Some non-seed-cage updates...

I'm gonna put off house cleaning just a bit longer to see if my delay means the kids will wrap up what they are doing and help me! Kali is working on making more of her popcorn for seed testing (we still have a lot of seed to test before planting time!!) and the younger two are loading up a new wardrobe acquired this week (more room inspired some cleaning and organizing of their club materials!). 

Going back a ways, the girls returned from a marvelous time in PA last Tuesday. Since then we have gotten to navigate the first virus going through our household since before the pandemic. I had nearly forgotten what a pain it was and how long it takes it to make its way through all of us. Thankfully it's been just a minor cold, but did make for a flurry of rescheduling and changing up our way of being with people for awhile. I was very glad for my foresight in going over to help with/hold Luca the day the kids came home. My arms are kinda aching for it again, but we'll wait until our sniffles and coughs have departed! 

The colds haven't really changed up the daily routines too much other than tiredness setting in maybe sooner than would normally be the case. That said, it is possible that it was partly what made our most recent family work day feel a bit more tedious and not quite as free flowing as some in the recent past. OR it could be that our last string of family work was a 3 day stretch and this was a 1 day blitz that probably had about as much work as could have fit into closer to 3 days. Sigh! We just kinda kept adding to the wish list. So hopefully we'll get another one on the calendar soon, but that work day did crash into nightfall and then spilled over into Easter in a way we hadn't wished for. So it goes sometimes...

Some of the big tasks of the day included the following:

Jason got into weeding and prepping the delicata patch in the side garden. He mostly ended up working on this solo except for a little help with rock pick up towards the end. I keep marveling how the rocks we are picking out of the gardens are getting smaller and smaller the more years we do it!

The girls and I started unloading the compost chicken coop and the duck coop. All the litter was being placed above the duff in one of the compost circles for distribution this fall. We filled it up, plus some to spare for the currant bed project (see below). Alida and Terah were really inspired to help early on and then tired of it. Kali joined a bit later and then stuck with it until the end. There was some urgency for this project since the mama hens with their 25-30 chicks each in the brooder pens were needing to get moved down to the floor. The chicks were getting more active and the mamas were eager for more space and something to scratch at!

I had fun watching them as I worked in the coop. SO cute! They weren't sure about us being in there for so long with them. 

At one point the one mama decided to brood her chicks out on the wire and I was getting a kick out of all the feet on the underside of the pen!

Before going back to reporting on the gardens, I also enjoyed taking occasional breaks to take grass/weeds to the chicks in the red coop. They are growing so fast. There's a great peep hole in the coop so I can throw in treats for them and then watch them from the outside, so they don't feel so skittish. Sometimes one will come up to the hole and look at me through it!

Somewhere in the mix of the morning/early afternoon, we got all the crates off the grain crops in the pig paddocks and the dry land garden. I had some good help AND a helper that was done helping and who instead wanted to sit in the crates and impede progress! 

It became clear that a break and some nourishment was in order so I believe that was the break where we enjoyed ice cream cones under the pine trees (why we have a whole lot of Turkey Hill ice cream that I purchased would have to be the subject of a whole different post!!). 

It seems every time we stop and gather somewhere, Sneaker (my favorite chicken) comes and finds us. She certainly did at our breaks that day. A bit later, after another stint of project progress, we enjoyed a picnic with the first red buds in our spinach salads!

With the coops cleaned out, we got the mamas and chicks situated on the floor of the coop in separate cages. The chicks were running around exploring in no time. The other big projects of the day were prepping the seed cage for planting (getting trellises set up and final weeding on the beds) and then working on shaping and prepping a new bed in the root patch for a fall planting of currants. After Jason helped with the bed shaping and getting a load of wood chips, he went off to the seed cage and the girls and I worked on the root patch bed. We did a bit of weeding and then put down feed sacks and covered them with wood chips. It was very satisfying, visibly obvious progress. And this was also the point at which the day was coming to a close but not the projects (Jason and I did a quick regroup and decided what point to get to and what would wait for another time). 

Jason and Kali went over to get another load of wood chips while I did the evening chores and Alida and Terah got a fire going (there is no way the evening fire would have happened if we didn't have children who could now independently take on tasks like that!). I will have to take it as a small sign of progress that we went ahead with our plan to hang out by the fire that evening even with the lingering projects waiting for us to wrap up the next day, and on a future family work day. It was a gorgeous evening with a full moon rising. The toasted cheese sandwiches and s'mores over the fire were about as enjoyable as could be with the weariness of our bodies by that point in the day!

I finished up the mulching the next morning and Jason got the seed cage planted. I think both Jason and I were pretty ready to sack out by that point but we had some excited kiddos and an Easter egg hunt and egg decorating in our future! So the afternoon had some egg hunting, some egg painting, some baby adoring (from a distance), some lollipop licking, and some hang out time in the gorgeous cool crisp spring air. 

