City Mouse, Country Mouse

(post by Ben)

There are countless versions of the fable: it’s either a cat-dog-mousetrap-maid that scares the mice cousins out of the pantry-cupboard-cellar-restaurant… but the moral is generally the same (this one being my favorite): “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.”

In case you forgot the story, a city mouse goes to visit his cousin in the country and helps him work on his farm. The city mouse is a little lazy, and complains a lot about the food and the work and how there’s not a lot of “people” around… then the country mouse goes to visit the city mouse and is amazed at how plentiful the food is, the “people” (human and rodent) only to be scared back to the country by the dog-cat-trap-maid which leads him to his moral.

Why is the country mouse judging so harshly his own food culture (what’s wrong with beans and bacon?) and saying that city food culture (where’d they get the ingredients for their cakes and ale anyway?) is almost worth dying for?

—-

The inspiration for growing our own Mud Puddle Produce happened in Chicago, a city famous for cakes and ale (okay — famous for hot dogs, baseball, “Chicago-style” pizza, beer… and the “Best Restaurant” in the country, Alinea) and also “famous” for fear (okay, a lot of cities are… but Chicago has the most infamous gangters and gangstas; the first serial killer; and the most recent elevated train derailment).

Almost one year ago (20 June 2007, I saved the email), Gabrielle, Chad, Jason, and me were sitting outside eating some fancy food with some surprisingly un-fancy ingredients: grilled monk-fish (“poor man’s lobster”) with a tasty corn and pork-rind relish. It’s too perfect as a background to such an ostentatious first year of farming. I had just gotten back from a month couchsurfing in France and Ireland, Chad and Gabe were about to go to France and Italy for a month themselves; I became obsessed with French Breakfast Radishes (our first harvest!). Gabe’s old apartment overlooked a police station and also overlooked the WORST intersection in Chicago (while cat-sitting I saw/heard five accidents over one weekend). Here we were just wanting to grow stuff to eat and get out of the city.

And here we are doing it.

Take a group of city friends with unlimited culinary and business skills and throw them at the most beautiful county in Oregon and let them grow as great a variety of fruits and vegetables that the deer, the heat-waves, and the notorious Pea Leaf Weevil will allow, and see what happens. For the good of the earth and all of those on it, for our own sanity… and to make new friends and get acquainted with the ones we haven’t seen in awhile.

What I’m gettin’ at is this country x city mouse is gettin’ home while the gettin’ is good…

(Also, it’s almost time for your first CSA box! You better get ready!!!)

Rage Against the Deer?

Because of the heat we have been having, last night we decided not to close up the greenhouse. It isn’t getting much below 60 at night, and I figured the plants could use the fresh air. The deer, I thought, would be too timid to venture past all the crazy stuff we have in there.

This morning Chad was up and out of the house at 5:30am to do some measurements for where we are putting the new fence posts in (for what? Deer fencing, naturally) because our neighbor Roy has a nifty Kubota tractor that he has an auger attachment for, and he offered to come help us dig the holes rather than making Chad do them all by hand again.

SO–I was lazy and slept another 45 minutes, and then got up and fed the dogs, and checked on the baby chickens in their coop (when we moved the bigger ones to the tractor, the little ones got moved to the coop Ben and I repaired. They still seem to be kind of freaked out by all the space they suddenly have:

But I think they will work it out just fine.) And then I took feed down to the big chickens, and went to start to get things watered. Chad and Roy were fixing something with the tractor, lubing the auger, it looked like, and I went over to say hi. Chad said to me, “You aren’t going to be happy this morning.” I thought Uh-oh, but thought that maybe something was wrong with the tractor, and we weren’t going to get any digging done or something. So, I asked why, and he said, “Deer got in the greenhouse. They ate the tomatoes.” At this point, I am worried. We have over 100 tomato plants in there, to say nothing of peppers and herbs, and squash. I am wondering how much they got to, and also kicking myself for thinking that anything with nature would go like I expect it to at this point. Haven’t I learned anything from the 4 months I have been out here? Then Chad says, “And your avocado.”

