Seed Starting Project

This is what my son, Keegan and I built with all that stuff I was hauling in my Versa a few weeks ago. Four shelves with a fluorescent light fixture hanging over each one for starting seeds and growing transplants. It's in the cellar - what the kids affectionately call "the dungeon."

The uprights are 2x4s and the shelves are 2x10s. I wanted to use 2x12s but they didn't have any 8-footers the day I bought the wood. I hung a shoplight over each shelf and wired up a 4-receptacle box on the right side. The box is powered by a wire with a male plug on the end so I can move this in the future if I want to.

We have an old computer desk in our greenhouse that we use for a potting bench. I'm going to bring it down to the cellar as well. My plan is to start our first seeds next weekend.

Book Recommendation

Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics As If Families Mattered by Joseph Pearce.

From the back cover:

A third of a century ago, E.F. Schumacher rang out a timely warning against the idolatry of giantism with his book, Small Is Beautiful. Few books before or since have spoken so profoundly to urgent economic and social considerations. Humanity was lurching blindly in the wrong direction, argued Schumacher. Its obsessive pursuit of wealth would not, as so many believed, ultimately lead to utopia but more probably to catastrophe.

Schumacher's greatest achievement was the fusion of ancient wisdom and modern economics in a language that encapsulated contemporary doubts and fears about the industrialized world. He saw that we needed to relearn the beauty of smallness, of human-scale technology and environments. In Small Is Still Beautiful, Joseph Pearce revisits Schumacher's arguments and examines the multifarious ways in which they matter now more than ever. Bigger is not always best, Pearce reminds us, and small is still beautiful.

And from Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons (also from the back cover of the book:

This could hardly be a timelier book. More and more people are coming to the realization that the materialism, the rootlessness, and the hedonism of this consumer's paradise we've built for ourselves are taking America down a dead-end road. E.F. Schumacher shows where liberals and conservatives go wrong, and Joseph Pearce makes Schumacher relevant for a new generation - one that desperately needs to hear Schumacher's message. Pearce shows why 'small is beautiful' is the only sane and humane response to our insane 'supersize me' culture.

The author is holding a discussion of the book in blog format here. I recommend both the book and the blog discussion for conservatives who are looking for something more profound than the modern mainstream neocon offerings. Likewise, I recommend it for liberals who are interested in learning more about a traditional conservatism that is wary of globalization, "free trade" and which understands that the world's resources are finite.

Shepherd's Pie

This is what I just made for dinner - Shepherd's Pie. The idea came from the recipe section of the new issue of Hobby Farms magazine. I used the ingredients from that recipe but modified the technique based on the recipe in Farmhouse Cookbook which, oddly, used beef instead of lamb. Here it is:

Mashed Potatoes

2# potatoes
1/2 cup milk
2 T. butter
1 egg

Meat and Veggies

1 1/2 # ground lamb
1 cup onion, diced
1/2 cup carrot, diced
1/2 cup peas, fresh or frozen

Sauce

2 T. butter
2 T. flour
1 cup lamb stock
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

Boil the potatoes until tender and drain. Heat the milk and butter in the microwave until the butter is melted and add to potatoes along with the egg. Salt and pepper to taste. Mash.

Meanwhile, brown the lamb in a 12-inch cast iron skillet. Remove the lamb when cooked through and saute the onions in the lamb fat until they are clear. Add the carrots and continue to cook for about 5 minutes.

In a second small skillet, melt the butter for the sauce and add the flour to make a roux. Cook while whisking for a couple minutes until you get a nice brown color. Add the stock and worcestershire sauce and cook for another couple minutes until thick and bubbly.

Add the meat back into the veggies and pour the sauce over top. Add the peas and stir. Then spoon the mashed potatoes over the top and spread to the edge of the skillet. Place this about 6" under the broiler until the potatoes start to brown on top.

Yum.

My New Farm Truck

Back in September, I traded my Dodge Ram for a Nissan Versa hatchback. As you can imagine there are times on a farm when a pickup truck is very handy to have but the truth is, 90% of the time my truck just hauled me around. Commuting 30 miles a day in an otherwise empty truck was just too wasteful. Our other family vehicle is a Jeep so I've been looking for a trailer to use with it for those times when we need to haul hay, straw, etc. In the meantime I'm saving lots of fuel and pumping much less carbon dioxide into the air.
As you can see in the photo, the Versa is no slouch when it comes to hauling things. I've got 2 8-foot 2x10s, 4 8-foot 2x4s, 3 4-foot fluorescent light fixtures, a case of 4-foot bulbs and some small miscellaneous tools and stuff. The hatch closes easily.

What I'm building with the stuff in the photo will be a topic for another day.