6 fine-art steps for building a raised bed

Step 1. Construct a timber coffin-like structure to what ever size you require in what ever manner you like. Remember the timber will flavour your food so don't use timber that has been treated with chemicals. Level off and fix to the ground using stakes or star pickets.



Step 2. Break up and weed existing soil at the base of the bed. If your soil is clay add some river sand and lime, if your soil is sandy add some clay and manure.



Step 3. Using newspaper, cardboard or some twentieth century art, cover the soil in a thin blanket. This barrier will act as a weed mat and help lock in moisture, which also encourages worms. Wet down this layer with water to start the decomposition process and help keep it from blowing away.



Step 4. Add a layer of straw, fallen oak leaves or sugar cane mulch. This organic matter will slowly break down, fixing carbon in the soil. A good soil requires a balance of nutrients, carbon, nitrogen and diverse microbial life, which will mitigate pests. Never use synthetic fertilisers or pesticides, you want your soil to hum loosely, not fear life.



Step 5. Finish the layers with composted soil. I have used part mushroom compost here with my own home-brewed one. Lightly compress or flatten the soil with a board and sow your seeds.



Step 6. Protect your seeds from your free-ranging hens. Now it's time for a well deserved glass of Astrid's dark chocolate stout.

Lucky dip and scratch (or, carbon fixed/carbon smoked)

I've been up a ladder, building walls to pay bills, and I've spent much of the past month finishing essays, films and funding for WorkmanJones' 2010 US tour. We've been invited and funded to make new work and show it at a non-profit gallery in Richmond, Virginia so we'll be looking to do a number of things while we are there.



In the meantime the garden has been neglected and the frost season has begun, which makes looking at the garden a tad depressing. Every day I have been scheming and planning new raised beds, future composts, fruit and nut tree plantings, canopies over raised bed structures in order to mitigate birds and frost damage, mulch and humus for further water and carbon conservation and more indigenous plantings to encourage greater biodiversity.



Surprisingly we've found that these heirloom toms (Riesentraube) are extremely frost hardy, for tomatoes at least. Because we live in a cold climate (though increasingly less so) toms generally come into abundance just as the first frosts start rolling in. Therefore these hardy toms are ideal in this climate. We've had 2 frosts already and the plants keep producing and ripening fruit.



In my absence the chooks have been guarding the compost. Over the Summer and until the first frost the European wasps had colonised the heap, now the chooks have reclaimed it as their very own lucky dip and scratch zone.



Working to pay bills and planning to fly to the US are obvious hypocrisies in light of what we're aiming to achieve in the garden over the next five years: 90% water self-sufficiency, 70% energy self-sufficiency, 70% food self-sufficiency. I suppose by agreeing to go to the US I participate in what I represent: a privileged late-capitalist citizen who still partakes in the short-term fantasy world of oil-based technologies.

As WorkmanJones' practice involves both disembodiment and re-embodiment, displacement and re-placement these ethical dilemmas are just part and parcel of a cold and rainy 2009 Sunday afternoon milieu.

Peddle, gather, cook, bottle (food activity alphabetised by return)

Our community has a local benefit concert and fundraiser for the survivors of the fires this coming Sunday and I spent the early part of the week thinking what I could contribute that didn't mean burning cash or burning carbon. We both have no work at present, which makes us time-rich and extremely productive in all manner of non-capitalist activity, while at the same time shitting ourselves with mounting bills.

I borrowed Meg's bike, which has a handy detachable front basket, and trawled the town for street fruit. I asked the local librarian, Janet, if I could harvest the rhubarb from the small community garden at the back of the library and she happily agreed, and I found some feral apples and pears ripe and delicious. I also noted other varieties of apples, nectarines and pears that would be ripe over the next few weeks and noted that many of the feral trees which had a substantial build up of humus at their base had disease-free apples. I cooked all the fruit together and added local honey.

I then peddled to O's to exchange some of our old glass jars for his larger, uniformed, black-lidded ones. I stayed for lunch, talked about brewing beer and gathered more apples and a branch of red-flowering eucalypt for my gal on the way home.

These small bottled gifts are for the organisers of the event – friends – folk who have worked hard over the past few weeks to organise the forthcoming day. As a child my folks had a successful cottage industry manufacturing jellies, mustards, chutneys and jams and this week I felt the spirit of that familial activity return.

The gardener of pleasure

Land of Meg

Billy

We're a little worried about Billy. She hasn't been looking that great of late. Our friend Jo said it sounds like she has a respiratory infection – budding vets and other chook experts can see Billy's condition for themselves here. On Jo's recommendation we have put a solution of boiled garlic in their drinking water. If Billy has not improved in the next day or two we will take her to the vet. Cuba and Dirt on the other hand are fighting fit – as demonstrated by their day's joyous offerings.

Social Warming

Until today we have managed to live on our 1/4 acre without one single fence, with the exception of temporary guards around our vegetables to keep the chooks from helping themselves.



However our neighbour to the North has insisted we build one because he doesn't like looking at our water tank and 'unsightly' produce area. We agreed as long as we could design and build it and not have to pay for it, so this is the beginnings of our social warming fence.



The Cuban says, "grow your own food, catch your water, say hello to your neighbour" – a reachable suburban anarchy.

Offline blog (1967) meets our girls

Accessing public drinking water

Click on this image to read the map.

Chicken coup