growing curious

winter weed salad

I love going out into the garden in winter to search for little bits of deliciousness.  Here is what will be in our salad tonight:

At 12:00 and 1:00 -- a stalk of overwintered celery.

At 2 and 3 -- bittercress/popweed, pleasing texture and tastes like a sweet arugula.

At 4 and 5 -- wild mustards, arugula, radish leaves.

At 6 --  overwintered frizee and sweet, cucumbery chickweed.

At 7 -- two slender leek scapes.

At 9 and 10 -- curly lettuce.

At 11 -- lemony sorrel.

In the center:  red chicory.

I'm going to leave some of these whole, and I will chop the stronger-flavored things into fine ribbons.  I'll dress them with lemon, olive oil, garlic, pepper, and salt (from most to least).  We'll have it with a garbanzo bean stew and some whole wheat pita bread.

Really, I can't get over how much food there is out in the garden right now.  I harvested celery I need for the stew and 4 pounds of broccoli raab.  I notice the motherwort and borage coming back again, and the garlic is coming up nicely.   I am so grateful.

 

 

the garden still gives...

It's the middle of January, after many light frosts, and snow threatens this weekend.  And here is what I plucked from the garden this morning:

Pounds of broccoli and mustard raab, their tender sweet leaves, and lacinato kale.  Some of these plants we've been eating from for more than a year because they were planted in Fall of 2010.  Some of these delicious flower buds came from volunteer mustard plants.

I feel so grateful for this bounty.  I'll sautee some of it with carrots D harvested last week.

hope

This is a batch of salsa I made from the tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and onions we grew. These harvest season projects always cause me to take stock and plan for next year.

I was up until 3am last night making giardiniera to share with customers at the Market.  I don't like staying up that late.  I'm toast today and am not sure how I'll cook dinner and help homework happen and all.

This year has been a whirlwind at the Market.  I'm grateful to be there.  My customers are loyal.  I feel loyal to them and often create recipes to suit their preferences.  I love their response to my sauerkraut and pickles.  I'm excited about developing new recipes for next year and getting a better head start on production before the Market begins next May.  I just had no idea what the demand would be like this year, and I feel like I've been scrambling to catch up since March, when I was invited to join the Market.

It's a wonder that I've been able to keep up with the laundry here.  Everything else is in disarray.  The house and garden have never been neglected like this.

Logically, I understand that creating a new business is bound to be consuming.  We started the farm in January 2010, and we started the pickling business this year.  To have come this far -- a successful year at the Market, loyal customers, and growing so much of the produce needed for the pickles ourselves (despite neglecting the garden) -- is amazing.  I will pat myself on the back, and I am eternally grateful for D and E's encouragement, help and patience.

I spent a wonderful twenty minutes in the garden yesterday morning, and it made me realize that I'm not going to be able to continue on with this business unless I'm able to streamline things so that I get time out in the garden.  I need it for nourishment and inspiration.

 

bittersweet update

Maybe you would believe how busy I've been?  It's been just a month since I found out that Curious Farm was accepted into the Beaverton Farmers Market, and one month from today I will have survived my first Saturday there.

Overall, we're ahead of the schedule I mapped out a couple of weeks ago.  Engineer D has been a huge help -- solving all sorts of spatial, storage (at different temperatures), fermenting, business and logistical problems.  There is no way I could do this without him.  And it's not like he doesn't have a hundred other things to do that are important, too.

I was doing pretty okay keeping my nose to the grindstone about it all until I looked online and found out my booth space at the Market.  When I was able to visualize where I'll be, it all became much too real.  As I've said a few times, I wish I had three months to prepare instead of two.

We've been figuring out the booth, getting tables and a canopy, finding eco-friendly containers that won't leak, making signage and other collateral, remodeling our house, figuring out new ways to ferment vegetables in larger quantities, marketing the booth and talking to media folks, mapping out production schedules, building relationships with other farms that can grow vegetables for us, product testing, connecting with new customers, integrating new hens into our flock, and planting up our garden.

I already have begun producing sauerkraut for the Market because it takes two months to ferment.  The pickle lab is working very well, by the way.  Right now more than a hundred pounds   (ahem...  all shredded by hand...  have you ever heard of "cabbage elbow?") of vegetables are fermenting in the pickle lab.  I'm excited by how these long ferments are turning out, and I can't wait until a week or so from now when I can begin working on some spicier products that take less time to ferment.

I've been trying to get nonsense and details done so that I can feel more relaxed as I make the products.  That was my goal with the schedule I hammered out two or three weeks ago, and it seems to be working well.  We've accomplished *so* much, and -- as I turn more to production -- I feel more centered because I know how the product will stay safe and vital all the way from sourcing it from our farm and other farms to handing it to our customers.

But it's been hard, too.  I haven't slept very much.  Neither has D, and that's way worse for everyone.

For me, though, the hardest thing I've had to do in this process is what I did today:  clean out the pickle fridge.  This is where we put most of the jars of pickles that I made last year, organized carefully by batches.  I don't know... it's complicated...  The refrigerator of jars represents failure on some levels.  I didn't sell those pickles last year. 

The refrigerator of pickles represents opportunity, too, because I identified the problem with my business down to the *jar* and found another way to sell my pickles.  I'm proud of that.  It's the right way for curious farm.

