stony run farm

An old lady can do it

2009-07-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

This year, we have tried something new by making shades and awnings from burlap. The sacking we buy from a nearby coffee shop for fifty cents a bag. A single bag, cut open down the sides, and pinned to laths at each end with 1/2" staples and a couple of screws, makes a simple and surprisingly attractive window shade, which can be hung from existing curtain rod mounts, as here, or from three inch wallboard screws driven into the window frame or just above it. The shade can be folded in half to cover half the window, or rolled up to rest atop its mounting to uncover the window completely. It seems to admit about ten to fifteen percent of the light into the room. You can see through it to the world outside, if you stand close, yet you have complete privacy. Fits a window of about three by four feet, or can be cut down to fit something smaller. Not bad for fifty cents!

If you attach the bag to the outside of the window instead, or even better, for the south side of the house, one on the outside and one on the inside, you will cut quite a lot of heat gain. Makes for a rather dark room, but we find we are twenty degrees (F) or more cooler inside, than out.

We didn't attach outside shades, choosing instead to dry-soap the window screens for additional reflectivity.

You can also stretch a bag between two laths mounted on wall brackets, to make an instant solar awning, or, better yet for the south wall, stitch together as many bags as it takes to shade the entire wall.

The awning shown is a little sloppy, but that's me; I am sloppy. Besides, I was working alone on a windy day. Not the best plan. Too much light is striking the upper wall; on the other hand, the gap between the wall and the burlaps allows wind to pass through without tearing up the awning, and, as summer progresses, the shadow will creep upwards as the angle of the sunlight tips away from the near-vertical.

Not visible in the photo is a length of seventeen-gauge wire, anchoring the end laths and running underneath the outer edges of the burlaps from end to end. At the anchor points the wire, which is doubled there, is tensioned with a stick to pull the whole thing tighter, much as one would tension end posts on a run of fence.

This forty-foot awning cost less than ten dollars to make and the project took a little over two hours. If an old lady can do it, you can do it, okay?

Blessed shade

2009-07-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

A northern-hemisphere July scorcher -- 93F. Daughter and Last Son were here; she pulling weeds and working on her tan and he down in the creek cutting beanpoles from knotweed, piling the twigs and leaves for me to mow and add to the compost. I pulled up the bed of fava beans to take around to the clothesline for drying, to see about saving seed.

We took a lot of breaks. I poured water in my straw hat and put it on, dripping, for each new (short) shift.

A garden snail-hunter friend, bereft of the shade of the favas, slithered off to pastures new.

There were quite a few elephant garlic and volunteer potatoes in the bed, as well. I braided the garlic and brought in the spuds, which are enough to last for weeks. The plan is for part of this bed and the one next to it to be enclosed this fall in a polytunnel greenhouse, 10'X30', for wintering-over cold-weather vegetables more securely.

Though it's awfully hard to think about winter right now.

To the left of the favas is the kale plant that I kept for seed and hung up last week; it's about ready to pick over for its more than a thousand pods. I'm sure I don't know what I'm doing, but I don't mind. It's my entertainment...

After hanging favas I worked with last son for awhile, stripping knotweed stems.

"What would you plant over here on this side of the creek, if you were farming it?" I asked.

"Oh, that's easy. Hops."

"Hops?!"

"Yeah." Oh, my, he looks interested.

"All the hops I've ever heard of involve cables, telephone poles and tall ladders and crews of a zillion pickers. Aren't there economy-of-scale problems?"

"No, they do it different in Bavaria, more like a vineyard. I think. And brewers buy small batches as well as large. It can be a specialty."

"Well, do ya want we should look into that?"

"Sure."

We might get him back out into the country yet.

He wiped the sweat out of his eyes. "Want to take another break? I want you to try that Hefeweizen Sis brought."

"With my waistline?"

He grinned. "What about mine?"

"That's different."

"Okay, I'll just pour you a little glass."

We crossed the bridge, passed the sun-sizzling favas, and stepped into the blessed shade of the front porch.

Heat wave...

2009-07-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

We're at around 90 in the afternoons at our place this week, with a killer drying wind, but the well is in good shape yet so I left the drip hoses going all night in the six beds in the lower garden, and gave everything else a dewing from the hand-watering hose as the sun went down and the long twilight set in. Beloved changed out all the pools for the ducks and geese, and the chicken water. We are at 44 degees north, and at this time of the year you have enough daylight for this kind of thing to last you till ten p.m.

The house is handling it well, better than ever before. The maple trees are finally tall enough to help some, there's more insulation, the south face of the roof now has a coat of white paint, beans are climbing the south wall, and there are awnings of burlap, and burlap shades, on the windows. I'm often seeing 65F on the inside thermometer when it's 85 outside, with no A.C. and no fans running. Usually we only have to start up the fans when it reaches 94 or more outside for three days running, which gives too much heat gain even for this house.

The grass seed growers, up the road, are baling their straw in gigantic bales that must weigh six hundred pounds each. The sunshine reflecting from the unbaled windrows defeats my sunglasses and I have to look away as I go by. There are mirages on the fields and pavements. It reminds me of my Georgia childhood.

:::

From the report I left at One Green Generation (The Growing Challenge):

Lately there is a lull in planting. A few potatoes in gaps. We have peas, lettuce, bok choi, radishes, turnips, kale, cabbages (red and white), Jerusalem artichokes, 6 kinds of tomatoes, eggplants, zukes, delicatas, butternuts, punkins, garlic, elephant garlic, turnips, green beans, runner beans, favas, yellow corn, white corn, rhubarb, nasturtuims, white onions, red onions, Egyptian onions, leeks, red potatoes, golden potatoes, strawberries, white grapes, red seedless grapes, parsley, cilantro, basil mustard, broccoli, collards, rosemary, marjoram, spearmint, peppermint, chives. There will be apples on two of the six apple trees and a scattering of plums. Cherries did well this year, pears are ok; there will be a lot of blackberries judging by the blossoms. Most of the pears, cherries, nectarines, figs and quince are too young to bear yet.

What we harvested last week: Elephant garlic, onions, peas, chard, mustard, lettuce, spinach, strawberries, basil, chives. One rooster. A lot of Japanese knotweed for beanpoles and compost.

I chose one kale plant to go to seed, and oh, my, did it! It's hanging up now in a maple tree to dry the pods, and there are THOUSANDS of them. I've selected some of the favas to save, and will save some peas, French beans, runner beans, potatoes and tomato seeds. All of these we have done before, except the kale, and the favas, which are a learning experience. We're still working full time, so there is only so much we can try.

Favas come in an eating size and a green-manure size and we have a lot of the latter as that was what we were given. They are good to eat but hard to harvest. What I have learned: cut them from the stem with scissors, close to the first bean. Rest the pods in a basket for a day so the pods will deflate a little. Steam to blanch. Rinse to cool. Now when you squeeze the other end (like a toothpaste tube) the beans should slide out of each pod easily, ready to freeze, steam, fry, or what have you.

I've built a solar dryer and we have hundreds of canning jars but most of what we have put up so far this year has gone into the freezer -- some choice greens, peas, and, umm -- lots of chicken and chicken broth.

