This means WAR.

Yesterday, I noticed that one of the wires had come off our new deer fence - in the corner - behind a compost bin - not a convenient place for deer to leap, so I didn't put it at the top of my priorities. We were out until late last night at a band concert and I completely forgot about it.

This morning I went out into the garden and found fresh scat at the scene of a horrible crime: the corn has all been snipped, neatly, as if it had been given a haircut. It was a similar story at the bean patch and in the butternut squash patch.

the break-in

DNA evidence

corn

butternut squash

pole beans

This is the last straw.

How deer-proof do we have to make this place, anyway???

Our gates are still not done, so we've taken to leaning boards up against each one - I'm about ready to sharpen them into pikes. The poor UPS people and the meter readers are wondering why we've banned them from our yard.

deters delivery guys, but not deer

I'm discouraged, maybe even a little depressed. But I'm not beaten!!!!! Priority one this weekend: gates and reinforcement. Meanwhile, I might have to cowboy camp in the garden.

Today has been very nice; I was unexpectedly released from work, as the kids went on a field trip and they had enough parents attending! The first thing I did was take a nice long walk with Joe, in the lower woodland elevations of Las Trampas Regional Wilderness. I almost never get to ramble with the dog anymore, and it was really lovely - extraordinarily peaceful and idyllic.

wild plums

wild blackberries

a trickle of water in the creek

wild grapevines growing up a tree

native honeysuckle, about to bloom

native mallow

shelf fungus

Then I came home and started on my list of chores. Always first up, weeds. The bermuda grass and bindweed are coming up all over the place in the North Garden. "Tenacious" is an understatement.

Evil #1: Bermuda Grass

Evil #2: Bindweed

As I was weeding and giving supplemental water (and moaning to myself about deer), I noticed that the huckleberry was full of ripe fruit! So I stopped for a snack. These berries are delicious - smaller than blueberries, but quite similar. 

The tomatoes are already reaching jungle proportions. A combination of good starts and good soil, I guess. We haven't had very hot weather, so I can't imagine what they'll do once it gets truly warm.

The peaches are ripening, and getting large. Soon it will be time for frozen peach smoothies again!

We got a new rain barrel, so I set it up. Tom will have to get the downspout adjusted over to the screened opening.

Dad brought over five bags of fresh sawdust and I spread the contents of three of them in the coop. The chickens have gotten noisy lately. They aren't annoying like a barking dog, and they aren't terribly loud, but there is a constant clucking and hooting which I didn't expect. Several of them have gotten their combs and wattles, and I'm expecting to see some egg laying starting next month. They love to dig down through fresh sawdust and take baths in it. They have gotten braver about coming close to me, and I often feel them peck the rivets on my jeans or the ends of my shoelaces, while I'm kneeling and working in their coop. And they come close when they see me heading over with fresh kale from the garden. But when I clean the coop or change the water, you'd think I was a terrorist. They just can't seem to calm down at those times, or maybe they just forget that I'm the person who gave them greens earlier in the morning. I understand now why people think chickens are dumb. It's because they ARE. However, they are cute and funny, and a nice addition to the garden (despite all the hooting and quarreling!).

Molly, checking me out. She's the bravest one.

Minerva and Hermione, with Luna looking on.

Next on the list, weeding the flower beds. Things are looking quite nice, I must say, and I hope the flowers stay abundant for the Urban Farm Tour (June 6!). 

Gilia tricolor, or Bird's Eye Gilia

Guara

Bush Anemone

Flowering pomegranate

California poppies with Elegant Brodiaea

penstemon

The potatoes are growing beautifully, as are the carrots and peas. It appears that the collards and lettuces have also had a recent trimming by those four-footed devils. The shallots are starting to look drier and may be close to harvest. The strawberry wall is recovering from a recent deer attack, and the blueberries are producing a few each day.

Yukon Gold

Our potato crop was eaten by deer last year, so it would be very depressing to have that happen again. I don't mean they ate the actual potatoes; as far as I know, deer don't dig (though I wouldn't put it past them). They just completely decimated the leaves. Twice. Are you noticing a recurring theme? 

Next chore: pulling out the kale, adding a few wheelbarrows of dirt to the bed, and planting basil seeds. Red Russian Kale is a star in my garden, producing well for six months out of the year. The chickens love it, we love it, it's a nutritional powerhouse - an all-around great plant. But I'm dying for fresh basil, and I have to get it in the ground now if I want a crop. And the kale was starting to flower and get quite leggy, despite my daily pickings. So with a sad heart I fed most of the kale to the chickens (and gave some to my neighbor for her chickens too!) and composted the rest. 

