Growing Farm

So as much as my wife may not like it now the farm continues to grow every weekend. The long weekend was no exception. I added a second PVC system for 110 plants that is nearly done and ready, I added a 40 plant sugar snap growing area, and I started over 72 more seeds for various things that will fill pots all over the yard. This weekend I plan to build some growing platforms for the pots so they don't kill the grass and finish work on the PVC systems and get them up and running full strength. As promised here is some pictures of things that got done.

Weekend

Very busy this weekend. I completed 5 DWC systems and planted 40 pepper plants. Also planted 40 sugar snap plants in a raised bed so they can hang. Got started on 12 cucumber plants, 28 green bean plants, 15 brocolli, and 12 summer sqaush. I still have about 20 more bell peppers plants that I will place in containers this week and 12 Roma tomato plants to put in hanging pots. I nearly completed a 2nd PVC pipe system for 110 more plants which will be a mix of lettuce, spinich and maybe beans. Mounded the potatos this weekend and I will also look to plant 4 more potato buds this coming weekend. My four vertical apple trees have not arrived yet but I will call Gardener Supply tomorrow and find out what is up with them. All together I think this weekends planting put me at over 500 plants now.
In other exciting news  I put in my 4 new beehives this weekend and the bees are already producing honey. I managed to snag an extra frame from last years honey and harvested 28 ounces. I also have a bunch of bees wax now that I will turn into candles with the help of  a friend with molds. I may check out building my own honey extractor and see how that goes for this year rather then buy one.
I'm still waiting on my seed starter plugs for the lettuce and what not in the PVC system I'm really itching to get it up and running full speed. But I will post pictures of everything hopefully tomorrow so stay tuned.

Victory Gardens

So I read an interesting thing today about Victory Gardens, that 40% of all produce consumed in the US was grown in victory gardens. All they were was a movement during the war to help relieve food supply shortages by growing it at home. I think it's interesting that after the war was over most people stopped planting their own gardens. Now here we are in the 21st century and people everywhere are trying to urge folks to go back to growing their own produce. With all the rampant pesticide use and other chemicals in our food growing your own seems the only logical step to me.
As of this weekend I have planted 478 plants on my small quarter acre of land. With any luck I will triple that by the end of the season. Anyway I'll leave for now with a couple links to the wikipedia article on Victory Gardens and a video from the 40's promoting them.
http://archive.org/details/victory_garden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

Container Gardens

So tonight I have decided to share with you all, pictures of my container gardens. To date I'm growing tomatos, sweet peas, potatos, onions, carrots, bell peppers, brocolli, rosemary, basil, dill, and parsley. This weekend I plan to add at least two more large containers of garden beans, and cucumbers. Also plan on completing some DWC systems for the peppers, and putting in roma tomatos in hanging pots. I also have 4 Columner apple trees that will hopefully come in and those will be in large pots along the patio. If your unfamilar with this type of apple I have included a link at the bottom to show you what they are. Rasberries will be planted along the backyard fence, and maybe some summer squash as well. Anyway enjoy the pictures and feel free to add any comments.
http://www.gardeners.com/Columnar-Apple-Trees/37-513,default,pd.html

Also before anyone says anything I know they all need to be thinned down and cleaned out of the oak tree seed pockets. =)

Electric Motorcycle

I really want to build an electric motorcycle, not only do I think it would be a lot of fun in the building process, but also it would save me tons on gas for simple errands around town. There are a lot of great videos on youtube on how to convert an old gas motorcycle into an electric. I guess really all I need now is to find a donor bike. Hell I don't even need the whole bike the frame and rear assembly would be enough to get started.
You know the more I read and research these differant technologies the more bothered I get. It seems my whole life I was lead to believe that these things were so advanced that not everyone could do it. Things like solor power and electric vehicles, hydroponics and sustainable living. And here it is 3 months into this reawakening and I've built a solar panel, I'm growing more crops then I could alone eat on a quarter acre of land. I understand now that the only reason people wanted us to believe these things were unattainable was to keep us down, for lack of a better way to put it. Uneducated masses are easier to control and sell products to.
At this rate I figure I'll have cold fusion in the bag by this time next year.

Just kidding on that part but who knows.