We rely a lot on things that self-replicate or are perennial. The Egyptian onions, elephant garlic, Jerusalem artichoke, nasturtiums, chives, parsley, rhubarb and blackberries pretty much take care of themselves. And the orchard just gets better every year. Also, a lot of our flowers are bulbs and can be divided, or seed themselves readily: daffodils, tulips, irises, flags, English bluebells, forget-me-nots, digitalis, poppies, sweet williams, lupine, sweet peas. And then there are the lilacs, which are so big they shade the house.

Ours is not the easiest site because rains are too heavy 3/4 of the year and entirely absent 1/4, nights are too cold, the season is short, there's too much wind, plenty of pests, incredible weeds, we only have a limited water supply when it's NEEDED, and we're a bit north-aspected, so the ground seems like it has some kind of permafrost thingy going on.

But we seem to do ok, as do many of our neighbors. The wind dies down a little after sunset, and we go sit with a glass of mint tea by the grape vines as the moon comes up, watching bats fluttering around the big oak tree.

There are worse ways of growing old.

Conundrum

2009-06-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

So, I worked as a parking lot attendant for two days at a sustainability conference, and the strain on my sense of irony was ... monumental.

Yes, people need to know how to make goat cheese, or beer, or do raw milk, or convert engines to run on veggie oil, or treat mild illnesses from the herb garden, but ... to drive all the way from Eugene, or Corvallis, or Roseburg, or Seattle, to learn these things on a small farm in the middle of nowhere, and then drive back? Yeesh!

Yes, I biked, but I live 2 miles down the road. Hardly anyone else did, and considering the distance from town, and the state of the road shoulders, and all the mojo-pickups with dual wheels sweeping those road shoulders at 70 miles an hour in 55 mile an hour zones, not biking was, yet again, the wise choice for most.

The railroad goes by right in front of the farm, though, and twice I watched the Coast Starlight go by, right in front of us. How hard, really, could it be, to have a charterable consist of self-propelled railcars to make the fourteen mile journey with two carloads of festival attenders? The tracks were empty across the road except for about fifteen minutes total, out of the twelve hours or so that I stood there, and this is a mainline.

A century ago, in fact, this was exactly how it was done. A hundred church picnickers would hire a train to get them out into the countryside, and at the end of the day, bring them back again. Nowadays, it seems, this can only be done on abandoned rails repurposed for tourists, at a steep price. But perhaps changes are in the wind.

I can't find it now but there was an article recently that noted that the litigious and grumptious relationship between petroleum-based cars and their manufacturers, and the oil companies (on the one hand) and bicycle commuters and makers of things like three-wheeled electric cars and Segways (on the other) is not that bicycles and such are too slow, but that the standards for convenient travel, geared toward the capabilities of internal combustion engines, are too fast. The context was the continual wrangle over bike lanes; the author felt the whole street should be safe for powering down.

I do think there is something to that. If lead-acid based systems are the only ones that will be available to us peons (those with less than $40,000 to spend on a car or truck) in the foreseeable future, then 25 mph speed limits are the only way to ensure our entry into any post-oil Great Automotive Commuter Society.

Perhaps next year the event organizers will consider chartering a bus to their event and organizing a group bike ride with a support van. Veggie-diesel support van, of course. With a hint of lavender in the exhaust.
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Why the sea is boiling hot

2009-06-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

I volunteered at the Sustainable Life festival down the road at Wise Acres Farm today; their better known event, the Herb Fest, draws gargantuan crowds, whereas this one (so far) has been somewhat sparsely attended, but it's the first year for it, and I think it will do well when it is better known and people can plan ahead to attend. There are workshops, lectures, farm tours, herb tours, and networking opportunities, and the people involved are knowledgeable and kindly. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, and planning to carry more sunscreen and water!

Last Son came along, and with him, after my shift, I attended a lecture-demonstration of a veggie diesel truck, a farm tour with stops at gardens, an orchard, compost piles, chicken shed, chicken tractor, and a goat dairy. We then spent the afternoon at the workshop of his choice, a hands-on beer-making session. An aficionado of Belgian beers, he appreciated the training but confided to me later that he could have done without all the talk of herb beers (!) -- he's a very basic guy.

Feeling woozy in the afternoon heat and wind, with a fairly stout sample of fennel-lavender beer, or some such thing, in my tummy, I wandered off, thinking to take a nap, and in the herb garden found an elderly woman in a steel-and-canvas glider, swinging gently back and forth in the shade, watching several huge koi in a small pond. She patted the seat beside her, and I sat down and introduced myself, and we "talked of many things/Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--/Of cabbages--and kings--/And why the sea is boiling hot--/And whether pigs have wings."

She seemed to have memory issues; as do I, increasingly. I hope to have them with such grace, should I reach to her years.

:::

for Independence Days,

1. Plant something - A few potatoes in gaps. Sunflowers.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, peas, chard, mustard, lettuce, spinach, strawberries, basil, chives. One rooster. A lot of Japanese knotweed for beanpoles and compost.

3. Preserve something - chicken, broth.

4. Reduce waste - Making more compost from knotweed and grass clippings, and beanpoles from knotweed.

5. Preparation and Storage - Assembled a new wheelbarrow.

6. Build Community Food Systems - selling duck eggs; Sustainable Life Festival volunteer.

7. Eat the Food - From frozen: plum sauce, used to make reconstituted plum juice. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs; fresh chicken liver with eggs and chives. From storage: rolled oats, potatoes, home-dried runner beans and French beans. From garden: Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, dandelions, peas, lettuce, spinach, chard, strawberries, mint, basil, chives, still mostly peas.

The volunteering has kept me away from much of this and before that was the illness (which is not over). Hope to have a much better IDC report after the 4th of July weekend!

Ready to harvest

2009-06-23T06:54:00.001-07:00

The fava beans are at their prime. They were planted in October, and wintered over without row cover. Sometimes they were knocked down by a freeze or buried in snow, but always came through. This is the first time we have really tried them, and we're impressed!

Daughter wants to come down and put in a day, and unfortunately I'll be gone most of the available date. She asked what to do; well, just doing the favas would take more than a day!
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Watching my toes

2009-06-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

South wall: comfrey, tomatoes, fig trees (saplings),
onion, strawberries, nasturtiums, eggplant. The sticks are
for beans, which are just now finding them.
The awnings are burlap bags suspended from laths.

As some of you may know, I came down with a nasty infection and was bedridden for a bit while the miracle drugs did their thing. Doctors think there may also be a kidney stone involved. Daughter and Young Man looked in on me with Youngest Son, then a few days later, when I had a relapse, Son spent the night again, showing me one of his favorite anime series, Planetes, on a small TV at the foot of my bed. By then I was getting better, so I rose up and fed him a pancake breakfast and we chatted over coffee for a good two hours. Nice. I sent him away with clean laundry, a bag of fresh peas, and a loaf of bread.

"What's in it?"

"Kale, garlic, oats, whole wheat, spelt, rye; that sort of thing."

"Awesome!"

Hey, it's lovely to have a 25-year-old who says your bread is awesome! He may even think so ...

Where was Beloved all this time, you ask?

Wisconsin.

