1. You know what’s really gross? I mean a real buzz-kill, garden turn-off? Digging potatoes – all happy, clawing into the hill of dirt, all full of yourself like you’re about to pull out gold – and then you sink your fingers up to the knuckle in a mushy, gelatinous rotten potato. And I mean soft like pudding. Ugh.

Seriously, that is just gross. And I ought to know. I’ve done it this week at least half a dozen times.

I suspect that this is a result of the few days a week or so that water from the sprinkler was hitting the potato patch, before I finally moved it, because I know that you’re not supposed to water potatoes, particularly. Then again, I know a lot of things from reading that somehow don’t ever really hit home until I do the wrong thing in spite of what I know. That’s when I really get the picture. 

2. Take a few days ago. Potatoes again. Why do all the Yukon Gold potatoes that I dig up have pink eyes? What is that, rot? Fungus? Disease? Oh my gosh, all my plants are diseased. I’m going to have to throw all of these potatoes away. I feel so stupid!

Google: "pink spots on Yukon Gold potatoes".

Turns out this is a normal feature of the Yukon Gold. The potatoes are fine. Whew!

3. Last year I learned all about solanine after harvesting green banana fingerlings, and now I’m a solanine expert. I make doggone sure no light can get to those potatoes. I know that apparently you’d have to eat like 5 pounds of green potatoes before you’d really get sick from it. Basically I know my way around one more thing that’s probably not going to kill me.

4. I know that Red Caribe potatoes, which are classified as early – 65 days to maturity – really are early. I know that next year I’m not planting all my potatoes on April 7^th. I’m going to do some plants on April 7^th, and some on May 7^th, and some on June 7^th, with the June potatoes being those I mean to keep for storage. And I don’t think I’m going to go with Yukon Gold, either. I’m going to look for something big and thick-skinned and hearty, like a russet.

All of my potato plants have already died back, and I’ve been harvesting potatoes like crazy, and now I’m done.

It’s not even July! Definitely poor planning on my part. It’s unlikely that I’ll have potatoes through the winter. But hey, I’ve got more potatoes than last year, and as long as we eat them all before they go bad, then that’s one for the win-some column, right?

5. I learned that potatoes need to be cured for about 10 days with humidity in a moderate (about 65 degrees or so) temperature before being put away for storage, ideally at something like 45 degrees. I learned that in the living room floor, behind the wood burning stove, in front of the air conditioning vent in the floor is currently the best place in the house for curing my potatoes. It’s 69 down there. That’s the coolest temperature I’m probably going to find inside. Close enough. They’re in cardboard boxes, with a damp towel draped over them for humidity.

6. I told you in my last post that I learned that ladybugs eat potato bug larvae.

7. And now that all of my potatoes are out of the ground, I’ve learned that once the potatoes are all up, you’re left with an area with relatively few weeds. Between the compulsive hilling (over-hilling as it turns out) and covering the hills with straw so that no light can possibly touch a potato, no weeds really grew in that area.

So I have three empty patches in my garden now, and rather than let them be surrendered to weeds like 2/3 of the rest of my garden, which quite frankly is a weed nightmare right now, I’m going to be proactive. One of these areas is going to get onions (planting fall 2010); one garlic (planting fall 2010) and one squash (spring 2011) for the next crop, so I want to make sure they’ll be ready. Which brings me to something else that I’ve learned recently. I mean, I knew it, but lately it's really started to sink in.

8. Driving twenty minutes each way down the road and back for one or two bales of straw at a time is a pain in the butt. It’s just too time and labor intensive. My local nursery delivers, so I’ve decided to get serious.

I called them today and placed an order over the phone. They’re bringing me ten bales of straw and a bunch of compost. The compost will go into the empty potato beds, which will then receive a heavy layer of straw, to keep them weed-free until I need to plant them again.

The remainder of those bales of straw are going to be used around the garden to combat this weed infestation. Grass, mostly. That’s one more thing I’ve learned over the past few years, although it doesn’t have much to do with potatoes particularly.

9. A really thick layer of straw WILL keep any grass or weeds from growing. So I’m going straw-out.

Bring it on.

Last year, my first year growing potatoes, I had a big problem with Colorado Potato Beetles.

This may have been because the first time that I saw them, I was captivated. I mean, they’re beautiful insects. I noticed them, I admired them, I watched them a little, and then I went off, leaving them to their business.

 

Big mistake.

Because not too long afterwards, when I was out inspecting, there were not only adult beetles, but this.

 

These are potato beetle larvae, fattening up on my potato leaves. I can say this because it was at about this point last year that I bothered to find out what these bugs were and whether or not I wanted them there.

As it turns out, I didn’t.

They were also eating my eggplant. What to do about it? Well, pesticides were out, so the fact that they apparently become resistant to a pesticide very quickly was immaterial to me. I read a paper from the University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture that said:

“Potato plants can withstand considerable defoliation without yield loss. Plants can lose up to 30 percent of their foliage without yield loss. Generally, insecticides do not need to be applied unless there is more than an average of one beetle or larva per plant. Additionally, some beneficial insects such as birds, predatory stink bugs, and parasitic flies will help to reduce Colorado potato beetle numbers somewhat.”

This was reassuring to me, because from this I was able to ascertain last year that my problem with the potato beetles was not too bad. I had never seen more than one or two on a plant at a time, and when I walked through all my plants (I had about a dozen banana fingerling plants) I usually only found one or two plants that had any on them at all.

So, I added potato beetle patrol to my list of daily garden chores. Whenever I saw them I would pick them off and crush them. I managed to keep things relatively under control, and got pretty deft at pinching the larvae between the folds of the leaf they were eating. It was a messy and unpleasant business, but I did what I had to do.

