her able hands

This is what has messed with my equilibrium for the past week. I can’t remember when I last slept so poorly for so many days in a row, and the jangled lines of communication rival the worst Mercury Retrograde I’ve ever experienced. It’s interesting that the moon is timed perfectly for a whole lot of change here.

Tyler started high school yesterday, and Lila started her new school on Monday. We found renters for the house and have a bunch of work to do in a very short time frame. It’s the final week for the remaining people who got laid off 3 months ago at work, and once they’re all gone, it’s going to be a ghost town. We’re all trying to help Chris’ mom get a bunch of things sorted out and either sold, scrapped or thrown away. The garden needs some attention. My brain is getting that itchy feeling again that happens when I’m not writing enough. I’m not exercising. I’m eating too much and of not the best food. I’m gaining weight again. I want to learn how to sing, and I practice all the time, but when I sing with other people I go flat and off key so easily and break into a stinky sweat of embarrassment. I keep having bad dreams about people I don’t have a relationship with anymore, all of them men, including my father. All of them branch off from my father.

So yeah, general, normal, everyday stress hopped up on a little extra juice from The Crazy Moon.

C’mon September!

If I knew how to use my camera properly (maybe this winter I’ll read the damned manual I bought a year ago), the photo would be a whole lot better, but I kind of like how the moon matches the street lamp in its intensity and blurriness. It was about 85 degrees outside at 8:30 pm when I took this and the moon looks as hot as the air. As hot as my temper. As my blistered brain. My bad, bad attitude.

I’m feeling unfocused, in need of a week at home alone to get organized without my small efforts being undone by four people living at full-speed. Or maybe I need to make a big pot of chicken soup with carrots and kale from the garden. Or maybe work on my novel. And put some attention on the good things, of which there are a zillion. And maybe I just need to have a good cry. I haven’t had one of those in a long, long time.

Technorati Tags: mental health, full moon

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Sunday was one of those perfect weather late-summer days where you get the cool, dewy morning followed by an overcast, yet warm afternoon, then bright sunshine, clear skies and a light breeze.

It was also a task day. We have a month to get the rest of our stuff out of the house in the country (mostly scrap and a few things we want to keep that we’ve been storing in the garage and barn). It looks like we found someone to rent. Actually, they want to sign a rent-to-own contract, which Chris is getting his lawyer to put together this week. I had some initial nervousness about renting because I’ve heard so many stories of plumbing ripped right out of the walls, of cat pee in carpets so thick it soaked through the floor boards, and of it being impossible to get slackers out once they’re in. But this family so far checks out pretty well. They’re actually just the type of family we hoped would want to live there—locals who want more property so they can raise animals and garden. They have a bigger story than that, but it’s not mine to tell. I just hope this works out for all of us—so we can all have our new beginning.

We also moved the chickens to their new spot yesterday. When we pulled away the logs that Chris buried around the edge of the tractor to deter the raccoons, a gojillion of those armadillo bugs swarmed into the cage and the girls had a protein feast. Such a riot the way they were tripping over one another to get to them.

We put a new layer of chicken wire around the cage, with about eight inches folded down over the ground around it. I’m determined that next spring we’ll have a permanent structure built for them, with yards for them to roam around in. We have hawks so I’ll need to put netting over the top.

Lila was a little freaked out by the bugs, but she stayed in there with us as we fudged and fidgeted with the tractor to get it level on ground that had an invisible hill. Jeesh.

They had lived too long this summer on the steaming pile of straw and manure, especially with the rains we’ve had this past month. After we moved them to the new spot, the ladies spent more than an hour having a communal dirt bath. Can’t you just hear them bitching about the husband and the kids—how they never pick up their dirty socks? Sharing recipes? Complaining about their overbearing, interfering mothers in-law?

When I uploaded these next photos I thought of Appalachia. I hear a fiddle playing and a high-lonesome voice like Iris Dement’s singing in the hills.

But we’re in Ohio. I’m trying to make the best of it.

The second half of the day we listened to an assault of music from somewhere on campus and it wasn’t until Lila had just dozed off and the house shook with the booms that I realized it was homecoming.