And now I think my house cleaning help might be about ready to help, so I better shift my attention to washing spinach, bringing in laundry, cleaning and evening chores. Today is Jason's first day back working away from home after the big spring push here on the farm. I'm eager for the house to not be in the state it is in for his arrival home. 

I will just close by saying that one of the outgrowths of some of my journaling time last weekend (besides a good amount of tears) was a realization that I have struggled for some time now with truly treasuring this beautiful place where we live - often being more focused on and overwhelmed by the relentless lists of tasks that I can never seem to get to no matter how hard I try. There's no quick fix for this, but I'm trying to pay closer attention and trying to slow down and breath and savor the gifts that this little piece of earth so generously offers to me every day. Even if sometimes I feel so very undeserving of those gifts. There's lots more that could be said, but maybe at another time and probably in a non-scrapbook format...

The Seed Sanctuary: A Spiritual Home

My first garden, planted when I was a lad of but four tender years, was dubbed Jason's Pea Patch by my parents, and the report is that I was inordinately, uncannily focused on it. Well, that spiral keeps coming around in my life, and the 45-year-old version of me can still let the world fall away while staring at a plant and seeing how it's growing.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it was the peas that drove me to this construction project. Ever since we installed our wonderful garden fence ("good fences make good neighbors" applies especially to our relationships with groundhogs, rabbits, and deer), the chipmunk, vole, and other rodent populations have often run a little to the dense side of things, which is not a plus for seed savers like us. The chipmunks especially are thorough at finding seed as it matures, and they have a special love for dried, mature green peas. Last year we got no Green Arrow shelling pea seed at all, and the strain we've worked hard to select over the last decade or so was in danger of dying out. I don't begrudge the chipmunks their instincts or their ingenuity, but this is important and I felt I needed to do something about it.

Trapping or poisoning them all was a disheartening prospect to us, seemed unlikely to succeed, and was not enough of a guarantee...new ones could always move in at inopportune times. Keeping a terrier in the garden or the traditional pride of semi-wild cats around the place come with enough liabilities (expense, care, disease potential in garden soil, destruction of wild birds), that we preferred to go another route if possible. We felt we needed a safe place to grow small quantities of rodent-attracting seed, and the best solution we could think of was a physical barrier creating a safe zone.

I had had good luck last year with isolating selected pea plants from a winter-ready snap pea variety we're trying to breed (see?...again with the peas!) wherein I had crafted a tube of wire mesh and slid it down over a stake with the pea plant tied to it, then worked it down into the soil at the base of the plant to prevent digging under the edge. That worked, but it was not going to do to have to labor that way for every plant with desirable seed. If we can sow a whole patch of something, we can overwhelm the ability of the rodents to consume it all, but when it is only a few individuals, things get pretty tenuous.

The solution we arrived at for peas and other vulnerable seed-producing plants was a large frame, covered in wire mesh with small enough holes (1/4") to keep birds, chipmunks, and even mice and large crickets and grasshoppers out. I drew up several design ideas, eventually settling on a Black Locust-wood frame tall enough for full-size bean vines, sorghum plants, and tall sunflowers. It needed a sloping roof to shed leaves and other tree debris carried on the wind.

The space we decided to use for it is our old strawberry garden, which has been pretty useless because of the chipmunks, squirrels and birds anyway. This meant the area available was 16' long by 10' wide. I knew right away this would feel tight, but I was also pretty sure it would be enough space to be an effective haven for bulking up quantities of precious seed for larger plantings and for reliably developing and maintaining small supplies of seed for certain varieties we keep for our own use.

Like many of our building projects, this one was high on innovation and learning curve, meaning we had no clear idea how long it was going to take. If I had had to guess, I might have said 4 days. It was more like 8, in the end, I think. Yes, this implies some moments of stress. Stress for Janelle as she worries about all that isn't getting done while I'm hitting it hard with the "seed cage," stress for both of us as we think about the money spent on supplies (over $350 on hardware cloth alone!), meta-stress for me as I wonder if my design will be successful, stress for me as I battle remorse over all this fuss and effort in support of my drive to work in the development of seed varieties as I wonder what it will all amount to, meta-stress for Janelle as she regrets her stress putting pressure on me and taking some of the enjoyment out of the building work...these projects can really take a lot out of us, and that's not even mentioning the physical stress of digging for posts and buried wire edges; felling, working up, peeling, and carrying locust trees for poles and braces; setting posts; assembling the frame; careful chainsaw and carpentry work for the door-shaped gate with a rodent-excluding fit; cutting and stapling hardware cloth to the whole exterior, and the interminable shuttling of tools back and forth from far-flung storage location, plus the constant moving and climbing of ladders in soft, uneven garden soil (It was taxing, unrelenting work for this 45-year-old, and I can tell you I am glad it snowed and rained today!) By the time I finally got to shaping the beds inside and filling in the wire-edge-burying trench (12 inches deep, by the way), one would think I would be so soured on the project that I'd never want to see it again.

I love it.

