Round Meets Green

"Vern, go get some potatoes from the cellar for supper". Being bigger,  the best cook in the world, and her first son, of course I did what she asked. A fool might say, get your own potatoes, but I knew better. Never, never bite the hand that feeds you. How will the potato be prepared tonight? I hope they are fried with smokehouse ham, pork chops, or meat loaf. It didn't matter. Tonight we may eat some fried, golden brown potatoes, fresh from the garden.

As requested, I picked out some of the biggest, and gave them to the cook. Bigger means less work, or so I thought. Sometime that week, she again put out the same request to one of us kids, and we never said no. Of course, the person chosen, again picked out the biggest ones left. After a while of picking over the potatoes, the next size was chosen for the biggest, and so on and so on. Right about the time of spring planting, mid to late April, only small clean ones the size of a quarter remained. Now what do we do?

No one ever accused our Mom of just being a pretty face--she had a plan.

Dandelions are notorious for being a pest in the yard, driveway, garden, and anywhere there could be found a teaspoon of dirt. People eat collard, red beet and turnip tops, and all kinds of green stuff. Maybe we could eat dandelion. She knew all along what we were having.   

Not a job for un-skilled hands, Mom always got the greens. It gave her a chance to get outside, check to see if the onions had come up, and just soak up some good old sunshine. Selection was important in order to choose the most tender plants. Those sporting a pretty yellow flower didn't make the grade. Soon a pan full of green tops appeared in the sink, and she cleaned and washed them to perfection.

I was too busy fishing or digging worms to go fishing, but she probably boiled or steamed them until the right tenderness. Bacon odors drifted through the house, and filtered outside to the garden.

Those little round potatoes were boiled and then pan fried to a golden brown. Want to know something; when you are young and hungry, little round potatoes taste just as wonderful as big peeled ones.

Great tasting food soon appeared. "Supper's on" came the call, and we never hesitated. Before our eyes and on the table, Mom served another good supper to eight hungry mouths. She cooked the greens and covered them with a wonderful sweet and sour dressing with fresh bacon bits and chopped onions.

This is how we enjoyed the meal. As always, some form of meat appeared. Let's say tonight it is country cured and smoked ham slices, (the smokehouse not being far removed from the kitchen). Along side of that favorite we added some of those browned potatoes, and on top of the potatoes the dandelion with bacon flavored dressing.

After the blessing we exchanged little conversation. You can't eat and talk.

The healing powers of enjoying a good meal at the end of the day, surrounded by loved ones, cannot be measured.

God is good.

The latest Grit newsletter listed a bunch of articles about home remedies and old-school medicine and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write an article about common garden items that have healthful benefits beyond their vitamins and minerals.  

Growing herbs has many advantages and takes very little space.  You can grow 16 different herbs in a 4’ x 4’ raised bed garden.  You may need to pot some plants: like mint, which is wildly invasive, but you can set the pot down into your bed if you want to keep them all in one place.

Parsley

Parsley has been cultivated for 2,000 years, and was used medicinally long before that. In fact, in ancient times parsley was regarded as sacred and was used to decorate tombs.

This leafy green is not just an attractive garnish; it’s chock full of essential vitamins. Just two tablespoons of parsley provide over 150% of the daily recommended value of vitamin K.  It’s also rich in vitamins A & C, and is an important source of antioxidants.  But what it less known is that the oil which is concentrated in the leaves and roots of parsley is high in apiol and myristicin, which are natural diuretics.

A study published in the "Journal of Ethnopharmacology" in March 2002 gave rats parsley seed extract and found that this significantly increased urine flow.  This would benefit anyone fighting kidney stones.

Drinking a tea made from dried parsley leaves or root three times a day can help keep your kidneys clear.  Steep 2 grams (.07 ounces) of dried parsley in 150 ml (5.07 US fl ounces) of hot water.

Fine Print

Be careful when using large amounts of parsley if you are pregnant, as both apiol and myristicin can cause uterine contractions, and myristicin may cause an increase in fetal heart rate. If you are taking lithium, do not use parsley without medical supervision. Other possible side effects of excessive use of parsley oil include headaches, loss of balance, convulsions and renal failure.^[1] 

Herbal Teas

Several herbs that are essential seasonings for your cooking also deserve a place in your herb bed for their medicinal value. Physician Andrew Weil maintains a list of healthful herbs and their uses at his website, www.DrWeil.com.  In regard to dried herbs, Dr. Weil recommends:

• Don't buy whole dried herbs from bins or jars in stores. These loose herbs are probably worthless because dried plants deteriorate upon exposure to air, light and moisture and the more finely chopped the plant parts are, the faster they lose their desirable qualities.
• Avoid encapsulated powdered herbs because when plants are ground into powders, they're exposed to oxidation which causes them to deteriorate.
• Buy reputable brands that advertise the purity of their ingredients.
• The best herbal medicines are those you grow yourself. Maintaining a personal herb garden can ensure freshness and quality.

To brew a tea, add 1 teaspoon of dried — or 3 teaspoons of fresh — herbs to 1 cup of boiled water; steep several minutes, then remove the herbs.  This is much simplified if you use an infuser.

Here are some of my favorites:

Thyme Tea

Thyme tea soothes a throat which is sore from coughing and has anti-viral properties.

Chamomile Tea

Is a great before-bed tea because it calms and relaxes.  Parents report that it helps to sooth cranky kids when they’re feverish.

Lemon Balm Tea

Counters headaches and can be used to mask the undesirable flavor of other medicinal teas.  Steeped in a stronger solution, lemon balm can be used as a topical antiseptic for minor injuries.

Sage Tea

Can sooth and heal mouth sores and bleeding gums after dental work.

Mint Tea

Is good at soothing an upset stomach – peppermint is especially good at this.

Comfrey

 I grow comfrey as a compost accelerator, but it has healthful benefits as well.  Comfrey contains the small organic molecule: allantoin, which stimulates cell growth and suppresses inflammation.^[4] Scientists and physicians agree that the use of Comfrey should be restricted to topical use, and should never be ingested.  Comfrey salve or a strong solution can be used to treat diaper rash, eczema, psoriasis, and burns. Here is a recipe for making your own Comfrey salve.  She adds plantain, but you won’t need to cultivate those in your garden, just check your yard!

Pineapple

While most of us won’t be growing pineapple in our gardens, it is worth mentioning because of its great benefit in fighting inflammation.  Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, a powerful anti-inflammatory.  This is helpful in fighting the stiffness and pain of arthritis and reducing C.O.P.D. problems .  Taking turmeric with the pineapple increases the benefit in regard to C.O.P.D.

Only fresh pineapple will do – cooking or processing (canning) the pineapple kills the bromelain and its benefits.  The bromelain is concentrated in the pineapple core, so don’t toss that out.  Mix chunks with water and pulse it in your blender to make a healthy juice, or just sit and gnaw on a core chunk.  The fiber will do you good as well.

Considerations:

As noted above, you will get the most from these herbs by snipping off what you need and using them fresh from the garden.  If you must dry them for storage, dry the leaves whole, seal them into air tight bags or vacuum packs and store them away from direct light.  Some can be successfully frozen as fresh leaves.

As with any form of self-medication, consider your situation first.  If you are being treated for a serious medical condition, and taking prescription drugs, check with your doctor before taking herbal remedies.  “Natural” and “Organic” are not guarantees of being harmless or that they won’t interact with other substances.

If you’re looking to add a little fun and whimsy to your garden this year consider growing a few birdhouse gourds.  

Last year we grew about ten vines and were blessed with an abundance of fruit.  

Once they reached maturity and the vines began to wither and turn brown, we collected the gourds and placed them in the attic of our barn for the winter.

Over the past few months the lime green skin of the gourds has molded and shrunk away leaving a hard, weather proof exterior.  

To turn the gourds into birdhouses, we simply drilled a hole in the large bulbus bottom using a hole cut drill bit. The interior has fibrous sections that can be pushed back if they happen to be blocking the entrance hole. You can leave the seeds, I’ve heard the birds will eat them as they clear space to make room for a nest.   

Then we sanded any bits of dry, flaky skin to smooth the surface of the gourd.  

Then drilled a hole for hanging.  

I left the bits of curly stem as added character.   

You can leave them as is, or seal with a stain or clear coat. They can even be painted.  

I decided to use some stain we had lying around from an earlier project. I think it helped enhance the contrasting pattern of the gourd and almost gives it a pottery look.  

Birdhouse gourds make wonderful presents to the gardener or bird lover in your life. I plan on giving one to my mom as a Mother’s Day present. 

To see what else we have growing, visit our farm blog at Iron Oak Farm.   

Though my Mother never really planted or tended a garden, her mother (Grandma) always had a beautiful patch. She had a garden for every season, and it escapes my memory what veggies grew in which season, but seems like every day of the year, she went to the garden to fetch something for dinner. And my most fun thing to do, especially in the summer, was to spend a week at Grandmother's house. Whenever she started toward the garden, with basket in hand, my stomach started laughing, because it knew that it wouldn't be long before it would be filling up with something more than delicious that Miss Maud would send its way.

Now, I must admit, I never helped her tend her garden, and she never asked me to. Because I did so much other field work, I never really liked digging in the dirt and hoeing and pulling up grass. Then again, it could have been laziness that made me sit on the porch in the swing while she worked. I would wash the dishes and clean the kitchen, but garden work just wasn't my "thing." And to this day, I still don't like growing anything, not even a potted plant. So, so much for my "green" thumb.

I grew up eating all the vegetables that my Grandmother grew. We seldom ate anything from a can except sardines, mackerel, and occasionallyVienna sausage. The majority of our food was grown or came from what we raised. Actually, to this day, I don't really like anything canned, but living in the city, there aren't that many options for garden-grown produce (except the grocery store or Farmer's Market).

At any rate, Not only did my Grandmother grow some mean vegetables, but she was one heck of a cook. I can still taste her yellow summer squash, fried with what we call "country cow butter" stirred in with garden fresh onions. Now, that's just good, down-home eating and you can't get much better than that.

Let's see if I can remember what all grew in her garden. Okra, butter bean, summer squash, collard, mustard, and turnip greens, turnip roots, cabbage, onion, corn, peppers, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, field peas, snap (string) beans, sweet potatoes, and of course, most of our fruits, we bought from surrounding farmers or from grocery stores.

This time of year, makes most of us full of outdoor project ideas and Spring delight.  We spend hours (and loads of money) on planning out our landscapes and garden designs.  We carefully select which veggies to plant and which flowers to grow.  Has the following scenario ever happened to you?

After back-breaking work in the warm sunshine, you stand up and stretch your sweat-soaked body.  You step back and enjoy the spoils of your work.  After a long day, it’s time for rest and you head to bed and dream of all the delicious vegetables growing steadily outside your window, and the handfuls of fresh cut flowers you will soon have.

As you awake to the streams of morning sunlight, you run to the window to take in an eyeful of beautiful landscaping and what do you see?

Half eaten flowers here, uprooted veggies there, trampled plants and crushed bushes.

While in your fury you may be brainstorming about deer torture devices-save yourself from an animal cruelty charge and keep reading.

This scenario happens all too often.  As we quickly invade the earth, the deer and other garden loving critters are running out of room.  They have quickly learned what delicious delights are left unattended in the gardens at night and make good use of  this all you can eat buffet.  Why not make this year, the year that the buffet closes down for good.

Short of wearing camo and stalking out the deer when they are mid-munch with your rifle (which is great when it’s hunting season!), there are few totally foolproof ways to keep critters (mostly focusing on deer) away, but join me as we explore some fantastic options.

Human Hair 

This is an age old remedy for keeping unwanted critters out of your gardens.  Take your shed hair out of your hair brush and spread it around in the trees and on the ground surrounding your garden.  The strong scent of humans is said to deter critters.  This is a free option-if you have hair to spare!

(Photo Credit) 

This is a store bought remedy.  This is harvested coyote urine that you spray around (not on) your garden.  The scent is supposed to deter deer.  I have not personally tried this one.

Store Bought 

There are endless sprays on the markets to deter unwanted critters.  Some of these are chemically created, but most are elements of garlic, putrescent eggs, and fish oils.  I would be very hesitant, despite the company’s claims of being safe for edible gardens, to spray on actual edibles.  I have tried the Liquid Fence and sprayed it on the ground surrounding the gardens.  These have been moderately successful.  I have found that most dogs love the scents that are supposed to repel deer.

The one product I have had great success with is Sweeney’s 6-Pack All Season Deer Repellent.  These are little cartridges you hang or stake into the ground.  They are filled with a scent powder that is spread throughout the air that supposedly makes deer flee. I used these religiously last year and had great success.  They are around $20 and last all season.  I have heard some not so great reports from other people’s experiences, but mine was positive.  One downside to this product is my dogs loved it.  They would find the cartridges, chew through the plastic and eat the scent powder.  Good at repelling deer-not good at repelling dogs!

Hot pepper spray is also a remedy some gardeners swear by.  You can purchase this, but I recommend making your own.  Here is one recipe I found: Homemade Pepper Deer Repellent Spray. 

Defensive Planting 

You can also plant in a way that hides the most delicious plants.  You can plant large bushes around the desired area, but the downside to this is it is not as aesthetically pleasing.

You can also utilize plants with strong odors to cover up the scents of the other plants the critters are after.  These include Rosemary, Parsley, Garlic, Basil, Chives, Chrysanthemum, Sage, and Elderberry-to name a few.

Dogs 

These are a good method for alerting you when deer are on your property.  Particularly if your dogs stay outside, their scent and bark will likely deter all critters.

Noise-makers and Movers 

This is a remedy I use in my gardens.  Stealthily and strategically place things that will rustle, bang, move or shake.  Last year, I put plastic bags tied to the fence posts to rustle in the evening breeze.  Many people use tin foil pie plates.  One of the reasons I have ribbon on my fence posts currently, is to create movement-and it looks very whimsical!  Deer are flight animals and will flee at any sign of danger or disturbance.

Fencing 

This is about the only nearly guaranteed method of keeping critters away from your beloved gardens.  This method is typically the most expensive, but a great investment.  Raised bed gardens are a good option for creating Fort Knox inspired areas.  The following is a picture of one of my raised beds-they have one section of the fencing that is on hooks for human access:

This has been totally critter proof in the years I have used it.  There is initial cost that can be pricey, but it lasts for a few years.  The area is small enough that deer won’t jump into the fenced area and secure enough rabbits can’t hop up and under.  Full instructions HERE. 

Along with fencing, is the use of netting.  I recommend using this in conjunction with your fencing, but some lower cost alternatives can be made.  For our blueberry bushes, we like to ensure that they are safe from our chickens, the local birds and deer.  We constructed a portable PVC pipe plant protector that is easily removed by a human, but safe from all critters.

We spent about $15 on each plant protector.  We measured to ensure the plant had growing room, cut the PVC pipe to make a box or rectangle shape, attached with pipe with PVC joint connectors, applied netting and secured with zip ties.  This was a fairly inexpensive and easy project.  You could even spray paint the PVC pipe to make it blend in better.

Just make sure the netting holes are big enough for bees to move in and out.

I hope some of these methods help protect your gardens and veggies this year! I would love to hear what methods you have tried in the past or are currently using.

Don’t miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE, and like ourFacebook Page! 

Existing in emergency room medicine is hard to explain to someone who has never lived it.  It is very much like a different universe in a variety of ways.  I see things and am a part of situations every day that most people never see in a lifetime.  I have stood on a stool cracking the ribs of someone’s loved one as I and the medical team attempted to bring them back to this side of the living.  I have held crying mothers as they stand absolutely shell shocked beside their lifeless infant.  I have then had to go in the very next room with the patience of a nun and a smile of a fairy and attempt to soothe the fury of someone’s impatience as to why the physician has not seen them yet for their stubbed toe.  I have been spit on, cursed at and kicked in the face (weeks before my wedding by the way).

I was drawn to emergency room nursing because to me, it is mostly black and white.  If someone is nauseated, you give them an anti-nausea medicine.  If someone has an infection, you administer an antibiotic.  If someone stops breathing, you assist the physician in putting a tube down their throat that will breath for them.  In medicine, if someone is sick, you make them better.  If something is broken, you fix it.  I love the directness of this world.  I love the responsibility of this role, and I love the honor and privilege of being a part of a time in someone’s life where everything has changed.

In emergency medicine, most decisions and critical assessments are done in a matter of seconds.  Mere second to determine what medical emergency is occurring, seconds to determine what interventions are needed.  Most everything has a solution-for most every problem, we have an answer.  In nursing, it is critical to remember every detail, every order, every medicine and everyone else’s  need.  It is easy to walk out of those glass doors feeling utterly defeated and depleted.

Homesteading is my way of refreshing this depletion.  Juxtaposed to the severe world of emergency medicine, is my quiet, simple homestead.  In the emergency room, mind numbing, back aching speed is essential, but here on the homestead there is no purpose for speed.  There, I take great care with my patients and here I take great care when I am gathering warm, smooth eggs in the early morning hours.  There, I carefully thread an IV in someone’s arm and here I carefully secure my seedlings to support posts.  There, I plan on how I am going to safely care for 7 patients who have needs all at once, and here I steadily make my way to each animal feeding and loving as I go.  I love that I am given the opportunity to exist in both of these worlds; there and here are incredible places to be.

Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE. 

This week off (since my weeks and weekends are reversed from the rest of the world) has gone by entirely too fast.  Working Tuesday night really took away a lot of homestead work time.  I am however beginning to figure out this whole sleep schedule with working night shift which has been a big improvement.  I have been falling asleep to ocean waves on a sound machine app I downloaded and it has been great.  It’s making me crave a trip to the beach though!

For the last two days, I have been doing pretty much nothing but cleaning the house.  Besides the normal house work, I got started on some Spring cleaning.  This meant organizing closets, cabinets, cleaning out my computer, and cleaning other parts of the house that aren’t normally in my cleaning repertoire.  I am absolutely exhausted!  Tomorrow starts my work weekend, so I am grateful to have tonight to rest.

With all of the cleaning I have been stuck inside for the most part, which has been alright since the low last night was in the 20′s.  Looks like that groundhog was mighty wrong this year!  Despite the below freezing weather outside, my seedlings have been growing at a ridiculous rate.  My beans, despite the tiny pots they were transplanted to, have already flowered and are growing tiny beans.

I am surprised they are producing with as little space as they are confined to.  With the extra few weeks of cold, all of my seedlings are outgrowing the greenhouse and the transplant pots.  As any ER nurse knows, you always have a back up plan (or two, or three, or four).  From failed equipment, to lack of supplies, to a patient crashing and there being no help available, it is vital to think creatively.

I decided that since there is no warm weather in sight, it was time to go to Plan B.  This involved taking the seedlings from the greenhouse, that were out of space, and transplanting them to the large containers that were reserved for other plants.  This way they would only be transplanted once instead of multiple times until the weather was warm.  Luckily, most vegetables can grow in containers so they should be happy living out their days in confinement.  I haven’t decided what the extra space in the raised beds will be used for yet.

As of today, only a few plants remain in the greenhouse (strawberries, watermelon, eggplant) and the rest have been moved to containers.  I didn’t move the beans since they are in a fragile time of producing.  I am just going to plant extra bean seeds in the raised bed gardens later.  The plants in containers now are jalapenos, mixed peppers and tomatoes.

I have garlic and viking potatoes growing in containers as well.  The lettuce and cherry tomatoes are fairing decently in the hanging planters.  It’s a bit of a pain to bring in all these plants at night!  

The chickens and pigs survived the bitter cold and were enjoying the sun this afternoon.  Lady-Bug’s belly is growing every day, but no signs of labor yet.

The pig pen crew consists of the pigs, Solstice and Princess (who learned how to escape from the chunnel-hence the reason she is now in the pig pen during the day).  They seem to be co-existing peacefully so far.

Solstice has begun to adjust a bit better to her new home.  She really enjoys spending the day with the pigs.

She was feeling particularly frisky today.

Solstice still comes in at night and Princess roosts with the rest of the flock.  As soon as the weather warms, Solstice, Princess and the chicks will permanently reside in the pig pen.  The old gals are just not tolerant of anyone new so a separate flock will be started with the others.

We are patiently (as patiently as I can anyway) awaiting warmer weather!

Until next time…

I have been trying to spend more time in the pig pen to make sure that Lady-Bug is comfortable around us.  I want to make sure she won’t be afraid if we are nearby when she goes into labor.  This way we can help her if necessary.  I decided to bring out some peanut butter to lure her over to me today.  She will eat out of my hands now which is a huge improvement from her running like crazy in the opposite direction.  She is definitely still timid without the use of food.

Once they got a taste of it, Houidini and Lady-Bug were all about the peanut butter.  It took a few licks to get the concept they couldn’t also eat the metal spoon.

As you can hear in the video, they have excellent table manners: Pigs & Peanut Butter 

In the end, Houidini attempted to take it all for himself.

On the crop front, I planted some viking potatoes in a container today.  There are several methods for this, but I chose to take a few of the starter potatoes and plant them directly into the container instead of cutting or letting them develop eyes.  We will see what happens.

I also took the older plants outside for some hardening.  It is warm today, but really windy.  It’s actually always windy here at our homestead.  I used hair clips to attach the crops to their support stakes so the wind wouldn’t break them.

I have lettuce and cherry tomatoes in hanging planters on the porch, so they were watered today and are soaking in the much needed sun.  I have been keeping them inside at night since the temperatures are still in the 30′s.

I put Solstice and Princess in the goat pen today to give them some more time to get acquainted   There is also plenty of room to run if Princess gets after Solstice again.  The chicken drama never ends around here!

Tonight I am looking forward to my agriculture class because we are meeting at a large, local composting center.  I am hoping to learn some interesting things about composting and vermicomposting (composting with the aid of worms).  After class I have to work until the morning, so I hope the shift goes by quick!

Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE.  

Recently, when I went on my hometown (Hope, AR) newspaper website, I saw the beautiful spring flower, Jonquil. They are so similar to and remind me of the daffodil - my favorite flower.

By the way, you may have noticed that instead of a photo, my blog contains the daffodil. For some unknown reason, I just love flowers and daffodils in particular. I guess God knew I would, so each year, He sprinkled daffodil seeds all up and down the road in front of our house. The first time I saw those pretty, deep-yellow blossoms swaying in the early springtime breeze, I ran down the road for a closer inspection. Then, I picked every flower in my sight. It was my "early bird catches the worm deal." Now, I can't remember if there were other girls who picked road-side flowers, but I certainly did. I have always and still do love flowers perhaps more than anything.

I wanted to interrupt our regularly schedule chicken learning adventure with the debut of our latest project.  As I have mentioned, it has been WWIII between us, the chickens and the family of red-tail hawks that reside in our woods.  I have been searching for a better (and inexpensive) solution and stumbled upon the answer a few days ago.  I came across this brilliant idea from a fellow blogger’s tale of her chunnels (chicken + tunnel).  Her blog can be found HERE.  She had a wonderful idea that is becoming very popular among us chicken folk.  This idea gave me the foundation I needed for Homestead Redhead style chunnels.  Chunnel has become a regular word in our vocabulary this week.

I bought (well actually my sweet husband went out and bought-while I recovered from night shift) 100 ft of the 60 inch welded wire cattle fencing from the feed store.

He also bought a bag of 75 u-shaped ground stakes (what you use to stake bird netting into the ground) and a package of flexible smooth wire.

I spread out the welded wire fencing and cut 5 ft x 5 ft panels.  This was really hard work as I don’t have the hand strength to cut with the tin snips very easily, but I did it!  I ended up with about 20 panels.  I then took a rake and raked all the straw, leaves and sticks out of the way where the chunnel was going to go.  Next, I lined them all up extending from the coop to get a feel on how it would look and proper placement.

This all took a few hours so I decided to wait until the next full day I had to complete the project.

I then cut out a large chicken space in the chicken wire in the base of the coop that would be the beginning of the chunnel.  I made sure to tuck in all the sharp edges so no one would get cut.  I placed the first panel against the new hole and used the smooth wire to sew the chicken wire and chunnel panel together (this idea taken from original chunnel blog-see above).  I then used a few of the u-stakes to stake the ends and middle into the grown.

I took the second panel and set it under the first by a few cm so they are overlapping.  I then sewed those two together and staked the second panel into the ground.  I used the welded wire to help secure any loose space between the panels.  I continued this until I got to the last panel.  Here I used some of the leftover welded wire panels and cut out a section that would cover the end of the chunnel, I secure it to the last panel with the smooth wire.  My intention for the chunnel is to be permanent   There are no access points throughout the chunnel, it is secure.

Princess was the first to try it out.

After looking at it, it seemed like it was missing a little something so I added a hint of camouflage.

I raked up the fallen pine-straw from the woods and spread it around the top and on the sides of the chunnel.  Some areas are more heavily camouflaged than others, I still wanted to be able to see the girls in the chunnel.  I like it camouflaged because it helps hide it from view not only from hawks, but people as well.  From the road, it's not the first thing to draw your attention about the homestead  now that it blends in better.

All in all, this project took about two days (with the excellent help of my niece) and cost about $100 dollars in materials.

I definitely recommend the chunnel for your flock-it’s safe and fun.

Until next time…

As the winter slowly fades into Spring, I have heard quite a few inquiries and questions on keeping chickens.  For the next few blogs, I am going to share some of what I have learned in the last year of keeping these delightful, feathered friends.  I happily welcome any questions or feedback.  The following recommendations are for keeping chickens as an egg source and not as dinner.

Where to Start 

The first place to start is to see if it is legal for you to have chickens on your property.  You will need to find out what zoning laws exist for where you live.  To find this information, you need to look on your city/town’s website, contact city hall, or contact the local zoning office if there is one.  Due to the recent heightened interest in backyard chicken keeping, many cities have become accepting of backyard flocks (yay!).  Most neighborhoods also have their own rules about backyard chickens-check into your homeowner’s association.  Hens are obviously much more accepted in a city setting than roosters since they are quieter.

Gathering the Supplies 

If you have found out you are legally allowed to keep chickens, that’s exciting news!  If you aren’t allowed, it’s time to start a petition to get those laws changed!

A medical word of advice: chickens do put off a dander so if you or someone in your family has a lot of animal allergies, asthma or COPD, make sure this will not aggravate their conditions before you go through the time and expense of getting everything established.

Next is to obtain the necessary supplies you will need over the next few months.  Anticipate spending anywhere from $50-$100 on supplies.  This is the higher average, it is definitely possible to do it for less with more frugal choices.  Chicks need to be kept in a brooder box for several months (if you get day old chicks).  A brooder box is a secure box that houses food, water, a heat lamp and the chicks themselves.  My general rule of thumb is they stay in the brooder box until their chick fluff is gone and they have feathers to keep them warm.  Typically once this happens, it has warmed up outside as well (in our area).  Some people move the chicks out to the coop sooner than later and place a heat lamp in the coop.

The brooder box needs to be a deep box with enough space for the chicks to walk around comfortably.  There are all kinds of ideas for brooder boxes, from plastic swimming pools to wood crates.  We used a large plastic storage bin and cut the inside of the top out and replaced it with chicken wire.  Make sure you have a top on the brooder box because they can find their way out!  In the brooder box you need to have a watering container that is kept full of fresh water at all times.  Make sure you get one that is especially designed for chicks, they are not very smart and can drown in an improper container.  You also want to have a feeder and a heat lamp.  Both of which can be purchased at the local feed store.  Wal-Mart also sells heat lamps near the car/camping section and the bulb will be with the regular house light bulbs.  Chicks are little and unable to maintain a steady body temperature.  We kept the heat lamp on most of the time and made sure it was angled at one end of the box so if they got hot, they can move to the other side.  Just be careful of fire hazards, make sure its not too close to anything flammable, they get very hot.  Here is what we used (with the top off):

There is conflicted feedback on what type of shavings to use with chicks.  The majority of what I read says that cedar chips are toxic.  Just keep in mind that chicks are babies and will likely eat whatever type of bedding you use, so make sure it’s something natural and non-toxic.

Check out your local feed store for chick feed options.  You can also purchase feed online, although I never have.  Tractor Supply and Southern States are our local franchise options.  However, we like to support the local feed store down the road.  Make sure you are buying the right feed for the age of your chickens.  There is different feed for each major phase of life.  We chose to keep our chickens natural and hormone free so we made sure our food was sans antibiotics.

You now have all the materials you will need for your little chicks.

The next step is to find and purchase your future egg layers!  Check back for the next blog to continue our chicken learning adventure.

Until next time…

Don't miss the whole chicken talk series, check out the full blog for more info HERE.

Yesterday as I attempted to sleep while the day carried on around me, I was harshly ripped from dreams by Peanut’s soul cracking howls.  This was his oh so subtle way of letting me know my husband had gotten home.  After hubby was settled inside, I slipped back into sleep.  Again I was wrenched from quiet stillness with the persistent gallop of hooves on the wooden deck.  Up and down the stairs was a loud clip-clop trotting and the sound of the adirondack chairs being readily rearranged around the back deck.  Try as I might, I could not shut out this noise.  Next came the ear piercing shrieks of the hawks.  This got my attention indefinitely.  As I clumsily raced down the stairs and out the door, I was greeted by 4 crazy eyed goats munching on the cardboard boxes left on the deck.  The pigs rooting around in the chicken coop with everything half-hazardously strewn around and chickens dispersed around the back half of the homestead.  Love these kind of wake up calls.

As I looked around further, there was a nice Houidini shaped hole in the fence, again.  After wrangling everyone back into their pen and yelling like a crazy person at the skies to scare the hawks away, I began to put the chicken coop back together.  Hubby then arrived back home with materials to repair the fence once and for all (hopefully).  What a morning.

With the stretch of Spring weather continuing tomorrow, there is much to be done.  Our chicken coop for Princess arrived so we will get that set up and show her her new place.  We are hoping to have time to pick up a Silkie buddy for her also.  We also have plans to finish the raised bed gardens, so a trip to the local topsoil supply store is on the agenda as well.  I have been setting the hanging planters with the lettuce and cherry tomatoes on the front porch to soak in the sunshine while I am at home and bringing them in at night.  I have noticed the cherry tomatoes are not doing so well with the transfer, so I am hoping the sun will help renew them. I definitely learned that this year I began planting too early.  Next year I will be waiting until March to begin my seedlings inside. Live and learn!

10 more days until Spring has sprung!

Until next time...

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE. 

Happy Thursday!  I'm continuing my list of favorite vegetable varieties today.  Yesterday's topic was the beautiful   Calypso Bean , today we have another beautiful bean, the   Cosse Violetta Pole Bean !  This is another variety that I ordered last year from   Annie's Heirloom Seeds .   It produced a prolific crop of tasty, beautiful purple "green" beans. 

I'll admit that these beans were a lot of fun to grow.  For one thing, purple is my favorite color, so growing purple beans was ideal.  Also, although the stems are also purple, the beans were much easier to find and pick than a green bean up against a green background. 

There are only 18 days until Spring has officially sprung.  My seedlings seem to be well aware of this fact and are busy outgrowing their designated space in my kitchen.  This year I started out my seeds in a mini-greenhouse which was amazing.  I did not have any idea seeds could germinate that fast.  Next year, I plan on waiting until later February to start my seeds since I have now had the problem of them outgrowing being inside, but it is still too cold for them outside.  Due to this, I have had to transplant them to larger containers and then will have to do it again when the weather is warmer.  Transplanting is tough on your plants and a delicate process, so the fewer times you do this, the better.  

