Category Archives: homestead

Germination 2015

April 21, 2015 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

We’ve been back on the Farm since mid-March, getting things started for the year …

It’s been a month of preparation: hooking the solar power and rainwater collection systems back up, moving and fixing up the new guesthouse (a ’58 mobile home we got free on Craigslist), getting a new flock of laying hens, upgrading the nest boxes, turning dead trees into firewood, setting up fences, planning upgrades to the rainwater system, paying taxes, layering the hugelkultur mound, preparing for the coming 70×30′ high tunnel, and, of course, soaking in the hillbilly hot tubs.

the 1958 Gilder Albatross - our new guest cabin — the 1958 Glider Albatross – our new guest cabin

old tractor tires & former tabletop repurposed as front steps on the Albatross

harvesting dinner from the field - parsnips that survived the winter — harvesting dinner from the field – parsnips that survived the winter

Gabe Sehr: Rhizome Hunter of the Hugelkultur, Destroyer of Crab Grass

this pine tree blew partway over in a spring windstorm - we made a sling from an old tractor tire tube and anchored it back upright to reroot — this pine tree blew partway over in a spring windstorm – we made a sling from an old tractor tire tube and anchored it back upright to re-root

we got ten 2-year old hens; they provide about 7 jumbo-sized eggs a day

the hens run toward the axe on our farm - because it means we're breaking some carpenter ant treats out of a log — the hens run toward the axe on our farm – because it means we’re breaking some carpenter ant treats out of a log

Neighbor Dave doing some tractormancy on a pile of aged horse manure, to prepare the soil for the new high tunnel greenhouse

handwashing and line drying; not too bad, but the wringing part is a pain.

Cleo may be almost 15 & a bit limpy, but she still loves life on the farm

"Science," the free deeeep freezer we got on Craigslist to use as our fridge (in conjunction w/ the buried chest freezer pseudo-root cellar) - it once went down to 120 below. The alarm still works. — “Science,” the free deeeep freezer we got on Craigslist to use as our fridge (in conjunction w/ the buried chest freezer pseudo-root cellar) – it once went down to 120 below. The alarm still works.

the Albatross came with some weird plastic cabinet things; we used their sliding doors for eas,y egg-gathering from outside, with the female edge of cheap pine paneling as the tracks

Foreman Jim and Kristin starting work on the new waterproof Albatross roof

the hens, minus Broody McBrooderson who hangs out alone on her own perch, off camera

chickens considering free-ranging right up the ladder with Jim

Widget knows the River Road well enough by this point

suspected double-yolker, and the biggest egg we've ever seen. Scientists theorize this was the consequence of Broody McBrooderson eating a bunch of venison sausage. — suspected double-yolker, and the biggest egg we’ve ever seen. Scientists theorize this was the consequence of Broody McBrooderson eating a bunch of venison sausage.

We got Jim some bee-keeping gear for Christmas, and he took a class ... next thing you know, he's in a bee suit, you're helping dump a hive of bees into a box, and everyone is getting stung. Except for the man in the suit of course ... — We got Jim some bee-keeping gear for Christmas, and he took a class … next thing you know, he’s in a bee suit, you’re helping dump a hive of bees into a box, and everyone is getting stung. Except for the man in the suit of course …

Pepe, our new rooster - he's in heaven here — Pepe, our new rooster – he’s in heaven here

But primarily, it’s been all about the seeds. This is our first year starting seedlings off grid, without either the electricity to run banks of lights or the controlled heat of a modern home – so we’ve had to do some improvising.

making soil blocks for seed starting - a mix made from compost we made last year, Perlite, peat moss, lime, blood meal, green sand, and rock phosphate — making soil blocks for seed starting – a mix made from compost we made last year, Perlite, peat moss, lime, blood meal, green sand, and rock phosphate

For next spring, we plan to have a wood fired, slow-release heating system installed in the greenhouse – a “rocket mass heater” that stores heat in a clay and stone bench running the length of the greenhouse, which we can germinate seeds on and leave plants overnight when temps drop down. But for this year, there was no time to build it …

So at first, we tried propane heat. We quickly discovered that it is far too expensive to try to maintain temperatures overnight in a structure that is not really made to hold heat – the thin plastic is great for letting sunlight in and holding the heat briefly, but when there is no sun and the temps are below freezing, a 200 square foot hoophouse will quickly drain your bank account – as well as leave you stressing about a propane cylinder going empty in the middle of the night and costing you everything you’ve worked so hard to start.

the dogs grazing on the crab grass coming up in the greenhouse, long before it appeared outdoors

Cleo is over the cold & ready to enjoy the Greenhouse Effect

The first seedlings started were the cool weather crops – hardy specimens that can survive chilly air and soil, such as lettuce, broccoli, and kale. We also got some more perennials going – asparagus and rhubarb.

you've heard of Baby Kale - this is Newborn Kale — you’ve heard of Baby Kale – this is Newborn Kale …

Using a handy digital thermometer with a probe (which lets us take readings in two separate locations), we experimented with different techniques for maintaining adequate temperature, and discovered that if we put the flats on the ground of the greenhouse at night and layered them with row cover fabric, the warmth of the earth keeps the trays several degrees warmer than the rest of the greenhouse.

using cold climate greenhouse tactics similar to those promoted by Eliot Coleman and Helen and Scott Nearing

When it is very cold, we bring them up into the trailer with us, to stay toasty with the heat from our wood stove.

