I didn’t realize blight had made it this far west. I thought I was safe because I started my tomatoes from organic seed and organic soil in my basement instead of buying plants from a big box store. I was wrong.

I know this is just one of those things that happens and it’s been a ridiculously wet summer, which makes blight thrive, but every day I read another gardener’s account of bagging up their tomato and potato plants and forfeiting their gleaming jars of sauce and salsa and it feels like the plague has hit. I suppose early blight is a sort of plant black plague. I’m going to skip photos, it’s too depressing.

I’m wondering if my new lasagna bed made the plants more susceptible to the blight, and it’s time to find out if there’s anything I can do to safely treat my soil so it doesn’t recur next year. I noticed a bunch of yellowed and browned leaves in the Matt’s Wild Cherry and Cosmonaut Volkovs last night, so it’s just a matter of time before my entire tomato crop is wasted. I should probably pull my potatoes immediately, too.

Oh, this gardening year has been the worst ever and I’m pitching a little fit in my heart. Can you feel me stomping my feet? I started off with such high hopes! Most of my beds were prepared for spring planting in the fall and I got so much in the ground early. Then I went away and the ground hogs and rabbits moved in. Now blight, which means I lost eighty percent of my summer crops. Sigh.

I guess it’s a good lesson in attachment. I’ve come to identify myself so strongly with my gardens and things are percolating under the surface of the community that is leading me towards work in gardening. I’m a little bit worried that this season just proves I haven’t got what it takes. But only a little bit worried. I can shoot out the other side of that black tunnel of fear into the stupid blinding light of my list of things to do to prevent the same scene next year. Buried fences. Soil amendments. Crop rotation. You just move forward or you stop, right?

I’m not going to give detailed voice to how much I want to stop at this moment. Amen for the winter. In past years I’ve said that — meaning how nice it is to give my body a rest. Gardening at this scale is a lot of physical work. But now? Now I’m simply hopeful that winter will heal my blighted heart and bring me back to the place of loving my garden again. At the moment, I’m thinking a bulldozer might be the answer. Double sigh.

I feel so bad for the farmers that are losing their cash crops. I’m just missing out on a freezer full of marinara and a pantry self of salsa. I can still go buy tomatoes from a u-pick (as long as they don’t also have blight). Yes, I was counting on my crops for winter. Losing 280 foot row of shelling beans when the beans were *just* about ready for the first picking, to the furry little f*ckers has put me in a space of no mercy. But I can buy beans. They won’t taste as good and I’ll spend money I don’t want to spend, but I have the option.

I don’t know, you guys. Something about this season feels like an alarm sounding. Guess I’d better make my list and get to work.

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Lila will be so sad when she gets home.

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I talk to them when I’m outside. I think about them — the older they get the more disparagingly. We don’t even get eggs from them any more because they’re almost four years old. Really, I should have processed them for the stew pot this fall, but I just thought about it as this thing that has to happen eventually, until the logical point passed. Now the eventuality feels like something vague and neverish.

They eat and eat and make lovely poopy bedding for me to use in the gardens, so it’s not a total wash. We don’t think of them as pets. Even Lila asked as we walked past the tractor on our way over to Grandma’s the other day, “When will we kill our chickens, Momma?”

I don’t know, Lila. I don’t know. I have no idea how to do it. Sure, I’ve read dozens of accounts, but have never seen it up close and personal. Never felt the life leave another creature’s body by my hand. It’s the final piece in the puzzle of this venture. I know it’s not necessary. I can choose to just keep feeding them and let them cluck out their days in peace, producing fertilizer and scratching the earth’s back. They’ll die on their own after a while.

And that may be what happens with the five remaining hens from our first foray into caring for a flock. We lost one to unknown causes recently. She went lame in one foot and over several weeks sank closer and closer to the ground until the final week she was hunkered down in a nest in the straw, close enough to the water and feed that she could reach out and take what she needed.

The books and websites and friends with experience said we’d probably have to separate her from the others to keep her safe. That when hens sense that one of their numbers is weak, they attack and often kill and eat their own. I kept a close eye on her, but often I’d find her prone in the straw with two or three and even a few times all five of the other girls snuggled in around her — all breathing as one.

Then one afternoon I went out to give them some kitchen scraps and she was gone, her body flattened out as if all of the air had gone out of it. A small russet feather rug.

I wanted to leave her for Chris to bury. I confess I was afraid to touch her and felt guilty for it. Also ashamed. It was my idea to raise chickens after all, so what exactly did I think that entailed? Pleasant clucking and a steady stream of delicous eggs, no doubt. And we have loved plenty of that over these four years, even if they all turned into egg-eaters.

The best/most illogical part is that I would like to raise meat birds for our table. And I know that after I go through the process once, I’ll be OK. Not necssarily fine, but less dizzy about the whole messy thing. Still, I don’t want to teach myself because that leaves far too much room for me to be so nervous that I accidentaly torture the poor creatures. I hope to apprentice for a day with someone local on butchering day.

But meanwhile, back at the homestead, there was the question of this quite dead Buff Orpington in whom the other chickens were beginning to take an unsavory interest. That, and a hole to dig.

I got a nice 2 foot deep hole carved out as best I could in the woods, having to chop through quite a few tangles of thankfully thin tree roots. It should have gone deeper, but I ran out of steam quick, and the girls were clearly becoming uncomfortable with the stiff in their midst.

Using the digging fork and my hand, I lifted her out of the tractor, and her body promptly slid off the metal tines and tumbled to the earth. Nice, Kelly. The sound of her body hitting the ground was preternaturally loud, much heavier than her seven or so pounds. The other hens stopped and stared at the feathered mass in that side-of-the-head way they do. We all watched and waited. They broke the silence first, clucking, pecking and scratching away from me and my grim task. Would they miss their sister?

I set aside the digging fork and lifted the bird with both hands. She was cold and hard like a feathered plank. I hoped I dug the hole wide enough — no way that body was going to bend even an inch. She fit. Just.

Something dug up and devoured the baby rabbit we buried this summer (one of the cats killed it) so after I stamped down the soil, I rolled logs from the last tree-felling adventure and stacked them in a sloppy pyramid on top of the hole. The biddies gathered around.

I sat on a log a few yards away and watched them with the afternoon light warming my face, golden in its waning autumn intensity. The ladies scratched away the top layer of leaves, picking at armadillo bugs, worms, seeds. They clucked and scratched and rearrangeed the surface of the soil around my improvised cairn of logs — tending to the dead by feeding the living.

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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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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.

[tags] chickens, chicken tractor, education, peak oil, garden, organic garden, growing food [/tags]

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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?

[tags] chickens, garden, organic gardening, kitchen garden, herbs, education, compost [/tags]

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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.

[tags] bumblebees, garden, critters, one local summer, eat local [/tags]

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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.

[tags] garden pests, predators, bugs, insects, identify [/tags]

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