Farming Has Changed Me

Summer has ended

In my very urban, very busy life, I have a full-time job that works on an academic schedule. So mid-August means I return to another routine, one that doesn’t leave a great deal of time for farming, meandering, hanging out back with my family, listening to them play as I weed or water  or plant or study what’s growing.

In the past, I have let that change in schedule (from summer to Fall) mean that I move at a much faster speed, and that I neglect my self-care, and neglect the things that bring me joy.

Learning to Stop

But these last nine months turning gardening into farming have changed me. This weekend, faced with an impossible deadline (of my own making, I might add), I simply decided to stop. Stop trying to cram four days work into two, stop avoiding my family in order to get work done, stop rushing through my days at home in order to complete work elsewhere. I just stopped, and made another decision: I am not going to be that person anymore.

Instead, I spent the day finishing the chores for the week (laundry, meal planning, cleaning the house), finishing up my canning for the week (tomato sauce, pesto, plum jam, dried plums), and preparing for my son’s birthday party. I cooked and cleaned and just relaxed into the day. And it culminated in a small, casual gathering of people closest to us eating red beans and rice and homemade ice-cream cake in celebration of our shining sun of a boy.

I am no longer willing to make myself sick and unhealthy in order to make a deadline. I am no longer willing to avoid my family when they are around me. Something has got to change, and since the job is a necessity for the time being, the change will have to be in me, rather than in the external circumstances.

I am deeply happy when I am in that less-than-one-tenth-of-an-acre, examining the bark on the apple trees, encouraging the tomatoes, marveling at the cucumbers and how quickly they appear. I love digging into the compost bin and smelling that rich dirt smell that happens under the right conditions. I like talking to my chickens and chasing them away from the roots of the orange trees.

How can I have more of this peace, and less of the rushing? I don’t know. But I know which feels better, and that’s the direction I’m going to go toward.

Apples in August

Our two small apple trees are producing buckets of apples, rather early in the season, it seems to me. The smallest tree– just a baby in size, really — produces apples that would taste better cooked in some fashion, methinks.

The larger, older tree’s apples are lovely to eat, but they never grow very large. Someday I’ll take one in to a garden place and ask someone what kind they are. But for now, we just eat them, cook them into applesauce, and say “Thank you.”

I Need Canning Advice. Anyone out there?

So here’s the thing:

I love canning. The idea of it, the alchemy of it — everything but the actual put-the-can-in-the-water. Because I have lost more batches than I care to remember to the jar popping in the water, and everything leaking into the canner.

Today, for example, I had a gorgeous quart of roasted tomato sauce ready to go. I had the jars boiling in the canner for 10 minutes, and the sauce warm, as directed. But still — as soon as the can hit the water – POP! There went my time at the farmer’s market, my time spent cutting, roasting and processing tomatoes, etc.

It’s so frustrating. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Any ideas?

When Disaster Strikes, We’ll Have Enough Dried Bananas

I am obsessed with my Excalibur food dehydrator. I want to dry everything I can get my hands on. My new favorite obsession is drying bananas, which I buy by the very-cheap-bagful at produce stores, off the discounted fruit shelves.

Today, I bought 2 bags of organic bananas for $.59 each and promptly sliced them up and put them in the dryer. My kids love them, and I love getting things cheaply and preserving them.

I’ve been trying to make more than we consume, so that I can start putting food up. My goal is to get 3 months worth of food put away. (My friend Tontra says 8 months is recommended, but 3 months is ambitious enough for me right now). Every week when I go shopping, I buy a little bit more than we use, so that I can start stocking up.

This is all well and good, but right now, the pantry consists of peach jam and, you guessed it, dried bananas. Not exactly a nutritional haven. But I’ll get there eventually.

Behold the $1,000 egg

Today, as I was letting the chickens out of their coop, I saw this in the straw:

Our little miracle. I’m thinking it was one of the Australorps’ or Black Sex Links’, because it is a perfectly pale shade of brown. It is perfect, small, and has gone a long way toward justifying the existence of my five avian terrorists, who have taken over my garden and decimated every new plant I try to hide from them.

And the chicken-yelling! No one told me about their tendency to call out LOUDLY when they see me. If the back door opens, they start calling. At a decibel a foghorn would envy.

I was beginning to mutter around them, “yeah, you want food? Give me an egg, and we’ll talk.” But now, with the arrival of the one perfect little egg, I feel much more loving. I ignore their yelling and focus on the way they coo at night when they’re all perched on their roost when I shut them in for the night. I ignore the big holes in my backyard and focus on the adorable ritual of their dustbaths.

Like that.

I’m a sucker for an egg, what can I say?

How Much Does Self-Sufficiency Cost?

I Refuse to Look

at just how much money I have spent over the past six months on this teensy farming venture I’ve got going in our backyard. Granted, The Wife and The Brother-in-Law built the raised beds with remnants left around the house when we bought it, and all the fruit trees came with the place, but everything else has been bought: chickens, coop and run materials, plants (through barter, most of them), dirt, compost bin (we just received another from a friend), seeds, straw, canning jars and supplies, water bath canner — and soon, an Excalibur food dehydrator.

When Does It Start Paying Off?

