I burned our last fire of the season last night. From this point onward, Jessica and I will rely upon mother nature, and snuggling, to keep our yurt warm enough. Also, I couldn’t come up with any interesting material to post to this blog today, but am trying to post something every day for the [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
- Published:
- April 30, 2011 – 8:52 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
- Published:
- April 29, 2011 – 9:16 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Wildlife
- Published:
- April 28, 2011 – 7:11 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
I picked up our first batch of seed envelopes from RH Printing in Campbell River this afternoon. I told the print shop guy that I’d be back to make an order for ten thousand of them as soon as our seed company becomes wildly successful and “Ryan Nassichuk, horticulturist and model” becomes a household name. [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Seeds
- Published:
- April 27, 2011 – 10:25 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
lentil
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
- Published:
- April 26, 2011 – 8:45 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
- Published:
- April 26, 2011 – 9:15 am
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
The first section of field to be converted back into beds is now complete. One thousand square feet in ten beds, dug, sheet-mulched, and planted. The next section, which will total about one thousand three hundred square feet, is almost half finished. In three years the whole field will be brought back into productivity, at [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants, Soil
- Published:
- April 24, 2011 – 7:11 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
I have been thoroughly enjoying David Parkinson’s Slow Coast lately. It is full of deep wisdom, and in his writing he poses all the right questions.
Categories: Uncategorized
- Published:
- April 21, 2011 – 8:43 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Last night Jessica and I attended the second Transition Island meeting. The first meeting, held last month, attracted over one hundred curious people, while last night’s event drew a smaller crowd somewhere in the neighbourhood of 75 people. Throughout the evening the-world-is-ending pessimism collided with we-can-do-it optimism, resulting in some truly stimulating discussions. While most of [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: The End of the World
- Published:
- April 19, 2011 – 8:57 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Pictured at right is the year’s first sowing of Tall Telephone peas. They were planted mid-March, and took their time coming up through the cool, wet soil. The new bed in which they grow is sprouting a wide assortment of weeds alongside the peas, which is to be expected with land recently brought back into [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
- Published:
- April 18, 2011 – 6:50 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Today I prepared the first of ten fifty-foot beds in the newly cleared section of field. For the past sixteen years I’ve longed for a fifty foot row of sugar snap peas, and today that row was planted. At some point in July or August I am going to stand next to the bed and [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants, Soil
- Published:
- April 17, 2011 – 7:46 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Doug Peters, a local excavator operator and all-around outstanding fellow, visited us a few weeks ago to offer some advice regarding ditch digging and field drainage. He saw what we are up to, and that we have been stripping turf using roughly the same techniques employed by medieval slaves, and very kindly offered to donate [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Machinery, Soil
- Published:
- April 16, 2011 – 10:07 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
On May 14th Jessica and I will be leading our first gardening workshop on Quadra, in our new field. We will demonstrate and discuss some of the methods we use to turn fallow, weedy land into fertile garden beds, and how to begin establishing and feeding the soil food web. These topics were chosen in [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants, Workshops
- Published:
- April 11, 2011 – 9:01 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Fungi
- Published:
- April 9, 2011 – 10:54 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
- Published:
- April 6, 2011 – 8:32 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
- Published:
- April 5, 2011 – 9:38 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
- Published:
- April 4, 2011 – 7:51 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
We have been busily collecting important soil-building materials lately. Horse, sheep, and alpaca manure have all been generously donated to our farm, and today we were blessed with a truckload of partially-decayed marsh straw from two very kind farmers in Bold Point. I treasure every one of our rotting piles of organic matter, and the [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Soil
- Published:
- April 2, 2011 – 9:23 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
A series of compromises must be made while breaking land with hands and muscles. Some methods are absurdly labour-intensive, but result in reasonably fine tilth ready to accommodate small seeds of a wide variety of crops. Other methods are leisurely and low-impact, but rely upon father time and the silent army of soil organisms to [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants, Soil
- Published:
- April 1, 2011 – 8:40 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk