Weekend Farmer

"Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done."

from The Farmer, by W.D. Ehrhart

As a weekend farmer, I get frustrated. I leave for work in the morning and see the weeds coming up in the mulch, and there's no time to stop and pull them. On my way to pick up the kids, I see a plant drooping, and I hurriedly bring over the hose and give it a quick spray, leaving the hose maddeningly tangled over the paths.  I see Tom quickly repairing a nail that's come loose after taking out the garbage in his work clothes at 7 a.m., rushing to get to the train on time. On my way to a meeting I notice a perfect strawberry ready to be picked - oh, there's another - can't get to that now. I arrive home in the dark and notice the package of seeds on the front porch; they'll have to go into the seed-box in the fridge, for now.

"I'll get it done this weekend." I must say it ten times a day. The list runs long by Wednesday, things begging to be accomplished. Between trips to school, work, and activities, between loads of laundry and dishes, between meals cooked and dogs walked, precious little gets done on the farm during the weekdays. Oh sure, a little extra corn for the chickens, a pea pod or a hundred picked for dinner, a quick glance at the bees to make sure pollen's coming in - that's about all there's time for. Even as I write this, I'm staring at the minutes of a community meeting that need typing up. I also just heard the washing machine beep. Or maybe that was my head popping off?

Some of this is just the season - spring is naturally a busy time in the garden. Some of it is pressure we've put on ourselves, trying to get the rest of the infrastructure done ASAP (and is that really necessary?). Some of it is the rush of the last term at school - extra projects and performances and testing. A lot of this will calm down once the middle of June hits, when everything that's going to be planted is planted, school is out for the summer, and all the building we're doing is finished. So I look forward to that time, when I know I'll be able to take a breath.

And I'm lucky, because after all, on a real farm, there would never be a breath, except maybe in the winter when the snow is deep. That's why this is a hobby farm. We get a lot of our sustenance from it, yes, but it's meant to be a respite for us rather than a stress. True joy is found with a shovel in our hands, or with aching muscles at the end of a good day's work, we've discovered. Satisfaction comes when we've provided a delicious and nutritious meal. The rewards are so many, as one astute friend recently reminded me (while asking me at the same time, "when do you SLEEP?").

So we plug on, weekdays for the world, weekends for the garden.

"Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who I am
But you know life is for learning

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden"

from Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell

Raising the Fence

We worked all weekend on raising the fence. Tom did all the cutting and measuring of wood, I helped with the wire, and chopped down several old, woody bushes that were in the way. What we have now is, hopefully, a subtle but effective deer deterrent.

You can barely see the three-tiered wire going across these posts, which is just how I like it. Neighbors can see in, we can see out, and yet no one wants to jump it. The fence goes around our entire property, except for the driveway and garage, so this was a major undertaking. Tom bought six foot lengths of 4x4 posts and cut them into two foot sections. Then he bolted them on (using deck screws) to the existing posts using metal plates on two sides. The wire is heavy gauge and is threaded through staples pounded into the wood.

We have three gates, one of them double-sized. So Tom's next project is to make, essentially, four gates, each six feet tall. He'll make them similar to the chicken coop door, since we have some supplies leftover from that. They'll each be latched by some sort of string system that can be accessed by either side.

I cleared out a truck-sized load of old westringia, ceonothus, sunrose and buckeye. It was difficult, scratchy, and painful,  and I would have liked a nice huge bonfire afterward to celebrate, but that's not allowed here. So we borrowed Dad's truck and took it to the compost facility at our local waste center.

This project took up most of the weekend, but I managed to make some new bars for the beehive; paint a brick for the new blackberry vine I scored for free on Nextdoor; open the hive (all looked well); reseed some corn, beans, watermelon; add dirt to the potatoes; clean the coop and the house; do laundry; and weed and mulch and get everything looking nice - plus a half day of training for Girl Scout camp. We did cross everything off the list except I didn't get to the herb purees. That will be a job for the week to come!

I've ordered three new bare-root fruit trees to take the place of some of the bushes I took out. I chose two different sweet cherries and a Santa Rosa plum variety hybridized by Luther Burbank. Once I plant those, I'll spread a ton of flower seed around them, and hopefully have a pollinator garden in the North Garden as well as the South. 