However, one of the reasons I lost confidence in selling my pickles in refrigerated glass jars is that twice I found jars with issues.  Other jars in the same batches were fine so I couldn't pin the problems on anything specific, but it made me really worried.  And I knew that the longer I held the pickles locked up in the jars, more textural problems might surface.

Last week I sold my last jar, from a dependable batch.

Today I cleared out the fridge of all jars, from all batches.  I opened up every single jar of pickles, filtered and saved the brine, and then threw away the pickles.

But I tasted a bit of pickle from every jar.  6 - 4 months later, they are amazing pickles.  Only two pickles in all of the jars were structurally unsound, and I understand that now as a problem in the cucumber's development on the vine.

I'm thrilled that my pickles could handle being locked up in glass jars for six months and still taste great.

I'm thrilled that I figured out that I hate having pickles locked up in glass jars so much that I wanted to figure out another way to sell them.

I'm thrilled that my "other way to sell them" turned into this.

But I just put 70 pounds of still-fantastic pickles (all homegrown) in the garbage because it's time to get ready for what's to come.

Bring it on, Universe! 

--cathy, covered in sour-cucumber-fermenty-spicy-summery wonder right now, dreaming about what's to come.

 

 

 

 

 

below the surface

It's been warm enough for the garlic to surface.  Other beds have brassicas and red clover in suspended animation.  I know we'll have some cold spells that will kill off the surface growth, but I am so so so ready to dig into the garden again.  I want to thrust in a spade, pull it out full of soil and count the worms there.

I'm not ready for spring yet.  I love the winter.  I just need to feel affirmed that there are positive things happening below the surface -- concretely and metaphorically.

gloomy day

 
The contrast in these photos has been tweaked so that you can see the gloom I worked in this afternoon.  It was hazy, misty, and eerily dark out in the garden, and the photos I took were too dark to include here as they were.

Do you ever procrastinate on a chore that you know will make you feel better if you do it?  I've been avoiding the garden recently.  I just didn't want to take down the bean bridge and towers.  I wasn't ready to let go of this intense season.

But clear away and take down I did today.  I even broadforked a bed and will plant red clover there tomorrow.  I ripped out spent broccoli and lots of weeds, uncovered some onions, raked leaves, noticed the garlic pushing up already.

Here is one patch of nasturtiums that I didn't have the heart to tear down:

I apologize for the dark photo, but this patch of nasturtiums climbs taller than me and is still vibrant.  I've never had nasturtiums last this long.  They always sacrifice themselves to the aphids by August. 

D's mother took D and E to Disneyland so they've been gone for a few days.  I was moderately productive while they were gone with cleaning, organizing, and gardening.   I seeded the last of the chili peppers on Friday night and severely burned my hands from the capsaicin.  Two days later, they still hurt.  I barely slept on Friday night from the throbbing pain, and then I got a rare migraine on Saturday morning that I think must have been from how wigged out my nerves were from the pepper burns.

But here are the beautiful chili peppers before processing:

 

And here they are all now as they ferment into a special chili sauce that Curious Farm will have available soon.

 

the garden keeps giving...

 
Mother Earth, I am blessed.  Here it is almost November and our vines have delivered another 18 pounds of perfect pickling cucumbers.  This batch of pickles may be the last for the year, and then I will decide if I want to import from California to make batches of pickles during the next couple of months.

Here is a photo of our vines, taken today during a break in the storm:

You can see that the vines still look pretty lively for this late in the season.  This is one of our new beds that gets southern exposure and heat radiated from the house on the north side.  It's such a sweet, productive spot, and we'll be planting winter crops in these beds soon, too.

And that's probably why the hens have gathered nearby here this afternoon to soak up the sheltered sun.  There's been no sign of molting yet, and they're still laying well. (especially since we discovered that they were laying eggs in the tomato bed and so have changed their ranging schedule to encourage use of the nest boxes.  ahem.) 

I am just beginning to recover from my illness.  Today I have done more than any day since 10/8.   I had to force myself out to pick the cucumbers, and I'm taking a break now before I put them into crocks because I'm tired.

But it was great to be out in the garden.  I'm just stunned by all that's still growing out there.  I haven't planted the garlic yet (hopefully will do that this week when E is in school), but there are carrots, beans, pretty summer squashes, chili peppers, eggplants, parsley, winter squashes, onions, leeks, chard and broccoli.  All of this is from plantings we did in the spring and early summer.  We haven't had "farm hours" here at Curious Farm in a month or so, but I'll send email to a couple of customers to let them know about crops I know they enjoy.

Now I just need to get my energy back so that I can plant the garlic and winter crops.  We have never had such bounty here, and I can't wait to see what we're able to grow next year.

 

surprise in the garden

Look what was growing underneath the tired cosmos!  Small, sweet, worthy carrots. 

reason #439 to grow your own vegetables

 
This pesto looks good, doesn't it?  It's very lush and green.  In the bowl here are basil leaves, basil flowers, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, pepper and salt.  I added the cheese to our noodles at dinner, thinking there might be some of this left to freeze afterwards (wrong).

Listen, though...  when you grow your own basil, you can use the basil flowers in your pesto.  They have heightened aroma and flavor, and -- as long as you use them fresh-picked -- they create super-charged pesto.  If you refrigerate them or let them linger on your counter, they turn bitter, and that is why you don't see basil flowers in the grocery store.

