Longleaf Breeze

After six years, it's time to shift our focus from what we're experiencing to what we can share. You'll see a bold new responsive design. Expect fewer podcasts, but there will be more information you can find and use. And we'll keep changing

Farmers have to keep one eye on next season. Even though it’s cold outside, we’re planning spring and summer vegetables. So when should we terminate our cover crops? They always hit a growth spurt when we most need to make room for other plantings

We love longleaf pines. They will live hundreds of years and are our forest's best tool for survival in an uncertain climate. Each January we plant a box of 330 longleaf seedlings. This year we're planting around the driveway, lodge, and Veg Hill

We love heating with wood, but it has its disadvantages. The temperature in your home will vary more widely, it's messy, you must be present to start heating, and you have to think WAY ahead to have enough seasoned wood

We’ve known about this for a week and had time to prepare. We were safe and comfortable. The issues were utility systems, plants, and animals. And most of that was managing water, keeping it off the animals but thawed and flowing when needed

Today we look back on 2014 and some "firsts" it brought with it, like the chickens and a cover crop test. We also talk about what we think lies ahead in 2015, like maybe meat rabbits, a greenhouse, and perhaps citrus.

Merry Christmas! We are back from a week in California visiting with Joe and his family. The visit was delightful, but we both are struggling with illness and weak voices, so we have kept today's program short

We use vinegar in our food the same way others do, but we also use it for weed control, for cleaning and stair removal, and for pickling. Most recently, we used it to disinfect the chicken coop and the brooder bin.

Yesterday we ushered two aged laying hens from coop to table. We learned: Start early in the day, make sure your knife is sharp, expect them to complain loudly, don't spend money on a cone or a plucker, learn chicken anatomy, and secure the dog

We're thankful for food put by, for food growing through the winter, for hens ready to grace our stewpot, for laying hens coming on this Spring, for firewood in winter and shade in summer, but especially for relationships with friends and family

November for us is usually quiet, cool, and pleasant. This year it just slammed us with winter, and our poor plants were unprepared. The figs probably died back to the ground yet again. But frost blanket protected our tender broccoli

Soon it will be time to plant fruit trees in Alabama. Today’s podcast includes a listing of fruits in descending order of the ease of growing them in central Alabama

In the shop, well protected from Oddie, our four tiny chicks are eating, drinking, peeing, and pooping. Mostly sleeping. This program is about their breeds, their temporary home, and our plans for their transition to the coop on the orchard floor

Master Gardener and Garlic Guru RJ Arceneaux describes what kind of soil garlic prefers, when and how to plant it, how to care for it over the winter, and how to know when it's ready to harvest. In the South, this is the time to plant it

It was good for spring peas, tomatoes, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, sweet potatoes, edamame, summer peas, apples, muscadines, persimmons, and blueberries. Lousy for melons, corn, peaches, plums, pears, figs, and blackberries

I failed to care for Amanda's garden while she was gone for a week. The beans and peas may be usable as seed but aren't fit to eat. The okra plants have collapsed with giant pods. We do have some gorgeous red peppers, though

Our home is 1/4 the size of the suburban house we left behind, so we thought it was small, but it's palatial compared to tiny houses, which force us to contemplate how much living space one needs to be happy. Think 200 sq ft, sometimes less

The persimmons we love are Asian persimmons, a far cry from the ones that turned our mouths inside out when we were kids. Mild, sweet, slightly tangy, and seedless, they have become our favorite. They are the last of our fruits to ripen each year

Gas prices are low, at least in relation to recent history, but we will soon see a petroleum shortage. Most of us will be forced to live with less gasoline and diesel fuel. Yes, we grow our own food, but how can we cut our petroleum use?

Today's program is an honest, rueful reflection on the mistakes we think we made and what we are learning from them. Our first chickens were an economic waste, producing surprisingly few eggs for all the care and feeding they received

Late summer usually means fired up tomatoes, squash consumed by insects, and a push to plant for fall. This year, we're getting a surprising spurt of production. Plentiful rain helped, but so did Amanda's mid-summer planting

We're still figuring out what tasks we should hire professionals to help us do and which ones we should do ourselves. This program lays out the factors we consider when we're thinking about hiring someone to help us with a project

We're transitioning to the fall, which we love. It's more pleasant to be outside, the weeds and bugs slow down, and we get to grow vegetables like collards and kohlrabi that just don't work in central Alabama in the summer

It's hot in August, but winter arrives soon, and we'll need warmth. We've neglected to build a supply of seasoned firewood, so we're playing catch-up. We'll use the sun for drying, and we'll use wood sparingly until we're sure we'll have enough

Growing fruit is an exercise in delayed gratification. After four years, the fruit trees are maturing and we are beginning to see real abundance of apples, pears, figs, muscadines, blueberries, and persimmons. Still waiting on the peaches and plums

In central Alabama pears usually outperform apples, So plant only pears, right? If we had followed that advice, we would have missed out on a delicious, abundant apple harvest this year. Our best crop ever, yielding 4 1/2 gallons of apple jam

We love squash, but it sure keeps us humble. This week we offer some perspective on squash formed over our five years of planting it, nurturing it, watching it die, and every now and then, enjoying its delicious bounty.

