Here, surrounded by the accouterments of a suburban family, and modeled by our son Chris, is the latest addition to our lineup of farm equipment.  It’s a bin for screening and mixing potting soil.  We go through enormous quantities of the stuff, even at our small scale.  Thinking it would be more convenient to not have to mix our own, we tried using a commercial mix from the local family-owned garden shop.  But it was getting expensive and in fact was less convenient because we were constantly having to go buy more.

This bin was inspired by our farming mentors at Stonebridge Farm, outside of Lyons.  While not made fully from salvaged materials, as theirs is, it’s still homemade and designed just for our needs.  There’s a removeable screen that fits into the top, and the bin is large enough to make 4 bushels at one time.

The process?  Dump the ingredients onto the screen at the top,

sift them through into the bin below,

mix with a garden fork, and put into 20 quart bags.  The bags we then take to our seed-starting room in the basement, where we either fill plastic trays or make soil blocks.

The ingredients?  Compost, rich soil from the garden, peat moss, and new this time, pumice stone.  Sand is an alternative to the pumice, but the water-holding characteristics of the stone seemed intriguing (watering is one of those tasks that seems to get neglected too often), so we decided to experiment.

And it’s off to the seedling races.