I keep all of our soil outside in the shed so when I am going to transplant into a pot, I fill a ceramic planter with the dirt I need.  Although from what I have read ceramic planters aren’t the best for long term use (they absorb the water out of the soil), they were only 99 cents at the local feed store.  Since both the soil and the pot are very cold from being outside, I place them in the oven for about 15 minutes on the warm setting.  Make sure you don’t overheat the soil, hot soil wouldn’t be good for the young roots either.  After the soil is warmed, I dig down until there is only a few layers of soil between the pot and where the roots will be.  Removing the seedling from the original pot is a very gentle process. You want to make sure you don’t disturb the roots or break off any part of the seedling to ensure successful transplanting.

As you can see from the picture, this has more than outgrown it’s little piece of soil sponge (they are what came with the particular brand of greenhouse I purchased).  I very carefully pushed up on the sponge from the bottom to remove it from the container.  I then carefully place it in the ceramic pot and cover with the warm soil.  I then water thoroughly.  The ceramic pots I bought have drainage holes, so the roots won’t get rotten from too much water.  So far this method has been very successful.  As you can see, I am running out of room for all these seedlings!

I use leftover wine corks as markers for which seedlings are what so I don’t get them confused.  I also made a legend for the greenhouse to keep those organized as well.

The next steps are to place the lettuce in the hanger planter I have since they will live on the front porch, but I am hoping the weather will warm up before I have to do that.  I also have started the majority of my seeds indoors (including ones that recommended starting outside, not inside) just to see what would happen (don’t press the little red button never worked well for me).  I am interested to see if they will survive the final transplanting to outside.

Happy transplanting!  Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE. 

My hubby had to do a paper for school and it involved the children’s book and movie “The Lorax.”  If you haven’t read this Dr. Seuss book, I highly recommend it.  The movie is also really entertaining.  It gives a great perspective on how the way society is moving, the appreciate for the earth has steadily gone by the wayside.  Old trees with stories to tell are demolished for parking lots and grocery stores.

This book/movie highlights what happened when society disregarded nature in exchange for technology and wealth.  It ends up becoming a world with no clean air, real trees or animals.  A little boy takes interest in what trees used to be and meets the man who was responsible for the decline of the appreciation of nature.  In the end, the town realizes the error of their ways and makes a decision to change how things have been.  Below is a clip from the movie…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slpz0D35oRI 

This message makes my Homesteader heart happy.  I get such a sense of wondrous fulfillment each time I see the bright green life emerge from the dark, wet earth.  It feels like a completion of a circle of life every time I harvest a rich, bright vegetable from its plant and nourish my family with it.  I feel such a true sense that this is the life I was called to lead and can’t imagine it any other way.

Until next time…

I am often met with surprise that I am “into this farming stuff.”  I am not sure if I should take this as a compliment or an insult.  However, I will be the first to admit my tastes and hobbies are about as varied as they can be.  Perhaps I do not look like or talk like what most people identify as a “farm girl.”  Like most other women, I enjoy little spoils like a pedicure, however rare they may be, but I also thoroughly enjoy the feeling of the earth underneath my bare feet.  While I have always harbored an intense passion for animals, it has been in recent years, as I have completed my transition into adulthood, I have discovered this passion for farming and homesteading.

One big reason I attribute this passion to, is the simple truth that farming blood courses through my veins.  Before Chapel Hill was consumed with shopping centers, banks and paved roads; it was a thriving, rural community.  The land that University Mall sits on, is the original home of my family’s farming beginnings.  Parking lots and trim boutiques have now replaced the stomping grounds of my Daddy’s childhood.

Below are excerpts from an article written by the local paper years ago…

“Since the 1960′s, agrarian landscapes that once prevailed around Chapel Hill have given way to urbanization.  One example is the replacement of the former Conner dairy farm.  The owner of the dairy farm, Luke Conner (1891-1974), was born and raised in Vermont, graduated from University of Vermont in 1917 and married Alice Briggs (1894-1975).

One a trip north, Conner stopped in Chapel Hill, liked the area and in 1929 bought 254 acres of farmland west of town.  A 10 room house costing $5000 was built on high ground on the Conner land.  The Conners were no sooner settled in their new home, than the Depression started.  Conner managed to stay afloat financially during the following lean years by the sale of timber from his land, milk from his dairy and 60 acres of low lying land to a neighbor.

Large crops of hay and corn grown there fed a herd of 20 dairy cows, each named for a movie star.  In 1940, Conner built a large red barn that became a local landmark.

The first segment of the two lane US 15-501 bypass cut through his farm in 1952-53.  That inconvenience along with his older age and lack of farm help contributed to Conner’s decision to retire from farming.

By 1969 the Conner farm buildings and cow herd were gone and the Conners were in a nursing home.”  (article written by Doug Eyre)

This article speaks volumes to my simple, farming heart.  I am extremely proud of the back breaking work and creativity my Great Grandfather showed through those terrible years of the Great Depression.  He had a true self-reliant homestead.  I would have loved to meet him and walk the acres of his farm, quietly relishing in all of his stories of years past and tricks of the trade.

I love hearing my grandparents’ and my Daddy’s stories of the movie star named cows, homemade butter and hot summer days spent working hard.  I can only imagine the quiet heartbreak and hopefully peace, of my great grandfather as he must have walked his many acres listening to the contented moos of the cows for the last time, before coming to the decision that not only was his life beginning to face its decline, but times were irreversibly changing.

Through all the modern hustle and bustle around where my family’s farm once stood in all its simple glory, it is hard to imagine acres of rolling green pastures, a bright red barn and cows lazily grazing in the sunshine.  The times I am passing through this area, I stop my truck, roll down my window, and listen as hard as I can, in hopes of hearing the almost imperceptible crunch of my great-grandfather’s boots as he made his way in the dark of early morning to milk his movie star cows. 

The Conner Farm barn in all its glory. 

The large Conner Farm pond where my Daddy fished as a young boy. 

Another view of the Conner Farm barn. 

The incredible kernel of corn. Our country has taken it to a whole new level. So much so, it's controversial. The agricultural business has taken corn and widened its uses EVERYWHERE- animal feed, fuel, most crackers, soda, cereal, dairy products, processed fruits and vegetables, barbecue sauce, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, training fish to eat corn and the list goes on.

If we take a look at WHY corn is fed to animals, it is simply because it fattens them up quickly making them ready to slaughter that much sooner. Consumers are purchasing more fat than they used to because corn fed animals (meat you buy from the grocery store unless marked grass fed) put on weight in terms of fat. This also translates to higher PSA levels in humans that consume this type of meat. Which also enhances the possibilities of getting cancer (s). I'm not taking on the corn industry but as a country, we are a bit used to going overboard.

If we take a moment to reflect why America and her citizens are getting larger, aren't we just like the corn fed cattle? The things we grab at the grocery store are just by-products of corn. Sure, as individuals we are to blame somewhat by what we put in our mouths but when the packaging has a beautiful picture of a small farm that makes it appear to be healthy and the first ingredient is corn or a chemical breakdown of it -it does seem a little unfair. How many people look at the nutritional value of each item they buy and actually KNOW what that long, strange word is? The best tool the food industry uses is trickery. A multi-billion dollar industry that tricks its customers into buying their corn products.

So why corn? Its relatively cheap to produce. Look at the statistics on farming in the past 50 years. We have moved from small dairy farms, local fruits and vegetables, and buying local meats at the butcher shop to using four major companies to supply most our food needs. Imports coming from Chile, Mexico, Argentina, and all over the world to supply us with 'organic' and regular foods. Therefore, corn is cheap and why not mix it in everything. It makes customers feel full and the industry makes more money on top of it. They use trickery to make us believe what we are eating is healthy. Many people think corn IS healthy. Yes, in its most natural state, but otherwise it's really just a lump of starch. Our bodies are not meant to run on such a high percentage of starch so it just stores it as fat.

We pretend like we don't know why disease and gastric problems are on the rise. We blame it on things like people living longer yet think it is amazing when farmers and their spouses have been living "the good life" at 93. It's not because they are lucky. They have eaten closest to nature their entire lives. And yes, also because it is cheaper to produce your own vegetables, meat and fruit. Followed by storing it fresh by freezing or canning.

Growing your own fruits and vegetables and canning them for winter months is the most healthy and best thing you can do for your body. You know what ingredients have gone into it and can pronounce all of them. Its up to us to take care of our families and with the shortage of farmers in the U.S., we will see more corn products on the shelves to fill the need of 'new' industrialized products to purchase. In addition, we will continue to see fruits and vegetables sprayed with chemicals to keep bugs off of them and also to make them ripen pre-maturely. Not enough people are asking what this does to our bodies and more importantly, children. The answer is, like a chemically enhanced tomato or growth hormone given to dairy cattle, it ripens a child early the same way. Our children are the future, and without teaching them how a garden grows or where our food really comes from, they will be in a world of hurt - financially and economically. My children mean the world to me, like most parents feel about their children. So take a moment to ask yourself what you can do to eat healthier by growing your own or supporting local markets that sell homegrown. If given the choice, I believe most people would purchase closest to nature and would opt to buy the NON corn filled products.

Some ideas to get closer to nature:
1. Go to farmer's markets - load up for the week. If anything, they are FUN!
2. Hunt- wild game is SO good for you and very little fat.
3. Buy meat as grass fed from a local small farmer. Store in your freezer (you can get 1/4 cow up to a whole - same for pork). If you don't have a chest freezer, get one. Super cheap on Craigslist.
4. Buy fruits and vegetables in their season and if you know its good buy a lot and can it.
5. Grow a garden, even if its small! Don't forget a berry patch, super high in anti-oxidants and don't take up much room.
6. Look for free range chicken eggs- TRUST me, backyard chickens are on the rise- you can find these literally down the road from you from someone cheaper than the grocery store even if you live in the city.
7. Be on the prowl and keep your ears open for local products, ie honey, pork, beef, chicken, duck, apples, etc. Closest to home is best for your body. The more you put your feelers out, the more you will find. People that raise products like these LOVE to talk about it and the resources will start pouring out.

Homesteading has become the "in" thing to do these days. I see lots of companies capitalizing on that. But their definition of homesteading isn't the same as mine.  

A $1300 chicken coop. Really? Do the chickens lay more eggs? Is it self-cleaning?

Solar systems costing upwards of $20,000. How is that ever going to pencil out as saving on electricity? Sure, you're off the grid, but you're still dependent on expensive equipment that has to be supplied and serviced by someone.  

How sustainable is your garden if you are purchasing all kinds of fancy soil amendments?

To me, homesteading is living more simply and sustainably. It means using what you have on hand. It means thinking outside the box instead of running to the store every time you need something. I am not against modern conveniences. My car gives me freedom. My washer and dryer save me time and pain. The internet enables me to work wherever I can connect, and my computer and Kindle carry tons of paperwork and books electronically for me. In fact, hey, if somebodywants to spend $1300 on a chicken coop, that's fine with me. I might even admire its "purtyness". But I don't call it homesteading.  

So how do I define "homesteading"?

In the city:  keep some chickens, if allowed. Mix the eggshells, chicken poop and fruit and veggie scraps from the kitchen into the garden soil to amend it. Grow what you can and eat it. Go hunting or fishing on the weekend. Make a camping trip of it and bring home your catch. Can, dry or freeze your extra food and eat it. Conserve water. Do dishes in a dish pan and throw the water on the garden. Buy your clothes from yard sales or thrift stores and embellish and alter them on the sewing machine. Save your recyclables and turn in what you don't re-use for cash at the local recycling center.

On the road:  Whether you live in an RV or just travel a lot, there are a number of things you can do to homestead on the road. In an RV:  drive slower to increase gas mileage. Cook from scratch. Learn to recognize a few wild foods you can gather and eat, like dandelion greens (great in salad or sauteed), mint (wonderful tea), crab apples, pinon nuts and fish. Choose dispersed camping or inexpensive campsites instead of always pulling in to hook up. 

In a car:  If you are on the road a lot for business, children's activities, or other reasons, pack a cooler and a snack bag or box. The cooler will have water, fruits and veggies and sandwich stuff or other perishables for the day/weekend. The snack bag will have dry goods (snacks, raisins, coffee, tea, etc.), dishes and utensils. For hot meals pack a small camp stove and fuel. You can set up at a rest area, park, or large parking lot to cook your meal or heat your water. Sandwiches are easily assembled on top of the cooler.

At the homestead:  Here in Northern Arizona it is very dry, so we conserve and reuse every possible drop of water. Dishwater goes on the garden, rinse water and bath water go into the washing machine or flush the toilets. Cooking water is cooled and put on the garden. We grow what we can and eat what we grow. We preserve any extra and eat it later.  The milk from the goats and cow is made into butter and cheese. The whey is used for cooking or fed back to the chickens. The shells from the chicken eggs are crushed and fed back to them for extra calcium and grit. We fish and eat what we catch. We eat the cows and goats and chickens. Bones get made into nutritious soup broth, then the bones are fed to the dogs. Meat scraps get fed to the dogs. Bread scraps go to the chickens. Fruit and veggie scraps go in the compost heap, thence to the garden. Need I say it? The animal poop goes on the garden.

Our gym is the wood pile, the hay bales, the garden, the repairs that need done. Our entertainment is the dark night sky with billions of stars, watching the critters play, taking a walk around the property or playing with the critters.

Old milk jugs become feeders, planters, grain scoops and watering cans. Old buckets are used for kindling, water, toolboxes and planters. Old clothes and linens are used for cleaning rags, then oil rags, then sometimes even compost. We make do, rarely buy new, frequently do without. Not because we have to, because we have found that living more simply is simply more living.

For more of Mrs. D's Homesteading adventures, stop by the website and blog:  www.mrsdshomestead.com Around The Homestead.

If children are part of your backyard farm, (even if they're just visitors) creating a children's garden can welcome them and encourage them to explore their own small corner of earth.  Helping children take part in the work of producing their own food benefits everyone.  Gardening not only teaches children about the process of growing things, but also teaches compassion, hard work, and ignites the  curiosity.  Working alongside children in the garden makes the experience even more powerful and is an can be an integral part of backyard farming. 

When you begin to design a children's garden, remember that this space can be simply a traditional garden space where a child is the gardener, or an entire area dedicated to structures and children's related play and gardening.  Based on your space, your time, the age of your child, and you children's interest, you can design the garden space specifically to meet your needs.

A few Things to Remember 

• Before you get started, remember this is a children's garden.  Make sure they are involved in the entire process (including the planning).  While it's tempting to do much of the work yourself, make sure there is an area that is truly 100% there own.  While watching a child transplant the same plant everyday may be painful for you to watch, it is part of their process and learning, and will truly give them ownership over the space.

• Resist the temptation to hide the garden in the back or in a shady space where plants won't grow.  A child will place a greater importance on a garden if you show it is important

• Encourage children to grow food.  They will often learn to love the food they grow even if they don't like the store bought version. There is nothing as tasty are food right from the garden

• Work in the garden (or a nearby garden) with your child - it truly is one of the best things you can do

• A stick teepee for growing beans or vines
• A balance beam
• Strawberry plants
• Bulbs and seeds
• Favorite Vegetables
• A tunnel or fort
• A texture garden
• An aromatherapy garden with herbs
• Sunflowers - a sunflower house
• A sandbox
• A quiet reflective spot
• A bridge
• A fairy Garden  
• A music wall 
• A Game
• Natural Wood block
• Table and chairs

For more ideas, check out this Pinterest board and visit me on Facebook. 

You can also get more ideas on planning this years garden in some of these recent posts:

 Planning a Bee Garden
Winter Planning for Spring (and summer) Vegetable Gardens
Ordering Seeds

























 

According to the gardening books, it’s time to put the garden to sleep for the winter. Not that my little patch was completely awake during the growing season, but it did produce a few vegetables and a good many herbs. 

I like getting the garden ready for winter. Expectations are low; in fact, all that matters is that I pull the weeds and pile them on a compost heap. Preparing the soil to rest is like stripping old paint from an antique dresser. You simply can’t hurt anything; it already looks as bad as it ever will.

The sage and mint are continuing to persevere amidst the relatively cold nights and chilly days of mid to late autumn. They will shine even more when I remove the dead, gangly stalks of brown plant material: they’re a true tribute to the robustness of domesticated weeds.

Finding time to clear out the garden seems to be my biggest challenge. The sun dips behind the horizon shortly after 5 pm these days. By the time I close down the computer and push in the last chair in my classroom, the large lunar fireball is already dipping dangerously low in the sky. We do have a few holidays coming up in the next couple of days. Thanksgiving is near, and the Powers that Be have seen fit to give us three entire free days this year…more than we have ever had before. Perhaps I will spend the frantic hours of “black Friday” puttering away in the back forty. Stacking weeds seems so much more restful than pushing through throngs of agitated bodies at the local mall. Such clamor and clutter messes with the minds of theoretical farmers---way too much reality for our philosophical brains to process.

Between now and Friday, perhaps I will do a bit more research on proper winter gardening for our neck of the woods. I still haven’t given up on horseradish and carrots, although I suspect I should have planted them much earlier… Whatever the case, I am looking forward to several uninterrupted hours in my garden. I’ve missed our time together. 

Late Autumn Mint

A heavy frost did-in my pepper patch, so I harvested all the peppers that remained and were not ruined by the frost.  That yielded a full basket of sweet bell, banana and lipstick peppers: more than we could possibly use before they go bad.  I have a shelf full of canned, sliced peppers; bags and bags of frozen peppers, several jars of dried peppers… what can I do with these final sweet peppers for a bit of variety?

Marie turned to the internet and came up with a recipe for sweet pepper relish. This one is tagged with the word Heinz, so I assume that company is somehow the original source, so I’ll mention that, although the recipe was found on www.food.com.

Ingredients for Sweet Pepper Relish

• 6 medium green bell peppers
• 6 medium ripe bell peppers (red, yellow, orange, mix & match)
• 3 medium onions
• 2 – 4 hot peppers (optional)
• 1 ½ cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon pickling salt
• 1 tablespoon mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon celery seeds
• 2 cloves garlic

Tools & Supplies

• At least 4 pint canning jars with lids and bands
• Hot water bath canner
• Canning tool set (wide mouth funnel, jar lifter, head space tool, etc)
• 6 – 8 Qt. enamelware or stainless steel sauce pan or stock pot
• Paring knife
• Ladle
• Wood, plastic or stainless stirring spoon
• Measuring cup and spoons
• Rubber gloves (optional)
   

Directions

Set up your canner and use it to sanitize 4 to 6 pint jars and lids by boiling them for 10 minutes.  Reduce the heat but keep them hot while you prepare the relish.

Stick your onions in the freezer for a few minutes to reduce the eye irritation that occurs while chopping them.

Wash, core and seed the peppers.  If you are including hot peppers (jalapenos, habaneros, Serrano – I’m using Cajun belles) you may want to wear gloves to prevent spreading the capsasin to delicate parts of your face. Washing your hands, even with soap and water does not remove this element from your skin.

Skin and cut the onions to manageable pieces.

Mince the garlic.

In a food processor chop the peppers and onion.

Combine all your ingredients in the saucepan or stock pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.

Boil for 25 – 30 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Turn off heat.

Ladle the relish into hot canning jars, leaving ½” of head space. Use a skewer or other non-metallic item to poke the relish to release any trapped air bubbles.

Clean the jar rim and threads and the lid seal with a clean paper towel.  Install the lid and band, tightening the band just to finger tight (careful, they’re HOT: use your jar wrench to hold the jar while you snug the band).

Use your jar lifter to place the filled jars into the canner (still containing hot water) as you fill them.

When all jars are filled, in the canner, and well covered with water, turn up the heat under the canner and bring it back to a boil.  Cover and reduce heat as necessary to maintain a rolling boil, but not so vigorous as to splatter excessively or to knock the jars into one another.  Check it occasionally to be sure the jars remain covered with water.

Process in boiling water for a minimum of 15 minutes, adjust this for your altitude.

When processing is complete, turn off the heat and allow to cool a bit before removing the jars.  Mine took only a few minutes to cool to the point that the lids sealed down and went “plink” even though still in the water.  If you MUST remove them from the canner immediately, handle them gently, do not tilt them and snug up the bands as quickly as you can to insure that the lids are held tightly to the jar rim until they seal.

Let the jars cool completely.

Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal and use those first.

If you choose to leave the bands on the jars, remove them first, wipe out any moisture that remains and put them back on.  Once sealed the bands are not needed but, if you prefer the appearance or feel better about having the bands on them, get the moisture out so the band and lid don’t corrode. 

Uses for Sweet Pepper Relish

You can use this relish in place of sweet pickle relish in most dishes such as deviled eggs or potato salad and as a condiment on hot dogs, hamburgers and sandwiches.  Traditionally (here in the South), vegetable relish or chow-chow is used as a topping for white beans as a low cost main dish.  Pepper relish is also a favored garnish for pork.  It is unique and flavorful enough to be used alone as a side dish if you wish.  Spice up your family’s dining table and try some sweet pepper relish.

Stevia for the Sugar Sensitive

In this batch I substituted ground raw stevia from our garden for the sugar. I harvested the stevia plant just a while ago (it builds the most sweetness in the late fall) bundled the sprigs and hung them to air dry.  Use just the leaves, the stems and flowers don’t  contain the stevioside that make this plant sweet.

You may drop a leaf or two into beverages like tea or coffee to sweeten it and retain easy retrieval.  Raw stevia does not dissolve even if ground to a powder and will form “dregs” in the bottom of your cup if used as a beverage sweetener.  However, stevia has a very sugar-like taste that holds up well to most cooking and it has no appreciable effect on your glucose levels, so it makes an excellent sweetener for diabetics or the diet conscious.  It also lacks the nasty side effects of aspartame.

Your only limitations on the use of stevia are that it will not caramelize; so making fudge or caramel is not possible and it does not activate yeast; so many baked goods will not rise like you expect.  In most other cooking ground, raw stevia will not make a difference in appearance or taste from sugar.  You can buy a white, powdered stevia extract that will dissolve in liquids; but the other limitations remain.

Using stevia is simple: for each cup of sugar called for in the recipe, use 1 tablespoon of raw powdered stevia or 1 teaspoon of the dry processed stevia extract.

I have found that stevia grows well here in Tennessee even though it is a tropical plant.  It will not survive winter, and starting from seed is almost impossible; so I take cuttings in the fall, root them, pot them and keep them indoors until late spring when warm weather returns.  Then I transfer them back to my herb bed in the garden.

I hope you have enjoyed this recipe and will give Sweet Pepper Relish a whirl.

As I mentioned last week, I was inspired to keep writing in this blog, but I never fleshed out what I might be writing about. A short list of items includes homesteading, harvesting, unschooling and urban foraging.  

One of the sessions I attended at the Mother Earth News Fair talked about all the food she had within reach of her backyard, or on the roads she travels to and from work. Living in Maine, she had an abundant supply of wild blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. But she also found that the plants in her own garden, so often ripped out as weeds, were very edible and sometimes more nutritious than the very veggies she was trying to protect. 

In our home, we have already known from our time at Foxwood Farm that pigweed, purslane and lamb's quarter were very delicious and hardy weeds. The kids make a regular snack out of the purslane we keep in our backyard garden this year, pulling it between bike rides and the tree swing. They love the idea of foraging for food, even in this small way. Sometimes they'll bring me a stalk or leaf and ask if its food? After careful identification, I give them the thumbs up or down. Since I am so inexperienced in what herbs and plants can be consumed, most of the time it's been a thumbs down. 

Well, no more. I endeavor to learn every plant we can eat on our 1/2 acre lot we rent here in Oshkosh. 

An easy one to start with is our city garden. 

I suppose this can't be considered foraging as we intentionally dug up the ground and planted it with peppers and tomatoes. However, seeing as the spirit of foraging (especially in the city) is to be more self sufficient, the garden is our number one supplier of free* food. 

* We paid $30 at the beginning of the season for all the started plants and $15 for some makeshift fencing.  

In June, when I was holed away in an office for 12 hours per day, Andy took on more than most Stay At Home Dads (SAHD) do. He kept the kids wrangled and dug up a garden from sod that hadn't moved in well over a century. At first he did it by hand, spending three hours moving sod from a 6 x 3 foot patch of lawn. 

Then my father graciously offered the industrial sized rototiller we had used when we gardened at the farm. There is a setting on the tiller specifically made to uproot grasses and this made the work much more expedient, though still exhausting. 

We decided to make four rows, three feet across and about forty feet long, with three foot stretches of grass in between the rows. 

This was a good start for the garden. Good for this year. Next year we will likely expand it just as many rows. As it is, the plants we bought completely filled in the rows and we had no room for anything but tomatoes and peppers. We have some large stuffing peppers, but mostly hot banana peppers, which we think was a labeling error on the part of the gardener we bought from, as we never had a need for that many hot peppers. The tomatoes are two varieties; the classic red heirloom Brandywine and a new (for us) long-storing red tomato called Mountain Mist. You can easily tell the two apart both in appearance and flavor. It's nice to have a small variety; we usually have about 15 different tomatoes, but in the end, they all get boiled and canned and look about the same, even the colorful ones. 

Very late in June, shortly after my temp job ended, we planted the tomatoes and peppers in the fresh farm compost my father had driven over in the pickup truck. Since it came from several composting sites on Foxwood Farm, there was a rich variety of nutrients and compost age. A lovely black earth, Andy took the same tiller and worked it in with the hard, poor soil the sod had been hiding. At last, he used a hiller function on the tiller and gave us "raised beds." Not the fancy ones held in by gleaming white pine boards but certainly enough to keep the plants from drowning in case of a flood. (Little did we know in June that this would be a record breaking year of drought for not only Wisconsin, but over half of the United States. Drowning...not really a concern this year.) 

  
In the process of planting, we discovered lots of bones in the compost. Some were small. Some were large. Now before you get the willys, remember that this came from when Andy and I were still on the farm. Do you remember us talking about those sheep we purchased from a Craigslist ad? We had been told they were wormed before we got them, but shortly after their transition to Foxwood Farm, we lost three ewes in as many days. On a farm, all flesh is grass and they went into the newly formed compost pile to aid in fertilizing our fields in the coming years.  

We really didn't think about that very much after we left the farm. We had a nice little reminder of our time as shepherds and thanked the sheep for their contribution (however untimely) to our new garden here in Oshkosh. At the time of their death, could we have ever known how that compost would be used? It served as a simple reminder of how God works things out in much more perfect and complicated ways than we ever could.   

After the tomatoes were planted, we headed out west and came home to find an amazing growth spurt in both the tomatoes, but also the weeds. In fact, before we even put our luggage back in the house, Andy and the kids and I spent two hours weeding compulsively, before dusk and hunger pains shooed us indoors.   

 
Above, before mowing the walkways. Below, after. Isn't it beautiful? This of course, before the great tomato take over in about a month! 

After that, we kept the garden watered during July and August to preserve the parched plants. Our lawn was brown, but our garden was gorgeous. As the farm market vendors began to showcase their Early Girls and Cherry Tomatoes, we were beginning to get restless for our own brood to hatch. Plenty of green globes danced about the ever-expanding vines but nothing even hinted at ripeness. We bought our tomatoes from a vendor friend instead and dreamed of the first sun-warmed red fruit that would sit triumphantly on our kitchen counter, proclaiming to anyone who cared, "I'm as local as they get!" 

We didn't have to wait long. Early September came and we were getting a steady sprinkle of red maters  hanging out on our counter, waiting for bruschetta or BLTs or a simple slice and rock salt. Then...we didn't look for a few days. We got a heat wave followed by a steady rain for three days.   When the thunder clouds cleared, our own homegrown downpour had only just begun. As Ethan excitedly proclaimed, "It's tomato season everybody!" 

And we set to work. Since we didn't get the tomato plants staked in time, they literally took over the garden and even finding our grassy walkways was a tall order. All the super ripe fruits begin at the bottom, so much of the work is gently and firmly lifting a plant to find it's hidden treasures below. It's exhausting work for a normal person, but with my belly expanding daily and heat tolerance near zero, harvesting became quite the chore.   

Thankfully, I had two excellent helpers in Elly and Ethan...and Liam was just amusing to have around as he eagerly picked all the tiny green "balls" he could find. I found out that while Elly has an eye for the very ripe ones, Ethan was fearless, burying his small 3 year old body deep in the monstrous tomato plants for the red globes underneath. 

Over the course of the month, Ethan has been my best and most eager helper in the garden. As a middle child, it's sometimes hard for him to have a niche in the family. I want him to know that his help has been irreplaceable and of great value to his Mommy and Daddy.   

 
Once the harvest is in, the time comes for processing. This is where Andy takes over and shines as his personality must find the most efficient and effective ways to can food. Putting eager kids to work never hurts and much of canning is very kid friendly.  

 
One Sunday about two weeks ago, I had some pressing freelance work that needed to be completed by Monday morning. The tomatoes were just as dire. So beginning right after church, Andy began the long day of processing what we guessed to be 120 lbs of tomatoes.  

It was a long day indeed. Hours after the kids were in bed, he was still boiling water and slicing stems and peeling skins. Hours after I was in bed, he was cleaning the kitchen and making sure the last jars sealed. In all, he worked for 14 hours. We are now blessed with 50 quarts of stewed tomatoes and sauce. When I asked Andy if that would supply us for the winter, he laughed and said, "Maybe til Christmas!"   

It's a good thing that when I began harvesting tomatoes again this morning, we got 90 lbs in boxes and I still have 2/3 of the garden to pick.     

Our neighbors in our small block think we're nuts. Some even have gardens, but only enough to supply them for the fresh season. An older lady saw us weeding in July and asked if were had planted a truck garden. For those of you who may not know, truck gardeners were the equivalent of the farm market vendors of today; people who planted huge gardens with the intent to truck the produce into the nearby towns and cities to sell. No, we assured her, this was not our intent. We explained that we just liked to make our own food and her eyes brightened immediately. She told us a story of her own mother, canning away in the kitchen and how she had to help put the food by. We promised to share our harvest with her when the time came and she seemed delighted. "Can't beat homegrown tomatoes and how I do love to slice them and eat them fresh!"     

We love how a garden brings people in a small community together. The rag tag family down the alley comes by often and offers to pull weeds from time to time. The divorced hairdresser across the street checks up on the progress regularly as she has a green thumb for landscaping. The blended family two houses down has a little girl about Elly's age and after a few get-togethers, we gave the mother several tomatoes and hot peppers. Just yesterday her daughter came over with a homemade cake for us.  Just three days ago, we got a note in our mailbox from a handicapped woman who walks through our alleyway regularly. She asked for some of the green tomatoes for fried green tomatoes. She offered to pay for them, but we'll just give her a bag to enjoy. We'll certainly have enough! 

As the canning season winds to a close in the next two weeks (our first hard frost often lands in the first week of October), we will turn to other means of foraging and winter prep. As I'm actively learning, there's a lot of food out there if only we are willing to work for it.   

This brings me to the country garden.     

