Change Everywhere

It’s that time of year again, when everything changes fast - the light, the leaves, the weather. We are enjoying fall colors (as much as we can in California) and the increase of ‘cozy’ with the early darker evenings. I’m baking bread again, weekly, and there are lots of hearty soups on the menu. Since it’s just me and Tom around the house these days, we keep it pretty simple when it comes to supper.

I’ve had a few folks ask me about the garden. I decided to plant the entire North section in cover crops, to help improve the soil. I’ve seeded both rye and crimson clover, and there are now other things coming up as well - cilantro, sunflowers, and also some tithonia. These are all seeds I put in over the summer and they never germinated. I just couldn’t keep enough water in the ground to support them. Now that we have cooler weather (and some rain - more on that in a minute), they are all popping up. It’ll be interesting to see what survives the winter frosts.

On the South side of the garden, I amended the soil, then planted: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, snap and shelling peas, chard, kale, several kinds of lettuce, leeks, garlic, and spinach. Everything has germinated well (or was transplanted from our greenhouse plugs) and I expect slow growth from now until early Spring. Hopefully we’ll have some winter greens and lettuces, at least.

I’ve recently cleared out some areas in the ornamental beds that just weren’t working well, and have bought some new native plants to fill them. I’m especially excited to try our native California clematis - pipestem clematis - Clematis lasiantha - on our front fence by the driveway. We saw this lovely plant all over Mt. Diablo during our summer hikes, and it always looked amazing in the arid heat.

You may have heard a little something about the ‘bomb cyclone’ and/or atmospheric river we experienced here last weekend. In one 24 hour period, our weather station’s rain gauge recorded 5-1/2” of rain. For us, that is unprecedented. My folks in Orinda had 9-1/2” over that same 24-hour period. Crazy! In front of our house, there is a drain that takes all the runoff from about a quarter mile of road (our neighborhood was designed and built in the 1940s, clearly inadequate infrastructure for today). We (and our neighbors) are careful about keeping it clear of leaves and debris when it is raining, because we’ve had flooding in the neighborhood when the drain is clogged. Tom and I both took very wet and windy walks on the 24th, and enjoyed seeing all the little creeks near our house fill up and run at top capacity. In those conditions, it is easy to imagine the watershed the way it used to be before people lived here, with a broad river flowing down from the Mt. Diablo foothills.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, all this rain put barely a dent in our drought conditions. We need ten more storms just like this one (and frankly, that is highly unlikely to happen) to take us out of danger. However, these rains quenched all the fires in the northern half of the state, so that’s really great news.

As you know, I’ll be graduating in December with my BA in Environmental Studies, an accomplishment 30 years in the making. This photograph was taken from Merritt College, in Oakland. I’m proud to say that I have been hired as an adjunct professor in the Natural History and Sustainability department at Merritt, and I start teaching Urban Argroecology courses in January. Part of my position is a separate requirement to mentor students, particularly those that have been historically underserved by the academic community. I am super excited to get started, and also terrified - which I take as a positive sign that this is a correct new trajectory for me. I will be sad to leave my current internship with Friends of Sausal Creek. I have learned so much in my time with the organization, and forged relationships that I hope will last a lifetime. I still have two months with them, though! Between that, my school load, and gearing up for the new gig, I barely have time to miss my kids. Who, by the way, are both rocking it at their respective colleges. We sure enjoy hearing about their adventures in our weekly phone calls, and we look forward to having them back for the holidays.

How are your winter gardens coming along? I’d love to hear about your urban farming adventures.

We Are Alone

There’s a scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where Harry, Ron, and Hermione suddenly disapparate (i.e. teleport) from London to a safe house (12 Grimmald Place) in order to escape the Death Eaters sent to kill them. Upon entering the residence, a ghostly Mad-Eye Moody (who is dead) rushes toward them, a sort of security measure he put in place before his death to protect the house. This is an unwelcome and scary surprise, so Hermione performs a spell (Revelio) to determine if there are any other frightening surprises (or persons) in the house. Nothing appears. The three teenagers stand in the entrance hall, which seems dark and menacing rather than the safe place it’s meant to be; the long dusty hall (and the unknown future) stretches in front of them. Hermione says, “We’re alone.” No one is there to help them. They are on their own, in an uncertain world.