Everything in the veg garden has sprouted and looks great. I have yet to harvest kale and plant basil in its place, and I have yet to harvest the shallots and plant cantaloupe in its place, but everything else is in.  It's all wonderful, but it's the flowers that are really knocking me out these days, so I'll leave you with pictures of those, plus a funky mushroom (I think it's a stinkhorn).

Clarkia, Mountain Garland

Blue Flax

Forget-me-not

Pollinator section of the South Garden

Redbud seedpods

Tidy-tip and Phacelia

Stinkhorn?

 Bonus picture -

Gopher snake Tom saw on a hike with Joe

May Day

Tra la, it's May, the lusty month of May
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray
Tra la, it's here, that shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear

It's May, it's May, that gorgeous holiday
When every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad
It's mad, it's gay, a libelous display
Those dreary vows that everyone takes, everyone breaks
Everyone makes divine mistakes, the lusty month of May

-Lerner and Loewe, Camelot

May 1st, Sugarloaf Open Space, Walnut Creek, CA

I don't know if I feel quite like THAT during May (though maybe I'd like to!), but this month does seem fresh and bursting with life and full of possibilities. (If May DOES make you feel like that, perhaps this event is for you! World Naked Gardening Day.) The wilting heat of summer is yet to come, there is still green in the hills, and wildlife abounds.

Speaking of abounding wildlife, we are having serious continuing issues with the deer. So, near the top of our list this weekend is to start our fence-raising project. The list, you say? What list is that? Why, it's the list that I start on Monday and add to all week long, until by the time Friday night comes around, I'm confident it won't all get done over the weekend. Somehow it always does. See, we really are weekend hobby farmers - almost nothing happens in the yard over the working week. Spot watering, yes, sporadic weeding, yes, an occasional digging in of a plant, yes. But nothing substantial, that is all saved for the weekend. We're just too busy with work, school, and kid activities. And this weekend, I'm going to be gone for a day, and that's stressful, because we have so much to accomplish in such a short time.

Here's this week's list of projects for the weekend.

Notice the lack of a nap on this list. :)

Last night, I cut off the largest artichoke and we all shared it! The smell coming off it right after I cut it off was heavenly, and it tasted pretty good, despite my mistakes during cooking. (I thought that since it was fresh, it would cook faster. No.)

All the seedlings are coming up - corn, beans, squash, collards, romaine, collards - it's the miracle of gardening. I never get tired of this wonderful surprise, that life begins from a tiny seed, so small you think it will never sprout.

It's hot, though - 91 today. The hot weather brings other surprises. At work each day, we take a walk with the kids. Many of them like to walk off to the side of the path, through the weeds. Earlier this week, the child I was walking with bent down in the weeds to pick up a stick and a movement caught my eye - a four foot long snake slithered away from us and stopped about a foot away. Not shy at all, and definitely not a rattlesnake, I stopped to take a picture, which was difficult because I was wrangling kids. Not the best shot.

Just his head and neck

I thought it was probably a gopher snake, and Gary at California Herps agreed with me when I consulted him. This was an exciting find for me, but I think it freaked out the other teachers. It also makes us realize that we need to be more careful with the kids walking in the weeds!

May also brings flowers on the buckeye trees, spotted all along paths and woods.

The blooms are actually poisonous to honeybees, and we have one in our yard that I planted years ago. It's only gotten about three feet tall, and the deer eat the leaves constantly, so I won't mind removing it. (That's on the list!) But they sure are gorgeous in the wild.

Farm Tour tickets are selling, and we hope very much that you can come be a part of it.

Catch you on the flip side of the weekend, and when I do, we'll see if everything on the list got done.

Summer in April

We always have a little heat wave in April, getting us ready for the real heat yet to come. My sweat glands (and attitude) have not adjusted, so by golly, when it hit 90 here yesterday, the air conditioning went on. And it's supposed to be hotter by the end of this week. Around this time, I start wondering; when is the neighborhood pool opening?

Since it feels like summer, some summer projects are in order. First up, sweet potato slips. I checked my records from last year, and it looks like I started this in late April, and they were ready to put in the ground by late May. It's easy to do; just pick out some organic SP's at your local market (they must be organic, as conventional SP's are sprayed to stop them from sprouting), cut them in half, and set them cut side down in a shallow dish of water, in a sunny spot. Add water as needed throughout the weeks. When they sprout on top and on bottom, it's time to plant!

