I don't know what to say???

Ever just have one of those times in life that just kind of leave you speechless? The kind of thing that you never really saw coming, but is welcomed heartily when it does? Well, obviously I'm not entirely speechless (I rarely am...), hence the post tonight, but I am flattered tremendously. A fellow blogger and Freedom Gardener, Andrew Stone, posted a write-up on my blog tonight that honestly just embarrassed me for it's complimentary nature. Thanks Andrew so much.

When I began writing this blog, just under two years ago, it was something I didn't quite understand to be honest. I mean yeah, I understood that it was a free repository for the written word, but I didn't understand the power for change in my own life that it could hold. Even more surprising to me is the influence that it could become to others. I began it as a way for me to, more than anything else, get my thoughts out of my head and to document them somewhere. I found that as I did they began to jell more clearly into not just random ideas but into much more, they started to redefine who I was. Actually not even redefine so much as to just put before me a clear picture of what I wanted, believed, enjoyed and strived for. Sometimes I think we get caught up in who we think we are and holding a virtual mirror up to myself helped me to see who I really was.

I found a voice I didn't know I had, and surprisingly to me, that there were people willing to listen to that voice. I don't know how to say it without sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, but when people email me from all over the world to ask questions or say thank you for "inspiring them", I just swell up. I enjoy it soooo much! I thought a lot about becoming a teacher in a past life, and doing this lets me live that just a little.

Well, enough of that for now. Why not drop into Andrews blog and give him a read. He's another Utahan, and has a really good site.

Till tomorrow.
P~

"Big weigh-in" Spring/Summer wrap-up

Do you see that? Maybe you can't quite make it out...I'll help you out, It says Spring / Summer garden 511.68 lbs!!! WE DID IT! A~ and I set out this year to grow for 500 lbs and as of yesterday, we not only met, but exceeded that goal. With the days being pretty warm here, and the nights getting around freezing, even the plastic tarping wasn't helping the tomatoes to ripen as well as I'd hoped. (Although the cherry tomatoes are actually still producing.) That said, I decided that it was probably a good time to get out and harvest what was effectively the final harvest from the Spring and Summer garden.
A few of the tom's are still green and some not quite ripe, but all will be enjoyed in their own time. I honestly wasn't sure that we were actually going to be able to make the goal, this being the first year that we had ever aspired to even weigh all of our harvests. A~ on the other hand has seemingly turned into a pro harvest estimator; she said all along that we'd make it and what do you know, here we are.

The best part is, we're not even done completely yet. There's probably another couple of pounds on the cherry tomato, and I have fall planted spinach, beets and kohlrabi yet to harvest. Hopefully the weather will hold for a little longer to let them all bulk up a bit, but if not I have to say A~ and I are both pretty happy that we've been able to meet our goal.

So, what's next? A~'s already talking not doubling but tripling it next year. Um, does she realize that that's 1500 lbs??? Who am I to argue... I'm just the labor. I will say that the backyard expansion is already nearly done and should be by the end of the weekend. The next thing on the list is relocating the chickens for next year and then tilling up our "parking area" on the front side-yard of the house. You didn't think we'd just sit back and be satisfied did you?

Have a great weekend all.
P~

This and That

Oh where to start...
I seem to have misplaced my peace of mind somewhere. I don't mean to say that I am unhappy at all, I really am not. In fact, I am probably at one of the most happy parts of my life. I have a wonderful wife and good kids, a stable job with people I enjoy working with, I have found a great avenue to express myself and grow through my writing here and at other sites. And yet I don't truly feel at peace. I have to admit that much of the affairs of the world/U.S. such as the economy and the upcoming election are truly beginning to weigh on my mind. I think that's part of the reason that I have been a bit lacking in my post of late. I make a concerted effort, as many of you know, to maintain a certain level of positivity here. I have had enough negativity in my life in the past and truly desire to leave it in the past. For the most part I am successful. Even, I think, when I write about some of the issues that I believe we will all face in the future that will not be...pleasant, I try to keep my outlook as positive as I am capable of. I guess you could say I follow mom's old advice "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

The other thing happening is that I've been swamped. I've been trying to get a lot of end of year stuff, and things that need to get done before the ground freezes, completed in a timlely manner and it has just been sapping the energy out of me; we're planning to expand our approx 450 sq ft garden to nearly 1100 sq ft, a little more than doubling it! A~ and I have some great plans for next year, including trying to start participating in our local farmers market by selling some of our homegrown veggies. It's not only so that we can maybe make a little extra $ from our efforts, but we also want to offer a few different items from everyone else in the hopes of inspiring others to start looking outside the standard green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and jalapenoes that seem to be the only things offered there. It also goes along with my greater effort to try to get people producing more food for themselves at home here in my community.

In other news, we had a great family outing last night. All three boys are just at the early stages of learning to play violins/violas and are coming along great. They have in their heads though that their really not very "cool" instruments. Well last night we had the opportunity to go down to SLC and catch a concert from a band named Apocolyptica that is in effect a cello quartet. Here's the rub though... they are amplified and play old school heavy metal on them with a drummer backing them up! That's right Metallica on a cello! It was absolutely AMAZING! I've never seen anything like it. Even A~ who is not a real Metal fan enjoyed it. (I'm not even a big heavy metal listener anymore, though I was in my younger years.) The boys came home really excited to play their instruments having just had a new door opened to them. If your curious about what it sounded like you can check them out HERE. This is almost exactly what we saw last night. It may not be your "cup of tea" but it certainly does give the whole thinking outside the box idea a new spin. (Phelan if your reading, you have got to check it out, you'd love it!)

So anyway, things have been busy and showing not signs of slowing any time soon. how about you? Had a chance to check out my new "other home" online yet. If not, drop in a give it a read. Dropping in here from the new site? Welcome, I hope you'll keep coming by and I look forward to hearing from you.

P~

Weekend update

Finally, we had a weekend where I could get some stuff done around the house. It's been either raining or snowing the last two so not a lot of work has gotten done. I was able to get the "fallerizing" (Note: Similar to Winterizing, just the first installment.) done on the chicken coop.
What I did was to turn the coop perpendicular to the direction that it was facing. Now the side with the nesting box, which you can see sticking out in this picture, is pointing directly south. This will will allow the winter sun to shine directly on it, as well as allowing the entire roof to get sun throughout the day. It also helps me work with the natural weather patterns in my area where most of our cold winds and storms come from the south. The black pots stacked in front of the open area are filled with soil so they will heat up during the day and radiate that heat back out throughout the night. The last things I did, were to add the side rails to the open sides. This will allow me to give the birds a much deeper amount of bedding in the coop, and will cut down on the direct winds hitting the birds. I also slid the removable bottom of the hen house back in to keep it warmer inside during the winter. I will have to slide it out and clean it once a week or so over the winter, but it will keep the girls dry and warm so it's worth it.

I also was able to get a good start on the final part of our garden expansion for next year where we're "liberating" about 400 sq feet more of our backyard lawn. To begin with I had weed whacked the grass down very short a little over a month ago. I covered this with black plastic to try and kill off most of the grass, and lined up the rough fit of the concrete "urbanite" that I'll be using to construct the beds hardscaping.
Next step in the process called for me to break up the soil. I used a pitch fork for this and was able to pull up a chunk at a time and flip it over completely putting what was left of the grass roots upside down and buried. I did a little poking around to break up the big chunks of dirt, but very little. This I covered with thick cardboard that I scavenged from work, and made sure it went up the fence and under the stones.
I only got about a third of the bed finished today, but hope to have it done and filled by this weekend. I've been collecting a menagerie of compostables to fill it with too. I have coop litter with the obvious "amendments" that that comes with, also grass clippings, finished compost, leaves and straw. I'll finish it off with some finished compost in the spring when I see how much more it needs.
All in all, a very good, productive weekend. I'll keep you posted on the progress. Hope you all had a great one too!

P~

Coop Mod

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the great feedback! I knew I could count on you all.

I got out tonight and was able to at least make a quick modification to the nesting box part of the coop. I really am inclined to think that that is at the root of the problem. It's one of those things that I have thought about many times. Like I said, I've never been very happy with it from the beginning but, since the chooks seemed to be doing well, and since we were getting eggs so regularly and consistently it just got pushed to the back burner. That, for the record, is the wrong thing to do!

This is the short term modification that I made to the boxes tonight. I basically just slapped a panel on the front of the box and then split the boxes in two with another piece and filled each side with some straw. That reminds me, anyone ever put sawdust into their nesting boxes? I have a very good source for course saw dust for free, and was wondering about useing it in the boxes? Anyway, tomorrow I'll get out and give a good powdering of D.E., something I've been planning on doing anyway once the weather was dry for a couple of days. I also have a couple of other things I need to do to prep them for the winter, so hopefully I can get them all done before more winter shows up.

I think this is a good time to mention, probably mostly for the benefit of newer folks to this way of living, that procrastination is the bane of not just the rural farmers life, but the urban homestead as well. When you endeavor to regain your connection to the land and to the food you eat, you really have decided to also be pretty connected to it's needs. You now have plants and animals that require your attention to thrive an do well, thus feeding you later. This is why we don't wait until later. At least that is why we TRY not to wait until later; we are still human after all and for the most part still learning.

So I've been reminded of the cons of my inaction when I know there is a problem. Now, I just hope I have caught the problem soon enough to fix it; I'll keep you all posted of course. Thanks again for all the great advice.
More tomorrow.
P~

Chicken problems, any ideas?

I've got a bad girl or two. I don't know which one it is, or if it's all of them for that matter, but somehow my chickens discovered that they like eggs. Yep, that's right, they found out that those things that they keep making and I keep taking are actually pretty tasty.

So I'm going to my master resource...you all. What's a farmer to do? Any ideas on how to curtail this problem? Or for that matter any ideas on causes?

I've read, and believe, that it's not normal behavior for chickens to eat their eggs. Some of the possible causes I've found are too little calcium in their diets, poor living conditions, infrequent checking for eggs and inadequate nesting space. These all make sense to some degree. If a chicken is calcium deficient then yeah, they may realize that they can get it from the shells, if they are in poor living conditions then they may not develop their natural nesting instincts and the longer the eggs lay around, the more likely one is to get broken and the birds will have a chance to develop a "taste" for them.

Here's the thing. I feel like we've been pretty responsible in providing adequate housing for the birds, they get fed a 20% layer feed every day that is mixed with oyster shells for calcium (and grit) and we check the coop for eggs at least twice a day. So what's left... the nesting area. This is really the only area of the coop that I've not been completely happy with. I didn't build it as separate individual boxes, more like a separate open area that fits a couple of birds where they tend to lay their eggs, or did anyway. Lately I've been finding them all over the coop area. On the grate in the middle of the coop, on the ground and some in the nesting area. I also can't get them to keep any straw in the beds. Every time I put some in, they scratch at it, and spread it all over the place. So, that's where I guess I'll work to try to solve the problem in the short term.

