Dirty Work, Dirty Play

We're rearranging our garden for next year, which means dismantling seven of the raised beds and planting grass seed. Yesterday morning, Gwendolyn asked if we could work in the garden after breakfast. Micah piped up with his approval of the idea. So out we went. They love wheelbarrow work, because it means both moving dirt and riding to and fro in the empty barrow.

We've razed two beds and seeded them for next year:

We found a toad, petted it, held it, and followed it around in the grass for a while:

The dirt from the garden beds is going to fill in the earthen ramp on the north side of the back porch:

Micah spent a good half hour playing by himself inside the barrow:

His big sister spent that time discovering textures in the moist earth:

Both really like shovel work: cutting, lifting, and dumping:

Here is Minute 14 of the first 30-minute period this week when they occupied with same space without making each other angry:

What a blessing to work and play in the dirt with my children!

~ emrys

In Touch

A few weeks ago I took Gwendolyn out to cut back some of our overgrown bushes. After only a short time of watching me work, she wanted to try the hedge clippers. So I helped her put her small hands on the handles in the right direction and led the blades toward some snapdragons. (Snapdragons don't require much force to cut.) The clippers were too heavy for Gwendolyn to hold up, but if I bore the weight then she could manage to pull hard enough to cut the weeds. She remained quite focused and patient with the task, more so than I would have expected from a young lady who throws a fast tantrum when she can't get her arm in a shirt sleeve right away.

When I go out to check the garden in the morning I take Gwendolyn along. She helps to weed the squash beds, getting very dirty in the process. The carries the bucket behind me to pick strawberries and, today, early green beans. She knows which asparagus spears to grasp and how to break them off. (She also knows that they can be eaten right there in the lawn.) Soon she will know where tomatoes come from and how to pull up carrots from the soil.

I have some agendas for my daughter's education. One of them is for her to learn that food--ultimately all food--comes from the soil. I want her to understand that dirt--the stuff we wash off before meals and bedtime, the stuff we pave over with concrete, the stuff that looks lifeless and bland--is the substrate of life. I want her to know that no matter how advanced we humans become in areas of technology and medicine we still have a symbiosis with soil. I want her never to think that food "comes from" the supermarket in any broad sense. Behind every bunch of grapes in the produce aisle I want her to see a hillside in Chile or a vineyard in Ithaca. I want her to have a keen awareness that humanity cannot, strictly speaking, produce food for itself; God must grow food from the earth.

We are blessed to live in a rural community where the green of life grows up all around us: where weeds take over, alfalfa thickens on the curves of the land, and cows are milked for the cheese we eat. Wherever we live in the future, I want Gwendolyn to know about earth, and what it means to have one's hands in it.

~ emrys

Floral Migration

The south edge of our property has a sharp embankment bordering the road on which we live. It's not a pleasant stretch to mow or tend, so we plan to plant successive stages of day lilies to cover this zone. These flowers will dominate their section and produce attractive orange blossoms in midsummer.

To establish this band of hardy flora, however, the bushes that reside there now must migrate. Last summer I moved one of the few plants that Sara wants to keep--the peonies--from the bank to another bed she's cultivating. Here's the peony bush, in its original position (under the Queen Anne's Lace, marked by the blue shovel):

Two holes for the two halves of the uprooted peony, in the other flower bed:

The vacant lot left by the emigrant:

And the peonies (one become two!) in their new habitat.

We'll see this summer if they really took to their new home.

~emrys

Security Measures

When I think of a "shed," I think of a ramshackle building with no frills, used for housing items that don't care about comfort or convenience. I think of a building that freezes in the winter, becomes a hot-box in the summer, and never breathes until you open the door.

I want my shed to stay pretty minimal, but I also wanted my shed to breathe. So I cut two holes in the walls, to let a little air in and out:

But I also don't want my shed to be a haven for birds, squirrels, and insects. Not that I have anything against these woodland critters, but I figure that's why we have woodlands. (One caveat: I do have something against red squirrels. But I'm cool with most of the others.) Thus if I want the shed to breathe, I also need something to keep the critters out. To this end, I installed screening and trim. It worked for our attic; I hope it works for my shed.

