Category Archives: sweat

The Mother of All Colanders is holding four pounds of elderberries.  Fortuitously, the wine recipe I used had called for exactly four pounds of berries.  And yes, it is necessary to wear gloves when harvesting and destemming them; they are messy!

When you read this, my one full week of vacation will have ended and my heinie will be warming my work seat.  Sigh.

Of course my vacations involve no vacating, nor really any sitting at all.  And I almost never do take a whole week off:  I just usually dribble the two-week allotment out over the course of the year, granting myself a three- or four-day weekend here and there or as Tom’s art junkets require.  This year was different.  We did some structural work to one of our outbuildings and needed a full week to do it.

Pictured with some of its victims

It’s been years since I got out my Sawzall (reciprocating saw).  Nothing satisfies more than the polite buzz of that saw tearing through something:  without the plaintive whine of the cordless saw, the zip-zip of the chop saw or the quasi-authoritative whir of the table saw, the Sawzall just gets the job done, quietly, with spooky effectiveness.  Now I am wondering if it will again be years before it’s put to use.

Structural crap aside, I did practically wear out the knees of my work pants while weeding the garden paths.  It’s been such a year (you know the ones) wherein one must shuck all unnecessary nonsense in order to simply keep the cogs of the machine well-oiled and turning, and this summer it meant I couldn’t attend to the garden paths as I would like. (Of course, had I had the 25 yards of woodchips required to cover those paths, weeds would not be a problem, but, well, it’s an off-year for the tree-cutting crews around here.)  The garden beds themselves, though, of course are weed-free; a girl needs her standards.

Princess of Pigweed, I would say to myself while creeping on those knees.  Professor of Plantain, Duchess of Dandelion.  Shepherdess of Sheep’s Sorrel, Priestess of Purslane, Lady of Lambs’ Quarters:  the irony that the majority of the weeds I was pulling were edible was not lost on me.  Bursar of Burdock, Contessa of (inedible) Crabgrass.   Luckily, the week had been a wet one, and the weeds came out in clumps, few tools required.  And as I pulled, I marveled yet again at how strong my old arms and back remain.  I can do this for another fifty years, I thought, which would bring me to 95, sweaty and muddy and happy; more wrinkled, more gray.  I am sure lifting beams and wrangling posts and heaving rafters won’t be in my future fifty years from now, but…milking a goat and pulling some path weeds?  Not a problem, no sir.

The jam convention thusfar:  roasted garlic, apricot, strawberry, three berry (strawberry, cherry, raspberry), and some culturing buttermilk on the kitchen counter

Gosh:  who knew taxes were the third rail of garden blogging?  What social scab shall I pick next:   Capital punishment?  Religion, maybe?

In all seriousness, these last two posts have been fun? something for me to think about, and I enjoyed your responses to them.  All I am really trying to say in both is “do what you can, can what you do,” and hopefully others can benefit from your home-grown goodness too.  So many of our problems are beyond our control.  Our weeds (mostly) and our own small steps toward self-sufficiency and teaching and wide-eyed learning are definitely in our control.  So, in the Hebrew then, amen:  meaning, so be it.  Do what you can.

And it is with wide-eyed wonderment that my old eyes see things when I go through the gardens or henyard accompanied by a small-ish child.  Even without such a companion, the garden world is plenty inspiring.  Add a goat in milk and the process of changing that milk into food and I am agog, and pleased.  Pleased, and worried, as there is so much!  This brand-new month of August hangs heavy with the fecundity of the farm:  the babies, the leaves, the weeds, some bugs and all that food!!  Do you have enough time to deal with it all and still sleep at night?

There’s wide-eyed, and there’s wild eyed.  Unbelievably, our flightiest chicken, Pauline, is now a mom.  Her chick brings the chick total to 38 for the year.

Mama Pauline with Jellybean

Granted, it’s new for us, Tomato Season.  It’s only Sunday that there were enough tomatoes to harvest for dinner.  Most of gardening and farm-type living is doing this exact thing:  treading water until the deluge.  The weeds can be attended to now, but soon, they can wait.   And then, all that canning.  And then, it ends.