I'm really interested in hearing from any of you that either have or are raising chickens with any experiences that you've had with this. A lot of the places that I researched said that this is a habit that can't be broken and that the birds have to be culled from the flock. I don't mind culling a bird that needs to be, but I don't want to blame them for something that I'm not doing correctly.

Thanks in advance.

P~

A new adventure.

I've had a wonderful new offer from a good blog-friend of mine, Rhonda from Down-to-Earth, to participate in a new project that she's put together. It's called the Simple Green Frugal Co-op and she's brought together some wonderful writers that deal with moving towards a simpler, more sustainable life, through frugal choices and greener alternatives. I can't say how happy I am that she sought me out to participate. You'll find a link to the new blog in the side bar on the right.

It's actually a happy coincidence. I've been thinking a lot lately about writing more, not so much making more posts here, but further putting myself out into the world and sharing the things I've learned, and my perspectives on them. (How conceited am I right?) It's just that I feel like I'm in a good position to do so. For many reasons, A~ and I began down a path a couple of years back that has led us to making some major changes in the way we live. These are changes that have had,not only the benefit of fostering a more healthful and sustainable life for us and our kids, but has had the additional benefit of helping us to weather the changes to the world around us. Simplicity has brought us together more as a couple and a family, greening has helped us to reduce our consumption and our mark on the world and our frugality has helped us keep up with the sinking economy.

So where does that leave this blog? Just in the same place as it is right now. I'll still be posting here regularly, this is after all my original home on the blogoshpere. I've only been asked to contribute to the new site at least once every two weeks, and more likely it will be more like two or three. So for the most part, I'll be posting my day to day entries right here, just like always.

I do hope you'll drop on in over there however. I've read some of the bloggers before, and some are new to me, but from the looks of it, it should quickly become a weath of information and knowledge on the web. Thanks for your support with this everyone, and please be patient with me if some growing pains arise.

P~

Well what do you know?

The weather forecast was right on the money?! We woke up this morning and guess what we found...SNOW. At first I looked out the window and told A~ it was only an inch or two max. Oops, good thing I'm not in the weather business. I took this picture at around 9 o'clock this morning when I went out to check on the chickens (They did great with the snow by the way.)
That's 5 1/4 inches. It kept up all day and on the news tonight, they said we ended up with 8 inches! More crazy weather. It's almost like...like the global weather patterns are all jacked up, changing even. Go figure? I took a little video this morning too, just to break up the monotony.

You'll have to forgive the audio on part of the video, it's a little faint. I just thought some of you would appreciate a look inside the A-frames to see how they're working. Which has been great I think. I took the video this morning at around 9 o'clock as well, and although the temperature
inside was only a little bit over 36 deg F it wasn't freezing, even though the sides of the A-frames were piled with all the snow that had slid off the sides all night.

In the afternoon I went out and checked temps again and, even with the snow that kept coming down all day, the temperature had come up to 59.6 F. The tomato plants were wilting a bit, but the tomatoes were slowly ripening. So far, so good, I guess I'll call the frames a success thus far. Anyone else having any experiences they'd care to share with keeping their harvest going? I'm always looking for new ideas.

Hope the fall is going well for all of you, or for my Southern hemisphere readers your spring. Till next time.

P~

Fighting the freeze

First off, I'm sorry to billbillbillbill (Freedom Gardens member) for lagging on getting this post up. Life... it happens, you know?

Anyway, on we go. Those of us local to Utah have found, as have many of our fellow gardeners in the Northern Hemisphere, fall is upon us. And with that the first frost/freeze warnings of the year. We received our first one this week and from the looks of it, it should be a hard one. The forecast is even calling for the possibility of snow in the valley. Drastic steps must be taken!

As you can see, the majority of my garden was removed this week. It's always a hard part of the year for me, sort of a gardeners version of separation anxiety. The beans were done though, as were the cucumbers, but the carrots that were growing in the area under the cukes have been left to overwinter. The only things being kept in the summer garden to try and stretch the harvest of are the tomatoes.

The last few nights have really pushed the limits of what the tomato plants can handle. The night before last in particular. I thought that for any of you that may be new to vegetable gardening I would show you what the signs of too much cold are on your tomato plants.

See there on the left hand corner of that tomato, the almost translucent part of the fruit? That is frost bite. That part of the fruit has been damaged. It's not necessarily beyond hope, depending on the amount of frost bite that happened. Then in the picture on the right, you see the darkened and wilted tips of one of the new shoots coming up on the plant, it's been frost bitten as well. This won't kill the plant, but honestly that shoot will most likely die at this point. It's OK though, I'm gonna tell you what to do with it here in a minute anyway.

Here are a couple of the tomato plants that I have growing in my beds. The one on the top is my brandywine. It had a very slow summer, I learned that it was not very tolerant of our hot summers here, and now that I've finally set a good number of fruit on it by golly I'm not just giving up on it! The one on the bottom is my San Marzano. I'm keeping it going just for the sheer number of green tomatoes on it.

What I did to these to get them ready for my version of season extension, and which will resolve the frost bitten plant tip from the previous picture, is to prune them. I trimmed the heck out of all of these prior to covering them. This site illustrates tomato pruning very thoroughly so I'll just link to it and not reinvent the wheel. Essentially, the idea is to top the plants, and remove all new growth so as to allow the plant, which is already getting stressed from the cold, to focus on maturing the already set fruit and not to growing more foliage or new fruits.

After I pruned them, and cleaned up the ground around them, I covered them with a 4 mil. clear plastic cover, basically making a small A-frame greenhouse. Let me digress here for a second... I also placed a little garden addition in the beds a few days back that really helps moderate the micro-climates around the plants as well... black water bottles. All they are, are plastic 1 gallon water bottles that I filled with some tap water after painting them black. They will get warm throughout the day and then hold that heat and radiate it back out throughout the cold nights.