A few days ago, we headed about fifteen miles due west to the farm (formerly known as Foxwood Farm). My brother and his family live there now, keeping up the house and front yard quite beautifully. My father continues to raise crops and beef cows on the rest of the acreage while the fate of the family farm seems more securely in generational hands than when we first exited two years ago.     

One of the projects they are diligently working on is repainting the house and garage, no small task as they are doing it without help of a contractor. My parents and brother and sister-in-law have been working for the last month, prepping and priming and painting the wooden siding and sills. When Andy and I pulled in the driveway late in the afternoon, the house fairly glowed with fresh white paint. Ever the classic midwest farmhouse, she is doing well under new management. Having spent about 75% of my life in that home, I am pleased with the care being given.     

Our purpose, however, was not to supervise any home improvements that might be brewing. Today we came for pumpkins and potatoes.   

A joint project between my parents and my brother's family, a large field garden was planted with rows of sweet corn, pumpkins and potatoes. What used to be sheep and cattle pasture is now commercial corn. The temporary fences long taken down, the lane between fields offered ample access for a small strip of garden. Here is where the sweet corn and pumpkins grew. Across the lane, a small triangle of land with very sandy black soil holds the two long rows of potatoes.   

Last week the farm experienced an early frost, killing the family garden and causing the field garden to die down as well. My family harvested the pumpkins and brought them to the front lawn in hopes of selling a few to passersby. Mom and Dad have been involved in a year long fundraiser to build a well in sun-parched Uganda and decided that half the proceeds from pumpkin sales will go towards that cause. We thought it would be nice to see the operation and get a few orange cucurbits ourselves. 

I had hoped to help with the harvest, but they had to grab them last week when I was in PA, so we got to benefit from the season's labor by just walking amongst the beauties and choosing what we'd take home. Since we had no hand in helping grow the pumpkins and yet were invited to take some home free of charge, we chose sparingly.   

I was a bit surprised when the kids gravitated towards the smallest pumpkins in the group, but pleased that they could carry their prizes to the car all by themselves. It also gave them a sense of accomplishment, I'm sure. Even wee Liam managed to grunt a pumpkin over to Daddy before thumping it at his feet! 

And of course, the obligatory kids in the pumpkin patch photos ensued. :-) 

Elly with her new hat from Grampa Steve. 

Ethan, with his exuberance flowing through even a static photo. 

Liam, more than displeased to have been deposited in between these cold, slippery lumps of orange, attempting a fast get-away.   

After we chose our pumpkins, we drove down the dusty lane and began our subterranean search for potatoes. Again, beneficiaries of my family's hard work, we were thankful for the homegrown goodies that lay in wait of our digging fork. 

At five and three, Ethan and Elly have been two full years removed from the last potato harvest we undertook. I knew they wouldn't remember that potatoes grow underground. I asked Elly as we stepped out of the car where she thought the taters were. She looked around and guessed at the remains of the pumpkin patch across the pathway.   

Nope, we told her. You've got to look under the ground. She thought we were crazy and when I explained that a potato was part of the root of the potato plant, it didn't really help her dismay. The best way was to just show her. Andy and I had good fun playing up the digging experience. What could have been a sweat-inducing, mundane task became a veritable hunt for treasure as our children squealed in delight at the sight of each colorful tater emerging from the black earth. 

Here, Elly grabs handfuls of a red variety in which the name presently escapes me.   

Ethan and Elly work together to find the "baby ones" and add them to our grocery bag.   

Finding a particularly large potato caused ripples of excitement. 

Below, Ethan shows off his "Swimming Cow" potato which he dug himself. As I found in the tomatoes, Ethan was again our best helper, sticking with Andy as he dug for the duration of the hunt. Elly lost interest and began exploring the fields with Liam, which was fine. However, our Little Man here never lost focus. 

Before we knew it, we were joined by three of our nieces, who walked the 1/8th mile from the white farmhouse to join in the potato dig. They had come from digging potatoes with their own parents not one hour earlier, but enthusiastically helped us up and down the rows by finding the biggest and most unusual looking taters to add to our bag. In no time at all, we filled the bag much past our initial intent and had to call the search party to a close. With 6 pairs of helping hands, the abundance of food will last us a solid few months. 

Again, I am thankful for the generosity of our family in sharing the feast without any help from us during the season. We were able to share a 30 pound box of tomatoes which mutually helped us out. 

We intended to eat potato soup that evening for supper but by the time we were back in Oshkosh it was already 6pm and the kids were clawing at the windows for food. Poor planning, Mom and Dad! We stopped for pizza at Papa Murphy's instead. I know I know! We're not perfect by any means and we do love a good pizza... 

We had warm potato cheese soup for lunch the next day instead. :-)   

While much of the summer garden is wilting off and ready to be pulled out, the pepper plants are still producing prolifically. I’ve canned, frozen and dehydrated a good stash for use this winter and we’ve used diced peppers in cooking a variety of dishes, but I wanted to do something different while we still have a good flow of peppers.  I wanted to stuff some.

Normally, stuffed peppers involve bell peppers and a rice/meat/tomato stuffing.  But getting enough bell peppers that are properly shaped, the right size and ready to pick all at the same time to make a double batch of stuffed peppers can be tricky from a home garden. This is enough work that I like to do a double batch so I can freeze half of it for a quick, easy meal another time. This recipe is a little different from your “usual” stuffed pepper recipe.

What You Will Need

• Two or three ripe banana peppers per serving.  (This recipe will stuff 25 -30 avg. banana peppers)
• 1 pound of ground turkey (you can use ground beef if you prefer, we like the turkey because it has almost no fat content)
• 1 pound of lean pork breakfast sausage. Hot or Medium, depending on your taste.
• ½  Tbsp fresh Oregano, minced
• 1 Tbsp fresh Thyme, minced
• 2 Tbsp fresh Basil, finely chopped
• 1 ½ cups chopped tomatoes
• 3/4 cups chopped onion
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• ½ cup shredded cheese
• 2 11”x13” baking pans 

Prep the Peppers

Figure out how each pepper will lay best in a pan. Remove a slip along the “top” side of the pepper then cutting down just under the cap of the pepper.  Do NOT cut the cap off.  Poke your knife down carefully to separate the core from the stem, then cut the webbing to remove the core.

If you want your completed peppers soft, par-boil them now for 3 minutes. Stuff them raw for crisper peppers after baking.

Bag and refrigerate the slips you cut off; they’ll be great for dicing up in a salad or scrambled eggs. Compost the cores.

Note, I used primarily banana peppers, but also included a few Lipstick peppers, a couple of Cajun Belles (spicy) and a long skinny sweet bell pepper. All worked equally well.

The Stuffing

In a large bowl, combine the turkey, sausage, onion, egg and bread crumbs. Mix until blended.

Reserve ¼ of each herb for the sauce, add the balance to the meat mix and mix through.

Stuff the peppers with the meat mix, packing the peppers full so no air pockets remain inside. Place the peppers in the baking dishes.

The Sauce

Coarsely chop the tomato and place in a small sauce pan.  I used the oven roasted Roma tomatoes I’d made a few days earlier.  Finely chop the reserved herbs and add to the sauce pan.  Sweeten to taste with a little sugar or fresh Stevia from the garden. Cook the sauce until the tomatoes break down and the liquid thickens.

Spoon the sauce onto the peppers.

Bake

Bake uncovered in a 350° oven for 30 to 35 minutes, test to see that the meat has cooked through in the largest pepper.  Top with shredded cheese and put back in the oven until cheese melts.

Serve and Save

Serve with a fruit and bread of choice. Two peppers constitutes a normal serving.  Super-size if you must.

Place the unserved peppers in the freezer and freeze hard.  Transfer into a vacuum seal bag, vacuum, seal and quickly return to the freezer.  These will keep for months and be the basis for a quick dinner another time. Warm in the oven or microwave.

Enjoy!

We very much enjoyed this different version of stuffed peppers, we hope you do too.

I call our property Marshview since it is surrounded on three sides by wetlands.  What is not wetland was once a cow pasture.  Our piece of land was the western-most edge of the pasture so we have a hedgerow of trees bordering the property. 

We raised two kids here and they are now off to college.  Needless to say, we did not do much to the property when the kids were growing up.   My husband and I both worked full-time and we spent many evenings and weekends at various sporting or school events.   Our lives have slowed down and since I am home full-time I am contemplating what to do with this patch of land.   Do I want to increase the size of the vegetable garden so we can eat more from the garden than from the grocery store?  Do I want to grow wildflowers and herbs?  Do I want to create a natural habitat garden?  Do I want to raise chickens, goats, and/or sheep?   Do I want to create a homestead that incorporates all of these options?

All of these choices require research and a plan. (I am a planner by nature.) Our vegetable garden is relatively unprotected thus our tomato, squash, and bean crops have been pretty much decimated by deer.  My husband and I are designing a garden barrier fence.  He is a ‘form follows function’ type guy but I do not want the vegetable garden to look like a prison yard.    We thought about an electric fence but we decided on a barrier fence instead.

I tried my hand at growing wildflowers, but the local wildlife found them just as tasty as the tomatoes so I need to research deer-resistant varieties or decide on some sort of fence in which to grow them.  I have herbs growing in containers outside the kitchen door.  Do I want to create a larger herb garden or maybe design a portager?

Marshview is currently a natural habitat garden in the most basic sense.  I have not done anything with much of the property so plants are growing, some invasive, with no real design.  The ‘natural’ parts of the property look messy and unkempt.   Cleaning up these areas and adding a few design elements would go a long way to improving the look of the landscape.  If you have not already guessed, I am more of a ‘function follows form’ person.

And then there are animals.  We have three dogs, but adding more animals, whether they are chickens, goats, or sheep, would mean daily care giving and it would be difficult to go away for a long weekend or a week’s vacation.  Do I want to be that tied to this land, to Marshview?

Deciding on what to do with our 2.5 acres is not an easy decision for me and currently brings up more questions than answers. Deciding how I want to live and what I am realistically able to do—financially, physically, and time-wise—will be on my mind as I go about my garden chores.  Today I will be digging up this year’s onion and potato crop.  Deer do not like onions or potato plants so I have had one small garden success this year.  Is that enough for me to strive for more?  

One of the challenges that come with a successful garden is the issue of what to do with the excess produce you produce.  Often you can give away what you don’t use, or sell it at a farmer’s market, but if you’d like to keep some of it for use later, when your garden is not offering up summer crops every week, you’ll need to preserve it.  In past articles I have discussed canning, freezing and drying (dehydrating) various kinds of vegetables and herbs. Today I’d like to look at how we store these goods after they’ve been put up. 

Our house is quite small, and we do not have a basement, so storage of food is limited basically to things to be consumed in the very near future.  Most of the preserved food, and a little short-term storage, has been incorporated into my workshop: what Marie humorously refers to as our Grocery Store (as in store – or stash - of groceries).  Occasionally she will call over on the intercom/phone saying, “Is this the Edwina Quick-Mart?  I’d like to place an order for delivery please.” Other times she likes to browse to see what we have.

We set up some shelving in my office to handle canned goods and dried produce.  The office is the only area that is air conditioned, and subjecting canned goods to the 80, 90 even 100 degree heat of the workshop proper is not a good idea.  I vacuum-sealed all of the dried goods (except dry beans) into serving-sized pouches so we need open up only as much as we would use.  Dried goods include peppers (hot and sweet), tomato slices, apples, pears, and of course herbs.

Onions and garlic can be hung in here after curing.  They will keep well as long as they have been treated gently and have good air flow around them.  Bruising them allows rot to set in.

We were offered a second hand chest freezer at a good price.  We make good use of that for long term storage of tomatoes, peppers, corn, green beans, okra and some herbs.  This year I’ll be adding turnips, beets, squash and strawberries to the inventory.  I prefer to vacuum pack as much as I can as this removes the air that allows freezer burn to set in and extends the safe storage time by at least double and up to 5 times, depending on how careful you are in packing the bags before evacuating the air.  I often freeze the food on cookie sheets, quickly pack the frozen pieces into bags, vacuum seal them and return them to the freezer.  This way, when the bags are opened up we won’t have one huge frozen mass to deal with, but individual pieces can be removed and thawed, returning the rest to the house freezer for use later.  This is especially handy for tomato wedges, cherry tomatoes and peppers.  Cooking for two seldom uses up large quantities of these.

As we empty the freezer we add soda bottles and milk jugs of water to help provide thermal mass to get us through the occasional power outage without losing all our frozen food.

In my office I have a mini-fridge that we bought at a friend’s garage sale for just a few dollars – a cheap luxury intended as a place to keep my lunch and to provide bottles of cold water (and an occasional “Dew“) while I’m working.  It has since been pressed into service as short term storage for cucumbers, zucchini and lettuce, three things the garden is producing faster than the fridge at home has space for.  Some of this gets taken to work with Marie to share with her co-workers.  Mom enjoys some of the lettuce but has her own squash and cucumber plants to contend with, and our new neighbors enjoy fresh veggies.  But I need a “buffer” to handle them while we decide where they will all go.

Potatoes could be stored in the office with the onions and garlic except that potatoes react badly to light until they’re cured out.  Our early crop potatoes (Yukon Gold) don’t hang around long enough to fully cure because we like potatoes and they get eaten.  I store them in a mesh bag hanging in a closet at home that is normally kept closed and dark – and somewhat cooler than my workshop.  The main crop potatoes (Yellow Fin) won’t get harvested until late summer and they’ll go into a box of wood shavings that will keep them dry and dark for the few months that they will last.  If we ever got so far ahead on potatoes that we were in danger of losing them I’d cut them into chunks, par-boil and freeze them for extended storage.

Sweet potatoes don’t get harvested until late fall or early winter (typically the first light frost) and they’re tricky.  They need to be cured for a couple of weeks at 85° then stored for the winter at around 60°.  The 60° is no problem; at that time of year that’s the normal temperature of my shop and office.  The 85° curing period may require setting up a space heater.  If I’m very, very careful in digging up the sweet potatoes, curing them may not be as much of an issue as it could be because curing is normally done to “heal” wounds incurred while harvesting so they don’t rot.  Using my raised garden bed method, we’ll produce somewhere around 75-80 sweet spuds at most and I will dig them out by hand.  It’s the use of shovel, fork or especially a plow that will scrape and cut the tubers.  Once properly stored these should keep all winter long.

And that is our simple life strategy for food preservation.  We do it on a small scale, but the same methods work just as well on a larger scale for those with big families and larger gardens (as well as bigger storage rooms – like a basement).  What methods do you use to store food for later use?

The back forty looks like a disaster area. We had quite a storm move through the Valley Friday evening. The weather-folk call it a Derecho: an unusually strong storm that, fortunately, doesn’t grace us with its presence too often. Derecho means “straight” (or “right”) in Spanish, and it definitely lived up to its name: the gust blew in a precise beeline, pushing over anything in its path. Unfortunately, we had about seven trees standing directly along the route the wind decided to take.

We spent most of Saturday morning pushing against the 90+ degree heat, trying to move the limbs and branches from neighbors’ yards. We still have multiple piles of debris that still need to be cleaned up, but all in all, we fared well. Many of our friends lost electrical power and had to deal with thawing freezers, no air conditioning (or fans!) and dwindling water supplies. There was a run on ice and water; most of our local stores ran out of these staples long before many folks were able to stock up.

The area gardens seem to be resilient, though. Saturday, the cornfields looked rather pathetic with all of their towering stalks lying horizontally across the field. By Sunday afternoon, however, most of the corn had straightened and looked no worse for the wear.  My broccoli plants (already suffering from the direct attention of some little green worms) are still leaning a bit to the East. Hopefully they will survive nature’s onslaughts.

But enough musing for this morning. The weeds are having a heyday in my tomato patch, and such foolishness must be stopped! Even theoretical farmers get their hands dirty once in awhile.

Since I last wrote you, more than a three monthhave passed. And so many things have changed. 

Let me begin at the beginning...which is actually the end of April when I chronicled the post below...

I had been hinting that we were looking for a place of our own and while our first choices were Omro or Winneconne, there was nothing affordable that truly fit our needs. That being said, we found a great old house to rent in downtown Oshkosh. It's the lower half of the home, with the upper being completely chaotic in the midst of renovation, so we don't have upstairs housemates and likely won't for a long time. The yard is roughly 1/3 of an acre, right here in the heart of the city. There are three bedrooms, a large farmhouse kitchen, one bathroom, a huge dining room and living room. Also of note is the sizable front porch and ample space in the lawn for a garden. The ceilings are 14' and the original hardwood floors and woodwork make this home full of character and style. For Andy and I, it was the next best thing to a home of our own on a farmette. As part of the rental deal, the landlord renovated a room in the basement to serve as Andy's work-from-home office, which he is utilizing daily.
   

Here is a view of the front from across the street. Elly is flying past on Ethan's balance bike. The yard on both sides is ours. There is an alley in the back since our street is a one way and our garage is in the very back. We love the porch and cannot wait for warmer weather so we can have meals out there. 
   

Also came with a tree swing in which Ethan here demonstrates his floating run. You can see the back alley and the kids toys to help you figure out what direction you are looking.

Inside, the home also came with a free set of bunkbeds which we needed for Elly and Ethan and a 1947 baby grand player piano. Andy is currently learning how to tune it himself. He's amazingly good at it since he can hear the notes perfectly. We've always wanted a piano!

Below, Liam and Ethan read books in one corner of the Elly and Ethan's room. Liam has his own space again, complete with crib (not a pack-n-play like he had for the last nine months) and rocking chair. It's the smallest of the three rooms and just the right size for him. (sorry, no photos yet).
  

I love the counter in the kitchen. The home came with two tall and stable bar stools that we fit into the corner when not in use. But we can fit the kids up there to help learn cooking and baking, or just watch us work in the kitchen. They love it and consistently fight over the two. Early on, Liam learned he could sit there too like the big kids and now he feels he has just as much right to a stool as anyone else. So...we figured out that if we scrunch the two stools together, we create a bench of sorts and then...

...Everyone can see! And, everyone can participate, just like they always wanted. Whew! 

 
Above, you see another angle of the kids' room, with their new bunk bed. Below, you see their door. Yes, its a big beautiful pocket door and our bedroom has one too!
  

 
Above, this is a view of the living/dining/kitchen rooms. Complete with kid messes! :-)
 

Here Ethan works on some playdough while I blog and Liam naps. This is a shot of our kitchen with the 14' metal ceiling and farm kitchen cupboards. We had to put our canned goods and Grandma's cooking utensils on center stage. It just felt perfect. What you can't see is that we also had room for a "kitchen couch," thereby inviting guests and family alike to hang out in the kitchen when the cooking is being done. Let's be honest, it's where everyone gathers most the time anyway!

Fast forward to the month of June and there have been even more changes in our life...

1. I got a hair cut (ok, not that big of a deal, but it's still a nice change to mention). Before, then after!

 
2. Andy and I celebrated 6 years of marriage on May 6th! (and the reason I cut my hair; a gift to Andrew as he loves short hair on me)

3. Elly turned 5 years old on May 9th. (so soon!?)

 
4. Elly completed her first dance class with a single recital for all the kids in the Omro grade school gym. She was very excited about it, but after three months, she was definitely done with dancing.

5. I got a full time job.

6. We learned we are pregnant with our fourth child!

The last two combined caused me to be utterly spent at the end of each day and the thought of even checking my email made me want to curl up in a coma and sleep for a week.

My job was a temp job with a local corporation doing layout design and typesetting. Very agreeable work, but long hours. My longest week was 70 hours and the shortest was a typical 40. I say was, because the job ended last week. I had about 5 solid weeks of hard work and good pay to help us bank up a little reserve for the summer.

During that time, Andy took over being the head of the domestic arts and excelled at being father, chef, house-cleaner, home schooler and playdate maker. At any given moment, I'd receive an email at work with a photo of the kids' current events. It was very heartening for a newly working mother to know that all was safe, sound and very well at home. He put in a large garden in our back yard and nice looking fence row of raspberry transplants across the front of the yard. It was three weeks of intermittent labor, but it all looks amazing now!

 

I only had one incident at work in which the morning sickness overcame me but I was able to make it to the bathroom in time. JUST in time. Thankfully, I have come out of morning sickness stage and though I am still drained at the end of the day, I can eat most foods set in front of me. We think I'm due about New Years.

Because we weren't planning this fourth addition, we are now in need of a mini-van again. While the Plymouth Breeze has served us well, it won't fit another car seat in the already crowded back seat. :-)

That was our past two months. Really, really nutshelled that one, but I need to move on with current events. And naps are ending in T-minus ten minutes, I just know it!

In a couple weeks, our family has the privilege to travel for the Wisconsin Farmer's Union to North Dakota. This is for their FUE (Farmer's Union Enterprise) Young Couple's program. We applied to be this year's couple and were chosen to represent Wisconsin amongst four other states: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. We will have the opportunity to travel to five locations across the nation in the next year starting with this leadership retreat in Medora, ND. The kids are welcome and we are making a family vacation out of it.

After the three day retreat we plan to visit some friends of ours in Colorado Springs from our CO days. However, with the wildfires causing so many homes destroyed, our friends may be evacuated! Our prayers are with them...

On our way home, we hope to visit our favorite editors at Grit and Mother Earth News!

Today I thought I’d give you a visual tour of my little garden and discuss what is working, what is not, and make a few guesses as to why.

My biggest problem has been battling the bugs; a warmer than normal winter has left us with battalions of bugs and I’m trying to find non-chemical solutions that don’t kill the plants as well.  I've experimented with hot pepper sprays, Fels Naptha soap spray and Eco-Smart spray. 

I’ve also been busy building the rest of the fence boxes and planting the last of my crops.

I have two boxes of tomatoes: 9 plants per box.  Cherry tomatoes (though they look more like grape tomatoes to me at this point) a bunch of Romas, some Best Boy (red) and a few Black Kren.  No yellow tomatoes this year; I still have a freezer full of yellow tomatoes that never got used for anything.  Somehow yellow tomato sauce just doesn’t fly.  As you can see the bushes are bearing heavily.  The Krens are starting to take on some color, I expect they’ll be the first to ripen, but the others may come from behind for an upset at the finish line.  When they do start to ripen, we’ll have lots and lots of tomatoes to deal with.  The Romas are more meaty, less fluid, they should be better for canning.

I just recently got my black beans in the ground.  The delay was caused by lack of funding to buy the soil materials and PVC for the fence.  Once that was done I planted the beans, but forgot to soak them overnight first.  I worried that perhaps I’d messed up because it went a couple of weeks and I saw no sign of activity at all.  But I kept the box wet, watering each day.  One morning I came out and where there was just bare soil the night before was now a forest of little cotyledons.   In a couple of days their secondary leaves began to spread out and I eased back on the watering.  A few were a bit late in coming up, but it looks like all but two or three did germinate.

I planted four Zucchini vines in one box and a pair of summer squash and a pair of patti-pan in another.  All of these have come up and are doing well.  Some have flowered and we will soon be shoving excess squash off on our neighbors – or maybe taking it to the Farmers Market.

My cucumbers are doing phenomenally: look at all those blooms!  We will soon be eyeball deep in cucumbers!  I’ve harvested a few already.  Too bad there isn’t any way to preserve them.  What we can’t eat, sell or give away will end up in the compost bin.

I tried some sugar snap peas this year (in the back, climbing the trellis) and they are doing well.  I stagger planted them so the first round would get tall enough to start up the trellis before the second round got going.  They can then climb up the first round and all will be supported off the ground.  They’ve begun producing and I’ve gotten a handful of tender, sweet pods each morning for the past few days.  Marie is planning on using these in her stir-fry this Friday.  They will also be good raw in salads or steamed as a side dish.

In the foreground are my Roma II bush beans.  I stagger planted two rows; the back row is big enough to be blooming, the front row is just getting going.

My first round of beets are doing much better now.  They were under heavy attack from some unknown insect that was decimating their leaves.  I tried insecticidal soap, but that was no-soap.  Then I tried Eco-Smart’s insecticide and that took care of the problem.  We’ve been harvesting beet greens for our salads for several weeks now and I’m seeing beet bulbs forming in the ground.  I’ll plant my second round tomorrow.  I was going to get that done today, but NBC came out to do an interview with Marie and I for a special they’re running on July 2nd.

Also in this box are 4 eggplants.  one is doing well and has several blooms and one small fruit on it.  The other three are kind of runty, though one has started to bloom.

My box of Mesclun lettuce was another troublesome box because of insect damage.  This was brought under control not through my efforts but because a momma garden spider hatched a brood of bitty spiders in one corner of the box.  They seem to now have whatever was munching the lettuce leaves under control, so I’ve avoided any treatment at all here.  I am careful to shake the leaves as I snip them to dislodge any spiders and keep them in their home not mine.

I was very late getting my corn in.  Same excuse as the beans: being cash poor.  The corn in the fields is already 18” or so high.  I actually had soil in the box for a while but dared not plant until I have a fence around it because Dolly thinks baby corn is the sweetest, most tasty grass there is and would chew the tops off my entire crop if it was not guarded.

My sweet potatoes got off to a slow start because Dolly discovered a liking for the baby sweets as well and chewed off several before I discovered it and strung chicken wire over the top pending building a proper fence box.  Now my biggest problem is keeping the vines IN the box.  Every morning I find the vines have poked through the wire mesh and are several inches outside, straining for freedom. I worry about depth.  My reading says they need 12” minimum depth, but in the garden boxes they have only 6” to start with.  I’m adding mulch as I can make it, but now that the vines are starting to shoot all over, working the mulch in below them to build depth is getting harder to do without damaging the plants.  Hopefully, if they can’t go down, they’ll go sideways.

I’ve got Yukon Gold taters as my Early Crop and I’ve been harvesting 6 to 8 egg sized spuds each week for the past couple of weeks.  That's enough to accompany a meal for Marie and I with some left over for fried taters with omeletts on Saturday morning.  I’m trying to keep the plant stalks upright so I don’t damage them by moving them around while poking around in the mulch looking for taters.

Yellow Finn potatoes were my choice as a Main Crop this year.  They too seem to be doing well, but I’m leaving them alone.  I’ll harvest the crop of full sized potatoes later in the year and hope to store them for at least part of the winter.  I don’t have a root cellar, but in the winter my workshop stays pretty chilly.  If I close them up in a box of wood chips they keep pretty well for a couple of months.  Storing them in rice is recommended, but I haven’t been able to locate a 50 pound bag of rice.

My pepper patch is pitiful.  PITTIIIIIFUUUL!  I planted 4 varieties of sweet peppers, 12 plants per variety.  All were started from good quality seed I’d purchased from a nursery.  But starting them in peat pellets made them get leggy, and they didn’t take well to being set out, the tops fell over and the leaves rotted from laying in the dirt.  Planting the seed in the dirt has done better, but cut worms chewed the roots off of about half of them: nearly all of the Sweet Banana Peppers.  I picked out the cut worms and replanted seed.  Most are doing better now.  The Cajun Belle peppers (this end) will be a scant patch because I used all the seed I had and still only got 5 of the 12 spots to produce viable plants.  The others I still have seed and am getting seedlings going.

Most of my herb bed is doing quite well: thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, and sage are all growing nicely and I’ve snipped sprigs off many times for use fresh and for drying.  I just added a Stevia plant for sweetening things without sugar.  My parsley is finally starting to grow.  I have 16 fists of garlic that were planted last fall and are almost ready to harvest.  Green onions are doing OK, chives are coming along slowly.  It will be next year at least before we can expect to cut any of these.  My Cilantro and Dill have been major disappointments.  I’ve planted both three times, the dill has finally put up a shoot or two, nothing at all on the cilantro.

I have one box that is onions and carrots.  Here I put in white, yellow, and  red onion sets.   A few are getting large enough to harvest.  I have a few sets left, so I’ll put them in as I pull their predecessors.  I’ll  store the onions in Marie’s discarded nylons, with a string tie between each.  This allows air all around but prevents them touching.  Hang the stockings in the barn for a week or so to toughen their skins, then I can move them to the food storage room in the workshop until needed at home.  Snip the stocking below a tie to remove the onion for use.  I’m supposed to braid the stems of the onions, and that might work OK if you’ve got a dozen onions or more coming out at once, but trying to braid two or three together than add two or three more each week doesn’t work out.  I’ll compost the greens, dry the bulbs in nylons and we’ll all get along fine.

I’ve found that I very much like chopped carrot tops in my scrambled eggs, the two flavors work together wonderfully, try it!

I had Mesclun lettuce and radishes in this box.  The Cherry Bell Radishes (foreground) have been doing pretty well; they don’t get very large but taste great, and I snip some of the greens for use in cooking.  These are not good in salads, but when sautéed up in a dish they add a nice peppery flavor.  A couple of the radish plants shot up and produced flowers but no bulb.  Odd.  Just for giggles I’m letting those two stay and see if they’ll produce seed.  As I pull the radishes, I pop another seed in the vacated spot so I always have a mix of mature plants and sprouts to deal with.  This may not be the best way to go.  I stagger planted; one square each two weeks, thinking that I’d harvest an entire square and replant that square, but the bug battle messed that plan up.

As the mesclun runs its course I’m replanting with Green Ice Leaf Lettuce (middle rows).  We’ll have plenty of mesclun from the mesclun box.

The back row are large white radishes.  They take longer to mature and I've stagger planted them: more mature plants on the right and seedlings on the left.

In this box I have turnips and spinach, two rows of each, alternating.  The turnips I stared in peat also got leggy.  After transplanting them, most survived but the “bulb” of the turnips are developing above ground.  I’m snipping greens as they become available: I’m not sure how many I can take without endangering the rest of the plant, so I’m being conservative, but I want to get a “mess” of greens harvested and set aside before it gets hot and they turn bitter.  We’ll get some more in the fall when the temps cool off again.

My spinach did the weirdest thing!  The plants didn’t get more than 6 or 7 inches tall and developed only baby leaves before they bolted.  Unlike lettuce, spinach can be harvested and eaten after flowering, but needs to be done quickly because the leaves will degrade rapidly after flowers form.  I suspect the soil is too rich.  I’m disappointed, but I’ve replanted and hope for a better crop the second time around.  Marie is fine with this, she likes baby spinach for her Race Day Pizza.

Only about half of the asparagus crowns I planted put up shoots this year.  I’m disappointed in that, but am told that it doesn’t mean the others died, they may shoot next year.  I may be able to harvest a few spears next year, but more likely will have to let them go again, snipping the ferns off in the fall for composting as I allow the plants to develop a good root system.

I recently harvested our batch of blueberries and the strawberries have completed their first run of the season.  Being Everbearing, they’ll go again later on.  I can now pull the bird mesh and convert the little hoop houses into this big hoop house that encompasses the grape trellis as well as the blueberry and strawberry beds.  Today I pinned down weed barrier, added 2x4 borders and laid on some pine needles as a mulch/path.  I think I’ll end up moving the needles into the berry beds and covering the floor with shredded pine bark mulch; it will pack down better and not be as slick on these slopes.

If we ever get to where we can afford a chipper shredder we’d be able to make all the mulch we want, I have a giant brush pile assembled that just gets bigger each week.  But chippers are quite expensive. I'll make good use of it though because eventually I want to replace the grass (or bare dirt) between all of the boxes with the weed barrier and mulch to keep grass and weeds out and reduce the amount of labor needed to keep the area mowed and trimmed up.