This year I was thinking about potato beetles before the seed potatoes even went into the ground. As the plants got bigger (this year I have closer to 40) I kept a regular patrol, walking between the rows. I checked the undersides of leaves. I was vigilant, and my vigilance was rewarded with…

Well, as it turns out there was little to be vigilant about. I found and crushed a few adult beetles, then never saw another adult. I found one plant infested with larvae and over the course of a day or two managed to find and crush them all. There were stray larvae on a few other plants. But that was it. My potatoes remained largely uneaten this year. What gives? What’s different? My gut feeling was that it is this: The ladybug.

I have tons of ladybugs in my garden this year. I didn’t import them. I don’t remember it being this way last year. They’re just there. Crawling all over my potato plants, my tomatoes, my peppers. I see them poised on the tips of straw. They land on my arm. They’re everywhere.

Still, in my usual fashion, I didn’t jump right up and start researching the issue. I just wandered around the garden, looking at the ladybugs, and thinking, Huh. I wonder if that’s why I don’t really have any potato beetles.

Then, finally, I sat down to a Google page and asked the question. It turns out that ladybugs are sold as a natural predator for, among other things, Colorado Potato Beetles. They eat the eggs. So my hardworking ladybugs probably cleaned up most of the damage done by what adult beetles did visit me, before I ever even knew it was there.

Lucky me.

I’m going to put this experience in the “win some” column.

Like most things that I’ve done around here over the course of the past few years, I started buying meat directly from a local farmer in idealistic and almost utter ignorance.

I mean, it’s not exactly like I went out looking for someone to sell me half a hog.

As a matter of fact, when I first started looking into buying local food, meat wasn’t even on my radar screen. Like most people, when I thought of “local food” I thought of CSAs and farmer’s markets, which to my limited understanding meant produce, plain and simple. But when I started participating in a local area food group in Southern Maryland, there was much more than produce on the menu. There were eggs. There were broilers. And then one day there was this:

“For one more week, I am taking orders for meat from half or whole hogs for fall delivery.”

Hello! What’s this? Are you telling me that I can buy a hog?

Of course I had a ton of questions. Starting with, why on earth would I want to buy a hog?

Well, for me it was all about the quality of the meat.

It’s only recently that I’ve become aware of the shortcomings of even organic and “naturally-raised” grocery store eggs and meat, and it wasn’t until I read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma that the penny dropped. In Pollan’s tongue-twisting words – we are what what we eat eats. And just because our beef was raised “without the use of antibiotics or artificial growth hormones” or has been certified “organic” doesn’t mean that it wasn’t standing in a feedlot up to its ankles in its own manure, eating food that cows were never meant to eat and that makes them sick, which is why they get fed all those antibiotics in the first place.

It’s enough to make a person lose her appetite.

But as I said, all of this had not yet arrived in my sphere of notice when I decided to throw caution to the wind and order half a hog. The question I asked was “is it organic,” not “what is the farmer feeding it.” So with approximately 80 pounds of meat coming my way, I really lucked out to find a few months later that my Tamworth hog was being fattened on foraged acorns, an image that calls to mind the feral hog that Pollan shot for his “perfect meal.”

Here’s seven other things that I learned:

1. You’ll get your meat on Nature’s timeline. Not yours.

First off, when you order a whole or a half (or in the case of a cow, a quarter) of an animal, you are entering the Rubicon of fickle nature. Temporal exactitudes are impossible. The hog will be butchered when it reaches approximately 250 pounds; when that is depends on a number of factors, and in our case the biggest factor of all turned out to be the weather. The hogs had a large field to themselves and spent much of their time foraging for acorns underneath a small grove of trees, a task that was made much more difficult by our unusually wet fall. Week after week of rain and several feet of snow apparently made the acorns – and so the desired butchering weight – harder to come by. When I originally placed the order, delivery of the meat was scheduled for sometime in November. It was March before I actually brought anything home.

2. You and the farmer are not the only players.

Fact number two is that you and the farmer (and the hog) are not the only players involved here. In Maryland it’s illegal for the farmer to butcher the hog himself on his property, so they are taken somewhere else for slaughter. But not to the butcher. It turns out that the butcher, who keeps a shop five minutes up the road from me, doesn’t do the slaughtering. What he does is turn the freshly killed animal into various cuts of meat – the chops, the tenderloin, the ribs, etc. He can also smoke the bacon and make the sausage.

3. Some of your meat may require further processing.

We tend to think of “processing” as an ugly word, but the truth is that there are also ways to “process” food which are age-old and natural. For instance, the cut of meat that becomes a ham does not spring off the hog as a ham. It needs to be cured and smoked. The cut of meat that is sliced for bacon is not exactly bacon as we know it until it, too, is cured and smoked. The part of the hog that will become sausage requires grinding, seasoning, stuffing and/or shaping. Chops don’t come off the pig ready to grill. They need to be cut from the loin, and you’ll probably get to specify how thickly you want them cut, and how many of them you want packaged together. All of these things add to the timeline and affect when you will get your meat, and you have to understand what these processes are in order to have a conversation with the farmer and/or the butcher about them.

Which leads into the next thing you need to know.

4. The price of your meat per pound may not reflect the entire final cost.

Meat is usually sold at a certain price per pound. Ask questions to make sure that that price per pound is not just what the farmer is expecting for raising and selling the meat. The slaughtering, the butchering and the processing must also be paid for. Is this part of the farmer’s cost of doing business, figured into the price per pound, as it is when you buy meat packaged and ready to go at the grocery store? Or are you expected to pay these costs in addition to the price per pound that you’re paying the farmer? And who do you pay them to? And when? You need to ask these questions.

5. Half an animal means – well – half an animal.

By which I mean to say that I was offered half the head. I graciously declined.