This set the stage for the next wave of seedlings – the much more sensitive hot weather plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.

These seeds will not germinate well unless soil temperatures are at least 80 degrees – and once they finally do emerge, the plants don’t like it much cooler than that, either – no lower than 50. So, we started a new regimen to accommodate them.

On clear days, when the sun warms the greenhouse up in the 80 to 100 degree range, we set up the warm-weather plants on the greenhouse shelves, to benefit from both the heat and the sunlight.

During these times, the cool weather crops are moved outside, to temperatures more to their liking, as well as into the wind and more direct sunlight that they need to get, in preparation for being transplanted into the open field.

We used the storm-ravaged mosquito gazebo frame and some row cover to build them a shelter, which keeps the sunlight moderated during the strongest times of day.

For nighttime and for still-germinating seeds (which require no sun and more heat), we hung ceiling-to-floor curtains in our trailer, dividing it into three areas: the living room with its big bright windows (which lose heat at night), the kitchen in the middle with the woodstove, and the bedroom in the rear of the trailer. Rearranging the furniture allowed us to set up a big wire shelving rack in the middle zone, capable of holding almost 20 flats of seedlings. The uppermost (warmest) shelves became our germination area – the curtains trap much of the heat from the woodstove, allowing us to easily maintain temperatures between 70 and 100 degrees overnight for the seeds to germinate within, without roasting ourselves to death while we sleep in the rear.

In the mornings, we load the sprouted trays into the van and move them “downstairs” into the protected sunny greenhouse. If it’s warm enough, the cool weather crops (which spend the nights on the greenhouse floor) get moved outside into the gazebo shelter. And then when the sun goes down, we bring them back into the greenhouse, and load the hot weather plants back into the van for a trip “upstairs” to their woodheated shelving in the trailer with us.

It’s a lot of shuffling trays back and forth and all around, but we’ve gotten pretty good at the process, handing the trays off from one person to the other at the doorways, using bread trays to move two flats at once, and making it a smooth and painless habit, a simple and quick routine. And because we’re here with the seedlings full-time (last year we did our germination in Kristin’s folks’ basement), we can pay close attention to maintaining consistent moisture levels, avoiding extremes of dry or wet soil that cause problems.

Not only does it work for us – it seems to be working great for the plants. This year we have the strongest and healthiest looking seedlings we’ve had yet – strong stems, glowing leaves, high germination rates, and no sign of damping off, yellow leaves, or other signs of stressed or unhappy seedlings.

Of course, just as it gets easier and feeling under control, it’s time for the next phase of things – this week we started planting seeds out in the field – so far, onions and snap peas, with lettuce and spinach on the to-do list next.

This means weeding rows and beds, planting, and mulching … making this a great time of year to come out and help if you’re interested in volunteering; there’s a lot to do, but it’s not hot and there aren’t any mosquitoes, gnats, or flies to speak of … yet!

2015 is off to an awesome start – I know there is no certainty when it comes to the future especially in farming, and ‘whatever will be, will be’ – but I’m predicting the best year yet!

Thanks for being a part of it!

– Gabe Sehr

homestead, WWOOFing

365 Days of Que Sera Serain’ … & some pics from last week

January 2, 2015 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

One year ago we left our home in Minneapolis and dove into our new life.

During the year since then, we’ve traveled for four months working and learning on other farms throughout the southern states, and spent 8 months building up our little homestead farm in the sand barrens of Western Wisconsin.

It’s easily been the best – most rewarding, most interesting, most promising, and most exciting – year of our lives, at an age I feared I’d be settling into an increasingly domesticated rut. Living outside my comfort zone – learning skills and approaches that make me acutely aware of how little I know and how much there is to learn – has been humbling and awesome.