I place them right at the bottom of the plants in the path of the sun, and they will slowly radiate that heat back up all night. I took the thermometer picture yesterday afternoon at approx. 3:30 PM when the outside temps were around 50-51 deg F. The temp in the water container is almost 80 deg F. So...back to the A-frame.

Voila! There it is. I want to take a minute to make the statement that this is yet another great benefit of trellising in the home garden, I can't speak to their benefit enough. The trellis that I used this year to hold up the tomatoes is the top of this cover. It allows me to leave the cover over the plants and to be able to get inside to water or check the fruits without removing the whole cover. A very nice benefit.

Fall is beautiful, and it's an important time for both the garden and the gardener to slow down a little, catch their breath and get ready for the next year. If you're really motivated it is possible to harvest all year, although I'm not quite to that point myself yet, perhaps next year. There are a lot of really good ways available and I'm sure some products one could buy to do much the same, but either way if you're not quite ready to give up the battle against the freeze then put together a plan, give it your best shot and as always learn from the process.
Good luck all.
Stay tuned for some interesting and very cool news to come on the next post.
P~

Watching the Sunset

Figuratively that is. We're expecting a major cold front to come through this weekend. Possibly even snow in the valleys. There won't be much even if it does come to that, but either way it'll be cold! So, like how the day winds down slowly and gradually the sun sets on the day so too has the garden, the summer garden that is, begun to slip into the horizon. It's not gone yet but it's fading for sure. I still have a bunch of tomatoes on the vines that I want to see how long I can keep in production, and there's a few chilies that are still not quite ripe, but those are all planted together so I'll be doing my best tomorrow to build them a sort of greenhouse/hoop house.

As for the fall garden, it's doing pretty well. The beets and spinach are plugging alone well, but I was hoping the kohlrabi would be doing a little better. Worst case, I guess I can always just eat the greens since they're edible too.

Not too much more to say than that. I hope to have a better post for you tomorrow.
Till then.
P~

I'm so sick and tired of this...

Really, I swear I am going to scream and begin to pull out my ha…. well, I don’t have much hair, but if I did I’d pull it out I swear! Ok, Ok, so what am I losing it about? This whole debate we just had over the $700 billion “bailout” or “rescue” or “economic life raft” that just passed. It’s not the fact that they debated it that’s bugged me, it’s HOW they debated it!

When I hear a politician interviewed from one side or the other, I don’t hear about the pro’s or con’s of the package; the merits versus the liabilities. What I kept hearing was this partisan crap about how “This was the result of poor regulation by the Republican administration”, or “In January 2005 the Republicans and John McCain warned about the need for more oversight and regulation of Fannie and Freddie and the Democrats killed it. It’s their fault.” I’m tired of it! What do I think caused this problem? To a great degree I agree that inaction and wrong decisions on both side of the isle allowed us to get to the point we are, but I don’t believe it caused it. That, I believe, came primarily from greed and complacency. And now we have a $700 billion, pork laden mess to reckon with and for our kids to pay off. Thanks guys... but is it all their fault?

We live in a society that for the large part espouses more and more, faster and faster and looks poorly on you if you can’t keep up. It’s true whether we like it or not. It’s no different from the root of many of the problems that face us today, I don’t think. Basically, greed and desire got the better of us as a nation. I mean who can blame us, we’re bombarded at nearly every corner by something that we need to have, and if we do manage to resist, our kids come home with all the stuff they need to have to "complete them". (At least in their eyes and the eyes of their peers.) So of course when companies start offering loans with all kinds of “perks” like no money down, no need for verifiable income, interest only ARM’s etc. a lot of us that are not economists and tend to trust the establishment at large are going to take advantage of it. Or better yet we can take the “equity” that we have in our now artificially inflated home prices and use that to get the new toy du jour that we need to have. Now we can have our cake, eat it, and pay for it over the next thirty (and sometimes even 50!) years with simple small installments. Oh yeah, but wait, wasn’t that kind of what happened just before the Great Depression? Paper money income, that is not to say actual FIAT currency but rather “investment” income from the stock market was so high that wall street and even the public at large felt it had reached a permanent plateau. Banks even began lending money to people to buy stocks at a rate of nearly two thirds the price of the stock. It was considered a totally safe practice. Sound familiar? So here we are, facing an economy that has basically forced the government to come to us with hat in hand, strike that…BAT in hand to scare us into approving this massive bail out that will possibly fix the problem in the very short term but opens a can of worms that could cause much more serious ones in the future.

So back to the crux of this problem. Who caused it? Who’ll save us from it? Well, I think that's going to rest pretty squarely on the shoulders of the same people that I just blamed for a majority cause in the problem... we the people. Oh sure, I totally agree that some serious regulatory oversight needs to be put in place, but I also think that we need to rethink a few of the things that have been driving us for the last 20 or so years. For many of us, a good majority of our adult lives. On the up-side, I think we're starting to get there. I hear more and more about people choosing to "live more simply", or making choices about what they consume, rather than just running on autopilot. It's a good thing. The more dialogue we can get started about this stuff, the more acceptable it will become and the more people will start paying attention.

As for the politics of the issue, well I'm sorry to say I've become a pretty big pessimist in the last couple of years. As of right now, I'm not voting for either of the candidates. I've seen no specific economic plans, short of more hand outs, from either of them, no energy plan other that to say they'll drill more and expand alternatives (A nice soundbite, but HOW? That's what I want to know.). Basically it just seems that both the candidates are leaving me with the old lesser of two evils choice, and I'm so sick and tired of that too! I am, my family is, my readers are, our nation is more important that the lesser of two evils.