Family stuff.

She's missed the whole thing, as usual, the gad-about.

Ah, blessed rain. It's not coming down in sheets, like the stuff my eastern friends are contending with (I would read their blogs, but I'm afraid I might get soaked), but just right for cutting my farm work day in half and looking into a few other things for a bit.

I'm resting right now from the mowing, mulching, top dressing, tomato tying, and harvesting that went on before the rains settled in. And, if I admit it, from the illness. I'm able to do these things but at a sedate pace. When I'm flat on my back like this, I grab the laptop and plop it on my belly, to blog or upload or check the latest from Sharon or Greenpa or whomever. If I didn't have a computer, though, I'd get by.

There's umm, reading.

Or just watching my toes wiggle down there at the other end of me.

And out of the corner of my eye, through the window, I see the yearling deer going by, along the fence. Aha, one of them discloses he is not a doe. He has those Bambi bumps above his eyebrows.

So serious looking.

And in the foreground, the eternal chicken races; hen in front, Chanticleer huffing along, gaining steadily from behind. Yeesh, get a room!

:::

'K, a report for Independence Days:

1. Plant something - Walking onions self-planting.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, peas, kale, chard, lettuce, spinach, turnip greens, strawberries, basil, chives. One chicken. Pie cherries. have been tying up tomatoes, laying down mulch, turning compost, setting bean poles and watering, more than harvesting.

3. Preserve something - Froze peas, cherries, chicken, broth.

4. Reduce waste - Making more compost from knotweed and grass clippings, and beanpoles from knotweed.

5. Preparation and Storage - Hung up some dried mint. Bought extra drip hoses and my next straw garden hat -- the one I've used for the last decade is finally beginning to crumble -- sigh.

6. Build Community Food Systems - selling duck eggs; having people over to harvest excess veggies and talking with them about our yard-to-garden method.

7. Eat the Food - From frozen: plum sauce, pear sauce, peas. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs; fresh chicken liver with eggs and chives. From storage: rolled oats, whole wheat flour, spelt flour, rye flour, sunflower seeds, potatoes, home-dried runner beans. From garden: Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, dandelions, peas, lettuce, spinach, chard, fava beans, turnip greens, pie cherries, strawberries, mint, basil, rosemary, marjoram, chives, leeks. But mostly peas. As John Seymour used to say, you can never have enough peas.

Fair is beautiful

2009-06-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

Urgently recommended reading:

Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation
by Dmitri Orlov

Social collapse, with its consequences, is no only not unthinkable, says Mr. Orlov, but a fairly common occurrence. So there is a morality that is proper to it, and which can inform our response to crisis and chaos better than we may have been led to believe.

Basically, his argument draws from Law of the Sea regarding lifeboats in storms at sea. If it is necessary to lighten the load, everyone draws straws. In the inquest, the judges will find no blame. If anyone pulls rank to stay on the lifeboat, that person will be found guilty of murder.

Fair is beautiful. Unfair is ... well, think about the debate over torture. How's that going? Figured out who your friends are, yet?

This will help us to understand clearly what is happening when the media discusses the saving of banks, or the insurance companies, gigantic mortgages on gigantic homes, etc., while the poor, all over the world, are going out, faster and faster, like candles in the rising wind.

So, relax.

Be generous with the people around you. Do not be always thinking about money, which is mostly designed for siphoning resources away from your life, your family, your community, your locality to ... somewhere else. Give gifts; things that you have made by hand, useful hand tools or timely knowledge. Hug your sweetie. Cherish your children and your neighbors' children. Walk about; watch sunrises and sunsets. Greet passersby. Grow things. Learn and teach seed saving. Make repairs. Teach. If you are a healer, or musical, or dance, or perform, do those things, in exchange or freely. Work, as soon as you can and as best you can, outside the "formal" economy. Rely on your strength and ingenuity, and then when that is gone, rest and contemplate.

"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"

Poor Peoples' Bamboo

2009-06-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

The pie cherry has begun its short season; to get any we have to pick when less than half are fully ripe, as there is a flock which comes when the cherries are at their best and cleans the tree in less than an hour. Today I picked to freeze, but once I got them in the house I sat down with them and gorged myself silly.

This must be the fruit hunger that comes of seriously trying to eat from home and in-season only. There seems to be something in the cherries my body was famished for, and when it got the chance, Lizard Brain took over. I can only say that the flavor, under these circumstances, seems wonderfully enhanced. "Absence doth the heart make fonder..." well, the tummy for sure. There was enough left over for three small freezer bags, pitted. These will be nice come winter.

I would have picked more but the tree had a lot of deadwood and hollowness and had been split by a falling ash tree in an ice storm, so I cleaned it up (i.e., firewooded half of it) last winter and now the cherries grow too far above ground except where they can be reached with an extension ladder. So the birds will certainly get their share.

:::

It's also Japanese Knotwood season. This stuff is listed as one of the most pernicious of invasives, and it is; the seeds drift down creeks and lodge on new properties, and, once arrived, the roots grow huge, and spread under ground, sending up shoots like Tyrannosaurus Crabgrass. There's little hope of spraying it to death without ruining your place, and less of digging it out. So we are trying to adapt to it.

We've learned to think of it as a Poor Peoples' Bamboo. We do not recommend the following, as I'm sure it has risks, but so far we have gotten away with it -- YMMV! Caveat emptor. K'? So ... keep the edges of the patch mowed back, to slow the spread. In the middle of the patch, let shoots grow to about eight feet, and harvest them June or early July, not in August/September, when they have gone to seed. Cut off the branches with all the big leaves and run them through the mower/bagger or shredder for mulch. Use the canes as beanpoles, plant supports, or as wattles -- we thread them through our welded-wire fence out by the road, to add privacy and deaden traffic noise.

Here we have some Japanese Knotweed beanpoles. I'm paranoid about getting them established in the garden so I use them upside down, to prevent rooting. Don't know that it makes a difference, but, hey, none of them have rooted. Plants are gravity fed and being upright is important to them, so maybe I'm onto something. They can't, of course, support beans this way by themselves; they're too fragile, so I tie them onto a strand of seventeen-gauge wire strung between iron t-posts, as shown.

The poles seem to last three to four years. After that, they are so fragile they shatter when used again in the garden. So we rotate them out of that service and into kindling work -- dried knotweed lights like paper -- burns more like tinder than kindling, so you still need real kindling to go with it -- but the quick, sure ignition has its own advantages.

This may not seem like very long-lasting beanpoles, but look at it this way -- if you are cursed with a patch of this dreadful stuff, you will never run out of beanpoles.
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Pear sauce good

2009-06-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Plant something for Independence Days - Not so much. It looks like there will be 1000s of runner beans, tho. How many of the danged things did I plant, anyhoo?

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, peas, kale, chard, dandelions, peas, lettuce, mustard, nasturtiums, spinach, fava beans, broadbeans, peas, radishes, turnip greens, strawberries, mint, peas, basil, pie cherries, chives. One chicken. Oh, and peas.

3. Preserve something - Froze fava beans, broadbeans, peas. Chicken, broth. Drying more mint. And, umm, froze more peas. And pie cherries. These are a little sour for me, but I dress them in a little bit of agave nectar or stevia before freezing.

