Farm Update for late May

Each year, we face some kind of delay getting our garden planted and projects started, but it seems to always come together.  This spring has been very cold and dreary.  I even had to scrape my car windows on Monday morning!  My early attempts to seed greens resulted in no sprouts at all, so I tried again a few weeks later and got a few little starts, and now I feel pretty confident that the seeds I planted last weekend will be successful.

Luckily for us, Mike runs the Horticulture program at his school, so there are always plenty of starts available if we can't pull it together.  Also, our best friends own a nursery, (www.BarnyardGardens.com) so we lean on them when our luck runs out.

Right now, I'm working most days while Anouk is in school, so I'm up by 6am to get all of us ready and off to school, then I drive the long commute to the job site, and put in about 4 hours of work before I race back to her school to pick her up.  After school, we run errands and I try to accomplish some important task at home, like cleaning, bill paying, and garden maintenance, before cooking dinner and putting her to bed.  I usually fall asleep during that process and I'm toast after that.

Two Black Rouen & Two Swedish Blue

In between those tasks, I tend to our animals.  Our ducklings grew to nearly full-size within a month, and they now live where our turkeys have lived in past years.  I failed to socialize them, so they run from me, but they are very easy to take care of, and we have been supplementing their feed with a steady supply of slugs.  They are gorgeous and fun to watch.

Our chicks are now about half grown, so I moved them to the main coop just the other day.  First, I put them in an adjacent enclosure for the afternoon so that they could introduce themselves to the established flock through the fence.

That evening, all of the chickens retired to the coop as usual.  The rooster was particularly loud, but not aggressive, and they have been happily cohabitating for three days now.  (Chickens will become very territorial if you put new in with old during the day, and they sometimes kill the newbies.)

When we get baby poultry, they spend the first couple of weeks in a plastic tub in a closet with a heat lamp.  Then I move them out to our original chicken coop, close to the house, in our old rabbit cage for extra security.  When they are ready, I move them out of the cage to have full range of the brooding coop until they are big enough to be out in a yard.  When I moved the chickens, I was able to release the baby turkeys from the hutch, so they now have a big coop to play in.  We did not go with a heritage breed this year, but I would have to write another long blog to explain why.  Next time I get a day to myself...

It has been a beautiful week, and today is predicted to be the best weather yet this spring, so I had better get off my butt and enjoy the sunshine.  I have plants to water, bees to check, and a car to pack full for the POSSCA Artist's Garage Sale taking place tomorrow.

Tomato and basil starts in the greenhouse, with cukes waiting in the tray.

Broccoli and cauliflower bed.

General update on homestead and business

I've written a few entries about our efforts to grow our own food and to engage in the Slow Food movement. (Confession: Until this year, I thought Slow Food meant taking your time eating.) It was more challenging with Mike's mom visiting over the holidays. This is the woman who has refused to drink our organic milk in the past because she thinks extra chemicals and hormones MUST be added for health purposes. We generally take her to the grocery store on the way home from the airport to make sure she has food that she likes. So, for the first time in months, we ate salad with our meals.

It's one thing to live with unusual food choices as a family, but it is another when we have visitors who aren't used to eating pumpkin three times a day. And I felt fine about adding some out-of-season ingredients during the holidays.

Besides, it is getting harder lately to put tasty meals together with the food we have available. On Christmas Eve, which is also my dad's birthday, I made a special dinner of Buffalo roast (grown about a mile and a half away), salad, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie (our pumpkin).

Unfortunately, I used many of our frozen veggies to make a big soup, but it turned out awful. Even I couldn't eat it. What a waste of hard-earned food! Overall, we are getting about one egg per day, we still have a lot of chicken and some vegetables in our garage freezer, and there are a few loaves of zucchini bread left. I just harvested the last of our carrots yesterday. Every morning, I make Mike a smoothie from our carrots, chard and blueberries. I add strawberries, bananas, protein powder and juice from the store. As winter progresses, we are buying more and more food ingredients, but trying to pay attention to where they come from and choosing organic.