Just my opinion...Care to share yours?
P~

Still alive

Yep, I'm hanging in there. I wasn't sure to tell you the truth. I mean I'm not a bad dad or anything, I actually think I'm pretty good truth be told. The thing is, in our home, we have "roles" (here's where any feminists may part company with me...sorry), and I wasn't sure how I'd fit ito both of them at the same time. What do I mean?

When I say that we have roles, it's a pretty simple thing. I go to work everyday (for money), I take care of the "heavy lifting" and I do the dirty stuff (bugs, compost, most of the garden work, etc.). In addition to that, I tend to be the stern voice in the house. I'm tough on my boys sometimes. I've had the world smack me around a few times and whether we like to believe it or not there's double standards out there so I tend to the firm side with them. A~ on the other hand go to work everyday as well, her work is in our home. She shuttles kids to and from school, does our budget, cleans the house and all our clothes and keeps us all fed like a band of princes. She's also the voice of moderation in the house. She tempers my hard edges, loves the boys when their scared, let's them pile on her on the couch and keeps them safe on a day to day basis. This week it's been all me and I have a renewed appreciation of how hard she works and how much she brings to the table.

But this week's reminded me of one even more important difference between us; all the time she gets to spend with the boys. In the morning, they have their tradition of listening to 101.9 on the radio. They sing the songs they all love and set a good mood for the day. After school she gets to hear about everything that happened that day fresh, before they forget half of it in their blessed childish way of living in the moment. I've been lucky enough this weekend to get to have that too.

And speaking of hearing from the boys when we pick them up from school, on Friday I picked them up and hadn't even left the parking lot when B~, the youngest, spouted out, "Dad, can we just pack up and go camping tonight? Pleeeaasseee???". To which of course the other two chimed in with "Yeah Dad, c'mon, let's just pack up and go!" Because you know of course in a child's world there's nothing to it, just grab a tent, something to eat and you're good. So what's a dad to do? Duh...I said YES. In all honesty we were planning on going up to the mountains anyway on Saturday. Grouse season has come to Utah, and we thought we'd spend a little time doing what I like to think of as "hiking with guns." So what's a little detour to spend time together, take advantage of a rare opportunity to bond and oh yeah, did I mention that the mountains we were heading up into are regularly voted as one of the best places in the western U.S. to view the fall colors?
The turnoff to our camp is about 60 miles from our house and from there we drove five or 6 miles back into public lands. We camped in an area that we've hiked and hunted a bunch of times but have never camped in and found the BEST camp site. We didn't have 4-wheelers going by all the time because it was off the road a ways and was not a through road. The tent site was cleared already of all the sticks and rock, and there was a big meadow for the boys to play in with a log pre-set to hold the "targets" (aluminum cans) for the BB guns.

We spent the night, hiked/hunted the next day (in which we got nothing), and had a great time together. Saturday we came home, cleaned up and watched a movie. And as a sign of a good time being had the boys fell asleep within minutes.

Today, I got to experience the other side of A~'s day to day as I spent most of the day washing clothes, making lunch, cleaning the kitchen and cooking a pretty tasty ratatouille for dinner. Oh yeah and by the way, I found out how to get kids to eat this heavy vegetable stew. I put about half of the ratatouille into our food processor and pureed it. I had to add a bit more salt after all the vegetables were pulverized, but they not only ate it, they had seconds. On the Harvest Keeping front, I also put up another 6 qts of beans for the winter.

It was a great weekend. We lived through it, enjoyed it, and still miss A~ terribly. No matter how capable I can be, our home's just not the same without her. Hurry home sweetie, we love you.
P~

Democracy Works!!! (or does it?)

Well, to a point I think it does, but you know that old saying "All politics is local"? It held true tonight as I witnessed first hand the inequities of the political process.

First off, let me start on a positive note. THE GIRLS ARE LEGAL!!! That's right, the outlaw birds in my back yard are LEGAL. I started working toward getting the restrictive ordinance pertaining to chickens, and in particular egg laying hens, changed back in February. Can you believe it's been that long? I should of course for the record point out that I personally did not initiate the ordinance change. Our city planning commission was actually in the middle of revising the ordinance when I showed up on the scene, but I made it just in time to have input into the revision, and was able to get to know the commission chair Robert Whiteley that actually sponsored the change that dealt with the chickens. A very good guy! The process was very time consuming, and took a lot of emails and some public speaking, but we've gotten it finished and tonight it passed the city council by unanimous consent. So you see, don't just let your fear of the process keep you from your goals. In fact this turned out even better than hoped for. Tonight before the vote, the council proposed to up the number of legal birds to 6 rather than the proposed 5. I think this was a great move for the city, and now I'm thinking, hmmm...how about a class in (sub)urban hennery? (sorry Laura, had to steal your term.)


So now you're wondering about the (or does it?) aren't you. I you remember yesterday, I asked for you to wish me luck. That wasn't for the chicken law to pass, it was for me. I went before the city council and a nearly packed auditorium tonight, to enter my name as a candidate for a seat on the Syracuse (UT) City Council that had been prematurely vacated by one of our elected members. The laws of our city show that when a vacancy becomes available mid term, that the existing city council will hold public hearings to review potential replacement and then vote on the candidates to get a replacement. I put my hat in the ring, and didn't get it, and you know what, it's really not a big deal to me. I hoped for it, buy didn't expect it. What I didn't expect however, was that the process was rigged.