WHAT??! My one lone avocado that I started from a pit out of an avocado we ate like you do in a grade school classroom? And that took 3 weeks to even show any signs of life, and then took another 3 months to grow a big long root and then had just gotten leaves so I was FINALLY able to plant it in dirt in a pot? Two weeks ago, it looked like this:

Yesterday, it looked even better. It loves the warm weather and the rabbit manure I put in the soil for it. The leaves were at least doubled in size from this picture. Today, it looks like a 3 inch stem stuck in some dirt. God damn those deer. Action must be taken. I am watching Caddyshack, to brush up on Bill Murray’s retaliation methods against gophers, and trying to translate that into something suitable for deer. OK, maybe not dynamite, but something really bad needs to happen to those animals.

They got a few of the tomatoes. They seemed to prefer the biggest ones. Which is great, because there goes all hope at having early tomatoes this year. I got some fertilizer into the pots, and we just have to hope they all put out new, and stronger leaves.

Tonight, the greenhouse is shut up tight. And the fence post holes were dug, so as of Monday, those deer are going to have even less area around here to graze on. Hopefully they get the point and begin hanging out somewhere else entirely.

Let’s end with pictures of the latest wildflowers on the property while we think calming thoughts of the ocean, or beautiful sunsets, or legs of venison spit roasting over a giant fire…

This one is called Pussys Ears.

Don’t know this ones name.

Don’t know what this one is either, but it looks vaguely orchid like. Maybe a wild variety?

The blue lilies are up as well, but I forgot to take a picture of that one…Next time, I promise. And they really are everywhere. It is crazy–like a sea of blue wildflowers in parts of the property. Must be deer resistant…

Heat Wave

We are in the midst of some record high temps here for so early in the year. Yesterday Chad and I drove past the Fairground thermometer and it said 104…Yikes for us! This has meant long, lazy days where I hide indoors and try to stay cool. Well, actually, we get up and moving really early, and then at 11am when it is too hot for me to be in the sun anymore, then I move inside and try to get stuff done around the house. It is just so hot though… The cats lay all sprawled out, and I follow suit. Then, in the evening, when the temps are a little more humane, I make the rounds again, and see what needs more water and how the plants and animals are functioning through the heat.

On Monday, we got a chicken tractor built with some help from RJ over at Blackberry Lane. This is a shot of me inside installing nesting boxes. Yep, go ahead, make “nesting” jokes…

Then Chad and I got chickens moved in. They really love being able to scratch in all the grass. The first night was a little nerve-racking for me, because I kept envisioning going out the next morning to remnants of a fox or coyote buffet, but all has been well for them. They pant in the heat, and I am trying to keep them as cool as possible, but when I can’t even manage that for myself, well…

Pretty neat, huh? So the theory behind this is based on Joel Salatin’s grass farming at Polyface Farm, where I first heard about the whole concept of pastured poultry. It turns out, as with so many other things, this is not a new concept at all… But one we are really excited about having in place around here. Hopefully the predators stay away, or else we will have to get a guard llama!

Also on Monday, Chad planned out our irrigation needs for what we have planted right now, and got it all ordered. On Wednesday, it arrived, and Thursday morning, we got up really early and laid the lines for it.