Just a little frill for my little shed.

~emrys

In the Beginning

I'm tired of carting tools from the garage in front of the house to the yard and garden in the back of the house. Rarely do I need those tools in the front, but I have no place to store them out back. Plus, someday I'd like to get rid of the garage we have, since it has no solid floor and therefore holds moisture like a sponge. Out of these two circumstances birthed the idea of building a garden shed in the back yard, where lawnmower, weed trimmer, rakes, et cetera could be stored out of the elements and easily accessible.

So during my two weeks of vacation this summer, I hope to erect a shed using the rough-cut lumber harvested from our property last year. As the success of any building depends on its foundation, I decided to go with 6x6 lumber for the foundation posts. Here's the first one, against which the other three will be set:

In the background at right you can see the white plastic bucket on a stake, which marks the location of the second post. One down, three to go! Stay tuned.

~ emrys

Gardener In Training

GBaby is getting her Gardening 101 course this summer. She began by making sure she had the proper tools:

And then observed those more experienced:



She also was good at asking for help and assistance when necessary:

After an adequate time of observation, it was time to get busy!






And after a full day out in the garden playing in the dirt and water, it was really no surprise that she couldn't hold her head up by the time dinner was over:

Mowing Mayhem

There are a lot of things I can do with GBaby in tow. Some are easier than others. I decided that today I would give mowing the lawn a shot. I have a play pen for the back yard- I nice gate system that provides about a 6 x6 play area for an active toddler. If G could adequately articulate her feelings I think she'd say its a baby penitentiary- instead she just voices her lack of appreciation for confining boundaries. Loudly. And sometimes angrily.

Into the pen she went - it was equipped with shallow containers filled with water, balls and other sundry toys for her amusement and I set out to mow. As the mower fired up, so did G. I figured I'd give her a few minutes to settle and as I moved away from her I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, she was off exploring the toys and water. I got to the end of the yard and moved back towards her. G was still content. Went to empty the bag, mower stops. G wails. Ugh. I empty the bag at the far end of the yard, fire up the mower and head back to the side of the yard where G is confined. I can see the continued distress on her face so I killed the mower and moved up the hill towards her.

As I reached her I heard a noise and turned just in time to see the lawn mower rolling down the hill heading straight for the one area of the bank of the creek that is not overgrown with stuff to block it's decent into the creek. OH [insertbadwordhere]!

I take off running. G screams louder. The mower topples into the creek landing upside down.

I right the mower, empty the bag right there in the creek (thank you yesterday's thunderstorms) and haul the mower up the creek bank (yeah, I'm going to be paying for that tomorrow!) G is still wailing because now she's confined and mommy ran away.

I spent some time consoling the poor kid over juice on the back porch. We repeated the cycle (minus the mower taking a swim) a few more times and finally the back yard was mowed and my free spirit of a child was free to roam again-until she grabbed a handful of dirt where I have spinach planted!
~sjt

P.S. My gardening and kitchen adventures are all over at ThrivingMama. Check it out if it's your cup of tea.

Child Size Zucchini

Today I was out in the garden picking some broccoli and wading through the zucchini bed picking when I stumbed upon a nice child-size zucchini. Well at least the size of my child.

I'm pretty sure she's trying to figure out how to chew on it...

If I could just get my hands around it!

This one's headed to a friend, but I've put pureed zucchini and shredded zucchini in the freezer and have zucchini chips on the counter. We've also had zucchini in pasta and some breads and muffins. Here's more ideas if you have zucchini coming out of your ears.

Enjoy!

~sjt

Commitment

I figure it's a good sign that one is committed to a home when one starts planting trees on the property. A young tree stands about as far as possible from instant gratification.