But I did receive two hocks and two hooves. What does a person do with a hog hoof? Apparently use it to flavor beans and soups. I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m sure that at some point I will, though seeing that hoof bobbing about in my cooking pot may make me feel like I’m in a cartoon…

6. Smoked/cured hams are “cooked” and ready to eat.

When I decided to prepare my “picnic” ham I’ll be honest with you, I had no idea what to do with it. So I threw it in the crock pot. I rubbed it with honey and molasses and Dijon mustard, covered it with water and cooked it until it fell apart like pulled pork. It was pretty doggone good. When I told the farmer this he looked at me in amazement. At first I thought he was impressed with my recipe. Then I realized that it wasn’t my recipe that had dazzled him, it was my stupidity. The picnic ham is already cooked, he told me. "You just have to soak it for two hours." Come to think of it, my pulled pork was quite – um – salty.

If the farmer gives you something that you don’t know how to prepare, don’t fake it. Ask him!

7. Buying meat directly from a farmer is totally and completely worth it.

I may not have gotten my meat when I expected to get it, and it may have ended up costing me a little more than I had thought, but my whole meat-buying experience has been completely satisfying and fantastic. I have great peace of mind about what we are eating. I have ordered a quarter cow for fall delivery, and whenever I head out to the farm to pick something up I can see these longhorn beauties grazing in the field. And I should add that every time I go out there they’re in a different field, so I know that the farmer is employing rotational grazing.

And my goodness, the chickens! The other day we ate a chicken that was fresh, and I mean slaughtered-the-same-day-we-ate-it fresh. It was amazing. These moist, meaty chickens have ruined me for store bought chickens.

Conclusion

Paradoxically, individual self-sufficiency inherently involves community. We’re participating in community when we buy food at our local chain grocery store too; we just don’t see that community, and we may not always share its values. Profit as a motivation is not always compatible with optimum human health. Buying a whole or a half animal directly from a farmer that shares your food values puts you in touch with your local community. It’s also a sound alternative to industrially produced food. You’ll know where your meat came from, how it was raised, who raised it, and what it ate. You can probably even visit the farm while it’s being raised and see all of these things for yourself. Also, there’s a real good chance that the particular kind of animal that you’re buying isn’t the only thing available to you from that farm. You may find that you can meet all of your meat and egg needs – and maybe even get some produce – from a single point of contact. For instance, the farm I go to raises hogs, goats, rabbits, ducks, geese, Guinea fowl, chickens (for meat and eggs) and turkeys, and beginning this spring, the longhorn cows.

If you’re interested in buying meat directly from a farmer and you live anywhere near the D.C. metropolitan area, by all means check out the It’s Only Natural Farm website, where you can see what’s available, put down a deposit on an animal, and even order (cut meats and eggs) online for pickup. If you live anywhere else, you can start your search for a local farm at eatwild.com, which claims to be “the most comprehensive source for grass-fed meat and dairy products in the United States and Canada.”

*   *   *

Portions of this post, in a slightly different form, originally appeared at one of my favorite blogs,  Urban Homesteader  , which chronicles the “journey of one average urban family trying to create a more sustainable home and garden, without spending a lot of extra money in the process.”

The first rule of leadership, Princess: Everything is your fault. – Hopper, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life

I love this quote. It would be funny if it wasn’t both painful, and so doggone true.

Whew. Where to begin?

Let me just say, first of all, that I am a big fan of Cesar Millan. I love his show. I love to watch the man work. I love the absolute power and control and zen that he brings to difficult dog situations again and again. That said, my appreciation of The Dog Whisperer has always been kind of along the same lines as my appreciation of the program What Not to Wear. I like it; occasionally I watch it; and then I wear sweats or pajamas pretty much every place I go. I suppose I could say that watching the programs is all that I do. Because much like my wardrobe, the dog behavior around here has always left much to be desired.

I take full responsibility for the fact that for about four years now we have had little control over the dogs. I was pregnant when our female dog had a litter of puppies, and I would like to believe that if I hadn't been coursing with motherhood hormones that I never would have kept those two male pups in the first place. But keep them we did, and we brought our newborn daughter home to four dogs – our female English Cocker (now spayed), an intact male Cocka-poo mix, and two of their intact male four-month-old pups.

Of course I was too busy being pregnant and working full time to properly train those puppies (she says, as if that's an excuse!). I mean, it didn't really occur to me to do it. I’d never really had to train the two I started with. They were more or less well-behaved, by which I mean that they did not bark incessantly in the house, or fight, or destroy things, or otherwise drive me crazy. But with four dogs ... well ... needless to say, the dynamic around here changed. The puppies – being puppies – were often energetic and overexcited, and I was constantly shoving cookies and bones into their mouths to shut them up. At any moment when they got to be unbearable, I would put them out into the back yard. Don’t get me wrong. I love those dogs. And we have plenty of quiet time around here, as long as the doorbell doesn’t ring, or a truck doesn’t drive by, or my husband doesn’t open a door somewhere else in the house ...

We take care of them. They’re housebroken. They have ample food, a large, fenced yard, tons of love, flea and tick control, heartworm medication, dog licenses, dog beds and annual vaccinations. We’re doing everything that we’re supposed to do when you have dogs – except, apparently, leading them.

Part I: In Which I Offer the Evidence of the Past

I love dogs. We pretty much always had a dog when I was growing up. But in the way that I suspect it works out in most families, none of these dogs were mine. Whatever dog we had always attached itself firmly to Mom. Mom did the feeding, the taking out, the taking of the dog to the vet or to the kennel. Mom issued the marching orders. So while we always had a family dog, I had never had my own dog, and as I entered adulthood I wanted a dog of my own. I wanted a dog of my own very, very much. So much so, in fact, that at the age of twenty or so I issued an ultimatum to my then significant other (who had recently acquired a dog of HIS own): either I get my own dog, or I’m moving out.

And so H. came into my life. She was half Lhasa-poo and half some kind of long-legged, long-snouted mutt with hair like a Collie’s, only thinner. I have never figured out what her father was, and I’ve never seen another dog that looked like him. But this Romeo was smart, and he absolutely courted my significant other’s Lhasa-poo. And I’m not talking about her being in heat. I’m talking about ALL the time; all year round. Whenever he broke loose from his owner, which alas was frequently, he would travel through the neighborhood and plant himself on our front steps. The Lhasa-poo would be in an upstairs window sometimes and we would know that she saw him coming, because her little tail would start to wag with hysterical happiness. I’m telling you, these dogs were in love. And so time passed, and with a little orchestration on my part, after seeking permission from Romeo’s owner, we had a litter of puppies – two puppies to be exact (lucky us). We found a good home for the male, and the beautiful black and white female was all mine.