That scene has been playing over and over in my mind these last few weeks, as Tom and I first traveled to Georgia to install our youngest, Rin, in their freshman year at Savannah College of Art and Design, and then again upon coming home, where we watched our eldest, Adam, pack up the car and drive off to begin his sophomore year at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.

Since then, Tom and I have had trouble concentrating on work and school - well, on life, basically. Sure, we are a bit sad (we miss them both quite a lot), but we are also happy, as we have become (as my brother-in-law Andy assures me) “Successful Adult Launch Facilitators.” We’re worried, and we’re proud, and we’re hopeful. We are also curious to discover who we are as a couple, after twenty years of sharing our home with children. In short, we are feeling everything all at once.

Being of a certain age, lots of our friends are going through the same changes, and it’s been interesting to hear the various reactions. Some have reported feeling utterly liberated and free; others write of evenings spent crying on their child’s empty bed. We are somewhere in the middle - not delighted, but not bereft. We are, quite simply, alone. It will take some time for us to adjust to these new circumstances.

Satisfaction

Sometimes I think all of this homesteading/sustainable stuff is just a little too precious for words. I mean, I just read a review for a restaurant that recently opened in San Francisco that is extremely farm-to-table, and some of it is just so over the top. I mean, using a perennial wheatgrass that is specifically known for its carbon-capturing capabilities for the bread? And I thought grinding my own wheat was crunchy.

And I'm too old to be a hipster. None of the stuff I'm doing is in the name of 'cool.'

But there are times, even whole days, when I derive such an immense sense of satisfaction from doing things this way, I just kind of want to burst with the 'rightness' of it. Today has been one such day. 

Tom's brother is here for the day, and it's so fun. He helped Tom put up the hop vine trellis (which involved ladders! yikes, you never know what you'll be asked to do around here) and now they are brewing beer. I knew we'd want to have good meals for him, something from the garden and something from the larder.

Choosing something for dinner was easy, with the new smoker - put a piece of meat on for the day, make some baked beans, and later, biscuits, and we're done. But I wasn't sure about lunch...

Today was bread-baking day, so I already had fresh bread. I had some ricotta left over from the other day - I had made fresh ricotta to go on homemade pizza dough. I also had a couple of tablespoons of pesto left over, which I froze last summer and have been taking out of the freezer when needed (like for pizza). I went out to the old herb garden and cut some chives, marjoram, and oregano. I opened up the last jar of pickled garlic from last summer. I put the ricotta, some olive oil, the pesto, the herbs, and a couple of cloves of garlic in the food processor and blended it all up with some salt and pepper. This gave us an herby cheese spread for the bread. 

I sent Tom to the store for prosciutto, and went out in to the garden for carrots, turnips, broccoli, beets, peas, and asparagus. I made a vegetable plate with these items from the garden.

I got out the last jar of pickles, a jar of dilly beans, and the olives and pickled jalepenos from the fridge. All together, these items made such a nice lunch, with a mandarin orange to top it off. And it was just so darn satisfying to have all these items on hand to make a lovely, homemade lunch. 

It's been a while since lunch, so soon we'll have an afternoon snack with our coffee - angel food cake and blueberry compote. I had a ton of egg whites left over from projects earlier in the week, so angel food was a great way to use them up. How fabulous to have our own delicious, nutritious, home-grown eggs to use in all these wonderful dishes. How amazing to have all these vegetables in the garden, just ready to eat. How terrific that I thought to put up all these items last summer, so they'd be on the shelf when I needed them. How lovely to have fruit from our own fruit trees, vines, and bushes. It's all just so darn satisfying, I can't think of any other word for it. It has nothing to do with the environment (although it helps there, too) or the water shortage (though it helps there, too), or make us look cooler, but it sure does feel (and taste) pretty good. 

Thoughts on 2015

It's natural to want to look back over the year as it starts getting close to January first. But, as I also have a birthday early in January, it's doubly so for me. As I was moving mulch this morning (the pile is getting smaller every day!), I thought a lot about 2015 and how it evolved, in every area; personally, professionally, and in the garden.