In June, to celebrate Gwendolyn's arrival in our home, I planted a sweet cherry tree across the creek from the house:

Within the first two weeks, deer came and nibbled off all the shoots. Sigh. So I put a fence around it. I went out to check on it yesterday and discovered that some insect had not only decimated the shoots again, but had made the leaves look like old Swiss cheese. Double sigh. There's always next year.

In hope that perhaps the first experiences of the cherry tree will not become a trend, I planted a black walnut seedling gifted to me by our friends Richard and Phyllis. here it is, with fence immediately in place:

This tree stands in the middle of our yard, on the edge of a brown patch that used to be our strawberry bed. We have since moved the strawberries to a raised bed; so we hope that this circle of dirt will soon (in a scale of years) become mowable lawn.

One more (baby)step towards the yard we envision.

In thirty-five to fifty years, the black walnut may be good for quality furniture lumber. Just trying to think ahead.

~emrys

The Flip Side of Simplicity

(If you haven’t yet, scroll down and read Emrys’ entry “Simplicity” first.)

Measures of our living simply danced my mind earlier this week in the midst of a day that had me feeling like the Energizer Bunny in need of Ritalin.   I jumped tasks from hanging out a load of cloth diapers on previously mentioned laundry line, to pouring candles, to planting spinach and peas in the garden, to dishes and cleaning, with Gwen’s diapers, feeding and care in between.  

I choose to be a stay/work at home Mom (SAHM).  While being a SAHM is hugely rewarding, the pay isn’t much.  In fact, my “pay” is generally measured in money saved.  (but that’s a whole different post!) So while Emrys contributes the paycheck to our family, I contribute the time.  When I was working full time, my biggest complaint was that my employer owned me from 8:30-5:30 whether there was work for me or not, and I was not particularly enamored with the work I was doing.  Now my time is kind of my own and I can spending it doing things I enjoy (cleaning toilets excluded).  I take the time to figure out how to stretch our money as far as we can and many of these ways are encompassed in living simply and organically: breaking life down to the simplest level.  I’ve found that usually taking tasks down to their simplest level, requires less money, but more work. 

 Using the laundry lines means working with the weather to get the laundry dry, hauling laundry to the line(s), hanging it up, taking it down when dry and hauling it back inside.  I’ve saved on propane and electricity, spent more time and gotten a mild work-out in the process – so I guess I’ve saved on the gym too.

 Gardening is another of our choices that take us straight to our food source.  We plant seeds (or started plants) and watch our plants grow and reap the harvest.  Then take the harvest and process it for the freezer.  All taking the investment of time and creativity (see entries regarding tomato trees & troughs) while saving on the grocery bill as fresh produce will grace our table and tomatoes (in many forms), peppers, squash, pumpkin, green beans, broccoli and cauliflower will fill our freezer at a fraction of the grocery store price. 

 I enjoy cooking and have taken on the rule of thumb to cook once, and eat at least 3 times from the mess.  Usually this takes the form of making a large meal and feasting on leftovers a couple more times before it’s polished off.  Sometimes though, it’s being even more intentional and preparing a meal x3 or x4 and putting the prepared in the freezer for later.  So the ready to bake lasagna or enchiladas in the freezer aren’t from Stouffers and soups aren’t from Campbell’s but from our kitchen – and many times contain produce from our garden.

 I know that these methods of simplicity are not everyone’s cup of tea, and there are times in our house where simplicity falls to the side of practicality: “I am too tired to deal with this, laundry’s in the dryer and eat whatever you can find for dinner”.  This is one of the first “jobs” I’ve had where I go to bed at the end of the day thinking that I’m proud of what I do and truly enjoy the life we’ve been given here. 

Tomato Troughs: Take 2

On some good advice from a neighbor (thanks, Merv!), I decided to go for a more structurally sound design for the hanging tomato trough. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

~emrys

Signs of Spring & Weekend Happiness

Spring is slowly winding up and getting ready to pop.  The temperatures are reaching for the 60 degree mark.  The first sights, sounds and smells of spring have arrived in our corner of the world: daffodils & day lilies peeking up through the dark soil (a welcome sight), fertilizer trucks rumbling past our house (and dripping their load - unwelcome smells) and the most fun one is the sign that Frog Pond opens on April 3rd.   

