Inner City Farmer

Here’s an example of how I am getting smarter in my old age. A year ago I was happy to drive across town and haul scavenged materials back to the homestead. One back injury later I have figured out that it’s better to allow others to do the heavy lifting.

Some of my ultimate goals for the farm are helping my fruit trees get big enough to actually bear fruit, turn my clay into usable soil, and controlling and trapping the flow of rainwater that hits my property, and to do all that I need lots and lots of mulch. While you can get it at the landfill for free, I recently discovered another way of acquiring it and all it took was a simple email. I asked the folks at Davey Tree Service if they wouldn’t mind dropping a load of wood chips in my driveway the next time they were in my neighborhood and the very next morning they did just that.

My neighbors probably think the huge pile of wood chips sitting in my driveway is an eyesore, but to me it’s beautiful, for it represents one more step along the path towards prosperity for the Inner City Farm.

One MRI, three cortisone shots in the back, and countless hours of physical therapy, and the Inner City Farmer is back! Sort of. To finish up the the earth floor in the Man Cave (or Brandy Library, if you prefer) I needed to employ the services of Frank Meyer, and I am so glad that I did because Frank is simply the best. He’s easily in the top three or four out of all the earth floor makers in the world. Think about that. It was like having Michael Jordan stop by to help me work on my jump shot.

Frank took care of applying the first coat of linseed oil to seal the floor and left me to do the rest. He heated the oil up so that it could be spread thinner. Even so the clay was “thirsty” and the floor drank up four gallons of the stuff. For the successive coats the oil hasn’t needed to be heated, but I have thinned it by adding some Citrusolv, which I got at EcoWise. The Citrusolv helps the oil dry quicker and it makes it smell better, like oranges!

I have added four coats total at this point and plan on adding one more. It’s taking about two days for each coat to dry. But soon–within a week?–the process will be done, and we’ll be able to start using the room! For those interested in learning more about earth floors, a good article was written about them in the New York Times several years ago, and, of course, Frank is one of the main people featured in the article.