I loved H. I loved H. in a way that I’m not sure that I have ever loved any living being since. When, several months after my ultimatum, I left my then significant other anyway, H. was a natural to fill the role of number one in my life. She was my roommate and my best friend. I took her to work with me at the bookstore in the mall, where she would hang out quietly (usually) in the back room; where the regional manager would bring her dog biscuits whenever he came around; and where the store manager tolerated several reprimands from mall security before I was finally ordered to cease and desist.

H. climbed trees – for the pure pleasure of it. I would let her outside and before I could get around into the back yard she’d already be up on the one thick, sideways-growing branch of the tree back there, over six feet off the ground, walking up and down, proudly surveying her kingdom. As a result of her tree-climbing passion, she often did the one thing that I have never seen another dog do – she looked UP as she walked down the street; not because a squirrel or anything else had momentarily attracted her attention, but because unlike most dogs – unlike any of the dogs that I have now – she was aware of UP as a place to be.  

She caught Frisbees between her paws. I could pat my hips and she would jump right up into my arms. She would walk down the street beside me, leash-less, and never leave my side. I could walk into a convenience store with her and tell her to sit down and stay inside the door, and she would do just that, watching other customers come and go, waiting for my return, whether we could see each other or not.

She was perfect.

Except that she was always afraid of little kids. She would jump up into my arms whenever one was around, whether I was expecting her or not, a tendency which often left me with raw, red scratches on my chest. She suffered from a serious separation anxiety. If I tried to crate her, she would gnaw on the metal or the plastic of the crate to the point of injuring herself. She would tear at doors, floors and carpet if I tried to contain her in any way. She was always in the trash the moment I left her alone. If left to her own devices when I wasn’t around, she ate my clothes, my carpet, and my shoes literally right up until she died. As a matter of fact, the last thing she did a few days before she died of lymphoma at the age of 10 ½ was to chew up my red cowboy boots.

So you might say that I have a history of problem dogs, and since all three of the males I have currently are descended from H. – they are her son and two grandsons – you might also say that all of these boys may have a genetic predisposition towards certain behavioral problems.

Or you might say that I make a pretty lousy pack leader.

Part II: In Which I Come To Understand That This Is All My Fault

I spent a lot of time during our snow storms this year reading dog training books. And then one weekend I watched a dog-training marathon on television. Four hours of Dog Town. Four hours of The Dog Whisperer. A few days later I ordered one of Cesar Millan’s books, Be the Pack Leader. And boy, let me tell you, it was an eye-opening read.

If you’ve ever watched The Dog Whisperer, you’ll know that Cesar Millan’s technique is unlike any other dog-training technique you’re likely to encounter. Even knowing that, I wasn’t prepared to read a book that was going to change me and my life. I mean, this is about the dogs, right? Check this out:

The moral of the story is no matter how much money or power you have, how many academic degrees, or how many priceless works of art you own, your dogs don’t care. They do care how unstable you are, because, being pack-oriented, it directly affects them. Dogs do know how comfortable you are with yourself, how happy you are, how fearful you are, and what is missing inside of you. They can’t tell you, but they absolutely know exactly who you are. You can ask a human, “Are you happy?” Some … will say, “Of course” – either hiding or unaware of the fact that he’s not. Then you’ll see the dog. The dog can’t hide his emotions, and he’s clearly not happy. It becomes very obvious, by reading a dog, how stable or unstable his human companion is.

Wow. I thought I was buying this book to learn what to do about my dogs. Not to discover that I’m a basket case.

We made a few changes that have managed to stick. No more dogs on the furniture. And we meant it this time! Three months later, and no-dogs-on-the-furniture is a way of life. I stopped leaving dry dog food out for them all the time. Now I feed all four together, one bowl per dog, as soon as they come back inside in the morning, and at somewhere around 6 every evening, and that’s it. Both of these things made a big difference in the dogs, and have become second nature to us.

And yet, all was not well.

Shortly after our snowbound Dog Whisperer days, after two years of gradually escalating displays of aggressive growling, one of my young male dogs, J., had finally begun launching outright scary and violent attacks against his aging (almost fifteen-year-old) father, A., who is largely deaf and mostly blind, and has the physique of the hundred-or-so year old man that he is. We had started to keep the dogs separated. I was in a state of constant anxiety. A. couldn’t walk near J., couldn’t approach me or so much as walk into the room where J. was without being attacked. This was all bad enough. Then a few weeks ago I hit rock bottom with this whole situation. I was out of town for a day and when I got home after about 10 hours, I asked my husband how the dogs had behaved in my absence. Come to think of it, my husband told me they’d been fine. There had been no incidents.

Interesting – especially since I wasn’t home and in the room for five minutes before J. launched another attack.

Clearly, this was somehow about me.

Part III: In Which I Clearly Articulate the Problem

I remember the night that all of this started – about two years ago – like it was yesterday. I had had A. to the cardiologist that day to check up on his congestive heart failure, which had improved a lot since his last visit. I’d changed his food, and he was getting more exercise, and he’d lost about 5 pounds of unnecessary weight. We’d come home and everything was fine – until I got ready to go to bed that evening. I was doing my usual corralling of the dogs preparatory to us all piling into the bed together, and suddenly J. started growling at A.

This was surprising and unsettling to all of us. My husband and I were perplexed. A. was upset and outdoing himself trying to get back into J.’s good favor. M., J.’s brother, was wide-eyed and huddled up against the wall with this what-the-? look on his face.

Why was J. doing this? Where had this come from? Why had it erupted, all of a sudden, out of the blue?