The next step will be to acquire a piece of bird netting that will go up the front, across the top and down the back of this structure.  Then I’ll build a door and frame and add netting to the ends.  That should exclude our feathered friends and keep the luscious berries for ourselves when the next batch comes on.

I’ve begun planning flowers around the outside of the garden area.  I’m focusing on those that will attract beneficial bugs like lacewings, big-eyed bugs, and lady bugs to control the bad bug population.  I have seen several very small praying mantises, but so far they have not helped much.  Of course ANY form of insecticide – organic or otherwise – will tend to kill the good bugs as well as the bad bugs.  I want to get away from that all together.  But I can’t be putting all this labor and expense into a garden that only feeds the insects.

And there you have it, a quick tour and a look at what’s what in our mountain side mini-farm.

We are at our "urban homestead", here at my parents' home in the Big City.  So here is what my youngest son found on my dad's lawn the other night.  It is a swarm of bees, seemingly nesting on the ground.  There were actually two "nests" going, but overnight they combined into one "nest".

I googled bees and found that there is indeed a species that nests on the ground.  I don't think these were that kind, however, because when I dug up the "nest", they were only on the surface.  The neighbors were being tormented by bees on the streetlight in front of their house, so they called the exterminator.  We believe that these are the bees that came out of that light post.

Of course, my son and I, being bee advocates, want to relocate them.  Dad just wants to get rid of them.  We agreed to see what would happen the next day, when it warmed up.  Dad was convinced they would leave on their own.  They didn't.  So now I guess it's my turn.  My plan is to dig up the whole nest at night when they are "asleep" and put it in a bucket with a lid, take it to a more remote location and turn them loose to find a new home for themselves.

The following day...

Although a few of them left the "nest" during the day, they seemed to stay nearby, mostly climbing on and seeming to eat the grass, too active for us to actually try to do anything with them.  Once the sun started setting, however, they went back to their "nesting" behavior and sluggishness.  It was then fairly easy to dig a circle around them, lift dirt, bees and all into a bucket, and transport them. We sprayed a light mist of water over them when they became agitated from the digging, which prevented them from swarming us.   

In this video (http://www.youtube.com/embed/rgMk7xSt5Ko) you can see their strange behaviour.  Most of them stayed just like this the whole time, which I guess would indicated effects of poisoning.  A few did venture out and fly around a bit. 

Though I suspect they did not survive the poisoning that drove them into our yard in the first place, I feel we did everything we could to give them a chance at survival, and I hope at least a few did manage to build a new home.

For super soothing soaps and lotions made with all natural honey, beeswax, shea butter and goats milk, visit Mrs. D at www.mrsdshomestead.com. 

For more homesteading, homeschooling and simple living adventures, visit Mrs. D Around the Homestead.

June marks the beginning of our sixth month in urban gardening and general homesteading shenanigans. Happy half-birthday to us! Hubs and I have learned some hard lessons (watermelons will overtake everythingif you’re not careful; without thinning, peach trees drop their fruit; and the dogs will poop in the garden boxes given the slightest opportunity), and I don’t doubt the next six months will continue keeping our egos in check.

Some of the lessons have been absolutely necessary, namely: patience. Though we both have country in our background, we’re city folk these days. And although our particular city prides itself on a laid-back, casual lifestyle (we named a downtown street after Willie Nelson, my friends) we are guilty of getting swept away in the flurry of work, volunteer obligations, birthdays, baby showers, and everything in between. Growing our own food has required –demanded– us to slow down. We pay attention to the details: the weather patterns, the birds and insects on our property, and does that Ancho Gigantea look a little droopy? And we wait, wait, wait, until just the right time to plant those seeds or thin that row. Nowhere has anticipation been more painful than waiting for harvest, as my mouth practically waters everyday I see our tomatoes on the vine. I’m this close to pulling them off, green, and frying them in a pan.

But not all lessons have been so difficult. One in particular has been delightful: sharing. In our excitement to garden Hubs and I maybe –okay, absolutely– overdid it with our summer vegetable sowing. Hear me now, believe me later: no two people need four watermelon plants, six okra, eight squash, or seven cucumber (I believe wholeheartedly we need four tomato plants). While I’m giddy at the prospect of learning to can, our pantry space might not support my new hobby. So. Giving away it is.

A few weeks ago, we were hosting a cookout and after a couple glasses of wine, I gave a giggly tour of our newest garden addition– the front yard rows. Star of David okra, Lebanese squash, Yellow Crookneck squash, and Pencil Pod beans were barely peeking out of the soil. I beamed with pride as our friends oohed and aahed. Exactly seven days later, they had more than quadrupled in size and were becoming proper young plants. I was thrilled. We again had friends over for dinner. One in particular praised the new veggies and wished she had her own. While everyone finished dessert I snuck out to the front yard, gently dug up a few plants and put them in small pots with soil. I loaded them into her arms on her way out.

Okra seedlings turn out to be a great gift.  

I prized those veggies. I carefully nurtured them to life, protected them from the elements and helped them grow. I couldn’t wait to eat the fruits of my labor. But more than that, I realized, I wanted someone else to feel the same quiet satisfaction of growing something good. That day, our rows were a little bit thinner but our hearts a little bit lighter. The cherry on top? Getting a message the next week from our friend, glowing about her new plants and how much they perked up her backyard. She, too, is excited for the harvest. 

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, tells us “kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

I have a feeling our garden will be creating a lot of love in the coming months.  

Happenings at home and at work with the animals.

Since we live on a major highway, our yard is fenced to keep the dogs safe. They love swimming in the ponds when it's hot, but that means someone has to take them, and we don't always have time. So, a couple of weeks ago, when the temperature hit 90 degrees, we went to the local hardware store and bought them a baby pool.

They couldn't wait for it to fill. They were in it before we even got the hose in and turned on.

This is our 9-year-old Lab, Maggie. She looks old, with lots of gray hair, but she doesn't act any older than our 2-year-old, Boone. Her favorite thing to do is dig in the pool and splash water all over herself. Then she takes her nose and dips it in the water like she's retrieving something, even though she's not.

Here's Boone digging at the bottom of the pool. I wonder where he learned to do that!

They were enjoying the pool so much, even though it's not really big enough for two big ol' Labrador Retrievers (Maggie weighs 109, Boone 118). Since we didn't have much planned for the day, we decided to really make their day, so we took them down to the pond. When Maggie hits the pond, she loses herself in her own world. She sees nothing and nobody, and she hears nothing and nobody. She would swim for days if we'd let her. Once she gets in, she is in until we manage to trick her into getting out, which normally takes about 30 minutes. We've timed her swimming adventures, and her longest swim was just shy of an hour. Now, when I say she swam for almost an hour, I mean she swam. She didn't get out once. She absolutely loves swimming, and since she has arthritis now, the vet says swimming is the best exercise for her - and she is more than happy to exercise.

Boone, on the other hand, loves to swim, but he also loves to run in the pasture. One of his favorite things to do is run around for a few minutes, then run full speed and splash into the pond. Once he's in the pond, he swims over to where Maggie is and asks her to play. However, she turns tail and swims away. He's finally (after two years) realizing that when Maggie is swimming, he is on his own.

In other animal news, we have three geese at work that have been making regular appearances for the past few weeks. Our back parking lot slopes, so when it rains, it creates a nice pool for them. They started out just bathing in the pool after a rain, and within a few days, they began making themselves at home. They seem friendly and will walk right up to you.

Here is one of them standing tall on the company truck in the back parking lot. It looks like he's checking out our shipping department through the dock door. Maybe he's planning a trip to tour the building in the near future.

A few days later, our visitors helped themselves to some goodies in the community garden in front of the building. Provided with food for the taking, as well as a nice watering hole for bathing, I think they just might be here to stay.

Fencing around a garden primarily serves one purpose: keeping pests out.  Before choosing a type of fence, you need to decide which pests are likely to be a bother to you and select an appropriate style of fencing.  A little research is recommended before making your final decision.

Two years ago I decided to start a small garden.  It was approximately 30’ x30’ with one corner taken out by a 10x12 barn.  Deer and coon have not been a problem here.  I expected rabbits would be a problem, and I suspected dogs would as well: they love digging in soft dirt to bury their treasures and the last thing I wanted was to fork up a potato patch and find a desiccated possum.  I chose (without research) to use a standard four foot high welded wire fencing using 2” x 3” grids.  I drove in metal fence posts and attached the fencing to the posts with bailing wire.  It was simple, quick and fairly inexpensive.

This fencing kept the dogs out, but not the rabbits.  I expected that itty-bitty baby bunnies would get through the fencing, but the big fat hares would have to hang around outside and watch.  I was wrong.  It seems rabbits don’t actually have any bones; for the things can squeeze through some amazingly small spaces.  When I caught the adult rabbits in the garden and went running down the hill yelling and waving my arms, the hasenpfeffer on the hoof would take off like a shot, there would be a “clang” when they hit the fence, but it didn’t even slow them down, they ran right through it.

Had I done my research, I’d have discovered that there is a “rabbit fence” that is similar to the fencing I used but has smaller grids at the lower 18 inches to keep the bunny vermin out.  I pinch-hit with chicken wire.

This year I expanded the garden by a factor of four.  I thought about re-fencing with the rabbit fence, but there are a few additional problems with that.  One is the topography: my garden is not flat and level.  Wire fencing does not conform to hills, dips and slopes well.  Another is the fact that the garden now cuts a swath through the middle of my “front yard” meaning that I will need to traverse it with the lawn tractor to mow and do routine maintenance.  Gates are a pain in the keester.  Last year I did have two gates, but I use the term loosely for they were more like flaps of fence with a board stapled to the free end.  One gate at each end of the fence run where it butted up to the barn.  Bent nails held the board against the barn to close the “gate”.  Such a rudimentary system would not work this time.

Last fall (actually early winter) I decided to build hoop houses to cover the 6 raised bed garden boxes I had then so I could continue to grow food through the winter.  I designed the covers out of PVC pipe, covered with chicken wire (excuse me: poultry mesh), then covered that with “transparent” plastic sheeting.  The idea being that the mesh would help support the plastic during the winter, then the plastic could be peeled off in the spring and the mesh would form individual (and rabbit proof) fencing to keep out all the vermin.

I built one this way.  That one took an entire afternoon to cut and fit the mesh to the frame.  It was already later in the year than it should have been because… well, because I procrastinated some.  I didn’t have time to go this route, so I built the rest of the hoop houses with just plastic over the PVC.  I was able to build and install the other five houses in just two afternoons.  They served me well during the winter, but I’ve decided to make a design change in these covers.

The hoops introduce a lot of tension into the frame that tends to pop joints loose.  I did not use cement (glue) to fasten the frames together, in case they needed tweaking or re-thinking (which is often the case in my life).

Putting the mesh over the outside of the frame added too much bulk and it was difficult to get the frame down into the box.  Also, having the mesh on the outside placed it in direct contact with the plastic cover; the constantly wet plastic cover.  This rusted the mesh quickly.

I decided to try a different design this year.  I dismantled the hoop houses and used as many of their parts as I could in the new design.  This one has the fencing (mesh) attached to the inside of the frame so when the frame is covered with plastic there will be a 1” air gap between mesh and plastic.  The summer boxes have an open top to allow plants to grow tall.  While the plants are small it is no problem to lift the fence box out of the way to get in to plant seedlings, maintain the plants, or harvest.  At 24” high, it is possible to reach over the fencing to work with plants and harvest, it’s a reach to get to the middle section (for me – I’m short) but it can be done.  Tall plants won’t be a problem at all.

The key to this design is this nifty fitting I found: it’s called a “Ninety degree elbow with side port”.  Not all hardware stores carry them.  In fact the one I normally go to for plumbing supplies and advice never heard of it.  But Lowes has them, and I suspect they may be there more for people like me than for plumbers.

To adapt these boxes for winter use I’ll need to add a roof/cover of some sort to support the plastic sheeting and provide active rain/snow removal.  I kicked around a number of designs before deciding to stick with the original idea I had during the winter.

By using this construct at each of the four corners I can add rafters coming up from each side, meeting at another of those 90° elbow/side port things that will join the upper ends of the rafters and accept the end of a ridge pole across to the structure on the other side.  Adding this to the boxes I have built will mean shortening two side rails and adding a Tee fitting at each end of them.  Everything else would be built up from those tees. 

When winter comes, affix a four foot wide piece of plastic to the lower side rail, run it up, across and down the other side to be trimmed off and taped to the opposite side rail.  Add a sort of pentagonal shaped piece to each end and I have a winter shelter.  The mesh can stay in place all year round and not be in the way.

In the spring, peel off the plastic and it's ready for summer use.  If the roof structure is awkward, pull it off at the tees and cap them to keep wasps from nesting in there.

Next Time

I’ll cover the construction of these boxes, what I learned along the way (hard way vs. easy way) and share some tips for newbie farmer wannabes on working with these materials and tools.  Won't you join me then?

I’m getting started on my garden by working on garden boxes. This one is 8 feet long and 4 feet wide. All of my previous garden boxes are 4x4, but this one is specifically for a group of blueberry bushes and needs to be bigger. I'm building it out of 2x8" lumber and fastening the corners together with coated deck screws. I'm using untreated lumber to prevent the "treatment" from leeching into the soil in which I'm growing our food.

Garden Box

Once the box is built I lug it out to the area I'll be expanding our garden into. This is normally the simple part: Just tack some weed cloth on the bottom and flop it down on top of the grass. But we live on a mountain and have to do things a bit differently. To prevent all the special soil from washing out of the box in a heavy rain (which we get often here) I have to dig the box down into the dirt to level it up

I start by going around the outside of the box with a pick to mark the location. Then I use the broad blade of the pick axe to dig a trench into which the rails of the box will sit. I can set the box in place every now and then, check it with a level and know where I need to dig more out.

Here I'm almost done, I just need to remove the rest of the grass and dirt from inside the box, use some of it to build up around the downhill side and toss the rest into the garden cart to be hauled away. I dig in the upper side, build up the lower side. If I were to dig it in completely the high corner would need to be dug in about 16" deep. That’s just silly.

As it is I'll need to add a second run of lumber along the upper two sides to make sure water running down the hill won't wash out my fancy dirt and fill the box with grass, leaves and mud.

 Over the next couple of weeks I need to build another 4x8 box and 10 more 4x4 boxes. We're going to be raising produce for selling at the local farmer's market this year; that's one of the way's I'm replacing the lost income from flat-lined furniture sales.

Seed Starting

For the past couple of weeks I’ve also been starting seedlings for the crops that will go out earliest. Of course I still have lettuce, spinach, chard, onions, garlic and carrots in the garden that I’ve been harvesting all winter long because of the nifty hoop houses I built to go over the beds. But I’ve talked about those before.

I started my spring seed run by ordering good quality seed for the plants I want to be growing this year. This company put the names in a strange place, so I write the contents on the flap edge where they will be easily visible as I check the order in.

I keep my seed packets in a sealed plastic bin, which I keep in the refrigerator in my office. When I get products packed with desiccant packets I toss those in the bin too – this helps keep the moisture down. The cool temperature keeps the seed viable longer. Some claim that it also simulates winter and helps the seed decide that it’s spring when it is placed into nice warm soil. Maybe.

I use peat pellets as a seed starting medium, mostly because they fit into my mini greenhouse and give the seeds a kick-start on germination. I call it The Germinator. The pellets come as hard packed pucks, to make them usable they need to be soaked in water so they expand. This can be done in the greenhouse – if something else isn’t already in there. In this case something else is in there so I’ll hydrate the pellets in baking dishes and transfer them to the green house later.

It’s amazing how much water these things soak up, and how much they expand.

Once expanded the pellets can be moved to the greenhouse tray. I open up the top of the mesh that holds the pellet together if I’m going to plant more than one seed per pellet. A lot of things will get planted two (or three) to a pellet, then when I transplant them to small pots I’ll divide the pellet. The mesh casing is supposed to be biodegradable, but it’s not – at least not in a two year period – so whether I will transplant to a pot or directly into the garden I strip the mesh off as I plant.

To keep track of what’s what I make little flags out of paperclips and masking tape; straighten one turn of the clip, write the label on the tape, cut it off the roll and wrap the tape around the clip.

It’s a simple, cheap, reusable system of identifying what was planted in each pellet. I don’t put one in each pellet though, just enough to delineate the blocks of seeds. The Germinator goes on top of the fridge (it’s warm there) because sunlight is not needed to germinate.

But once they sprout I move the pellets into plastic or aluminum pans (8x8 aluminum cake pans work great, don’t rust and are super-cheap at a Dollar Store) and set them into a window where they will get some sunshine. Don’t let them get too hot; 75° to 80° is tops for most seedlings. But lots of light prevents them from getting “leggy” and being difficult to manage.

Once the sprouts get some size to them I move them either to the garden (if they’re cold tolerant) or to pots. If pots, I also take them outside for a while each day to “harden them off” so that when it’s time to put them in the garden they will be accustomed to full sunshine. I use the Grit Garden Planner software on Square Foot Garden mode to plan my garden. This has very handy notes on planting directions, companion plants and of course a great bar-graph schedule of what plants need to be started when and when to harvest them. It will even send you reminders via e-mail of what plants in your garden plan need special attention. It’s a great tool for a rookie like me, but I suspect even pros will enjoy the convenience it offers. Want to see my garden plan for this year? Click: 2012 Garden Plan 

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions. – Benjamin Franklin 

Broadway, Virginia; 37 degrees; 12:50 pm 

The sky has been spitting rainy mist for the past couple of days—good for the soil but hard on the bones! I haven’t been out to check on the garden for a few days. Don’t suppose much has changed yet; we haven’t had enough sunshine to warm up the ground. Those little seeds are picky. Conditions have to be just right before they will poke their little tendrils out of the dirt.

I’ve been researching the difference between heirloom and hybrid tomatoes. I used to have an old paper towel covered in tomato seeds. An elderly lady gave them to me and said they were the best tomatoes on God’s green earth. Alas, I am not always a good steward of my possessions, and I mislaid the little paper square. I guess I’ll have to go with hybrids.  I know some seed companies say they sell heirloom plants, but to my way of thinking, the seeds are not authentic unless they have been saved year after year by some grandma in a bonnet and calico apron.

I usually plant a large, beefy tomato such as Beefsteak or Big Beef – one of those bovine-like names. I also like to put in some Roma plants as well as they make for good sauce, juice and salsa.  Edna wants me to enter the biggest tomato contest at the fair this year. I’m not much into competition unless I’m pretty sure I can win. I wish you could just wait and see how big the little fellows were growing before you put your name on the dotted line of the contest form. Unfortunately, they make you sign up long before you know the outcome of your crop. Maybe if I ever turn from a theoretical farmer to an actual farmer I will be brave enough to enter.

Edna is still fretting over Cousin Effie taking over the southern bedroom during seedling-growing time. I heard her talking to Hoyt Miller at the Farm Bureau the other day about the possibility of building a mini greenhouse behind her place. Some people sure take their gardening seriously. My biggest worries are the three Fat Kats that live in my house. They usually commandeer the sunniest spots and don’t take too kindly to little pots of plants lined up in their cozy corner. Farming is a never-ending battle with nature.

  

This post is being written at the request of Marie, my wife, because it struck her last weekend while she was making up our usual Saturday night pizza and salad that she still had most of what she needed for both without having to go through the produce department at the supermarket – except for mushrooms.

And it’s December!

Thanks to the hoop houses I built a while back, we are still harvesting lettuce, spinach, onions, carrots, chard, and in the herb bed I’ve got garlic, oregano, rosemary, thyme and sage going strong.  I dug up a basil plant and took it inside and we’re still getting fresh basil as Marie needs it.

Admittedly, the cold temperatures slow things down; I harvest once a week now instead of every day, but that just means we eat it as it comes instead of canning or freezing most of what I pick.

A week ago Marie made up a batch of black bean chili, all of which came from the garden.  Dried black beans, home-canned tomatoes, frozen jalapenos, dried cayenne, fresh onion, only the ground turkey had to be bought.

It just impressed her as being a wonderful thing to have so much free food at the ready when she wants it, especially at this time of year.   

To keep fresh veggies growing, I have to start seeds in my indoor greenhouse; the ground is too cold for seeds to germinate, but once they’ve sprouted and gotten a little size to them I can put them out into by garden boxes with hoop houses over them and they will continue to grow – slowly – all winter long.  Of course not everything I grew in the summer will grow in winter; I’ve selected cold-hardy greens and root crops for the winter garden.

With a little planning I’ll be able to keep an assortment of garden fresh vegetables coming onto our dinner table year round.  That’s pretty cool!

Today, I'm supposed to be at class number four of the Central Illinois Farm Beginnings program. But I'm not. I'm at my kitchen table, writing this blog, and feeling surprisingly OK about it.

The combination of a wonderful but demanding promotion that caused work to bleed into my weekends and my dire lack of knowledge about farming led me to the conclusion that I need to step back, reassess, and rethink the order in which I'm doing things. So the farm class is on hold. I'm not really a drop-out, I've just deferred continuing until next year, but "drop-out" made a better headline. 

I have this tendency to run headlong into things. Once my mind is made up, it's like the starting gun has been fired and I GO! This has served me well so far. After three months of dating, my husband and I decided to get married, and we did so just three months later. Next fall, we'll celebrate our 25th anniversary. When I decided it was time to move from our last house, we had our property on the market and sold in about two weeks, and bought a new house just a week after that. So when I decided that it was time to learn more about farming, I didn't hesitate to plunge into a class aimed at starting a farm business. I thought I was ready. But I'm not. Or maybe I was just on the wrong track.

I am ready, however, to get my hands dirty, and that is exactly the place I need to start. I need a season of planting something in my backyard patch of clay, of learning to make and use compost, of building a coop and getting a few hens. I have to start somewhere, and I've recognized that the place to do it is on this suburban plot I call Half-Acre Farm. Now I need to dig in. 

After my first day in class, I wrote about the irony of learning to farm in a windowless classroom—the very environment I'm seeking to escape. I still think there's a place for what I was learning there, I just think I need to earn a place in that classroom first. As a wise farmer friend said to me, "Courses are great fun and very helpful, but learning by jumping in is exhilarating." It's funny—I was thinking that by taking a class in the business of farming, I was jumping in—but maybe I was jumping around the fact that no matter how much I learn about farming, there's only one way to become a farmer, and that's to do it. So, deep breath! Time to plunge in.

The goal now? Chickens. I've been talking about it forever. Time to do. Time to GO! Let's see if this time, I'm on the right track.
 

It is mid-November and most of the gardeners I know have pulled up the last of their crops, turned the soil over and put the garden to bed until spring. Last year I did the same. This year I decided I wasn’t ready to quit yet.

I had been doing some reading on cold frames and greenhouses. Then I picked up a copy of the Winter Harvest Handbook, found that many root crops and some leafy greens will grow in the cold of winter and I decided I could do this: I’d just have to do it the mountain man way.

All of the instructions I’d seen on building a normal greenhouse start with “find a flat, level spot…” I have no flat, level spots. But I had installed 4’x4’ raised garden boxes as a way to keep my crops from washing down the hillside every time it rained hard. Could I not simply build on that? The following was my solution.

Allow me to preface this with the disclaimer that I am not a master gardener, nor a greenhouse engineer. At this point the whole thing is newly built and untried. I’ll be happy to let you know if it works out (or not) as we go along.

My idea was to build mini-greenhouses that will fit over my garden boxes to protect the plants inside from damaging winds and snow. The Winter Harvest Handbook – written by Elliot Coleman who runs a year-round farm in Maine – offers a whole list of vegetables that will grow in cold weather and many helpful tips on winter gardening without hot houses (heated greenhouses). The big thing is to protect them from the wind. And by retaining some solar heat on nice days, the plants will grow a little better than if left exposed to the normal winter temps. Requirements for me were keeping the cost down, keeping complexity down, and making them easy to either re-purpose in the spring or break down and store compactly.

I decided to use ½” ID PVC tubing because it’s light weight, flexible, and inexpensive. This design uses tubing and Tees, some plastic sheeting and duct tape. Getting the measurements for all the pieces was the hardest part. Once I had those worked out cutting the tubing to length and assembling the frames took only a few minutes per house.

  I did build a fixture on my work bench that holds a couple of the sockets (made from 1” PVC) that go in the corners of the garden boxes at precisely the right distance apart to help me assemble the frames. Most of this is not difficult at all, but bending the hoops that for the top and plugging them into the leg and rail assembly proved to be a challenge if they were left loose.

Cut the 6 10 foot long sticks of tubing to the lengths needed for the framing parts, and assemble the Tees to form the connectors. I used no glue in assembling these hoop houses so I could make adjustments if needed now, and could dismantle them for storage next spring. Where tensions threaten to pop joints apart I use a piece of duct tape wrapped around the connector(s) and tube.

  Assembling the frame goes very quickly. There is one critical factor that must be remembered during frame construction – especially if you are using glue: take it outside before the final assembly! At almost 4’ square and over 3’ high, the frame will not fit through many doors. I assembled the end frames and covered them with plastic, and assembled the center hoop and side rails then took the three pieces outside to do the final assembly and apply the top cover.

I used 4 mil clear plastic sheeting that I bought at Lowes. I wanted UV resistant plastic, but that wasn’t available locally and mail ordering it would delay this project by 2 to 3 weeks. Since I will probably tear the plastic up when I remove it next spring, it may not matter if it doesn’t last more than one year. I fasten the plastic to the tubing with good quality, exterior rated duct tape. Not classy looking, but effective.

I used my garden tractor and cart to transport each hoop house from the workshop down to the garden. They are not heavy – weighing just a few pounds – but are fairly bulky and tricky to carry very far. Marie said it looked like I had built a covered wagon and was heading “out west”.

 The “legs” on each corner slide down into the sockets to hold the frame in place on the garden box. Lifting it enough to clear the legs and tipping the cover back makes a simple way to access the plants inside. I will need to rig a method of tying down the frame so it isn’t lifted off and blown away in high winds. There is enough friction and tension in the foot-socket system to hold well in moderate breezes.

I built enough hoop houses to cover all six of my garden boxes, although I may not plant in all of them. At the moment I have carrots, spinach, chard, onions, garlic, mesclun lettuce, leaf lettuce, Brussels sprouts, thyme, rosemary, sage and oregano planted and growing. Each will grow slowly in the colder temperatures, so I’m stagger planting my crops hoping for stepped harvests through the winter. I may add turnips and beets.

New plantings will have to be sprouted indoors and the seedlings transferred to the hoop houses because the seeds will not germinate in the cold ground. But once sprouted, they will grow and provide us with fresh vegetables.

If this experiment works out, I plan to produce a small book to serve as an illustrated guide with exact dimensions, processes and tips on building these hoop houses. I may even offer pre-cut parts as kits for those without the proper tools. My rough figure is that I put less than $20 worth of materials into each of these houses, all total. Since they can be knocked down and stored for the summer and re-used for many years, only having to replace the plastic ($4 per house) that’s not bad at all. And I do have the option of covering the frames with chicken wire (excuse me… poultry mesh) and using them to keep pests out of my plants during the summer instead of using my practically ineffective perimeter fence. This fence keeps the dogs and deer out, but the rabbits run right through it. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know what issues turn up and how I address them. If you are a greenhouse expert and care to whisper in my ear about problems I can expect, that would be greatly appreciated.

It’s late October; the mountains are splashed with red, gold, yellow and russet as the hardwood trees settle in for a long nap.  There is a bite of winter to the nighttime air.  Most of the garden is slowing to a crawl if it’s not wilting up entirely.  But not everything in the garden is going dormant.

Don’t Put the Whole Garden to Bed

Winter crops include leaf lettuce, mesclun, carrots, chard, Brussels sprouts and onions. These will continue to grow and provide fresh vegetables well into the winter.  Winter gardening?  Outdoors?  Yes!  This is possible by choosing carefully the crop you plant and providing protection from winds and storms through cold frames, many root crops and some leafy greens can be grown even in the winter.  And not just in the south. The Winter Harvest Handbook was written by a fellow who runs a year round farm – in Maine!  And he does this without hothouses.

Nature’s Art Gallery

This is Leaf Peeper season in the Smokies: a time when tourists from all around the country come here to look at and hike among the colorful fall foliage.  There are many festivals as well, nearly all will feature locally made art and crafts, delicious food, as well as traditional dancing and music.

Fun in the Fields

 Another favorite fall activity is to visit a corn maze.  Mature corn stalks can be 7 to 10 feet tall, so a corn field makes an ideal place to play hide and seek.  At some point an enterprising farmer decided he’d mow a convoluted path through his field and charge people to come play in it before harvesting the crop.  Modern corn mazes are planned out in the spring using a CAD computer program.  The corn is planted and allowed to grow to knee height.  Then the paths are planned using paint and anything from a survey tape to GPS devices.  Then the stalks that are in the pathways are pulled up by the roots to prevent resprouting.  Once the corn is grown to above head height, the maze is ready to open for business.

Some mazes provide maps and color coded tags on the corn to help visitors navigate the maze, others get snazzier: one gives each group a flag that stands up above the corn, the leader of the party can get hints texted to their phone from a corntrol tower.  The Oakes Farm Maze in Corryton Tennessee steps up the challenge a bit by placing 12 goal posts inside the maze.  Visitors are to find all 12 posts, then find their way back out.  Plan to spend the day at this one!

Oakes Farm is among those who offer a haunted maze at Halloween, They call theirs The Trail of Doom.  Bring a change of underwear!

If you’d like to check out a corn maze in your state, this web site will prove useful:  http://www.themaize.com/map_locations.php  

Campfire Songs

With the cooler evening air, this is a perfect time to enjoy a family bonfire and wiener roast, just be sure you are being cautions with your fire, the dry leaves will go up like a tinderbox if your fire or floating embers get to them.  You may sing if you want, but it’s not required!

It’s time to get outside and enjoy the cool crisp air before winter sets in and we curl up like bears to hibernate.

Ah, reality. At this weekend’s Central Illinois Farm Beginnings class, it made a strong appearance.

In the previous two weeks, I’d spent time pondering the vision and mission for my business, with the help of worksheets provided by Purdue Extension. It was time well spent.

I clarified my overall goals and values, deducing that I want to connect people to their food in a meaningful way and create a unique, engaging, and educational experience around my farm. My “farm enterprise,” I’ve been calling it, because it has taken on dimensions beyond farming.

What I envision is not just land that I farm, but plots that I rent to people interested in growing their own food but who might not have access their own land, and who would enjoy learning to farm within a community of like-minded people. The enterprise will include raising livestock for meat and dairy. We’ll have a commercial kitchen for baking, canning, and cheese-making, and a climate-controlled room for aging cheese and sausages. We’ll have a retail shop on premises to sell all that we produce. And, since my husband is an artist, we’ll also have an art gallery—and since he has trained as a barista, maybe even a coffee shop! 

But wait, there’s more! We’ll bring in young chefs to give cooking lessons. Once a month, we’ll host fabulous dinners featuring food from our farm or other local farms. It will be a destination, a magical place that makes visitors feel warm, welcome, and part of a terrific community. 

Don’t you wish you were there right now?

