A PAUSE

A PAUSE

There has been a pause in this blog, but certainly not a pause in writing. 

I have written long and unpublishable things, rants really - spoiled child dissertations about rights and unfairness and love and letting go.  When sorting out is hard, you don’t go public.  You wait until chaff is blowing towards the trees and you’ve cleaned up a little, cleared your throat, and washed your face. 



CHRISTMAS CARDS

When my youngest son was 9, in the middle of the Christmas rush, he left our kitchen filled with the soft hum of Christmas music, and quietly walked outside.  When I couldn't find him I panicked.  When I found him and heard him, the panic was just beginning.  He had locked himself inside of our minivan and wailed to me he wouldn’t come out because he hated his life and wanted to die, specifically freeze to death.  Of course, I easily extracted him from the van (I had keys), but it would be years before the sorting out of depression, anxiety and autism was in a state where we could address it, talk about it, understand it, live peaceably next to it and stop blaming “it” for taking our son’s intended life from us.

The outgoing Christmas cards never went out that year.  Then, like now, too much sorting out.  The outgoing Christmas cards haven’t made it out since, but not so with this blog.  Thankfully, this sorting is a fraction less complex.

TRANSITION
The current sorting started last Summer a little before the Wholesaler I sold produce to folded their business up into a tidy chain of words: "we will be closing as of September 11th."  Slightly before that my very level headed and loving husband announced that he didn't want the farm any longer.  He wanted to get rid of the animals, sell it all off and live like “normal” people do.  

a Storm Approaches

So I gasped for air.  Over and over.  Gasping and grasping sorting out the tug of war.  Not even sure what the prize was should I win.  If we stay, then he is unhappy which ultimately makes me unhappy.  If we go, everything about who I am is stripped down and I will have to spend my days clean and dressed appropriately, smelling like the “normal” people. 

A TRUCE  
He conceded that we could stay until the youngest son graduated, if I would agree that there would be no additional animals to the farm.  We agreed to stop farming by attrition.  In the hopeful corner of my mind, we get to stay here, but outwardly I am lobbying for buying a 5 acre lot and building a “farmette” so we can keep the animals we have until they die, but live in a lower maintenance house.  If that should ever come to fruition, I plan to lobby for only 3 chickens and 2 dairy goats. It's my 5 year plan, and my tenacious mate is prepared for the battle.  After 24 years of marriage, the man knows me and the hopes I harbor.  He absolutely doesn't want to build a house and wants to live on a lake or river.  Negotiations continue….

This is Whisper's Negotiation Face

THERE IS PEACE

I'm not angry anymore.  Truly, this life of dirt and eggs and fruit and vegetable production is no longer sustainable.  It takes 2 people to build any kind of family life and if one person is unfulfilled, then the whole schmear is unsustainable.  A farm needs at least 2 and maybe 10 people who are invested up to their armpits in order to thrive.

Rose Hips drying

Making Grape Juice

Neck Pumpkins for Pumpkin Pie
Enough for an Army really! 

Roasting Tomatoes for Sauce

THANKFULNESS 

Each day, the rising and setting sun, is so new as if I see it for both the first and the last time.  Each day, I ready this place for the eventual real estate sign at the end of the driveway and our journey to a sustainable life.  Each day I count the crows, moos, and baas and mehs and store them in the corners and folds of my mind.  I hear the opening line of "Out of Africa".  That breathy exhilirating whisper, "I had a farm in Africa."  “I have a farm in Virginia” continues to fill my soul.

The Fab Five Teenage Chicks Check Out the New Windows

Replacing the Old Broken Windows With Old Unbroken Windows

Residing the Barn, Step 1: Tear down

My Sweet Husband

LUCKY

All in all, I am living "the dream", and fixing up this old place for sale is part of it.  Someone else will get to make a fresh start of it.  I imagine a young couple with ambition and strength building upon the foundation we laid just as we built on the foundation that the Hills, the originators of this farm laid.  I had hoped to grow old here, maybe die in the same bedroom that Mrs. Hill died in, roam the house as a ghost like Mr. and Mrs. Hill do, and bounce blessings off of the walls like their gentle apparitions continue to do.  But perhaps, that is someone else's destiny, and mine is to figure out how to become civilized again.