Those black lines you see are the drip irrigation lines running off the main line. Chad had a really good time putting it all together. I helped, but got really distracted by our baby corn plants:

Of course, there are a million pests for these too, so we have to up our protection methods for all our plants. Sigh. I didn’t particularly like bugs before, and NOW, well, let’s just say I am very fond of things like frogs and turtles and birds…

Oh! Speaking of birds! I will just say that the big scoreboard for my life is currently at Birds 2 Gabrielle 0. After the great chicken escape of a couple weeks ago, I had yet another encounter with a fine feathered fellow, but this time it was inside the house. I was sitting at the computer, and I noticed that Amelia was behaving very oddly with our little wood burning stove. Normally, she isn’t even really around the thing, but this day, she wouldn’t leave it alone. After about 15 minutes of her clawing at it, I was finally fed up, and I went over to grab her and make her sit in my lap. As I got close to the stove, I heard a little noise from inside. Well, I opened up the door enough to peak in, and there was one of the barn swallows we have been seeing around the house lately. I slammed the door shut really quickly and went about what I was doing. I took Chad lunch a little bit later and asked if he was ready to tackle the next problem of the day, and told him about the bird. Well, he said, if it is still in the when I get home from work tonight, we will take care of it. We went back up to the house a little but later, and while he was on the computer, I decided to have another peak inside the stove. The bird was calmly sitting in the back corner, and I once again closed the door. I went and got a box, thinking that I would open the door, and the bird would try to fly out, and I would have the box there waiting, and smoothly transfer the bird back to its outside life. Right. The bird wouldn’t come out, and while I had the box tilted away from the opening to get my hand inside to shoo it out, THEN it flew, and didn’t fly neatly into the box, but proceeded to fly around the living/dining/kitchen area.

The cats, by the way, thought this was fantastic. They were running around the floor right under the bird like laser guided missiles, so the game became “try to shoo the bird out, and not trip over a cat”.
I opened the 2 sliding doors, and had Chad open the front door. The bird would perch on the top of the door, and then swoop right back inside. After a few minutes, he finally made it out the front door, while Matilda and Amelia sat with tails swishing at their loss. I went back to washing the nesting boxes for the inside of the chicken tractor, and Chad went back to the computer. A couple minutes later, Chad poked his head outside the door and said, “Uhm. I think we have a new pet.” I could only groan and ask what had possibly happened at this point, and he said, “The bird is back in the stove.” Obviously, they are trying to make a nest and the wire that should be on the chimney is not… Well, this time, Chad dealt with it. He opened the stove, stuck his hand in, caught the bird, brought it outside, and let it go. (That would be Bird 0 Chad 1. I need to take lessons.) It has yet to come back. Hopefully we traumatized it enough that it will pick another nesting site…

The Tenacity of Plants

Well, Nature in general I guess. There have been some amazing goings-on around here.

When Ben and I were transplanting the biggest of the tomato plants, one snapped just above the roots. I don’t know how much you know about tomatoes in general, but they have adventitious root systems. This means that if you bury the whole stem up to the top leaves, the stem develops roots all along its length. Ben had the great idea to submerge the plant in water so the roots would develop anew. I just repotted this plant two days ago back into dirt, and it looks really good. The top died back a little bit because it was focusing its energy on regrowing roots, but I am amazed that it survived as well as it has.

Also, the asparagus we planted outside which got either underwatered or too cold, and which we thought for sure was totally gone, is actually growing back. Chad and I were weeding in that bed the other day to prep it for a new round of peas (we are still trying to outsmart those damn pea weevils), and lo and behold, there are new asparagus coming up! So I need to finish weeding the bed, and replant more asparagus seeds so we can try to actually have a full asparagus bed.

And our peas…Our poor, poor peas… The first round is hanging in there. They are considerably taller, but still have bites taken out of the leaves. But the second round is nearly totally destroyed. But it is amazing how they still try to grow. I keep expecting to go down there and they will be gone, but they aren’t.

Oh, and how can I forget about the weeds? Weeding is the biggest job we have on our daily lists, and it literally seems like it is needed every single day. Those guys burst overnight. At first it was really hard to distinguish carrots from weeds, so we just let them all grow until we could straighten it out, and yesterday Kirby and I finally pulled up all the weeds from the carrot bed.

Bug Porn Goes Big

I knew there was a wider interest in bugs having sex since seeing it in my Master Gardener class. Now Isabella Rossellini is in on the act:

Check out her Green Porno. It is hysterical!