Excited about having this big picture in place, and buoyed by the fact that there is a couple successfully combining farming and art at the Wormfarm Institute in Wisconsin, I headed off to class feeling good that I know what I want to do. The topic of the day was doing a SWOT analysis, identifying the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to our farm business ideas.

Strengths came first. I had a list of about 20 or so, from having strong communication skills and marketing experience to knowing when to ask for help.

Then came weaknesses. A much shorter list, but the items on it revealed serious issues: No farm. No farming experience. No experience with livestock. No money to buy a farm in the near future. Debt.

Then came the assignment: Have a proposal for our farm business ready to share with farmers for evaluation in two weeks. Two weeks!  

The proposal should include our vision, mission, and personal goals; a map of our proposed farm; rough estimates for one or two enterprises (such as selling eggs and/or selling chickens for meat); and a rough plan of how we will market our products.

Ah, reality. Hello. 

On the drive home, I couldn’t decide if I felt like a deer in headlights or a deer who can’t stop herself from leaping onto the road and into the side of semi. Either way the fate of my dream seemed bleak, mirrored in the long, dark-red streaks I kept seeing on the highway.

Lucky for me, my list of strengths also includes determination, not afraid of hard work, and embracing creative problem solving.

I thought over my lists again, and moved one of my listed weaknesses to my strengths: the half-acre lot we live on. It’s mostly wooded, shady, and half of it slopes sharply down to a creek, but work with what you’ve got, I told myself. Figure out how to turn this far-from-ideal-for-farming suburban plot into a mini-business, and scale it up to farm-size when the time is right.

So.  

Welcome to Half-Acre Farm. 

I’m now researching what might grow in this space, starting with the 12-by-24-foot garden that gets maybe four to six hours of sunlight. (Skip the fruit-bearing vegetables like tomatoes and squash, I’ve already learned, but greens, herbs, and root vegetables might do OK.) 

I had already planted winter rye in an attempt to improve the soil (clay fill that was packed in—and I mean packed in—after the in-ground swimming pool was destroyed last summer.)  

The rye will grow through the winter, and I’ll cut it down and till it in come spring. I’ve also started composting, creating a bin for us and one for our neighbors, who are happy to contribute.

I need to plan for chickens next. Where this shed is located seems like a perfect spot for a coop that I could keep fairly secure from raccoons, coyotes, and foxes.  

But as I learned today from John Franzese, who provides the most excellent Fran’s Farm Fresh Eggs to our South Suburban Food Co-op, it’s not enough to have a secure coop. I need to consider, too, how to protect chickens from hawks, which are in abundance in these woods. He keeps a couple turkeys as deterrent, although he said owls are not afraid to take those bigger birds down—and we’ve got lots of owls, too!

I’ve also started looking into mushrooms, since this environment seems like a natural (wild varieties are always popping up in the yard.)

Suddenly, what seemed like the easier solution—working with what I’ve got rather than creating a hypothetical, non-existent situation—is seeming not so easy at all. Which is good. (My optimism is out of control.) I believe that if I can work this out and actually create a feasible, profitable business, no matter how miniscule that profit may be, I’ll be better prepared for full-time farming than had I worked with an imaginary, idealistic setting.

Reality, bring it on! I'm ready for the challenge.

I think. 

I hope. 

Can I do it?

I’ll keep you posted. 

Autumn is here in the desert and it’s time to plant garlic again. We’re closing the windows on our straw bale house to keep warmth in rather than encouraging those cool summer evening breezes in the high desert. This is the time of year for hot and zesty meals and the time of year that garlic really comes into its own here at the Bear Cave, for cooking and for planting next year’s crop of tasty and healthy bulbs.

Garlic and onion added to slow cooked pinto beans is a staple here. Spicy bean burros for lunch can happen pretty regularly and make me a happy guy.  Adding garlic to stir fry, marinara sauce made from our garden produce, and salad dressings are just a few of the many ways we enjoy our garlic. Because we use garlic nearly every day, certainly every week, we keep a good supply on hand and make sure we plant and preserve enough to carry through the year. Apart from our belief that garlic contributes to good health, we know it contributes to good eating.

To ensure we have a plentiful supply of garlic, we always overplant. Last year, we went a bit too far overboard and planted 120 cloves of four varieties. Our garlic loving neighbors thank us on a regular basis. This year, we chose the best three of the four varieties and are planting 90 cloves. Should be more than enough for our use and sharing with friends and neighbors.

Preparing the bed for garlic planting is pretty straightforward. We spread strained compost over a new bed. We like to rotate beds for planting all our varieties. In this case, we are putting our garlic in last season’s green bean bed.

Recently, there have been larger numbers of earthworms evident in our garden beds. YEA!  To keep from damaging even one of those welcome little critters so rare in the desert, we quit using a tiller and turn our compost in with a spading fork.

When the bed is prepared, the best of last season’s crop is selected for replanting. Only the largest and healthiest bulbs are chosen.

Bulbs are separated into cloves until we have 90 of each kind. Care is taken to leave the skin on the cloves intact as they are separated from the bulb.

Barbara lays out the bed for planting by running masonry string down the middle and laying out a steel measuring tape between the about-to-be-planted rows. She plants our garlic in rows by variety with one row in the center, on the masonry string and the outlying rows midway to the edge of the bed. The cloves are planted 2” deep and 6” apart in the row with 12” between rows.

In addition to hanging our garlic for preservation, as shown earlier, we also freeze sacks of prepeeled garlic cloves. That’s it, just peel the cloves, put them in freezer bags, and they are ready to add zest to your cooking all year long.  For more on planting garlic in the desert, please visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com and learn how one of our favorite “bean friends” fares here at the Bear Cave.

I left you with a cliff hanger last post as to whether Old Nebraska Dave was going to go down for the count with the new faucet installation or was he going to rise to the occasion and wrangle that old plumbing into the trash can.  As Paul Harvey would say, "Here's the rest of the story."

As we left the story last time the installed faucet was dangling from a piece of wire wrapped around a mirror cabinet and the wall pipe from the sink P-trap was stuck in the wall.  The whole thing kind of looked like a display in a red neck faucet shop.  The score at this point in time was faucet 2 and old Dave 0.  So let's continue and see what happens next.

   
With very delicate instruments the surgery to remove the drain pipe from the wall was performed.   An amputation was made with a sawsall and the end of the pipe removed.  Next a ball peen hammer and a chisel performed the actual splitting of the pipe and rolling the sides in on themselves.  An hour into the surgery the final extraction was made with the ever so versatile vise grips and the surgery was declared a success.  Score a point for old Dave.  Now the score is faucet 2 and Old Dave 1.  Could he be making a come back after being flung to the mat by the stubborn plumbing? I don't know. Flat box furniture comes next.  Everyone knows how much he likes flat box furniture.

I don't see a smile on old Dave's face but he is diligently working on the sink cabinet and I'm sure before the day's end it will be standing in good shape.  What do you think? 

You can't see the sink too well because of the bright sunshine but I think we can chalk up another point for old Dave and make the score faucet 2 and Old Dave 2.  The old geezer is rising up isn't he?  So the sink is set in place and the final assembly begins.  Supply lines for the water are too long.  A trip to the home repair store nets the shortest supply lines they have which is 9 inches.  It's still to long and exerts too much pressure on the bottom of the sink when connected.  So as this day closes the score is faucet 3 and Old Dave 2.  It's a neck and neck battle.  Who will be the winner.  Will the faucet repair be too much for old Dave or will he be able to recover and continue the fight for long flowing plumbing at sunrise?

Ah, one more thing before the day shuts down.  Old Dave always has to improve on the design of flat box furniture and this time is no different.  You can see that he has reinforced the back side of the cabinet to give it more stability  Ah, yes, it's just a thing with him and flat box furniture.  It's been a long day so Old Dave toddled off to a hot shower, a hot coffee, and a hot sandwich before settling down for late night TV viewing.

Wake up!!  The suns up and the coffee's on.  Old Dave is revived and ready to go toe to toe with that old plumbing. Another trip to the home improvement store was first on the agenda for very long flexible supply lines.  Huh!  If short is too long then really long is going to work?  This time the plan was to buy the longest supply lines available and circle them around in a loop right into the fitting on the bottom which would give downward pressure to sink  and help hold it in place.  The supply lines were attached to the sink, a bead of construction adhesive laid around the top of the cabinet and the sink with faucet and supply lines installed was set in place.  A small wait of about an hour for adhesive to set some found old Dave rolling on the floor attaching the supply lines to the wall supply lines.  A few minutes of close quarter combat and Dave rises hands in victory.  So now the score is 3 to 3 with the faucet working and Old Dave is gaining momentum.

Next day Old Dave made a few jabs with a hand saw on the PVC plumbing pipes to fit things together and this fight was over.  Final score Old Dave 4 and Sink faucet repair 3.  Now Old Dave can get to his real passion .... gardening.

The GRIT Garden Planner says that this 4 X 8 bed will only hold 8 broccoli plants.  I haven't planted or grown broccoli before and didn't know that a broccoli plant got that big.  So eight tiny little seeds were planted in the big prepared bed.  The other bed behind me is a different story.  The left side is lettuce which has even smaller seeds than the broccoli seeds.  In this case an 8 plant by 10 plant grid nets a total of 80 plants.  The other side of this bed is planted with carrots which has even smaller seeds than lettuce.  A good health sneeze would blow them all away.  It was the same grid story through which again was an 8 X 10 giving 80 carrots if they all grow.  So
far the only thing up is the lettuce.

So as the sun sets on the Urban Ranch all is well with the plumbing once again.  Until that old monster creeps up out of the deep dark depths of the drain pipe life will remain good.

I leave with one more tidbit of information which is pretty self explanatory.  I just had to try my newly acquired toy which is the flip video camera that I won right here on the GRIT web blog site.  Thanks go to Purina and also Samatha Biggers for hosting the give away on her GRIT blog.  I hope for you to enjoy many more videos as time rolls on in the life and times of Old Dave and the Urban Ranch.

Now where's that dang bottle of Aleve.  I know it's around here some where.  Oh, yeah, there it is.  Right by the coffee maker.  See ya next time and the only rule to remember when working on plumbing is that it all rolls down hill. 

Marie called me the other day and asked me if I’d seen those As Seen on TV upside down, hanging tomato planters in the magazines (we don’t watch television) and if I thought they’d really work.

The reason she asked was that she’d seen them in a local dollar store for a buck each. They had lots of them. She has seen the exact same product in our big-box department store for $8.99. The clerk in the dollar store said that the distributor and donated a semi-load of the things to the dollar store distribution center so all the stores in the region have cases and cases of the things to sell. Marie wanted to know if I’d care to try one out. If it worked as well as was advertised, she could get me more and next year I could take my tomato patch air borne. I answered that for a buck it can’t hurt to try. I even had a couple of volunteer tomato plants that had come up in places I didn’t want them, courtesy of bird droppings.

The thing is essentially a heavy vinyl cylinder with a plastic plate at the bottom and a steel hoop at the top. This bottom plate has a hole, approximately 3” in diameter in the center of it with a ring standing up from the inside surface a little larger in diameter than the hole, forming a lip inside the ring. This ring holds a disk of dense foam rubber that is slit half way across. The idea is to poke the root of the tomato plant up through the hole on the bottom plate, slip the disk onto the stem of the young tomato plant just above (or below, since we’re working with it upside down) the root ball and seat the disk in the ring on the bottom plate.

Then, we fill the cylinder with a high quality potting soil – I used the Mel’s Mix formula used in the planting boxes in the garden. The key here is to put the “dirt” in GENTLY, at least to start, to avoid crushing the root ball and stem.

I could see even before starting that the problem here was going to be in holding the container up to avoid crushing the plant hanging out the bottom, while filling it with a couple cubic feet of soil – which would get heavy pretty quickly. I solved the problem by simply driving a stout nail into a post on my loading dock (a left-over from my furniture building days) to hold the planter at a convenient height for filling, yet keep it off the floor so the plant doesn’t get mooshed underneath. This worked very well.

Three steel cables swaged around the hoop at the top lead up to a heavy swivel/loop hanger in the center. There is also a lid that fits over the top end that forms a shallow funnel toward a hole in the center for watering, but will help keep debris out. The lid is slotted to fit over the support cables, but getting it installed after filling was something of a wrestling match.

I mounted a plant hanger bracket on a post where it would receive sunlight most of the day, and used a real heavy “S” hook to hang the filled up planter on the hanger. This thing has to be watered every day. It has drain holes in the bottom to release excess water so the roots don’t rot, and the swivel allows me to turn it to expose all sides to the sunshine, and to ease picking tomatoes off it later on.

The manufacturer claims the vinyl will not break down in the sun so the planter will last for many years. Having to water them daily could put some people off, because they only have to water the rest of the garden once a week (twice a week at most). My initial thoughts are that it is solidly built and the theory explained in the pamphlet that comes with it seems sound. It might just work. As to whether it works any better than my planter boxes – I’ll have to get back to you on that later.

* * * * *

On Monday of this week we had a gully-washer rain storm. Lots of rain came down very fast, the water ran down slopes faster than normal and washed out some areas and many driveways; including one of ours.

There is a long driveway that runs from the hard road up the hill and around a bend to my workshop / office / lumber yard. When my Mom & Step-Dad decided to move here, seven or eight years ago, we wanted to put their house up by the workshop – at the time, what is now my workshop was our home and what is now a lumber storage shed was my workshop – but the “steep” driveway scared the willies out of them, being flatlanders from Nebraska, so they wanted their house put in at the bottom of the hill, as close to the road as possible. So we carved out a flat spot down there and put their house in at the bottom of the hill. Their driveway branches off of the drive that goes up to the workshop, and I installed an 16 inch diameter tile in the drainage ditch where their drive crosses it to allow for proper drainage. Most of the time drainage is OK. Gully washers are the exception.

This photo shows a portion of our side yard. This is the area we laughingly call our “lawn”. Just out of frame to the left is my workshop and lumber yard, just out of frame to the right is our house (I’m standing at the back of our house to take the photo). That’s Mom’s house, our storage barn for lawn and gardening equipment and of course my garden. Mom’s driveway is between her house and the barn. This area encompasses… maybe a half an acre; maybe a little less. Behind me as a took this shot is another half-acre, maybe a little more of equally sloping land that I have reclaimed from the forest by cutting out all the brush and smaller tress. Beyond that are hundreds of acres of virgin forest on it’s way up to the mountain ridge above us.

In a gentle rain, most of the rain water is absorbed by the forest floor and our “lawn” and does no damage. In a gully washer the ground becomes saturated and can to take on no more, so the excess rolls along over the top and picks up velocity as it goes. This is rarely a problem in the forest because God knows how to take care of his creation and the fallen leaves and ground cover form an armor plating that holds the soil in place. But where we “silly creatures” (to borrow a term from Fraggle Rock) decide to tear things up, remove the leaves and tailor everything to suit our tastes, it’s different. Three inches of rain in two hours will do a fair bit of destruction if it is not channeled properly.

Last fall I detailed the digging of a proper ditch to replace one of my feeble hand-dug efforts, and that has proven to be an immeasurable improvement, for that driveway and not washed out since. But, I never have done much to direct the water that rolls along the photographed expanse, through my garden and across Mom’s driveway. The flood or water washed a considerable amount of mud, rock and debris into my formerly pristine, Mel’s Mix filled planter boxes, then proceeded to carve great runnels out of mom’s graveled driveway and out in the main drive, it joined with water flowing down from the top of the drive and excavated channels deep enough to make the drive unusable until we got them filled it a bit. A couple of hours with a garden rake allowed me to move enough gravel around to make things passable again. If you’ve never tried raking gravel – up hill – let me clue you in should you ever try: keep the Advil handy; your shoulders are going to HURT!

So, after the damage has been done I decided it was time to actually DO what I had been considering for several years, but kept putting off because it’s just about my least favorite job: ditch digging.

After the rain I got out a narrow spade and dug one of my piddly lil hand-dug ditches from about 8 feet in front of the barn all the way down to the main drive, next to the uphill end of Mom’s driveway tile (some would call it a culvert). This is NOT sufficient to handle a gully washer, but it’s a start.

The rains stopped and we were expecting 3 days or more of clear, sunny days, so I let the wet, heavy, clumps of red clay dry out a bit before carting them way up to the other side of the house where we have a hole I want to fill in. Why is it that the place we need dirt is NEVER downhill from the place we are removing dirt?

This ditch will need to be 3 times as wide and twice as deep at the lower end (by the tile) and taper in as it climbs the hill to the top. I’m still trying to decide how to line the ditch to prevent the clay from collapsing into the ditch and clogging it in a heavy rain. To use rock big and heavy enough to stay put in a torrent would mean having to dig the ditch even bigger than I’m planning, and that, simply, is more work than I want to put into it considering that it will be done by just me, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow. If I had access to a small backhoe, I’d be happy to dig another Panama Canal, if that’s what it took. But not by hand; I’m getting too old for that sort of stuff.

Things I’ve considered include using rectangular pavers, angling the sides out and smearing an inch of concrete into it, and simply lining it with black plastic. If you have other ideas, or an opinion on these, I’d love to hear it. I’ll let you know what I decide – and whether it works out – in a later episode.

For now, I’m just glad I don’t live in Montana, Missouri, or Iowa where the residents are having to deal with *really* serious flooding problems. My heart goes out to those folks. Thanks for reading, please come by again next time.

We’re into June already and I’m lagging even farther behind in my garden chores because of supply problems. But I've finally gotten the peat pellets I needed to start the next round of plantings. They are the wrong size; the diameter of the compressed “pucks” is 1/4” too large to fit into the grippers in the tray but I’ll work with them anyway. One advantage of these larger “pucks” is that when they are wetted and expand, they end up with a hole down the middle (think doughnut) that makes it a simple job to drop the seed right down inside. This would not be good for small seeds, but today I’m planting beans and chard. I set up 18 pinto beans, 18 black beans, and 12 Swiss chard. The chard is for Mom. Marie doesn't care for chard but Mom does. I've never had it, so I don't know... but I will try it when it's ripe. I set the clear cover on top and set it in the window to make a small greenhouse that will speed germination of the seeds.

When the seeds sprout, I remove the peat pellets and their seedlings and put them in small planters with potting soil. Here I gradually acclimate them to full sunshine while the first (baby) leaves are replaced by the plant’s initial mature leaves. Once the small plant has been “hardened off” (or made able to stand full sunshine without withering up and dying), I’ll take them out to the garden and plant them in the designated squares. The beans will go into the ground on the inside of the fence line, with the corn/cucumber row outside the fence. These three play well together, but crop rotation will require doing something else next year as beans can be planted in the same place only once in every three years. Maybe the beans will go outside the fence and the corn/cucumbers inside next year.

Overall, the garden is doing well considering that I’m new to this. My one major ‘fail’ this year has been the cauliflower and broccoli; Looper worms ate the centers out of the plants, then started chewing holes in the leaves. Once the centers were destroyed any chance of getting edible parts from there was gone so I pulled them out. The gardening sites say to prevent Loopers I must spray both sides of all the leaves with insecticide at least once a week. I wanted to avoid insecticides if I can, Mom has a “natural gardening” book - I think it’s by Jerry Baker, which offers several suggestions. One is to sprinkle corn starch or rye flour on the leaves. The bugs eat this, it swells up inside them and causes them to burst. There’s a visual I don’t want to entertain! Adding a little salt or cayenne pepper helps to repel the bugs. I’ll give this a shot and see if it helps on the second round of these plants.

The lettuce is still prolific. Marie says she has never seen anyone grow lettuce as tall as this. My theory on this is; it’s because instead of waiting for the lettuce plant to get to 12-14 inches tall and cutting it off at the ground, I snip off the lower leaves and leave the plant to continue growing. This seems to encourage the plant to keep putting new leaves out on top and I keep snipping off the lower ones. Eventually I get a lettuce tree! This works great for the leaf lettuce, head lettuce would be entirely different, and the Mesclun mix lettuce has all different shaped plants - some pretty bizarre looking, but they all taste great and make for a very interesting salad.

The squash plants are beginning to bloom and from the number of buds I see waiting to flower out, we will be pushing squash off on the neighbors and co-workers just like we are the lettuce. I've got yellow squash, summer squash and zucchini, but none of the bigger varieties like crook-neck or acorn; those would be just too much for my little garden!

This year I’m growing both red and white radishes. I’m sure you’re familiar with the red (Cherry Bell) radishes, but the white ones are rather unique. They are white on the outside, red on the inside and when sliced look for all the world like hunks of watermelon. 

They taste like a radish except they are more spicy than the red radish – so much so that nibbling on two of these as a snack gave me quite a case of indigestion! A little of these goes a long way. They are good in salads though.

The tomatoes have many blooms and a few green tomatoes the size of marbles. When they get to the size of golf balls I’ll need to fertilize them with some ‘Mater food. I've got a couple of green peppers almost ready to pick and many more in process. I have watermelon seedlings hardening off now what will go in the ground in another week or so. Everything else is coming along pretty well, and plant chomping pests aren't much of a problem, except as noted earlier, so I’m happy.

As the weather gets hotter, lettuce and spinach will have a hard time growing. The chard will grow well in the summer heat, as will peppers, tomatoes and squash. Once we reach mid-August I’ll be ready to start another round of the cool-weather crops as well as Brussels sprouts.

And there you have it. Not exactly ready to set up a canning operation yet, but we are enjoying what we’re harvesting and I’m having fun managing my micro-farm.

 Greetings from the Urban Ranch.  I truly hope and pray that all our fellow GRIT bloggers and readers have not been harmed by the volatile weather that has been causing havoc across the country.  Here in Nebraska we have escaped the brunt of the storms that have ravaged certain parts of GRIT-land.  We have only had normal storms with enjoyable thunder and lightning.  I do like a good thunder storm but not one with tornadoes, hail, or damaging wind.  We did get some hail but it was only a short burst and teeny tiny little balls which were even smaller than a pea.  None of my garden plants were damaged.

The poor man's patio is shaping up for this years display.  Across the top in the hanging baskets are Impatiens and up the sides are Begonias.  I kind of over bought with the Begonias.  I bought a flat of Begonias thinking that there were 24 in a flat when actually as it turns out there are 48 in a flat.  Yeah, so, I've been trying to give them a good home.  So far only 4 have be adopted out.  The four larger containers you see back by the wall on the patio now have zucchini in them.  I've always liked zucchini but have been plagued by vine bores that would kill the plant just as they started producing.  A trip to the local nursery gave the containers one plant and seeds for the other three containers.  So we will see how effective this method of growing zucchini will be.  Anyone out there in GRIT land have good recipes for zucchini bread, or maybe casseroles.  I think I just might need some with four plants.

As with all working ranches, things break.  Oops, I think I pulled a little hard on that last pull.  I've learned to boldly tear into mechanical things where most fear to go.  Most times it turns out OK.  I've worked on recoil starters before and the trick is to wind up the coil and hold it while threading the rope through the hole while tying a knot in the rope end.  That can be quite a trick and some folks just buy the whole assembly new and eliminate the tedious task of holding a wound up spring while practicing knot tying.  As for me, well, you know me, I'm always up for a challenge.

After wrestling with the spring and getting the rope through the hole at just the right spot, success rules.  Oh, yeah!!  Oh, yeah!!  Old Chomper, the lawn mower, is once again back on duty in his faithful undying way of keeping the lawn cut.  He has served faithfully for many years here on the Urban Ranch.  He was given to me some years back and needed a little tender loving care to nurse him back to health.  A few minor parts and his life here on the ranch as been remarkably reliable.  He might not look pretty, his wheels wobble a little when pushed across the lawn, and his blade might not be the sharpest in the neighborhood, but when the grass needs mowed, he's the one I can count on to get the job done. 

Here is the vine plague from outer space.  It sprouts up every year and must be nipped immediately or it will take over the entire side yard.  I mistakenly left it grow one year and had a difficult time untangling the mess from the side yard.  This year I have cleaned it out early so as not to be overcome with frustration.

This is what happens if this vine isn't kept under control.  It will invade your land and take over every square inch.  Then in the fall it will generate pods of fluff that looks like cottonwood fuzz and blow out a billion seeds all across the land.  I think it's been sent here by aliens from outer space to terraform the earth.  Run for your life the end is near.

One day as I walked past it, the deadly plant reached out and grabbed me.  It was a long and difficult battle between me and the alien plant from outer space.  Relentlessly, I persevered with loppers and choppers until the deadly force of the alien plant was broken and brought under control once again.  There's just nothing like a good fight with an alien plant to make a person sleep better at night.  Once again the neighborhood was safe from the invasion from space.  Hey, Jean, remember the old sixties horror movie called "The Day of the Triffids".  It kind of reminded me of that.

The Urban Ranch Garden as it looks today.  All is well with the garden so far.  The radishes grew extremely well but went to all top and no radish.  I've never had that happen before.  I suspect the soil might have been just a little rich which made the tops grow out of proportion.  I'm about to take the net off the lettuce and harvest what is there.  I think there's about enough for one salad.  What's there looks really good and next year I'll be definitely planting more.

Well, that's about it for this time.  Until next time keep those plants watered and growing.  Harvest time is coming sooner than you think.  Be sure to leave a comment about how your garden grows.

Designed specifically for lawn and garden equipment, Toro’s new Full Synthetic 4-Cycle Engine Oil provides extreme performance in all temperatures, enhancing engine life.

Engine oils formulated for automotive applications don’t always provide the optimum level of corrosion protection in the harsh environments and long periods of storage common with lawn and garden equipment. Toro® Full Synthetic Engine Oil delivers special rust and corrosion-prohibiting additives, protection against high heat, easier cold starts, plus increased anti-oxidants and detergent additives.

Using Toro Full Synthetic 4-Cycle Oil in your lawn and garden equipment protects your engine components from premature wear caused by metal-to-metal contact that occurs during use. That’s because Toro’s oil contains higher anti-wear additives generally not found in traditional automotive or other lawn and garden oils. Automotive engine oils are typically designed for lower-revving engines; Toro Synthetic 4-Cycle Oil is designed for high-revving and higher-temperature small engines.

Toro’s Full Synthetic 4-Cycle Engine Oil can be used in any gas or diesel small engine specifying SAE 30/10W-30, including Toro products with a Kawasaki®, KOHLER®, Honda, Diahatsu, or Briggs & Stratton small engine. It’s available at your local Toro dealer (www.toro.com/dealer).

I love being strong. I have spent the better part of this weekend knocking a fence down, board by board, patiently removing every nail and stacking the lumber for reuse. I have made friends with a mini sledgehammer, and it is such a satisfying relationship. Whack, whack, whack, down go the boards, one by one.

To remove nails, I use a beat-up old hammer that I vaguely recall belonging to my dad. Even if it didn’t, I feel a connection to him as I work across two sawhorses, tapping nails back out through each board, flipping the board to pull them out, and dropping the spent nails into an old enamel pitcher. I develop a sure and steady flow to my work. My dad was a patient man who methodically worked his way through a project, whether it was refinishing furniture, building a porch with my husband, or doing a crossword puzzle.

I understand the satisfaction that comes with such patience as I take apart the fence. It is a very zen activity for me, unhurried, immensely pleasurable in its rhythm and repetition. It’s also immensely pleasurable because I can do it without struggle—and without being sore. In the past, this type of activity would have deeply fatigued me and left me hobbling and hurting the next day, to the point where I pretty much have left the physical stuff to my husband.

But when I decided that I seriously want to pursue a rural lifestyle and farm, I realized that means getting serious about increasing my physical capabilities. So I started a strength-training program a couple months ago at Quality Classic fitness center, a gym in my town of Park Forest, run by former competitive weight lifters Earl and Alia Davis, who are the nicest people in the world. It’s a very “country” kind of place—everybody knows everybody, and everybody helps you out or leaves you alone as desired. It’s incredibly friendly and supportive. And it’s making me strong.

I’m still fat, still way overweight, but damn, I can swing a four-pound sledgehammer with gusto, and I’ve got stamina I never knew existed. In the past few weeks, I’ve knocked screws out of the wood from two decks—one 10’ X 10’, the other 8’ X 14’—hauled and stacked every plank of lumber, and, in the past two days, single-handedly deconstructed a 35-feet long, 6-feet tall, board-on-board fence. To an almost-50-year-old woman who has been sedentary for the past several years, this feels like an accomplishment.

I love the confidence that comes with physical labor. This weekend, I have lived exactly as I want to live—with a good part of my day physically immersed in my work. That’s not how I live most days—I spend hours on my butt, in the car, in front of a computer, in endless meetings—but we’re working to change that. All this deconstruction is being done to accommodate the crew and machines that will demolish our concrete pool. I’m sure we’ll mourn its demise on the first 90 degree day, but I’m hoping the sadness will be offset by something I’ve been missing for the past nearly six years: A GARDEN.

The pool has occupied the only spot in this forested yard that gets decent sun. Now, instead of baking myself with those rays, I’ll be raising and cooking up organic produce to feed both body and soul. I’ve so missed getting my hands dirty. This weekend, they got filthy. And I loved it.

Next up will be serious consideration of adding a few hens to the homestead. Homegrown tomatoes in a fresh-egg frittata … I can’t imagine what might be better! Except for fresh goat cheese to go in it. But I’ll have to wait for a real farm for that.

In the meantime, I’ll build a garden and maybe a chicken coop, channeling my dad’s patience with each swing of the hammer as I work surely and steadily toward the dream.

Dear Reader, this post falls under the category of Land Maintenance, so I thought I’d talk a bit about some things that are happening here in the mountains, and preparations we are making for the much welcomed spring.

Rain

Spring time here in the great Smoky Mountains means, first: rain.  Lots and lots of rain.  Our mountain retreat will seem more like Seattle for a month or so from late February through most of March.  The ground will be soggy, the rivers run full and we make good use of umbrellas and wide brimmed hats (like my fedora).  Not only does it rain often, but some will be very heavy rainfalls, which can lead to the washing out of driveways and roads.  Crusher-run gravel comes at a premium price at this time of year as residents scramble to repair damage to their drives and access roads.  This year with all the budget cuts, including road maintenance, some of our normally top-notch roads are deteriorating rapidly.  One that we normally use as a short-cut into town has become all but impassible because of the pot holes.

Color

On the brighter side; we also enjoy the brilliant colors of spring; all the fruit trees burst into bloom practically overnight, the pink and white of Dogwood trees and the lavender of Redbud trees, yellow of Forsythia and bright red of Quince.  The irises and day lilies have already put up their spiky green leaves and will soon flower into purple, orange and red blossoms.  Pansies are already putting on a show, and a multitude of ground covers are popping open in purple, pink, yellow, and white flowers. The following video is not of TGSM, but it looks a lot like our region:

Crops

The seeds I planted in peat pods in my mini-green house have sprouted and will, in another couple of weeks, be ready to harden off and then go into the ground in the garden.  The garden itself has lain dormant for the winter under a blanket of fall foliage and is now ready to till and make ready for planting.

This year I will adopt a Four-Square method of gardening instead of the traditional method I used last year.  Heavy rains caused too much shifting of the soil in my sloping garden plot - even though it is planted on the flattest spot of land we have here!  We lost some top soil, and my neat rows of radishes tended to wander around the garden.  Some seedlings took offense to being moved and died off.  I decided that I would terrace the plot this year, but over the winter discovered the Four-Square method and decided that this makes more sense for us.  I’ll go into more detail on this method in an upcoming post.

