Photojournal 6

I intend on blogging with words soon. I recently took my wife and two kids across country to see my side of the family this last December and January. We drove from SC to California and back. I turned 35 in Sedona Arizona. We've been back to SC now for a month. Lately i've been busy studying Celtic Mythology and Bamboo, practicing Druidry, moving earth around, raising children, and exercising the fine art of good husbandry. There's a lot I could say, but I'd rather let the pictures do the talking. It seems the writing portion of my life has been giving way to the reading and doing, but I'll always be a writer, and so I'll write again. Just can't say when. Soon...maybe...but not right now right soon...later soon!

That's me and "The American Poet" himself, Jim Morrison, on an American Flag that's tied to a bamboo cane and stuck into a berm.  That berm is the same berm you will see transformed, in this very blog, into a Hugel Dragon. 

That's the chicken coop.  It's been there for three years.  We recently moved it as you'll see.

devising my strategy just before moving the coop to behind that garage.  I had the help of my wife.

Those roosts are bamboo culms (canes) Wendy and I harvested from local groves.  The coop is slowly transforming into bamboo.  I'm also using bamboo canes for the small roof above the roost.  The roof is made of tin metal flashing and bamboo canes.  That blue thing in the center of the coop is a moving blanket I tied to a cane with hemp cordage and stones.

The first three hugelbeds constructed at the Fox Den in their third season.  I sewed Rye Grain, hairy vetch, and white clover last fall.  The round things are some of last year's gourds. 

That's Stink around skunk bug and I.  He came by to help me tie the roost poles to the cage.  I drilled a hole through the canes and lashed them to the fence with hemp cord

The vernal pool/pond.  My business partner, Taylor Maxson, and I made this pond last summer by reusing two full size blow up mattresses as the liner.  I'm about to add another section to this pond in that space in between the existing pond and the chicken coop.  I'm gonna make the amendment a few feet deep.

That's "Badgey," our rooster.  He's the one and only chicken to have been born here at the Fox Den.  He's a Red Star, which is a cross between a Rhode Island Red rooster and a Delaware hen.  He's about 6 months old now. 

the hugel spiral sewed with the same cover crop mixture used on my hugel beds.

Bamboo Island.  It has Phyllostachys Aurea and Nigra as well as Pseudosasa Japonica

the log and stone man in the center of Bamboo Island

The resident flamingo

Around the island is a trench 18 to 24 inches deep by 20 inches wide filled with sand.  I'm taming the Bamboo Monster by berming up as well as trenching and rhizome pruning. 

This is the original swale filled with mulch and sand.  I've got my other bamboo plantings in the center of the berm on the backside of the berm.  You can see the Phyllostachys Aureasulcata f. spectabilis in the background. 

Spectabilis, with Aurea Koi and Vivax.  All of my bamboos are juvenile plantings.  This will be spectabilis's second full season.  The Aurea Koi and Vivax are both baby plants.  Ironically the vivax is nothing more than a few blades coming off of a stem emerging from the ground.  The vivax blades are about an inch and a half long right now.  At maturity Vivax is capable of 65 foot canes that are 7 inches plus in diameter.  Right now it's a sleeping giant. 

This is the spectabilis up close.  These three canes emerged here last season.  The original three canes from the juvenile planting that I planted last spring were harvested for indoor decoration.  Those three canes were born right where they stand.  The one on the left has some frost damage. 

That's where the coop used to be.  You can see the white post that I had it lashed to.

This design was challanging.  We already had several existing plantings behind the coop.  We had to incorporate them into the design.  Wendy and I collaborated and she drew a snake eating it's tail.  What emerged from a two headed snake was a dragon.  This is the dragon hugel bed.

I moved the berm that was in front of the Gypsy House. 

Booga destroying the snow man Wendy made.

There's Tribann overseeing the mound building operation.

  The flag's now lashed to the post with a ten foot section of black rope. 

See the eyes of the dragon?

I buried the trunk of a maple tree in this bed.  The gourd has grubs we found while moving the Earth.  The chickens had a feast that day. 

Putting in the early spring greens.  Three types of lettuce, radish, a dwarf blue kale, spinach, and kohlrabi

The water had frozen on the bamboo.  It was melting off.  So what I photographed was ice melting off of the plant.

The finished hugel dragon. 

The tree is a Maygold Peach