4. Reduce waste - Carrying duck-pond water to the gardens. Brought home a bunch more empty green wine bottles. Hung out the laundry instead of running dryer.

5. Preparation and Storage - Bought a hundred wine corks. Put away the dried marjoram. Hung up the dried mint. Whitewashed window screens, painted a south facing section of roof on house. Made dozens of beanpoles from Japanese knotweed (dreadful stuff, gotta make it do its share).

6. Build Community Food Systems - selling duck eggs. Gave away packets of our dried runner beans. Had friends over to pick all the peas, lettuce, onions, garlic, and basil they could carry ... this helps me too 'cuz I can't keep up with the peas and want them to keep blooming. And the early lettuce is bolting already.

7. Eat the Food - From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs; fresh chicken liver with eggs and chives. From storage: rolled oats, spelt flour, rye flour, sunflower seeds, potatoes, refried beans. From dried: basil. From frozen: applesauce, pear sauce, snap peas. Pear sauce good with local Nancy's Honey Yogurt, made about twelve miles from here. From garden: Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, dandelions, peas, lettuce, spinach, chard, fava beans, radishes, turnip greens, cherries, strawberries, mint, basil, rosemary, marjoram, chives, leeks. Made four small loaves of kale/garlic/applesauce bread ... hey, don't give me that look! '... sgood stuff ...

So, you may well ask, what does risa eat that's from the store? Not much, these days, it's my personal challenge, based on the Freedom Gardeners' 100 foot diet. But lest anyone think I'm actually winning the battle against ketchup and mayonnaise ... and sometimes when I'm at work, my lunches fall a little short of getting me through the afternoon ... disaster has been known to take the form of a maple bar ...

... I stepped on the scale at the doctor's office.

"Hmmm, up seven pounds ... puttin' ya on a diet ... "

"But -- but -- I was up ten, then down three. Doesn't that count for anything?"

Now, why did she laugh like that? ...
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Peas in our time

2009-06-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

While weeding and spreading mulch, I discovered the bush peas, sugar snap peas, and golden peas are coming in, and they look great, as ever, but none of them have the super-sweet flavor of last year. But they're not a total loss; steam them a little bit, and they're a good deal more like the real thing.

I made dinner for Beloved, who worked all day at the library. We had whole wheat spaghetti noodles, salad, peas in the pod, and some whole wheat bread that was made with "Amish Friendship Bread" starter -- my first successful sourdough, in other words. The salad contained spinach, FIVE kinds of lettuce, fava bean leaves, nasturtium flowers, onion greens, dandelion, chives, and chive blossoms. I'm actually not much for salad and took mine, snapped some peas in it, spread it over the noodles, poured some tomato sauce over it, added fresh basil, zapped the whole thing for a minute, and had vegetable-spaghetti.

[reposting]

j. s. bach

She turned up the weeds without pity, spreading
their roots before the sun. Most of them died,
though a few tenacious grasses rolled over

when she was not looking, and sucked earth
till she found them skulking about, and banished them
to the heap with the egg shells and old tea leaves.

Returning to the scene of the massacre, she placed
a five tined fork before her, pointed toward
the earth's core. On its step she placed her boot's

sole, and drove its teeth home, tearing living soil.
She did this many times, and in her hearing,
the dark loam whispered in protest. But what

was she to do? One must eat, and the white seeds
in their packet were waiting for the sun.
She carried a blue denim bag at her side,

zippered it open, feeling about in its depths
like the housewife at the station platform
seeking her ticket for the last train--

Seizing her prize, she held it in a soiled palm,
reading the runes of inscription:
"Date of last frost"; "zone three," "days

to maturity." How many days now to her own
maturity? Not to be thought of. Her hand
trembled. Tearing the thin paper rind,

she tipped out contents: a shirtfront
of buttons. Five seeds to a hill she counted,
pinching their graves over them: three hills.

And on to other tasks. The rainmaker
whispered over hilled earth all
the zone's days to maturity, and the date

of first frost held true. Almost forgotten in the rush
of gathering in others: beans and corn, tomatoes--
she sought them last in October, the golden

fruits of that planting. Her other crops
talk to her; the Hubbards never do. (What are they
dreaming at, over there? She brings out the knife.)

Now it is March, she remembers having gathered
the silent, sulking Hubbards. How are they faring?
A look into the pantry reveals them,

dour and uncommunicative, all
huddled like bollards on the high shelf.
She chooses one to halve on the kitchen block.

Scooping out seeds to dry and roast later,
she bakes the halves till soft, slipping off skins
per Rombauer and Becker. "Dice them,

and in a mixing bowl add butter, brown sugar,
salt, ginger, and move the lot to the mixer,
remembering to add milk." With a bowl

of silent Hubbard thus richly dressed,
she goes to the living room, asking blessing
of the gods of the steel fork and the weeds,

the rainmaker, the packet of white seeds,
booted foot and blue denim bag
and the longtime summer sun, eating,

listening to a fugue by J. S. Bach.

:::

Independence Days:

1. Plant something - Lettuce, spinach, pumpkins, corn, beans, turnips, basil, stevia.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, dandelions, peas, lettuce, spinach, chard, fava beans, radishes, turnip greens, cherries, strawberries, mint, basil, rosemary, marjoram, chives, leeks.

3. Preserve something - Froze kale/chard/spinach mix, dried marjoram.

4. Reduce waste - Carrying duck-pond water to the orchard trees for a boost. WEEDING. Dumped the compost barrel and began refilling it. Still bringing home cardboard, newspapers, bottles, and bubble pack every day, for use in projects. Found four free pallets.

5. Preparation and Storage - Whenever we gas up, we take along a 2.5 gallon container and fill that up as well. We've put twenty gallons of gasoline in five gallon jerry cans this way, a little at a time. When a can is full, we add some gasoline stabilizer and lock away the cans.

6. Build Community Food Systems - Beloved and Son are now done volunteering as veggie garden experts at Extension Service. I'll be directing traffic at the Sustainability Conference.

7. Eat the Food - From storage: rolled wheat, oats, spelt flour, rye, buckwheat, brewer's yeast, sunflowers, flaxseed. From dried: Runner beans; basil. From frozen: apples, pear sauce. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs. From garden: Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, dandelions, peas, lettuce, spinach, chard, fava beans, radishes, turnip greens, cherries, strawberries, mint, basil, rosemary, marjoram, chives, leeks.
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Breakfast of Champions

2009-06-02T22:16:00.001-07:00

"What's in it?" "Umm, maybe I won't say. Want some?"

"Maybe not ...in fact I think I'll pass."

What's in it is whatever I feel like putting in that's on hand at the moment. There are limits; I might not, for example, want to mix strawberries and garlic. But when you are consciously eating from the home place year-round, some combinations will have more appeal to you than to those accustomed to take-out.

After I have had, say, pizza, or a peanut butter sandwich (fallen off my wagon, so to speak), it takes me a few days to really get interested in bean/pea/bok choi/kale/Egyptian onion smoothies again -- but that doesn't mean the smoothies aren't good, just that I'm not acclimatized to them.

