Buff Gardeners
This group is intended for those who enjoy the natural aspect of gardening, and don't feel the need to cover their natural state while tending their plants. This group may be used to exchange ideas, and success stories, and of course...recipes, that have been brought fourth from the earth.
- created by douglas62
naturist farmin
Return to DiscussionsIt's been over 50 years now, since my parents moved out of town, bought a piece of land with no buildings, not even a drive into it. Moved into a tent the first summer just to get onto it and stop paying rent on the house in town. I was 4 at the time, just old enough to remember it all. My mother had grown up on a farm with her dad raising produce for market, so she went at gardening to feed us while dad worked a job and payed the bills. And she had been a school teacher for a few years so ended up just keeping us home and doing home school. That was not too far east of Chattanooga TN. During that time my sister died from a strange illness and my brother was born. Then when dad was close to retirement and I was 19 we decided to sell that place and move to a more remote location somewhere, searched several states but ended up finding our place just 60 miles north of Chattanooga on a mountainside. Over the 34 years since the move I've tried many things, logging, sawmilling, house construction, horse training, mechanics, truck driving, but always seem to come back to gardening as my first enjoyment. I feel best doing that and eating what I grow. So now I'm aiming to make it a full time thing, and having been converted to naturism a few years back, they go together nicely. Kind of like Eden style living, although degraded a whole lot from the tropical paradise it once was.
So currently working on fencing several acres of the mountainside that isn't too rough, because we always have critter issues, gotta keep the deer and coons out of the growing area, then work on clearing it all of forest and replace with gardens and orchard. Switch it to food forest instead of fiber forest with gardens between on the leveler spots. Make biochar from all the excess wood and plant cover crops for compost making. I've learned how to do nutrient dense or high brix fertility and will be experimenting more with that. I have part of what I need. But I will need some more products, mainly sea water or salt lake water preferably, to use as a trace mineral addition and flavor enhancer. Will have to make a trip to the ocean or salt lake to get it. Salt lake preferably because it's 6 times more concentrated, but also 3.5 times longer trip. The idea is to get enough carbon in the soil with biochar and compost, then add minerals in the right balance until the soil is as rich with them as is optimum for good growth and flavor, then do nutritional folier spraying for even more enhancement, because the leaves will take in nutrients. Using a calcium/phosphate combination made for the purpose and add kelp extract and sea water to it. Keep track of the plant leaf brix with a refractometer to monitor what the plants are doing with the combination and make adjustments as needed to maximize the brix.
My dad passed to the earth last spring at age 92 and my mother is still here but not mentally with it, I hope by growing some nutrient rich food for her to consume it will help her, but whether it does or not she will join him I'm sure before too many more years pass. Leaves me and my brother to occupy 80 acres and do something with it to make a livin and be of some service to others. He's not naturist inclined but is OK with me being that way. And my farming venture is isolated back on the mountainside. Hope to figure out how to run greenhouses cheap and get some of them built for winter production. But summer production on the 7 acres or so will take a lot of work. With room to expand up to 10-15 acres if I want eventually. And I have a small foundry and machine shop I want to use to make old style machines to help do the work. First off though will be the track loader repair I'm doing now, to help with fence making and clearing, then I need a good 4x4 mowing machine, I can assemble that from all the parts laying around the shop yard. That along with the new large stihl weed eater I got last spring should do maintenance for awhile. I have a ford 3000 tractor with a few implements. And a small Kubota with rototiller. Might need more eventually but it's enough to get by with. Still have the gravely my folks bought over 50 years ago, but it's too small and slow for most of what I do now. Eventually I want some steam engine powered equipment and old style flywheel engines to play with to run things. I already built a steam engine powered truck but it needs a custom engine built for it, and the engine I have on it used for some stationary job. But the boiler i built for it works great. Heats up in 20-30 minutes and blows off steam at 200 PSI. I will use it for general work and maybe steaming grow beds to kill weeds where I want to grow things that don't compete with weeds very well, like carrots.
Carrots is one thing I want to play with and see how high I can get the brix, or sugar content. brix is actually a measure of dissolved solids in the plant juice, around 50% of which is sweet sugars. But the more mineral I can get the plant to pick up the higher the brix reading will go and the sweeter things will get, plus enhanced flavor from the additional complex acids and flavonoids and whatever else makes up good flavor and rich nutrition. With things growing rich enough in flavor they will sell hot on the market for premium price as gourmet produce. Should make things more fun to play with, delicious to eat. And the naturist aspect makes the work more relaxing and beneficial. Got springs and gravity delivery to part of the area, water line runs through the middle of the place I can tap into it for cool water, might have to pump it uphill into a holding tank to get water to the upper area, possible job for an old fashioned hit n miss engine that I could build with my shop capability.
It would really be nice to see any others into this like you are, it seems like there are no others. I would try some of those things, to me there is the urgent need for sustainability in living that is needed in this world that many should come to, that calls for the simple living on land with growing the useful vegetation for all of what is needed, for subsistence living. The world can handle people doing that much more.