My late crop of lettuce and Brussels sprouts survived the winter and are getting a head start on the season already.  The three lettuce plants I dug up and put into pots in my office window grew well all winter long and provided me with fresh baby lettuce for use in sandwiches and salads.  It seems that trimming the lower leaves as they became large enough spurred growth on top, keeping the plant from bolting (going to seed) and dying.  The result looks more like a lettuce vine that a regular lettuce plant, but it worked out well for us.

I also transplanted a Brussels sprout plant and a tomato plant.  Both lived through the winter indoors, but neither did anything more than survive.  They will both go back out in the garden soon and will hopefully give me a jump-start on those crops this year.

Junior

Junior is the American Chestnut sapling that I grew from an acorn my twin brother by another mother, Mike, gave me.  He will be one year old this spring (Junior, not Mike) and is leafing out nicely again.  I was afraid he had become diseased last fall because of the way he lost his leaves; they turned to lace before falling off.  But he is apparently doing very well and is looking healthy so far.

As you may know, American Chestnut trees are all but extinct because of a blight that swept most of the nation in the early 1900’s because of introduction of Asian chestnut trees into our country.

In the Appalachian Mountains, it is estimated that one in every four hardwood trees was an American chestnut. Mature trees often grew straight and branch-free for 50 feet (sometimes up to one hundred feet), and could grow up to 200 feet tall with a trunk diameter of 14 feet at a few feet above ground level. For three centuries most barns and homes east of the Mississippi were made from American chestnut lumber.  The chestnut blight caused by C. parasitica has destroyed about 4 billion American chestnut trees.  Efforts are underway to try to repopulate this magnificent tree, but the dreaded blight fungus continues to grow in the soil in many areas.

Will Junior survive?  We’ll see; so far, so good.  His biggest problem so far was that his leaves grew so large that his spindly little trunk would not support them and he spent most of his time doubled over - especially when it rained.  So I built this support system to give him a hand until he beefs up a bit.

Lawn

It’s also time to think about getting ready for the season of lawn care. Clean up the yard before mowing. Remove leaves, sticks, papers and any other debris that has accumulated. Remove any dead spots  visible in your lawn by vigorous raking. Once everything has been cleaned up and debris removed, follow with a lower than normal mowing. This should be short enough to remove the dead tips of the grass. This shorter mowing will encourage the roots to awaken and start growing. Compost the trimmings.

If you have any dead spots, re-seed now. Rake the area thoroughly to roughen up the top soil. Spread an appropriate seed, tamp down the area and cover with straw. If reseeding is required, hold off using any fertilizers with pre-emergent weed controls. You'll still have time to do this application in about 6 weeks. This will give the new grass seed time to sprout and take hold.

Don’t forget to change the oil in the mower, give it a thorough check-up to see that it is in good working order, and sharpen or replace the blade. A sharp blade cuts the grass, a dull one tears them.

 If you are like me, you are thinking about what to grow in your vegetable garden this year. Maybe you’ve already ordered all of your seeds, or like me, are doing it in batches. We’ve got most of it ordered, some already received, but still have some decisions to make for the rest.

The subject of zucchini came up the other day. How many plants do we want? We have an amazing harvest last year. Evidently so did most of the region, as we got truckloads upon truckloads to feed to the critters, too. By the end of the season, even covering them up with yogurt wouldn’t get them eaten. The sheep hung in a little longer than the pigs, but by the end of the summer, we were all DONE!

It got me to do lots of new things to preserve them, though. As I sit hear snacking on curry-flavored zucchini chips, I’m thinking that several of these new things are keepers.

• Slice them length-wise with a mandolin and dry in the dehydrator. This is quick to do during your busy season. We pick ones that are the same width as our mandolin and fill up all dozen trays of our deydrator. It usually takes about 12 hours to dry them. Then we put into plastic bags that we seal on our vacuum sealer. (We found zip bags inadequate at keeping them dry during the summer -- rotting zukes is one of the most disgusting smells around, just for the record. Vacuum seal or freeze. Trust me.) All winter I’ve been adding those strips to things like lasagna and potato gratins.  If I cook noodles of some flavor, I’ll add a handful of zuke strips to the pot as well.  
• Slice into rounds and flavor with spices, salt, pepper. Again, we use the mandolin to quickly slice up the zukes. Then put the slices into a big bowl and toss with the spice mixture. I did curry powder this year for one batch. Chili powder on another. Garlic and onion powder on another. Then spread them out of the dehydrator sheets and let them dry until they are crispy. Store in a vacuum sealed bag or in the freezer. I use canning jars in the freezer. We nibble on them like chips all year long.  I like them with a little sour cream dip, but Frank likes them straight out of the bag. I like to take them in the truck with me when I have a long drive to make. It keeps me from stopping somewhere and buying crap. (Oh, a couple of times when I was doing a bread crumb / parm cheese topping, I whirred up some zuke chips in the food processor and added them to the mix. Yummy topping on mac and cheese, tuna casserole.)
• Shred on a box grater. Every year, I do at least a dozen gallon size freezer bags filled with zuke shreddings. I shred onto a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. I cover it about an inch thick all over, then stick it into the freezer over night. The next day, I break it up and pack into gallon plastic bags. It makes it really easy to grab cup fulls as I need them for quick breads. I’ll add handfuls to regular yeasted bread sometimes, too. Also, chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies, brownies, chocolate cake.  It’s good promise! Zucchini goes really well with chocolate, or cinnamon, really.  I like zucchini muffins and bread, too. Oh, and meatloaf. I almost always add a cup or two to meatloaves, and it makes them so moist and yummy. And we have an orzo and zucchini dish that was featured in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that works really well with both fresh and frozen shredded zucchini. It’s additively good. 
• Puree and freeze. I roughly chop up cubes of zucchinis until I fill my biggest crockpot. Turn it on high, and after about two hours, hit it with your stick blender. I fill pint size canning jars and pressure-can. I use this mixture when I’m making soups all winter. It goes really well in potato soups, both regular white potatoes but also surprisingly well with sweet potatoes, too. It’s a quick way to thicken beef and lamb stews, too. 

Even after going through all of that, I think I’m only going to plant a few plants this year. Last year was a bit much!

Depending on what part of the country you're in, it's getting to be the time of year when we will need to get started with some of our early seed starting. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and many herbs and summer veggies can benefit from being started anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months early indoors.

If you buy new planting trays every year, you can go ahead and proceed as you normally would. Fill with starting medium, maybe cover with plastic, and either set in a window or build yourself a seed starting set up and put up lights. If, however, you're like me and try to conserve a little bit of money as well as maybe not use as many resources, then you'll likely try planting many of your seeds in starter trays that you've kept over from previous years. There will of course be trays that have met there useful end and must be scrapped, but taking a little time to clean and store the ones that have not will go a long way to increasing the "bottom line" in your home garden in the long run.

There is one thing that must be taken into consideration when reusing planting supplies however. Sanitation. Just as germs and bacteria can be spread in our kitchens through careless sanitation, so too can they be spread in our gardens. Many of those bacteria and disease strains can be terribly harmful to our gardens if not devastating. Fortunately for us, as the gardeners and caretakers of our gardens, there is a simple way for us to mitigate this potential disaster.  

Each year before I begin planting, I pull out my trays, sort through those that have become unusable, clean off the cobwebs and give them a bleach bath.

I happen to have a dedicated sink in my garage workshop that I make use of for this, but a simple bucket of bleach water, a folding table or even a board over a pair of saw horses will work perfectly well. The point is that you want to kill off any harmful bacteria before you start new seedlings in these trays.  

After you've cleaned the trays that you want to use, it's not a bad idea to give some of your other implements a dip as well before dumping out the water. Pruners, loppers, trowels and other tools come in direct contact with our plants and can also hold dormant bacteria or spores.

The long and the short of it is that with a little planning, and investment of a small bit of time, you can make sure to get your seedlings and your grand plans for this years garden off to a great start. 

Paul~ 

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse. 

Read more: Growing Possibilities 

A few days ago, my daughter pulled Oh The Places You’ll Go down off the bookshelf and asked me to read it to her. I did, and when I got to the pages about “the waiting place,” I had one of those “a-ha!” kind of moments.

*

 Waiting till construction’s done 

 Or waiting for some weekend fun 

 Waiting for fire to catch a log 

 Or for inspiration to write a blog 

 For dogs to come in, for the sun to stay 

 For a tax refund, and for each payday 

 Waiting for what tomorrow will bring  

 For the dirt and bugs and smell of spring…. 

*

About this time of year, for us gardeners especially, waiting is becoming a greater and greater part of our days. Ordering seeds, taking advantage of an unseasonably sunny day to straighten things up outside, examining the fuzzy buds on the pear trees, stooping down to discover that some kind of flower is pushing its way up through the dead grass, are all moments which – while they are complete in themselves – also serve to remind us that there is more waiting yet to do. 

The warmth is unseasonable. That spring is immanent – really immanent – is an illusion. 

I’ve had my share of impatient moments this year – though not with winter itself. How could I lose patience with a winter that has delivered so many bright, warmish days and so little inconvenient precipitation? No…it’s not winter that’s sent me into a frenzy from time to time this year – it’s the construction. 

Anyone who has done any house remodeling knows that these things do tend to drag on; and sometimes it doesn’t seem like construction will ever end – a feeling that only intensifies the closer you get to the finish line – like, for instance, on a Sunday a few weeks back when I woke with a psychological – almost spiritual – need to make pudding from scratch. But alas – unless I wanted it to be seasoned with drywall dust, homemade pudding was not to be. 

* 

 It’s been a long time, perhaps over twenty years, since I’ve made pudding. It’s been nearly that long since I’ve made any kind of pudding pies too – chocolate, custard, lemon meringue. I remember one particular lemon meringue, a slice of which my one-time boyfriend served to a female friend of his who showed up unannounced late one night at our sliding glass door. She was strange, and wary, some intellectual who at the time attended the same literary college that I would later attend myself in search of…. 

 I don’t know what, really. I only know I didn’t find it.  

 What I remember about that particular lemon meringue pie is how she sat at our kitchen table and picked at the flecks of lemon zest with the tines of her fork, until finally my then-boyfriend told her, “It’s lemon zest. It’s supposed to be there”. I remember how uncomfortable and embarrassing the whole half hour or so was; mostly I remember how infuriatingly slowly she ate that piece of pie. 

 * 

 I – who have always been a brisk dispatcher of tasks, a fast walker, a fast talker, reader, and writer – find myself these days in a world gone slow.  

 An old, medicated dog with congestive heart failure retards the night with his hacking, his frequent wakings, his thirst and his need to urinate. At two-thirty in the morning I stand before an open door that spills in eleven or eighteen or twenty degrees of cold because he comes so slowly into the house. In a household that is bursting with youthful energy, restlessness and strength, my one-time speeding bullet of a dog does things slowly – as he must do them now. He is old. He is infirm. He is slow. Again and again, through the course of a day, I must adjust my pace to his. I adjust myself to the thought that returns more and more frequently, that the dog is dying. The vet told me when we were at “the beginning of the end”. But some days it seems that surely we must be at the middle of the end; or near the end of the end; by now.  

 I play games with a four-year-old whose capacity for slowness – by which I mean a delight in lingering over each and every moment – is unlimited. While I want to whisk us all through the prompt taking of turns, the snapping of cards, the tapping of pieces along the game board with precision in counting, I am faced instead with slow. Are the pawns boys or girls? It is decided that the reds are boys. The yellows are girls. Bounce. Sprawl. Giggle. Sing. Lift two cards instead of one. Gibberish numbers just for fun, not because she doesn’t know any better. Every moment with relish. It is not the slowness of the interminable but of eternity, of timelessness. Perhaps there are other things to do, and a great many things to be done, but this is what we are doing now.  

 Pudding is like this. It is not for the multi-tasker. With pudding you can’t walk away from the stove. Pudding made from scratch, like a growing child – like a dog whose illness must be monitored – requires your constant awareness and patience.  

 * 

 I’m up hours before I want to be – because of the dog. It’s become a morning ritual. An old man that simply can’t lie down for another single minute because of all the fluid pooling in parts of his body where fluid shouldn’t be. It’s much like the middle of the night ritual in that I drag myself out of bed and all three young dogs thunder out into the icy air, and one old dog meanders – to the water bowl, to the trashcan, to the pooling of curtain in shadows behind which – he seems to be acting from dim memory and his sense of smell – he seems to suspect that there is a door. 

 The only difference between what happens in the middle of the night and what happens at morning is that in the morning, I resign myself to being awake. Instead of sitting on the arm of the sofa, waiting in the dark, shivering a little as I do at night, in the morning once they’re all outside I make coffee and stoke the fire. Turn on lights. They all come back more or less together. I get my morning chill holding the door open a few extra moments for the old guy. I pick up a book – Fahrenheit 451. 

 I read something about a garden – having a garden or missing a garden. To me, a garden is a place to work; to do things. It is a place of quiet. A place to connect with the larger, natural world. My mind flits immediately to a memory from last summer – the insult of coming home to work in my garden late one afternoon only to have its peace shattered by a teenage neighbor’s music blasting from his deck across the silence of my garden.  

 The fury! 

 Then the sudden understanding that the character means a garden to sit in, a garden to see, not a garden to work in like I first imagined – and the momentary connection is lost.  

 * 

 The irony is that when I hear the morning call, Mom! Mama! I have to pull my long, slow thinking out of the book to do things slowly; which is what it means to give my daughter my undivided attention.  

 Do lions eat flowers? 

 Do they scratch themselves? 

 Every question is earnest. Every one must be taken seriously. Every one deserves – and gets – my full consideration.  

 Last winter I fought daily against slow. The slow of construction delayed by weather. The slow of winter delaying spring. It’s a foolish and hubristic thing to do to fight against time, to launch a battle against the very pace of life. It’s a battle that is always lost. I write this down now so that it can remind me later of that to which I can’t seem to sustain a grasp, and because Ray Bradbury assures me that writing down my discoveries matter; that it makes a difference somehow. 

 “Books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.” 

 But this winter I do not fight. I begin an indoor, contemplative project instead. I keep my home warm and clean.  I push my daughter on the swing, through the crisp chill air and her own happy breath. We watch as the sun, a bright indistinct blur in the white sky in front of us slips slowly, imperceptibly, down behind the bare-branched trees across the street. Pushing her on the swing is like meditation. It is slow. It is rhythmic. It is bounded, and the very boundaries of the physical motion push me inside myself. 

 My daughter sings. 

 * 

 I find it difficult to write when I don’t have anything to say. Words come only slowly. They are built up out of the tension between observation and activity. Words require the balance of disparate energies – the physical and the mental – in order to come into existence. Words – like the young child slowly growing; like the old dog slowly dying; like the alchemy that is pudding – have their own pace. They spring into existence only when they are ready, only when the conditions are right for life. They are heedless of my schedule or my anxieties.  

 * 

 I am a human being and therefore full of contradictions. I found something endlessly fascinating recently – a list of human universals – and the funny thing about them is that if you study them and think about them long enough you start to realize that many of these universals said to all exist simultaneously in all persons across geographical, religious or cultural boundaries, are in fact largely a collection of contradictions; or potential contradictions; which perhaps explains why we are all always so close to being crazy. It is because our very natures are precariously balanced conglomerations of opposites constantly pulling us in different directions.  

 * 

 Of my own contradictions, today it is fast in tension with slow. I write in a notebook with a pen, which necessitates slowing down, even though my hand cannot keep up with the pace of my thoughts and I long to tap tap tap furiously at a computer keyboard to keep up with it all – except to change what I’m doing right now necessitates slowing down even more – stopping, in fact – to turn on the computer, to wait for it to boot up, to open a document, to orient myself to the technology once again – so far so good. 

 The problem is that faced with the blank computer page I am overwhelmed with a desire to order things, to clarify what has been random thoughts, the disorder of inspiration, so that when finally equipped with the technology to go fast, I am compelled by the formality of typing a manuscript, to go slow. 

 I am compelled to reconsider, to revisit, to puzzlingly try to read what I have written, to make it cohesive and coherent. Whereas before I was furiously cracking eggs, now I am forced to stand and stir the pudding, back and forth, back and forth, scraping the bottom at each pass across the pot so that nothing solidifies too quickly and loses its connection to the rest of the soup. Pudding – like good writing – must as some point become a cohesive whole. It must cease being a multitude of things and become one thing, so much so that it should seem like a pudding has always been a pudding. One never thinks that a pudding is the slow transformation of eggs and milk and sugar and the knowledge and patience of the cook just as a novel is the slow accumulation of words out of a life, countless distinct and individual moments lost, dissolved into the overall texture of the thing.  

 A novel, like a pudding, comes together only slowly. 

 And this is what life is, the seemingly interminable slow which goes by fast, a fact that we recognize only in retrospect, when we stand staring down at the pudding in bewilderment. Where did it come from? How did it get here? How is it that we can eat a spoonful of pudding without even a dim memory of the milk, the sugar, the eggs? 

 * 

 It seems that to think of any one thing completely you must think of many things. It’s as if I must think like my daughter plays – bringing pieces of many different play sets into a single game that she makes up as she goes along. Thomas the Tank Engine. Farm animals. Buzz Lightyear. Mr. Ed. Wilbur the pig and Wilbur who owns Mr. Ed and Charlotte the spider. The zoo. The farm buildings. Magnatiles. Every dinosaur she owns – large and small, plastic and plush – standing together in a group. Every multi-sized toy tree from any toy set that has a tree comprise a forest on the living room floor. Two fat quarters – one blue to be the sea, one yellow to be the sand – form the beach. There are milk and sugar and eggs and patience and time. Words spilling across like music. And Thomas – puffing and singing “we’ll be chugging on Boulder Mountain when we come” and rolling through it – somehow brings all the activity of a multi-faceted imagination together into a single, momentarily coherent world. 

 And no one – in this particular moment – is waiting for anything.               

If you live in or near a wooded area, you most likely play host to an unwelcome house guest every fall: lady bugs. 

It is interesting that this colorful and much celebrated insect is neither a bug nor always a lady.  Like anything that reproduces sexually, the species consists of both male and female, so some ladybugs are male!  And because ladybugs have biting mandibles for tearing their food, not the sucking mouthparts commonly found on “bugs” these creatures are more correctly classified as beetles.  Technically, the proper common name for these brightly colored, hard shelled flying insects is “ladybird beetle”, but it’s OK if you prefer to call them lady bugs; most everyone does.

Lady bugs are handy helpers in the garden because both the hard shelled adult and the alligator head shaped larva are voracious eaters of aphids, scales, whiteflies, mealybugs, thrips, mites, caterpillars and beetle larvae.  In fact a single lady bug can consume 5000 of these pests in its lifetime.

Native American lady bugs are not much of a nuisance, but the Asian lady bug which was deliberately introduced into the United States by the U.S.D.A. to control certain pests, such as the hemlock woolly adelgids, which has been decimating the old growth hemlock trees of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, have bred, spread and become something of a pest themselves.  Not only do they displace the native and more beneficial ladybird beetles, but these lady bugs swarm in the fall and invade homes in large numbers.  They emit a nasty smelling liquid when disturbed and will bite humans.  Generally these beetles are a red-orange color with black spots, but the easiest way to identify them is the black M shaped spot pattern on white background just behind their heads. 

To rid your home of lady bugs, be sure doors and windows seal up tightly; they can wriggle through surprisingly small cracks.  Then cut 6 to 8 inches off the toe section of an old pair of nylons, slip this “bag” into the end of your vacuum cleaner wand, leave an inch or so of the nylon out to fold over the end of the wand, then hold it in place by slipping your crevice tool over the end.  Now you can use the vacuum to suck the lady bugs from walls, ceilings and around your lights.  Remove the bag and empty the lady bugs in your garden where they will do more good than in your home.

To attract lady bugs to your garden, do not use pesticides.  You may notice more pests, but if you also see lady bugs, it will balance out.  Lady bugs also feed on pollen and nectar, so planting wild flowers around your garden or letting a portion of your land near the garden go “wild” will also bring in more of these natural pest patrollers.

If you see larval or adult lady bugs in your garden, it is a sign that your garden is in a natural balance.  Perhaps this is where the thought that lady bugs are harbingers of good luck came from!

Thanks to all who entered the drawing to win a free copy of our 2011 On the Farm calendar. We hope 2011 shapes up to be a successful year for us all; I'm looking forward to baby chickens, of course! *grin*

I entered each commenter's name into a mug and Alan pulled out one lucky winner ... big congrats to Nebraska Dave!! Get in touch with me Dave, and I'll get your choice of small or standard sized calendar out to you right away! We hope you enjoy spending your year with our calendar.

As always, you are invited to read more about our life on the farm.

Thanks for checking in!

Our Tiny House will sit on the unofficially named Tiny Lane. There we will raise Tiny Goats and this year, have a Tiny Farm.

Unlike last year, we simply aren't ready to have multiple gardens full of organic produce and fruits. We will have to exchange the size of our 'salad bowl,' if you will, for something a bit more fitting for where we are in the move from Georgia to North Carolina. This minor setback (and I use the term setback very loosely) didn't mean we couldn't still have as much fun perusing through seed catalogues, mildly discussing exotic produce, and dreaming about the organic edibles we would one day enjoy from our own land.

So last week - at separate times, unfortunately - Crystal and I both spent time flipping page after page, comparing items from last in regards to growth success, growth potential, overall energy consumed to grow, and overall taste. With a wonderful cup of rasberry-peach tea on my desk in front of me I saw down and began with perhaps my favorite catalogue; Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

We still have a few seeds left from last year that are still quite viable including some cabbage, a bit of Carrot Chantenay Red Core, Lettuce Val d'Orges, and Cauliflower. While I had originally thought of giving them away in a contest, I have decided to save them and use them as a great way to begin some leafy greens anywhere I can find dirt worth sowing in.

Because we are limited on ready space this year we have talked about doubling our efforts by growing potatoes at Crystal's mom's house and even trying some sweet corn in the back field of her grandmother's place. Last year we we tried corn and had really mixed results. We had a case of ear whigs and many of ears came in small and lacking kernels. We're willing to try again though as it was our first time and we're bound to do better in a corn hotbed like the sandy soils of North Carolina.

We're definitely looking forward to doubling the size of our onion beds this year. Last year we harvested just at 124 onions and while they lasted up until mid-November we would love to have a supply that would take us into late-February or so. While the desire is there we are still trying to figure where we would get that size space for such an onion supply. We may have to resort to a bit of gonzo gardening and just plant bulbs all around being careful to remember when we have things growing.

I think the main focus this year though is going to be our beans and cukes. We serve early peas, snap beans, and bush beans all year round and while our cucumbers have done really well each year we can't seem to get enough to both eat and pickle. Crystal loves a good dill pickle and so we look to raise up cuke plants in every available vertical spot we can muster.

So what about you? Have you begun planning and ordering yet? If so, what is your favorite company to order from? Are you growing anything new and original? What are your old standbys that get planted year after year? As always if you like this post be sure to share it on Facebook or send the link out on Twitter. We appreciate you also taking the time to read the r(E)volution and be a part of the conversation! 

I love photography and am always finding fun things to photograph here on the farm. Last December I went through my photos and put together a special 2011 On the Farm calendar featuring various critters here on the farm, some images from the garden, and even some farm landscapes. The purpose of the calendar was not only for our own home use, but it also made wonderful gifts for the holidays, and we also hoped that sales of the calendar would bring in a little cash that we could put towards caring for the farm critters.

I thought I would offer up a free calendar to one lucky Grit blog reader! If you would like to enter the drawing for an On the Farm calendar, simply leave a comment on this post and tell me what you most look forward to in the coming year. I'll randomly select one name from all comments on Friday, January 21st at 10am Central. The one lucky reader selected will be given their choice of a small, or standard sized, 2011 On the Farm calendar.

And well, if you don't win the drawing on Sunday, it's not too late to order up your own copy of On the Farm!

As always, you are invited to read more about our life on the farm.

Thanks for checking in, and happy weekend!

My grandiose fall garden plans - lettuce, green onions, pickling cukes and radishes - never materialized.  I can only blame the time bandit. Before I knew it, October was upon us, and I had not planted any fall veggies.  Coincidentally, I had just ordered Eliot Coleman's "The Winter Harvest Handbook" from Amazon.  As I read through each chapter, I became more and more intrigued by this concept of continuing the harvest through the winter months.  If Eliot can do it in Maine, then I could certainly do it here on the Kansas/Oklahoma border!!

As a side note: this is an excellent book, rated 5 stars by 37 reviewers on Amazon thus far and soon to be given high marks by me also.  I found the history of cold weather gardening to be fascinating, as narrated by Eliot, proving that nothing is new under the sun.

And so I ordered a row tunnel cover from Burpee's website and planted a short row of spinach on October 3. This would be my initial foray into cool weather gardening, and so a short row would be my experiment. Spinach is one of the top cold-hardy vegetables.  As such, it will actually prefer our cool fall and winter weather to the stifling hot weather we have in the summertime. Like a nervous mother hen, I checked on my babies every single day, uncovering them to soak up the sun during the day, and lowering the cover at night to protect them from the cold.  As our nights began to dip into the 30s, I draped towels over the row cover for even better insulation.

Above photo ~ spinach sprouts on October 20.  Below photo ~ first spinach harvest on November 3.  

Harvest was estimated for day 42, and yet I began clipping baby leaves for salads at the 3 week mark. As of November 20, the spinach is still doing remarkably well, even though we've had several nights in the 20s now.  Quite honestly, I haven't even put the towels on the row cover at night, and the spinach is still doing remarkably good!

Above photo ~ still beautiful spinach on November 20.  

I'll continue to keep it covered, watered and nurtured as long as it continues to grow.  And I'll count this experiment a success and plant even more fall veggies next year.

When I look at the bigger picture and my dreams... I would love to have a coldhouse (or two!) similar to what  Eliot has in Maine, and supply our local community with fresh greens and root vegetables throughout the cooler months of the year, when fresh, local veggies are in short supply.  Someday! 

The subtitle for this post should be: What We WON'T Do in Next Year's Garden.

We decided our first-year garden would be small.  Small space still equals big work.  My husband and I have both gardened in our past lives, but it's been so long ago ... we realized our little garden would be a re-learning experience. The ultimate goal is to enlarge our garden each season so that eventually it will be a garden befitting the 27 acres it sits upon.  Who knows, maybe there are farm markets and CSAs in our future!

I digress with my hopes and dreams, so back to our small garden and our first year results.

Our plot measured only 15 by 16 feet.  We planted corn, cucumbers, green beans, radishes, and several varieties of tomatoes and peppers.  A few renegade marigold plants rounded out the small plot.  We were looking forward to a summertime of grilling and eating our own sweet corn on the cob ... canning every conceivable pickle flavor a person could think of ... fresh green bean salad and extra beans for preserving ... spicy radishes in our salads ... and tomatoes and peppers for our own fresh-from-the-garden spaghetti sauce and salsa.

Some of our dreams came true, while others did not.

Here are the lessons we have learned and will apply to next year's garden.

1. Give the cukes their own space. They tend to invade anything within 2 feet.  We will plant them separately from everything else in our garden next year.  We will have a separate cucumber garden, with regular cucumber varieties and pickling cukes.

2. Do not fudge on spacing. We wanted to plant so many different things in our small space, we fudged on plant spacing – if it said plant 2 feet apart, we planted 1.5 feet apart.  Don't do it.  If anything, plant further apart than the seed or plant instructions indicate.  Give every single plant adequate space to flourish.

3. Be sure to thin out plants when seedlings are tall enough.  We thinned everything, but again, we fudged.  It is one of the hardest things in the world to pick healthy plants and toss them so the remaining plants have room to grow.  But you MUST do it.  It's imperative so the remaining plants are healthy and the resulting veggies are large enough to eat.

4. Be sure to use tomato cages to help contain your tomato plants.  We neglected to do this, and our tomato plants are all over the garden.  I've been weeding the perimeters of the tomatoes and staking and stringing haphazardly to keep the fruit off the ground.  Also, nip back the side growth to help the plants grow tall in the beginning, then once they've reached the desired height, start nipping them from the top to encourage them to bush out. (I received the nip tip from my son the other day – he's reading The Backyard Homestead.)

5. Fence the garden. Protect it from the bunnies and other wildlife.  We were going to do this, but somehow just didn't find the time.

6. During the winter, I need to read and research plant diseases and insects more thoroughly.  I'm pretty sure these are nematodes on the roots of my tomato plants (see photo), but that's about all I know.  Why they appear, how they affect your plants (or do they affect the plants? I'm still harvesting tomatoes!) and how you prevent them are unknown to me.

Fall Garden Plans

Since our temps have finally cooled down from the 100s to the 70s and 80s, I'll be cleaning up the garden over the next week.  I hope to plant our fall garden by the middle of next week – lettuce, radishes, and pickling cucumbers.  (I'm determined to preserve even more cucumbers before winter is here.)  I'm going to fortify the soil before I plant the fall garden, and I'm also going to use Sea Magic Organic Growth Activator.  I've read rave customer reviews about this product on Burpee's website.

We also need to determine where the strawberry beds will be and get that area ready for next spring by killing the grass and turning the dirt.  Decision needs to be made – raised bed, or not?

2011 Garden Plans

We'll be planting a strawberry bed in addition to our veggie garden.  We're also going to get serious about building a few good compost piles.  We started a pile last year, using horse manure, but neglected to turn it or add other organic matter to the pile.  Just horse manure alone a good compost pile does not make!

Lavender beds are a must in my 2011 plans, as I would love to dry my own lavender and make my own potpourri and sachets for gift-giving.  If there's enough lavender, I will sell the extra locally or on LocalHarvest.org.

Final garden summary: It's been a great re-learning experience for both of us. I think it's safe to say we're looking forward to Gardening 2011 - both the expansion and our renewed efforts to grow a bigger and better harvest!

Oftentimes we plan our gardens so well that we never take into consideration that we are but stewards of the land. Where a seed is dropped a plant can grow. It doesn't matter all the time if we water it systematically or we allow it only X amount of sun per day. It doesn't even matter if we suspend the plant correctly and allow it ample bedding so as not to bruise the fruit. A plant is a living organism and as such, is always full of surprises.

Thus is the case when last night, frustrated with our lack of melon production, we noticed this little gal resting in one of the holes in the cinderblocks that composed the melon raised bed. At first we thought it a loss. But I picked it up, cut it open with my pocket knife, and found one of the sweetest, most beautifully ripe, cantaloupes I have ever eaten.

I thought it might be time for a quick garden update!

The garden (containers, raised beds, and rows) all got a late start this year. But I am determined to make something of it – even with central Texas heat!

First of all, the cucumbers! They're growing, and even producing fruit!

There are fruits of all sizes on the plants -- some are near harvest size, some itty bitty, and some in between. Much of the vine has small cucumbers just starting out. I am so pleased with the progress of the two plants we have growing that I put a few more seeds in the ground for a later harvest. Hopefully we'll have plenty of cucumbers; I would like to give a couple of pickling recipes a try.

A few weeks ago I put in another row of beans (pole, and bush). They're coming in nicely. I'm looking forward to fresh picked green beans for supper. I recently purchased a FoodSaver, and plan to freeze the beans we don't eat immediately. With nearly 50' of beans planted, I hope we have LOTS of beans to harvest!