Farmer

Recently I have started to think about the prospect of becoming a full time farmer. I can't tell you how much joy I get from working my crops and building these hydroponic systems. Not to mention how good I would feel being able to sell healthy, affordable produce, and honey to my friends and neighbors in the community.
Of course here is the hook, the intial start up cost of even a hydroponic growing system of this size, along with recurrent costs is well beyond my means at the moment. Especially when you consider for the first year to two years the farm would make next to nothing. Since you have to start crops and get rotations going for sustained income.
My ideal farm would be twenty of more large greenhouses, feild crops in the spring and summer like corn and wheat. A solar array to power the operation, worm and normal composting systems, a couple tanks for fish to also use in the hydroponics, much like growing power uses in the milwaukee. And a small to medium apple orchard and rasberry patch. Oh and of course beehives for honey and pollunation.
Some initial estimates, and mind you this is very rough guess, for start up and three years of operating costs would put the whole thing at about two million dollars, and that would be me and my friends doing most of the construction. Which is not to bad all things considered, I have nothing against swinging a hammer and building up a future.
So I guess in the end I might look into kickstarter or other crowdfunding sites. If any of you happen to be overly wealthy and have that sort of money laying around with nothing to do with it, I would gladly except it and get moving on this. Until then I guess I will keep doing my little farm here and dreaming.

Worm Composting

Today my worms came in to start my composting. After lots of shredding newspaper and cardboard, adding leaves and other lawn clippings, and throwing in a healthy dose of vegetable scraps, the worms are not neatly tucked into their new home.
My plan is to use the worm castings in a nutrient tea for my hydroponic systems. Which I'm going to be adding to with the addition of 5 deep water culture systems for peppers tomorrow. Along with that it will also be my fertilizer for the container gardens and reduce our waste going to the landfill.
To date all of the crops I planted have come up, carrots, peas, tomatos, brocolli, basil, rosemary, dill, bell peppers, parsley, and potatos. Tomorrow the PVC systems I had built will go into action and I'll get my spinich, and lettuce going. 172 plants total in the hydroponics. Add the 40 pepper plants going into the deep water culture systems and it is quite the amount for very little usuable space.
The first of five solar panels is complete and working now as well, and I need to start keeping an eye out for batteries and a control unit for it. I have two 3000W inverters that I will use to power growing lights and heaters in the winter but there is still a lot of time for that.
Tomorrow morning the beehives will be put up and ready for the bees arrival on May 26th. So lots of projects so little time.

Alternator Generator

So not sure if anyone else ever saw the show, The Colony, but in the first season they build a generator out of 2 car alternators and an old pressure washer motor. Using wood gasination to run the motor they were able to generate power enough to run power tools and recharge tool batteries.
Since seeing that show I have wondered about hooking up a electric drill motor and using it to spin the alternators. I wonder if I could produce surplus power from alternators while also powering the motor. Now I know the first thing everyone is going to say, Ohm's law means that perpetual motion is not possible, and I understand that. While I know that the small electric motor could not be run continuously, since heat would become an issue, I wonder if I could run it in small stints to help recharge a battery bank when the solar panels are not producing at full strength.
By the numbers it should work, a car alternator puts out 63 amps, meaning two of them would put out a potential of 126 amps. The drill motor is set to run on 5 amps, meaning under ideal conditions with the right gearing I should have 121 amps left over to recharge a battery.
I'll have to add this to my list of projects and see if it works, again not forever on it's own, but in short maybe an hour or two stints to help charge a battery bank.

Bees

So I have decided that I need to start thinking about my next project as I wait for crops to grow. I started beekeeping last year and have decided to expand with two more hives this year. The bees are coming in on May 26th and with any luck will provide a great honey harvest this year. Last year unfortunatly the bees starved to death over the winter. They simply could not get a good enough store of honey with all the rain and what not that we had to make it. I tried feeding to help them out but once the temp drops below a certain point they simply won't go for it. Really hoping for better luck this year, one thing I think that is on my side is that these bees are raised here in Vermont. Where as the other bees I had purchased came from Georgia.
I'll keep track of how they do on here and lets all hope for a great bee year.