Amen.  And let us feast.

The first tomato dish is probably also the easiest:  dump hot pasta atop finely chopped garlic, onions, tomatoes and torn basil.  Add olive oil and salt and pepper, splash of Balsamic, then mangia.

Penny is barking mad!

Sorry all.  I am not quite sure what happened but my gmail account has been compromised.  I can’t access it and won’t be able to do so for 24 hours or so.  Then, well, we’ll see what damage has been done.

Spooky stuff!  My apologies.  Even when you have high firewalls, I guess it doesn’t always work.  I have no contacts in that email account; the virus seems to have contacted everyone through dint of my emailing or replying to people via that account.

Most assuredly, I am still whiling away the days here in Michigan.  Here’s our beach two nights ago.

Ripe for the picking

It requires a pair of scissors…

…and an excited and toothless child to harvest and then eat it

Get out the sunscreen, beach chair and the trashy novels!  I will be taking a break from blogging for the summer.  Expect maybe one post a week from me, hopefully every Monday.  (Psst:  put this blog in a reader if you don’t wanna miss anything.)

Of course I realize this is a bad time to quit the blah-blah if you might be in the beginning stages of making your own masonry oven, making your own cheese or making your own booze, as these are all things that are happening in real time at this little farm.  Having one’s own backyard greenhouse, chicken coop, and vegetable garden:  continue to consider me your biggest cheerleader!  Really, shortening the food supply chain to “you” and “yard” means lightening your carbon footprint considerably…and it’s fun.  Trust me on this.

I will leave you with a few favorites from the (yipes! 900-odd post deep) catalog.  As ever, if there’s something you wish to learn about I have probably covered it in some form or another so make good use of the “Search” box up above.  Make free use of my email as well as I do love hearing from you and am more than happy to answer any burning questions you might have.  But otherwise, have a fun summer!

On fear of food

On life without the had-boughtens

I am the bridge

Call me a peasant

This I believe

About 90% of vegetable gardening is merely keeping your eyes open.  I’d say another 5% is actual “work” and 5% is harvesting and storing but really, all that “puttering around in the garden”?  It’s entirely necessary.  It’s field work!  It’s direct observation!  Even with a glass of wine in my hand, I am WORKING, people.

And it is through direct observation that I realize my darned greenhouse seedlings are never ever gonna grow past the stubby 2″ phase unless I do something to stop the munching damage caused by the sowbugs.  I can’t do anything about the sowbugs barring absolute war so…I employ a simpler strategy.  In this instance, entrapment.

The caramel-colored blob is this year’s barrier method.  And “OB” = “Orange Banana,” a delectable paste tomato.

Last year I mounted an office-supplies war with indifferent results (the greenhouse was open-ended thus wind-riven; these collars up and flew away if not simply apart).  This year, I applied the stuff normally applied to tree whips (sapling fruit trees) to prevent girdling by other, equally hungry insects.  [It’s called Tanglefoot; it’s a gooey waterproof paste of wax/oil; used to be made in Grand Rapids but like so many Michigan companies it’s up and gone away.]  Can’t say it won’t stop the bugs from decapitating the seedlings below the point of the goo, but it’s something.  Now, I stand back and watch.  And sip.  And watch some more.

I have said it before:  in matters of taste, there is no argument (De gustibus non est disputandum).

Now having said that, let me tell you about something I like!

All tools are personal things.  What works for you won’t work for me, and vice-versa.  And after early experiences, I have long maintained a Do Not Buy policy for my own garden toolshed.  I learned that I was wasting my money AND precious tool-storage space by succumbing to every short-handled tool whim.  I always used what I liked, and what I liked was never the new-fangled thingy I thought I needed to have.

Well!  After years of coveting, I broke my rule and bought this tool.

It does look positively murderous:  like the game of Clue, Mr. Green did it in the garden with the Korean Ho-mi!