Did you know this?  Now there is no need to cry when your basil flowers!  Pluck the beauties and some lower leaves and use all of their potent energy.  If they're calling out to bees, those bits of basil will make otherworldy pesto.

Tonight's pesto was very good, but I made better pesto for myself on Thursday morning when I was exhausted/sad/overwhelmed and decided to spend the morning in bed.  After I got D and E off to school (both of them on Thursday!), I forced myself out into the garden to harvest some basil. (You know how it's hard to fix yourself something wonderful when you're feeling depressed?  It was one of those days.)

I used ground almonds instead of cheese, lots of basil, lots of garlic, lots of lemon juice and then cayenne instead of black pepper.  D and E would have hated this, but I loved every bit of it.  If you need comfort and medicine some day, make your pesto this way, and you will feel glad.

taking stock

Fiona over at the Cottage Smallholder posted a lovely reflection on her last year of healing.  She's had to reorganize her life entirely, do more with less, and figure out new ways to support herself.  I hope you'll visit her blog and get to know her.

I draw great strength from Fiona's journey because -- even though our circumstances are different and we live half a world apart -- our priorities and solutions are similar.  I especially appreciate that she can see that she's living a deeper, more satisfying life now that everything has been pared down to essentials.

That is true for me, also.  I really love getting to know my husband now that he's free of the evil empire.  I'll gladly face storms of financial, geographic, and professional uncertainty to watch him settle into himself.  I appreciate having a clearer idea of who our real friends are.  I'm grateful that we're getting so grounded that we're literally dirty from our work on the Farm.

The Farm...

I've been in a funk about the farm.  I work so hard out there but can't see appreciate our progress so this weekend, much like Fiona, I've been trying to acknowledge the deeper progress we've made in these last six months:

• We came up with the plan for the farm in January.
• We built the farm's website in January.
• We re-organized our entire garden into mounded, raised beds.
• We ordered seeds and planned crops differently than we ever have before.
• David designed and built the coop.
• We got the chickens and learned to care for them.
• Our garden grew.
• We dealt with the record-breaking cold and wet spring.
• I've kept up with the weeding.
• We sold a few vegetables. (thank you!)
• Pickling classes are coming up later this summer.  (There's room for you, too!  Contact me.) 
• First eggs are due any day now, and we have customers waiting for them already. 
• We're meeting a lot of wonderful neighbors.
• I'm figuring out how to license the kitchen so that I can make and sell preserves and pickles legally.
• I am making unusual pickles and preserves and learning a lot in that realm.
• We are feeding ourselves from the garden. (At the grocery store, I skip the produce section 90% of the time -- mostly just buy mushrooms or a few lemons sometimes.)

That is an awful lot in six months. 

I know from my experience with this garden over this last few years that we'll see rewards two- or three-fold next year.  We won't have to truck in compost anymore.  The beds are organized well enough now that rotation will be easier and weeding reduced.  I've learned so much about succession planting and yields this year that next year I'll have a better idea of how to market crops in advance.

I need to be patient.  A year from now, we'll face different challenges, but it will feel easier (hopefully) to sell what we grow.

Not small potatoes for six months of hard work.  Even I can see that.

making lemonade outta of the endless rain

Let's see how to frame this in a positive way...

Here is a picture of my cleaned-up, worked-on, painted garage:

You don't need to see the "before" picture.  Just imagine chaos, dirt, no visible floor, ancient stuff stacked up to be dealt with someday. 

So, during the endless rain, I dealt with it all -- except for a line of things behind that chalkboard (above) which David assures me he will move.  His cooperation is his "rent payment" because the tractor is also behind the chalkboard, and I'm cool with that being in the garage until we figure out something else (plan #3b).

These shelves used to be covered in icky, sticky stuff and an endless assortment of things that needed to go elsewhere.  Now they're full of seeds, supplies, and reference books I use when I'm muddy and need to plant something.  Since the garage has been "done" (not hardly, but you know what I mean), I find it very usable.  It's wonderful to come in with my muddy boots and consult a reference book.  It's also nice to keep a cup of hot coffee here out of the rain.  To have this space -- however humble -- in which to work and think is very freeing to me.

We're going to be putting a refrigerator in the space to the left of the picture above so that I can keep greens and eggs fresh for folks.

Whenever I make a big change to the house (especially something for me), I try to make a space for E.  This time, I made her an office in the back of the garage.  She has two desks to swivel between, and she can look over the half-wall you can see in the first picture to supervise me while I work -- which is what she told me she will be doing from her office when she's not twirling.

Why am I showing you this?

Because I feel icky and sticky and yucky and immobile because of the endless rain, and I'm trying to remind myself that we actually have accomplished a few things since our lives changed in December.

The rain here in Oregon, zone 8, has made the soil *too* wet to weed properly.  Can you imagine?  I used to love to weed in the rain.  But now the soil is a slurry, and when I pull up a weed, the roots stay in the ground while I pull up soggy tops.  It's almost June!

However, the garden still grows (slowly), and the chickens are fine...

And there's a sign up at the front of our garden that says "Curious Farm: coming soon! "  Today I planted flowers out there that I hope will bloom soon.

I keep trying to be optimistic, you see.  It's been challenging.  Sometimes I think we all will float away in the sludge and rain.