Quite frankly, it scared me, and obviously J. knew it, because from my reaction on that very first night he had a foothold. His toe was in the door. The power games had begun.

As time went on we figured that this – unfortunately – was the natural world at work. A. was getting old and infirm at about the same time that J. was reaching maturity. None of the boys were fixed. There was some probably to-be-expected reordering of the pack going on here. I still believe that this is true, but I also believe that it’s only part of the story, because I know for a fact that J. has always had issues.

He was born right in my living room, on December 11th, 2005. I have literally been with him every moment of his life. I know that he displayed aggression towards the other puppies in his litter when he was still toddling. Oh, isn’t that cute? They’re playing! (Ahem.) I know that he has always had what seems, from the outside anyway, to be something of an anxiety/inferiority complex. After all, his brother M. has always been his physical superior. M. was breaking out of the puppy enclosure when he was only a few weeks old, and exploring the house. M. could get over anything, while J. had a little puppy hernia that we had to have repaired, and just plain couldn’t physically keep up with his brother. And yet, J. has always been my favorite. I think because I knew how much he needed me. I got a sense that in J., I might once again have that devoted, one-on-one dog relationship that I had had with H., and which I feared – now being married with child and multiple dogs – that I would never have again. And so I coddled his every infirmity. I met his whines and his frustration with affectionate and enabling sympathy. At every crucial point when bad behavior could have been corrected, I unwittingly did the exact opposite of what I should have done.

Consequently – apparently – I had created a monster.

Part IV: In Which I Have My Rock Bottom Breakdown

As I said, a few weeks ago, I hit rock bottom. The day after my out-of-town trip, I came home from work and my husband once again reported that the dogs had gotten along fine together in my absence. As soon as I walked in the door, though, J. became violent. I simply could not be in the same room with them peacefully. I couldn’t separate them peacefully. The situation had become impossible. Not knowing what to do at that moment, and clearly feeling that I was losing it, I put I. (J.’s mother), M. and A. outside and left J. inside with me. I was standing by the French door leading out to the deck, when I. walked up to her side of the French door and J. sprang at the door in a growling, snapping fury that scared the crap out of me, and I screamed. It had finally happened. I was afraid of my own dog. And my dog-induced nervous breakdown – which like so many other things around here was a long time coming – had finally arrived.

When I finally got a hold of myself, which took quite some time (What’s the matter? Why is Mama crying?), my husband and I ended up in the kitchen arguing about what to do. Getting rid of J. was not – and has never been – on the table. It wouldn’t solve his aggression problems. It’s more likely that he would bounce from home to home, end up in the pound, and get destroyed. But neither could we continue to live this way. By this point I had watched and read enough Dog Whisperer and other dog training books – and seen enough evidence – to really believe that the problem was less with the dog than it was with me. And besides, there was evidence to support that J. was far from a lost cause.

In spite of being “the problem dog” in the house, J. has some interesting and unexpected qualities: like, for instance, being the dog most likely to sit and stay and lay down on command; the dog most likely to heel; the dog most likely to be hanging out beside me when out free in the back yard; the one dog to always come to me happily when I call; the one dog that follows me around and generally looks up at me with expectant eyes all the time. There was no way a dog that would do all those things was a bad dog. The problem must be that I wasn’t being clear enough about what I wanted – and didn’t want – him to do. He had developed a dangerous possessiveness about me. Even as I said all this to my husband, J. was the only dog in the kitchen with us. He was laying calmly about six feet away, his head on his paws, perfectly serene, perfectly beautiful, looking up, from time to time, at me.

“Look at him,” I told my husband. “He wants me to tell him what to do. He’s always looking to me.”

“He’s not going to stop looking to you,” my husband told me, misunderstanding, I think, what I was trying to say. “That dog adores you. You’re everything to him.”

“I don’t want him to stop looking to me for leadership,” I said. “What I’m saying is that I think I ought to start working harder to give it to him.”

So I outlined my plan, based on the basic Dog Whisperer principles of Exercise, Discipline and Affection. Number one on my list was that I needed to start walking the dogs. J. probably wasn’t getting enough exercise, so we had to rule that out as a problem first of all. But just walking J. wasn’t going to be enough. I had problems within my pack, and they weren’t going to be solved by pulling one dog out and trying to fix the problem in isolation. He was never any trouble by himself. The problem was about dynamics. It started when I put them all together, so any solution was going to have to involve all four of them at the same time; a daunting task. Especially when, I’ll be honest, I was still feeling a little intimidated and afraid of J.

But in the words of another favorite movie around here – The Princess and the Frog – I had to “dig a little deeper.”

I was determined. I was going to start walking my pack – every day. The pack walk, I decided, was going to be the foundation of our future together, and I was going to start right now. This very moment.

The idea of walking four dogs at the same time, my husband told me, was ludicrous.

Part V: In Which I Undertake the Pack Walk

Ludicrous it may be, but impossible it ain’t. I know this because I have done it a number of times, though it had been quite some time since I’d done it last. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that I’d done it much at all in the past few years that this situation had been developing. It’s a skill I picked up after spending a (mostly wasted) huge amount of money on a dog trainer a few years back; in fact, the ability to walk my four dogs while pushing my daughter in a stroller is probably really the only lasting, useful thing I got out those dog training sessions.

Because on that first walk I was the most concerned about J., and wanted to tire him out, I first took him out alone with my daughter in the stroller. We walked a mile and a half, and he was pretty good. He pulls on me the least of all my four dogs. His problem is he wants to bark and whine and freak out at every single dog or squirrel or cat that we pass. But we dealt with each incident as it arose, and, as I said, he was pretty doggone good, and after I’d drained most of his energy (to use a Dog Whisperer phrase) we stopped at the house and picked up A. Back when I used to do this (not always successfully), J. and A. always walked strapped together on my right side. Obviously I was concerned about walking them side by side because of the attacks. But I took confidence from two facts.