Unbeknownst to me until I began this project, the lower reaches of the kale was full of aphids, which can certainly happen once the plant is stressed. What an ABSOLUTE pleasure to feed the aphid-ridden bits of kale to the chickens, to whom Christmas had come early! Chickens dearly love bugs, of all kinds.

I hope I didn't feed any on-the-prowl ladybugs to the chickens while I was at it

The worst part about aphids is that after you get rid of them, you feel all crawly.

I noticed a bunch of bees hovering around the hive today. My best guess about this is that they are the first flights of the new bees. I'm anxious to take a look in the hive this weekend and see how much the colony has grown.

I'm finishing up the day with a fancy dinner, because when you have the time to cook something special, you have to take advantage! I'm roasting a beef tenderloin, which is a splurge - but we will eat leftovers from it for days. I've made a compound butter to go with it. This sounds complicated, but it's not; just soften a stick of butter, then whip it with garlic and herbs. I used thyme and sage from the herb garden, as well as our newly hung garlic, which is really fun to use - it's not dry, like grocery store garlic. It's quite moist and easy to peel, and has a wonderful flavor. With the tenderloin, I'm going to roast some beets, and make some parmesan polenta. It'll be a great end to a great, full-of-accomplisments day!

Sometimes nothing gets done

This weekend was a bit of a wash, garden-wise, though it was rich in personal gain, as we watched our daughter perform (several times!) in a production of Mulan. Helping out with the performances and dealing with the logistics of getting our son home from his band competition in LA took up all of Saturday. Tom is sick with a nasty cold, and I have a foot injury, so there wasn't much done in the yard.

Tom did manage to get gates built for the 'new' fence, but we are having trouble finding the perfect hardware with which to hang them. Meanwhile we are chasing deer out of our garden every night. We park our cars in front of the gates, and prop long pieces of wood against them to deter them, but sometimes we forget and then I go out in the morning and find the beans eaten. Argh. I cannot describe how demoralizing this is. We are having much more deer activity than we did last year at this time, and I think it must be an effect of the drought. Likely there's nothing to eat in the hills. And I'm sorry for the poor deer, but honestly. There's plenty of grass to eat around the neighborhood, they can eat that!

On top of that the dog has been digging again in the pepper bed and I don't know how to get him to stop. Today I fashioned a screen out of hardware cloth and laid it in the bed, we'll see if that stops him. Between the deer and the dog, I have to say I've been a bit depressed when I walk out in to the yard. I guess also I am maybe feeling the results of several months of non-stop work in the garden every weekend. I think we just might be the tiniest bit burned out.

There's one thing that made me very happy this weekend, and that's my new canning shelf, made by Dad. I hung the garlic braids I made from our harvest, and there's a jar of honey on the shelves from last year's hive, as well as a dry garden my mom gave me and a painting I made a few years ago. I'm excited to fill these shelves with pickles and preserves.

Gorgeous, right?

I'm hoping to have an attitude adjustment and have lots of progress to show you later this week.

Hive news

Last Sunday when we opened the hive, we saw the queen! She is laying in a wonderful pattern, and we saw bees hatching out of their cells, so all is well. I've also started smelling the hive - it's a hard smell to describe, but the hive starts to emit a scent that is entirely unique, once there are babies, pollen, and nectar. It's very rich, not entirely pleasant, but not unpleasant, either. It's quite strong. I suppose it is also a mix of wood, wax, and propolis. Whatever the reason, the rich smell on the air, and seeing the queen and babies, makes me feel more secure around this group of bees.

I'm different around this colony, though, than my first. I am keeping my distance, emotionally. I suppose that's natural after losing a colony. You might wonder how one becomes emotionally attached to a bee colony. I can't explain it, but one begins to feel very protective over one's bees. I'm already going back and forth about whether to use miticides, come October (which was recommended to me very highly from the breeder).

My brother-in-law sent me a wonderful article from National Geographic. Here's a couple of sentences that stood out to me. The author, Charles Mann, is speaking with a beekeeper.

"Before varroa, he tells me, beekeeping was mostly a matter of bee-having -'they needed minimal attention, most of the time.' Since the mite arrived (in 1987), 'you really have to keep them.' Beekeeping, he says, should actually be called 'mite management.' Most farmers facing insect issues turn to chemicals... there are a dozen or more effective miticides. The chemicals are widely used, but not a single bee researcher, commercial beekeeper, or bee hobbyist I spoke to was happy about putting toxins into hives. In addition, many varroa are already resistant to commercial miticides."