It helps to remember to have one reasonable calorie-packed meal a day (assuming we are among those who have that choice). I go for duck eggs with diced radishes and chopped garlic greens, onion greens, kale, fava-bean leaves, parsley, chard, and spinach at present, because that's what's out there. On alternate days, potatoes instead of the eggs.

At the moment, though, the potatoes are not from-home; they're inorganic reds I found at 33 cents a pound. And I might give myself a party with whole-wheat noodles -- and there's olive oil in lots of these meals -- and do you see an olive grove or a wheat field anywhere around here? Didn't think so.

So much for from-home purity.

But wait! You say you saw wheat five miles up the road? Mmm-hmm, with herbicides up the yin-yang and en route, after harvest, to China. Mine comes from eighty miles up the valley, grown with a little more care, but I know I'm a creature of privilege and grateful for the diesel-gulping truck that brings it.

Every attempt to simplify meets with its own exceptions, caveats and paradoxes, and I will refuse to call mine or anyone else's sincere efforts a failure. You see this in comments on green blogs all the time; someone blogs that for Earth Day they turned off the power and sat around a candle, and the commenter lays into the poor thing for using the paraffin instead of the electricity, a net gain in carbon emissions. Oh, for -- ! look, she's working that out; a candle for Earth Day this year may lead to reading and thinking and skills acquisition and -- and the candle-burner might be next year's Sharon Astyk, ready to teach and lead. Give her a break.

What did I do? I was crabby about the whole rigmarole, skipped all the events, and celebrated the day with a bag of pepper-seared Doritos....

Woops -- biggest storm in years has popped the electricity and I had to run around lighting candles. The laptop's already unplugged, in case there was going to be a surge, and I think there was.

So, where were we? Oh, okay. Unless we are moving to the Marquesas or the Andes and leaving behind the laptop, the whole-wheat noodles, the red potatoes and the Doritos, it's all rehearsal. And I have doubts about pretty much anyone's ability to leave it all behind and be pure, anywhere.

What I think I'm saying is, rehearsal is okay. We don't need to rain on one another's parade over what's green or what's not because, if you're reading this, you're civilized to the extent that pretty much you are not green, and neither am I. Blue, ya think? Rehearsal is good because it adds a tiny bit of green pigment; someday maybe we'll all be blue-green algae, but not in my lifetime, I betcha.

:::

A yearling doe was hanging out in the coppice; I was annoyed with her tameness enough to toss a pebble at her. It rolled down her flanks, which shivered a bit; she took two little hops and went back to daintily browsing on our willows. I opened my mouth wide. "Whah! Whah!" She looked over at me, waggled her ears, and leaned down and took another bite.

Sigh.

This year you're cute, my dear, but give us time to get into enough trouble and you will be somebody's venison, current game laws notwithstanding.

That won't be greenness, that will be triage. Some will eat and some will be eaten. Life is hard sometimes, and sometimes it comes to an end; I think some of that hardness and endiness is coming en masse, and when I read the first chapter of the Joy Luck Club, I feel like I'm reading the future.

I was talking the other day to a friend and he asked about the garden and the fences and some other details and said, "how would you defend all that?"

"We can't. We're equipped for that kind of thing and good at it, too, but in real life five naked people with a box of matches and a little patience could take it away from us in a couple of days."

"Good; you have it figured out. So many don't. I'm your friend, but I might be one of those five people and I will take what is yours and eat it, just like anybody else."

I was shocked because I thought he would go on to talk about community as the way to avoid such scenarios, but no, he went straight to dog eat dog, and I was the critter being eaten. He saw my expression, and he raised his eyebrow a notch -- like: so? And I could only nod. He added:

"In the absence of the rule of law, we get the same triage we have always had, only accelerated and more obvious. That's about it. That's the meaning of just how much you and I did for the Tutsis when the machetes were swinging."

We were both quiet for a little bit after that, as the traffic buzzed past on Thirteenth Avenue.

:::

Ah! Lights just came back on. 'Scuse us while we blow out the lamps and candles.

'K, Independence Days:

1. Plant something: more tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, squash, corn, cukes, basil, pumpkins. Some other things.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions, eggs, strawberries, comfrey, peppermint, fava beans, PEAS, lettuce, spinach, bok choi. Fresh basil!

3. Preserve something - Dried comfry, put it away, dried peppermint, put it away, drying marjoram.

4. Reduce waste - Still bringing home cardboard, newspapers, bottles, and bubble pack every day, for use in projects. Carrying yet more duck-pond water to the orchard trees for a boost. WEEDING. WATERING ... until today. We needed this storm. Riding buses for about 9/10 of my commute. Saving up appointments and purchases to consolidate trips.

5. Preparation and Storage - rebuilt a bedroom wall and took the opportunity to re-insulate there.

6. Build Community Food Systems - Will volunteer at a Sustainability Festival. Beloved and Last Son continue volunteering as veggie garden experts at Extension Service. I think they have three more shifts.

7. Eat the Food -

From home-dried: Runner beans; basil.

From frozen: trout, blueberries, blackberries, apples, plum sauce, pear sauce, bok choi, sugar snap peas. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs, chicken liver, chicken soup.

From storage: vinegar, olive oil, molasses, rolled wheat, rolled oats, spelt flour, rye flour, buckwheat, brewer's yeast, sunflower seeds, flaxseed.

From garden: elephant garlic, onions, kale, strawberries, bok choi, basil, parsley, chard, broccoli, cabbage, radishes, radish greens, dandelions. The leeks are getting woody, and I'm switching to using seed heads from the Egyptian onions in stir frys.

Win/loss column: geese still don't like the new Ancona ducks. We're letting them spend days together but nights are a no-no; not enough running room for the ducks to escape the bedtime bullying. Deer eating willows. On the other hand, some projects have gone well, like the bedroom wall....

A lesson learned

2009-05-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

We thought we would spend all Memorial Day weekend in the garden.

It was time for the Annies/Anconas to go in with the Deloreses/Khaki Campbells, the chickens, and the geese. The Rosies (Rhode Island Reds) were introduced last week without incident.

But the Annies were a problem. When they were very young, Susannah, a White China goose in extended broody season, had assumed they were the babies we had stolen (in egg form) from her nest, and talked to them every day, unable to understand why they would not follow her -- fences are a part of the world of "free range" poultry, but are poorly seen and understood by them. I have no idea what the Annies thought of this gigantic "mom," honking solicitously to them for a part of every day, but they tended to huddle away from her. Eventually she gave it up as a bad job --ungrateful children!

As soon as they were herded from their pen into the wide world of the pasture, the Annies came under attack by Sylvester, Susannah's mate, and she joined in! They pursued the little flock up and down, shouting, hissing and making their "snake-neck" gesture. The Deloreses just stood and watched the fun -- secure in their position as members of Sylvester's flock, they had little stake in the outcome.

The Annies were being run ragged; something would have to be done. We went to the white board and drew fence plans, made assumptions, argued their merits, and settled upon the following: Geese to the south. Divide the outside pen into two parts, cut in a door through the chicken wire for the geese, cover the area with a tarp for inclement weather and shade, and bring in drinking water and a swimming pool. Deloreses, chickens and Annies to the north. Two swimming pools, in case the duck flocks could not tolerate one another in one; an extra fence and gate in case anyone needed further separation or time-outs.

