Free Food

Every spring I am rewarded for my laziness. While many gardeners and farmers clean up their gardens before the first frost, I become my usual slothful self and decide that I would rather spend what little energy I have left freezing and canning my garden's bounty and skip clean up all together.

It pays off in the spring.

But you have to be patient and pay attention.

All too often in the early spring, I would be in such a hurry to get the garden clean and tilled and ready to plant that I would miss all the food just waiting for me.  I would plow it under before it even showed itself.

Every fall, that lettuce that you didn't take the time to uproot....it goes to seed.
Those cucumbers that you neglected after you had enough pickles made and stored....they went to seed.
That spinach that bolted and became too bitter to eat....it went to seed
That somewhat rotten onion that you didn't want - it sprouted again and is now beautiful
The garlic that you didn't pull....it's back and bigger than last year.
The parsnip you forgot to dig up - they are sweeter than ever now and ready to eat.
And so is that carrot!

And not only that, but Mother Nature is the best almanac for when to plant things you will ever find.  In general, when seeds are naturally sprouting outside in the cold spring, it means those seeds can handle it, so if you want to start neat and tidy rows of food, you probably can - even though the almanac and the seed packets may say otherwise.

There are all kinds of wives tales about "what is the best time to plant _____?"  For corn it is when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear.  I don't know how many people have actually even seen a squirrel's ear?  I tend to just wait for the random forgotten ear of corn to suddenly sprout into action.  Even after a long, sub-zero winter, it will happen.

This is, of course, provided you use seeds that haven't been genetically modified to only sprout once.  Heirloom quality seeds or organic seeds cost more, but they will more than pay you back in their ability to produce fantastic quality foods with minimal work (or in this case, no work), year after year .







So, while other enterprising gardeners are busy cleaning, tilling and planting, I am busy harvesting the fresh spinach and lettuce from the garden - the first crop of greens so long awaited in the many months of cold.

 What we don't immediately harvest and eat, I transplant into more recognizable and organized rows.  The transplanting slows it down a bit and extends the season for a few more weeks.

So many times while gardening I have marveled at man's belief that we know what we are doing and are "in charge" of growing food.  While it is true that we are the caretakers of the produce, Mother Nature already has the system down and knows the perfect timing and temperature for it all.

Standing Stones

Nature in all its many facets is astounding.  In Spring I revel at all the new flowers and plants that bloom, I sit mesmerized while watching honey bees and other insects going about their busy lives with no thought for us whatsoever, I am fascinated by watching migratory birds return year after year to nests that only they know how to find, and I even harbor great affection for the rocks. 

Perhaps the quietest members of my garden, there are many rocks that line my flower beds and get moved slightly from place to place as I weed around them throughout the year.  I like the feel of them, their heft, their rough edges and sharp angles.  They are the oldest things here - limestone, granite, sandstone, quartz, geodes- they speak of a time that I will never know.  A time of heat and turmoil.  Pressure and seemingly infinite spans of time.  There are small trilobites that I find embedded in the limestone rocks, whole generations of a species that, at one point, thought they were the height of civilization as we do now.

For whatever reason, I have a fascination with standing rocks up - a change of perspective for them, I imagine. When I find a small pile of them lying around, even though they may have odd angles, I take on the inherent challenge of balancing one upon the other.  It takes a little time and patience to get them to all work together, and not enough can be said to praise a small amount of sand that helps create the all important friction that holds the odd-angled rock in place, but when they are all in harmony and supporting one another, they almost seem enlivened somehow.  Even a rock wants to be something - whether it be a quiet meditative being lying in the midst of a field, a part of a building's foundation , or a member of a cairn.  Perhaps that is being overly anthropomorphic, but then I try to imagine what the animal world looks like to a stone - we all must be in high speed motion to them, flitting from place to place, growing, aging, dying within a blink of a rock's eye.  How ridiculous must the work-a-day world seem to a rock.

Sometimes they fall.  Gravity, rain and wind work their change on the rocks just as they have for millions of years and I will come across the dismantled pile looking like so many pieces of puzzle and stoop to rebuild them again as I take a break from the endless pulling of weeds.  No two piles are ever the same, but then it is fun to hear people's remarks that have seen a group of stones together and then realize that they are subtly different, as though by magic they have shifted themselves.  Sometimes, I think they do.