An abandoned bunny joined our family two days ago. His name is Uncle Wiggily, and he was left behind when a family moved from their home. Anouk has been begging for a bunny for years, so she's thrilled. We are still figuring out where he will live, but so far, he's settling in fine.

As for my business, I took a break from mosaic during the past couple of weeks, mainly because my studio was in a state of complete chaos, and I didn't have time to clean it. In the evenings, I worked in the house on fabric experiments and some projects for us that I had been putting off. Now I'm preparing to start 3 new commissions and creating new art panels for galleries and a recycled art festival in March.

I've had many ideas over the past few months that I haven't had time to realize, so I expected to get out there and whip out some of those. However, I find myself making something totally new and different. Suddenly, I'm working small and abstract, piecing together little bits of glass into inset rectangles on drawer faces. I have this nagging feeling that I'm wasting time, while I'm doing it, like I should be working off of the sketches in my notebooks, concocting masterpieces. Last night, I realized that I have something to learn from these little, simple mosaics, and I need to follow that urge. It could be as simple as a need to play, and to let go of the pressure to make something grand and impressive. Besides, these small pieces will provide some items that I can sell in a lower price range.

It's a new year and everyone seems to be looking toward spring. Bulbs are already coming up in the garden, and by the end of the month some of the trees will have small buds on them. I have a sense of a new beginning for me as well, with ideas brewing, new projects, and many goals to work on.

Sanctify Me

Recently, while catching up with a friend, I talked about how we've been working hard to grow our own food, and that "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" had a big impact on my attitude about the time and labor I have to spend on this endeavor. My friend said, "But now you can be all sanctimonious and walk around feeling like you are better than other people." It was said tongue-in-cheek, but I felt that it came out of resentment, from a mother of three living in the city, just trying to maintain her sanity. It achieved the desired result; it shut me up.

Today, I was listening to an interview with a food critic on NPR about the latest trends in American food. She said people are very concerned about where their food comes from, how it is grown, seeking quality and sustainability with their food choices. There are different approaches, some eating free-range, grass-fed meats, some going vegetarian, locavores, etc. A man called in to say that this was all fine and dandy, but was there any way to keep these people from being so self-righteous about what they do and don't eat?! He called it "obnoxious." The radio personalities heartily agreed, and seemed apologetic.

When I was at my liberal arts college, studying women's issues and becoming aware of the wide range of injustices in the world, I found that I was not allowed to discuss these topics with non-college friends. Political topics were dubbed "too P.C.," and friends asserted that it was elitist to be politically correct. End of debate.

I have known my share of the stereotypical vegan-snobs who won't eat from a plate that has touched meat, insist that using honey is bee extortion, and who fly into a rage if the cook accidentally includes a dairy-based condiment with their meal at a restaurant. My own husband, a strict vegetarian until 3 years ago, once stacked menus between us at a restaurant in Poland to block his view of my plate of fish.

But most of us are just learning about the genuine impact of our food choices on the economy, environment, and the lives of animals and farmers, and we want to find balance.

The fact is, humans are eating more meat than the planet can support. People are starving in this and other countries, rainforest is being destroyed at an incomprehensible rate, animals are raised and slaughtered by disgusting and horrific methods, and illegal immigration is supported by a fast-food industry that relies on cheap labor for a dangerous job that legal United States citizens are not willing to do. However, animals can be raised humanely, sustainably, and resulting in higher quality nutrition, and most Americans would benefit from reduced meat consumption. Food purchased at a big box grocery store is produced far away by cheap labor. Buying local food saves fossil fuels, puts the money into the hands of our farmers (who are struggling to compete with big companies using unsustainable practices), and we eat fresher food with far better nutritional value. Growing some of your own food is very rewarding, the flavor is incomparable, and it saves money.

Some of you have more pressing challenges to attend to, and just getting food on the table is enough of a struggle. Some are simply not interested. But I have made this a huge part of my life, and I don't intend to be secretive about it to make other people more comfortable. I believe this is an important conversation, worth having, even if we don't agree. If people who feel passionately about an issue are silenced by those who feel they are "obnoxious" and "sanctimonious", we won't get very far.