Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Seriously. 

I can't pick everything up.

Sometimes you just gotta drag it.

This bale of straw was lucky enough to ride home in the back of my mother's car (we could close the hatch so straw wouldn't billow out behind my sedan and irritate people behind me...) and will become, in part, mulch, compost "browns" and bedding for the chickens. I love that first part when you cut the strings and the bale goes pwoof and is instantly 3 times bigger. I relish that moment like hitting a tennis ball in the sweet spot of the racket - it's the same sort of instant, completely ludicrous, self - indulgent bliss.
So much better than chocolate.
But I digress.
I am going to try hot composting - something I have never done before. I will be using the Your Farm in the City book by Lisa Taylor that I got and also a couple pages from Helen and Scott Nearings book The Good Life to build up the recipe. From what I can gather, I need to layer greens and browns with nitrogren fixing things, top soil and water. But learning from the Nearings, I'm going to put two poles straight down the middle to bring oxygen to the middle of the pile and speed things up. I'll be using my two compartment composting bin that I "created" (term used loosely - I'm no carpenter). I should be able to build, water and let it sit for 3 weeks, then take it apart and rebuild, moving the outside in, and let it sit for another 3 weeks and then rebuild again and then it should be good 3 weeks after that.
My previous method of composting was throw-it-in-the-corner-and-forget-about-it composting, which is nothing except Lindsey being lazy. Which is super fun and really easy, but I need to start generating more compost so it's time to get off my ass and make this a reality.
So I'm going to start now.
Whoohoo, Compost!!

Homemade Chocolate Sauce

 

Recipe is over on Urban Homesteading Page.

Thanks DIY Natural!!

Basil x 3

This is my third time out with basil. I think. It might be number four. I definitely know it's number three.

And I don't even particularly like pesto. Or the strong taste of basil.

It's more like a revenge planting. The first couple of times the basil got eaten or killed by some odd mildewy scourge. So I replanted. And replanted.

And the third time, as I scattered tiny basil seeds over the flats, I told it that I was gonna win. The mildew would not win. I would win. I would have basil this season if I had to grow it indoors and hold hands with it all season.

Cripes.

But, alas, there are small starts, again, so out they go into pots and into the hands of fate. Or mildew. Or bugs. Or whatever the hell keeps eating my basil!

However, the dill is going gang-busters. Didn't I say it would grow out of someone's ear given half  a chance?

Gardener Turned Bad

In the Northwest we can get surprised by really warm days that pop out of nowhere.

This was the case yesterday where, after a slew of overcast, rainy and otherwise dismal days, we were blessed with a brilliantly sunny day with temps in the 80's.

Which is rad if your grilling. Not so rad when your are a tender herb seedling that yo' mama has left outside to harden off.

Thusly:

Dill and sunflowers to be exact. And only about half of them made it.

I have found that starting herb seeds under the grow lights this late in the season (so mid June on) makes them leggy and unhappy. But starting them outside takes to long. So either I need to be more patient, or pay more attention to make sure the starts don't get leggy and thus die when hit with direct sunlight. Some of them actually baked to the plastic. Not good.

This year because of the damp and the cold, all the seeds are germinating very slowly. All the sunflowers I direct seeded two weeks ago have rotted in (I dug up some out of curiosity) or been dug up by the little rodent something.

I put the trays in the hoops house, which is listing dangerously to the starboard side, and just waved some magic JuJu over them (oh, and some water) and soon some of the starts were perking up again. Hooray.

The Chicken Gauntlet

It is a beautiful day here south of Seattle. Mild and warm with a touch of cool breeze under denim blue skies. You can see, off in the distance, the last skitterings of ocean clouds burning off in the distance.

And on that note, I give you:

The Chicken Gauntlet

The girls decided to jump the fence yesterday and run helter skelter around my neighbors yard. (The nice one, not the one with the annoying dogs). I had to pack up the kiddo and chase them around her beautifully manicured backyard (trying not to notice how much they were shitting all over it).

Eventually, out of breath and red in the face, I got the wayward ladies back over the fence.

Where I then proceeded to wrap twine around the trunks of the tree that they were using for their escape and affix those to the fence. What resulted is a twisted looking spider web of twine, all in the hopes of keeping them safely in my yard.