This was the view from our back deck for about thirty minutes last night. It was a wacky interlude for me because I was in the middle of reading Jim Kunstler’s The Long Emergency, right at the part in the last section of the book where he’s talking about the future possibilities for education after petroleum products become scarce. How the college and university systems will collapse in this century because the world will not need a constant influx of undergrads to flood the job market. What the world and our country in particular is really going to need is people who know how to grow food. He hints at social upheaval due to racial and financial inequality, of continuing education only for those with great wealth and in fields the average person won’t be able to consider viable.

Then blam! blam! blam! and I put the book down, grabbed my camera and got up on the picnic table.

I think about the money that had to go into that fireworks display that rivaled the one the town did for the fourth of July, and realize that nobody knows what’s coming. We’re a short-sighted bunch as a whole, we humans. But we individuals? We can open our eyes and our minds to the possibilities. And some of us can learn how to grow our own food. A whole lot of us are already doing just that.

Technorati Tags: chickens, chicken tractor, education, peak oil, garden, organic garden, growing food

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I’ve finally mastered the grilled boneless chicken breast. I know, you’re saying what’s the big deal? Everybody can grill a chicken breast. Well, no they can’t. I’m somebody and let me tell you I have wasted many a boneless chicken breast in my day. But this time I decided to butterfly the breast to make it thin, then watched it like a hawk tracking a dumb baby rabbit from a low branch of a tree.

Quick cooking over medium heat and many a flip—all the while brushing with whatever kind of vinegar-y salad dressing I had in the fridge (not local)—made decidedly tender chicken. We were all happy with this one. I almost always cook chicken breasts too long and end up with rawhide that’s burnt to a crisp, all the while afraid that it’s still pink in the middle and going to give us all a hopping case of the runs. It’s happened.

So this was some of the yummy, local Amish raised chicken with no hormones or antibiotics. Not pasture raised, but a big step up from Perdu, let me tell you. Do you remember that advertising campaign a few years back where they tried to convince us that the reason their chicken was so yellow was because they fed confined, debeeked, wing-clipped biddies marigold petals? Yeah. Had nothing whatsoever to do with antibiotic poisoning.

I also grilled a bunch of San Marzano, Bloody Butcher (not half bad grilled) and Juanne Flamée tomatoes along with a bunch of quartered Pattypan. I sprinkled a handful of chopped basil and parsley over the top of it all. Oh, how I love me some Pattypan. I’m going to do a whole separate post on the virtues of this under-represented, funky little summer squash.

I knew the boys would want some carbs, so I made a partially local dish to accompany the meal. It was 94 in the shade that day, so no way in hell was I attempting my first batch of egg noodles, even though they would have gone perfectly with the rest of the ingredients. So the pasta was an away ingredient.

But just look at these Chard stems and Cipollini Onions! I am so psyched that my Chard leaves have finally started to grow big like elephant ears—the stems thick, radiant and Pantone-specific in their color tones. And the flavor is incredible. Sweet, tender, almost peppery.

I added the leaves after the stems and onions cooked down a bit, then dumped in the cooked pasta, crumbled some local goat feta and some not-local canned black olives. Finished it off with some kosher salt and cracked pepper. I exercised a bit of self-discipline and only had a small serving of the pasta, mostly the greens, along with my chicken and veggies. It was a truly delicious meal, eaten in front of the boob tube while we watched the second half of Casino Royale after the bean fell asleep.

Before we know it, we’ll be eating root vegetables and stewed meats, early in the evening with the cold and dark night air pressing up against the house. Our late night summer suppers will be a brightly-flavored memory and something we’ll look forward to again come February when we’re so sick of baked beans and beef stew and mashed rutebega. Hard to believe we could ever get tired of anything so flavorful, but I think that’s the power of February. Just like August has the power to make me long for a good snowstorm, far away from fresh tomatoes.

Summer is almost over, but the Earth, she keeps spinning us through time. Bringing us around to face the many seasons of ourselves again and again. I’m so glad you all are on this ride at the same time.