1. J. generally never growled at or attacked A. outside of the house.

2. J. was already getting tired.

So I strapped them together and off we went – and we had no problems. None. Not one.

So I stopped at the house again, and on the very afternoon of my rock bottom breakdown, I took my whole pack for a walk. And I've done two or more miles with them almost every day since. The threatening postures, the growling and the attacks are now down by about 90 percent. Though from time to time I still need to administer a correction, it is no longer necessary to keep the dogs separated. J. and A. are in the same room together in my presence, peacefully, all the time now. The pack no longer barks hysterically at every little thing that goes on in the house. They don't wake me up every morning in an anxious, energetic frenzy. And I am no longer afraid.

Exercise. I’m telling you. It makes a huge difference.

But I didn’t accomplish all this with exercise alone. The other thing I’ve done is to start telling J. – in the language of dogs – that I don’t want him to threaten or attack A. anymore.

What is the language of dogs, you ask?

It’s body language, of course.

Whenever J. starts to act up, I bite him.

Part VI: In Which I Backtrack for a Moment

I feel I have to pause here and backtrack a little, in order to give credit where credit is due, because this story wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t tell you about M.’s role in all of this. Remember J.’s wide-eyed, what-the-?, cowering brother on the night of our first aggressive incident? Well, he didn’t stay that way. Despite looking smaller, he actually outweighs his brother by half a pound. He is 35 ½ pounds of smart, lean, athletic and utter COOL. And in the final few weeks of our problems, as things were hitting their emotional peak, M. was literally stepping in often, and quite obviously, as my protector.

It came to pass that when J. and I were struggling – J. growling, me trying unsuccessfully to get him to stop – that M. would walk up to us and very calmly insert himself between us, facing J. This was usually enough to get J. to back down and be quiet. It became obvious to me that M. was positioning himself to take my part should J. decide to turn on me. M. was telling J. – knock it off, or you’re going to have to deal with me.  And I know, because I’ve seen these boys fight a few times, that M. always ends up on top as the winner. Obviously, J. knows this too.

Anyone want to know a sure-fire way to break up a dog fight? Throw a pitcher of water on them. Right in their snarling, snapping faces. It works every time.

M.’s behavior was not so much reassuring as it was disturbing. After all, if M. felt that J. might actually get aggressive towards me, then there must be some truth in it. And J.’s growling was upsetting me, and I guess every dog in the house knew it.

I had been watching M. and learning. After all, he wasn’t ruffled by J.’s behavior. He wasn’t afraid to step up to him – tall, composed, confident – and tell him to stop. What M. did worked. And so it became clear to me that if I was going to handle J., I was going to have to be cool, like M.

Part VII: In Which I Begin to "Bite"

You may have seen Cesar Millan “bite” dogs on his program. He takes his hand and “nips” them sharply at the neck area, a touch that is supposed to simulate the kind of corrective nip that a mother dog gives to a puppy. I believe he describes it as a “touch” (not a hit!) and it seems that the real power behind it is in the transfer of his calm and confident energy and of his intention: you will stop this undesirable behavior right now. In the midst of formulating my solution to our problem I was reading a story online about how a young woman had solved her dog’s aggression problems by trying this technique, and I thought what the heck. I’ll give it a shot.

Now, I am no Cesar Millan. I do not have his experience. I do not have his composure, his confidence or his cool. And I am well aware that it’s always a good idea to consult a professional when dealing with any kind of dog aggression problem. But J. is not a rescue/shelter dog. I know every moment of his history. And I do truly believe that J. does not want to hurt me; that he is craving leadership and direction, and that he has the capacity to be that perfect dog that I have always wanted. So, in addition to the pack walks, I gave the “biting” a shot, and it worked. Whenever J. would begin his low warning growl, I would nip him and tell him no. If he persisted, I would do it again. I would not get upset. I always remained calm but firm. And he always (sometimes sooner than other times) backed down.

Attitude is everything in this, and I still have to correct J. from time to time. And some days are better than others. And I’ll be honest; he does still occasionally launch an attack against A. But I’ve come to realize that these displays are just that – lots of noise and posturing – no one has ever gotten hurt. I’m not afraid of J. anymore, and I manage to communicate to him to knock it off when I need to. I think this is why my husband never had any problems like this when he was alone with the dogs. Not for one minute was he ever afraid of J.

A. is now able to mind his own business about the house without constant fear of an immanent attack. And from time to time, I even catch them hanging out peacefully together.

Part VIII: In Which I Consider the Practical Implications of My Experience

Even greater than ending the dog-violence – if such a thing is even possible – is that suddenly I realize that problems we’ve struggled with for four years don’t have to be problems. Solving the problems may be as simple as just telling the dogs no – in a language that they can understand. J. used to bark – high pitched, anxious barking – all the time: if my husband opened or closed a door, for example; if one of us walked into the house after being gone, etc. That has decreased a lot, and I attribute much of that decrease to his increase in regular exercise. What hasn’t stopped by itself, I just tell him not to do it, and he stops. The command I am most interested in at this point is “Quiet.”

There is liberation on all kinds of fronts.

I suddenly realize that maybe I don’t have to put up with my dogs barking at the fence at the neighbor’s dogs. That maybe I can teach M. to play ball, which is his very favorite thing to do, without him constantly barking at me. That maybe I don’t have to worry about the dogs harassing the chickens whenever we actually get them – a concern which has been one of my main worries about the whole potential enterprise. I have an idea that maybe I can get the coop first, and train them to stay the heck away from it. That maybe I can get chicks and brood them myself, teaching the dogs from the get go that they are not wild prey, but part of the family.

It’s a thought. I think it might actually be doable.

The possibilities are endless.

Part IX: In Which I Consider the Philosophical Implications of My Experience

I suddenly realize that all these hard-to-believe, instant transformation stories from The Dog Whisperer probably really are true.