I then proceeded to take stock and talk to the ladies face to face:
You are not laying eggs yet. No pressure, but come on.... *strike one*
You are escaping over the fence and brutalizing someone's very expensive expanse of weed....*strike two*
I let them know they have to start redeeming themselves and just looking pretty isn't enough.

Adventures in Horse Shit

~or~

Holy Horse Shit, Batman.

I could not choose a title and so you get both. You're welcome.

I looked on the good old craigslist - home of "massages" and missed connections and all sorts of humanity's seedy soft pink underbelly stuff and found, lo and behold, free manure - u-haul, u-scoop.

Ever being the adventurist, I set out with  my daughter to go get the free poo. Aged poo. With a hint of cedar shavings and all the pink worms you could shake a stick at.

I like to think, being a person who works in mental health and has to go to questionable locations somewhat regularly to check up on people who haven't gotten, taken, or have sold their anti-psychotic medication, that I have a pretty good sense of situations to avoid. I trust my gut and I know how to put myself in a room, how to put someone into a wall, and how to subdue someone who is being unruly (thank you inpatient psychiatric at Western State Hospital for all your useful tools!) I feel that I make pretty good decisions and as a testament to that, I have never been assaulted or otherwise accosted and I have been in some ruff areas.

Lindsey, why are you talking about this?

Well, it seems as if I chose the worst, run down,  nasty-ass, last crack farm on the left to go pick up poo from. But I didn't feel at all afraid of the joint. I had my stun gun and I have a safety person who I talk to on the phone while I'm meeting the people. I also give my safety person the address and phone number before I get there. I'm pretty much covered. Plus the lady I talked to sounded nice, so I thought what the heck.

What a surprise! Terrible looking farm (when bad things happen to good land) - over grazed, stressed rocky landscape with horses picking their way around giant ponds of standing water and just a general sadness to it. But the people where super nice, the guy showed us around the stalls where they breed peruvian horses and he was not in the least bit scary - just a country guy showing off his best horses. Totally cool. I let my daughter touch some of them, and she was thrilled.

Then he showed me to the mound of poo. MOUND of poo. Giant, heaping small mountain of poo. Good God, I had to scale that thing and dig out buckets full - but I never wavered.

With my kiddo firmly planted in her carseat and locked in the car 10 feet away (windows open a bit, I assure you, I'm very humane) I proceeded to dig up the best composted horse manure I have ever seen while she happily paged through books and played with her dolly's. 15 minutes of hard labor warranted 3 buckets and 2 bags full of black gold. And the dude said to come back whenever - just give him a call and he'd make sure to leave the gate open for me.

Hooray! For those of us suburban locked people with no ready access to the poo, this is a windfall for me - somewhere close that has a never ending supply of good composted shit for my garden and my compost bin.

My H is so lucky that all it takes it buckets of aged manure to make me happy. SO lucky.

My New Shoes!

Wow. What an exercise in narcissism when you think people want to hear about your shoes.
But wait. Seriously. These are absolutely AWESOME garden shoes!
Comfortable, flexible, lightweight.
Plus they are easy to slip on but have a back strap for your heal so they don't fly off when you are, say, dodging a bee and tripping over an over-coiled soaker hose.

I have to admit that it was my Mom who got these for me - mostly because the ones I coveted where her pair and after I wore them I swore I had to have them. But they are at a nursery in North Seattle and I can't ever get up there. So my Ma was nice enough to do it for me. Thanks Ma!
They are called Sloggers (which makes me think of Donald Rumsfeld...long, hard slog...geddit?) and you can wear them with the sole insert or not. Also, they come in a crazy bunch of colors...the website is www.sloggers.com. Apparently there is quite an array of products on their site. Definitely worth a look and totally not expensive.
For those of  you in the midwest and east coast, it does say that the material on the shoe can't be out in 125 degree temps or more, so....*wink*
Only drawback that I can see so far is that the removeable sole wiggles a bit, since it's not affixed to the bottom of the shoe, but that's minor compared with the awesome pillowy comfort that greets your feet every time you slip them on.
I want to wear them all the time!

Succession Planting

There is a great post by Willi Galloway over at ReNest about succession planting - and for a scatterbrained thinker like me, it's easy to see what needs to go in when what has been there needs to come out.