Frog Pond is our local produce market/nursery that is loved by folks for miles around for their inexpensive produce and plants.  I cringe in the winter at the grocery store when I have to buy produce - since it's all shipped to our area, it's expensive.  Frog Pond gets some sort of deal because they usually undercut the grocery stores by at least 25%.  They also have plants started for the garden.  My tomato, broccoli, cauliflower and pepper plants for the garden are all 25 cents each.  When Gwendolyn gets a little bigger, our visits to Frog Pond will also include visiting the barn and pens where they have chicks, ducklings, rabbits, goats and pigs.  It's great little treasure in our corner of the world.    

Today I'm also excited that my folks are on the way her for Birthday Weekend 4.0 - Granny Nanny & Granddad to the rescue :).  For me this weekend is going to include a haircut that just hasn't fit on the schedule and making homemade ravioli.  I'm weird, I relax to a good cooking project and now that life is more full and relaxation comes in the form of the extra 3 minutes in the shower, I haven't had much play-time in the kitchen.  I've been wanting to play with the pasta-rollers and ravioli molds for quite a while and that kind of mess is much more enjoyable with extra hands around to help amuse the baby.

Springs springing and the grandparents are on the way - it's going to be a good weekend...

Upside-Down Tomatoes, Take Two

Our upside-down tomato project last year had some great success. Nine months later, our freezer still supplies us with marinara and diced tomatoes from the garden. However, in light of the failure of a few elements of the hanging structures, I've decided to make some modifications.

With the help of Sara (and Gwendolyn in the mai-tai) and an afternoon of 54-degree sun-lovin', I began construction of a tomato trough, which will replace two of the tomato trees from last year.

Here's one of the posts, bereft of its tomato-growing branches, but enjoying the addition of its delta-trough supports (patent may be pending, depending on whether I will need to defray increased insurance premiums):

The posts are about 11 feet apart. I am still benefitting from the generosity of friends who unloaded some 14-foot 2x8s (which are really only 1 1/2 x 7s, curse the nominal system). So the trough will over-hang the posts by a couple feet:

After all four boards that form the sides of the trough are up, here's what the cross-section looks like:

I need to cap the ends, make a bottom for it (with holes for tomato plants), and line it with something to help the wood from rotting too quickly. Then we wait for May, when tomato-planting season begins! Stay tuned for what are sure to be more adventures and mis-adventures in the great upside-down tomato saga.

~emrys

Last Call for Tomatoes

I realized that I have not given the final update on our upside-down tomato experiment this year.

And knowing that so many of you have waited with bated breath to hear the final results, I'm surprised I haven't received any emails demanding a final report.

However, my assumption that hordes of you are on the edge of your ergonomically-designed computer chairs goes unchecked. I know it is just courteous reserve that muzzles you from requesting a wrap-up to this year's tomato season. So, before the anticipation results in some sort of nasty hernia, here it is.

For providing a mass of tomatoes so great that we're left wondering how they will all fit in our freezer, the technique worked quite well. Sure, there were a few structural issues (especially with the 5-gallon buckets--see earlier post), but on the whole it worked. Tomatoes seem to enjoy growing upside-down at least as much as they do growing downside-down, and they bear much fruit. Any tomatoes we lost this year were due more to early frosts and late plantings as to finicky preferences for gravity.

I did not get a summary photo of the plants, hanging with full ripe tomatoes (and green ones in the wings) like a vineyard of love-apples waiting to burst. So this one has to do. Here is the garden, after today's first snow of the year, with tomato-trees bare of their lovely dangling branches.

The buckets I overturned on the spent garden beds, to be turned and mixed with manure next year.

And here is the crown and joy of our efforts: the beginning of homemade tomato soup in the crockpot (to which cream and basil will be added before blending). As you can see, the sweet red of juliette and roma tomatoes did come to our table from the upside-down tomato project. May the Author of All Tomatoes be praised!