I think we're doing a good job.  I think we're making progress.  But the garden itself is stalled in this rain, and -- after six months of soul-searching and incredibly challenging work -- I could use a little sunshine and affirmation.
 

  

done!

Psst...  I finished the garden beds.  What's three months of my life, anyway?  The digging is done.  Done.  

I finished them just before it began to pour, and it's supposed to keep raining until the weekend.  I feel giddy.  I feel triumphant!

They're crooked and a little funky around the edges, but hopefully no one will notice that once things start growing.

balm in the rain

If I look hard enough, there is a positive side to not being able to dig because of the rain:  I'm forced to get other stuff done when I get an hour or two without E.

Today I went out to weed under the apple trees.  I do this twice a year -- spring and fall -- and spread compost around them in neat circles.  They get unruly again pretty quickly, but I usually get a month or so to enjoy what the backyard looks like when the grass is cut and the trees have nice borders.

A couple of weeks ago, I worried I wouldn't be able to tackle this job since so much is going on this spring, but today I found the time to begin.  Weeding around one tree was so satisfying (easier in the rain) that I did three more.

I have been meaning to plant some lemon balm under the apple trees because it attracts bees, and I've been wondering if it might compete well with the invasive bindweed that grows on the hill.  It wouldn't bother me at all if the lemon balm just took off and spread all down the hillside.  Its roots are shallow, and it serves several purposes -- medicinal and insectary.  I happened to have some lemon balm elsewhere that had escaped its pot so it was nice to be able to transplant that to a place where it can do a lot of good.

While I was replanting the balm, the sun came out.  There I was... sitting on the edge of the hill, listening to the creek, smelling both the dirt and the soapy lemon balm, feeling the sun on my hair, and looking at the pretty blossoms on the crab apple tree (always the earliest to bloom).  Bliss.  A moment so full of hope and simple pleasure.

I walked down the hill a bit and saw a young blueberry plant almost completely taken over by a huge (18 inches in diameter) red dandelion.  I laughed because it reminded me of how the chicks sometimes stand on top of one another.  I thought, "Oh, you'll be a bugger to pull, won't you?"  Then I decided to change my strategy and said outloud, "Dear, you are gorgeous, but you can't be here.  Come inside with me and we'll make some tea of you."  She pulled straight out without a fight.

why i love my husband...

This morning, D took E rollerskating at Oaks Park.  Can you imagine having your dad take you rollerskating?  I can't.  I love and miss my dad, but he never did things like that.

Afterwards, D thought they would head over to the farm store to get some baby chicks.  Can you imagine being 5 years old and going with your dad to the farm store to get baby chicks?

I really love D.

This morning, while I've been alone at home (don't feel very well -- tired from the digging and other things), I've been thinking about how well D and I complement one another with our gardening skills.  He's patient with the process of propagating starts.  He's good at testing the soil and mixing amendments so that they work well for us.  He's been building the coop almost single-handedly (thanks again, JL and S).  He brings me tractor-fuls of compost whenever I ask and dumps them right where I want them to be. 

He would hate to be digging, and that's why I'm doing it, and I don't care that I'm doing it because I know he would hate it.  You know?  He would last 10 minutes with that job, and I've been doing it for a month.  I'm really tuned into the plants themselves and am good at direct sowing.  I'm sensitive to what a plant might need while it's growing in order to improve its flavor.  He pays attention to broad trends in the garden and takes the time during my witching hours (late afternoon/eve when I'm making dinner and feeling cranky) to spray horticultural oils out on the fruit trees and stuff.  (I have never sprayed horticultural oil in my life.)

He and I do different kinds of research.  He researched coop structure, basic chicken requirements, and spent an entire season planning out the coop before he started it.  I researched coop design and different breeds of chickens in order to find some that might work for us here. 

Sometimes I'm amazed by how well we work together.  I couldn't do Curious Farm without him.  But, mostly, I can't imaging raising E without him.  He is such a good dad.

digging #328

Are you tired of hearing about me digging garden beds? (here, here, here, etc.)  Yeah, me too.

I finally finished the third bed -- 4' x 12' (on top).  I dug it much deeper.  It's much loftier because I went dug down deeper and ammended it more intensively.  I'll post a picture of it when I'm in a better mood.

We've been working so hard.  Both D and I were feeling icky today (rare sleepless night with kid didn't help).  Our bodies hurt so much from putting shingles up on the roof (him) and digging (me).  Some days I work so hard out there that I can't even talk.  When E asks me to help her put gloves on for the fourth time in an hour and I can't even get my own gloves off to do that because I'm shaking and sputtering from having dug for hours...  it's yucky.  I can be an impatient mom when I'm that tired.

It was a year ago this week that my dad died.  I've been thinking about Cynthia and her family so much this week because her mom died last week.

How do we get through the stuff we have to get through?

I'm still figuring out how to connect with my mother since my dad's passing.  I am grateful that today she didn't argue with me when I asked if E and I could come up tomorrow.  I am working very hard on things in my own life, but I talk to my mom three times a week on the phone and try to visit with her once or twice a month.  I'd visit more often if she didn't refuse to see me.  You know?  And, although I invite her here frequently, she will only stop by on a blue moon.  It's been a long time since I used any guilt or pressure with my mom.  I'm just open-hearted and don't expect anything.  She seems interested in seeing the chickens someday, though.