I am reminded of my favorite philosopher, J. Krishnamurti, who has much to say about the immediacy of transformation: “Most of us are accustomed to thinking that time is necessary for transformation; I am something, and to change what I am into what I should be requires time. ... First of all, why do we want to change what is? ... Because what we are dissatisfies us; it creates conflict, disturbance and disliking that state we want something better, something nobler, something idealistic. ... Being in a state of conflict you want to achieve a state in which there is no conflict. Now is that state of no conflict the result of time, of a duration? Obviously not, because while you are achieving a state of nonviolence, you are still being violent and are, therefore, still in conflict.”

I will say this: the change in J. was not gradual; it was not of a duration. From the moment that I became different – J. became different. We still have our moments; I said the attacks were down 90 percent, not that they were completely eradicated, but they are few and far between compared to what was going on before. So, while there is an element of practice at work here, the “practice” is both meaningless and useless without the immediacy of transformation that is only possible by first being different.

 Cesar Millan: “The truth about dogs is, they don’t feel bad about the past. They don’t dwell on their bad memories. We are the only species that does that. Dogs live in the moment. If they feel safe and secure in the moment, then any past conditioned behavior can be reconditioned, provided we give our time, our patience – and our consistency. They – like everything else in Mother Nature – naturally want to return to balance. Too often, it is we, the humans, who are unknowingly preventing that balance from occurring.”

Krishnamurti again: “Revolution is only possible now, not in the future; regeneration is today, not tomorrow.”

Hmmn. Philosophy is where you find it; interesting how a fundamental abstract idea can be so completely illustrated in an everyday life problem. And come to think of it, if it can’t, then what the heck good is it?

"Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." – Beatrix Potter

Back in the very beginning of April, I went out to check on the state of things in the garden, and I was dismayed to find that something had not only been chomping on the leaves of my strawberry plants, but had also gone fussing through my garlic. It looked as if whatever it was had managed to eat half a dozen of the garlic plants. It had left behind a little cave of straw and a bunch of muddy footprints. My guess was I had rabbits in the garden, because we have them in the yard every year, usually in a burrow under one of our sheds. I poked around the garden fence some and I found the spot where they must have come in, where there was about a two-inch gap between the bottom of the rabbit guard wire and the ground. I plugged it up and went around to inspect the fence perimeter and it all seemed okay. There was no further damage the next night, so I assumed that the buffet was now closed.

Um ... wrong.

Some days later, I was moving some straw around in the garden and I unearthed a rabbit's nest. There were 4 babies and no sign of Mom. I suspect that Mom may not have been around for a few days, since I had plugged up the hole in the fence. I took another walk around the perimeter of the rabbit guard and I didn't see any obvious entrance point, and nothing else had been eaten.

Using a plastic garden shovel and a huge old Tupperware container, I managed to negotiate these rabbit babies out of the garden, and, without touching them, I put them on a bed of straw at the edge of the shed underneath of which is the known rabbit borough. I didn’t want to kill them; but to be honest, I pretty much knew that in disturbing and moving them I was probably sealing their fate. It was kind of a passive aggression. It left open for them a small window of hope. Maybe they would reconnect with their mother. Maybe they would manage to make it on their own.

Or maybe not.

But I felt that it was the best I could do for them at the time. I SURE didn't want them in my garden.

*   *   *

About a month later, I was outside in my pajamas early one morning, hacking down my rye with a shovel, and getting pretty doggone good at it, thank you very much. I was almost finished and was near the fence, when I did my step-hack sequence and was startled by the tell-tale scream of a rabbit. At least I was pretty sure it was a rabbit. I couldn't see the source of the noise. But I had a rabbit many eons ago when I was a kid, and I remember the time he got loose in the back yard and we had to catch him. I’ll never forget that scream he let out when we finally made a successful grab. And then there was the time at band camp when my best friend started marking time at the Drum Major's signal, and found that unbeknownst to her she was standing on a rabbit's nest. You can imagine the screams – the rabbits and the teenagers – and the ensuing hysteria.

So even though it flitted across my mind that I might have unwittingly dismembered a field mouse – sadly this has happened, quite by accident, before – it was no surprise to me when the baby rabbit, considerably larger than it was the last time that I saw it, presented itself, apparently unharmed.

I think I just scared the crap out of it. I know that bunny scream scared the crap out of me.

And it made sense out of that half-eaten strawberry I found a few days ago, still clinging to its vine.

What to do?

Of course, it couldn't stay. Absolutely no rabbits allowed to make their home in the garden. Interesting thing about the babies, they're quite able to squeeze themselves through even the closest-spaced wires of the rabbit guard. Rabbit guard indeed.

So I ushered him out, gently, with the shovel, where he proceeded to crouch in the tall weeds along the garden fence and to generally try to make himself invisible. Thankfully my dogs were all tied up at the time and did not notice the quick arc the bunny made across some open grass before settling into its hiding place. It occurred to me that I could solve the problem very quickly by letting them loose, but that – while sure to be effective – just seemed too cruel, especially with my daughter watching everything with rapt attention.

So, I headed over to the carport where I came up with a plastic pitcher and an old Frisbee, and I managed to get the little thing inside the pitcher without too much trouble. I carried him to the fence line at the back of the yard.

Toss him over? Nope. Way too high. That would be sure to cause cruel and unusual damage. And that's when it came to me.

The day before, on one my patrols around the yard, I happened to notice a hole that had been dug all the way through under my fence. Groundhog? Rabbit? A small neighborhood dog? I have no idea. I do know that it was nowhere near big enough for one of my dogs to get through it. Still, I had hauled a cinder block out from behind one of the sheds and plopped it on top and there you go, problem solved. No one coming in. No one getting out.

This hole was plenty big enough, though, to be a safe passageway for a baby rabbit.

So I took my captured charge back there, moved the cinder block with my foot, and let the rabbit go to scamper through into the yard of the neighbors behind me. Then I put the cinder block back and another rabbit problem was solved.