UNTIL
Until then,

I will grow

and harvest

and cry

and laugh

and dress funny

and smell like dirt and manure

and pound nails

and prepare for something a little more mainstream and maybe a little easier on my bones and heart. 

And I will love my husband for his honesty, and for the gift of these 13 years here and the gift of having my dearest friend as my partner these 26 years.  Above all, I will remain steadfastly thankful for every favor God showers on my expectant heart. 

Goodness!

Passion Flower (May Pop)

Palms up to Catch Every Good and Perfect Gift

Enough Chickens!

Enough Chickens!!

Could this be the March Lioness?

March and its lists have begun.  March came in like a lion, but today was a lamb day, soft tendrils unfurling in breezes just strong enough.  “Enough” is the root of this day.  Just enough sweat, and just enough dirt under these nails grown too long in the winter pause.

Pause interrupted

The starter cord snaps back over and over, and the tiller is declared “unresponsive.” "Till Garden" is item number 1 on the list.  Last Fall, in a fit of focus, 10 wheelbarrow loads made it to the garden filled with stems and various poops from the barn floor.  According to the USDA guidelines for Good Agricultural Practices, 120 days is the minimum recommended decay duration for uncomposted manure to be in place before being bacteriologically safe for planting and especially harvesting food crops. 

Food for thought?

The industrious chickens, who aren't even supposed to be in the garden, spread the piles into a perfect blanket over the sleeping earth.  The dog thinks she helped, but eating the assorted poops really doesn't count.  There's no better nourishment for the garden than a veggie-poop blanket.

Today, the plan was to till that blanket and awaken the dark and crumbly - stir it into life.  Alas, the back up plan; the sturdy wheel hoe that never fails to start - unless I fail to start.  Raking, hoeing, sun soaking me wet, this is freedom after a winter suffered indoors.

Runs on muscle

The list says to get ready for planting peas and lettuces.  Instinct drives me to mark off five 30 foot rows for peas, but the sense of this new life, the existence where I'm not selling produce, tells the overachiever that only one row is necessary for peas and a very shortened row is all that we need for lettuce.  The days of washing 20 pounds of lettuce at once and picking 30 lbs of peas in a day are gone.  This is a happy departure. 

Letting go of 12 years of expansion goals is work. Obsessions of growing more in less space, growing up and out and down like a skinny-pathed Eden on 1/4 acre hang leech-like onto the gray matter. There is such mental struggle in growing less - insidious arguments that arise between myself and the newer self.  It's a power struggle plumbing self control to new depths. 

Often times I think about what my efficient and focused husband would do next.   He wouldn't be using the wheel hoe.  He would have fixed the tiller.  He also wouldn’t be making lists, but I'm list driven and I live for the hash marks checking off the “to dos.”  So despite reason, the 2 rows are readied with muscle and not so much ingenuity.  This is what ages a farm hand, brute stubbornness.

Grubbing for grubs

Item number 2 is to fix the fences so that the chickens can't get into the garden anymore.  They are so focused on the quest for insects, they trample plants, and scratch out seeds and seedlings eating what they mine like crazed archaeologists.

Ignore the hype about chickens being good for the garden as if there are no repercussions. There are conditions attached to that concept.  

Chickens must be excluded from the garden unless certain conditions are met:

Condition 1:  All plants are secured by long tap roots or are surrounded by protective barriers.   Frugality, not logic, has driven me to spend hours collecting sticks and jamming them around precious plants.   There are prettier options out there, for a price, or you could use what is within scrounging distance, but also for a price.  “Time vs. money, chicken vs. egg?”  The two concepts that drive man mad.

stick-henge fortress

Condition 2:  You desire the annihilation of

the garden to a flattened monolayer of detritus, or you wish for every larvae to be excavated from your planting rows after you have cleared them of vegetation.  This is a decided bonus and the reason why chickens in moveable pens are deemed “chicken tractors.”

 Condition 3:  You desire exactly one chicken sized bite out of each and every tomato, pepper, eggplant…you get the picture.

Condition 4:  The damage being inflicted by insects exceeds the damage that a chicken can do.  Watch out Japanese Beetles and stink bugs!  I have an army of

chickens that are on to you!  They are focused and merciless killing machines.

Did someone say stink bug??