Beyond Farming

THis is no longer going to be our farm blog then I am going to change it. Foci will now include the everything that has the ability to disintegrate our way(s) of life. We have potential,. but such energy and examples are being squandered by global forces of which we have no control. Entities exist to return our gratitude to earth, but the corporate world has meddled enough in our routines, reaching beyond legality of the nation-state, that they are no longer accountable to our livelihoods. A person can no longer make a difference, yet we struggle. This blog from now on will be about struggle to exist, and coexist, which are synonymous, yet we always forget. Organic coexistence should be a struggle demanding critical thought, but we are constantly treating beneficial relationships with indignation. Profit, and market economy, and the nation-state political bodies are antediluvian.

Outsmarted by a chicken…

Last night I was doing my evening rounds before dinner (and then we watched Lars and the Real Girl–if you haven’t seen it, you should. It was awesome.), and noticed that the bigger chickens in the outside coop needed water. So, I pulled the hanging bucket off the string, and went back outside the coop to fill it up. I set it on the ground outside the coop door, pushed the door closed, put the hose into the bucket, and walked over to the house to turn on the faucet. I stood next to the faucet the whole time because I knew the second that I walked back over to the bucket, I would just have to turn back around to turn the faucet off. Once the bucket was full (I saw some water overflowing from the edge), I turned off the water and walked back over to the coop. This is when I saw 4 chickens had pushed the door open and were wandering in the area OUTSIDE their coop–not the fenced in outside area, but in the yard. You see, I didn’t think I needed to latch the door, because why would chickens push open the door? I immediately regretted my oversight. Especially since not one dog, but both dogs were outside in the yard as well. Before they were able to see the chickens, and as calmly as I could, I called out to Kirby who was in the kitchen getting ready to make dinner– “Hey, Kirby, could you give me a hand?” “Yeah!” I hear from inside. She opens the door, and I say, “There is a chicken out. Can you please get the dogs inside?” She calls the dogs, and they go running before they have any idea about the fun they could be having, which makes me breath a small sigh of relief.

BUT–I still have to figure out how to get the chickens back into the coop. They were a little freaked out at tis point and wouldn’t really let me near them. They had made their way around the side of the coop and were on the other side of where the outside run area was, and were trying to fit through the fencing to be with their flock-mates. Kirby had come back outside to help, and had grabbed a handful of weeds to offer as bait to lure them close.

Let me just say, this is one of the MANY times we have had around here thus far where I kind of wish a documentary film crew was around. Granted I would totally be the person chasing around livestock as has happened in countless films and TV shows about the inexperienced city dweller moving to the country, but still. This was worth catching on film. You guys would have paid to see this.

I went around to the end of the run area to try and force them back towards the door, which works until they realize they can go under the coop. This is when I curse the fact that Ben and I decided not to close off this area. With Kirby on one side, and me on the other, they won’t come out, so I backed away and they came out my side and I was able to get them around towards the door. Only to see that another 3 chickens have made their way out in the meantime. I began cursing my stupidity in leaving the door open, because why wouldn’t they rest of the chickens have the same idea the first group did… But I was trying to make it easier to get them back inside. They all veered away from the coop and start to go up the hill, but Kirby cut them off, and they made a beeline towards the coop door. WHEW! All inside…except 2. Who promptly ran around the side of the coop, and under it.

Now what?, I kept thinking to myself. How in the hell do I corral 2 birds in a backyard with almost no boundaries? And I kept being so thankful that the dogs were safely away because I could not have handled dead birds. So, I end up chasing the birds around the coop/run area in it’s entirety a few times, and they kept trying frantically to push themselves through the fence into the run, and Kirby was trying to act as a counterpoint to my movements to sandwich them between us so they could be grabbed, but they kept slipping through. I finally ended up snagging the Rhode Island hen, and carried her back around to the closed (and latched!) door, and then it was just the poor rooster left. A couple more times around the coop, he stayed underneath it for a while with either of us on a side trying to lure/force him out, and then we finally caught him, too.

