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!)
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