Pi Day

This late winter day finds me completely preoccupied digging in the dirt.  I type now with sixty four thousand scratches on my hands from weeding flower beds, smelling of leaf smoke, and my lower back is sunburned from spending the day happily bent over perennial flowers that are starting to emerge.  Many thoughts made their way into my head, but most of them were directed at the plants, the earthworms, the birds....no time today to sit and write them all down, but pictures speak volumes.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things,

man will not himself find peace.

~Albert Schweitzer

The clever men at Oxford, know all that there is to be knowed.

But they none of them know one half as much, as intelligent Mr. Toad.

~Kenneth Grahame

The grand show is eternal.  It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.  Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

~John Muir

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring,

I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.

~Helen Hayes

In Like a Lion

March is upon us and seems to be coming in like a lion....at least from the perspective of my emotions.  
March usually marks the point of "Spring" in my mind and I will likely start becoming overly anxious to be outside every waking moment.  I become cagey and frustrated every day that I have to go to work when the weather is beautiful. And, it never fails, the worst days are always the ones that I am at home.  There will likely be much gnashing of teeth from now until April and I have a tendency, I'm afraid, of turning into a bearcat with my family due to the confounding weather of March.

I am still up to my eyebrows in trying to redo one of the bedrooms in the house.....namely mine, and this will likely manage to keep me preoccupied until the ground warms up enough to start moving flowers around and planting seeds in the ground, but that doesn't mean that I won't be staring out the window with my face pressed up against the glass to peer into the gardens throughout the day in the hopes of seeing tulips and daffodils on the rise. 

There were also seeds planted indoors today to help reduce the early spring gardening anxiety.  One hundred and ten onions,  23 tomato, 12 red peppers, 6 leaks and countless lettuce plants were all started today in organic potting soil and will need to be monitored closely and protected from the threat of house cat destruction until such time as the greenhouse becomes more hospitable (and enclosed) to harbor tender plants.  Their planting is like a promise that in the next six to eight weeks the weather will be nice enough to move them outside.  Planting them is sometimes a more hopeful predictor of spring than judging whether or not a groundhog can identify his shadow. Watching them sprout and then take root in their small pots is a moving pep talk that, indeed, spring is on its way. 

A Good Pair of Boots

Winter somehow seems to have missed us entirely this year.  By writing that line I am secretly hoping to jinx us into receiving a horrendous snow storm that drops a foot of snow on us and takes until April to disappear, because I really have kind of missed having the down time that winter typically brings.  My "weather worries" are deepening with each changing season - the buds are too early on the trees, the ground never froze for more than a week at a time, I have weeds that have continued to quietly grow in the garden all year, and I never had enough time to get the indoor projects completed before spring is knocking at the door.  I am trying to keep track of the appropriate time to start planting stuff in the garden because the temptation is strong to start placing seeds in the ground given the warmer weather....it could be a very long season indeed.

So, to pass the time and quietly prepare the garden, I haul fertilizer....also known as "manure" by most, unless you are covered in it and up to your knees in it....then it simply becomes "shit".

There are very few things that you really need in life on the farm, but a good pair of shit-kickin' boots are definitely one of them.  I don't usually swear, but if you can't say "shit" when you are actually up to your knees in shit, then where else can it legitimately be used? 

The ideal shit-kickin' boots have to be:

Tall:  Because this stuff is deep and only gets deeper as the spring rains come on (if they ever do).

Waterproof:  Because most of what you are tromping through is often largely made of water or the rain has added to the moisture level.

Lightweight:  Because it gets really heavy when you have half an acre of mud on your boots.

Sometimes it helps if the boots have steel toes because animals can be really heavy, and it is also nice if they are big enough that you can fit a large pair of warm socks in them when the weather is cold, but both of these cut down on being lightweight, so it is a bit of a trade off.