In three hours all the changes were made and everyone sorted out. Even the chickens seemed more relaxed than they had been before. Ducks not being as long-lived as geese, the fact that the Deloreses, getting older and older, had to run to keep up when the geese were out perambulating, had not really occurred to us. But with the geese away in their own pasture, the Deloreses could slow down, which was easier on their legs, and spend more time in a happy, shady heap during the hotter parts of the day. When they traveled about for bugs and food, it was at about half the pace to which they had been accustomed -- and they seemed grateful for the change.

The Annies climbed into their chosen pool, told the Deloreses to stay away from it, and bathed contentedly all afternoon. The geese toured the south pasture, decided it was still big enough for them, inspected their new sleeping/anti-predator arrangements, and concluded all was well. Peace reigned at Stony Run Farm.

A lesson learned.

:::

Granddaughter spent the weekend, and divided much of her time between collecting eggs, watching the two deer that have moved onto the premises, and helping in the garden. She and I worked on the corn patch together. I made the hills and she arranged the seeds in them.

"Five Silver Queens here; five Bodacious here, then three Butternuts here." (Shift planting kneeler.) "Now we repeat that pattern all along here in this bed, and the same for the next bed, so the pollen will find corn whichever way the wind blows."

"So, five Silver Queens here?"

"Mm-hmm."

"And then five Bodacious?"

"Ye'm."

"Now five ... uh ... "

"Butternuts."

"Oh; right. Why not beans?"

"Good question. Beans are good for this, they say, but I tend to find them scraggly and unproductive in the corn. Maybe it's something to do with our heavy clay; dunno."

"There aren't a lot of Butternuts left."

"Right; so we'll switch to pumpkins to finish out."

"I like pumpkins!"

"To eat?"

"Not really; but they're fun to put a candle in."

"I don't like them to eat as much as the squash, but they can be handy for the poultry."

"How do they eat them??"

"We smash one open and boil it on the woodstove every week or so, then throw it on the pasture; they love it like that, 'specially the chickens."

"Oh! I don't think I've been here for that."

"Probably not. We really don't see enough of you. Now, what goes here?"

"Ummm, uh. Packet's empty. Oh, pumpkins now! Got seeds?"

"Got 'em right here!"

"Yay!"

Ten-year-olds are a treasure.

:::

Independence Days Challenge

1. Plant something - more tomatoes, eggplants, winter squash, lettuce, cukes, corn, pumpkins, stevia, runner beans, bush beans.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions, strawberries, comfrey, chicken eggs, duck eggs, radishes, broadbeans.

3. Preserve something - dried comfrey.

4. Reduce waste - Moved all the compost one heap on. Started new "heap" in the compost drum. Still bringing home cardboard, newspapers, bottles, and bubble pack every day, for use in projects. Made black water bottles for heat sinks in the garden. Carrying duck-pond water to the orchard trees. WEEDING LIKE CRAZY.

5. Preparation and Storage - Cooked up and froze leftover picnic chicken. Began drying peppermint and spearmint.

6. Build Community Food Systems - Master Gardening at Extension Service.

7. Eat the Food - From dried: basil. From storage: rolled wheat, oats, spelt flour, rye, buckwheat, brewer's yeast, sunflowers, flaxseed. Pear sauce, duck eggs, chicken eggs. From garden: elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, leeks, dandelions, broadbeans, radishes. Strawberries!
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Weeding, weeding, weeding ...

2009-05-18T10:47:00.001-07:00

If that was not our busiest weekend of the year, we're doomed. Mowing, mulching, repairing, planting, watering, weeding, weeding, weeding ...

Plants are doing well, direct seeding less so. It's either too hot and dry for the seeds, or drowning and cold. The yo-yoing seems to do them in. Most years, too, it's either aphids-to-the-max or slugs-to-the-max, this year they are beating us up alternate weeks, seems like. Meanwhile, we doggedly throw starts at the failed spots in our seeded beds and keep up our other tasks -- introducing new chickens to flock, putting the summer awnings on the south side of the house -- alternately shivering in rain boots and staggering around, sweat pooling through the gaps in our sunblock.

Coffee in the morning, at about 6 a.m., is our down time and discussion roundtable.

"What was that with the Rosies last night?" (These are the Rhode Island Reds.)

"They've never been outside before. And I think they're not used to so much daylight. So when everybody went in to roost, they stood around outside in the dark because it looked more like home to them. What did you do? I saw you out there but I thought you were in with the Annies." (Ancona ducklings have their own temporary run.)

"I found the Rosies huddled near the door so I shone the light in their eyes; they got up liiiiike thiiiis (demonstrates) and mooched in like kids caught staying out at recess. If chickens had lips they would have all pouted."

"Funny! But we have to do that, or they'd take to the trees and never use the barn." (We both pause to think of reports of a new cougar in the neighborhood.)

"Marley is having to learn new stuff, too." (This is the young cat Daughter brought us in exchange for Donut, who is retired at fourteen.) This morning I let her out, and she flew right across the yard at a little sparrow who was putzing about, just on the other side of the fence."

"And hit the fence."

"Full force. She came back and asked to be let back in, walking a bit sideways-fashion. The look on her face said 'Don't ask', plain as day."

"Aww ... but she's spending more time out, especially at night."

"Mnh ... but hasn't left any mice on the doorstep yet."

"Well, there was that one shrew."

"It's a start. Kinda. More coffee?"

And so the day begins. But outside, as the shadows shorten, it's already getting a bit hot to be up on the ladder ...
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Spring duty

2009-05-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

Bedding straw, with poultry manure, leaving the barn. This three-tine fork, our best one for the purpose, was found in the blackberry patch seventeen years ago, where it had languished for who knows how many years. We shortened and oiled the broken handle and it has worked steadily in the barn ever since.

Stage one: into the barrel. We could never afford such a gizmo; this one is a gift from my father-in-law. It works as advertised in warmer weather. Mix straw with fresh, damp grass clippings, add kitchen compost and fish waste, tumble every day for two weeks. Longer (much longer) in winter.

Stage two: dump the barrel underneath itself and refill. throw some straw on the pile to reduce odor.

Stage three: after three dumps, shift pile to compost bin. This gives you exercise, aerates the pile, and holds off putting poultry manure on the garden while the pathogens and "burn factor" fade to a kinder, gentler minimum. I'm not sure we always wait ninety days, but we try. The bin is low at this point because the winter compost has been hauled to all points of the garden for spring duty.
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Kudos in the form of starts

2009-05-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

Independence Days Challenge 2009: week 3

1. Plant something - tomatoes, eggplants, broccoli, runner beans bush beans, lettuce. Moved comfrey.

2. Harvest something - Comfrey, rosemary, marjoram, parsley, radishes, peppermint, spearmint, lavendar, elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions. Harvested two more egg-eating hens; made yet more stewed chicken and saved all the broth.

