Farm Kid Fun

I am still in recovery mode from last week.  Last week was the local county fair which is the time in which kids involved with FFA and 4-H get to strut their stuff.  Projects that they have been working on for a while (as well as those that were finished in the eleventh hour) are judged and scored.  Animals that they have been taking care of, teaching to lead, and handling get washed and groomed to look nice for their respective shows.  Lunches and dinners consist entirely of fair food for a week and the temperature in the shade is, without fail, about 110 degrees.

This used to be easier....I come out of the week feeling like something the cat dragged in.  I have driven the road to the fairgrounds so many times that I could do it in my sleep, I have a purse filled with "just in case" items that would make any event planner proud - tape, safety pins, paper clips, pens, markers, rags, lead ropes, lip gloss...you name it and I could probably find it in there. Not to mention the miscellaneous items that the little kids pick up at all the commercial exhibits - the bottles of bubbles, stickers, tattoos, pencils, tooth brushes, catalogs, used paper cups - it gets entirely out of hand.  Sun burned and smelling of whatever animal is to be shown that day, we make our rounds and ride the rides with the promise of Hawaiian shaved ice at the end of the day if there is enough cash left.

Don't get me wrong - I love it!....but it does take its toll on the parents.  When I was a kid, living at the fair was the highlight of the summer and I see the same thing reflected in my kids now, so who am I to deny them that fun? And they have fun while simultaneously learning new things.  During one of my weaker moments during the heat of a day at the fair I questioned whether they actually did learn anything, but my enduring son turned to me and rattled off his list of things he learned:

• How to paint a room correctly and a mural to go with it.
• How to grow garlic.
• How to make a bat house and what white nose syndrome is in bats.
• How to make a rocket out of scraps lying around the farm and get it to fly....and find it again in a soybean field.
• How to build a fire (although I had to call him on this one because he kind of already knew how to make fire...not always safely... okay, so maybe he did learn something. )

Out of all these projects however, the one thing that they do learn how to do well is present themselves and be judged.  There is a lot of hard work that goes into a project - coming up with the idea, research, collecting the parts needed, assembling, experimenting, and completing projects all takes time and perseverance.  Then, to be able to explain to another person what, exactly, you did and why.....that is tough, but ironically what most people have to do on a daily basis while on the job.  Personally, I think the judges are entirely too lenient these days.  I seem to remember more white ribbons given out and more judges not being afraid to tell you just how much better you really could do if you just put in a little more time, but they are still being judged despite the relatively non-existent gradations of accomplishment.  I am probably their hardest judge - if they can get past me shaking my head and giving them the "you could do better" look, they are set for the judge. 

Too few kids are "judged" these days.  We have some crazy misconception that everyone should be a winner regardless of how bad you do and it has very rapidly led to demoralizing those kids that try exceptionally hard and making the lazy kids even more complacent.  We as a society have this crazy fear that if we tell a kid "this really isn't all that great, you could do better" that we will permanently scar and cripple them for all time.  When did kids become such wimps?  I definitely had my fair share of white ribbons and it taught me two things: I either had to work harder or, if I truly didn't like it, move on to something else.  Excel, or redirect.  This is how the best of the best get picked out - for a country so entrenched in Capitalism we sure do a lousy job of preparing our kids.  And, what's worse, we shake our heads and wonder what has happened to the younger generation and can't understand why they don't move out and get a job.   The corporate world is 'dog eat dog' and yet parents have been making sure that every puppy gets plenty to eat and lots of praise - no wonder they don't want to move out on their own and get a job.

Over the course of the week, we had a few rough patches - the sudden cold that my son got that made showing chickens a struggle and my daughter not having any back up music for her talent show competition (but she sang acapella amazingly anyway!)  Overall, I am happy to say that the week went very well. My son came out of the week with two State Fair trips and my daughter came away with a Champion trophy for her calf....yes, Hazel did well! They had put themselves out there and had fun doing it. The thing that I love to hear most of all at the end of the week is, "I can't wait until next year! I am going to take......, "  and the list is usually at least half a mile long.  I nod and smile and try to take fast mental notes that will later be used to direct all that energy and enthusiasm, but for now I am just going to breathe a sigh of relief that the county fair is done and restock the "just in case" items in my purse for going to State Fair.