Personally, I am very attached to my boots.  They are worn year round and start to mold directly to my feet after a while.  My tan lines in the summer will often extend from the bottom of my shorts to my knees where the tops of my boots are.  When I dislocated my ankle a few years ago I had on a pair of boots - I really would rather have had them simply pull the boot off my horribly dislocated foot, then cut it off, but they weren't brave enough to try.  I am not sure what was more painful - the foot, or watching them cut one of my favorite boots off. 

Some people come home from work and put on their slippers....I come home from work and put on my boots.

Mr Pig Goes A Courtin'

Spring is starting to roll slowly around.  The sun is peaking up over the horizon a little earlier and staying up a little later every night.  There are many times when the weather has been warm enough lately to even smell the warmth of the earth, but the biggest signs that lets us know that Spring is on its way is that love is in the air.  Valentine's day isn't just for the humans of the world....our pig gets to have her love affair as well.  Granted, her pool of eligible bachelors was somewhat smaller than she might like, but then a kept pig can't be choosy.

For the last four years, we have purchased baby piglets to raise and then eat, but in the last two we have thought about saving the gilt (that's the female) and have her bred so we could farrow and raise our own piglets.  Last year's gilt was fine except for one small thing....she liked the taste of chicken a little too much and whittled away our chicken flock significantly with her ravenous habits. 

Mr Pig

But this year's gilt?  She was taught at a young age by the local rooster, Dominique (which is both his name and his breed....we aren't very creative with names for the animals that we might one day have to stew in a pot..."Bob-noodle soup" turned us off to that practice).  Anyway, Dominique taught her not to mess with the two footed and feathered crowd.  She happily allows chickens (and cats) to partake of her bounty of cracked corn and kitchen scraps without so much as a proprietary grunt.  In short, she is a really nice pig.  And so, she was nominated to stay and hopefully pass on not only her beautiful chops, but also her winning attitude to a herd of small screaling piglets. 

The question, however, was where to find the boy?  Technically, we would most like a Large Black - this is a particular breed that is easier to raise on pasture since they don't rut it up quite as much, but we weren't  into spending the prices being asked for a purebred boar, not to mention that you have to be able to house them and feed them - no small task to be undertaken when they can reach approximately 700 pounds. We found a rather nice one that was due to go to market unless they could find him a home, but he was already full grown, exceptionally large and more than we were up to paying once again.  Craigslist has any number of fun and interesting items for sale....including pigs, and we contemplated these options, but none of them stuck out as suitable matches for our pig. Our breakthrough came with finally taking the time to meet some of the neighbors. 



First encounter



My husband had been told about a farmer just north of us that had cows and pigs and sheep - doing basically what we are doing, but on a much larger scale.  It had been suggested that we stop up and see him some time and finally, one chilly December day, we made the trip of six miles and found a resource for bottle/bucket calves, milking advice and .....you guessed it, a boar.  All too often we forget to look around and tap into local resources.  We get caught up with the idea that we are the "lunatic farmers" of the neighborhood amidst an ocean of "conventional farmers" and we forget that there are, in fact, more and more of the us lunatics out there all the time - small family farms that are starting to make a small but significant difference in how food is raised.  But we need to work together and depend on each other - just like farmers did in the past.  All too often now, conventional farmers are out there on their own - big fields, big equipment, big risk.  The competition to produce more and more soy and corn has led to isolation and a general lack of public interest in farming in general.  Ask any non-farming person if they would want to farm and most of the time the answer is "No - I don't have the first idea how to do that!"  Conventional farming is daunting - even for the farmers that do it, and unless you are born into a family that farms, it isn't likely to be something that you would want to jump into.   But small farms, such as ours, are do-able.  With a little time and sweat equity we have been slowly turning this old homestead back into a productive farm.  One adage that I have stuck to when it comes to trying new things is, "Learn by doing" - you can read all the books on a subject you want, but until you are up to your elbows in it, it doesn't sink in.  So we were up to our elbows with a gilt that needed a boyfriend and, in this case, all it took was making a neighborhood connection to provide us with the answer.  The Rent-a-Boar.

A purebred Berkshire boar with proven quality...essentially meaning that he has been with a pen of sows and proceeded to get them all 'with pig' as the case might be.  Originally, the plan was to take Miss Pig for a visit up to the other farm and let her hang with the rest of the pigs, but Bill (the farmer) was a little worried that his sows might beat her up, so it was decided that Mr. Pig should come hang out in Shangri-La at our house.