All in all, I think this whole escapade only took 15-20 minutes, but it felt way longer than that. And now I have learned something else not to do.

These are all the tomatoes I was talking about:

Our last frost date is approaching very rapidly, so soon these guys will be headed to the real outside within the next couple weeks. This, as you can imagine, means even more work than usual for us. We have to plow under more of the land, amend the soil with compost, fertilizer, and lime, and pull all the obvious weeds out at the very least. Chad may want to subsoil as well. And we have to do enough land to plant tomatoes, peppers, summer and winter squashes, beans, sunflowers, amaranth, and more corn! Yikes…Anyone wanna come out here, like around tomorrow?

Non-farm related things

Just came across this internet page. Maybe it will inspire someone:

http://eartheasy.com/article_ten_ways_post_oil.htm

And while we can all still indulge our “canned entertainment” cravings, can I remind everyone that has access to cable to watch Top Chef on Bravo, and to root your asses off for Chicago girl Stephanie Izard?

I am off to clean some planting pots (using the awesome natural disinfectant recipe I found) , so I can then transplant more tomatoes.

First Sale(s)!

My first order of business this morning was picking the French Breakfast radishes (D’Avignon variety–bought through Johnny’s Seeds) we planted in March because our friend Lori at Blackberry Lane Farm has a restaurant tat wants them! So here is a picture of the first official harvest:

And then I washed them all up and bundled them together for delivery. I hope the restaurant likes them:

This was just the icing on a very busy week. Chad’s parents arrived last Saturday and we had a really great 5 days with them. I took them (and Ben and Kirby) on a wine tasting tour:

And we went on a hike around Rogue River. We almost made it to Rainie Falls, but I had to make everyone turn around because I had a doctors appointment I had to get to. What we saw was BEAUTIFUL though:

While they were here, Dee helped transplant tomatoes, and Steve repaired our screen patio doors and helped finish the outside area of the newly renovated chicken coop. Here is a photo of the inside that Ben fixed up while he was here:

Those chickens have it made, huh? Towards the top of this picture, you see a plywood looking piece below the beautifully whitewashed wall. (Ben found a really cool idea on a blog, which we promptly used for our own coop!) This plywood piece is a gate, of sorts, which opens down and lets the chicks into their back run area. Since Steve helped fix this up, and it is now finished, I have had the gate open during daylight hours the past couple days. Well, until this evening, the chickens regarded this as a great back porch area, but didn’t really get the fact that they could get down into the dirt and scratch around. Just as I had decided that they had had their learning opportunity for the day and I was getting ready to close the gate for the night, one of the dogs (she shall remain unnamed, but let’s just point out that for once it wasn’t the black dog being naughty) charged the dividing fence, and sent chickens scattering. A few of them found themselves on the ground, amidst all the pasture clippings I had thrown in there yesterday, and boy did they like it! Upon seeing no harm falling their flock-mates, a couple others braved the short trip down, and the next thing I know, most of the dozen are scratching and pecking just like they should. And THEN they figured out how to get back up into the coop. I could not have been prouder of those crazy dinosaur birds…

Ben has announced he is moving out here in June, which is fantastic news for all involved. It will take a lot of pressure off Chad while I am laid up due to childbirth, and that will make me stress less about Chad’s health and well-being.

We have gotten 2 checks for CSA shares, which is really fantastic. Now we just have to stay on top of the planting schedule to make sure we have items for the weekly boxes. This weekend I need to start more herbs, radishes, turnips, carrots, lettuces, and eggplant. Chad and I got corn in the ground yesterday, and our tomatoes are filling up the greenhouse. Now we just need the weather to cooperate and enough time and hands to do all the weeding, seeding, plowing, and harvesting…