Argh.

Maybe it's silly to be thinking about this already - after all, I have all summer to decide about this issue, as the mites usually show up late autumn/early winter. Tom and I are planning to attend (and re-up our membership with) the local beekeepers association meeting on Thursday night. I think I'll take aside some old-timers and ask what they think. My guess is, they'll say 'treat.' Meanwhile, the article stated, scientists are working on breeding a mite-resistant bee. I don't know if that will solve the problem; it seems to me that bees need to evolve a natural resistance to the mites.

Phil Chandler, the author of The Barefoot Beekeeper, seems to agree with me. More from the article: "'We cannot solve our difficulties by using the type of thinking that created them,' Chandler says. He's referring to the 'persistent delusion' that humans can control nature... many around him agree with his diagnosis. Sill, they look vexed when he says that the best thing to do for varroa would be... nothing. Keep bees healthy and well fed, but let evolution work. For ten years or more, beekeepers might lose most of their bees, he concedes. But natural selection would eventually lead to some kind of resistant bee. 'We have to think of these issues in terms of what is best for bees,' he says. 'Not what is best for us.'"

Our Queen

Beer making and garlic braiding

Tom and I are attending 'Beer School' through The Kitchn. Last week most of our assignments were preparing us for the actual brewing of beer, and yesterday our task was to go shopping for all the equipment we needed.

We visited our local brew store and had a fun time gathering up our list, which included strange-sounding things like 'hydrometer' and 'airlock.' We also got our grains. We are making an all-grain beer, which is apparently more flavorful but is a bit harder. It was fun to go into the 'grain room' and taste and smell all the grains. We also enjoyed milling the grains right there in the shop.

Employee Nolan helps us navigate milling

We have everything at home now, it set us back about $119 but we already had a significant amount of the kitchen items needed. If you had to start by getting that stuff too (stockpot, thermometer, etc) it would be quite a bit more costly.

I'm guessing that we may begin the brewing very soon. We're excited to get started making our first amber ale!

Today my fruit trees arrived from Stark Brothers, impeccably packed as usual. I soaked them in water for several hours while I prepared the beds. Last week I took out a huge ceonothus and many sunroses from along our North fence. The first thing I had to do today was borrow my father's ax and hack the stumps to pieces. I gotta tell you, nothing makes me more exhausted than using the ax. I always end up with numb hands and arms, literally dripping sweat. How did all the pioneers clear their land with just an ax? It blows my mind, every time I use this tool. Respect, pioneer dudes.

Next I needed to clear the land of mulch and dig some holes. Clay clay clay. Digging is the second-most exhausting thing in our hard-as-rock earth. I shall sleep well tonight.

Sunrose is gone, time for cherry trees...

...and here they are

only the ceonothus stump left....

...now a plum tree

I put wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of good compost in these areas, and mixed up a huge amount of flower and herb seeds, then broadcast them over the dirt. Tom hooked up drips, and in a few weeks, we'll see how these guys are doing. These trees probably won't fruit for at least two years. Planning for the future, yo. In the meantime, we'll hopefully get a nice pollinator garden going.

By the way, those cinder blocks you see in the plum tree picture are for the new rain barrel I ordered. Turns out, they don't make them the way they did five years ago when we got our old one; they no longer make them with removable lids. So you must use the spigot to fill your watering cans. (I guess it's a safety issue?) Therefore, they need to be up on blocks. Also in this picture is a small strip of bark for Joe. He likes to lie in this spot, and I keep taking away his favorite places. I couldn't bear to do it again.

I also made my garlic braids. The garlic was harvested two weeks ago and placed to cure on top of our chicken coop. It had gotten quite dry in the curing period, so I decided to go ahead and braid it. You start out with three bulbs, wired together. Then you braid, adding another bulb to the middle each time. It's a little like French braiding hair (which I was never very good at). When you've reached the top, you secure with twine, making a knot at the front and then at the back, then making a loop with which to hang the braid.

Still a little green in the middle; that will dry with time

Dad has finished my canning shelf, which has knobs on which to hang these garlic braids, and I'll be installing that next weekend.

You may recall that I made Thieves Vinegar a few weeks ago. I decanted it in to a spray bottle and used it to clean the kitchen, the shower, and our wooden dining room table this weekend. I'm happy to report that it works excellently on all those surfaces. It smells good, too - very minty. And yes, vinegar-y too. But after using chemical cleaners most of my life, it was a nice change. I guess you just have to decide what you want to smell when you're done cleaning.