3. Preserve something - Froze kale/chard dandelion mix. Froze chicken soup. Drying comfrey.

4. Reduce waste - mulching like mad; mostly grass clippings and bedding straw. Changing out the compost barrel every two weeks (warmer weather).

5. Preparation and Storage - built horizontal awning s of burlap and lath for all the south and west window; put up the summer tarp for the dining room picture window. Bought a pile of slacks on sale; should last the rest of my anticipated years! BARN CLEANED OUT.

6. Build Community Food Systems - Beloved and Son continue volunteering as veggie garden experts at Extension Service. Kudos in the form of starts which they bring home and stuff into the already maxed out garden!

7. Eat the Food - From garden: elephant garlic, onions, kale, maple, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions. From frozen: trout, blueberries, blackberries, apples, plum sauce, pear sauce, bok choi, sugar snap peas. From storage: rolled wheat, oats, spelt flour, rye, buckwheat, brewer's yeast, sunflowers, flaxseed. From dried: basil. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs, chicken liver, chicken soup.

Win/loss column: Friendship bread a failure; friend gave it back; gave it to the chickens; they weren't sure what to make of it. Will download recipe and get the hang of this.

Listening to Beloved

2009-05-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

Independence Days Challenge 2009: week 2

1. Plant something - tomatoes, FINALLY! And eggplants, squash, cabbages, cukes, basil.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic, onions, kale, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions. Harvested two egg-eating hens; made stewed chicken and saved all the broth. Caught and froze three trout.

3. Preserve something - Froze kale/broccoli mix. Froze chicken soup.

4. Reduce waste - Still bringing home cardboard, newspapers, bottles, and bubble pack every day, for use in projects. Carrying duck-pond water to the orchard trees for a boost. WEEDING.

5. Preparation and Storage - Taught Daughter revolver basics. checked and updated 9/11 bags and moved the one that had been in the dead station wagon to the living pickup truck. New fire extinguishers. New compost bin walls (recycled futon frame).

6. Build Community Food Systems - Beloved and Son continue volunteering as veggie garden experts at Extension Service.

7. Eat the Food - From storage: rolled wheat, oats, spelt flour, rye, buckwheat, brewer's yeast, sunflowers, flaxseed. From dried: Runner beans; basil. From frozen: trout, blueberries, blackberries, apples, plum sauce, pear sauce, bok choi, sugar snap peas. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs, chicken liver, chicken soup. From garden: elephant garlic, onions, kale, maple, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions. We're baking a loaf of Amish Friendship Bread brought by Daughter for Mother's Day, which was also my 60th birthday.

Win/loss column: some chickens discovered the joys of pecking open eggs, taking a sip, and then rolling the eggs over to drain them into the straw. Taking defensive measures. Suffered identity theft. Someone took an $1100 dollar ride on Quantas on our dime; we have to swear out a case number at the Sheriff's office. We have been careful and this is the first time this has happened in all our sixty years. Big win: listening to Beloved practicing her guitar/storytelling program.

IDC 5/4/09

2009-05-04T08:23:00.000-07:00

Independence Days Challenge 2009: week 1 (I jumped the start last week!)

1. Plant something - Willows. Golden peas; moved sunchokes. "Bushed" the Sugar Snap peas with willow cuttings.

2. Harvest something - Elephant garlic (shown upper right), onions, kale, maple blossoms, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions. Blew 26 goose eggs (with basketball pump); froze eggs. Harvested one egg-bound hen; made stewed chicken and saved all the broth.

3. Preserve something - Baked and froze bread. Froze kale.

4. Reduce waste - Bringing home cardboard, newspapers, bottles, and bubble pack every day, for use in projects around the place. Using, with permission, neighbors' grass clippings in garden. Weeding like mad.

5. Preparation and Storage - Taught 25-yr-old son shotgun basics. Designing barn extension and new cold room. Have collected about sixty wine bottles for winemaking.

6. Build Community Food Systems - Beloved and son volunteering at Extension Service as Master Gardeners. Continued blogging "A Self-Supporting Home", first published in 1904, as it contains densely packed garden, animal husbandry, orchard, and apiary information. Sold free range eggs, gave away garlic bulbs, runner beans for seed, bread.

7. Eat the Food - From storage: wheat, oats, spelt, rye, buckwheat, brewer's yeast, sunflowers, flaxseed. From dried: Runner beans; basil. From frozen: trout, blueberries, blackberries, apples, plum sauce, pear sauce, bok choi, sugar snap peas. From poultry: duck eggs, chicken eggs. From garden: elephant garlic, onions, kale, maple, chard, broccoli, leeks, dandelions. Also: Maple blossoms. Traded some plum sauce for "pot stickers" (dumplings). Baked four loaves of spelt bread with kale.

:::

Win/loss column: our beloved Saturn wagon, with 198,000 miles, died; will donate to St. Vinnies. Some tomatoes and peppers in the "greenhouse," along with most of the parsnips and kohlrabi, have succumbed to damping off, need better seedling setup. Potatoes knocked back by unexpected hard freeze; everything else pulled through. The fig trees made it through the winter, which was unexpected. And the nectarines are in leaf, though far behind the new pears, cherries, and quinces. Some willows in the new coppice have died, but I have replacements for them in the ground in the garden, along with some cuttings from the Santa Rosa plum. Also, many, many of the new filbert trees and willows in the boundary hedges are doing splendidly. Ancona ducklings and Rhode Island Reds are now half grown and we expect to introduce them into the flock in 2 weeks or so. Ducks have reached through the fence and eaten some of the sunchokes that I moved, so had to chicken-wire along the bottom of the fence in that area.

Goose-egg time

2009-05-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

It's goose-egg time again ... as it has been awhile since Susannah has been on the nest, or at least like she really has her heart in it. It's her opinion that we ran off with all her eggs and hatched them, and that the Annies are the result. She calls to them plaintively to join her in the pasture, but they aren't sure what to make of her, and continue feeding, drinking, waddling about, and preening as if having a mother was the last thing likely to cross their minds.

Twenty-seven of this year's eggs made it to the refrigerator -- there were some accidents involving eggs inadvertently laid in the open, and attacked by the chickens -- and one of these I broke while getting the egg-blowing routine down right. Every year I have to learn all over again -- the margin of error, with the high-speed grinder and the basketball pump, is relatively small. I'm sure there are better ways to go about this, but this is what we do:

We gather up containers for the freezer, and a Sharpie for writing on the container, spread out some newspaper, find a round toothpick, an old-fashioned milk bottle or a glass carafe, the basketball pump, the high-speed Dremel-style tool, and a bowl of soapy, salty water.

With the little cone shaped grindstone, we zip off a bit of shell at each end, about as big as the head on a six-penny box nail, and punch through the membrane with the toothpick, stirring up the yolk, then place the egg on top of a suitably wide-mouthed bottle and gently pressurize the contents with the basketball needle. You can see a small rubber gasket here, cut from a flat rubber band, to seal the contact between egg and needle.

Every second egg we pour off the eggs into a freezer container, so that if we get into a bad egg (never has happened) we won't waste a lot. Mark the container Goose '09. Wash the eggshell inside and out (draw some soapy salt water into the shell and shake vigorously, then blow out). Repeat. Freeze containers, sun-dry shells.

