The Helping Hands

Work worn and weary

I mold to the hand I know

Saving tender skin

Plant More, Weed Less

I realized the other day that I haven't written in some time simply because the weather has been too good.  My typical day is to go to work for 10 hours and then come home and drop to the ground and start pulling weeds.   Most of the vegetables are up and growing, but then so too are the weeds.  It rained this weekend and I am quite sure that all the carefully planted and cultivated vegetables grew about 3 inches, unfortunately, the weeds grew 6.

Weeds are the bane of every gardener's existence.   They outnumber us about 6 billion to one and they will survive and spread like wildfire despite our best attempts at controlling them. 

Some people like to use chemicals, but the effects of those chemicals are similar to the use of antibiotics on bacteria....resistance develops and we are left fighting bigger and meaner weeds that are harder to kill.  Not to mention the unwanted health effects such as cancer and other chronic debilitating diseases, or the environmental impacts like colony collapse disorder of bees, fish kills, song bird death, etc...yeah, I know, the government, EPA, and all the chemical producers swear up and down that it is safe to use, but I have seen a few too many farmers dying of cancer and I, personally, don't feel like being a guinea pig in the corporate money making machine that is agricultural chemical manufacturing.   All right, I will now attempt to step down off my soap box.

Some people "weed" the garden by hand or with a hoe or rake.  To some extent I will do this, but I only have so much time in a week - between working full time and raising five kids.... hand weeding isn't going to work for long.  It is, however, a great job for kids to do that are looking to earn a few extra dollars, or who get into trouble and need a little hard work to help clear their head.
 As much as I love growing food, I hate weeding vegetables and I will do whatever I can to spend less time weeding and more time growing and processing food or putzing in my flower garden, so I have started weeding even before the weeds come up (or the vegetables for that matter).  I weed once and then I am done. 

Now I have you wondering don't I?

It requires two fairly easy to come by items - straw and newspaper.

I was blessed with buying a farm that has a very old barn on it that is filled with exceptionally old, but functional straw.  Hopefully, by the time the barn is finally depleted of straw I will have some other source (or possibly my own) lined up, but for now I rely on straw that is probably about as old as I am.   Hay works well too as does grass clippings although sometimes with those two items they can re-sprout and create more problems than they are worth.

The newspapers have never been a problem to find, but it comes down to "know your neighbors" and either have them save up their papers or get to know your local neighborhood convenience store owner and have them give you all the old papers that didn't sell.  I have also periodically gone dumpster diving in the recycle bin for newspapers - especially Wall Street Journals - I figure if all those financial wizards on Wall Street can't improve life for us a little, at least the associated paper can be put to good use.

Armed with this newspaper, straw and a water hose I set out to eliminate all potential weeds from the cucumbers and squash before they even poke their heads through the soil.   The concept is extremely simple - cover all unplanted ground with a thick layer of newspaper, wet it down and cover it with straw and then wet that down.  The only reading that I ever do of a newspaper anymore happens as I lay them down in my garden and I contemplate how quickly the news becomes old  - how earthquakes and tsunamis get swept away in the revolutions that take over the middle east and then those are superseded by upcoming Presidential elections and tornadoes in the Midwest.  I see them all laid out in my garden and then I watch all the news just disappear under a matt of straw.  It is a beautiful thing.  To think that the media is keeping down the weeds in my garden may be the best compliment I am able to give them.

One hour and forty seven minutes later I am free from having to weed my cucumbers and squash for the rest of the summer and slowly the newspaper will break down and next spring I will simply till it into the soil as more organic matter.  One less area to weed leaves that much more time available to plant and harvest. 

Weed less, plant more. 

A Spare Asparagus

Little known fact:  Asparagus is very happy growing in the wild and I am very happy to let it grow in the wild.  Of all the vegetables that we eat routinely, asparagus is one that I do not grow on the farm, but we eat a ton of it during its season. 

This last Sunday, my teenaged son practiced his driving while chauffeuring me around the country roads to pick asparagus that grows wild in the ditches.  The hardest part is simply remembering where it grows so that you can pick it before the buds open and it becomes woody, but year after year, it is always in the same spots and other than having to sometimes brave stinging nettle or poison ivy, it is easy pickings for all asparagus lovers. 

The hunter/gatherer in me is alive and well and happily eating wild caught asparagus.

Happier Than A Pig In......Grass!

