Pumpitude For Your Rain Barrels

 

The Zen Koan for "before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment...same thing" can be applied in my semi-retirement. "Chop Wood (From Fall to Mid-Spring) Pump Water (other times)."

 

I enjoy more unharried time, free from the dreariness of campus politics and trifling administrivia, to focus on three things: writing, teaching a single class, and working on our farm. All stimulate different parts of my being: they are intellectual pursuits, though one is more social  than the other two, and only one includes physical labor.

That labor need not be onerous, especially as one's body ages. Watering a big (5,000 sq. foot) garden takes about 40 gallons at least weekly, often more in on a high summer evening, just as the lightning bugs start their show. How to get that all from rain barrels far away? Drip irrigation works for big operations but costs a lot of money and is not portable. It may work for you. All you need is water uphill and fixed beds for the system.

Or carry water in buckets and cans, oh Enlightened Sage. Not me. I let a pump do that. You see the two types I've tried. Both have their advantages and shortcomings.

 

The green pump, a cheapie from Harbor Freight or Northern Tool (I forget), has become my favorite, even though I damaged it by letting it run dry. It still works but now I let the weight of water in the rain barrel do the work for the pump, by connecting barrel's spigot to the pump's inlet (I had to make a female-female connecting hose). This same technique can be used for our pressure washer. I mounted the transfer pump on a small piece of 2x6 treated wood to keep it level and off damp ground.

 

Transfer pumps tend to be lighter than the submersible black one, also a really cheap Northern Tool purchase. Both pumps have grown old and cranky as I am doing, likewise acting up at times, needing only a tap from a hammer to get them running. That may be my fate one day. Bonk bonk on the head.

 

But as I said, they are cheap pumps. Submersibles work great if the top of your barrel or cistern (ours is a copious 500 gallons) is not crisscrossed with bracing, as some of our barrels are, and (strongly recommended) you get a submersible with a float that will shut the pump off as soon as the water level falls too low (again, running dry burns out the pump motor in short order). We had a pump with float, a promising stainless steel model, but it's now at the scrap-dealer's pile. Also a cheap pump, it gave out after 2 or 3 years of powerful service. It never ran dry.

 

Why not buy a nicer pump? I will next time. $100 is not too much, even $200, for one that will last many many years with proper care. Or you can spend $40 to $75. Be sure you have a hammer handy. 

 

Which type of pump is for you? My hose runs 200' from the barrels to the garden, or from cistern to barrels uphill when we transfer water from deep storage. 

 

Unless a hose kinks, the water-flow is powerful and the source sustainable (we have a shallow well we don't use to irrigate. Rainwater only). I use the nozzle shown below to save water. It's a powerful jet nozzle (a tiny one) of solid brass. I can dial it to a stream or spray. The only issue involves debris that can clog the jet. When that happens, I crimp the hose (no 200' walk in July, please) and remove the nozzle and crank it fully open. I then visually inspect it and either puff up my cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie and blow out the debris, or I find a piece of straw from the garden mulch and clear the jam. 

 

Then I watch the plants grow. Now that's enlightenment, Grasshopper. Happy Gardening in 2025. 

 

Now's the Time to Trim and Plant

 

Apple-tree spreaders do their thing

With the weeds just starting their journey to domination, I got busy on some undone tasks. This is the time, friends. Get out there.

Fruit Trees: We cut back our apples and figs. They've gotten so tall that I need a big ladder to get fruit from the tops. While we were at it, I used split branches from fallen maple limbs to make spreaders that train limbs on sides where I want growth. I split the ends of small pieces of maple or use a Y branch, bracing the other cut end against the trunk. When the sap rises, the branch will tend to stay in place. If not, I can cut another spreader.

Too Late for Alliums? I missed the planting-window for garlic and multiplier onions in Fall. First it was too wet, then too cold. Then I got busy cleaning out my campus office. Now here we are, at the end of frost season, planting them. To force growth I'm going to hill them, as I saw done recently in the garden of the Governor's Palace at Colonial Williamsburg.