Truthfully, I feel incredibly lonely lately.  My mother and D's mother -- from different perspectives -- seem to think we're a little crazy with our garden plans.  Now's about the time when we could use a warm pat on the back and a "Gee, I'm proud of you.  This is smart."  Yesterday, while D was resting, his mother kept trying to process doomsday scenarios with me while I was washing the dishes after dinner.  "So, if D doesn't get a job, you'll have to move from here, right?  You'll have to get an apartment somewhere..." 

There is so much at stake.  So I keep digging and dreaming of a healthy garden.  It's the only thing I know how to do right now.  I might be crazy.  Or I might be smart.

still...

...working like crazy over at Curious Farm.

digging challenges

I won't delete this post.  I've deleted a couple this week.

I'm still digging.  I am still working on the third 4' x 12' bed.  There have been some other events and responsibilities (like putting the roof on the coop) this weekend so I haven't made as much progress on the beds as I hoped I would.

Two challenges I'm facing:

Although it's out-of-character for my former oovy-groovy, hippie-ish persona, the smell of wheatgrass makes me feel ill because of an unfortunate overdose of freshly-juiced wheatgrass that happened in Santa Cruz 25 years go.  But the area where I'm digging is covered in wheatgrass because that's the cover crop I'm turning under with each shovel-ful.  And every single time I break the soil/wheat with the shovel, a fresh burst of wheatgrass smell overwhelms me.  This is the best cover crop we've ever used (germination, habit, coverage), but digging it up is yucking me out.  I wish we had planted red clover last fall!  I would probably still be out there digging at midnight.

I've been at this digging for several days now.  Can you imagine how your skin would feel if you kept giving yourself clay masks for six hours, several days in a row?  I have wrinkles on top of my wrinkles now.  It's been clear and beautiful enough this week that the ground is actually drying out.  Every time I stick my hand in the bed to pull out another rock, I get clay all over me.  It's going up my shorts and chapping my legs.  Between my shirt sleeves and gloves, I have a ring of chapped skin.  It's not just the clay.  I'm ammending the beds with some rock and mineral dusts...  And then I take a couple long, hot showers (before I make lunch and after I come in for the evening) to get the dirt and ammendments off my skin and hair, so those aren't helping either. I never anticipated this problem.

And, in case you've lost count, after I finish this third bed (tomorrow!  tomorrow!  please!), I still have eight more to dig out.

I will do it.  I refuse to give up.  But man...  this is really hard, friends.  I am encountering many, many rocks (between 15 and 30 inches down), and I think these rocks prevented our vegetables from growing well in the past.  I'm spending a *lot* of time on this -- sorting through the soil with my hand, making sure every rock is removed.  Maybe I'm crazy.

my 5-year-old garden spade

So I was outside moving the 3' x 10' mound of dirt I made in the garden and had begun to double-dig the whole area instead when 5-year-old E came out chattering about digging and our Farm .  She said we'll have chickens and she'll have to learn how to be with them, and we talked about 4H and learning how to be a young farmer, and then she told us she's going to move away to her own farm just a couple of days after the birthday when she becomes a grown-up. Then she decided to help me with my digging, and she told me that our farm is not the Curious Farm yet -- it's the "We're Learning to Be a Farm " Farm.  After we earn our Curious Farm by digging hard, we can call it the Curious Farm, but not until then.  I agreed with her because she is more wise than I am, and I was pleased and energized by her thoughts and feelings.  After feeding the imaginary goats, she went off to sing to the real blueberry bushes and raspberry vines.  I continued digging, and dug for two hours.  She helped me.

digging deep

I did a lot of digging and moving dirt today.  (I made the 10' by 3' mound in the picture above by shoveling dirt from elsewhere and heaving it over here.  I know it doesn't look that big in the picture, but it is that big.  I measured.)  I wrote about this work over at curiousfarm.  I like digging.  I like doing the heavy work in the garden more than I like to fuss over delicate pruning and stuff.  I'm sore, though.  I'm sure I'll be more sore tomorrow.  I'll use Taylor's gardening elixir tonight before bed!

*I* am still feeling very good -- relieved, at peace, excited -- about our new venture.  D has had a hard couple of days, though, and I'm not sure how to help him through these feelings.  I'm at a place in my own life where I don't expect concrete answers from anyone or anything.  I work through my angst (which is just noise sometimes) by working hard on the house or the yard and by going on a walk.  I don't dismiss his anger and feelings of being lost after the lay-off.  I've experienced this, too.  It's just that I don't know any way through that pain and ickiness except by getting busy with real things.  As far as I can see, the vegetables, chickens, and dirt don't play petty politics.  I trust them not to screw me over intentionally.  So, while I'm tender, it makes sense to give my energy to the garden. However, this week, D isn't finding the joy in that.  

For me, my goals are simple:  really work the garden this year and spend as little money as possible doing so.  We'll have to make some investments (seeds, blueberry bushes, chickens, maybe some soil ammendments), and we'll have to be smart about these purchases.  We won't be getting any doo-dads or implements to make our work easier.  We'll have to use our muscles and our minds to make this all pencil out.