I put some in another spray bottle to take to work tomorrow - what with the kids' diagnosis', sensitivities, and allergies, we try to use natural cleaning products whenever possible. So we can use this to clean the lunch and station tables when we are done.

I can think of lots of other uses for this too - I'll try it as a clothes softener this week. Vinegar naturally softens clothes and it doesn't leave a vinegar smell on them, apparently. Much better for the environment than regular fabric softeners. Plus, if we go with a graywater system, we're going to need to use different detergents/softeners anyway.

I'm desperate to plant basil and get it started, but I'm loathe to pull out the kale until it's really and truly done. So I'm leaving the kale for now, and I planted some interim basil between and among the peppers. I ordered more seeds and will just plan on succession planting once the kale is finished. I also had to re-seed a few items. You see, we've attracted an intrepid scrub jay to our yard. He came for the chicken coop. He discovered that the chickens will sometimes, in their enthusiastic scratching and digging, pitch a treat out through the fencing of their coop. He sees them scratching and comes down, perches on the edge of a raised bed, and waits for any morsel that comes sailing out. Smart bird. Apparently he's also seen me seeding beds, because I've seen him steal the seeds once I've planted them. So I have to be stealthy. I have to make sure he's not around before I go out and bury and few furtive grains of corn or beans. I feel silly looking out for a BIRD, but there it is.

Finally, we tried to get to the fence gates. We've taken to parking our cars as close to our gates as possible (three gates, two cars - one gate is always unprotected) because the damn deer are hopping the fences to get in, now that they can't get over the fence. Beans - eaten! Strawberries - eaten! ARGH. And we just didn't get to the new fences this weekend. It's top of our list, next weekend.

And that's the news from Poppy Corners this second weekend of May. Have a good week, everyone!

Farm Dinner

This past January, I got a surprise text from Tom: "Happy Mother's Day! We're going to Full Belly Farm May 9!" Having dinner at the farm is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but they sell out very quickly. Tom happened to look at their website the day they posted the 2015 events, so he was able to secure our reservation early. I was very excited! We reserved a place for six of us so that Mom and Dad could go too, and we've all been looking forward to this for several months.

You might recall that we visited this farm once before, last Father's Day, on our hunt for local almonds. The farm wasn't giving tours the day we were there, but when I reached out to them, they welcomed us to look around on our own, and we did. It's a lovely place, but we only saw a very small part of it. We got to see much more last night!

We were told to arrive at the farm at 5:30. It was perfect weather; hotter in Guinda than in our part of the bay, sunny and about 84 degrees. We pulled up to the newly built event center, which was gorgeous.

Friendly farm dog Milo ran up to greet us, and we made our way to the back patio, which had beautiful bouquets of flowers, pretty dining tables, and a side bar of Lemon Verbena iced tea. Delicious!

We enjoyed our beverages whilst chatting with the owner and chef, Amon (we met his wife Jenna a little later, as she was busy doing her own 'chef-ing' in the amazing kitchen). Dad and Amon talked a lot about the reclaimed wood used to build the center, and we enjoyed the view and being together.

I'd like to cook in this kitchen!

We then climbed aboard a touring wagon fitted to a tractor. We had a pretty cute driver.

Third generation farmer-in-the-making

Amon and his son took us around the property. Full Belly Farms has been certified organic since the early 80's, and it's a beautiful place, with birds flying everywhere amongst the fields filled with 70 different crops, cows and chickens and sheep in the background, five bee hives, and a thriving flower business. One of the best things about this farm is that they house and board their farmworkers each year, with a permanent crew of about 40 there full time. 

Amon was very proud of his family farm, and he should be, it is a very inspiring place.

Back to the event center, and time for dinner! We opened the wine we had brought with us (thanks to the families at my work and teacher appreciation week, we had a very nice bottle indeed!) and tucked in.

I didn't take any pictures of the meal, because I was too busy enjoying the food and the company (also I don't believe in phones at the table!), but it was all excellent, one of the best meals of my life, I think. We had wonderful house made cheese, salami, pickles, pasta, lamb - everything from the farm or close by. I think my favorite thing was the peach-leaf ice cream; it tasted rather almond-y and I can't wait to make it at home. It was a very 'spring' menu; it was a very 'California' menu; it was simply lovely.

I urge you to make your own visit to this magical place. There are many events happening this year; I think we'll try to make it back for the Hoes Down event in October. Many thanks to husband Tom, and hosts/chefs Amon and Jenna for a perfect evening!