 

Condition 5:  You really love the companionship

of the chickens so much that any damage they inflict is worth the sweet company they provide.  They talk to you in the garden and honestly ask questions. I'm

not making this up.  A few years ago, a chicken friend let me know very loudly that I had dropped a large piece of root crop.  She used the sound that roosters use to let his hens know that he has found food.  It was a Dr. Doolittle moment, and still unsettles me a bit.

So the garden chores of today end with an unfinished list, an unwilling tiller, two open rows ready for planting, some very happy and completely free-range chickens, and a dirt laden, sweaty, and satisfied farm girl who has had enough in the best sense. 

Seeds the Day!!

Funny.  I checked the pile on the shelf in the kitchen.  The top shelf, just tall enough so that I can launch a seed catalog into it in a sort of neatly fashioned pile.  That tidy pile waits until a cold day in January, and now here it is February, where a cabin feverish farmer can pore over them and try not to let any saliva fall out of a half-grinning, gaping mouth.  The shelf should have a name like “the future” or “dreams” or “rainbows and unicorns.”  The seed catalogs promise all of that. 

On frozen days, I want to believe every claim and picture!  The authors of seed catalogs are not bound by any laws of science, and are certainly not pledged to any honest order.  They are graduates of Don Quixote University; degrees rendered only by proof of rose colored glasses.   I put mine on.  The scientist, the cynic, the budgeter all rest awhile as I circle, highlight, make lists and dog ear pages. 

Oh sigh….

Back to “funny”.  What is funny is that the stack of catalogs is really short. It's like the catalog companies knew of the layoff this Fall where my employer of 6 years closed doors, shutters banging shut like a scene from the Wizard of Oz.  “Nobody gets to see the wizard! Not nobody, not no how!”  How did the post office know that the garden plans are small?  Do I have to shop like it’s a small garden?   I do have some very short highlighters…

Funny again.  Funny that last year I forced myself to buy flower seeds.  Cosmos, they are my favorite, leggy and prolific, all light pinks and white then whammo! there’s a dark pink-petaled face blazing bright and deep like a treasure poking its glint up through a sandy beach.  I forced the purchase last year because I had stopped planting flowers that weren’t edible.  I had stopped measuring beauty with my eyes because tastebuds and pocket books drew me in.

“If you can’t eat ‘em, don’t plant ‘em” was the mantra until one lunch at a great little restaurant in town.  The restaurant’s owner came to talk about gardens with me, and he spoke of boring large holes into a privacy fence just to see sunflower faces peeking through.  Then he described planting corn in serpentine (drunken tractor driver) fashion simply for the beauty of it.  

Just like Dorothy remembering how wonderful “Home” was while in Oz, I surprisingly remembered that I had forgotten beauty.  The garden had always stunned me with the unexpected grace of spectacle, but I had forgotten to plan for beauty - as if the gardener had no hope of influencing it!  Had I lost hope?  Is only function without form a recipe for hopelessness?  

Oh My!!!

This year the garden won’t be shaped by the fads of chefs or driven by the efficiency of the overcommitted grower.  This year there will be beauty in spite of the farmer, of course, but there will also be beauty because of the gardener!  WoMan was created in God’s image, likeness, or nature.  God creates. God plays with color and light just for joy, and this year in an attempt to be like her creator "Daddy," so will this Farmgardener.  Function will take a step aside and form might have a chance to blossom into some much needed hope. 

So back to the pages in the “unicorns and rainbows” booklets.  I will take one of these and one of those and….never mind the drool.

Favorite Gardening Catalogs to Drool Over:

Pinetree Garden Seeds- www.Superseeds.com

          - A very diverse seed collection with sections laid out                       according to cultural regions of crops.  Seeds are packaged in           smaller quantities and are priced accordingly.  There is                     always something interesting to try!

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange-  www.SouthernExposure.com

          -They have great varieties geared for Southern growing                       conditions.  Great descriptions and varieties, and they are                 absolutely committed to preserving heritage varieties.

The Growers Exchange-  www.thegrowers-exchange.com

           -Live herbal plants.  Very nice specimens shipped in high                quality packaging,

Bountiful Gardens- www.bountifulgardens.org

          -Specialize in heirloom, untreated and open pollinated                      varieties.  All sorts of varieties you never thought existed.                One year I grew Egyptian greens from them.  Very yummy!

Territorial Seed Company- www.territorialseed.com

          -They have all of the familiar varieties and some interesting               things too.  Great seed quality.  Beautiful pictures (the                       source of much drooling).  Their shipping is a bit steep                     though.