Seriously, this is not a sour grapes issue. The gentleman that got the position, I felt, was far more qualified than me or many of the other candidates so not a big deal there. The problem arose when the council was making their vote and councilman Doug Peterson, after making his vote, Made a declaration that rocked the room. He stated that when he originally ran for council he lost. Then, the same type of thing happened and he applied to the council for the position. He didn't get it, and felt that since he had been the first runner up in the election that the position should have been his. Tonight he went clearly in the face of the established process and declared that that was the reason he voted for the winner; because he was in fact the first runner up in the last election. Another councilman, Doug Hammond, agreed and went on to state that the voters had spoken and had voted for the winner in the last election. (But not in enough number for him to win.)


On the face of it, it sounds logical right? But myself and the other 20 candidates walked into a council meeting tonight, expecting to be heard and to have a fair chance at being considered for the position. That was, in point of fact, no the case. If two of the remaining 4 chairman came to the meeting already having in mind who they were going to vote for and why, (and yes, I do know that that is the case in at least one person, but cannot get into how for a couple of reasons.)
then what was the purpose of me spending my first night alone with my boys, cooped up in a stuffy city hall for no reason. Oh, I was mad!


After the election, you could here the vocal murmurings of the audience, and then the utterly ridiculous. The city council completed the city managers report and called for a motion to adjourn, with was seconded and agreed on. Only one problem, the first order of business for the night was to approve the agenda, an agenda that allowed for a period of public comment before the adjournment. Two councilman had already gotten up and started to leave and I just popped up. Not a lot of thinking, just popped up and yelled over the room "Mr. Mayor!" (ask my kids, I'm loud when I need to be.) When I got his attention, myself and the other gentleman pointed out that they cannot adjourn legally, they are breaking the agreed upon agenda. We got them back in there seats and they spent the next 20 minutes hearing from me and the other guy about how they had just committed a farce of a political proceeding and should be ashamed. It was pointed out that at the last election half the previous city council was removed for similar actions. Both myself and the other man received many handshakes and thank you's afterward for calling them on this. I guess it may be time for the other half to go too.


Let me finish this off on a positive note just so I don't come off too PO'd. I think that the process does work by in large. Look at my chooks after all, their free to roam now. The key however, as in national politics, is to be involved. Make your voice heard. We are a democratic republic and inasmuch we are required by duty to be a part of our governments process. I encourage you to participate, to debate and to be activist in the things you believe in. I ask though that we keep a level of civility, look for commonalities and work for the type of change that will benefit us all.
Be well...
P~

Growing for 500!!

I got out into the garden this evening, and was able to bring in what was actually more food than I realized I had ready. After bringing it all in and seeing how much there was I realized I hadn't put up a good harvest picture for some time so why not now! And if I don't say so myself, didn't I set this shot up nicely? It's approx 42 lbs of food.
In the picture I have apples, green beans, Marketmore and Boston pickling cucumbers, jalapenos, San Marzano tomatoes and some volunteer Romas, ichiban Japanese eggplant, bell peppers and Swiss chard. Oh and let me throw this little tidbit it...that's only half the beans I pulled today. In total I picked 22 1/2 lbs of beans today! Is that crazy or what? Good thing we all love beans right? Guess what I'll be doing next week? Yep, canning. Speaking of that, anyone have a good recipe for applesauce? We actually gave almost 10 pounds of beans away to some friends of ours that are looking into growing their own for next year but we still have plenty. It really is a blessing to be able to share with friends and family when we have a bounty isn't it?

A~ and I talked at the beginning of this season, when we decided to make a concerted effort at weighing all of our food we really had no data to go by in guessing what we'd get out of it. Initially we guess we may be able to make it to 300 pounds. As the season progressed, we realized that it would most likely end up exceeding that. A~ has contended almost all along that we'd make it to 500 pounds, and right now it seems she may be right. After tonight's 42+ pound harvest we cracked a new ceiling by making it to 313 pounds! So now that it's in sight, we are definitely going to "grow for 500". It's not tons, not thousands, and not enough to sell or anything but we both really are blown away with what we've been able to bring in. In addition to the fact that we will now have some concrete data to gauge future harvests against, having real numbers to quantify our efforts to others has really been an unexpected benefit of the "Big Weigh-in". In my outreach efforts to get people around me excited about the idea of growing food at home, it really helps to have real numbers to present to them. It puts things in better perspective that just the old, "we got a ton of beans" or "we're knee deep in tomatoes". To be able to say that we have harvested over 300 lbs is a thing that everyone understands. If you haven't tracked what you've grown this year I adamantly suggest you look into it for next.

Well, I guess that about does it for tonight. I hope everyone's doing great and with that...I'll catch you tomorrow!
P~

The "Big weigh-in" Update.

Just an FYI. I finally updated the "Big weigh-in" tonight. total this year we have harvested 262 lbs of veggies and 233 eggs from the chickens.
I think realistically we're shooting for about 350-400 lbs for this year total. Not to bad if I do say so. I'll try to keep it posted more often.
P~

The dark ugly underbelly.

It has been brought to my attention that perhaps I have been hanging around the garden with my rose colored lenses on. I have, from time to time, mentioned how the garden has been a bit off this year, and how some things I just was not happy with. But what? I guess I owe it to you to show you the dark seedy underbelly of my garden.