In A Pickel

Waiting around for my cucumbers to really get going is one of the hardest things about summer.  I hate to say I hover, but I do - much to the detriment of my cucumber vines.  I get all giddy with pickling enthusiasm when the first blossoms appear and then nash my teeth when they either take too long to grow to the right size, or overnight seem to mushroom into an inedible cucumber-zilla, or the vine that they are on dies and takes down the cucumber with them.

Slowly, I finally come up with cucumbers enough to start the pickling process.  I soak them in salt brine overnight and then raid my garlic stores and dill plants to prepare to make sweet and sour pickles.

• Salt brined cucumbers - drained and rinsed
• One head (or maybe two) of dill - I take these at whatever stage they are in but I do usually pick some at the height of flowering and then put them directly in the freezer until the cucumbers catch up
• Garlic - one clove cut into two pieces ( or if they are small, two cloves)  The pickled garlic is actually one of the favorite things to eat in the pickle jars.....my kids fight over it.
• Pickling spice - can be purchased almost anywhere that canning goods are sold in grocery stores.
• Brown sugar - more for sweeter pickels, less for more sour pickels
• Vinegar - I use white, but apple cider works well too
• Water

The reason I so love pickels is that it takes so little time to actually make them - I don't can them in a hot water bath,  so all that is needed it to bring the vinegar and water mixed with a little brown sugar up to a rolling boiling and then pour it over the cucumbers in the jar, and then screw on the lid - they seal as they cool and the vinegar ensures that they are acidic enough not to go bad over the winter. 

There are about as many different pickel recipes as there are people in the world - the trick is to try many and then see which one you like the most.  The hardest part is keeping track of which recipe you used on which jar because you have to let them sit and pickel for at least 3 weeks before you do any taste testing. I have had to hide mine from the kids to keep them from breaking into them early.    One of these years I am going to try fermented pickels - I have been told that this will take the pickels to a whole new level.

Since the cucumbers have (thus far) been disappointing, I have elected to pickel some hot peppers and more of the garlic separately since they are such a hit.  We may have horrible breath all winter, but at least we will keep any vampires at bay and Peter Piper will have nothing on me.

Welcome To The Jungle - Random Thoughts While Weeding.

I find myself having to stop, midway through weeding the gardens for the thousandth time, and remind myself that this is the time of year that I dream about in January - hot, humid, and green.  And yet, when I am in the midst of it I am too hot and it is too humid and way too green!  The corn is about 4 feet over my head, the beans are stringing all over the place, the peas are getting totally lost amid all the weeds, my flower gardens are horribly neglected and the sweet potato vine has taken on the personality of Audry II in Little Shop of Horrors.   The list of vegetables and flowers to try to save from the assault of the weeds gets forever longer and my back and shoulders become ever more sun burnt from being stooped over pulling weeds all day.  Thankfully, there are a few plots of vegetables - namely potatoes and squash that were mulched well with straw and newspaper that don't require much work other than to pull out the occasional errant weed, but the other seemingly endless beds of plants needing my attention are enough to make anyone wish for a sudden, yet definitive frost.

I often channel my grandmother when this sense of being completely overwhelmed strikes.  Her motto for cleaning her house - which was a large four square and a lot of space for an elderly lady to tackle - was to "clean one corner per day"  At the time she told me this I was probably about 15 and thought 'that's crazy - it would take weeks to get the house clean' not realizing at the time the wisdom of my grandma.  The hardest part is always starting.  A task too big will put just about anyone into procrastination mode, but to set the goal of cleaning just one corner....that is do-able and so you begin the task and before you realize it, the entire house is cleaned because you naturally progress from one corner to the next and so on.  I apply the same thought process to my gardens although it is modified slightly to  "save just one plant from the weeds". 

This particular mindset came about when I was about 8 months pregnant with kid number 4 and I couldn't bend over anymore to get at the weeds - those were long, hot days indeed - but plant by plant I continued to weed.  Some days I literally did save just one plant at a time before having to go inside and take a break, but these days I start with one plant and slowly drift from plant to plant to plant until I look around at the carnage of weeds around me. I was so proud of weeding my entire tomato patch the other day that I just sat on the dirt as though it were the nicest sand of the beach and basked for a few minutes - actually looking up at the sun and letting the front half of my body have some exposure to the light for once.