It's the middle of the summer in Central Alabama, and that means it's the peak of pest season. Stink bugs, squash bugs, vine borers, grasshoppers, not to mention poison ivy and plain old weeds, all make our farming work more interesting

We're back now from a one-week stay at the lake. It was beautiful, and we had fun, but we're not rested. We returned to the farm daily to check on the vegetables, the fruit, the chickens, and the dog. What should we have done differently?

We look beyond the national Independence Day to explore what we're doing to make ourselves more independent. How are we doing on planting, harvesting, preserving, limiting waste, living frugally, and building community food systems?

Our daily power consumption is way up as we use the AC in the lodge, the dehumidifiers in our closets, and even on occasion the electric clothes dryer. The grass loves this kind of weather, so mowing is a frequent chore. But then solarizing is fast

If you call yourself a reasonably proficient grower of your own food, you ought to be able to grow potatoes. On our fourth attempt at growing spuds, we finally enjoy modest success. What we did wrong before and what we did right this time

Each day we're getting smarter about chickens. This week we caught up with Dr Joseph B Hess and his colleague Dr Ken Macklin of the Auburn University Poultry Science Department and buttonholed Joe for a quick visit.

We stand on the shoulders of the giants who have preceded us. They help us see the truth. Today we merely scratch the surface of the ways our elders have supported us, strengthened us, inspired us, and taught us.

We should have planted the pecans back in January or February. All we can do at this point is to get them in the ground now. They will be vulnerable to drought, so we need to keep them well watered, especially during the late summer and fall

Questions and Amanda's answers from our talk at the Wetumpka Public Library. You’ll hear a couple of questions about composting; then we talk about upside down tomatoes, and then growing strawberries.

Podcast version of our Wetumpka presentation. We cover the essentials for growing food, the best vegetables to plant now, organic weed control, organic pest control, and the advantages and disadvantages of using raised beds

Our joy at bringing home chickens turned to fear when Oddie attacked them. Rather than simply get rid of the chickens or the dog, we tried an e-collar. Now Oddie is again off his leash and frolicking around the farm, and the chickens are safe

While we focus on food, we want a pleasant, welcoming environment. We need low maintenance and low cost, and each plant needs to perform several functions. We work from a plan, but that plan evolves as our goals change and new plants show up

After trying free range on Veg Hill, we knew they needed to scratch but stay confined. We built a run where they can scratch, peck, pee, and poop during the day before they retreat to the coop at night. The bad news is still with Oddie the dog

Now we finally have a start with chickens. Four pullets - part Plymouth Rock and part Ameraucana - in a storebought coop. But hey! We're underway. The birds are fine; the. problem is our dog Oddie and his powerful predatory instinct toward them

We spell out what we think most people would need to construct a happy life in subsistence farming. How much land do you need? Does it need to be paid for? Do you need to have grown food before? Do you need a partner? Do you need people skills?

We're constantly experimenting, looking for ways we can reduce the time we spend controlling weeds. Sometimes we welcome them to hold our sandy soil, but more often we're looking for ways to eliminate them. And we've tried so many!

Tuesday night the temperature hovered below freezing for nine hours and reached a low of 26. The strawberries, plums, apples, muscadines, and all the vegetables came through fine. The pears, figs, and blueberries took it on the chin

It's surrounded on all sides by earth and reinforced concrete and seems thoroughly safe in a storm. We've used it to store wheat berries, wine, jam, pepper sauce, pickles, and sweet potatoes. The temperature does change slightly with the seasons

When we designed and built our 16 raised beds last year, we omitted what we now know was a crucial step. We should have installed hardware cloth to exclude voles. Now we're retrofitting the beds. Big job, but we had no choice

Economic growth is pretty much done in the US. The mainstream media keeps saying the economy is bouncing back, but most of us know better. The more we can produce for ourselves, the happier we can be while making little or no money

Our focus is on growing food, but in February we prune ornamentals too. This program covers the importance of plant hygiene in pruning and basic principles about ornamental pruning. We even talk a little about how to recover from "crepe murder"

February is our big pruning month. I love it, working quietly using no noisy equipment. And pruning is a time to think about the future, trying to guess where the tree wants to grow and deciding whether I want to let that happen

We welcome my brother Dave Borden. He's the smartest person we know about longleaf pines. He describes why he loves longleaf pines, how he prepares to plant them, and why and how he works so hard to keep their competition in check