About Monroe County, IL

Waiting for Mother Nature.

I haven't updated my Green Experiment blog lately because there really hasn't been much to add at this point. We've got our seeds started and some are sprouting and beginning to grow.

Kyle has started to produce more components for his vertical and hydronic gardening system and it's really too early to forage for any spring time plants like wild asparagus or mushrooms. Too late for hickory nuts or rose hips.

So, now is the time to wait....continue starting my seedlings...and be as efficient with our resources as possible.

Looking for the Right Land.

Kyle and I really love our current home. He designed it and we built it together over a period of 2 years. It sits on 2.5 acres with a small area of woods. Theres a small creek that runs through the woods, but no pond or other source of water on the property.

This bothers Kyle quite a bit...so we've kind of been looking into finding a piece of property with a water source on it. We may have found the right one...it has potential.

So, we may be getting our home ready to put on the market soon. It was definitely a hard decision to make. However, we don't feel we can really be self-sufficient on the property we have now.

Grandchildren due soon!

Everyday, my daughter's belly gets a little bigger. I'm sure my daughter-in-law is doing the same. William and Caden will be coming into our world in about 5-6 weeks and I can't wait.

So, as I watch my seedlings germinate and wait for them to be ready to plant...I also watch my grandson growing and getting ready to make his appearance along with spring.

I guess this blog is really all about waiting. Sometimes we just have to sit and wait...and let mother nature do her thing. :)

"He said to my heart....peace...be still."

Yesterday was a very exciting day! I spent most of it with clients and had a wonderful time.

My husband, Kyle, spent it in the garage bringing a vision to life.

In some of my previous posts, I have mentioned that Kyle has been researching and designing a vertical, hydroponic gardening system. Well, yesterday he took his concept to reality by creating his first prototype in our garage.

The tower will allow us to grow 28 plants in a 2 foot space. Because he is growing vertically, this means that we can grow more produce in less space! No tilling, no weeding and no waste.

After he finished the prototype, he brought it into the house and we sat down together, sipped on a little wine and began to brainstorm all of the possibilities for this nifty tower that he has created.

I can see these hanging from under a deck or smaller versions being hung under a porch. The system he envisions will be modular, which means a person could have as large or small a garden as they'd like based on the space available to them.

We both envisioned people in an apartment or inner city setting being able to grow pretty much anything they'd like using this system.

Today, I will be meeting with clients again, and I'm pretty sure he will be back in the garage making more towers.

I think one of the coolest things about his system, is that we are recycling things that we have in our basement already to create the system. And his creative side is coming out. He showed me some other systems he has designed to go along with this one.

I can't wait to see what he comes up with next...and I can't wait to pick and eat the goodies that we grow!

Last week I launched this blog series called the Green Experiment. In my first post I said that I would share with you something that I have been researching that will allow me to create a liquid fertilizer and solid compost for our garden project.

Well, Kyle and I have finished up our research and will be starting this project in our basement in the next few weeks....so what is it that we've found?

Earth Worm Farming!

We will be starting an earthworm farm! Sound crazy? Not at all. Mother Nature has it all figured out! Earth worms can convert half their weight in food scraps to compost in 24 hours.

Kyle and I have always wanted to compost our food waste, but found that it can take several months for the bacteria in the air to eat and convert organic waste to compost. This isn't very practical as one would have to build a bin, (preferably away from the house to avoid the odor) then make sure that we are stirring the waste regularly for aeration to help facilitate the process and so on.

We discovered that we could save the labor (and odor) by letting our little wiggly friends do the work.

We thought we would avoid the cost of purchasing the earthworm farm by making it ourselves, however it turns out that it would be more efficient and cost effective to purchase one that is specifically built to house our earthworms. The manufactured farms also make it easier to collect the "castings" and liquid for use in our garden.

The system is a series of perforated trays the allow the castings and liquid to drop to the bottom of the farm while the earthworms migrate upward to their food source (kitchen scraps). The farm is actually a little worm condominium and fairly quickly becomes a mini ecosystem if properly maintained.

The benefit is a much speedier composting process with much less odor. As a matter of fact, our research indicates that this process is virtually odor free.

One of the other benefits is that our earthworms will also supply us with fishing bait. We love to fish, so it will be great to just be able to go down to the basement and pull a few worms from the community any time we decide to go fishing!

The castings and liquid they produce are said to be excellent for plants and is a natural fertilizer. This means we won't be spending money to purchase fertilizers which contain harsh chemicals. Once the expense of setting up the farm is taken care of, it is basically free for us to operate and we will be putting some or our garbage to good use!

Once we get this up and running, I will be sure to keep you updated with photos and any snags we run into.

More Treasures!

Kyle, my husband, was inspired by the warmer than usual weather this weekend and did his own hike in the woods. He came home with a handful of nuts and a detailed description of the trees that they came from. After about a half an hour of research and verification we discovered that he had found Hickory trees and their nuts.