I think of my grandparents often when working in the garden.  Things my grandma used to say, poems she taught me, the lives they all lived.  One of the things that I most enjoy is knowing the favorite flowers of my grandparents  - for my Grandpa George it was Marigolds, for Grandma Syl it was Petunias and for Grandpa Dave it was Four o'clocks.  Grandma Vera had so many favorite flowers and grasses that I don't think she could ever pick just one.  I grow all these flowers in my garden and have found that most of them will self seed year after year, which gives the feeling that my grandparents are with me all the time.  That connection, however abstract it may be, is very comforting and I will find myself mentally talking with my grandparents periodically as I go about saving one plant or another from hostile takeover by weeds - I imagine what they would say about current events, the kids, my old house.  All of my grandparents were farmers in South Dakota and lived through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  Imagining what those times were like - how difficult, how frightening - makes my own stress about current events slightly more bearable.

 Weed, weed, weed......drifting about the gardens thinking all the while.....it is incredibly hot right now and I know there are many that consider me crazy, but we don't have air conditioning and I like it that way.  Again, I think of my grandparents that lived (and enjoyed) their lives without the benefit of air conditioning. The trick is to cool the house off at night by opening all the windows and then closing them during the day to contain the cooler air.  It works well, no expensive air conditioning needed.  We have become a society of wimps - addicted to our televisions, iPhone and air conditioning.  There is a way to becoming energy independent....it's called 'not using it'.  Given the current state of society, it will never happen. 

Weed, weed, weed.....sorting through flowers and weeds and came across the season's first Preying Mantis.  Very small - only about the length of my little finger and very quick.  She doesn't realize yet that she is the top of the insect food chain.  I won't even dare to hurt her because she is too valuable for eating unwanted bugs.  I will perhaps move her to a more desired hunting location, but I wouldn't think of harming her.

The worst part to all this weeding is collecting and disposing of the weeds afterward.  Inevitably, while raking up all the weeds I will spot a few thousand more and it will take me another half hour before they are all raked up and thrown into the compost bin where they will be quickly broken down into something far more useful than the weeds they were.  The jungle still lives on, but at least one corner of it is now more under control.

The Scourge of the Beetle

There is one part of summer that I completely dread - the part that includes removing, by hand, all the vermin that seek to decimate our crops before we have a chance to devour them ourselves.  Potato bugs, squash beetles, cabbage moth caterpillars, horn worms, but the very worst of the worst.....Japanese beetles.

They show up on the scene at about the same time as the blueberries ripen and within days can completely ruin a vineyard of grapes or raspberry bushes.  I have also known them to eat all the silks off my corn thus limiting the corn's ability to germinate well.  Not to mention the destruction that they cause to my flower gardens - roses, Canna Bulbs, and woodbine all get munched into small Japanese beetle pellets.

The farmers, of course, spray for them with whatever nasty, harmful chemical the agricultural industry has come up with to kill them, but many will fly from their fields to mine in front of the sprayer.....thanks neighbor, that's just what I wanted - toxic chemicals AND the nasty beetles.

They didn't seem to be so bad the first few years of having the farm, but my suspicion is that we just didn't recognize or care so much about the food that we were attempting to raise to notice the destruction that was caused by these little beasts.  Now they are significantly worse than they have been in the past years.  Like all obnoxious pests, when they gain a foot hold they seem to make the most of it.  I always joke that if we actually tried to get them to spread and grow they would probably die off.

There are a lot of natural ways to try to decrease the numbers of beetles - traps (which, incidentally, seem to actually draw them from miles around), nematodes to infest them and kill off the grubs in the soil before they hatch into beetles (which takes a bit of work and the right timing to know when the grubs are most susceptible), and my preferred favorite - hand picking.

Every morning my husband goes out with a bowl of water and collects bugs.  Some people suggest soapy water, but we avoid the soap....with good reason that will be revealed later.   Sometimes it takes a quarter hour and sometimes it takes an hour and a half to get most of the bugs off the bushes and grapes.  It never seems to matter how many are picked off, there will be more by nightfall when it is done again.  I try to spend some time in my flower gardens picking them off the flowers there as well, but I can honestly say I am not as diligent as my husband is about picking them off the grapes and raspberries....and my flowers pay the price, but then again we don't have to eat my flowers. 