I have a bare patch in one of my beds in between the lettuce and the spinach. I tried to do carrots and radishes, but this year something ate them down at the ground and I couldn't get a head of it, and hence lost all the carrots and radishes. I think I may start them again, knowing how cool our spring has been here in the Northwest and not really anticipating a lot of warm sunny days.*

I am also smitten with a variety of cabbage that is small and fast growing, but can't find it anywhere and I haven't been able to get online to Renee's Seeds to get it ordered. So I think that's a non-starter.

I seeded up three flats of herbs - mostly because I over bought this year and I know I can always dry them and I use herbs a lot in my cooking, so it's not a big deal. I worry that I won't have enough afternoon shade for my Cilantro and may have to sell off some of the starts, but I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it.

And yes, those are my Grad School Textbooks holding up my seed flats.

 I also, and I doubt that anyone wants to know this, discovered that I can make little tags for my flats out of garage sale stickers and pieces of old straws. I am notorious for not labeling the flats, and then trying to identify plants based upon what they look like when they spring their second set of leaves.
So, uh, I made a pact with myself that I was going to stop doing that. Hence, the tags made out of straw and garage sale stickers.



*I say that knowing that if we do get some sunny days, I'll be happy with the sun but might lose the plants to bolting. But if we don't get sunny days, I'll be happy with the plants just the same. Win-win, you might say.

Free Hazelnuts

I'm a bonafide tree hugger.
I don't make excuses for it and think it's funny when people use that term as a slam against someone else because, you know, we need trees to breathe and I think breathing is pretty cool, so I wear "tree hugger" like a badge of honor.
How many times, as I stare towards the sounds of rampant chainsaws in the distance do I mutter (or shout, but whatever) the phrase "hey, we need those to breathe, moron!"?
So naturally the next step would be to join the Arbor Day Foundation - give 'em $10.00 and they'll plant a couple of trees (or 50) for you.
I joined many years ago and they are always trying to send me free trees, which I think is super cool, but I have no place for trees, so I just ask them to spend my tree money to plant the trees themselves. And they do. And we all lived happily ever after. 
Then I got a notice in the mail that they were trying to revive the hazelnut population in the United States and would I like 3 free hazelnuts?
Uh, yeah.
They came earlier in the year and I planted them up in little pot but didn't expect much out of them. Mostly because when you get "trees" from the arbor day foundation, they look like little twigs. They are delivered with the mail; that'll give you an idea how little they are.
But they are doing beautifully (well, two of them are, the other is wilting and I don't know why.)

 I'm sure I won't get any nuts off these for a long time, but I like the idea of getting free stuff and I have enough space to cultivate the hazelnuts, so It's pretty much a win-win.
Anyhow - the link for the free Hazelnuts is HERE, and even if you don't want them, it's good to give the foundation anyway. They are working tirelessly to restore native populations of trees across the county and do really good work.
Plus, you get a newsletter and free swag in the mail.
Tree Hugger, over and out.

Raw Things Controversy

I was gonna post about my compost bin.
But not anymore!
In typical alarmist fashion, American opinion writers, news organizations, and other outlets are latching onto this E.Coli outbreak like a hobo on a ham sandwich.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/10/berezow.e.coli.raw.food/index.html?eref=igoogledmn_topstories

Which is to say, everything is now dangerous to grow, sell or consume. Including the old standby whipping boy, Raw Milk.
Oh, Raw Milk. How could you be so raw?
Even though we consumed you for hundreds, nay, thousands of years with minimal incident.
Yeah, sure, people got sick, but they also got dengue fever, cancer, heart disease, and were crushed by falling rocks.
Sickness and death happened and it was a way of life.
But then the industrial revolution happened, manufacturing moved to the city, people became more centralized (generally) and consumption of goods went from milking our own cows and drinking it right away, to milking someone else's cow and drinking it two weeks later.
Is it any wonder that people got sick from E.coli?
So we fixed it, and started pasteurizing everything. Making it dead makes it better! Yum!
But, guess what? People still got sick. From giardia, and cryptospiridium in bad water, to parasites and salmonella in salads, meat and other food products.
Because we moved away from our land and decided to be industrial and put someone else in charge of our food and water. No one's fault, certainly, just how it was.
I am someone who likes raw milk, but can't get it around where I live for a price I can afford, so we drink Horizon Organic and call it a day. Not a big deal.
I guess this post is a verbal flouncing in the face of over-regulation. People probably got sick in Germany (and it is tragic, I feel for them. I can't imagine losing a family member b/c of someone else's unsanitary business practices) b/c feces and urine from feed lot's or sanitary waste facilities permeated the water that fed the fields that grew the crops that Germans ate.
It's not fair.
But it is the face of modern technology.
The things that were meant to save us time, energy and injury can sometimes be the things that harm us.
I think I get exasperated with our overarching American goal of making everything as sanitized and squeaky clean as humanly possible. The yards must be perfect, the children must be perfect, the milk must be perfect and if anything falls remotely short, total overhaul and abstinence is the only way to fix it.
Just seems like a fancy bit of overkill.
Let's retain our composure, peeps, and remember that most people eat raw, dirty or ridiculous things everyday and don't get sick at all.
My daughter ate a dried cranberry off the floor the other day.
No harm, no foul.