I had very good luck with my SP's last year until the deer ate them. Sigh. Well, this weekend we start with the 'raising the fence' project, so that should take care of the problem. More on that later.

I have a huge amount of cilantro in the garden, and even after advertising it to neighbors, co-workers, friends, random strangers on the street - there's still a lot of it. And the herb spiral is fit to bursting with sage, thyme, marjoram, oregano, sorrel, and mint. So I went searching for a way to preserve fresh herbs. I ended up trying something like a pesto, by which I mean I blended a lot of herbs with a little bit of oil, then put the puree in ice cube trays to freeze, then decanted them into a ziploc to keep in the freezer.

And then today, on the Living Homegrown website, I saw this article about making herb concentrate. It's basically the same idea, except stored in jars. I'm so glad to know that I can preserve this fresh summer flavor for all year! (These cubes, or jars, will last a year in the freezer.)

When it's this hot, we get really sweaty running after kids all day at work, and we all desperately want an iced coffee as a pick-me-up. I finally got around to making cold brew to take to my co-workers, and it was a huge hit. Much richer, much more flavorful, no bitterness, and with simple syrup and cream it was a real treat. (It's also much stronger, so I might be making it with extra water next time. And we're all used to strong coffee, here - I was surprised how strong this was - so if you prefer a lighter coffee, adjust your ratios.)

So here's how you do it: Put 10 cups of cold water in a pitcher, along with 12 oz ground French Roast (next time I am going to use a ratio of one cup of water to one ounce of coffee and see if that makes it a little less strong). Stir and let sit overnight. In the morning, drain through cheesecloth and store in a pitcher (or in a Mason jar, as I did). That's it! Make sure to put those coffee grounds in your compost!

It is SO GOOD. This is going to be a weekend staple for me at home, for sure. I just might need to make it decaf, because I'll be drinking it all day long. Oh - and the simple syrup really makes it good - just heat up a cup of sugar to a cup of water on low heat until the sugar dissolves - that's simple syrup. It mixes more easily into the cold coffee. And use plenty of ice! Enjoy!

Oh, fishy, fishy, fish... (with apologies to Monty Python)

Non-comformist!

I ate the fish's typical friends for breakfast, yesterday.

Harvested the last of the beets and ate 'em for dinner last night. Delicious! We didn't get enough beets this year and I'll have to plan accordingly next year.

The greens make a nice addition to my morning scramble. Besides the last of the kale (which just keeps pumping out produce), we won't have fresh greens again until the collards, romaine, and Bibb come up.

Planting takes time - adding compost, getting the drip lines right, making furrows and putting in seed, or digging in starts, adding cages or trellises - but harvesting takes more time, because the food needs to be processed. Cleaning beets, for instance requires four containers, one for edible leaves, one for chicken leaves (whatever looks marginal), one for the actual vegetable, one for compost. I enjoy processing the harvest if I can do it outside.

Remember those compost bins we built out of pallets? Well, one's already nearly full.

That's figwort growing out of the bin at the top center

I'm trying to add layers of brown and green. For the brown, it's all chicken straw, all the time - once a week I add a big amount of that. Of course the straw is soiled with their excrement, which is very good. For greens I add the leavings from our harvests, and my next-door neighbor brings over his grass clippings when he mows (isn't that nice of him?). Though he said yesterday that it was probably the last batch, as they won't be watering their grass this summer due to the drought. And now that most of my harvesting is done (shallots yet to go - next week, and kale when it stops producing or when I can't stand not to plant basil any longer!), I'll have to trim a lot of plants to keep up with the green stuff for the compost balance. Or not. One thing I've learned over the years, compost always happens, irregardless - it just takes more time.

I've been making lists of vegetables that do well here in winter, and ones that do well in summer, as well as those that do well on the edges of the seasons. I'm also making lists of winter veg I want to try, like rhubarb and brussels sprouts. I'd also like to try growing wheat or some other grain, for both our needs and the chickens needs. If any of you have experience growing grains, I'd like some advice.

Flowers continue to open up, which makes me and the bees happy.

Mallow, just on the verge

Not just here, but in the open space too. 

Native penstemon

Beautiful now, but it's fleeting.