her able hands

It’s definitely spring because Tyler has used half a box of tissues this weekend. Poor guy gets allergies like his father does, long and brutal. I feel mine cranking up too in the form of a headache that’s hung out in my skull for four days and an ever-so slightly scratchy throat.

What a spectacular weekend. We all spent at least eight hours outside both days and managed to get a whole lot of work done. The new wood playground is now in place with the swing beam and both slides attached. It took us four hours to put that blasted tube/spiral slide together and get it attached to the top platform. But it’s done and is already the neighborhood play zone—ten kids made wild fun on it after the birthday party next door.

Let’s see, what else? I’m not feeling particularly narrative this morning as I sip coffee in the dark and hope the headache will go away. I raked out half of the border beds and started a new lasagna bed along the back of the deck (more almost full sun). As I worked I thought about fruit tree placement around the property. I had originally planned to dig out the two ornamental shrubs on the south side of the house to plant the two pear trees as espaliers up against the house, but read in The Garden Primer that pears should not warm up too quickly in spring because of the risk of early buds and late frost damage. Apples might fare better in that spot. Thus the lasagna bed behind the deck. I can put four dwarf fruit trees along the back and espalier them, which will make a great living screen, but then, will also screen out the playground from the house, so maybe that’s not a great idea. Of course, it’ll be a few years before that’s fully filled in, so maybe it’s fine. It’s an ideal spot, facing east, plenty of sun, natural windbreak out of the northwest from the house, and in a dip in the property, so moist enough, but not too moist, it’s also very well drained.

I had intended to get some more seeds in the ground, but that didn’t happen. I’m going to leave work an hour early today and plant some radish, kale, collards, chard, turnips, rutebegas, spinach and arugala. The peas aren’t coming up yet, and I see that a bunch of the Fava beans got dug up by the squirrels. I really do need to fence.

Late yesterday, while all of the birthday party kids played on the swing set, and the parents hung out chatting, we moved the chickens to a new spot. I forked up the top layer of soil and dumped it on top of the cardboard for the new bed first so they had plenty of bugs. I need to get out there and take some pictures (have been so camera lazy lately). We have a huge new mattress of straw/manure bedding to work with—my next weekend project is to assemble a couple of quick and dirty compost bins with garden stakes and fencing. I want to be ready for the first lawn mowing when I’ll have some green to add to the layers of leaves and bedding and finally, finally get some real composting happening on the property. Instead of these random piles I have everywhere that seldom, if ever, get turned.

The chicken wire had rotted and we didn’t notice. When I went out across the back yard to bring some Sesame Noodles to the neighbors who recently had a new baby, I heard an incredible volume of rustling coming from the chicken tractor. They had busted out and were blissfully scratching in the dried leaves on the other side of the cage. Luckily they were so engrossed in their freedom, they didn’t really notice us corralling them and when we tipped up the bottom of the tractor, they all went right under. Chris cut new wire and attached it and now they’re on new ground with a fresh layer of straw and oats, some cracked corn the kids sprinkled for them, and I’m hoping they’ll start laying in earnest. This one egg every three days is just not going to cut it.

In other news, I had a conversation with a neighbor who happens to have worked for OSU extension up in Cuyohoga County, organizing community gardens in Cleveland. She offered to give me a hand if I need to do any grant writing. That same day we got another certified letter from the city about the senior village development. There will be another meeting the following week about an easement for the Residential 3 zoning, which calls for 30% open space with any building project. They’re looking to cut that in half to 15%. This could be a real opportunity for the city to put some sustainable building practices in place—to work on a model for land ownership, housing and community relationship building. My job this week is going to be to talk to everyone I can think of who might want to make this a pet project. I need to act fast because the first meeting is next Tuesday. People assure me that things in town move very slowly, but I don’t trust that.

We’re also talking to the homeowner who works for the housing developer who started this project five years ago. There are two lots still standing empty on the cul-de-sac and there has been zero interest in them for two years. He has made a proposal to the builder to put a playground/park on one lot to make up for the fact that the development will not be finished and the people who bought in with the promise of a community center and playground now have to drive to a park if they want to play like that (the yards are really too small). The other could be an excellent neighborhood garden. It’s wide open, graded, has water and electric. It would just need a shed and a faucet.

Of course, I also did a lot of thinking this weekend about the fact that most of these ideas I have will entail me being in a volunteer position. I really need to learn how to parlay this into for-profit work. I don’t need to get rich doing it, but I need to replace the paycheck I currently collect for my time in the cube farm.

More to say, but out of time. Must wake up the children and get ready for the day. Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

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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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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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On Saturday morning, I went out to check on the Pattypan plants that are limping along in the lasagna bed and there were five huge open blossoms…each with a sleeping bumble bee in it. Actually, one blossom had TWO sleeping bumblebees. At first I thought, holy mackerel, these plants are poisonous and are killing the bees, but when I touched one flower the bee stirred, looked around and then burrowed in deeper. Then thoughts of a long, hard winter crossed my mind, but that’s probably unrelated and the bees were likely just enjoying the shelter of the tunnel-like blooms overnight. Bumblebee motel. So weird that there were six bees, though, all checked in to rooms next to one another. Were the two sharing a room a couple? Or was that just a one-night-stand?

I thought about running in to get the camera, but I was enjoying a few minutes away from the Lila Show (Mo-ooom! Watch what I can do! No! Watch it again! No! Just watch what I can do!). I didn’t want her to bring that show outside where it was relatively peaceful for five minutes. Then a chicken started in, belting out the Holy Crap This Egg Is Splitting Me In Two song like Ethel Merman so I just went back inside to make a grocery list.

I missed OLS week 8. I cooked a local meal, but forgot to take photos and forgot to post about it. We had local Amish raised chicken breasts on the grill with the local Maple BBQ sauce, my potatoes sliced thin and layered with my onions, slices of tomato and local Amish farmer’s cheese, all wrapped up in tin foil and cooked on the grill. I sliced a few pattypan and grilled those, and steamed up some haricot verts. It was a delicious, fresh meal with just nonlocal salt and pepper.

I’m falling behind with a bunch of things. But I’m exercising some and I’m going to let that count as progress.

I’ll leave you with a couple of garden shots. This is a Bright Lights Chard, taken before we got all of that rain. I tend to let the Chard fend for itself with the straw mulch and maybe an occasional watering, unlike the tomatoes which I watered almost every day in late June and all of July.

Poor thing’s looking pretty limp there. But then we got several days of rain, I think a total of almost 6 inches.

Looking pretty great now. And I finally realized that I have to stop planting my chard like inner-city row houses. I thinned them down quite a lot and gave a good 8 inches between plants and now the leaves are growing big, ruffled and strong.

Technorati Tags: bumblebees, garden, critters, one local summer, eat local

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These little buggers are all over my giant parsley plant and my cucumbers. They seem to be staying to the stems. I have no idea if they are pest or predator and can’t find any other photos of them online.

Believe me, I searched every bug index I could find.

The little cottony fluffs sticking off their bottoms made me think they might be scale of some sort, but the body looks too round and I’m not seeing any big, white buildups. They look like armadillos in drag.

Technorati Tags: garden pests, predators, bugs, insects, identify

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