Any time that you mix two 350 pound animals together there is a certain amount of blind faith that goes along with it because you realize that if they really don't like each other, there isn't anything that you will be able to do to stop the ensuing battle until the smoke clears.  We didn't need to worry with Miss Pig, she was smitten almost immediately and we are fairly convinced that he was taken with her as well. 

If you ever hear a person say that an animal doesn't have feelings, do me a favor -first, kick them in the shins and then direct them to this post.  Our Miss Pig had been without her pig friends since about late September when we took them to market.  The first few days had been difficult and she had mopped around without her buddies, but her gregarious nature and love of food brought her around fairly quickly.  On Sunday, however...when Mr Pig showed up....suffice it to say that it was love at first sight.  If you have never seen a happy pig with her new friend smile....you really should.

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.





Spring Fever

I become a bit stir crazy when the weather warms up even a little. When spring starts to roll around some people clean their houses....I clean the forest. Early spring is the prime time to trim, prune, cut, sculpt, whittle or any other thing that you can image doing with branches. It is also the project that I can do that allows me to be outside working, but doesn't entice me into digging in the dirt and planting seeds or plants that I know will not be able to withstand the frosts yet to come.

I start with the "twig" pile. This is a pile, or rather two piles, that I have maintained for almost four years now. When we moved onto the farm almost eight years ago, there were three rows of evergreens on the north side of the house. They had been planted as a wind break and were very useful as such, but unfortunately they had been attacked (and are still being attacked) by anthracnose - a fungal infection that attacks trees that are in close, crowded conditions. The trees were so congested that very little air could flow through them at all. All the dead limbs were cut down and most of them were bonfire foder. The ones that were not immediately torched were placed in very loose piles on the very eastern edge of the tree strip to avoid having the predominant western wind blow the fungal spores into the remaining trees. A few years ago I finally got around to sorting out some of these twigs.

My husband thinks I am crazy, but what he fails to realize is two things: 1) working in the woods and communing with the trees makes me very happy. The happier I am, the less likely I am to let my frustration at not being able to get in the garden yet drive me over the edge.... 2) and possibly more importantly, all the "twigs" that I bag up for the winter are the kindling that helps to make his split wood actually burn. His great big pile of beautifully split wood would take forever to get to burn without the help of hot little pine sticks.

Pine trees get a bad rap when it comes to being a good wood for fuel - they don't burn as cleanly, too much creosote produced so it clogs the chimney, and they really only have the central trunk that can be split into firewood so you don't get nearly as much from a pine tree as you would from a deciduous tree. All the branches are typically too small to be of much use as firewood....but they are stellar kindling branches. The sap in those small branches dries to become like solid kerosene and they can heat up a wood burner in short order on cold winter mornings.

So, armed with a loppers, a hand saw, a leaf rake, a garden rake, and a shovel I set out to clean up the woods. The piles that I maintain are essentially branches that I have taken down the year or two before and allowed to dry fully - I simply move them from one place to another and pare them down a bit in the process. I stack them up to form rudimentary "fences" in one corner of the tree strip and this will serve to catch any wayward soccer balls or pails that blow across the yard during one of many summer storms. By stacking the wood up, it also helps to dry it out so that it is that much better at starting a fire in the winter. As I move each piece of wood I test it to see how dry and breakable it is. Most branches, after drying out for 2 years, can be broken relatively easily with a well placed boot on the midshaft of the branch. If they still have "spring" in them, they are placed back on the twig wall for another year.

After I move one pile, I dig up any of the rouge scrub trees that insist on spreading like wildfire using the shovel and all the leaves and dry grass get raked down into the ditch for eventual burning. The sticks that I have managed to break apart get loaded into the left over feed bags from the year and then they are stacked in the hog house for the summer to stay nice and dry.

Crazy, I know, but once again, it is a job that I can do outside on those beautiful spring days when you can almost believe that winter is completely finished, but you know in your heart that there will be at least one or two more snows before it completely gives up and heads south as the world rounds the sun again.