As time consuming as this is, and as monotonous, it has an up-side.....disposal.  We had started out with the soapy water, but then I had a thought while watching a chicken working like mad to find a cricket that had escaped into a crack in the sidewalk.....maybe the chickens will like them. It was like Mikey on the "Life" commercial, "... He likes it!  Hey Mikey!"  A small handful of the swimming, swarming mass is tossed out onto the floor of the chicken coop and then the feeding frenzy begins. 

I am not really one to deliberately hurt beings if I can help it, but there are some lines that do get drawn when attempting to grow your own food. It is a bit gladiatorial, but very satisfying.... if you are a crop eating bug, you will be summarily sentenced to death by chicken unless you are strong enough or lucky enough to escape from the coop unscathed.  Some do, I know, I have seen them crawling off to hide out of sight of the chickens.  My luck, I am slowly, inadvertently running a Darwinian experiment and evolving a new breed of Japanese beetle that is smarter, faster and luckier than the typical beetle.  Hopefully, my chickens are also evolving right along with them.

Blue Period

If June is the month of strawberries, July is the period for blueberries.  Somehow I had the forsight to plant three bushes of blueberries about five years ago and then planted two more bushes last summer.  I think maybe I should have planted at least another ten this year.  These tiny little packets of anti-oxidant bliss are nothing like the ones that you buy in a store.....sorry, but true. Sure the ones from the store are round and blue, but they are berries formerly known as blueberries by the time they hit the shelves.  Right off the bush is the only way to eat them.  Some are small and tart and others are as big as a dime and juicy.  "Tart and sweet all at the same time" is the way that my daughter aptly desribes them.  They take a simple bowl of cereal to whole new heights.   This time of year, the writing definitely slows down, but it is only because I am outside on hands and knees around the blueberry bushes getting every last one.

Knee Deep In June

Yucca Flowers

All too often, summer races by without once stopping to actually look around and simply enjoy all the wonderful things that nature provides for us.  Now that I am knee deep into June and most of what needs to be planted is in the ground, it is time to simply enjoy a few weeks of all that is green, lush and growing.




More than knee high by the 4th of July



Carrots, Cabbage, Lettuce and Spinach



Potatoes



My Free Beans - they come up year after year without fail



Champion of England Peas



Hummingbird busy while I sit on the porch

From One Mother To Another

I had a friend link this to me today.  Listening to this woman's story is so much like my own with Mara.  I can't help but post it here.  The word needs to be spread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA&feature=player_embedded#at=1078

Please watch these 18 minutes of video....it just might save you from cancer and if not you, then maybe your child or grandchild.  And maybe....just maybe....it will change the way you shop for food and what you eat.

Black Gold

This was my breakthrough into organic farming.  While living in the city we had built a compost bin and then moved it with us when we came.  It was the starting point for us - from the dirt on up.  I have started and restarted this post about ten times now....not sure exactly why since it is quite possibly the best and most useful thing on the farm and one thing that I am constantly amazed by. But for whatever reason writing about it in any sort of understandable way is hard.  Most likely because it is entirely too simple.

Scraps of anything green and growing or dead and brown
Water
Air

Time

It's that simple. 

This is the recipe for dirt that Mother Earth has known for eons and we have since tried to make a science out of with no great success.  We make it entirely too complex.  You can spend a fortune buying organic compost at any garden store, or you can make it for free using all of the stuff that you throw out every day - the coffee grounds, the potato peelings, the apple cores, the old wilted flowers, the weeds that are the bane of every gardener's existence.  Just about everything that goes down the garbage disposal could be put to a better use as compost. 

Over the decades, since chemical farming came into vogue, scientists tried to figure out what the key ingredients were that plants needed to grow.  They came up with phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium as the three things that plants need to thrive and have since marketed it every possible way.  Nitrogen is the stuff that you see farmers carting around in the spring and spraying all over their fields and a mix of the three chemicals is what you will find in any bag of lawn fertilizer.  The thing they didn't realize is that even though they are supplying the three main ingredients, they are leaving out the micro ingredients that plants also need to survive. Micro nutrients are those small amounts of nutrients that plants (and animals) utilize to put the main nutrients to their best use.  We have slowly been depleting the soil of the micro nutrients for about 60 years now. 