Hilling has some advantages in our clay soil, avoiding rot. At the same time, in the hot part of the year I'm going to need to weed and water fanatically to get a good crop. As for the hard-neck garlic I love? It will wait until Fall, when I can order more seed-garlic. I'll plant some organic grocery-store variety to tide us over. 

Weeding Before Summer: You really don't want to deal with established weeds and dry soil, so why not get out there now? We let the chickens into the garden all winter, and they loosened even the wire grass. With tiller and cultivator, I got the soil looking lovely. The weeds will return, as always, but they'll be smaller and have roots that are not so deep.

New Tiller: This gets its own post soon, but I purchased a light-duty Stihl tiller to replace the heavy, and not very reliable rear-tine beast I've been using. I'm going to repair the latter and then sell it. The Stihl uses a power-head I know well from our weed-whackers (and it's no wimp; it's a professional model with a lot of torque). I'm getting too old for the rear-tine monster, anyhow, and with our minimal-till method and already amended soil, I just want to turn in ashes and compost. I don't need to bust the sod. For that, I get out a tractor. 

Calling Some Guy: I've a dead oak that needs felling, and it's in an odd place where it might fall on a fence or chicken coop. Then there's a huge red maple that needs a major limb dropped or maybe the entire tree, as it's pulling out of the ground. Enter an expert. I'll get two estimates and the firewood. 

Know your limits! And keep gardening.

Three Essential Natural Chemicals for Your Garden

We think of the word "chemical" in a negative way, unless we work in the industry. Yet even without a periodic table or large fertilizer makers, our preindustrial ancestors knew that soil needs certain things to be productive. Where they got them is another post, but here, for a start today, we need: nitrogen (from compost, green manures, animal manure, or fertilizer), potassium (from lime or ash, usually), and rock phosphate (a mineral).

It's easy to confuse the last two. I found a site providing the basic explanations, as well as where they come from. I think we'll be hearing more about phosphates soon; the trade war between the US and China may endanger supplies of this important additive for fertilizer. The US has some domestic production; all comes from mining.

I would love to find a sustainable, locally available substitute for rock phosphate. It's the missing ingredient in sustainable gardening. Luckily, I have chicken manure handy. When composted, it's a viable substitute, and there are others. These won't work on many large farms, but they provide a godsend for gardeners. Good compost seems able to provide all of the "big three," if it's the right mix of green materials (food scraps) and brown materials (fallen oak leaves, say).

Some plants, like nightshades (peppers and tomatoes in my garden) need a boost of rock phosphate annually. I provide it with a product called green sand, which is just what it looks like. As a mined rock, it's not sustainable. Yet a little seems to go a long way, so my current bag is only the second I've bought in 12 years.

We avoid other bagged commercial fertilizers on our farm; any left from my in-laws got spread broadly and thinly, to be rid of them. They are junk food, in many cases. Our goal is to build good soil longterm, using rotation and amendment and minimal tillage whenever possible.

So as we get ready for Spring gardens, what are you doing to get the soil ready?

 

Figs, Figs, Everywhere

My grandfather Sam spent most of his life trying to grow figs, before climate change made it ridiculously easy in our bioregion.

That is the one good thing I will ever say about global warming.

This time of year, my nephew Mike Ryan (as big a madman as I am) will text me with a "hey, Uncle Cheapass! I want them damn figs!" and I deliver, delighted that one person in my extended family at least loves fresh figs as much as my grandfather and dad did. Or as much as my wife and I do now.

Growing fig trees is not that hard, once they get established. Chicago Hardy is a variety that works well here. Further south Brown Turkey is a good bet.

But what to do with the thousands--and I am not kidding--of figs that even four trees can produce in a year? Here's the plan, Stan.

 And where do we go for ideas about how to deal with lots of excess fruit or veg? Why the National Center for Home Food Preservation, of course!

They feature the best canning recipe ever for fig jam. Even non-canners could make this one work. It cans in a boiling-water bath in 5-10 minutes, depending upon the size jar.