Today, we’re ushering in the new year at Habitable Spaces down in Kingsbury, Texas. It’s been cold and rainy since 2014, although the chill is only by Texas standards – it’s currently 40 here, but only 12 back home on the Que Sehra Farm … I’ll take it .

bottles awaiting de-labeling, halving, taping, and mortaring into the bottlehouse walls

testing the new rocket stove (for heating up chicken/duck dunking water)

Kristin had some good photos on her phone that didn’t make it into the “Inhabiting the Habitat” post last week, so here some of them are …

the standard rocks here are mostly gorgeous flint

Mina loves her body inside the warm kitchen and her face out the kitty door

Happy New Year everyone! Life is short and we’re writing our life stories every day – let’s all make this next chapter the best one yet.

farming, homestead

Flight of the Snowbirds

November 26, 2014 QueSehraFarm 1 Comment

We were busy for the first couple weeks of November, preparing the farm for winter, preserving food, and packing to flow southward.

Kristin & her dad patching leaks atop the semi trailer barn

the new firewood shed about to get filled up

#2 – the back door of the composting outhouse

2014 final harvest – mere hours before 16″ of snowfall began

potato salad senposai wraps w/ bok choi, arugula, pea tips, spinach, mizuna, carrots, beets, & dill

November 13th was one year to the day from my last day at my internet marketing job in downtown Minneapolis. Coincidentally, it was also the day that the four of us rolled out from the farm, for 4 months of travel and working on other farms down south – WWOOFing as we did last winter.

packing up the electric fence – and opening up the remnant buffet for the deer (who leave us all kinds of free-range grass-fed fertilizer in exchange)

Why leave? For one thing, the farm is not yet ready for us to overwinter – the well would freeze, the firewood pile is too small and uncured, the trailer is drafty. These things could certainly be overcome, but we prefer to travel anyway – escape the worst of winter’s cold, meet new people, see new places, learn new things – and spend some well-earned time away from the farm, where we have spent almost every day working fro sunup to sundown for the entire season. Winter’s frigid spell gives us an opportunity to leave the field behind for a while, and get out of well-worn ruts of routine and responsibility.

Over the two days before we planned to leave, a storm buried the farm beneath 16 inches of snow – and nearly trapped us there.

The snowplow took 2 and a half days to clear the road, just in time for us to leave – and our amazing neighbors Dave & Marcie helped us escape – plowing us out, and then pulling us up and out of their driveway when we got stuck there while trying to drop off some veggies as we departed.

To start the journey off, we picked up my mom and drove with her out to Illinois, to my sister’s house – where I’m writing from now. My mom flew back to the Twin Cities after a few days – we’re staying here for two weeks, enjoying the company and beautiful home of my sister and her husband and their two whippets.

We leave for Yokna Bottoms Farm in Oxford, Mississippi in Saturday. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for … and look forward to leaving on our journey filled with good food and fortified by two weeks of family relaxation!

homestead

the Rust Shack

November 19, 2014 QueSehraFarm 2 Comments

Once the freezing nights had decimated most of the crops, the CSA was done for the year, and we’d completed our final farmer’s market, there was time to work on projects outside the field. Kristin mostly focused on preserving and storing produce for us to eat over the winter months ahead. Gabe turned his attention to the pallet fort, which had languished, partially constructed, all year.

Reconstructing the fort from the couple photos that Kristin had taken when she was disassembling the original (from a South Minneapolis back yard, found via the Craigslist Free section) was a real pain in the butt.

partially disassembled in South Minneapolis

Also, we didn’t have a clear idea of what the heck we’d even use such a thing for – maybe firewood storage? However, we did know we didn’t want the plywood floor and pallet walls to be sitting in the snow and slush all winter long, so we made it a goal to get the roof up before the snow flew.

But to add the roof, we had to finish the exterior walls, as well as build out the loft inside, so we could stand on it to work on the roof inside. This all seemed like a big obstacle, until we actually got into the work, and it flew by – with some help from Kristin and Mark, Gabe got the thing completed in no time, with some modifications improving upon the original design.

So now the fort was as complete as it had ever been – but still was open to the elements from the sides, through the gaps in the pallets. It was easy to see that winter would fill it with snow, which would thaw and freeze and deteriorate the floor, which was already suffering from sitting piled under scant cover last winter. So thoughts turned to siding … and we remembered the fascinating ruins we’d discovered in the Polk County forest right down the road from us.

This was what we came to call “The Architect’s Shack” – the remains of a cluster of shanties and shacks all built in the same style – shallow foundation pits, lined with steel panels from cars dating to the 1920s or ’30s. Walls had been built from natural timber beams, with flattened autobody panels nailed together onto them in layers, always with higher panels lapping over lower ones, to keep water from running in. The wood stove was gone, but the DIY chimney cap made from a milk jug and an enamelware pot was still laying nearby.

There was only part of one wall of the main shack still standing, and the piece of hammered-flat steel tank that had served as a front door hanging from it. Two other totally-collapsed structures were nearby, as well as more further back into the woods – and an outhouse still standing, the only surviving piece of the Architect’s work.