Next time you pass a confinement, see if you see any pigs doing this.......



This is a mound of grass that I dug out of my garden.  Pigs are the ultimate processors of grass, dirt, vegetable matter of all kinds.  They rut it apart, eat what can be eaten and simply enjoy the rest. This is what a pig was designed to do.  They weren't designed to live in closed confined buildings with no access to dirt and sunlight - it goes against the very grain of all that is pigness.

When pigs are born and raised in confinement they are typically given iron shots....know why? .....because they don't have access to dirt in a confinement and therefore are iron deficient and anemic.  But, by giving pigs access to dirt they are fine - no iron deficiency.  Pigs and dirt go hand in hand.

**in the background are any number of free range chickens, one crazy fun-loving grey cat named "Tink" and at one point, near the end, Hazel makes an appearance while chasing a chicken.

A Walk In The Woods

Cottonwood

 Across from our five acre lot lives a forest.  It isn't very big and it technically falls under the jurisdiction of my sister and brother-in-law, but it calls to me in the spring.  Fifteen acres of maple, cotton wood, elm, and poison ivy and I love it.  I only haunt the woods in the spring, mainly because during the winter it is too cold to go on a leisurely walk and during the summer I am too frantic with getting things done in the garden to actually take the time for an amble.....but ambling in the spring is ideal. 

There are many of us that get sucked into the wooded lots in Iowa at this time of year and there is one particular thing that many of us are after.....the ever elusive Morel mushroom.

Trametes versicolor

If you have never eaten a Morel that has been sauteed in butter and seasoned with Cavender's greek seasoning then, quite honestly, you haven't really lived.  But only half the fun is eating them.  The other half is the hunt. 

Hunting for a Morel is a definite challenge.  There are many times, while walking through the woods, that I think it would be much easier to hunt animals than mushrooms.  So far this year I have come across rabbits, turkeys and deer, but the mushrooms have been very scarce.  Morels are a fickle mushroom, like many of their fungi friends, they need exacting conditions of temperature, moisture and humidity in which to grow and for all the research that I have done on these mushrooms, no one seems to have a very good handle on exactly what makes them tick.  Therefore, I constantly walk in the woods. 

I usually start sometime near the beginning of April.  Not because I think that they will actually be out yet, it is entirely too early for them to show up, but it is nice to just walk and notice the changes that take place as spring emerges.  There are many times when walking through the woods that I don't actually look down at the ground for mushrooms at all, but rather at the trees and the state of their buds.  I make note of the trees that have fallen during the winter and marvel at the number of deer trails that have emerged like small highways making the paths through the forest that much clearer.  I note the level to which the garlic mustard, an invasive plant, has taken over the woods and I ponder at what point there will come a virus or bacterium that will infest this noxious plant and render it less obnoxious to the forest flora.  I walk with folded arms most of the time to avoid touching all the small twigs of trees that grow two or three feet off the ground for I have learned that these are poison ivy plants that haven't leafed out yet and although they don't have leaves they are still poisonous and will give a person a tremendously horrible rash.  I listen to the song birds calling and to the frogs chirping in the wetlands just to the north of the woods.  The smell of earth and dirt is strong in the woods in the spring - all the slowly rotting vegetation and leaf molds from the previous fall make the earth very spongy under foot.

All it takes is looking down a little closer at all the vegetation and suddenly mushrooms of every kind and color become visible.....all of them that is, except the Morel. 



Trametes versicolor



Puff Ball



Devil's Urn



Morels are elusive.  I picture them being very similar to leprechauns - there one minute, but gone the next.  They blend in with the leaves that cover the ground and they hide in the tall grass or the rose bushes.  I feel sometimes as though I am trying to "sneak up" on them so that they won't know that I am looking for them.  Sometimes I feign nonchalance while walking through the wood in the hopes that they will be lulled into a sense of security and come out of hiding.  When the time is right....they do.  It usually happens when I have decided to take a quick jaunt through the woods without something to carry any finds home in - those are the days that the mushrooms are many in number as though mocking my ability to hold them all on the way home. 

There is essentially something very satisfying about finding edible things in the wild that you know are incredibly delicious and safe to eat - it fills some long distant hunter/gatherer instinct of being able to know, recognize, and appreciate the earth's bounty.  And the walk through a peaceful, transcendent woods gives perspective and hope that there really is a little magic left in the world.