We have invested a great deal in the farm this year, what with the chickens and the composting, etc. So we will get eggs soon, and we’ll get our own compost/soil next year. I’m also going to try and save some seeds from our plants this year, so that we won’t have to buy as much next year. The jars we can use over, though the lids we have to buy each time we can. A colleague generously gave me a good, working sewing machine, so that was one less expenditure. And of course, the more produce we grow, the less we have to buy. And the more I can put up in the summer, the less we have to buy in the winter. But combined with the cost of the two classes I will have taken to learn how to sew, I feel as though we are spending more money right now than we are saving. And since our income isn’t increasing (and in fact, is decreasing at the moment), that scares me a bit.

If the point of this is self-sufficiency, with an additional goal of consuming less, I’d say we aren’t even halfway there yet. That’s frustrating, but I guess it’s normal.

The Dervaes family, over at the Path to Freedom blog, do a great job of charting how much they grow and consume, as well as how much they save on water, electricity, gas, etc. Someday, I’ll get there. Actually, I might start trying to create some charts of my own, so that I can see where we have come from. Who knows? Maybe the water bill will go down, or the grocery bill. It would be nice to see some monetary results, as well as the obvious, and joyful physical and psychological ones.

The 2010 Potato Harvest

Here it is, folks — the grand finale, the proof that, well, we’re not quite ready to give up on produce shopping yet. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you The Potato Harvest of July 2010:

23 potatoes. I planted around 9, so that makes a grand total of 14, net.

And yes, I know that’s pathetic, but I must admit that I love those potatoes. I love the smell of them and the feel of them, and can’t wait to go out and plant some more. A lot more, if I would actually like to eat some of them in more than one meal, it seems.

No Impact Man documentary

Last night, I watched No Impact Man, a documentary about Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin’s choice to try and make as little environmental impact for one year while living in Manhattan.

I most identified with Michelle’s obsession with coffee (sadly for me), but was interested by their choices, and impressed by their commitment — especially Michelle’s, since it wasn’t her “dream,” yet required her commitment.

I wouldn’t make some of the choices they made, but respect their experiment. I am fascinated by how diverse the range of choices can be that people can make to lessen the damage we collectively create, and improve the quality of our lives.

I am one month away from rejoining the workforce after a semester’s leave, and am constantly thinking about what it will take to maintain the life we’ve created over the past year when I am back to commuting 64 miles round-trip 4-5 days per week. I tend to cave when faced with the logistics of my worklife in addition to my family life.

But here’s what I’m thinking, so far.

1. Although the bus system in East Contra Costa County is horrid and frustrating, I really want to commit myself to commuting via public transportation or bicycle at least 3 out of the 4 days I commute. Since I am training for a marathon in October, perhaps I can even run the 10-mile round trip once a week, if I plan things well enough. (That’s a large IF there, folks.)
2. I want to commit to making and packing all meals, and not supporting the truly awful cafeteria at my college or the big-box stores surrounding it. You would think that’s easy, given how much food we produce and how much I cook, but I tend to think of myself last when it comes to getting ready for the day, so I will have to be much more conscious of my own needs in order to make this happen. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!
3. The food-preparation thing includes caffeine consumption as well, which has been surprisingly hard for me. I realize how much I count on going to cafes (both local and national chains) for an “outing” during the day. When I think of how pathetic that sounds, and of how much money that consumes — let alone the disposable cups . . . . let’s just say it’s a work in progress.
4. No #4. Three is enough, thank you very much.

I’ll keep posting on my progress. The commuting part will be the hardest, given the kids’ school locations and schedules. Actually, who am I kidding? Having to leave my house will be the hardest. I’ve been very fortunate this past six months.

It’s like that bucket scene in Fantasia . . .

I’ve been reading about greywater usage in the garden. We have 17 rose bushes and other non-fruit producing plants (jasmine, bougainvillea, artemisia, geraniums, jacaranda, etc) that we can water with dishwater.

Since we moved in a few years back, we have used the kids’ bathwater to flush the toilet. But last week, I decided we needed to go further. I bought two plastic buckets that fit into the kitchen sinks, and use that water for the plants out front and out back that can stand dishwater (with biodegradable soap, of course).

Here’s the deal: it’s a pain in the ass to hoist buckets outside constantly when I’m cleaning. A pain in the ass, but eye-opening. Just this morning, I emptied out three buckets of water in the process of doing my dishes. That’s with careful practices such as turning water off when cleaning and using as little water as possible to rinse. My roses are very happy, but I’m pooped.

So I’ll keep it up, but when my ship comes in, a greywater drainage system had better be on it (along with a solar heating system). Just sayin’.

You say “Plum Tree,” I say . . .

Canning. I can see a hot steamy kitchen in my near future (thank the lord!)

The plums are starting to turn color from a dusty sage green to a light purple.

Notice how many of them there are? Come mid-July, I will be happily up to my elbows in plum jam. Canned plums. (I tried plum chutney two years ago, but nobody, including me, ate it.)

I am also considering buying a food dehydrator so I can dry fruit and vegetables. (Any suggestions of a good 5-tray dryer that is relatively cheap and quick?) I was going to use the Mother Earth-suggested plan for making a solar one out of cardboard, but with the fog-in-the-morning reality of our summer, wonder if we’d get enough sun to make that work effectively.

Since I need to make about 35 jars of jam (just for the plums) , I am hoping to get someone to help me rent or use a commercial kitchen so that I can make more than 6 jars at a time. My stove top can only accommodate one big water canner at once, which makes canning a slow process.

At any rate, I am clearing the calendar for the late-July onslaught of the stone fruits.