We have not bought jam in years, in consequence. Plant some fig trees and give it a try. Sam would be so happy to know that folks are growing figs. Once you get in the habit, you'll never let it go.

Gleaning Time

This word will be a good one for my workplace blog, where I propose a Word of the Week and Metaphor of the Month.

On the farm, or even in a small garden, gleaning has a strong purpose of connecting us with the final turn of the season of warmth to the colder, darker months ahead. I tend to glean--gather whatever remains from my final heavy harvest--on the day of first frosts. That would be tonight and tomorrow night in Central Virginia!

I filled a bushel basket with some summer squash, a lone cucumber, a few tomatoes, and many, many hot peppers bound for chopping and fermenting. It sounds sad, this last picking of fruits, but really it's a fun way to say "thank you" to the garden beds and "hello!" to fall plantings: broccoli, lettuce, kale, garlic and onions mostly. 

Nan and I then put heavy row cover on the smallest seedlings and trucked giant piles of dying weeds and garden debris to our two compost piles (a long-term one for weeds, a shorter-term pile for soil amendments, leaves, and kitchen scraps).  We spread fresh straw around the new plants we have for fall (Kale appeared just as the basil finished up) and continued to glean lessons from a rather bad year in the garden. Mostly that was my fault: late start, travel in May, laziness in July and August.

 Next year we will change how we manage our raised beds and mowing our paths, and remove any remaining weed-block fabric. We will rotate basil more mindfully (black spot appeared on it at season's end, so it cannot be composted).  We also gleaned some good ideas about planting a second crop of squash in late August, to beat the squash-bug cycle.  One lesson we gleaned involved herbicides: sadly, we cannot manage 300' of fence-line without some judicious application. With a good deal of that fence now covered in thick vines, we'll cut, spray, and maintain it better to keep weeds out and the sun on our garden. We lost a lot of produce to the shade this year. 

That all said, I managed to put up a gallon of tomato sauce in pint jars, nearly that much Blackberry and Fig jam, and get a fair onion crop. The garlic did not get harvested in time, so it sprouted. I gleaned all that; the soft-neck variety will be trimmed and pickled; the hard-necks went right back into a new bed. Next year, hard-necks will be our speciality as they keep so well.

I hope the lessons you gleaned from your gardens help in 2023.

The Silence of The Roosters and Other Fall Traditions

Sad to do it, but we get to the point every year when a few formerly cute little chicks morph into nightmarish teenage boys who fight each other and roughly molest hens. One nearly blinded our former Alpha rooster, Big Daddy. BD now is our Beta, and we'd be sorry to lose him. As Roger our "chicken whisperer" tells us, older males mating with young hens result in fewer male chicks.

Win win.

And the aggressor? That punk teenager went into a dutch oven today. Young roos "taste just like chicken." Only older birds prove too tough to eat, good only for the stockpot.

Culling roosters we cannot re-home with Roger is, thankfully, only one of the annual rituals that begin about the time of the Autumnal Equinox. The heat and humidity have broken, so I get entire days for physical labor of splitting firewood and stacking it, pruning trees ahead of hurricanes, baling a bit of late-cut hay, planting garlic and onions, putting in kale and lettuce, picking figs and last tomatoes for last batches of jam and sauce.

As my full-time professional career nears its end, I'm ever more in love with this perfect time of year. I cannot sit still for long or look at screens except to write or study more about my hobbies. At night I read books, but while there's enough light in the evenings I get a bit more work done. There's also enough cool, dry air to make sweating fun. It's not hunting season yet, but the lakes are good for fishing for quite a while longer.  We even suddenly, after my wife's retirement, have time now for short vacations. It requires a farm-sitter, but the "shoulder months" are good for that, without fretting about animals needing constant attention to water and shade in summer or well-prepared shelter and fresh dry bedding in winter.

With Fall in mind, I went to the movie theater and sat in front of a big screen for the first time since COVID-19. I was deeply moved by Brett Morgen's film Moonage Daydream, about my favorite musician, David Bowie. I've missed his music terribly since his passing; he never seemed to run out of good ideas, even late in life.