Indeed we will all be forced into subsistence survival eventually, as disasters take out infrastructure more and more. The prophecy of the bible prophets has been fulfilled up to now, (The interesting part is how mainline christianity shows up as the evil culprit through it all, and they are the ones primarily persecuting the true Christians and who bring in the mark of the beast at the end time. That is why the prophecies are so poorly understood. Just as soon as they start pointing out the corruption of the main church, those involved in those churches have to either ignore it all, or come up with some illogical excuse of an alternate interpretation.) and the next major event on the timeline is the "time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation" And the more current prophetic revelations are describing it all in detail and urging us to get ready to meet it. Some passages in the bible indicate disasters so terrible they kick the earth out of it's orbit, scaring people so badly it produces heart attacks in some. (Great fear can bring on a heart attack) Just be warned that the true followers of Jesus Christ will be made out to be the culprits, supposedly making God angry and preventing him from fixing the deadly things earth suffers from, but in reality they are the only one's truly obedient to Jesus Christ and God is not going to fix the earth at that point.
But those few who are paying attention to the warnings and get ready, will have a far easier time of it. First prepare spiritually by going all the way with Jesus Christ, developing His character of love and obedience to God's law. Then physical preparation, get out in the boondocks somewhere and grow our own food, so when the infrastructure breaks down we won't starve. That's an ideal place to live naturally Eden like anyway, using garments only for what God intended, to keep warm when it's cold.
Well, machine is about done fixin, ready to try starting it. Need to weld cleats on the track plates and get busy on the fence job. Been pulling out parts to build the mowing machine, start work on that next week when it rains again, in the mean time the fence is pending and it looks like Monday might be good nude working weather. 60 F they say. and sunshine, just warm enough to shed the fabric while working. Not quite warm enough to sit around doing nothing without some insulation. Unless it's beside a fire.
Been hard at it full time, fence project is on the verge of completion, but my 4x4 vehicles started having problems, (a necessity for getting back there and getting work done) then a friend nearby gave me his old 4x4 toyota pickup that needed lots of work, 34 years old and 450,000 miles. So since it is a better match that the others for my back in the woods mud road access naturist gardenin needs, I spent last week repairing all it's issues. It's about finished and been using it since Sunday. Finished replacing brake parts and even got a winch installed on it yesterday. Went back at the fence work today, (wearing nothing but shoes of course) But I'm running short on cash after that truck repair so i'll have to do a little more logging, sell a few trees and buy a bed unloader slip sheet for it and a set of better tires for gettin round the rough and muddy mountainside. I've about decided to get a set of super swamper TSL/SX tires for it. Make it look like one mean off roadin rig. But it's just my humble little old garden/farm truck for hauling compost and dirt and firewood and totin tools in and out, reliably without wasting time getting stuck. If it does get stuck the winch will make sort work of gettin unstuck.
Got everything but the new tires, just getting by with what i have for now which is OK but not the best. run a little short on money for them and it's been raining to frequently to do more logging, so just getting the gates built on the fence and ready to start hauling loads of barnyard cleanings and rototilling it in. Did get the slip sheet type unloader installed on the truck and built boxed up bed sides to direct all the dirt out on the sheet. Made it where the whole business can be installed or removed in a few minutes so I can have it as a normal pickup for other work easily. got a number of flats of peppers and maters seeded in the greenhouse, pretty late but that's OK. We have a pretty long growing season anyway. They're starting to pop up. I'll try to get the second gate done in the mornin and start hauling the black stuff. Otherwise just a few details to finish up on the fence but I'll get that in in the next couple weeks, work on it after the next rain perhaps when it's too wet to do dirt work.
better update I guess, ended up sort of neglecting the garden all summer while I cut timber for cash and made two long trips with trucks to fetch agriculture minerals. that accomplished I got new tires on my 4x4 toyota that will throw mud better, (all over the truck) and get it around the muddy mountainside reasonably well. Am working on cleaning up land to plant apple trees. Plan to go at it full time and be ready to put in plenty of garden by spring. getting in a day or two or 3 at a time off and on of clothes free work when it's warm enough, (last 3 days it has been) but it turns cold often enough and can't do it that way. the work is not as pleasant when I have to stay clothed. but I keep working anyway on something.
Need to get a root cellar built near the garden, so i picked a spot in the bank to dig the hole, (will work on that with track loader and skid steer) and started cutting trees to make lumber for it. I will build it of cedar and black locust and cover it with a heavy waterproof layer of something, like a vinal tarp, before back filling with dirt. A place to pack away things like taters and beets and carrots and cabbage to keep them for winter use. maybe good place for apples too. I had intended to build uch a place when we first came here 35 years ago, but somehow the years slipped away and it never got done. But with my increased gardening plans it's time to get it done.