Were the neighbors likely to mind? Honestly, I didn't think that they were likely to notice. Their yard is not fenced, and the neighborhood is full of these wild brown hares. And besides, I know for a fact from my frequent walks around the neighborhood that these neighbors do not have a garden.

And is that it? The story’s over?

Heck no.

A few days later I checked that same spot at the fence and something had dug its way back in – just extended the hole the length of the concrete block and come right on back up at the end of it. At the time I guessed that my baby rabbit had probably dug his way right back on in, and over the course of the last few weeks a number of rabbit sightings have proved me to be right.

*   *   *

It’s been six or more weeks now since I found that nest in the garden, and Peter Rabbit is getting bigger. I see him out grazing in the grass from time to time. Sometimes my dogs will pick up his scent and give him a chase, which is how I learned where his front door is, and one day when I walked back behind the fence for some old pieces of ornamental fencing that I knew were leaning up against the side of the shed, I saw Peter out there in his “front yard.” He darted back under the shed as I approached him – sadly, past the bodies of the siblings that didn’t make it, still laying right there where I left them. So I know that Peter Rabbit is, in fact, probably the one that got away, so to speak, and he is living in the burrow under the shed where I put him the day I found him.

And yes, I know, it could be a different rabbit; I know that every rabbit I see could be a different rabbit – but it doesn’t really come together as a story that way ... does it?

A few days ago we were outside and in the garden and my daughter said, “Bye rabbit!”

“What rabbit!”

“The one that just ran out of the garden.”

Sigh.

But it’s not a surprise. I knew that Peter was still getting in there, because someone is still eating my strawberries. Granted the strawberries, and thus the Peter Rabbit-like thefts, are few and far between, and nothing else has been touched. But still. I wanted those strawberries!

And yet, I had already about made up my mind not to worry about it – provided that Peter will confine himself to the strawberries. After all, I haven’t really gotten serious about strawberries. And if he’ll leave everything else alone, a few half eaten strawberries every day may be a small price to pay.

*   *   *

Which brings us to today.

I let my dogs out at 6:30 a.m., and there is an immediate ruckus. I look outside and my two young male dogs are running around the garden, barking at the fence line, and I know that we've interrupted Peter's breakfast.

Argh.

I walk out there, and I can see him darting around, looking for a safe way out, but my dogs are mirroring his every move. I guess rabbit guard is best negotiated in a non-stressful environment.

So, I call off my dogs and come back inside, so Peter can get himself on back home – until tomorrow morning – when I'm sure he'll be back in there again, helping himself to something.

How much can one rabbit eat, anyway? I guess through the course of this growing season, I'm going to find out!

I never make the same mistake twice. I make new ones.

Like so many things I’ve tried in the garden, my relationship with onions began on a whim. I was at the garden store last spring picking up some nasturtiums to plant with my tomatoes and peppers, and I happened to see one lone pot of Spanish onions just sitting there, and I thought, Onions! Why not?! So I took them home and planted them in the very beginning of May.

After that, I pretty much left them alone. I would check them out when I was outside making my rounds, and they always seemed to be doing fine. They were growing. They began to form quite large bulbs, and I felt pretty good about the whole project.

My mistake last year was in leaving them in the ground for too long. They had started to fall over, but the green tops hadn't died off, and in my limited understanding I thought that the green had to turn brown and fall over before I could pull them from the ground, and I sure wasn’t expecting them to be ready to harvest in July.

But apparently they were, and I didn’t even get the pleasure of being the first one to pull them out of the ground.

I was in the kitchen when I saw my husband from the window, walking up from the garden with his arms full of onions. I nearly had a fit.

"What are you doing!” I shrieked at him. “They're not ready! The tops aren’t brown! Their skins aren’t papery!"

"Some of them are rotting,” he said. “These were all sitting above ground. I think they're done."

"Then you're not supposed to bring them in! I think you're supposed to pull them up and leave them out there to dry up or something..."

I wasn't really upset with him, of course. I was upset at myself for being so unprepared to deal with them. I went back out the next day and there were two more decent ones, which I pulled up and left to lay there in the hot dirt for the day. They actually dried up on the outside and did get papery, and so I set them in the vestibule in front of an open window to get a few more days of hot air.

The good news was that we did manage to produce onions, and we ate what we grew. The bad news is that we only got half the crop that we should have. Still, I was optimistic. I felt well-prepared to do better this year.

Wrong.

What’s went wrong this year, you wonder? This.

In the beginning of May, my onions bolted. As soon as I saw this, I knew it was bad. So I did a little research – too little, too late. It seems that temperature fluctuations will “fool” an onion plant into thinking it has gone through two growing seasons instead of one, and it will flower – or “bolt” – prematurely. I put my green onions in in March this year, and since then we’ve had weeks of 40 and 50 degree weather, alternating with weeks of the high 90s. Technically, I don't think that this is my fault. It would seem that this year I am the victim of the vicissitudes of nature. But hey, isn’t that what gardening is all about?

Is there anything I can do about it? My first thought was to cut the flowers off – but apparently once this process has started, cutting the flower off won’t make a difference. The onions will never fully develop, and they will be completely unsuitable for storage.

So I did a few things.

First off, when the buds finally opened, I learned what an onion flower looks like, first hand. I cut the flowers and brought them inside and enjoyed them. So there.

 

Second, I harvested all the small onions over the next few weeks or so and we’ll be eating them. I happen to know from the other night’s grilled dinner that these little suckers make one heck of a shish kabob.

And for my next onion crop? I’m still undecided. It's only June. I know from last year that I still have plenty of time to put in onions, so maybe I'll do that. I have a lot of onion seeds, so I might do some research and try my luck planting them this fall when I plant my garlic. Or I might do some more transplants next spring and hope the weather isn’t so crazy – or I might wait to put them in in May like I did the first year. Or I might do all of these things.

In the meantime, did you know that onions are on the EWG Clean Fifteen produce list? It’s a good thing, because I bought a big bag of yellow onions last week, and it looks like we’re going to need them.