If the only things that happen this year are that we grow most of our own vegetables and sell a couple of dozen eggs, then I will count this venture as a success for the year.  We can build on that success for next year -- when, hopefully, we'll get into a good rhythm with selling vegetables and eggs and finding our niche.

There are many challenges ahead of us in order to grow just the vegetables we need.  We have never been the best carrot growers, for instance.  Our cabbages sucked (very sad because of the sauerkraut and kimchi-making I do).  The beets I grew were more minerally than sweet.  And you might remember all of those green tomatoes?  So I have a lot of drama swirling around in my heart as I move forward with this intention of growing substantially more of our produce than ever before.

But I feel good.  I think we can meet my goal.  We have come so far already in the almost seven years we've lived here.  We've been building the soil religiously.  Every year we grow and save more.

Now that E is older (she turns 5 on Friday!  She wants her cake to say,  "I want a fine birthday!" ), D and I are able to work out there while she does her own garden projects.  She's very aware of how important the garden is and enjoys helping.  She's also very smart about it all and comes up with connections and insights that blow me away.

My energy (physical, mental, spiritual) feels more focused and free now that we have a shared vision for what we want to do.  D and I argue and challenge one another over little things, but we both share the hope that our garden might sustain us more deeply.  This is very good, and I am very lucky.

dogwood fun

It was time to prune the dogwoods.  They leaf-out early, and I wanted to coppice them this year in order to force the plants to grow long, straight branches that I might be able to use in basket-making projects.  When Amy Whitworth and I took that class with Margaret Mathewson last summer, Amy told me that our red osier dogwoods would be good for making more vine cages.

So I hung out outside all day yesterday -- pruning and cutting.  Any gardener will tell you that it's magic when busy schedules and the weather open up a sweet spot for gardening in the middle of January.  It felt heavenly to be out there working, breathing in the cold air.

 
I decided to cut off the side-shoots from the branches and salvage as many long, straight branches as possible from the pruning.  I wasn't sure if they could be worked into a project, but look:

 
I did it!  I made another cage! (The photo is blurry because I worked in the pouring rain.)  It only took an hour, too!  And, yes, I'm going to remove it from that grassy patch as soon as possible so that it doesn't root in place.  Dogwoods want to root almost as much as willows do.  That could be a perk in some instances, I'm sure, but I'm not ready for a permanent, living garden structure in that spot.

Wow.  So fun!  Want to do more!  Won't the sugar snap peas look pretty growing on that?

garden hope

A non-gardener might look at this pile of damp hay and see something ugly.

To me, it looks like hope.

This is the asparagus patch, put to bed for the winter.  It won't be long now before the first spears poke through the ground.  You can bet I'll let you know when they do.

There is hope.  The world moves in cycles that include us but that are far bigger than us.  For that, I am thankful.

busy in the kitchen...

 
Yesterday D poured the concrete for the chicken coop.  Now we have a 10' x 11' slab out there for square dances.  In the spring, we'll build the coop itself and then get our chickens.  This daydream suddenly became more concrete (ahem) with the delivery of the concrete.  I guess we'll be getting chickens then.  Real ones.

While out there, waiting for D to need my help, I picked the rest of the tomatoes so that we can start putting the garden to bed.  I know you can see the tomatoes up above, but look...  there are more green ones...

It's sort of like a bad dream to have all of these green tomatoes again because I haven't properly recovered from last year (chronicled here, here, here, here, and here ).  But I'm a good sport, yes?  And I have done a good job of minimizing the waste of perfectly edible produce from the garden this year so I was game to give it another go.  Green tomatoes are my friends.  No one understands them as deeply as I do...

So I put them all in the Harsch crock, and we'll hope that they turn into the real pickled green tomatoes I remember from New York City.  No vinegar.  No canning.  Real, fermented, crispy green tomatoes.  At least that's the hope.  They look pretty in the crock, don't they?  They're waiting to get splashed with brine.  In a week, they should be ready!

Actually, there are two Harsch crocks that are bubbling away right now.  The left one holds the green tomatoes, and one on the right is making Beet Kvass.  This is my first attempt and the first time I've used whey in my fermenting.  I looked at hundreds of recipes for Beet Kvass, and I was unable to find one that didn't use whey so I figured it must be important.  Beet Kvass is a fermented beet juice made with whey, salt, filtered water.  I put ginger in mine and used much less salt than often suggested.  It is supposed to be very healthy and very satisifying.  I love beets and have a feeling I'll love this.  We'll see in a couple of days.

But there were pretty red tomatoes out in the garden, too...

 
E doesn't eat tomato sauce on noodles so I wondered about making vegetable juice with these.  Then I realized I could make the job quite easy if I used the new strainer from the estate sale.  It worked magic!  How did I live without this tool?  (And, Stephanie, I really wonder if this would have helped make your grape project a lot easier?  Please borrow this anytime!)

The jars of juice look so pretty.  I used the recipe in the Ball Blue Book for Vegetable Juice and used less salt, and I think I could have even used less salt because the celery, onions, and lemon gave the tomatoes a nice twang.

The jar with the white cap is the pulp from the juicing.  It tasted so good that I added some lime juice and hot peppers to it so that I have some salsa to use for the next couple of weeks.  I didn't process this -- just froze some and put the rest in a jar in the fridge.  I'm happy that even this bit of garden bounty didn't get wasted.  It's satsifying to make the effort to turn leftovers into goodness.