It is the BOMB.  Seriously.  I have never planted potatoes faster, or planted peas with such ease.  Like all new things, you need to learn how to use it.  My only criticism is that the handle is overly large.  I purchased it from the stalwart folks at A.M. Leonard:  I can only guess (if it was they who made it that is) that those swarthy Germanic Ohio boys have bigger hands than my dainty blistered Irish ones…and certainly my hands aren’t much smaller than those gardeners of peninsular eastern Asia, from whence the design comes.  No matter.  There still is no ONE garden tool I turn to, and this one isn’t it either, so the diameter of the handle doesn’t bother me enough to have it changed.

I am glad to have added it to the collection.  And, goodness knows, it does look intimidating.  I think we can all agree about that.

I am not one to take myself overly seriously.  I also gave up a life of stress an eternity ago, it seems, when I left my city job behind.  However, every once in a while I will have a bout of “get it done” farm-related insomnia!  Like, ohgosh wouldn’t it be great if I could take two days off of work to at least get caught up on my to-do list?

And then I have weekends like last weekend.  It was a weekend in which I get so many things crossed off that I realize…my list is probably not long enough!

But, two non-weekend days off does sound nice.

Hard to tell, but the grape vines are pruned:  I always seem to leave more on the ground than on the trellises.  Number One at the top; Number Two at the bottom.

The kids really don’t help much with the trimming pickup, but they think the tractor is cool.  Number Two in the driver’s seat, Number Three (bottle baby) riding sidecar.

Kids are great as dance partners with your own kid, though.  That’s little Number Three.

And there are bunnies to pet.  It’s amazing how quickly they are growing; they’re a month old.  And:  we have six of the things!

Here’s the girl holding a baby and Daddy Dum-Dum to show you how big the babies will eventually get; not big in other words, as they’re Mini-Rex rabbits…and terribly soft.

And Ruby is officially on lock-down under the Chicken Tractor, complete with doghouse and 9 eggs.  Earl is verklempt!

Like I don’t have enough to do, I have decided that 2010 is the year I will make wine too.

In my aim to make this a full-service farm, wine has intimidated me.  I have said for years that indeed I will do something more readily enjoyable (for grownups anyway) with those 50 grapevines.  And wine as we all know certainly doesn’t start and stop with grapes:  dandelion wine, anyone?  Strawberry, blueberry?  Plum?  Well.  The process intimidated me, that is, until another D.I.Y. someone I’m getting to know kind of stopped, looked me up and down and said, well, why AREN’T  you making wine, considering everything else you can do?  It’s easy, he said.

Easy!  Well, we’ll see about that.  In the meantime, Craigslist is again my friend, this time with finding glass carboys.

(Now I am wondering if anyone’s ever made wine out of winter squash….)

Pine (Remembering Andrew Sie), by Thomas Allen, 2009

Not much happening on the garden front, so I thought I would share art stuff.  Tom’s got a portfolio in the January issue of Harper’s.

You can see more of his work here.

Sunday found me dodging the raindrops of a late autumn thunderstorm.  What’s with the fireworks, I ask that cloudy sky, don’t you know there’s outdoor work to be done? I got doused for my impertinence.

Plan B had me harvesting the last of the calendula blossoms for another batch of balm.  “Make balm while the rain falls,” then, became the activity of the afternoon.  I upped the quantity of beeswax considerably in this batch:  I enjoyed the easy spreading of the first recipe but this batch is solely for gifts, and I don’t like complaints about greasiness.  (Unbelievably, yes, people tell me to my face that they didn’t like to use that last batch, as it didn’t melt into their hands with the rapidity that alcohol-based commercial products will do.  This either means that I am the type of person who won’t take offense, or this means I have some loose-lipped, patently unworthy friends:  you be the judge.)

Really, there’s nothing easier than growing calendula:  once you have it, you always will.  And if you can melt oil in a pan and grate a bar of beeswax, this, too, can be yours.

And the consistency:  it’s up to you, so…no complaints!