Exhibit A: The gardens poorest performing zucchini plants. These guys had such a hard time even getting started this year, that I had to go out and manually pollinate them daily for the first 3 weeks. Even after the bees showed up, I've never really gotten a lot of fruit from them. Put it like this, I haven't had enough to get sick of zucchini... get the point? And now, they have begun dying early on me. But I have found the culprits...all of them!
Squash bugs. Yep, I have more bugs than just praying manti. When I uncovered these this evening I realized it was worse than I even thought, nearly an infestation. Time to get out the soap! The chickens won't even eat them. What's up with that?
Exhibit B: The cucumber vines. Look at that pathetic pale drying. (no the squash bugs aren't getting them.) They just aren't healthy. I did notice some new growth tonight, but they've just not performed nearly like in years past.
And this is what I've gotten from them for the most part all season. Softballs. The funky shape is from incomplete pollination. Oh, they taste fine, and we've still been able to put up pickles, but not nearly like we had hoped. Any suggestions? Anyone else had this problem?
Exhibit C: Miniature bell peppers. Yep, that babies mature, all 2 and a half inches of her. Peppers are another crop that I really had good hopes for this year but is probably the worst producing of all of them. These are the first peppers from these plants ( I've picked one off another plant.) and I fear it is all my fault. Despite my best planning, I planted them in the same bed that I've had peppers in for the last three years...Crop rotation, crop rotation, crop rotation!!!
Exhibit D: Broccoli. Do you see there in the distance... the vigorous sprouts??? No? Me neither, but I should. Everything else has come up for the fall garden, that's a little kohlrabi sprout in front, but not broccoli. Add to that the fact that the spring broccoli that I planted never headed up at all, and just went leggy and flowered, and It's been a total bust this year.
And last but not least, the pests. Found this little bugger tonight. They've just started getting to my beans. This weekend, I'll hit em with a little diotamaceous earth and water mixture. That'll show em!
So there you go Mike. My little garden of eatin' has been uncovered for the mess it is. Well OK, it's not a mess and we've been really pleased by most of it, but by no means is it perfect and everything is NOT going the way I planned. But guess what, that's what gardening is about. I get better and more productive every year. And every year, I love it more and more.
Be well all...tomorrow is another Harvest Keepers update. (oh yeah, and Dilly bean recipe by request!)
P~

Beans are here for sure!

Oh yeah, the beans are on now. I can go out every night and pick a pound or two of beans without fail. Or, like tonight, I can go out after skipping a day and a half and pick a quarter bushel that weighs 4 1/2 pounds. Looks like some canning is in the future huh? And this is after putting up 6 pints of dilly beans this Sunday too!
Check out the progress with the bean trellises so far this year. The idea for the cube shaped trellising was that I would be able to bring the beans out toward me, rather that having one big bush that we have to dig through every day like last year. Below is the picture from the end of June showing the summer gardens just taking off.
And here, below, (don't mind that ugly shmoe digging around in the foliage) is the bean plants this evening. As you can see, the plants are really easy to get to, and in fact, I have a small rolling garden box that I sit on to do most of the picking. Much much better than last year!
And finally, guess who else loves the bean plants? This big ole mantis is who. Actually in the interest of honesty in journalism, I found this guy on the siding of our house but he's been relocated to the beans. We set out a cocoon early this spring for manti, could they get this big in one season? Do they over winter? Anyone?
On a positive note, while the other plants in the summer garden didn't perform to expectations, at least the beans are prolific this year.
Till tomorrow.
P~

You're a LIAR and a FOOL ... now, let's change the world.

Not really the best way to go about things is it? Supposing you and I were both after the same job; and say you and I argue for, let’s say a year and a half. We call each other liars, talk about how bad the other person would make things, explain why we are right and people ought to listen to OUR point of view and go to great lengths to point out to the world every stupid thing the other has ever said or done. The longer it goes on, the more our friends and allies start to polarize against each other because, now they think to themselves, “Geez, I thought that person was so smart, but they want THAT person to lead the way?” and quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, they start to bicker about things too. Then one day… *POOF*… argument settled! It’s been decided that one of us is the one that is going to lead the way and make the big decisions. Now let’s all come together and sing coombayah, and make the world a better place. What? You’re not still angry about all that “…you lied and you’ll ruin the world..” stuff are you? Come on, we have serious work to do here.
Well, that’s pretty much politics as usual and I’m sorry (not really), but I’m just not going to be a part of it. As I’ve spent a little of my precious time over the last couple of weeks watching and listening to the presidential convention speeches, I’ve thought a couple of times about making a post about one thing or another; I’ve heard things from both candidates that I’ve agreed with to a great extent. My issue with the whole process and particularly how it relates to my blog, is this. I have a pseudo mission statement for this blog that's been pretty plainly laid out in a few of the posts throughout it’s time online and is very succinctly stated in the title itself. “Possibility to Reality”. I spent a good number of years arguing about policies and politics and guess what? It really didn't change the country, and most certainly DID change me. The more I concentrated on what my position was on things, and even more so on why the people that had the opposing position were wrong, the more and more unhappier I became. Have you ever noticed that, regardless of what a candidate actually does once their elected, voters tend to be more apt to get out and vote FOR something, rather than AGAINST something. In other words, no matter how much one candidate tends to point out how bad the other person is, if they don't actually stand for something specific themselves, they generally lose. Why? Because I think people naturally want to think positively of things. They want to be a part of the future and a part of something greater than themselves.

My concern is this. If we buy into the partisanship that's peddled to us through all of the standard media outlets. If we just re wrap articles from the Times or Tribunes of the world filtered by our particular biases (whatever they are we can substantiate them, trust me!) and further perpetuate the divisions of our country, then we do a disservice, not only to ourselves and our readers, but an even greater disservice to our country and our future as a whole.

