Swiss cheese in a 9" x 13" x 3" pan (or equivalent pan volume).  Mix eggs, milk, and spices together, pour evenly into pan.  Spices may fall to bottom of mixture, so re-mix frequently.  Chill overnight, or at least 6 hours.  Bake at 375 °F for 50-60 min until egg mixture is set (toothpick inserted in center comes out clean).