There is one section of the bean row (one week younger than the others) where I continue to battle the armadillo. Each night, he turns over 6-12" of soil. Each morning, I put the soil back in place. Thankfully he has only turned a couple of plants... although, I wonder if he has helped himself to a couple of seeds – I am suspect of a "gap" in the bean plants. It's the only section of the garden he has bothered. I'm hoping as the plants fill in, he moves on to other areas of the farm (just not the garden).

This is the first year I've attempted to grow melons. So far, they look like they're doing alright. I wasn't sure they would do well being planted in a container. I've even spotted a few small melons on the vine! How exciting!

A few weeks ago I put some pumpkin seeds in the ground. The Big Max plants are growing nicely, and so are the small decor pumpkin plants. I planted a few other varieties, and hope to get at least a couple of pumpkins off the vines. Unfortunately, the area I created the pumpkin mounds in gets a bit more shade than I expected this time of year. But even so, they're able to soak up the afternoon and evening sun and seem to be doing just fine.

I put some zucchini squash plants in for a late summer harvest, and just put a few more seeds in the ground, too. I really had to mulch the mounds to keep the hot sun from drying out the soil too quickly. It took the plants a bit of time to settle in, but now they seem to be noticably larger with each day. Alan's father isn't a fan of zucchini (I think he even said something about zucchini being a "waste of good soil"), but I happen to LOVE it and think the more, the better! Even with the late start to the garden this year, I've harvested about 12 pounds of zucchini from the three larger plants I have planted in containers. Here's hoping for more, more, MORE!

Finally, the zinnias are blooming! There is a variety of colors, and their bright, cheery faces add a sweet spot of color to the place.

Thanks for checking in on the garden with me! As always, you are invited to read more about our life on the farm.

I have been staring at this empty block for almost a half hour now. My only company the sound of the overhead fan in my 5th-wheel office. I don't like to write depressing things. I don't like to add too much of the world's reality into my own life or writing. But today I can't seem to help it.

I turn to food for comfort. These past two months I have gained probably 10-12 pounds. What could I possibly be stressed about? Beyond the transition of a new job, a growing homestead, Pan and I trying to start a family, and the influx of media I am forced to swallow each day, I guess nothing. But each day I wake up, down a cup of coffee and a little pick-me-up (usually fruit or a bowl of mueslix) and flip on the news. I am not specific in which channel or news team. Delivery is delivery no matter how much Splenda you might put in it. BP. Wall Street. A failing presidential office. War. Sex Trafficking. Terrorism. Obesity. Obsession. It is all a bit much over what should be "the best part of waking up." After about 15 minutes though I cut it off and join the sun as it rises into the sky.

My first stop is at the herb boxes. I love to smell them and wonder just what recipe they will end up "completing" or how Pan will dry them for tea or shaker spices. I then ramble on towards the corn. We try to water it every other day, and when I say water I mean for a few hours. Because of the position of the field it gets pummeled with afternoon sun and needs every drop of liquid it can get. It is usually at this point that I can't help but checking on the chickens. I can hear them so they are pretty hard to ignore. And now with the new chicks ... well, who doesn't want to see new chicks fumble around and play what looks like a game of poultry rugby?

And then it is on to the main garden. I can't step into it without being washed over by its miracle. At the risk of sounding emotionally drippy, this garden is so much more to me than probably to most. It represents new life in its most raw form. It is my church. It is where I was baptized a second time, changing from the consumptive person I thought I deserved to be in life to the humbled man I am now. I typically reach down and poke my finger in the dirt. Most mornings it is moist with dew; a reminder that each day is a new one and everyone deserves to be cleaned and refreshed. And then? Well, then I park it. I sit on a bench made of old granite curbing that we recycled from a downtown renovation project. I stare at the plants thinking about how Pan and I have poured hours into it hoping for a harvest that will last us well into fall and early winter. I think about how we tithe the first of the harvest and give thanks to God for what he has blessed us with on Odom's Idle Acres. I think about how a tiny seed turns into a huge plant that bears food. Think about that for a moment.

What starts out as a seed ... well, perhaps Robert Schuller (yes, the televangelist ... so sue me) said it best, "Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed." How amazing is that. And as I stare at that garden – what it once was, what it is now, and what it will be in a month – I find my hunger being satiated. No, I am not talking about a twinkie I hid amongst the okra but rather a satisfying bite of relief; freedom from the very stresses that one hour ago gripped me tight like a boa constrictor on his prey. And it is at that moment the world makes sense again. It began in a garden. A garden shall sustain us. And if I have my druthers, it will all end in a garden.

Fox and his Friends can say what they want, but when the world gets extra hairy and Uncle Sam reaches out his hand one last time, I am headed to the garden. And there I will find new life, new hope, and a new understanding of what we are here for.

Image of the garden on March 25, 2010, and then again on May 27, 2010.

Last season was my first foray into gardening. From taking control of my front garden area (with my sister’s help) to container gardening on my back porch, I actually enjoyed getting my hands dirty.

Two recent press releases brought home the fact that I’m not the only new gardener out there. According to the National Gardening Association, one out of five gardeners are new to the hobby. So it seems I’m in good company!

Those of us who started our first gardens last year did so for better-tasting food (58 percent of the respondents to the association’s survey), to save money on food bills (54 percent), for better quality food (51 percent), and to grow food we know is safe (48 percent).

The association expects 43 million households in the United States to grow their own vegetables, herbs and berries this year. That’s an increase of 19 percent from last year, according the association’s survey of January 2009.

The Garden Writers Association Foundation conducted a survey, too. (Popular pastime for organizations, eh?!) Their numbers show 7.7 million households planted a vegetable garden for the first time in 2009, increasing the number of such households to 41 million. For 2010, 37 percent of gardeners said they would increase their edible gardens, 29 percent plan to plant the same amount as in 2009, and a mere 1 percent plan to plant less.

The GWAF survey also found that the reason people gave for growing a garden was to supplement the household food supply.

The GWAF results resonate with me. I’m planning on adding another tomato plant or two. I planted one Brandywine last year –it produced late in the summer and was good while it lasted. Then the blight took it away. So I’d like to add a variety that produces a bit earlier in the summer.

I’ll continue with one pepper plant, being a bit more protective of it this year. Last year, wind blew off a lot of blooms, so it produced late and not as many as I would have liked. I also planted basil and oregano, which I’ll do again this year, although they’ll go in separate pots. I discovered the plants had conflicting ideas as to how much water was preferable.

For me, I’ll go along with the variety of reasons given for growing a garden. My main reason was and is taste – I refuse to buy tomatoes in the store. I may break down and buy grape or cherry tomatoes, but only in a pinch.

Since I am container gardening, I’m not doing much early planning. Those of you with plots (large and small) probably have already figured out what's being planted this year. If you haven’t, may I make a suggestion?

Check out GRIT’s garden articles, read our bloggers’ takes on gardening, or visit the websites of our sister publications THE HERB COMPANION or MOTHER EARTH NEWS. THE HERB COMPANION's May issue contains “Grow a Garden from Seed,” which focuses on an herb garden, and “Save Water, Plant Wisely: Xeriscape,” which takes a closer look at planting a garden to use less water. MOTHER EARTH NEWS' website contains a number of articles on organic gardening.

And if I need any further help with my gardening, a few other websites may have the answers. Here are a few for information, seeds, equipment and more. Visit and pick your favorites.

National Garden Bureau 

National Gardening Association 

Mailorder Gardening Association 

Garden Writers Association 

All-America Selections 

BackyardGardener.com 

MidwestGardening.com 

Seed Savers Exchange 

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds 

Burpee Seeds 

Willhite Seeds 

Duluth Trading Co. 

Tomato Growers 

Johnny’s Selected Seeds  

Peaceful Valley Farm Supply 

Territorial Seeds   

Abundant Life Seeds   

Nichols Garden Nursery 

J.W. Jung Seed Co.   

Dixondale Farms Inc.  

Brown’s Omaha Plant Farms 

Stokes Seeds  

Flame Engineering (Weed Dragon)

Lee Valley Tools  

Photo credits: vegetable garden plot, iStockphoto.com/Chris Prince; garden bounty, iStockphoto.com/Steve Cole

In winter, when many gardeners are planning, ordering from seed catalogs, and dreaming of spring and the day they can get out there and dig, I’m just thrilled to see that the dirt stains are finally gone from beneath my fingernails and hands. I work all day helping customers plan their gardens, choose their plants, answer their questions, and then come home and tend my own gardens. When the nursery closes for the season, and the plants are resting, it’s my time to rest too. I am not a garden planner, plotter, or hatcher of good ideas during these cold months. I couldn’t enjoy winter to its fullest if I was busy planning for the next season. But still….I can’t really forget about gardening entirely for a whole season. I get my fix by catching up on garden-related reading, and by attending seminars and lectures on the topic. 

If you are one of those who plan ahead (I’m breaking my no-planning habit for this one), why not plan for a little extra and "Plant a Row for the Hungry"? The Plant a Row for the Hungry initiative is a nationwide campaign to provide fresh, healthy produce to those in need. The premise of PAR is simple: plant an extra row of vegetables and donate the harvest to a local food pantry or soup kitchen. Since 1995, over 14 million pounds of produce have been grown, providing over 50 million meals donated by American gardeners. 

Due to the economic situation in this country, a rapidly increasing number of Americans are turning to food banks for hunger relief. Reports show an unprecedented number of them are middle-class families and first time visitors. Alarmingly, many of them are turned away because there is a lack of available resources. Billy Shore, the founder and executive director of Share Our Strength, an organization working to end childhood hunger in America says, “Relief groups are getting hit hard by the same economic factors affecting those they serve. In these tough times, they need support from caring, everyday Americans more than ever." 

When learning about PAR, I got excited and started making phone calls. Through the help of a local social service agency, I was led to a church in town that serves “Open Door” dinners to anyone in need of a hot meal. Every Tuesday night, they provide a sit-down meal to between 80 and 100 people and prepare about 120 take-out meals. Speaking with the pastor, he said they’ve seen an influx of people served in the past year, and would be delighted to have donations of produce. Any surplus will go to the local food pantry. I’ve got gardeners and a small farm more than willing to commit space and time to growing vegetables for the program. Because the produce will go toward providing that many meals at one time, we will be concentrating on one vegetable this first year: green beans. They’re easy to grow, produce a lot for a long period of time and have a longer storage-life than many other vegetables. My next step is to get the word out via our local newspaper and the Master Gardener newsletter to rally more participants. I have high hopes, and will keep you posted throughout the growing season on how the program is going.

If you’re interested in starting a Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign in your area, check out the Garden Writers Association’s website. They offer tips on getting started, support and printable brochure downloads. 

I read about PAR in a letter from the editor of GreenPrints “The Weeder’s Digest”. I ordered this unique gardening magazine as a Christmas gift to myself. The “greatest story” edition arrived a couple of weeks before Christmas. I would have promptly read it, but Shelby knew it was my gift to myself, snatched it out of my hands and wrapped it to put under the tree, telling me I had to wait until Christmas like everybody else. Drat! Sometimes what we teach them backfires. Luckily for me, the winter issue came shortly after, and I’d sneak some reading time while no one was looking. 

One of the best parts of my job at the nursery is the interaction I get each day with people who love gardening as much as I do. I’ve laughed with my customers, commiserated with them, and even cried with them as they’ve shared their personal stories revolving around their gardens. It’s stories like these that unfold in the pages of “GreenPrints”. Digest-sized, it “focuses on the human, not the how-to side of gardening.” This is a magazine for anyone who gardens not just for the harvest or for aesthetics, but for those who find that reaping the emotional benefits from gardening is just as – if not more – satisfying. I can’t wait for the Spring, 20^th Anniversary Issue to arrive. 

Another good read that isn’t just another “how-to” book is Farm City; The Education of an Urban Farmer, (Novella Carpenter. The Penguin Press, 2009). During early summer last year, I read a review about the book that promised it was “hysterical and uplifting … a wry, yet humble sense of humor … not just an informative manual for the urban homesteader, but also refreshing and highly entertaining.” I like hysterical and highly entertaining. I had to wait this long to find out for myself; my library didn’t have the book, but promised to put it on request for an inter-library loan. It finally came in, and I couldn’t put it down until I finished the last page.

It’s the author’s account of her attempts at urban farming in a ghetto neighborhood in Oakland, California. She has no desire to leave the city for the country, preferring its noise, energy, and “its late-night newsstands and rowdy bars” over the quiet isolation she knew growing up on a ranch in Idaho. But she can’t ignore what her hippie, back-to-the-land parents instilled in her: a love of nature, self-sufficiency, and the satisfaction of growing vegetables and raising animals. Amid drug dealers, the homeless, gang shootouts, and across the street from a speakeasy, Novella starts a “squatter’s garden,” complete with raised beds and fruit trees, on the vacant lot next to the house she and her boyfriend rent. She keeps bees, chickens, geese, turkey, ducks, rabbits and two pigs. Her idea of foraging for food is different than what most people have: it’s late-night dumpster diving excursions to the best restaurants in the city, to get scraps for the pigs and poultry. 

Interwoven throughout her story are tips on growing vegetables, raising animals, and of the history of the urban farm. Urban farming is not a new way of life; it’s been practiced in various parts of the world since the ancient Greece era. Even in this country, where “most Americans believe in the separation of city and country,” pockets of urban areas have been farmed, most notably in Philadephia, New York, and Detroit, since the 1800s. This is a book about the celebration of the urban farm and of life. It’s about failures and successes, sorrow and joy, birth and death, and how to richly live the life we choose. The book is everything the review I read promised, and so much more. 

Speaking of so much more … ever think about what a tree does for you and your family besides standing there, looking pretty? What if the next tree you purchased afforded you the same type of federal tax deduction as does installing a new solar heater or energy-efficient central air-conditioning? Dr. Robert Schutzki, professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Horticulture, contends it might not be too far in the future that those tax deductions will be available, and trees will have ratings similar to the Energy Star Rating. In mid-December, I attended a lecture given by Dr. Schutzki, “What Sustainability Means to the Green Industry,” in which he stated some government and other agencies are exploring those possibilities. 

There are a number of calculators which attempt to put a dollar amount on the benefits a tree provides. One I found online is very easy to use: if you’d like to see just what benefits a tree already growing in your yard provides, just type in your ZIP code or your geographic location from the provided map, choose your tree from the drop-down menu, enter the tree’s trunk diameter measured 4.5 feet from the ground, and the type of dwelling you live in. I admit, I’ve had a lot of fun wading through the snow to measure the trees in my yard, and dragging Shelby in her pajamas with me to hold the tape measure so I could take a picture; what a ham. It’s amazing what one single tree can do. 

According to the National Tree Benefit Calculator, the largest tree in our yard, a sugar maple, “provides overall benefits of $361.00 every year; the same tree if located on the California coast would have an annual benefit of $661.00. Here, on the coast of Lake Michigan, my maple will intercept 7,694 gallons of stormwater runoff. This year it will raise my property value by $138.00; it will conserve 213 kilowatt hours and reduce my natural gas consumption by 72 therms. It will reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon by 1,461 pounds. Kinda neat, huh? Especially when you consider 26 pounds of carbon dioxide equals 11,000 miles of car emissions. Actually, the sugar maple probably provides greater benefits than this; its diameter is more than 50 inches – the calculator only goes up to 45 inches. 

So there you have it – while I haven’t been busy thumbing through catalogs and ordering seeds (I didn’t even order a catalog), or plotting this year’s garden on graph paper, I have been kind of busy with gardening stuff. Or at least well-occupied. I hope you get a chance to check some of these things out, and find them as time-worthy and enjoyable as I have.

What on earth is this?

If your answer is a giant Daikon radish you’re only partly right. The answer that I’m looking for is: “It’s evidence.”

Of what, you ask?

It’s evidence that I planted a crop this fall that I a) don’t really like, and b) don’t really know what to do with. Which is why I never harvested it, but let it keep growing, and growing ... after awhile it kind of became a game. How big would it actually get? It got even bigger than it looks. I broke off about eight inches of it trying to pull it up out of the ground.

Enough already.

I’m at the end of my second full year of gardening – I’ve done two spring/summers and two falls – and I think that I’ve moved beyond planting a particular kind of seed just because I know that it’s going to come up. It’s time to get serious. Getting serious means making plans. Making plans means making lists.

We’ve been giving this a lot of thought. We’ve had a lot of conversations about it. What exactly is it that we’re trying to do around here? What do we hope to accomplish? What’s the best way to build upon our 2008 and 2009 successes? Lately we’ve been trying to move beyond our usual broad, sweeping, philosophical statements and write down some discrete, concrete and measurable goals. We’ve argued the virtues of this crop over that one. We’ve observed what we eat a lot of, what we only eat occasionally, and what we don’t eat that much of because for the most part only one of us is eating it. After my recent rye revelation I’ve been reconsidering my position on growing grains. My husband would like to devote some land to growing crops dedicated to experimenting with biofuel. We’ve debated whether or not and how to save seeds. We’ve tried to over-winter plants indoors with varying degrees of success. We’ve dabbled a little bit in an awful lot of things.

Obviously, we need to get organized.

So here it is, our 2010 goals, broken down into the following categories:

1. Our staples – what we want to grow a lot of

2. The mid-list – what we want to grow in moderate amounts

3. The low list – what we want to grow in small amounts

4. What we would like to grow, do or make if we can

5. What we will not try to grow, do or make

Our Staples

1. Potatoes. I had great success with banana fingerlings and Beauregard sweet potatoes this year. In 2010 I want to up the ante a little bit. We’re planning on banana fingerlings (12 plants, same as this past year, to give us new potatoes in early summer); a variety of potato that will supply us in the summer (12 plants); a variety of potatoes suited particularly for storage to keep us in potatoes through the winter (at least 12 plants, possibly more); Beauregard sweet potatoes (24 plants, same as this past year).

2. Tomatoes. I was very happy this year with our variety of heirloom tomato plants. I would like to grow 6 heirloom plants again. But this year I want to grow a lot of red tomatoes too; at least 6 Roma plants and 6 of something else, Beefsteak maybe, since I have seeds. I want to produce enough tomatoes to keep us in sauce, stewed tomatoes, salsa, ketchup, BBQ sauce and enchilada sauce ideally through the following summer. I’ll set some definite canning goals at a later time.

3. Onions. I’m thinking of planting a variety that is particularly suited to storage, and shooting for producing at least 52 onions, one for every week of the year. I don’t know if they’ll keep that long, but we’ll see.

4. Garlic. Same deal on the garlic. I did plant garlic this fall, but I already know it’s nowhere near enough. Next year I want to plant more with plans to dry and store it for use through the year.

5. Peppers. Boy, did we enjoy our peppers this year! We really miss them now. I didn’t really preserve any of them, but I plan to do that next year. We’re shooting for 3 jalapeño plants, 2 Serrano plants, 1 habanero plant, 2 bell plants, 2 Anaheim plants and 2 Carmen plants. And in 2010 I won’t dig them up prematurely in a useless attempt to move them indoors. Seriously. I swear. I lost months of productive time eating wonderful peppers because of that little trick.

6. Carrots. This year I’m going to do succession planting of carrots in the spring and fall, and hope to have plenty for fall storage. I’m still working out the details of how to store fall vegetables…

7. Beans. I want to grow the regular green beans, and maybe some exotic 8-foot long bean, and I’ll throw the peas into this category too. But what I’m really talking about here is beans that can be dried for storage for use during the year. I’m shooting for a total of 12 quarts of dried beans; red, black and white.

8. Broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. These are the main vegetables that my husband will eat. I have had great success two falls in a row with broccoli, but I still don’t have it down. I have never successfully produced a head of cauliflower. The verdict is still out on my first year with the brussels sprouts, but at least one plant out there seems to be trying to make little heads. I’d like to grow all of these in spring and fall in 2010. The past two years I’ve only grown them in fall. I’m aiming for 6 plants of each, each season.

9. Fruit. I’ve had success two summers in a row with melons. I would like to grow a little more variety in melons. This year I also want to get some berry bushes installed. We still haven’t purchased any apple trees for installation this fall ... Our fig tree is still hanging out dormant, but hopefully this coming year we’ll be able to harvest a few figs too. My fruit goal is vague. Whatever I can get to grow and harvest this year works for me. I will also make a greater effort to get to farmer’s markets and buy what I can to preserve to make up for what I’m not producing.

10. Last but not least, the eggs, of course! I have made a deal with a local lady to tack onto her upcoming chick order this spring in March/April. When the chicks arrive I am going to let her keep and brood them for me along with hers, until they’re about 18 weeks old, point of lay. I will then pick them up, pay her what it cost to feed them, and bring them back here to thier new coop. I am excited about this arrangement, because, 1) It’s a good time frame. It gives me until about June or so to get the coop ready, and since we’re under construction around here, and trying to focus on one thing at a time, summer chickens will work out about right; and 2) I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew the first time out, and I was a little concerned about having to raise the chicks. But they will be raised around lots of people, and socialized with people and other chickens, and I'll get to visit them while they're growing up, get to know them, etc. They’re going to be Golden Comets, from Mt. Healthy Hatchery – a “quiet bird” that lays brown eggs. Perfect!

The Mid-List

There are a number of vegetables that we like and eat, but which I wouldn’t call a “staple.” If I dedicate a modest amount of space for these things and do some succession planting, we should have more than enough of all of them. The mid-list veggies are: lettuce, turnips, rutabaga (by the way, bugs LOVE rutabaga. If you don’t get them out of the ground soon enough, the bugs will hollow them out and leave you with a rutabaga shell!), kohlrabi, beets, celery, asparagus, cucumbers, eggplant, spinach, zucchini, cabbage, leeks.

This list represents some real challenges. I’ve never grown celery or leeks but I understand they can be difficult. Asparagus is expensive, and I believe it requires some time to establish a bed before harvesting. I have yet to eat an eggplant off a plant I have grown, and not only because my daughter developed a fondness for plucking off the babies ... I did get spinach to come up from seed this year, but it’s not very prolific. Every summer I have lost my zucchini to vine borers. I also have a huge bug problem with the cabbage. I hope to do some research about how to prevent this for the upcoming year this winter. I think I’m going to have to cover them.

The Low-List

Basically, these are the vegetables that only I eat, or only my husband eats. Also, for the time being, I have put the herbs and other condiment-type things here. The low list consists of kale, collards, chard, radishes, yellow squash, winter squash, corn, peas, ginger, horseradish and herbs.

What We Would Like to Grow, Do or Make

There are a number of things that we would like to do around here, but for the time being we’re not setting any goals to do them in 2010. If we do get them done, that’s great. If we don’t … well, we’ve got enough to do. They are below in no particular order.

1. Keep a sheep for milk and cheese (I think they’re nicer and easier to handle than goats). I also suspect we don't have the proper space or zoning on this piece of property for this, so I doubt it'll happen any time in the immediate future.

2. Build a smokehouse. I'm pretty sure I have a neighbor with a smokehouse.

3. Make cheese and butter. Or at the very least find someone locally around here that makes cheese and butter and get it from them.

4. Make cleaning products.

5. Develop my own recipes for crackers, cereal bars, and croutons (these are practically the only processed foods I still buy).

6. Preserve whatever is in season that I can get my hands on as it becomes available, time permitting.

What We Will Not Try to Grow, Do or Make

We’re energetic and ambitious, but we have to draw the line somewhere. So here it is. We will not be getting involved in any of the following:

1. Growing grains, except for possibly small amounts of specialty things like quinoa, etc.

2. Pasta. I can and occasionally do make pasta from scratch, but I will continue to keep a variety of dried store-bought pastas on hand.

3. Honey. I have no intention of getting into bee-keeping.

4. Yeast. Where does yeast come from? Who knows? I will totally just buy it and not worry about it.

5. Rice. With all the rain we've had around here of late I suspect that I could grow rice outside right now, but I’m not going to try. I buy rice in bulk and keep it in 5-gallon buckets.

6. Popcorn. I’m not thrilled about growing any corn at all. I’m not going to knock myself out over this.

7. Dog food. I have 4 dogs. It is expensive to buy them quality dog food anyway, but more expensive and time consuming to make it myself (though I do make my own dog treats). I will continue to buy dry dog food.

8. Raising animals for meat. I don’t think we have the property for this, and it’s not something I am anxious to get into, especially as I can get good quality naturally-raised meats from a local farm. My Thanksgiving turkey was truly the best I've ever had, and sometime this month I'll be filling up my freezer with hog …

So. There you have it. To sum it all up – in 2010 we’d like to pretty much grow all our own produce.

Obviously, this is going to take some planning, and a heck of a lot of work. I believe we have the space for it. I have drawings from this year detailing where everything was planted in spring and summer so that we can make sure that we’re rotating things properly. Deciding where everything will go, and when it will go in, will be my big winter project. That and reading to try and learn as much as I can during the down time.

But for now, I think I’m going back to bed. Just writing all of this down has exhausted me.

So much to talk about … where to begin??? The last time I posted here was waaaay back at the end of June!! I know, I know, it’s unforgivable. “Bad Blogger ... Bad blogger!!”

So then, now that the self punishment has been doled out, what say I start trying to get you up to date? You may remember that I mentioned that my wife and I went through our local extension service’s Master Gardener program this Spring. It was a pretty long course that consisted of 40 hours of classroom instruction spread out over 10 weeks. But it didn’t stop there; the second part of the program, and one that must be finished if we were to actually be counted as “graduates” of the program was to provide 40 hours of garden-related service to our community. That took a surprisingly long time to do working on it only part time but was truly one of the most rewarding parts of the process as well.

One of the things that I did a lot of was to teach beginning gardening classes to different groups in my area. It was so fun to get to share my passion for the garden and the many fruits of that sort of labor with my neighbors and community groups. I can only hope that I was able to affect at least one person or family. We also spent a couple of afternoons at our county fair manning a Master Gardeners booth and worked together to answer phones at the extension service office; both times providing knowledge and “expertise” on some of the typical garden problems that arise in our area. They’re called diagnostic services and its amazing how much you can learn just by looking up information for others. I heartily encourage anyone who is seriously interested in gardening, of whatever sort, to check in with your local extension service to see if there is a Master Gardener class scheduled for your area. Now is the time to check too since they usually start at the beginning of the year.

And speaking of the garden, a lot of good things came out of it this year. This spring we added a new garden bed to the side-yard area of the front of our house. It’s not a common site in our suburban area but we hope it will be soon! You can see that new garden area in the bed below.

The low lying plants are the potatoes that I talked about planting earlier this year, but as you can see they weren’t the only thing that did well in this area. Let me take this opportunity to tell you about how many sun flowers of varied and prolific numbers that we had. The sunflowers you see here - both the large ones and the small - are naturally seeded ones that came up as volunteers from last year. I did thin them out quite a bit, but the ones I left did great and brought us lots and lots of bees and lady beetles. Of course we know that the lady beetles showed up because we had an abundance of aphids.

In the back yard we had some more positive developments. The Lasagna Garden Beds that I started at this time last year and planted for the first time this summer did better than I could have expected! (That’s it above.) Watermelons, tomatoes peppers and cukes all did awesome in the fertile, nutrient-rich humus. I’ve decided that this fall I’m ammending all my raised beds with my last clippings, leaves, coffee grounds and chicken bedding to break down over the winter and enrich the soil. I am sold!

Also in the back yard I finally got the rest of my side yard cleaned up and added four more 4-by-4 raised beds to it. That’s them all the way down at the end of the row. The soil is still a little bit neutral for my liking, being that it is just a basic soiless mix of peat, vermiculite and compost. I’m ammending it this fall and look forward to growing in it next year.

One of my big successes this year was with okra. (You can see the early growth in the picture above, it’s in the second bed from the right.) They are really an interesting plant. Before the familiar pods in the picture below form, this relative of the hibiscus and rose of sharon sports a quite beautiful flower. Better keep an eye out though, they’re only there for about a day. I’ve learned that they don’t like any cool weather, nor do they care to have wet feet. Otherwise a pretty easy plant to work with.

With all the talk of the good things going on you must be wondering how the harvest was. Quantity isn’t the sole measure of a successful garden mind you, but it sure does help an urban farmer to know how he’s doing. I’m glad to report that this was our best season yet! Of course that was bouyed by the added garden areas that we developed this year but I also felt a little more organized than I have been in years past.

Here’s one of only a few harvest pictures that I took this year. It was after we had pulled our mid season potatoes and a half bushel of tomatoes; along with some other stuff, too, of course.

Ever wonder what 135+ pounds of tomatoes looks like? OK, I never did either, but now I know ... and here it is. One of the things that we decided to do a little differently this year was to plant a good mix of indeterminate and determinate tomatoes. Of course wanted to have enough tomatoes trickling in to keep us in fresh ones (indeterminate), but this year we also wanted to have those big single harvests (determinate), too, so that we could can and put up more tomatoes for this winter. Mission accomplished.

After all was said and done we ended up with just barely shy of 810 pounds of food from our 0.25 acre suburban lot, not counting the eggs we got, which I stopped counting at somewhere past 750. To say I was pleased would be an understatement.

Of course all was not successfull, as is the way in the garden, or we would likely have topped 1000 pounds. Pumpkins, watermelon and some zucchini plants were completely decimated by an abnormally large number of squash bugs. Our green beans also did miserably, I think due to the long cool spring that we had this year, and were plagued by a rust not long after emerging. I had to plant them twice and still needed a fungicide. Time to rotate beds for a few years I’d say.

Well, I think that almost catches you up with me. Still a few more recent developments, but I think I’ll try to put those in another post. Hope all your gardens did well this year. For my part I’m looking forward to relaxing just a little and getting ready for the holidays.

Best to you all!

Paul Gardener~

Oh, my poor tomato plant. When I posted “My Garden” at the end of August the tomato plant was doing great. Just a few days later, it was an entirely different matter. The leaves near the base of the plant started turning yellow. So I consulted with our resident expert (GRIT Editor Hank Will), and he thought aphids.

I was still searching for diatomaceous earth when, a few days later, the entire plant was yellow! Another consult resulted in the diagnosis of tomato blight. Ouch!

With a heavy heart, I trimmed all the leaves off the plant, leaving the remaining tomatoes to, hopefully, ripen. No new tomatoes, although there were about 25 or so pieces of fruit in various sizes. I’ve harvested almost all of those, and my kitchen counter contains a pile of red. Unfortunately, a few tomatoes had to be tossed, with strange holes. And since I’m squeamish about that sort of thing, into the trash they went.

This weekend, the rest of the plant will follow, as will the soil. And I plan to rearrange the garage so all my gardening paraphernalia will fit. A problem I never thought I’d have, by the way.

Now armed with a homemade pesticide/fungicide, I have high hopes that this particular problem will not repeat next year.

And yes, I’m already planning for next year. What can I say? I’m hooked.

The basil and the oregano didn’t do too well together, so I’ll leave the oregano in the current pot (letting it winter in the garage) while I plant a new basil plant in a new pot next spring.

The red peppers are still going strong – new blossoms have appeared, and if all goes as I hope, I’ll pull the plant inside when Jack Frost comes calling and have fresh peppers in a month or two. And a second pot of peppers will undoubtedly be part of the container garden come spring. Those red peppers are delicious, if I do say so myself.