For next year, I have some structural and architectural adjustments to make; then we look forward to even greater tomato projects and more marinara, basil bisque, and caprese!

~emrys

Tomato Tragedy

Experiments are done in order to test hypotheses. That is to say, we want to see if something is true--for instance, "Tomatoes can grow upside-down from hanging buckets and be productive." We might then conduct an experiment. If the tomatoes grew productively, then we would say the experiment was a success. The hypothesis was proven true. If the tomatoes did not grow productively, we would also say the experiment was a success. But we would have discovered that the hypothesis was proven false. (Or at least under these conditions; it's hard to truly prove something false.)

Our upside-down tomato experiment is, in many ways, a true experiment. I was therefore prepared for the tomato plants to grow bushy and grand, but produce no tomatoes. If you've been reading this blog, you know that we have had tomatoes already turning orange. However, I was not prepared for a failure in another realm of the experiment: structural integrity.

This afternoon I walked out into the garden and found this:

The handle on one of the buckets had failed: pulled out of the plastic that attached it to the side of the bucket. That bucket fell, which loosed the counter-balancing weight from the opposite bucket. The effect of the second bucket pulling on the unbalanced spar tore the wooden arm apart. Since it was the lower arm, the arm running across it was also dislodged from the post, and down came the remaining two buckets.

Sad day.

What have we learned from this, class? Do not use cheap buckets to hang your tomatoes. Use the free ones that your friend gives you after she's used all the laundry detergent out of them. (Thanks, Margery. You rock.)

Until next year, when I can work out a more sound structure for hanging tomatoes all summer, the four we could salvage (one fell from another post earlier) have been set up thusly:


Now they're Sawhorse Tomatoes. We'll see how they recover from the shock of bungee-jumping without a rope.

It's all about constant improvement. Create, adjust, improve.

~ emrys

The Strawberries' New Home

Our strawberry plants currently inhabit a circular bed ringed by a shallow layer of rocks. And over the past two summers we have noticed that birds and rabbits wreak havoc on our strawberries before we have a chance to pick them. So I decided to extend one of our garden beds to include a section for strawberries, that can be covered with chicken wire when the time comes.

To complete this project, I conscripted a few young men from our congregation, who braved the summer heat to help me out.

The posts have to be straight, and the correct height, else it will be harder to construct the sides and hinged top that I have planned. Here's Jordan checking the lines on our last post.

Here's Jordan and Matt attaching the sidewall for the raised bed.
And here's Matt and Jordan working assiduously to place the last sidewall of the future bed, while Sean does . . . something . . . is that "Peace out"?
When we get our topsoil and fertilizer, we'll be all ready to transplant those strawberries.
Thanks, guys!
~ emrys

Neerg Tomatoes

In case you were wondering (the guys at the local building supply store certainly are), the upside-down hanging tomato project goes well. Only one of the sixteen plants died of rot, and the other fifteen have produced green tomatoes. They will soon be red, I have no doubt. Romas and Juliettes ahoy!

~ emrys

Payoff

What a great gift we have: a home with a big garden in a climate that grows great vegetables. Praise the Lord! Here's a sample of what came in just today from our garden:

In there are carrots (why do the ones from your garden always taste better than any you can get in the store?), yellow squash, broccoli, cilantro, cauliflower, and green beans.

Today is the first day we picked green beans. But going out to the trellis I see the tsunami of them coming. Last year we let a few quarts go to seed on the vines because we had already picked so many. But this year I'm armed with the recipe for dill-pickled green beans. Thanks, Wakemans!

~emrys

Images from the Back Yard

The simple and unsupressable beauty of the day lily:

The hope and effort of pole beans:
The experimental upside-down tomatoes:
A radiant fan of broccoli:

Marching rows of corn, not yet knee-high:

Day lillies and Queen Anne's lace, leaning toward the sun:

~ emrys