Everything he’d built had been sided almost entirely with old auto body panels – hoods, doors, roofs, tailgates – all pieces of Model As, Model Ts, and other cars from a time when cars were made from serious heavy steel.

The panels had rusted, but were surprisingly intact considering they’d been in the elements and partially buried for at least 60 years – and they’d acquired a gorgeous patina of rust, algae, and lichens. I was completely in love with their look and history, and had already planned to scavenge as many as I could to use in artistic projects.

But it wasn’t until the pallet fort was rebuilt that it really clicked that we could pay homage to the forgotten shack-builder’s design style, by salvaging the remains from his structures and renewing them as siding on our fort.

We wound up unearthing and retrieving a half-dozen carloads of panels, which – with some old windows, glass blocks, and a french door we had on hand, quickly armored the fort against the onslaughts of coming winter – and the Rust Shack, aka The Architect’s Shack, was born.

Once the metal exterior was complete, Gabe turned his attention to the interior. First up was the railing on the loft – it was so central, so literally in your face, that something had to be done with it. The bare 2×4 construction was functional but ugly … we considered trying to minimize the size of the railing, but then it wouldn’t really serve its purpose. Since we couldn’t really fix it, it had to be featured. And the only couple of intact car body panels we’d recovered from the woods – still curved, never pounded flat and nailed to a shack – fit over it beautifully, a worthy centerpiece, beautiful and bringing the exterior theme into the inside of the shack.

We had stacks of scavenged pipe and aromatic cedar paneling, which served perfectly to bring a homey, welcoming, and warm vibe to the interior – vital, in order to avoid any negative “murder shack” connotations that the rusty metal exterior might hold for people who don’t share our rust n’ lichens aesthetic.

The panels covered most of the interior walls, leaving space for an inset medicine cabinet mirror, some knick-knack nooks, and a few patches that we can fill in this Spring.

And the day after the panel project was declared done for the season, the snows came, and our full attention turned to preparing to travel southward …

CSA, farming, homestead

2014 CSA Wrap-up & 2015 Preview

October 22, 2014 QueSehraFarm 5 Comments

We want to start by thanking everyone for a beautiful year – a transitional, magical year we will remember forever.

The leap of faith we took – away from career, from life and home as we’d known them – was truly the best thing we could have done. Our days have never felt more fulfilling, our work never so meaningful, our hearts never so calm and in love with all we see and do. This has been a life-sized proof of concept for being guided by intuition and letting “que sera, sera” replace fear when faced with the unknown. It’s indubitably been the best year of our lives – we’re so grateful that you joined us and helped make this possible.

The Year in Review

Looking around us and smiling in wonder, I’ve often exclaimed to Kristin, “Look! This is our life!! Aaaaaa!!!”

We’ve made the place feel like home, and improved our processes and systems in countless ways. We built a greenhouse, a chicken coop, a hugelkultur mound, and composting outhouse, planted several dozen raspberry bushes, began doing salad mix, sold at market and wholesale for the first time, did late season planting for fall, got to know the locals and explored the ‘hood, hosted our first WWOOFers … it’s been an amazing first year here, and we’re excited to start next year with all the progress we made as a foundation.

We’d love to hear any feedback you have for us – good or bad, it will help us continue to grow and improve.

Looking Ahead

We have just a few weeks before we hit the road for warmer climes. Until then, we’re keeping busy removing and composting dead crops, cleaning and storing away equipment and materials, taking down trellises, planting and mulching garlic, preserving food, finishing the pallet fort/guest shack, and packing up.

scavenging lichen-crusted old sheet metal from a collapsed 60-year old hunting shack in the woods

Then we load up the dogs and roll out for a long journey south – meeting up with family at the beginning and end, some friends in the middle, but mostly working on four other organic farms – learning new things, meeting new people, experiencing new places. (We did this last winter too, and it was incredibly rewarding.)

Come March, we’re coming back and hitting the ground plantin’ – starting seeds and preparing the field for a new year. We’ll be planting different varieties, new greens, more spinach, starting the fall crops sooner, experimenting more with compost tea, and expanding to new markets.

The biggest change we’re planning is transitioning to “no till” farming – rather than plowing the field in spring, we’ll be leaving the existing mulch and delicate soil structure intact, and working more organic material into the rows as we plant. (We reckon that this is the best way to address the sandy soil we have to work with here in the Sand Barrens – where nutrient leaching and moisture loss are major pitfalls.)

2015 CSA

We will be keeping the CSA about the same size, so spots will be limited – but returning members get priority.

Let us know now if you’d would like to be on board next year, so that we can reserve a spot!

Whether you’re joining us next year or not, please stay in touch! We’ll be continuing to update this blog throughout the winter – let us know if you want us to keep emailing you a link when we update the site.

It’s been amazing; thanks again. Have a wonderful winter – hope to see you soon!

– the Sehrs

living close to the ground