Little Edie for scale:  bean bed with monster weeds

November!  It’s time for stews, simmering stock and lots of roasts. It’s also my last chance to put the garden to bed.

We have about a month before we can expect snow in earnest, which is good:  that garden is still a weedy mess, I confess.  Despite my usual routine of grass mulch and close plantings, the perennial weeds like dandelion and thin-leaved plantain will take hold between plants, and it is only now that the plants are gone that I notice.  So I am on a rigid routine of hand-weeding beds and paths, about 6 a day, before I cover them deeply in compost and grass clippings and leaf mulch.  All 26 outdoor beds will be covered about 5-6″ thick with this stuff, and some beds, like the cardoon/artichoke beds, will be covered by a foot or more.

Deep cover on the beds serves two purposes.  One, for the beds with winter crops on them (leeks, root veggies), the mulch prevents frost from settling in deeply…at least for a while.  The second reason for deep mulch is for the benefit of the soil itself.  The worms and other creatures will consume the mulch, tunneling through it, tilling it into the soil.  My thick soil has vastly improved these five years by doing this one thing:  mulching in fall, slightly tilling in the remaining mulch in the spring.

The best possible scenario is we get a few light frosts between now and mid-December and THEN blammo we get a foot and a half of snow, which most likely will remain (and get deeper) for the rest of the winter.  The mulch will stay in place that way.  Wait:  did I just say I want it to snow?

Epilogue, by Thomas Allen (c-print, 2009)

We’re off again on another art junket!  This time we’re bound for the old stomping grounds of Minneapolis.

We’d love to see you at Tom’s opening on Sat., October 24th, from 6-8 p.m. at Thomas Barry Fine Arts, 530 N. Third St., Minneapolis.

au revoir!

Thomas Allen:  Unreachable, 2009

We’ll be stepping away from the gardens, pets and poultry for a few days.  Tom’s latest show, all new work, opens in New York on Thursday night.

He’s had a review in The Daily Beast!  Check it out.

“What, you’re going away during Tomato Season?” came the incredulous query from a friend.  YES!  Not that I can spiff up enough to get all the dirt out from under my nails, but indeed, it’s time for a trip to the city.  And our daughter, ever the budding naturalist, is itchy to see rats in the subway tunnels again.  “There are no rats in the country,” she said.  (Only because she hasn’t seen them, surely.)

So:  if you are in town, come to the opening, 6-8, at Foley Gallery in Chelsea!

Boothby’s Blonde cukes in the all-volunteer garden

For the last three years, my daughter has had her own garden bed.

Never one to force the issue, I figured she’d either like the idea of having a space to grow her own stuff, or she wouldn’t.  Either way, whatever is growing in that bed is “hers.”  And, for the third year in a row, she hasn’t shown much interest beyond the initial seed-starting frenzy begun last winter.

That is okay.  The compost yields its gifts quite readily, and this year, in that garden bed of hers, there are: two prolific Costata Romanesco zucchini, four pie pumpkin plants, three butternut squash plants, four tomatoes, and one (at least one, can’t tell) Hubbard squash.  Oh:  and the above cucumber.

She has been delighted with these “finds.”  She considers herself quite the successful gardener.

Who am I to tell her that the garden planted itself?

The school’s Verde Puebla tomatillos and Riesentraube tomatoes

I have so many irons in the fire now I can’t think straight!  But that is okay.  I feel like things are getting accomplished.

But you should see how weedy the garden is…

I will be back to post later in the week.  Until then!

There was a time when I had beautifully manicured nails.  That time has passed, as has the time of business attire and an obsession with shoes.  I don’t necessarily miss my dry cleaning bills or shoe habit, but my hands could use some help.

Our little Christmas gift experiment was fun:  we made lots of lip balm, bath salts and hand cream for friends.  The kitchen got messy, but canning season sees a lot more general untidiness and stickiness, so I knew I would eventually get back to making more salves and balms.  And vegetable preservation season (also known as Tomato Madness) has not begun in earnest, but the flowers and herbs are truly exploding out there.  Time to mess up the kitchen!