It is similar to saying that all people really need to survive is fat, protein and carbohydrates without any thought at all to vitamins and minerals.  Without these micro nutrients none of the main nutrients get absorbed and utilized properly.  If you want an interesting and eye-opening breakdown of what I mean by all of this, Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food is a good place to start or even just typing in the words - "whole food supplements" in any search bar is likely to get you some interesting reads.  We humans try to break everything down to it lowest form, we look for the exact chemical that is responsible for preventing scurvy or rickets, for instance, and once found (Vitamin C and Vitamin D) we take those chemicals in excess to help ward off these terrible diseases without really understanding how they work or what other smaller chemicals might be there to help the system along.   It is like putting only gasoline into a car without any understanding of what oil and antifreeze are there to do.  Whole foods - like a whole orange- has many chemicals in it and many chemical interactions that take place that we have absolutely no understanding of that make it the perfect packet of Vitamin C known and yet we take out the Vitamin C to put into tablets and throw the rest of the orange away.

The same thing has happened to our dirt over time.  We kept the Potassium, Nitrogen and Phosphorus and threw the rest of the beneficial stuff out with the trash.....literally.

Composting is perhaps one of the easiest things to do and one of the most beneficial.  It is the crux of sustainable farming - we pull nutrients, in the form of plants, out of the soil....we need to put nutrients back into the soil.  What better way to do this than to use the used up plants themselves?

Any, and I mean any vegetation or things that were previously vegetation are fair game for a compost pile.  The only rule that I stick to is that you can't put anything meat based in the pile - no meat scraps and no droppings from animals that have been eating meat.  The main reason behind this is that it sometimes takes on a bit of a foul odor and it can definitely start to attract the local vermin to the area.

You need to have a pile of some size to get the whole thing going.  3 square feet is generally considered to be about the right size.  You can hold it all together with a ring of woven wire, or a fancy compost bin....or you can just pile it up in a heap of at least 3 square feet and let it go.

Wet it down until it is about as wet as a well wrung out sponge.  In the early spring, or when it is dry in the middle of summer, I will add about 5 gallons to the pile periodically during a dry spell to keep it going.

Turn the pile every three weeks or so to allow air to mix with the pile and voila!  Dirt!

There are a few things that I have learned to do over the course of several years of producing the best black dirt imaginable. 

• The water is really important.  It may sound crazy to water your compost bin, but it definitely speeds up the breakdown process.  
•  A metal stake through the center of the pile will let you know if it is getting hot enough.  When a compost pile really gets going, the internal temperatures will be around 150 degrees and even weed seeds will get cooked beyond the pont where they will germinate.  My method, using the metal stake, is rather primitive but it works well.  I know that when I pull out the stake and it is too hot to touch, the pile is cooking. 
•  If your pile isn't taking off and getting hot - add dirt!  You will read that you need to go to the garden store and pick up bone meal or compost starter, blah, blah, blah.  Everything you need to get it going is already in the ground - all the enzymes, all the beneficial bugs, everything - just add a few shovelfuls to the mix and it will help to get it going.
• You don't need to mix it into the soil - this is what worms are for and they are good at it!  They will make short work of incorporating any compost that you put around flowers or vegetables into the soil.
• You know when it is done and ready to be used when you can no longer identify any of the stuff that you threw into it.  If you can identify a few things, simply take those out and throw them back on the pile for a little more time.

Over the winter, I let it sit and by spring the bottom stuff of the compost bin is gorgeous and ready to be spread around the flowers.  Then I add in leaves left over from the fall, grass clippings, vegetable scraps from the kitchen, coffee grounds and filters, egg shells and any weeds that have made an appearance in the garden.  Mix it all up and add water.  By the time the potatoes are peeking up in early spring I have another batch of the black gold to be spread around them.  And so it goes all summer long - using left overs to make more soil to make more vegetables which leads to more left overs.  Whole food nutrition for the garden- and not one chemical needed.

Full Strawberry Moon

Every full moon of the year, in the Native American culture, has a name. June's is Full Strawberry Moon.  It is very aptly named.

Every year, around the first of June, the strawberries start ripening and by the middle of the month, I am more than ready for them to be done.  I love strawberries - there probably isn't a recipe that calls for strawberries that I don't like, but my favorite way to eat them is sun-warmed straight off the vine.