Save Me!

Save Me!

Most of my posts have been about the farm, bringing you here, hoping that you will love the creatures and the dirt of it all.  There is work to be done too, and if you want to share in that as well, then join me in the chores and make your own patch of dirt work for you.

Tomatoes!

The holy grail of gardening pursuits seeking the biggest, the first, the best tasting,and (for me) getting the last tomato.  This time of year, the tomatoes here are finishing their race, ripening slow and smoky on the vine.  

I save seeds now not because it is an ideal time, but because this is the time of year that I am gleaning.  The crops have slowed down enough that I can start to sort and save. 

Here are some tips on saving seeds from your best tomatoes and some advice from the “do as I say and not as I do” category.

11.  Pick out your best really ripe fruits.  Ideally I would pick out 5 of the best tomatoes of the same variety even though I am showing you only 1 tomato from each variety that I am saving.  Best means no rot, no deformities, no weird blotches, but you want them to be soft and really ripe so that the seeds inside are mature.

22.   Slice the fruits in half and spoon out all of the gelatinous seedy oogy stuff into a glass container that you can see through (a mason jar or tall drinking glass will suit this purpose).  Label the container well.

33.  Fill the glass container to about an inch below the top with water.

44.  Leave to sit for about 3 days on your counter.  Why 3 days?  Tomato seeds need to ferment a bit to jump start their ability to germinate later.  If you put on your “I am nature” thinking cap, you will note that in the absence of a farmer/gardener, a ripe tomato would fall from the vine, rot (a.k.a. ferment) on/in the ground and come Spring the seeds would sprout when the timing was right.

55.  At this point, the juice will stink!  Really, worse than a teen boy’s gym clothes locked in his trunk for 2 weeks.  Stir up the juice even though it’s going to smell worse.

6

  6.  Wait an hour and notice that you will have a layer floating on top and another layer of seeds on the bottom.  The top layer goes into the compost.  The bottom layer is your prize.  The seeds that are floating are not going to germinate - trust me.

  7.  Pour off the top layer carefully into the compost bin and then pour the rest of the liquid into a fine meshed sieve straining out the good seed.  Wash the seed a few times under cool water and pick out any vegetable matter.

  

  8.  At this point, I prefer to dump the seeds out onto a labelled paper towel that I have quartered, and spread the seeds out so that they are not bunched together.  Dry overnight or longer to make sure the towel and the seeds are really dry.  Place the entire mass into a plastic Ziploc baggie.  

  9.  Store in a cool, moisture free, dark space.  I like to store seed in a plastic box with a lid, put a few of those little silica packets (this is a desiccant and it takes moisture out of the air) from boxes of new shoes and keep the whole works on a closet shelf until Spring when the timing is right.  Some people use Mason jars and put them in their basement fridge with the silica packets.  This is a great idea as long as the fridge isn’t prone to freezing and as long as you let the seeds warm to room temperature before opening the jar because water from humid air likes to condense on cool objects.  Moisture is really hard on seeds and will greatly reduce your germination rate. 

You are a good scout, already prepared for next Spring!  You have saved yourself anywhere from $2-$4 per variety just by doing this.  You have also selected fruits that like growing in your garden environment which will increase your chances of success next year.  It’s a win-win. 

What about cross pollination?  In my experience, seeds collected from my tomato plants almost always come true from seed.  In an article “The Tomato: Still Champion” printed in “Secrets of Master Gardeners” published in 1982 by Rodale Press (the publishers of Organic Gardening magazine) stated:  “Tomatoes rarely cross-pollinate, and produce little pollen and no nectar.  On many varieties the pistil, which traps pollen, never emerges from the sheath formed by the pollen-bearing anthers.  Since the pistil becomes receptive to pollen several days before the anthers mature, it could accept foreign pollen, but in field observations, this happens with less than 4 percent of all blossoms.”

There you have it.  You are now a seed saver, storing genetic material from your generation and maybe one day, you will pass on seeds to your grandchildren.  If our ancestors hadn’t saved seeds, we might never have seen the likes of Brandywine, or Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter (yes this is a real name).  

Garden, and glean on!

Falling

A stew sky, thick, substantial, coating the branches, wiggling the leaves like they are loose teeth.  

The leaves face plant flat, spread eagle, kissing the ground as if all this time they'd longed for gravity to succeed. 

