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.

 
On Tuesday I headed to the landfill near the airport to take advantage of one of my favorite things: free mulch!

Luckily, I have a vehicle that I am not very attached to so shoveling several yards of mulch into the back didn’t present much of a problem for me.

I took a fairly large dent out of the pile, but, trust me, there’s plenty more still there.

I used half the mulch I brought home in the garden, and the other half I am using to fill in the rudimentary French drains I dug under my gutters where the rain overflows and collects next to the house. Having pools of water so close to the house causes all sorts of problems. I’m also hoping to plant a bush in the hole next to the trench I dug so it can soak up all that excess water.

Initially, the trench worked perfectly as all the rainwater from the roof flowed into the trench and away from the house.

But, alas, when it rains in Texas, it rains hard, and the trench quickly filled up and started overflowing, which means it’s back to digging for me.

With the Man Cave nearly complete, I’ve started focusing on the next round of projects, most of which involve scavenging free materials from around town. Last week I began building a back fence that will, hopefully, shield my urban oasis from the rantings and ravings of Linda, the drunken Cajun woman who lives directly behind me. All the materials I’m using on the Funky Fence, with the exception of five four by fours, I found in a construction dumpster one of my neighbors used while having an addition on their house built.

As much cedar siding as I scavenged last fall, I realized the other day that it wouldn’t be enough to finish the fence and so I got back in the habit of cruising the Free section on Craigslist. Yesterday I found a gold mine: free cedar fencing and the four by fours it was attached to. Yes, the wood was old, probably somewhere between 15 and 20 years, and, yes, some boards were hopelessly rotted, but generally it was in good shape and it was all free free free.

Even better, Deb, the woman in charge of demolishing it, helped load it into my van and even offered to haul a load of it to my house! That’s how committed she was to not seeing the stuff end up in the landfill. Incredible.

And here is the result of a mere hour’s labor. I now have more than enough wood to finish the Funky Fence, and perhaps there will be enough left over to embark upon another endeavor.

One of my favorite parts of the building process is materials’ acquisition, i.e. scavenging. I always have my ears open for a new source of building supplies so when Kieran mentioned that you could get free rocks at the cemetery I had to investigate. He told me he used the rocks to make a raised garden bed, which seemed like an idea I wanted to replicate, so yesterday I headed to the Austin Memorial Park Cemetery to see what the deal was.

I assumed there was going to be some catch. I mean, rocks don’t grow on trees. You can build all sorts of incredible things with good stone. So when I stepped into the cemetery’s office I expected the guy behind the desk to mention that there was a fee or that or I had to return on a certain day. Nope. He just told me to drive straight ahead and help myself. I started imagining a little bitty pile tucked away in some far-off corner. Nope. This rock pile is endless. It’s so big it shows up on Google’s satellite photo of the graveyard. According to Kieran, the cemeteries have to excavate five feet of limestone every time they dig a new grave and all that rock ends up on this pile.

I am usually proprietary about my best scavenging finds, but in this case I don’t fear that the pile is going to be eroded anytime soon. I would suggest to anyone interested in making a raised bed to head straight there. I am planning to make one trip to the cemetery a week until I have enough rocks to build a stone wall in my backyard. I am imagining it will take over a year to amass enough stones, but time is one thing I have plenty of.

Question: What’s the difference between me and those creepy old men you see rummaging through dumpsters?
Answer: Not much.

I am in full-on scavenging mode right now. Some of my neighbor/friends are building an addition on to the back of their house and I took the opportunity to extract some goodies from their industrial dumpster, mostly pieces of wood, but I also found a functional screen door. One way or another these newly found materials will get used.

I suppose the resurgence of my desire to scavenge has to do with the steady decline of summer. Temperatures are now only getting up to the 90s for three or four hours in the late afternoon, which is sweet relief compared to the heart of the summer. With cooler temps my need to get outside and build and dig and move things around increases tenfold. The Farm is about to return to life after a long summer of dormancy….