Not just the work...though I do really love that, too, frustrations and spent energy to one side. Seeing my idea take shape by the effort of my hands is like magic, truly. What I really love is that when I step through the door-gate into that space, I feel something that has to be like what I felt in Jason's Pea Patch over forty years ago: an entrancing blend of wonder, eagerness, contentment...it is a place that I know is good, that I trust will be a safe place for my ideas and our family's needs. Despite the wind that whistles through the wire and rain coming right in through the roof, it feels like home. The first peas are already planted inside, of course.

I've been thinking a lot, in this transitional time, about the process of seed saving and development and what role it fills for us, what it means, and how it is accomplished. One of the things I've noticed is that I feel so differently while I do the work depending on what else is going on in our lives. I can feel numb with exhaustion, eager with anticipation, whimsical, driven, dubious (even regretful), proud, distracted...in the end what will matter most is that we persist. And that's how I feel about this project. It was in some ways costly to us, but even if I didn't believe it would earn its keep and then keep on giving (which I do), it is evidence of our tenacity that we got it done, evidence of our vision that we conceived of it and followed through, and the good things that come out of it will come because of that tenacity and vision expressed through time and despite the momentary feelings that may or may not always align with it.

(the view from up top - that top was then covered in snow today!)

Spring has sprung!!

Jason is outside working on the seed cage project - the hope is to wrap it up soon so that we can get peas planted inside it (the goal is to have a chipmunk/squirrel/grasshopper-free place to grow some of the seeds that are most tempting for certain critters). And the girls are enjoying time with family in PA! They left yesterday on a fun road trip north and will get to hang out with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents for a few days!! That means the house is quiet! I've made a verbal commitment to a few friends that I will carve out some of the next day or two to hole up with my journal. So that's up next after sharing some spring images and snippets here. 

I did chores this morning and sloshed my way through various places on the land. We've had A LOT of rain since we did our spring planting. I was excited to see the lettuce sprouting. I also made the first batch of apple mint tea to have alongside sautéed winter cress for breakfast. Green is popping out more or less everywhere. Of all the animals, I most enjoyed tending the chicks that we booted out from the house when they started exploring beyond the bounds of the kiddie pool. 

We had three good weather days recently before the predicted rains where we worked all together to get the spring gardens in. Those were the best 3 days I've had in a really long time. It was so good to be outside working together. We did so much seeding, planting, mulching, watering, weeding, transplanting, alongside a lot of laughing and talking. I was able to mostly mentally table everything else for those few days which is a monumental feat for me. There were some moments where it was iffy if we were going to meet our goal for the day (for example, get the potatoes in before dark). But we made a good team and accomplished more than we even set out to in those few days (we'll credit that by and large to kids getting older and more helpful)!! 

We did take breaks and this one was a picnic in Terah's turtle shell playhouse. The willows are slowly turning the roof green!

Alida and Terah would get tired of various jobs pretty quickly, but they were normally open to selecting something else helpful from a menu of options - they seemed to really enjoy filling wheelbarrows with leaves for mulching. 

I really do love the combination of shades of greens and browns - the leaf mulch on paths with a layer of compost on the beds is truly a beautiful sight for my eyes. 

Jason did the hard work of digging all the potato trenches. Then the rest of us helped putting the seam of bio char in, some soil over that, planting potatoes and then covering them. It feels like this year Terah is exponentially expanding the number of things she can do in the garden.

All the baby shallot and onion plants are in and looking pretty happy. I was worried the recent rains might have been too much for them, but the onion patch, especially, looked quite perky this morning.

In addition to planting potatoes, shallots and onions, we also seeded cilantro, lettuce, beets and dill. We also did a lot of weeding and path work (scooping soil from paths onto beds and applying fresh leaf mulch to the paths). Additionally, once the biochar pit was emptied we raked and scooped up all the duff from the bottom of the old brush pile to fill in the pit. It was a cascade of projects, all the more fun when done together. Here's a few other pictures from those days...

In other non-garden news, but still in the vein of things growing: Terah has lost her 4th tooth. And our trip to the dentist the other day for cleanings confirmed that she has a few more loose. She's not wasting any time!! She is enjoying what foods she can stick in through the hole.

My heart had its best kind of therapy the other night when Jonathan, Christen and Luca came over for dinner. After he had had his (several) dinners, he sacked out on my chest. There's nothing like it!!!

Since both Terah and Alida had gotten a chance to hold and feed him, they even let me hold him without asking for turns. Or maybe they could just see how blissfully content their mama was and didn't want to end that time prematurely. Whatever the reasons were, I was grateful!

It's so amazing how a little person can reorient our social spaces. He is literally the center of attention in some moments. :) He's becoming much more alert and curious about the world around him, and his smiles and little coos are something else!

And, yes, I was having a little bit of a hard time giving him up at the end of the evening!

Here's to hoping that each of you reading this have the kind of love, accompaniment, nourishment, tending, challenge and gentleness you need in your life to inspire your own growth and blooming!