Technorati Tags: One Local Summer, eat local, garden, harvest, summer, August, gratitude

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Gosh, this kitchen garden writing thing really comes to a screeching halt when there’s not much happening in the garden, doesn’t it? With that and the heat, humidity and constant wet, I’m all sodden and useless. I did take some pictures last night for my OLS dinner and from my small harvest, which I’ll post tomorrow. Or maybe tonight. I don’t know. I don’t have time to upload, correct and size them right now.

I have enough ripe San Marzanos to make a small batch of sauce. I’m thinking of seeding, skinning, chopping and oven roasting them with garlic and herbs to serve with grilled sausage, peppers and pattypan over rice. Doesn’t that sound yum? My three basil plants (two genovese, one opal) have made a massive comeback after a hideous encounter with a flock of leaf cutters last month. We’ve been enjoying fresh basil on everything the past couple of weeks. The herbs seem to love the soil by the Icelandic Lily’s, so I think I’ll expand that bed for next season. It’s right by the kitchen door, so I can run out and snip whatever I need without my sauté sticking to the bottom of the pan on me.

The school year is ramping up and this week we’ve had something going on just about every evening. Tyler starts high school next week, and Lila starts at the university Child Development Center. Huge relief that she got in there, and seeing the teachers in action at the two visits we’ve made has made me think more about trying to keep working so we can pay for Montessori school for her, at least for K-6. Cha-ching. Of course, I’ll revise my thinking on that a thousand times. And I need to not do what I did to Tyler, which was to try out every possible education system. Poor kid. He did Waldorf (twice), Montessori, Public and homeschool (twice).

In other news, it had better not rain again before the weekend because we have to move the chickens. They’re running out of head room in the tractor—the straw mat is getting so thick. That’s going to be a stinky, nasty-asty job in this humidity, but looking ahead to the weekend, the overall heat index is supposed to drop about 15 degrees. Phew. I’m going to take that hot straw and layer it immediately with grass clippings and plants I pull from the garden and leaves from last year, get a good compost heap going. I’m so far behind in my compost creation project.

We really need to get a more permanent situation for the girls because we just don’t have the space to do the tractor system properly and keep them hidden from view. I’d like a nice little raised coop with a pop door into a small yard for them. The yard will have two areas, so I can sow clover on one side and let it grow, then switch once it’s ready to eat. Chris mowed the lawn last night, and as he moved things out of the way around the garage, he found about 50 slugs and a ton of giant grasshoppers. You should have heard the happy sounds coming from the tractor after he dumped them all in there.

Okay, end of update. I have a few things I’m itching to write about, but I want to think about them for a little longer: music, singing, old tapes in the noggin, continuing education.

Happy Friday, people! What do you have on for the weekend?

Technorati Tags: chickens, garden, organic gardening, kitchen garden, herbs, education, compost

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I’m feeling a little content constipation. It’s probably August, because I think we can all agree that as a general rule, no matter how much we think we’re looking forward to August, it generally turns into a month-long suckage. Heat. Humidity. Drought. Rain. Blight. Fog. Mexican Bean Beetles. School shopping. Faint smell of cat pee in the carpet that can’t be pinpointed. Heat. Humidity. Weird fungi growing under every plant in the garden.

Really, I find myself once again at the place where I’m thinking it might be time to just rip out the entire garden, throw on some extra straw mulch and call it a year. The weather has gotten so funky and extreme. Nothing is ripening in any numbers big enough for actually putting food up for winter. We pick, we eat. We watch and wait. We (I) try not to beat myself up for having yet another unsuccessful garden season. The gardener in me laments moving into town beneath hundred year-old oak trees and desperately misses the acres of sunny land out at the old house. But I don’t miss living there, so I’ll get over it. But is it bad for me to wish for a big lightning storm to come through and knock down three of the offending shade-making trees? Trees that are in otherwise perfectly good health?

I’m thinking the neighbors aren’t going to like me too much once we get solvent with this real estate debacle we’re in because people, I’m putting aside some paycheck for tree removal.

So this is why it’s been blog-lite around here of late. I’m just a little at a loss.

Technorati Tags: garden, organic gardening, August

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