After I finish with the old wood, I start tackling the new dead branches. There are always more than I care to think about - branches that I have watched and tried to keep healthy, but they have finally given in to the canker that grows rampant in a tight knit bunch of trees. So, I wander around with the loppers on one shoulder and the saw on the other and I cut off what can be reached and then typically, I will find a ladder and go a little higher each year on a tree to cut off more and more of the dead branches. The amazing thing to me is how many new growth branches will emerge when you allow the tree to have a little light and air. The trees by our house were simply planted too close together and therefore spread their disease too easily. By cutting away the dead stuff I have allowed more airflow and sunlight into the forest and helped to reduce the spread of disease.....It works the same for trees as it does for people and animals.

The "newbie" branches are stripped of all the small stuff and then added to the twig fence to dry for a year or so. Hence, my supply continues and I don't see it ending any time too soon. We are always looking for a place to plant another tree and I have found that many small saplings take root in the forest below the mature trees - all I have to do is move them carefully to the place that I want them and then protect them from the lawn mowers.

One of my grandmother's favorite sayings was "Waste not, want not" and I have found this to be very sage advice because in the depth of winter, when the house is all of about 54 degrees and you really need to get a fire going quickly, nothing beats hot little kerosene sticks. So, I spend these first wonderfully warm days of spring outside playing with sticks and humming along in my head the childhood rhyme of "1, 2, buckel my shoe...3,4 shut the door....5, 6 pick up sticks....7, 8, lay them straight"....and I am happy in my thought that the fires of winter are, finally, a long way off.

First Signs of Spring

Every year it is the same. I am completely astounded by the coming of spring. I recognize and expect the changing of the seasons from spring to summer, summer to fall and fall to winter, but by far the most resplendent of the changes is from winter to spring. It doesn't take much to amaze me at this time of the year. Having just spent the last four months cooped up in a house with five children is enough to send anyone screaming for the door at the first sign of nicer weather, and for me, 20 degrees can sometimes be considered nicer weather. So, perhaps it is the deprivation of winter that makes spring so magical, or maybe it is just that, as I get older, my memory is getting worse and I can never remember from year to year just how things are supposed to happen.

It is still cold out. Cold enough that a quick walk around my gardens is really all I feel like doing yet, but even during that brief walk I notice subtle changes that herald the start of spring. Last week as I was peering out my window with a cup of coffee in hand, I suddenly realized that there were buds on the trees despite the general gloominess of the last week's weather.

"What! Really, they are budding out already? Did this happen last year this early? The trees are crazy!" Picturing them like a mentally unstable relative that has declared that they will no longer wear a coat and thereby bring on nicer weather, I went out to inspect them and make sure they weren't really freezing.....not that I could do much for them if they were, but I thought I had at least have a walk among them to be sure that they were all truly budding and that it wasn't just a deranged few. Sure enough, buds all around. "Well, okay....if you guys say it is coming...."

So, then I start looking elsewhere for spring. The birds are usually the next clue and clearly it is time to start spreading my lint piles and wool leftovers for nests. April chicks are usually the result of mating and nest building that starts approximately now. The first Robin is no doubt around here somewhere, but I haven't heard them start to call in the mornings quite yet, but the Cardinals are getting into it - my son noted that the other day, that the birds are back. Not so much back really, as just vocal and trying to let the girls know.

The snow continues to fall, but there isn't a lot of confidence in it anymore. The flakes know they will be short lived and the daffodil bulbs and irises will soon be pushing up through last year's leaves. How they know it is time to poke their tender heads out is completely beyond me, but I find myself crouching over their area in the garden with baited breath waiting for their emergence and knowing that when they do show up, winter's back will be broken at last.

Spring is always a lesson in faith. The trees bud out, the daffodils sprout up, the animals start to shed their fur - all on faith alone that the earth will continue its incessant march around the sun and the days will slowly but progressively get longer and warmer whether we realize it or not, even though the thermometer still dips into the teens and twenties during the day. Faith in the future- nature has more of it than I do myself, I am afraid to say. I am, however, happy to feel its optimistic effect and let it soak into my pessimistic soul like the sun slowly soaks into the soil and turns the frozen ground into fertile loam.