So, yesterday:  chicken coop/square dancing platform, picked tomatoes, made beet kvass, maked pickled green tomatoes, made tomato juice and salsa.  Good, eh?

back

This is the view from our porch in Maui:

I swam a lot right out there.  In the afternoons, the wind picked up and made the water a little more rough.  In the mornings, it was very calm.  I also spent a lot of time reading out on this porch, enjoying the view and the breeze.

When we came home, after just a week, we found all of this in the garden:

When E and I picked up our dog from the kennel on Sauvie Island, we stopped into Kruger's for these:

They should be ready on Sunday or Monday.  I'm thrilled that my last batch of pickles turned out so well and still are receiving rave reviews.  I probably will get two more batches in before cucumbers are done for the season, and then I'll start another batch of kimchi. 

Three or four people are waiting to come to my house the next time I make kimchi...  I keep trying to figure out how to make a living teaching and doing this fermenting, but I also want to just share.  I guess I'll figure it out in the next few months.  Today D, E and I passed a boutique catering kitchen, and I thought again about the process of getting a food handler's license and of finding commercial kitchen space.  I don't know how to begin those projects until E is in first grade so that I have full mornings free. 

carrots and onions

the garden giveth...

...and I am very grateful, even though it is not fun to wash and process that much kale all at once.

I separated the bug-free kale from the icky and then put it in the sink for a second sort and a first clean.  I saved the kale ribs and washed them again, and now they're bubbling away and giving their good energy to a vegetable stock.  Those two bowls of de-stemmed kale in the picture above will go through two more washings before I make kale pesto (a la Farmer John's Cookbook, which is so helpful when one needs to make smart use of a vegetable bounty).

E just came inside and was talking to me about all sorts of things for ten minutes before I asked her directly, "Why did you come inside even though Daddy is still outside?"

"Oh, I came in to ask you for two bags so that Daddy can put the onions in them!"

"Well, that's very important, and I'm glad I asked you because he needs those right away if he's pulling all the onions!  Take these to him right now!  Thanks for being such a big help, E!  He will be glad for these bags."

So if all goes well, there will be a picture here soon of a bunch of dirty onions and maybe some carrots!  Gotta make carrot cake for Grandma P's birthday on Tuesday!

i like dirt

Look at this glorious pile of steaming compost!

There was a good summer rain last night (lovely to listen to) that left the ground in perfect condition for weeding.  I was out there all morning.  E even helped for an hour. D agreed to order me a truckload of compost so that I can quickly cover up the weeded areas and maximize my hard work.  The nice landscape materials folks must have filled up the truck as soon as we called because they were here lickety-split.

Other pretty things:

The passionflower vine finally surfaced.  It's quite late in the year, and I had given up on it -- assuming the wild winter had killed it.  Not so, and I'm delighted.

These pretty baubles belong to the new apple rose (Rosa villosa) I planted this year.  I love this rose so much.  The flower is sweet, simple, light pink.  These hips taste like candy.  Someday, when the plant is larger and produces more, I'm going to make jam out of the hips.  This year, I'll make some heart-lifting tea from them.  I have another of these roses that I've written about before.  That lovely being is down by the creek.  This one is new, planted just months ago, and I'm happy about how well it's growing.

As The Cottage Smallholder wrote about recently, we're re-engineering our landscaped areas so that they can be used to grow more edibles.  This apple rose will stay, and I'll add another one here and some blueberry bushes.  Yesterday I ripped out a rhododendron that finally died (my fault, a casualty from our big front landscaping project...  I never had time to plant it so it suffered freezing temperatures in its pot...  when the ground thawed, I tried to plant it, and the rhodi sure tried hard, but it finally gave up this year...  lesson learned), and now we'll nourish the soil there and plant three blueberries.  Next year, I want to integrate squash, peppers, and eggplants into the front landscaping, and I also think there might be room for beans to share the same fence with the passionflower.

first figs

My early morning meditations in the garden are going swimmingly.  This morning I noticed that a few of the Desert King figs were drooping in that very sensual way that they droop when they're heavy and ripe.  These plopped into my palm just as I reached for each of them.  Thump. Thump.  Thump.  They make a gentle smacking sound on my palm that sounds like the pat-pat-pat I used to give E on her bottom when she was a babe.

The Desert Kings are funny because they're still green when ripe.  You have to look carefully to notice how they're hanging there.  Another day in the hot sun, and these would have fallen to the ground on their own.

I ate all of these by myself because I am the only one who likes figs here.  E thinks they're too weird.  D thinks they're too ummm...  sensual, I guess.

Also sweet today:  our wonderful neighbors brought over a berry pie to thank me for inviting their granddaughter over to play two late afternoons and a dinner time this week.  She's just a year or so older than E, very sweet, and they play nicely together so it was great for me all around.  But a berry pie?!?  Yes, please!

got aching gardening muscles?

Once one gets past a certain age, gardening feels necessary to the spirit, but a busy day out there when the weather is right (like after several days of 100-plus weather...  well... you have to get out there and do what you can when the thermometer is only at 95...) can make one ache all over.

Dear gardeners, please contact Taylor at WebWeavingHerbals.  She made me a special elixir for my aching muscles, and it is magic.  An hour ago, I was on the verge of tears because my feet and hips were in such pain.  What could I do?  Oh!  I could use Taylor's special oil.  Now, I feel renewed.  My feet feel fine.  My hips feel relaxed... like really relaxed...