The tomato plant will have a larger pot – and I do believe I’ll add a second plant, probably one that ripens a bit earlier than Brandywine – and I’ll add the wire cage from the beginning, training and pruning each plant as the season progresses. As you can see from the photo, my re-tying efforts were a bit erratic, so I don’t want a repeat of that particular problem. The homemade pesticide will also be applied from the get-go.

Guess I’ve become a real gardener. The roller coaster set of emotions were mine from the beginning – the thrill of new growth and a great harvest, the sadness of a dying plant, the anticipation of next year – and I’ve begun to look at gardening equipment in a whole new light. Too bad I can’t quite get myself to be thrilled about working in the dirt when it comes to my front garden. Maybe next year?

For a first-time garden, my container tomato and pepper plants are growing great. In fact, I’m pretty amazed at how well things have gone.

The Brandywine tomato plant has already produced 10 beautiful pieces of fruit – and, believe me, I’ve enjoyed every bite! There have to be at least 30 green tomatoes still on the vine, and I’m pretty sure I saw a few more buds appearing just this week. My only problem is that the plant is not producing ripe fruit in a nice orderly fashion – I really don’t like the wait! I’m joking – well, a little bit anyway. It would be really great if the plant would ripen one or two tomatoes each day – I’d be in seventh heaven!

I definitely can’t complain about the quality of fruit. Although I do have a bit of a complaint about the monster plant in my container. I’ve been pruning, and it’s a bit more manageable these days. That wasn’t always the case.

One day I came home to find the tomato plant leaning against the table holding the pepper plant. The tomato’s container is an urn design, and the plant decided to put all its efforts into vines on one side, rather than a neat round bush. A slight wind that day caught the mass of growth like a sail, and the plant tilted to the side. It’s actually lucky that the pepper plant and its table were right there to catch the wandering tomato plant. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure the tomato plant would not be looking too good right about now.

The massive growth has necessitated quite a few re-ties over the summer. I started out with three stakes in a teepee configuration. That didn’t last long. Then the three stakes were untied at the top and replanted straight up and down. That lasted for a bit. The pepper plant about that time decided it needed a stake, and a week or two later, the extra two stakes were planted with the tomato. That makes five stakes and I still need more! I tried a wire cage for a while, but it seemed to be crowding the plant too much, and of course, at this late date, I wasn’t able to place the cage properly without damaging the plant. I’m still looking for more stakes, because the darn tomato just keeps growing!

The pepper plant had a bit of a problem earlier in the summer – a storm blew off a lot of blossoms. At the time, there were six or seven peppers beginning to form, and I thought I’d have a slew of them by now. Not the case. I’ve been forced to harvest two green peppers – one was knocked off by the tilting tomato plant – which were good. But I wanted red peppers as advertised! Yesterday, I picked the first red pepper. It’s a deep red color, and I have yet to sample its deliciousness. I have every reason to believe it will be as good as the green versions. (It was!)

So there you have it, the latest from this neophyte gardener. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving every minute of this experiment (and every bite too!). I do have a confession to make, though. I’m already planning next year’s garden!

We have had our gardening ups and downs this year. You may have heard that it has rained almost every day this summer in Massachusetts, so our poor waterlogged plants haven’t had much of a chance. But we are beginning to reap the benefits of our home garden. We’re getting a bowl full of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes every day. At first every ripe tomato went directly into Ella’s mouth, but finally there are enough to share. We have tons of other unripe tomatoes on the vine waiting for some sun to ripen. We have some yellow leaves, so we’re praying they don’t get hit by the late blight, which is wiping out whole fields of tomatoes around here.

We’re also getting quite a few zucchini, which seem to grow about four inches overnight. Fortunately, we are big fans of the secret placement of zucchini in everything from cookies to bread to smoothies, so we are happy. Ella has even rewritten the Raffi song, “I like to Eat Apples and Bananas” to be “I like to Eat Apples and Zucchinis.” Of course, she doesn’t really like to eat zucchini that much at all, but we’re hoping the song will sink in. We also started a whole host of other squash, pumpkin, and gourds, which we forgot to label, so now we are watching every day to see what they will turn out to be. 

Our bean crop had a few disadvantages going in. First we mixed up our beans and planted the pole beans in the garden and the bush beans by the fence. Next we actually followed the directions on the package that said to plant them 6 inches apart. So we only planted like 12 plants. We could have planted them a couple of inches apart and actually produced more than two servings of beans. Good to know for next year. The Royal Purple Pod Beans did win the most interesting vegetable from the garden though. We love the color combo of the dark purple with the vivid green when you break them. Of course, when you cook them, they turn just plain old green.

We’ve also got peppers, cucumbers, carrots, onions, our second planting of lettuce, tons of basil and other herbs including lemongrass.

Our biggest surprises were our berry crops. The good surprise is we actually have strawberries on the plants Brent grew from seed. Our friend who works on an organic farm said we should probably pick them off so the plants will produce next year, but we just couldn’t do it. Our first strawberries!

The less good surprise was that the very prolific huckleberry bushes we also started from seed are not the wild huckleberries that grew on LeAnna’s grandparents’ farm in Kentucky, but are actually garden huckleberries, which don’t actually taste very good. Any ideas for what we can do with them?

We’ve definitely learned a few things in our garden experiment. First, we need to plant a lot more to feed our family for the summer and be able to can. Second: it seems to benefit most anything to start it from seed before planting it in the ground. Third: We miss our CSA more than we thought we would, especially those giant u-pick fields. Depending on how the rest of the month goes, we’re thinking about joining a local college’s Fall Semester CSA and trying to take advantage of the u-pick and seeing what we can preserve. Until then we’re supplementing our diet with lots of free, foraged berries and local fruit and produce from farmstands. How has your garden been growing?

Things have been very busy here in our neck of the woods!

My little darlings, as I like to call them, are now permanent residents outside. Of course I am referring to the three baby squirrels that we rescued earlier this year when I found them fallen from their nest. They are looking for food on their own, but we still spoil them with corn and sunflower seeds.

On some days they greet us on the porch in the morning, and will still come running up my leg, or jump onto my shoulder. My husband, Jim, built a couple more squirrel boxes and hung them in trees near our house. The babies are all staying in one of those boxes overnight. They have been a great success, and it is a joy to have them around!

Our garden is growing beautifully! I have already picked sugar peas three times, and I have gotten quite a few Eight Ball zucchinis!

Our green beans are in blossom, and our potatoes just started to blossom.

Our cabbages seem to put size on every day, and my carrot tops are beautifully frilly!

The onions are big enough to start harvesting some to eat, and there are little green tomatoes hanging from the vine!

My peppers haven’t started to blossom yet, but I was a bit late getting them in the ground this year.

My flowers are starting to bloom beautiful too.

My Delphinium are opening, one of my favorite.

I’m a sucker for the cottage garden look!

On the fauna side of things, I have had lots of broody hens in the past month!

We now have four mother hens with peeps running around, and another that is still sitting, but not on chicken eggs! Our neighbor over the hill is a farmer, and farms the fields right next to ours. He came to our house a couple of Saturdays ago. He was mowing his field when he came across a turkey hen sitting on a nest. The hen took off without being hurt, and he just missed the eggs with the mower! He gathered up the clutch of eggs and came to our house. He knew we had chickens, and wondered if we had any broody hens we could stick the eggs under? It just so happens that we had a Welsummer hen that had just gone broody. It’s funny how things work out sometimes! So that hen is now sitting on ten turkey eggs. We don’t know how long it will take them to hatch, because we don’t know how long the turkey hen was sitting on them before she was disturbed. We also don’t know how they will do if they hatch. I know wild turkeys are very touchy. It is an experiment, and we’ll figure it out as we go! Our goal is to get them big enough to let them loose.

It is fun to watch all these mothers with their babies, and as they get bigger, we will start culling some of the older chickens from the flock and put them in the freezer. The first four babies that Mamma hatched for us back in December are now laying beautiful darker brown eggs.

Another change with our chicken flock is they are now in a very large fenced area. I prefer them roaming free, but we couldn’t let them roam and have a nice garden and flower beds! They thought they had to remove all my flowers and replace them with large dusting holes for themselves! We bought 300 foot of chicken fence and made a large enclosure. We hope to add another 300 feet very soon. That fence also gives us a little more peace of mind as far as predators are concerned.

My husband and I just took a vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in May.

The beach there is so nice. It is never crowded, and is within walking distance from the house we rented!

What a way to relax! We had a great time! As I said at the start … life is good!

In my area, spring has disappeared, and summer’s heat and humidity have taken its place. Being a complete indoors type, I’m not particularly thrilled with the changes. However, there is one outdoors arena in which I’m pleased to report a bit of success. OK, only if you don’t count my lack of weeding skills (or more accurately, weeding motivation).

You may remember a blog post from last November – Garden Headaches – in which I detailed my wonderful sister’s efforts in clearing out my front garden and dividing/transplanting hosta and sedum. (Do I have that right, folks? What variety of sedum do I have?) The before shot is above.

Check out what the spring brought! All of the transplants are flourishing, and a couple of the sedums are now almost as large as the two we divided last fall. Amazing!

I added the rock around the downspout, because the rain kept washing away the mulch, which is the same reason I added the border. And while both have helped, mulch continues to wash away. I think it’s going under the border, which I only placed on top of the ground. It probably needs to be installed properly. One of these days.

I smile every time I drive up to my house. It’s looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. Now if I can just get it weeded!

In the backyard, I actually started my container gardening. Yes, I actually did it. In Neophyte Gardener, I wrote about my intention of starting a container garden. I am proud to report that I am now the owner of three containers holding a Brandywine tomato plant, a red pepper plant, basil and oregano. The tomato plant has buds on it, so I am eagerly awaiting fruit. My mouth’s already watering.

The basil and oregano have yet to be used, and I’m struggling with ways to cook with both herbs. Once the peppers and tomatoes start arriving, though, that probably will no longer be an issue. I love tomatoes with oregano and mozzarella cheese. Yum!

So there you have it, and I promise I’ll keep you updated on my gardening adventures. I feel like a gardener; am I?

The garden project has moved a couple of steps forward. I worked pond muck, composted wood and leaves into the soil and we have built to first box for the raised beds. Our neighbors think we are nuts to assume that we’re going to keep the deer out. But at the same time, we have no shortage of advice on how to do it. And the solutions range from building a fortress to relying on scent alone.

The first person we talked to insisted that we need welded wire fencing to 4 feet, then 3 strands of electrical wire above, to a total height of 8 feet. He also told us to install 5-post corners. Wait a minute! We’re starting this year with about 600 square feet of garden! If we put in 5-post corners, plus a gate, all of the space would be filled with wire and wood, and that’s not what I was planning to eat this summer.

A friend of ours has a garden every year, and he lives pretty close. The difference in our parcels is that he is surrounded by cornfields and we are in a natural area, so deer already have some pretty good stuff to eat to keep them away from his garden. He just uses regular 5-foot metal posts and a 2-wire electrical fence and it works well for him. Actually, he has another line of defense as well. He lets his garden go “au natural”. I remember him trying to find me a zucchini and he couldn’t even find the plant in the midst of all the weeds, so it’s possible that deer get so tangled in the garden underbrush that they just give up trying to find the vegetables.

I was looking over a farm supply catalogue, and they were advertising the bright orange plastic mesh as deer fencing. Seems to me that if you wanted to protect some trees that this might be a deterrent, but it would surprise me if that would keep out any deer that really wanted to get into a garden. The other thing I’ve heard it if you use high test fishing line, it makes an invisible barrier, and since the deer can't see it but can feel it, it spooks them and they stay away.

Talking about invisible barriers, our neighbor just two lots away claims that all you have to do is mix a couple of eggs in water each week and pour it around the perimeter. According to him, this creates a scent barrier that will keep deer away. All I can say, is that I’ve spent a ton on bloodmeal in the past and it never stopped anything from munching on what was supposed to be the fruits of my labor.

Unless I hear differently from someone else, I’m going with the 2-wire electrical. If I have to let the weeds grow and just stay in my hammock all summer, well, it would be a sacrifice but I’m sure I’d be up to the task.

Most people who like to play in the dirt have probably had their gardens planned for a long time now. I suspect it’s actually a constant thing – a continual revising of the garden in one’s head, imagining the colors, the textures, the produce. How it will look and all work together. Even dreaming of the harvest to come, and the preserving of the wonderful treasures coming from your very own garden, I’m sure are part of mental gardening.

Those of us who haven’t gardened much in the past (or none at all, as the case may be), are just now thinking of a semblance of a garden. In my case, it also helps that the six sedum my sister and I transplanted last fall are all, yes, count them, all, showing green. Still no word from the hostas (we split and transplanted eight) on how they survived the transplant and winter. Remember my Garden Headaches post?

So green showing in my front garden, houseplants that are doing well, a series of novels set in a greenhouse (lots of talk of flowers, seeds, propagation, grafting and the like) and a kitchen garden article in our May/June issue of Grit have all combined to start my mind whirling.

I’m going to container garden this year.

Well, that’s the plan anyway. I’d like to start with at least two containers on the back porch (it’s a slab of concrete outside my sliding glass doors, but I call it a patio) with one tomato plant, at least, and the other … Well, I haven’t made up my mind yet.

I miss homegrown tomatoes. A former neighbor planted almost half his backyard in tomato plants, and he was kind enough to keep me supplied with gorgeous fruit all summer long. I’d like that experience again, just with fewer numbers, I hope.

So I’ve decided. It’s time to get over my dislike of playing in the dirt. I can get my hands dirty, I can handle the bugs and the heat. I can do this.

Now all I have to do is decide on the containers!

Any suggestions for this neophyte gardener?

Photos from top: iStockphoto.com/pixonaut; dirkr; kkgas

A string of sunny days the first week in February had me itching to start working in my gardens. But with only two days with temperatures above freezing and everything still covered in snow, there was little gardening work to be done. I sat on the back porch with my chin in my hand, pondering what I could do to relieve my gardening itch. Then it hit me – though it was still winter outside and spring seemed far away, I could have it come early inside the house.

The pussy-willow in the ravine already had nice, big fat buds – perfect for bringing indoors to force. Pussy-willows (or any Salix species) and forsythia are natural choices for forcing; they will bloom indoors so easily it’s nearly foolproof. The only effort involved is cutting branches after they’ve gone through a sufficient period of dormancy – generally anytime after January is acceptable – and putting them in a vase of water. They’ll not only bloom, but often grow roots as well. With a little more effort though, the branches of nearly any dormant deciduous tree or shrub can be forced indoors.

Species such as magnolia, flowering quince, American spice bush, flowering dogwood, redbud, crabapple, vernal witch hazel, and lilac are just a handful of flowering trees and shrubs that make good candidates for early indoor blooming. But don’t discount non-flowering species either. Birch and willow provide catkins, and their slender branches make a graceful arrangement. Shrubs with variegated leaves have interest, as do those with dark leaves such as sand cherry or purple-leafed plum. Even those that just leaf out a bright green will brighten any room during the late days of winter.

I’ve been tempted to force branches from my fothergilla; I like the fluffy white, early flowers that Keith calls “bunny tails.” But the shrub is slow growing, and cutting branches to force would have ruined its structure aesthetically. It’s important when cutting branches for forcing not to go hog wild. Cuttings suitable for forcing should be at least a foot long, and consideration should be taken if removal of such branches would disfigure the tree or shrub’s overall appearance.

When making your selection, choose branches with well-developed plump buds. The plumper the bud, the better chance of success you’ll have in forcing it to bloom. Plants closer to their normal bloom or leafing out period outdoors will be quicker and easier to force indoors. The earliest flowering shrubs, such as forsythia, American spice bush, and quince, will generally only take one to three weeks to bloom. Later blooming species should be forced closer to their natural bloom – if brought indoors too early, the buds may dry out and wither before having a chance to open.

The trick to successful forcing is providing constant, sufficient moisture and humidity. If the buds become dry, you’ll end up with nothing but a vase full of dead branches. Your inside environment should mimic that of early spring outdoors. Keeping your cuttings out of direct sunlight and away from heating vents will minimize the chance that they become desiccated. Temperatures ranging from the low to mid-sixties are best.

There are different methods for forcing branches. The simplest method is to just put them in a vase of water – this is recommended for only the most easily forced species such as forsythia and willows. Other methods are more complex and involve completely submerging the branches in water for 24 hours, mashing the stems with a hammer, then wrapping the length of the branch in plastic wrap for another 24 hours to produce humidity before placing the stems in water. That may seem like a lot of effort to go through to have blooms just a few weeks earlier than nature would normally produce them; it seems so to me anyway.

But there is an easier method that works well on most species. Once you've chosen your branches and placed them in a vase, just make sure to change the water every two or three days, making a fresh cut on the bottom of the stems as you do so. Always use well-maintained pruners or a sharp knife to get a clean cut – those made with dull blades can inhibit the branch’s ability to take up water. Keeping the buds moist with daily misting helps to prevent drying. The forcing process can take from one to six weeks depending on the species and how close it is to its natural bloom period.

The pussy-willows opened in a little under two weeks. I added some yellow-twig dogwood branches, boxwood, and variegated euonymus to the bouquet for color-contrast and interest. It’s not the most flowery of displays; the flowers of viburnum, chokeberry, and lilac branches will come later. But with a fresh layer of new snow outside, it’s nice to see a bit of springtime from my gardens inside.

I noticed this morning that the yellow-twig dogwood branches have started to break bud! It’s a pleasant surprise – though I brought them in at the same time as the pussy-willows, I really didn’t expect it to bloom, thinking it was it too early. The open buds reveal two tiny leaves on either side of a lime-green composite flower. The flowers will change to creamy white about the same time the pussy-willow catkins turn fuzzy yellow with pollen. Maybe in the meantime, I’ll start forcing forsythia to add in the vase too, for a whole new look. Experimenting is half the fun.

I’m not sure whether she’s bragging or complaining, but Sue’s favorite expression has become, “Now even our projects have projects!”. Here we are in the dead of winter and we are in the midst of planning and preparing for our first garden together. Actually, we started planning it when we moved into the new house last summer, because despite the fact that the lot is 2 acres, it’s in the glacial terrain of Michigan, so there probably 20 feet of relief from the pond surface to the ridge along the back of the property. The lower areas are flat, but they are also in muck soil without much structural integrity, and riddled with moles and some pesky muskrats. The upper soils are very sandy without much organic material, and there’s not a flat spot to be found. And we have quite a few trees. 

After a few discussions and sessions of standing outside and staring around, we finally settled on a reasonably flat area northwest of the house. It works because it’s out back where we added a water spigot and it’s close to the house and the compost pile. Other than the slight slope and the sandy soil, there were only three problems with it. 

First problem: a mature tree smack dab in the middle on the south side of the plot. Second problem: the east edge of the garden area butts up against the woodpile which was cut into the hill. The current vertical, wooden retaining wall is falling down and will need to be rebuilt before we can expand the garden that far east. Third problem: Since we connect through forested land with the Waterloo Recreation area, which at 30,000 acres is the largest State recreation area in the Lower Peninsula, we get a lot of deer. Although we don’t see huge herds of them, they are a constant presence. The story goes that when the previous owner used to “feed” them, one winter day he counted 65 out on the frozen pond in the front yard. Since the nearest farm is half a mile down the road, our garden would quickly become the salad bar of choice for venison on the hoof. 

So at that point, the project sprouted four preparatory projects- cut down the tree, fix the retaining wall, build an electric fence and of course plan the garden itself. After I paced off the area, Sue got to work on the plot plan, which will result in some raised beds on the southwest corner of the area, and slowly expanding the garden to fill the whole area. I figure that gives me at least one summer, if not two, to get the retaining wall fixed. 

Then when we got a little break in the weather a week ago, I started on cutting the tree down. Well, I got part of the way done with that, noting that all 3 of my saw chains are dull as butter knives, when the chain started jumping off the saw. I’d put it back on and it would jump off again. As it turns out, the chain tightener and brake assembly was broken, so I had to order a new one. Since I had to wait until it got shipped in, I decided to go ahead and get the chains sharpened. That, of course, was project number 5. 

Finally, I got the chain saw fixed and went to work on it today. All I have to do is haul all the stacked wood down to the woodpile and project number 6 will be done. I plan to chip up the smaller limbs and branches and mix it in with a tiller to start building up the organic content in the soil. 

So project number 7 will be to rent a chipper.

My garden is not big, at least not by most standards. I’ve estimated it to be about 400 square feet this year and will be expanding it to nearly double of that next year. Even at that though, it’s still not a big area that I grow on. I take a lot of care and time to look into and try out many different methods of growing in that space from using cages, to trellising, to companion plantings and all have helped in one way or another.

Still, even with all the trickery and good use of space and planning, there’s really still only one thing that has the most impact on the small scale growers productivity in my opinion: soil. I need to make sure that I not only use my soil with care in not over using it with the same nutrient loving crops over and over again in one place, but also that I give them the right amount of off time to recoup, rest and regenerate before the next season. And one thing comes to mind when I think of regenerating my garden. Can you guess?

Ever walked through what is normally a lush and fertile summer forest in the fall? What do you see? Leaves. Barren trees, and lots and lots of leaves. They cover the ground, insulating it from the extremes of winter weather and snow and provide shelter and food through the winter for the worms. Worms that will, through the winter and spring, gradually bring all of that wonderful organic material back into the ground to compost and rot and become food for the plants to grown there the next year.  That’s the basis of my plan for my autumn garden beds this year, to try and mimic (albeit very loosely) the way that a natural ecosystem would function. Although I took it a little further.

This year I have at my disposal something that I didn’t have last fall … chickens, or more to the point, chicken manure. As I cleaned and tucked the beds in for the winter, I not only added a lot of very carbon rich leaves to them, I added a few healthy scoops of nitrogen rich chicken manure. It takes a few months for fresh manure to age and compost to the point where it’s no longer so HOT that it will burn young plants, and tucking it in during the fall is a perfect time for that. Come early spring I’ll do a pH test of the soil to determine where I stand, and adjust as necessary.

Leaves are also being used as a final layer to a new bedding area that we just added this fall. It’s a lasagna garden – a garden bed built with different layers of organic materials designed to break down over the winter into a rich humus for planting in – and I gave it a final turn to break up the layers a little before the snow flies, and am covering the entire bed with leaves as a final step. The leaves will help insulate the bed from freezing too hard over the winter I hope, giving it a better chance at completely breaking down before I plant in it next year.

I don’t think there’s a better friend to the small scale farmer, or in my case large scale suburban gardener, than good healthy soil that is rich in nutrients and organic material. It nourishes the earth, helps retain moisture in the heat of the summer, and provides the building blocks for strong plants the next season. And of all the ingredients that I can think of to put to the most useful purposes in building that healthy soil, few can compare to leaves.

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse. 

Folks at the local garden center in Osage City know that garlic is typically planted in the fall, but they don’t stock garlic-for-growing in autumn because most people in Kansas plant it in the spring. Undeterred by that bit of news, Kate decided it was time to try a few different varieties of garlic next year, and so she spent way too much time on the Nichols Garden Nursery website and ordered too many different garlic varieties to count. The box of garlic has been around for a while … I finally got some of it planted on Thanksgiving Day.

My first task was to till up part of the garden for the garlic. I chose to turn the ground that had been lettuce, spinach and peas earlier this year. The soil was already pretty mellow, but I wanted to turn the chicken-scratched straw into the top few inches. Since I was working a relatively small part of the garden, I used our trusty old BCS tiller. This 8-horsepower Kohler-powered machine is as heavy-duty as they get. It has an all-gear transmission and automotive-type dry clutch. Kate thinks it is hard to start … I will tweak the carburetor some day.

After the tillage, I used a little four-tine hand cultivating tool to create shallow furrows … my lines are only relatively straight. I next placed individual garlic cloves pointy side up in the bottom of the furrows. After I had four rows of garlic cloves placed, I gently pulled and pushed soil into the furrows until the garlic was covered. By then, another daughter and her husband had arrived for the holiday, and it was time to take a tour of the farm and have some fun.

I hope that November 27 is the right time for garlic planting in Kansas. It was about 45 degrees and the soil was still warm. I guess we’ll know come spring whether this effort was worth it.

When I was in college and graduate school in Chicago, I managed to pull off some kind of a vegetable garden in vacant lots here and there. Gardening was good for my soul, and it seriously stretched our meager food budget.

One summer we were blessed with a bumper crop of Roma tomatoes and several dozen scrounged, bail-type glass-lid canning jars. After processing one batch of tomato sauce by hand with a cone-shaped colander, I figured there had to be a better way.

I was a subscriber to Mother Earth News at the time and was aware of many expensive, and therefore unobtainable, machines that would have made making tomato sauce and paste a piece of cake. One of the more affordable pieces of equipment advertised in Mother was the Squeezo Strainer. As luck would have it for us, we were regulars at the once famous Maxwell Street Market on Chicago’s near South Side, and before I spent the money on a new Squeezo, we found a used one at the market. It was all metal including the hopper, as I recall, and it looked like it hadn’t been worked hard at all. Using the Squeezo, we actually had fun processing that bushel of remaining Romas.

Our Squeezo Strainer processed hundreds of pounds … perhaps thousands of pounds … of tomatoes, grapes, apples and other fruit before it was retired many years later. We replaced it with a strainer attachment on our first KitchenAid Mixer … one of the last to wear the Hobart brand. I can tell you that we stripped the main drive gear in that mixer twice … we never stripped anything in the Squeezo. But for the life of me, I can’t remember what we did with it … perhaps it was a casualty of some yard sale or another.

Earlier this year, I learned that the Squeezo Strainer is still being produced … built in the U.S.A, in fact. The good folks at All Seasons Homestead Helpers, Inc. in Vermont have kept the Squeezo alive, and they were gracious enough to send me a new one. What I discovered about the Squeezo this year is that it is still every bit as hard core as that old model was. And even though our tomato harvest this year was pretty slim, running some of the fruit through the strainer was a delightful blast from the past.

If you are looking for a high-quality juicer/strainer that has relatively few moving parts, requires no electricity to operate, and will serve your children, and perhaps even your children’s children well, then I suggest you make the $250 investment in the deluxe model. It comes with three strainer screens (different perforation sizes), a 2-plus quart hopper, wooden plunger, brush and recipe/instructions booklet.

 If you are looking for other useful low-impact stuff to help around the homestead, be sure to spend some time exploring the All Seasons Homestead Helpers website.

As far as I’m concerned, gardening is hard work!

My garden area is between the house and the sidewalk to the front door, and it’s always been a sore spot. When I first moved in, it looked like a jungle. I finally cleared it out, and then the grass took over.

There’s a beautiful Japanese maple that keeps getting better every year near the front window. A huge hosta huddled next to the house, and it just kept getting larger. Two sedems also managed to survive the jungle, and they too were huge, leggy and unmanageable. All three plants were constantly being hit by the lawn mower, as we tried to keep the grass under control.

So after more years than I care to count, I decided something needed to be done. My sister volunteered to help (I’m sure she regretted that offer at some point during our adventure), and we set a date.

That Saturday morning, I headed to the garden supply store and bought mulch. Soon the bags were stacked in the garage, and I was trimming back the sedems and the hosta.

When Mary arrived with her two youngsters and a set of garden tools, we got down to business. Within an hour, the three plants were dug out, setting on another section of lawn, and a large section of sod was gone.

There were, of course, problems from the get go. Neither of us thought about how wet it had been recently, so we had mounds of mud to contend with, and the soil was much more clay than dirt. Both factors made digging difficult. Mary took it as a personal challenge and declared she was going to kick that grass to the curb before she was finished.

And she did.

About four hours later, Mary was dividing the hosta into eight pieces, and the two sedems into three each. I tried to envision the plants in full summer green, and pointed to spots I thought would work. (The placement is marked on the photograph at the end of this post.) We dropped in the divided plants, pushed the muddy clay around the roots, with our hopes high that they would all survive.

Once the 14 transplants were in the ground, the mulching began. I tried to be dainty (hah!) about it, raking carefully. Mary soon convinced me the only way to garden and mulch was down on my knees, close to the ground, pushing those cedar chips around. My 10 bags of mulch didn’t last long, but we put it down around the plants. My Sunday task was to find more mulch, and finish around the maple. (I added another six bags of mulch!)

After a great deal of effort, we had eight bags of sod at the curb for the city to pick up Monday morning. A neighbor gave me recyclable bags so it all went to the city compost pile. The bags were so heavy, we placed each on an empty plastic mulch bag and dragged it to the curb, a task that took both of us to accomplish. Whew!

Then it was cleanup time. What a mess! It may take me a while to get that sidewalk clean, but it was definitely worth it.

My niece Maura wanted to help with it all, and she did – bringing us water and watching her little brother. My nephew Thomas was fascinated by the earthworms, and more than a few glasses of water had to be thrown out after the worms were given baths. It was fun to spend time with Mary, Maura and Thomas. I’m not physically able to do as much in the garden as others, so Mary did the lion’s share of the work, for which I am eternally grateful.

Do you have any suggestions for my hosta/sedem garden? Any tips for a non-gardener? How do I keep it user friendly?

On this long Saturday, I learned a few things. One, my sister Mary is amazing!

Two, I learned that I am definitely not a gardener. Mary and her husband Mike, our sister Tricia and her husband Mike (who has a degree in horticulture, and they have always had great outside gardens and lots of indoor plants) are the gardeners in the family. I’ll stick to my few house plants, thank you very much!

Slowing down in a fast paced world is not easy for those of us who have been programmed all their lives to achieve and become successful.  You become wrapped so tight, you forget how to loosen up and enjoy.  Nature’s beauty goes unnoticed and you can easily become a robot in a make believe world.

But then … you reach milestones in your life and they scream for your attention.  Ours came when we prepared to send our first child to college and we realized that the status of becoming empty nesters was only a few years down the road.  Our second child leaves for college next year; we have taken notice.

As we prepare our children for independence, we are also preparing ourselves for the same.  How ironic that as the next generation heads into the high-pressure world, we are preparing to leave it all behind.

Our children face many challenges as they enter this new phase of their lives; so do we.  The children will have many trained teachers to show them the path. We will have one – a piece of land, in the country.

We purchased our country home last year and we are slowly learning to adjust.  Although Stan has already proven that the pond is full of healthy fish! The pond has also taught us a tough lesson: ponds don’t maintain themselves! This fact was recently proven over the course of a weekend when we pulled 3,000 lbs. of algae and weeds from the pond – Stan in the canoe with me on land, rake in hand.  We prevented our pond from becoming a swamp, and have since purchased an aerator to oxygenate and circulate the water (not yet installed).  Our country property consists of 18 acres, 8 of which a local farmer plants for us – this year soybeans. 

As an Illinois native (47 years) I feel most comfortable here; however, traveling back and forth between our current home in St. Charles and our place in the country (a 5 hour trip one way) gives us plenty of time to reflect on the diverse beauty along the way.  Even though the two locations are in the same state, the differences (soil, weather, towns, people and lifestyle) are profound. Click here to see my farm-diversity slideshow.

I am focusing my passion for gardening on our new property.  As I learn, I will share my experiences and I hope others will join me with their knowledge and own experiences!