We knew that the wood from the Hickory tree is very useful and I love to smoke meat with it, but we weren't quite sure if the nuts would be edible. Low and behold...they are. I cracked one open and tasted it. Although the nuts had been on the ground since last fall, they were still tasty. They reminded me of a pecan, but not quite as sweet.

At Thanksgiving, I like to make pecan pies. I went to the store this year to buy the pecans and about had a heart attack when I looked at the price. Next Thanksgiving, I will be giving the Hickory nuts a try. I'm quite sure they will work very well and won't cost me anything but a little time to shell them.

On the garden front...

A week ago, Sunday, I had started some seeds in starter pots, watered them and placed them under my kitchen sink. As of last Saturday, two have sprouted and are now enjoying a prime spot in front of my brightest window!

Kyle and I are both excited by the new life and can't wait to get things moving forward on the garden front. He has drawn out detailed plans for both the hydroponic and vertical gardens. We have chosen the spot for the garden and he is anxious to get the materials and begin the process.

The warm weather is very motivating, but we both know that it will turn cold again...so our efforts are focused on not getting ahead of ourselves. I would like for him to build the cold frames so we can set the seedlings as early as is reasonably possible.

In The Mean Time...

I am a mother of 3 adult children...2 boys, both in the Marine Corps and a daughter. Both my daughter and my son, Ben's wife are pregnant and are due on the same day in March. My daughter is growing rounder by the day and her body has begun practicing to deliver my new grandson.

This weekend was quite eventful. I received a call from my son-in-law....all in a panic. Hannah was having contractions 7 minutes apart and was very uncomfortable (I laughed as the last trimester of pregnancy is uncomfortable by nature). We came home immediately and sure enough her little belly was as hard as a rock. Of course, it is really too soon for her to be in labor, but she was having practice contractions.

They stopped and the grandbaby kicked like a soccer player and all is well. The next day my son called...all in a panic...same thing going on with his wife. It's so awesome to feel the weather warming, the new seedlings sprouting and my grandbabies coming!

Very soon, there will be new life all around!

What Did I Find In The Woods?

In my last post, Kombrink Real Estate Group: The Green Experiment, I said that I would share with you what I found in my back yard to help my family through the cold and flu season.

It has long been suggested that taking vitamin C can help fight off colds. It is also credited with being an anti-oxidant. We are familiar with the many sources for adding vitamin C into our diets. Of course orange juice is one way of getting your vitamin C or you could go to your local drug store and purchase the tablet and swallow that horse pill on a daily basis.

I have also found that vitamin C is available in our skin care products as a way to fight the signs of aging.

Another source of vitamin C is rose hips. Rose hips are the fruit that roses make after the bloom has finished being beautiful. According to my reading, rose hips have a very high vitamin C content.

I notice every spring, in the woods on my property, the beautiful pink blooms of wild roses. So I got to wondering the other day, after reading about rose hips, if the roses that grow on my property made rose hips.

I did some more investigating and sought out pictures of rose hips so I would know what I was looking for and set off on a small hike. I knew exactly where those bushes were and sure enough....there they were. The little red berry-like fruit were all over those bushes.

Everything I've read about them tells me the best time to gather them is after the first frost, but I figured what the heck and began to pick the little treasures. They were already dried on the bushes, so that actually saved me the step of having to dry them in my dehydrator. I imagine if I had gone out after the first frost to gather them I would have found more of them as I'm pretty sure they are often eaten by wild birds and other of mother nature's little critters.

I brought them into my house and washed and dried them. I then broke out my coffee grinder to grind the little hard berries. I placed them in water and brought them to a slow boil, removed them from the heat and let them steep. Vitamin C breaks down in heat, so I wanted to be careful not to over heat them.

After steeping them, I poured the liquid through a coffee filter to retrieve the tea. I placed it in a mason jar with a lid and placed it in my refrigerator. I have read that I can also freeze the tea. I could have frozen the rose hips and only steeped them as I needed them, but there were so few berries that I chose to just go ahead and steep all of them.

This rose hip tea is full of vitamin C. And since I have it in a liquid form...I can add it to juices or use it in my home made skin care products. I have begun to use on a daily basis for my face and have noticed the texture of my skin is softer and improved over all. Of course vitamin C is an acid...so I may be basically giving myself an acid peel each time I use it.

In my research, I have found there are many other plants, trees, berries and flowers that grow wild in our area that have many wonderful uses. It is winter right now, so identifying some of these would be very difficult. I can't wait for spring to see what other useful things there are in my backyard.

I do know that we have a wild persimmon tree. The fruit from this tree can be made into sugar! Wow. I can't wait until the fall to try that experiment.

Stay tuned for more....I will be talking about the composting system that will be going into my basement. yes...I said my basement. Stay tuned!