Drippy, gooey, soup day, nudging genes of old to whisper, "hibernation is near."  

Modern genes mumbling back something about productivity and efficiency battling the wooly

buzzing lullaby in your head.  

Rain drizzles off gutters, and surely there are

sirens swimming there singing us to slack off, enter into the lazy drip dropping heart beat of our very own muddy soil.

Slow Food Season

This is fast food at home- Ruby Hoop's Tomato Soup

"Entry level food worker-Chipotle." 

That's the job alert today.  Yes, a resume and a cover letter are required.  

Since when did fast food applications require cover letters and resumes?  Should I let them in on how I was Chuck E cheese in High School?  Yep, really.  It was a promotion,  fifteen cents an hour more than the $3 minimum wage.  I was paid to sweat, and tiptoe gracefully, while wearing clown shoes, in between toddlers and the occasionally over-zealous teen.   Come to think of it, on the average, $3 an hour is actually more than I earn farming-and sweating.

This is where I start whining so close your ears if you don't want to hear it.  It is high pitched and pleading.  "I don't want to work fast food.  I like slow food!"

Concord grapes!  The smell is amazing-sorry no smellovision

I like wiping my brow with gritty hands, and I like the welts on my wrists from a mysterious sting that the beans keep hitting me with.   I like the aching knees and the laser focus required for picking small green fruits from a sea of green.  I like digging for tubers for hours as if on an archaeological dig.  I love the science behind it all and the sheer "dirt-"iness about it.  Satisfaction is the ultimate reward from all of the muscle mashing, patient perspiration and yes tiptoeing.

In only a week, I will be unemployed.  The wholesale company that sold my crops is folding up like so many paper airplanes in a lecture hall full of teens.  Whoosh-shutting their doors smack dab in the throes of my largest crop.  Seriously, I have 400 lbs of Jerusalem artichokes just sitting in the ground.  That's a lot of money rotting.

Only 4 lbs Jerusalem Artichokes

"Seasons over!" I announce loudly across the garden.  As if the beans and tomatoes will stop - cease cell division, fruit falling, heaped and composting in place.  As if the ripe red raspberries will just wither into fruit leather.  As if the chickens and ducks will stare red faced holding the eggs in like a toddler determined not to "go".  The goats must have had premonitions, because they never did produce anything aside from entertainment which is needed now.

For 11 years produce has held center stage.  First, friends asked to purchase it, then we had a tent at the local Farmers market, and then we formed a CSA (community supported agriculture is where individuals buy shares in a farm's produce).  Finally, for the last 6 years all of this farm's produce has been sold to a wholesaler who provided food to restaurants.  For 11 years this brain has wrapped itself around the timing of crops, the productivity of the soil, the health of the animals, and the unique and fashionable morsel that the palates of the public and chefs will pine for.  Almost like chewing the same cud for 11 years isn't it?

Some things try to wrap themselves around my brain!

I have a BS degree in Medical Technology, and would love to work part time, but ultimately, I  might not be marketable here in this adorably po-dunk town just far enough from civilization.  There are plenty of jobs for bank tellers, nannies, Certified Nursing Assistants (a job I once did to put myself through college), and fast food workers.  I am not saying that I am above these jobs, please don't get me wrong.  I just want to dig deeply into new soil and plant a new seed while still tending the living organism of our home.   I want to be inspired by a new crop of ideas.  I want to buy into some local endeavor.  For at least 11 years, growing organic food, caring for the earth, feeding my family healthy and interesting food, and selling to the community has been the only view in this wonderland's looking glass.  

Wonderland?

The thought of not farming at least for our own nourishment is too harsh to entertain.  Yet, the thought of finding new buyers and starting over has an echo of "been there, done that."  Could this be Limbo?

Standing in our hallway, the transition zone of a home, I can't seem to decide whether to pick a little more produce for today's delivery, call it quits and shower, write a blog, or go hog wild and explore a career as an entry level food worker.  I'm a little stuck.  Must be quicksand below these feet. 

So.... I'm going to move one foot in front of the other.  This is me looking up phone numbers of local chefs.  This is me cold calling and trying not to sound desperate.  This is me peddling this year's final crop. 

Seasons change.  Progress is forward.  Have shovel, will dig!  Here's to new soil and a crop of fresh ideas.