This was a big year for our yard. Very early in January, we were told we would be part of the Institute of Urban Homesteading's Urban Farm Tour. This lit a much-needed fire under our collective asses to get a lot of work done, fast. Our first project of 2015 was the chicken coop, which was also my birthday present. Soon after that was finished, we got our chickens. Not long after that, we got our replacement colony of honeybees. Then, we built the North Garden.  Tom replaced our old sprinkler system with a drip system. I successfully planted and maintained two year-round pollinator gardens which attracted more critters than we've ever had before. We planted three new fruit trees and countless fruit shrubs and vines. We managed to have a decent summer harvest despite the severe four-year California drought. We bought more rain barrels and built more compost bins. And we successfully raised the fence, to keep out the hungry deer! We learned to pickle and can food, we made bread and sausage and cheese, we fermented beer and wine and cider, and continued to eat well every day, mostly out of the garden. I'd call our year in the yard successful, for sure.

Professionally, this is the year I began to feel more confident in my abilities as a teacher to cognitively-affected children. It's taken four years to get to this place, and it feels good to know that I can help kids feel safe and loved, and maybe even help them to get to a place where they are able to learn. But it's also the year when I realized that this is a younger man's game. There's a reason everyone I work with is half my age. In a mainstreamed situation, with a child who is cognitively more higher-functioning, it's no problem physically. But at this particular school, we are extremely physical every day with kids who are alternately running away, needing to be tightly held or picked up, getting up and down off the floor numerous times a minute, quickly - I'm just not that good at that aspect of the job. I'm old, slow, and chubby, no matter how you slice it. My hands have stopped working right, due to severe arthritis. My feet are similarly destroyed. What this tells me is, no matter how much I love the kids and my co-workers, that I'll be looking for something else come June. I have an idea for a new business, but it's going to take more thinking and planning before I can tell you about it. Be assured, I'll write about it here as it comes to fruition. I'd like to work outside, and regular exercise is a benefit. I certainly don't want a desk job!

Personally, I feel quite fulfilled by the events and happenings of the past year. I fervently wish life was easier for Tom (the difficulties at my job may be physical, but the difficulties at his are interpersonal and political, which is far harder), with his job and his commute. Money continues to be tight which makes things stressful. Living as we do in a very affluent area, the cost of living continues to be quite steep and goes up all the time. We often dream of selling our place and buying a large piece of property elsewhere, for much less. With college expenses coming up in the near future for our kids, this will remain a dream for a while.

Speaking of the kids, what an interesting year it has been for them. I started out 2015 being extremely concerned about Kate's social life, but I end the year feeling very hopeful for her, as she has matured quite a bit and has even rekindled an old friendship. She continues to fascinate with the way she thinks and writes. We're looking in to a performing arts school for her for grades 8-12, which we hope will surround her with like-minded people, but she is an introvert and will always need a lot of alone time.  Adam has grown in both size and personality and is truly a young man now. He got a shaving kit for Christmas and was just invited to a party by a girl, so things are changing for him. He's had great moments of academic anxiety this year that manifested in physical discomfort, which was scary, but I think we've got a plan for high school that will help keep him engaged and interested and challenged. His mind is far sharper than mine has ever been, but he's like me in that he likes to learn fast. Public school is often not exactly fast.

So, on to 2016, with hope and vigor! Here's a few things I'd like to accomplish in the next few months, but it is by no means a complete list:

* build a raised bed area in the part of the yard we just sheet-mulched, but build it in a different sort
   of pattern, and plant herbs, citrus, and other perennial edibles.

* make an insect hotel.

* grow new-to-us plants, like horseradish and rhubarb.

* continue to think about ways to increase water storage in the garden, as El Nino moves through.

* keep my bees alive, and harvest some honey!

* grow a new business which combines my love of children and the outdoors.

This list will continue to change and evolve as the year proceeds.

I'd love to hear more about how 2015 was for you, and what you are planning for 2016. Please share!

Feelin' Like a Real Farmer

This morning I had to put on my woolens,

grab my adze,

go to the troughs,

and break through the layer of ice so the livestock could have fresh water.

Well, not really.

I did however have to throw on a sweater, bite my lip, and break the ice in the chicken waterer with my bare fingers.

Damned if I didn't feel like a real farmer.