When we first moved onto the farm I found five strawberry plants huddled beneath the leaves of the rhubarb plant.  I moved them into the southeast corner of the garden so I could know where they were and not inadvertently dig them up.  I didn't expect much from five little scrub strawberry plants, but since that day they have been quietly attempting to take over the entire garden.  They and their offspring now take up one entire corner of the garden. 

That first year on the farm, since I had moved them, they didn't produce much at all.  The following year, I would get about one cup per day throughout the month, and so on until last night, as I stood amid the multitudes of strawberry plants watching the sun set in the sky and wondering if I would ever be able to stand upright again from picking for so long, I realized that I had easily picked a quart and a half of strawberries, and that same amount (or more) is on deck to be ripe tonight.

I didn't grow up in a family that stored food - my grandma would make jellies and jams in the summer to give as presents, but I never really took part in that endeavor other than to be the happy recipient of those jellies.  The whole canning thing, quite honestly, scared me.  I always had visions of somehow poisoning someone with a bad batch.  Visions of the evening news with a story of a family poisoned with botulism always made me cringe and shy away from anything to do with canning.  But, oh, those strawberries! I hated seeing them go to waste!  We could never eat all of them fast enough and, as good as they are, there are only so many different desserts containing strawberries and that you can make and consume fast enough.

Then,.... my inspiration.  You always find it in unusual places.  I went to visit some relatives and there,  placed on the table at dinner to be spread on the bread, was a small jar of strawberry jam that had been pulled from the freezer.  Freezer jam! It was amazing and I was immediately hooked - no boiling water canner needed, no scary thoughts of cooking it incorrectly and thereby poisoning my entire family!  When the producer of the jam was tracked down for the recipe, she said, "oh, I just follow the directions on the Sure Jell box."

I tracked down this mythical box in the grocery store, found among the canning lids and jars and other various supplies and purchased just one box to start.  The directions took a little getting used to, but eventually I had deciphered them enough to attempt my first batch of freezer jam.  Sugar , pectin, water, crushed strawberries, and a little time and I found myself the proud producer of 5 cups of strawberry freezer jam which, when opened in the deep dark days of January, just about make you cry with the delicious taste of fresh strawberries.

 Our production in the last several years has, along with the amount of strawberries, ramped up.  We no longer make it by the cup - we now make it in pint jars because we discovered that five kids all eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all year go through a lot of jelly very quickly.   After I had made strawberry jelly, I became braver and suddenly the peaches on the peach tree seemed like a good thing to try in a jam....I actually made some regular jam - the type you have to hot water can because peaches don't do as well as a freezer jam.  After that, the canning flood gates opened and suddenly everything seemed to have a method of preservation that could be handled with a few glass jars, lids and a big kettle.

Is it time consuming? - yep. Is it sometimes very messy? - yep. Doesn't it make the house really hot, standing over a hot stove in the middle of June, July and August? - yes.  Is it really all worth it?  - Absolutely!  I know that it would be very easy to go to a grocery store and pick up a jar of jelly, or a jar of pickles, or a can of pears, or tomato sauce, but there is something about knowing that I did this - I raised these tiny little strawberries up from the scrubs hiding under the rhubarb plants, I picked each one by hand, I washed, sliced, cooked and canned them all. (Well, actually my husband has taken a fancy to doing a lot of it now, so technically I can't say that I did it, but rather we did it, and last night my son got into the act as well).  Is it healthier? - Definitely!  Glass jars are completely inert - no plastics to leach off their toxic chemicals, and we reuse them year after year - the only thing we buy new are the lids so they are sure to seal well.  None of the produce we use has been sprayed with any chemicals which is not something that you can truly know about the canned goods you buy in the stores.  As I am hunched over picking berries, or standing over a hot stove for the third night in a row I think of how good it is to be able to produce our own food - food that will actually nourish the kids and may help to fight or ward off diseases.  Strawberries are one of the best food that you can eat for their nutritional value and health benefits, but due to the amount of chemicals that are sprayed on them commercially, it sort of negates the benefits.... unless you are eating at my house, where during the Full Cold Moon of December we will feed you fresh strawberry jam on homemade bread and dream of being up to our eyeballs in Strawberries in June.

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.