We, I believe, stand at a crossroads. We are at a time when not only are we facing economic woes or the possibility of peak oil and climate change, we have wars and power plays taking place in many places at once. We have a bankruptcy of not only capitol but of morality and self control and a culture of self gratification that demands more for less at a moments notice. These are things that are changing. Things that MUST change. Things that our government, regardless of who's elected, will not be able to change on it's own. They more than likely will not even consider that many of the problems need changing. So we need to come together and lead. To show our elected officials that they need to come together to make the big changes as well. How are they to do that, how are we to do that, if we have been trained to point at how wrong the other side is and vote solely on "party lines". In that case, we are too busy looking at the splinter in our neighbors eye than at the log in our own.

I've read a few other blogs this last week that I feel got a bit mired in this kind of partisanship. Some are ones that I read regularly, others are ones I visit only occasionally. I don't think less of any of them, I understand their passion for these things and for the changes that they hope for. I just hope that we in this "new media", with our overwhelming freedom to offer suggestions and solutions and our ability to lead the way to these changes through our own example, will look not to furthering the divisions in our greatest nation, but to healing them. I ask you to find the possible. Find it, embrace it, share it and make it the reality. We can do it!

Namaste...

P~

2008 Garden update - Aug 13th

Time for another Garden Update.
In the last week and a half or so, the garden has really started to come up to where I thought it should be a couple of weeks ago. Long spring, and sudden hot summer really prolonged the growth spurt, but it seems to be here now.I thought you guys might like to see what it is that the whole raised bed section of the garden looks like in context, rather than just a pic here and one there. If you click the picture you can see the full sized version that I seamed together.

These are the Hamson tomatoes that I decided to try out this year. They're tasty, but the tops have all been split to as least some degree so they don't really make a great slicing tomato. But for salsa... perfect. They're also a semi-determinant variety so I get quite a few at a time as you can see. This picture was taken just after I pulled about five or six ripe toms from the plants.
Another late comer, but a very welcome one to the garden is the green bells. This one is forming just perfectly, and there are another 4-6 of them staggered just behind it, so as usual it'll be feast or famine.
Here's a late cabbage that I honestly didn't think would head up, because of the heat, but the fence that's just behind it and blocks the morning sun, combined with the shade of the apple tree that's west of it, must put it in just the right micro-climate to benefit it. No complaints here.
And speaking of the apple tree, it's piled full on a lot of the branches. One problem, the organic methods I tried to keep the bugs out either didn't work, or more likely I was not diligent enough with them. Either way, the apples will make fine applesauce and/or pies.
Above is Mount Squash. There are four pumpkin plants in there, and two butternut's. I the middle I placed one of the wire trellis systems that I used for my peas earlier in the year. The vines have taken it over and then some.
Here's one of the pumpkins that have set successful. There are a couple of them buried in there.
I planted marigolds to help attract bees and beneficial insects this year. Here is one of the ones that I started from seed. It grew a lot slower to start with and took forever to set a flower, but that sucker is two and a half feet tall. Are they supposed to be that big?
And on to the pickles which finally set. Now I'll be swimming in them soon enough. This is the first year for us actually growing pickling cukes. I pulled the first few pounds of them today and their very very tasty, can't wait to pickle some.

So, there you go, a bit of eye candy and a little catch up with what's been going on in the Freedom Garden. Tomorrow I'll get up some pictures of the girls, they've been laying consistently, and as a matter of fact, the younger ones that I got as a second batch are just starting to. Fun stuff.
See you tomorrow.
P~

The Big Weigh-In 2008 7/28 (83 lbs)

OK, so the numbers aren't as impressive as 6000 lbs per 1/10 acre, but I think their pretty good considering so far we haven't yet really pulled any of the big crops such as cukes, tomatoes and zucchinis from the garden. (Yeah, I've gotten a few zukes but not too many yet.)
The grand total to date is just shy of 83 lbs of food. (82.87 or 1326-oz's to be really geeky) Most of that has come from strawberries and the heavier spring veggies like carrots and beets, but a good bit of lettuce and greens were brought in as well.

So, how about some numbers then eh? These are by no means all inclusive, but they do give a good idea of what's been producing around here.

• Strawberries.....................................................330 oz's - 20.625 lbs

• Baby Lettuce (mesclun).......................................46 oz's - 2.875 lbs

• Greens (kale, collard, spinach, chard)..............134.5 oz's - 8.406 lbs

• Kohlrabi............................................................60 oz's - 3.75 lbs

• Carrots..............................................................197 oz's - 12.31 lbs

• Peas (shelling)..................................................107 oz - 6.687 lbs

• Peas (Sugar Snap).............................................60 oz's - 3.75 lbs

Well, that gives you a good idea of what's been coming in this spring/early summer. Like I said, the numbers aren't huge but you never really notice how much baby lettuce it actually takes to make a pound of it until you keep track of the actual numbers; another benefit to keeping accurate records. Besides, we aren't vegetarians and the things that we've had come in we've able able to really enjoy on the table and have even put up a few things too.(More to come on that.) We've also had a total of 37 eggs so far since the three mature hens started laying on the 12th of July. The other girls should start around mid month next month, so that'll really help too. Every little bit goes toward our own food Independence, and is a welcome addition to the pantry. You can find my updated totals in the left column under the Big Weigh-In icon. I'll be doing my best to keep that Qty updated even if I don't have a chance to make a big update post.
I Hope all your gardens are blessing you with bounties as well.
Till next time.
P~

P.S. Thank you to Anais at PTF for the nod today. I owe much of my inspiration to you guys!