I won't tell you what she uses in her elixir, but she will, and she may customize it just for you. 

first apples

We planted an apple tree out front three years ago, and this year it fruited.  In fact,there was so much fruit on it that the branches bowed down to the ground, and I worried for the health of the tree.  Other apples were falling off.  I decided to salvage what I could and just left a few apples up on the tree to see how they ripen.  I thought that I could treat the green, unripe apples like crabapples and make hot apple jelly with some chilis I had in the fridge.

And so I did that last night.  I put a whole, dried chili in the jar a la Oded Schwartz in his book Preserving.  I gave a spoonful to D last night, and it took  a minute before the heat hit his tongue, but then I heard the "oh!"

This morning (still going out just as it gets light) I brought in the garlic that I had curing out there in the hot, hot sun.  The kitchen smells like how our next door neighbor's house used to smell.  Mrs. Gashina lived next door in a double-sized lot, and she gardened her whole yard intensively.  She and her husband made wine, and even her apple streudel tasted like garlic because everything in Mrs. Gashina's house was infused with garlic.  I used to love it when she'd take her gray hair out of her bun and brush her hair upside down, down to the floor.  She'd swoop back up, and it would be standing out to her sides, and she'd cackle like a happy witch.

Feeling a little blue today, overwhelmed by summer and hormones, worrying about things I can't seem to fix.

sometimes i amuse myself...

Tonight I'm watching kimchi how-to videos on YouTube.  This video by Maangchi is inspiring and easy.  This one by Julie Hasson is vegan.  My recipe is different from both of theirs!

Also, I'm thinking about chickens and how to keep them happy.  I'm overwhelmed by hot summer days, solo with a four-and-a-half-year-old.  I'm growing a lot of beans.  I feel pride in the celery, which is a crop no one else likes because I'm not blanching it by hiding it from the sun.  I make jam.

Even ten years ago, when I was just getting back from New York,  I never would have guessed I'd be here now.  Back then, I thought I'd be in publishing somehow forever.  These days, I care about children's books, but my energy is used in the garden and the kitchen.  I still haven't figured out how this changes me, but I'm different lately.

summer overwhelm in the garden

To do the garden as we wish we could would be a full-time job, split between D and me.  There are some things he's good at, other things I am.  If we both could spend 6 - 8 hours out there each day in total, during the 6 intensive months of the year, we'd be in good shape with this 2/3 of an acre.  (Please don't laugh...  I realize that some of you work miracles with much more space.)  During the other six months, we both could work on other projects and work less outside (or in the yearly planning for the garden).

We've come a long way since we moved here six years ago.  Each year we get better at what we're doing.  D and I are trying to figure out how we want to garden and develop the property in the near future.

But every year I have a miserable June with hay fever.  I take alternative and allopathic medicine for it, but I pretty much can't go outside and be productive during the entire month of June -- such an important month!

When I finally venture out in July, I hate it out there.  It's overgrown, unruly.  Some plants have been neglected because no one was giving them extra attention.  (LIke, for example, for such an herb enthusiast, I pretty much suck at growing basil because it needs every-other-day attention here in Oregon during June.  It wants to be plucked and pruned so that it can grow bushier.  Sometimes it needs an extra splash of water.)

In July, I hate the garden, and it takes every ounce of courage I have to go out there and face the madness of growth.  (It doesn't help that my mother-in-law chides me about the weeds every time she sees me -- a few times a week.)

I asked some nice people on an organic homesteading mailing list if *they* ever feel overwhelmed and helpless in summer.  Many said yes.  It helped to hear that!

So I have been trying to figure out how to push through my fear and overwhelm and reconnect with this crazy garden after a month of growth has happened.  Usually, once I'm out there working, I can sink into a small task and then move onto the next.  The problem is getting out there at all when I feel overwhelmed.  Many of those homesteaders suggested I just go out early in the morning, every day, and work for a short while.

When I was talking about this with my mentor/therapist, she thought they had a good idea.  So we spent part of the session figuring out how I could re-engineer mornings around here so that I could get out to the garden before D and E woke up, or how to have good breakfasts ready for them to make themselves while I was outside.

This is what I'm trying to do this week.  I've gotten three painful wasp bites (think that's what they are) in the process, but I'm going to try to go out there again tomorrow morning -- the fourth day in a row it would be.

Today I strung up the tomatoes a bit higher, picked a load of broccoli, and watered the celery and zukes and my mother-in-law's garden bed that isn't on the automatic system.

Tomorrow morning, I should pick some green beans again.  (But I am afraid of the spiders/wasps who are biting me.)

It's like the garden *is* my practice, my space for connecting with spirit and real life.  When I'm gone for a month because of the pollen (and I'm well aware of the significance of my "allergies" in terms of my body-mind-spirit...  like why does my body panic in the middle of the good stuff?), I don't know how to reconnect with myself out there.  My worn hand-tools feel foreign.  I feel shy among the plants.  My first hour of weeding feels shallow because it *is* shallow since I'm not using my whole body to twist and remove the roots of the weeds.

So I am trying to approach the garden as a meditation practice -- every morning for awhile.  We'll see...