Calendula (pot marigold, Calendula officinalis) is one of those self-seeding wonders that I allow into the vegetable garden.  Their seedlings are readily identifiable in the early spring, and they’re easily removed and/or transplanted to where you might need more color.  They’re not quite the pollinator-attracting darlings that, say, borage is, but selfishly, I love gold and orange, so these guys are allowed to stay.  They have many wonderful properties, too:  the petals are edible, and they contain antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and rash-healing magic within them.  In fact, I had used a calendula-based diaper rash cream on our kid when she was a bulky cloth diaper-clad babe.  Huh!  Well, now, I D.I.Y., with an olive oil, shea butter and beeswax salve.

Pretty, huh?  Will it bring me back to those lacquered nails and perfect cuticles of my city days?  Doubtful, but…it’s a step.

Meadow-encroached long bed now grass-free!

On Saturday, three of Tom’s students came to work in the gardens with me.  Considering my recent revelation of (duh!) how much more work gets done with help, I gladly, readily accepted!  And I am so thankful.

It took me a long time to come to this realization:  sometimes, I cannot do it all.  Sometimes, it’s quite nice to have help.

I would say my hesitancy to either ask for or accept help comes from that nagging sense of obligation that attends the help itself.   Would I be willing to return the favor, or would I always feel indebted?  I expect help, for example, with the school garden:  its objective is not so small (feeding the school) whereas my personal garden feeds my personal family.  And maybe that is it: my garden is selfishly mine, whose output feeds me and mine, plus a few other souls as serves my need for dispensing largesse.

We got a lot accomplished Saturday, whatever my feelings are toward accepting the help.  I will say I was rather surprised when a student made the offer, and even more surprised when two other students offered to join.  We shared a happy garden-supplied meal, ate a yard-supplied chicken, drank elderflower cordial and grape juice of the property, and finished with an egg-based dessert from the girls with our strawberries on top.  It was fun, we were dirty and sore.

2 of 8 garden zones, plus greenhouse, at my friend’s house

Having gardening friends is wonderful.  It is quite true, I do love all of you virtual friends, but having a flesh-and-blood person walk around your gardens with you “is so very much more better,” as my daughter might say.  I am quite envious of those of you who garden with partners, or have relatives or good friends with whom to weed and share tall gardening tales.  Gardening should be shared!

I have gardening buddy who has the idea that, between the two of us, we can figure out every single crop that can grow in southwest Michigan.  He’s got a few years up on me trying to figure this out.  He’s a weekender, coming in from Chicago; they bought their property in the dunes in the late 1980s and have been battling the deer, woodchucks, raccoons, and sandy soil ever since.  His gardens, frankly, are Fort Knox compared to my wide-open plain:  because he’s in the woods, he has 7’ high electrified chain link fencing running around each set of gardens.  I would guess he has twice my square footage under direct cultivation, all in raised beds.

He also has a greenhouse.  His is a “true” greenhouse, not a hoophouse but a proper building with supplemental heat.  Indoors he grows 16’ tall fig trees, as well as bushes of capers, bay, various citrus, curry, allspice, epazote, guavas. Outdoors, it’s much the same as I grow, plus a whole lot more fruit trees.

But before this year, he didn’t seed-save, and he didn’t use his greenhouse to grow salad stuff and vegetables in the winter!!  I will say I have shamed him into doing both these things now.  And soon, he’ll be putting in a hoophouse of his very own.

Because our gardening interests are different, they complement each other:  I am learning so much from him in terms of fruiting things, he from me in terms of…I don’t know, me being a stick in his side about using less energy and seed-saving.  But it is so fun to walk around and say, “has your zucchini ever done this?  What do you think it could be?” and getting a good answer.

I encourage you all to find someone with whom to garden, or at least from whom to learn.

Friends are also good for buckets full of poison:  rhubarb leaf tea, a general insecticide (oxalic acid kills sucking insects)