In a few days they are ready to decorate or sell to Psanky painters ... whatever suits ya. I like to just sit by the table and look at them.

Flashback

2009-04-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

19 years, ago, Daughter shows off Beloved's Calabrese broccoli ...

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We aren't the spring chickens

2009-04-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

We aren't the spring chickens that so many "adapting in place" farmer/bloggers are these days, having gone through our youthful back-to-the-land number in the 1970s and 80s. Our reference shelf shows it. These are mostly older tomes. We have a few newer things draped on chairs around the house, such as Sharon Astyk and Eliot Coleman, but Carla Emery, Ruth Stout, Jeanne Tetrault, and Sherry Thomas remain among our standbys, along with J.I. Rodale.

Our neighbors to one side have circled the wagons -- a great many RVs all hooked on to the old farmhouse; and they've clearly pooled resources in such a way that we don't see evidence of any of them getting out much ... things seem kind of volatile over there, so we keep to our own side of that fence. On the other side, to our west, have lived, for all the years we've been here, a venerable WW II vet with his music teacher spouse; he has come down with some serious old-age issues and packed himself off to a good rest home, and she is sticking with the homestead a while longer.

We used to exchange services with one another; he would weed-whack our foundation and fence lines and we would mow their grass. We've asked the Mrs. if we might keep mowing and start taking off their clippings, which we know to be organic, for our garden and orchard and this is working out quite well.

Here is our place from her back yard; looking across the "willow coppice" and the creek to the south and west sides of the house. You can see, from left to right, the well-house with its solar hot water pre-heater, dining room window with long-plank bird feeder, high albedo roof and walls, creek bridge, and, through trees, the barn.

From the same area, in our "back forty," the view to the south.

Today I am distributing clippings on the pathways between the beds, and moving hoses to begin the watering season. It keeps threatening to rain but holding off, and cracks are appearing in the clay soil, not a good sign for the plants and seedlings already set out. Busy, busy -- but with enough time to enjoy the advancing season.

Independence Days Challenge 2009 begins

2009-04-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

This week for our Independence Days report, we:

1. Plant Something: planted Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce and some kohlrabi in flats, golden edible-pod peas in the garden, moved some wintered-over chard, ditto parsley, rhubarb and sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes), and potted-on some peppers -- I forget what kind. Silly me.

2. Harvest Something: Bigleaf maple bracts (yes, edible and nutritious and not at all bad), kale, Egyptian onions, elephant garlic bulbs, stems and leaves, leeks, chard, romaine lettuce, broccoli leaves, spearmint, peppermint, parsley, chives, dandelions, rosemary, marjoram, red cabbage leaves, duck eggs, goose eggs, chicken eggs. We discussed culling a hen but she's still in the land of the living -- it was 80F here today and I'll wait for the cold front to roll in.

3. Preserve Something: Ummm, painted three windowsills! Does that count? :)

4. Store Something: Put away some bigleaf maple bracts, and a soup, froze a loaf of our "spring" bread.

5. Manage Reserves: Eating down freezer things for more freezer space (some lamb coming in next week); apples, pear sauce, bok choi, blueberries, blackberries. Added to our stash of Gasoline, with a dollop of stabilizer in each container. Bought Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth and Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman (I recommend buying Ashworth, and other goodies, through Sharon's online Amazon store).

6. Cook Something New: Never used the maple bracts in bread and pancakes before, just in stir-fries. We'll call this "spring bread" -- also contains dandelions, chard, green onions, kale, and the like. Healthy! Healthy! Healthy!

7. Prep Something: mulched and weeded around all the new trees and the strawberries. Noticed buds on the figs, nectarines and quinces, and the new pears and cherries are in leaf! Put up the wall brackets above the south-side windows -- as summer approaches, we'll make burlap awnings and bolt them to these. Well, screw them, actually, but, oh, that doesn't sound right ... umm, and split some firewood. Oh, and! Chitting five pounds of German Butterball spuds from Seed Savers Exchange.

8. Reduce Waste: We have formed a habit of collecting everything that might otherwise go down the drain and using it in watering gardens and fruit trees. "Household liquid manure" included. Due to the presence of considerable poultry manure in bedding for compost, we're also on a three-heap rotation in an effort to keep the manure off the garden for ninety days. This weekend I emptied the garden heap onto the garden beds, the under-the-barrel heap into the garden heap, the barrel into the the under-the-barrel heap, and the under-roost bedding into the barrel. The under-roost bedding was ... very ripe! Yeesh!

9. Learn a New Skill: built a portable shed for the new Ancona ducklings, who are already chasing flies and taking turns in their bath water.

10. Work on Community Food Security: Our son still works at the food bank gardens, and he and Beloved are now Master Gardeners and are attending the badge ceremony tonight (New Skill here too!). They put in their first shift at the extension office today!!

11. Regenerate What Is Lost: Am serializing an amazing book via blog posts: A Self-Supporting Home, by Kate V. St. Maur, published over one hundred years ago. How to build a profitable poultry, mixed stock, orchard and beekeeping operation on no capital and without access to electricity, a combustion engine, or Monsanto. http://selfsupportinghome.blogspot.com
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Spring bread

2009-04-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

Whole wheat; whole spelt; rolled oats; rye; buckwheat; rolled wheat berries; fresh chopped bigleaf maple flowers, leeks, kale, chard, broccoli leaf, elephant garlic greens, "walking" onion greens, dandelion greens; 32 oz. of pot-liquor (water from steamed veggies); honey; agave nectar; sea salt; fresh free-run duck egg; home-dried Bing cherries; flax seeds; baker's yeast. Raise once in the bowl; cut, roll out and shape loaves, place in greased Pyrex or stoneware dishes, set in oven, raise to desired shape, bake at 325 for one hour.
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Early spring tour

2009-04-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

Let's take an early spring tour ... First, we have the bigleaf maple blooming ... if you look closely you can see the bracts are protruding from calyxes -- I separate the one from the other when harvesting, and the pollen-rich flowers go into breads, soups, salads, griddle cakes, souffles, and quiche.

These onions, shown here with an elephant garlic and a Swiss chard plant, wintered over and are getting ready to bloom.

Planting. I'm too old to do this without sitting down or kneeling on padding, and am pretty much married to the gardener's kneeler these days. Compost/potting soil in the bucket is spread in the holes in the mulch, and things like spinach, turnips, carrots, chard, peas, kohlrabi, lettuce, and kale seeds are spread over the "hill", misted, and then gently covered with more potting soil. This gets around the problem of very cold, very wet garden soil underneath the beds. Later, I'll loosen the deeper soil around the plants with a deep-digging fork, but no tilling or spading is planned. I made the right-angled trowel this morning, after seeing one in Eliot Coleman's book (which I strongly recommend). The trowel seems much improved, at least for the way I like to do things.

Sylvester and Sweet Susannah sun themselves along the property line, behind the new pear and cherry trees. An Araucana forages in the foreground.

The Annies (Ancona ducklings) go for a walk.

No bees for the plum tree

2009-04-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

Mid-April snow is sticking to the beds. No bees for the plum tree today ...
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