Doubt

 

Sometimes, when I'm at my practice or working in the yard or just generally being in the world, I have these moments of doubt. 

I worry that my practice isn't as glitzy and glamorous as the one down the hall. Then I remember that I'm  not glitzy or glamorous. They are Whole Foods. I'm Trader Joes. They are Macy's. I'm Target. I am a certain kind of therapist, with a simple, straightforward style who would rather spend time with my family and my garden then work all the time to make a little extra money. And my practice is going strong.

So I must remember who I am.

Occasionally, when I look at my thrown together garden, scratched out of the sod bed by bed and ringed by slightly out of plumb structures (hoop house, compost bins) I feel less serious than a gardener with pretty raised beds, store bought composters, and glass greenhouses. But is our bounty any different? No. It's the same. And I spent less money putting it together, more time salvaging objects to be reused, and consequently leaving less landfill waste in the process.

So I must remember who I am.

It's hard to remain cognizant of our own styles, I think. Some of us, including myself, may get lost in the "maybe I should do's" as we look at what other people are doing. I don't know if this means we are cattle, always following the lead grazer who looks the strongest or if it's just a perpetual case of the green envies but it could be.

I don't know if this is our natural, biological urge to compete and thus see what we are doing as somewhat deficient or lacking so much so that we think we need to change it to "get somewhere" or die. Maybe.

So I want to take a minute to recognize everyone who is living the way they want, regardless of whether it's cool or glam or popular. Hail to the people with mixed up furniture, old cameras, and cobbled together gardens. Hail to the people who are going their own way and casually becoming the kind of person (or family!) that feels right to them.
Hail!
And ride on, you crazy outsiders!

Splendor in the Grass

Stinky - the 23 lb cat, enjoying some quiet time under the lilac tree.

 Yesterday was one of those gorgeous Northwest days that leave even residents in awe. Warm, slightly muggy but with a good breeze, sun peeking in and out of wispy clouds.
All you can hear are birds singing, lawnmowers going and the sound of the Mariners game on the boob toob.
Absolute heaven.
I, of course, took advantage of my H's vacation to work out in the garden for several hours during "prime time" (read: the time in between naps. Almost unheard of.) while he corralled the tot and relaxed.
I got all of my squash in - lemon squash, red butternut, and all of the pumpkins (this year I bought a mix of white and small golden pumpkins - we'll see how that works.) All the rest of the pole beans (hyacinth moonshadow, purple podded pole) and the Sugar Ann's and Golden Wax beans (MY FAVORITE).
I also, wielding my mighty SOS (secretary of state or pick ax digger thingie) dug up a whole new bed and elongated another to accommodate some herbs and squash. I'm hoping the herbs, dill and cilantro, will grow faster than the squash and will be ready to pull when the squash is just getting to the crazy big stage.
I sometimes just direct sow the herbs into the beds, rake 'em in, and water well. This year I did that, but will also start some indoors just to make sure. With an herb like dill, you can't really go wrong. The stuff would grow out of someone's ear if given half the chance. 
The squash and pumpkins are such heavy feeders I amended super well with compost and will probably go rustle up some well rotten manure to truly get the plants going well. I added some vegetable food, as well. I figure you can't have enough nutrients when it comes to the heavy feeders! They are such hogs.
Then, sunburnt and feeling slightly crispy and headachy - did I mention we are not used to all this sun??? - I escaped inside with an iced coffee and a nice shower.
And to this day, I submit that there is nothing that feels as satisfying as taking a long shower after hours in the garden. When I can actually see the dirt going down the drain, then I know I'm clean! Clean, clean, clean!