Hydroponic/Solar Panel Parts and Price List

So here is the list of pieces I used to build my hydroponic system.
2- 2x4x12 pine lumber - $4.80 each
7- 2" PVC pipe 10' - $6.67 each
10- 2" 90 degree elbows - $1.06 each
3- 2" T's - $1.79 each
12- 6" Carriage bolts - $.47 each
1 - 1000 gph water pump- $51.00
10' - 3/8" clear plastic tubing - 7.00

Total = $135.36

Everything I bought at Home Depot with the exception of the pump. Which I was able to get at Aubuchon Hardware. So not bad considering if I can continuously grow year round then the savings to my grocery bill a month will pay for this in one week.

For the Solar Panel I used the following items.

1- 4x8 sheet of 15/32" plywood - $24.97 (this is enough for 2 panels)
1- 4/8 sheet of pegboard - $17.95 (again enough to build 2 panels)
2- 1"x2"x10' trim- $3.97
The solar cells I was able to purchase on Ebay for $105.00 for 120 cells.This also included tabbing wire, flux pen, solder, lead boxes, and bus wire. So each cell comes out to $.87 each. 48 to make a single panel comes out to $42.00.

Total = $92.86

Now I happened to have the plywood and pegboard from other projects hence why I said about 70 dollars for the panels originally.

Again I would be more then happy to help out building your own one of these projects, there are also a number of helpful instructions on the net like this one; http://www.mdpub.com/SolarPanel/index.html

A little about me.

So since I'm new to the blog universe I figured I would tell all of you a little about myself. I'm 37 years old, I served 8 years in the Army as a combat medic from 1992 to 2000. Currently I work at a hospital here in Vermont doing Vascular Ultrasound for a group of surgeons.
My interest in sustainable living and renewable energy is I have to admit, new. For years I, like many people, bought my food at the grocery store and just plugged my things into the wall without thinking about where the power was coming from. Then one day after listening to a group of my friends complain about what was being put into food, and how "the man" was over charging us on everything I decided to do a little experiment. I challenged all of them, that if things were so bad why not do something about it. Grow their own food and find ways to lower their reliance on power from the grid. They all came back with the same excuses, working full time, no space for a garden big enough to live on, blah, blah, blah. So I decided to show them that it was possible, and not only was it possible but that even I could do it.
I started simply enough, I currently have 10 container gardens growing a variety of crops, but living in a suburban area, and having a very shaded yard, I needed to use my space as efficiently. So I started looking around at hydroponics, and after some considerable late nights reading and watching videos on the Internet, I came up with the system you see in my other posts.
My next hurdle was growing through the long winter months in Vermont. The systems I was building had to be able to grow in the winter. Which meant heating and lights. Something that would drive my light bill through the roof. So back to the Internet and with some help of a friend who knows something about electricity, I started to build a solar panel and learn how to set up a system that I hope will power my lights and heat for growing in the winter.
So here we are now, the long term goal is to build another 2 hydroponic systems like the one in the pictures and 5 more solar panels. Link the solar panels to a battery bank and an inverter then power everything in my garage. I'm going to shrink the space in the garage to make heating it a bit easier and will probably only grow cool temperature vegetables. For this experiment to be a success I have to live, with my wife and two sons, without buying produce from the grocery store for a year, and I can't plug into the grid to do it.
Wish me luck, and please feel free to leave helpful advice whenever possible. I hope you decide to come on this journey with me.

Hydroponic System Pictures

And here is the pictures of the hydroponic system, I haven't drilled out the holes for the plants yet but the water feed and drainage all work. Once I get the holes drilled I'll paint and add finish to it, and then it will go to it's permanent home outside.

Solar Panel Pictures

So as promised here are some pictures of the solar panel I built. It measures 4 feet long, by 2 feet wide.

DIY Solar Panel

I completed work on a DIY solar panel, 90W, 12V. Again I will post pictures soon, I'm going to use about 5 or 6 of these to power growing lights and heaters for indoor gardening through the winter. Each panel will cost me about 70 dollars to build, but compared to 600 or 700 dollars commercially built that is a bargain. Anyone interested in how I built these please drop me a comment. Once the whole system is up and running I will make sure to post pics and a description. Also I'll post a price list and sources for people looking to do this themselves.

Hydroponic growing

Started a hydroponic growing system with PVC pipe. It will support 86 plants, I'm thinking lettuce to start. Hoping to build a 2nd one for baby spinich and then another one for bell peppers. I'll be posting pics soon so stay tuned. Feel free to follow me on twitter also @AndrewRaven1.