Chicken Science Project

I'm out of hay, so I decided to line the nest boxes with grass. Big, tall, long grass straight from the yard.
Like this!

 I do not know if the ladies will take to it, but It's worth a shot. I figure - grass is just green hay, with roots and bits of dirt and yummy grubs and other organisms attached. Who wouldn't like it?!?

As if to illustrate how long our grass is, let's see who can spot the pug in this picture....

Lindsey, why don't you cut it?
Yeah, I know. I will. That's on the docket for this weekend.
But cutting the lawn is not fun, and transplanting peas, playing in the sun with my daughter, and visiting friends is MORE fun, so, you know....priorities and all.

The Art of Living Gracefully - Suburban Syle

Things you cannot do in suburbia:
1) Go outside naked.
2) Yell at your plants and look sane.
3) Yell at your chickens and look sane.
4) Not mow your lawn.
5) Dig too deep down, lest you hit a water pipe. Yikes.
6) Leave hay where anyone can see it.
7) Drive home with said hay that is sticking out of the back of your four door sedan and leaving a trail of golden straws that leads Right. To. Your. House. Whoops.
8) Make a hot compost pile too close to your neighbors bedroom window.
9) Make a chicken run too close to your other neighbors living room window.
10) Dream too long or in too great of detail about moving to the country. Thanks to the full nelson the stock market and a bunch of greedy bankers has us home owners in, that dream won't be happening anytime soon.
11) Did I mention you can't get naked in the back yard?*

The nice part about our property is that it's a corner lot in an older neighborhood with over a 1/4 acre of space. Huge lot, little house, lot's of backyard and front and side yard space. So. Lot's of space for a hoop house and chickens and a respectable pea patch of which I'll be expanding this year even more.

So I guess living gracefully in the shadow of some dreams left undone means embracing my current circumstance and learning to like it. Not LOVE it. But be content in it. Living gracefully means paying attention to my  neighbors and being kind and thoughtful about said garden accoutrements when I am placing them around the property. Also, carving out a little piece of suburban homestead goodness in any which way I can.

My favorite line of all time? Get busy living or get busy dying. Anyone know where it's from??

That's how I try to run my life. Get busy living or get busy dying.

I'll choose the living. If only on my paltry 1/4 acre!

*Last week, while stringing chicken wire for a new run, I found that I had a shirt full of little winged green bugs. So naturally I took my shirt off to brush them out and brush my hair out and squeal in disgust after I found one in my ear and then I looked up in time to see a neighbor drive by. All round eyes and question marks. Don't tell me how hot I am. I know how hot I am. Especially in gardening gloves.

New Posts

New posts over in Urban Homesteading and Chickens - go take a look!
~Lindsey

Seedlings on Crack

Just saying that the grow light system has produced some bean and squash seedlings that appear to be smoking crack when I'm not looking.
Gangly and top heavy. Interesting.

Hilarious.

I actually used leftover paper cups from some sort of function that we had a while back to grow the seedlings. And some of them were used. My H definitely rolled his eyes on that one- "Hey, don't pull 'em out of the trash! Gross!" I assured him that most people had only used them once (like, literally had taken one drink from the cup) and then thrown them away and that it was fine. I also told him to grow up. But whatever. I rinsed them out, get off my back.
So. Used cups and recycled 4 inch pots (I had quite a stack at the start of the season, not so much now!) and lot's of happy bean and squash starts. I need to move them away from the grow lights before they grow up and wrap themselves around the actual bulb and bring the whole structure down.
I don't have much space for potatoes this year. I have never really had luck with them, so I'm feeling a bit jaded. I got some california whites and will put them in the two tires I have languishing in a corner of the pea patch:

 

I actually got these tires for free by stopping by one of those tire yards. You know, where they are all piled up and you wonder - wow, what are they using all those tires for? I'll tell you! Potatoes! *Not really.*

I actually just pulled up and asked for wide tires and they gave me two for free. Whoot!

I do know that I'm supposed to plant them around the perimeter of the tire. I will cut the California Whites up so I get multiple eyes on each and stick three eyes to a tire. The rest I will plant in an extra bed that is not doing anything right now and maybe cover it with straw. I think I actually screw up the watering of said potatoes, so I will try to get that right this year.

Speaking of water - does anyone really like unfurling a brand new soaker hose? Pain in my....