Bowie's passing may have left a hole, but the film provided closure appropriately connected to my thoughts about Autumn.

 Fall can seem sad to some folks I know, yet to others "the veil is thin" between us and eternity. Our ancestors seem near. It was a good time to see that film. Bowie left this coda in the film, expressed as a prose-poem, and it fits well with any meditation about Fall:

You're aware of a deeper existence
Maybe a temporary reassurance that indeed there is no beginning, no end
And all at once, the outward appearance of meaning is transcended
And you find yourself struggling to comprehend a deep  and formidable mystery
I'm dying
You are dying
Second by second
All is transient
Does it matter?
Do I bother?
Yes, I do
Life is fantastic, it never ends, it only changes
Flesh to stone to flesh
And 'round and 'round
Bеst keep walking. 

Yes, keep walking. I'm walking outside now to cut up some limbs that fell in the last storm, before what is left of Hurricane Ian arrives.

The One Garden Tool You'd Keep...

 

We all have them. For a while, it would have been my Japanese gardening knife, or hori-hori. Then I got another Japanese tool, a really nice small pick. They can open a hole fast and mix dirt, break up clods, turn in fertilizer, ash, or green sand.

As the pandemic wanes and I have free time after a busy academic year, I hope to write a bit more frequently here. And nothing charms me into scribbling like the right garden tool.

As much as the hori-hori beckons (we have at lest three) I adore a good trowel. At Herbs Galore 2021 (back in person, hurrah!) I found the booth for Down the Garden Path, a local shop I love to support. I've written here about snips I got from them. Used them today to cut some lettuce for dinner.

 You won't find the trowel on their site (yet) but contact them to ask about this tool. It can be found at the UK Web site for the brand as well. I've not checked shipping from there to here.

From the show I brought home a really nicely made trowel, a "Sophie Conran Burgon and Ball Long Thin Trowel" model. At first glance, it looks better made than my old favorite, an English-made Spear and Jackson that cost twice as much.

It's Chinese-made but to the highest standards, which surprises me as Chinese tools are often cheaply made. I expect to get years of hard use from it. So what makes for a good trowel?

• Heavy metal that is stainless or powder-coated. My Spear and Jackson trowel as the latter and this one has more metal and a Black Sabbath show. If a trowel bends, it's cheapass and toss it!
  
• Blade with tang deeply set in handle, with a snug collar. The collar (ferrule) has finally failed on my Spear and Jackson, after two decades of use. While I attempt a repair, we'll see how the new trowel holds up.
• Ergonomic handle and balance in the hand. Like a fine revolver I use for target shooting, a trowel should have woodwork that fits you and balances when held. It should not be too light or heavy. You'll know it by feel.

We shall see how this beauty holds up over the decades. I plant things FAST, getting a seedling in in 20 seconds or so.  You need a good tool for that, especially when the ground gets dry. Other than bringing my tools inside, I do not baby them.

Fermenting Fool

 

Look out, Sandor Katz. I read your book.

Actually, I use his work as reference, as well as many good (and a few dubiously gushing) Web sites to guide me as I learn the arts of lacto-fermentation. What, pray, is that?

You've eaten fermented foods your whole life, if you enjoy kimchi you've had it. Likewise sauerkraut, if it came from someone's kitchen and not a factory jar.

Wikipedia's definition, however, seems to come straight from a high-school chem lab, so I'll try some of the fermentation-fanatic sites for a warmer vibe. Here's a nice definition by Danielle at Fermented Food Lab:

 Lacto-fermentation is the oldest form of food preservation in the world. It involves only salt, water and vegetables. The salt water brine creates an anaerobic environment (free of oxygen) where only lactobacillus bacteria can survive. The lactobacillus bacteria act as a preservative, keeping harmful bacteria from living in the ferment. 

Yes, I too was dubious about this entire business, imagining a lingering death. I've drunk kombucha, mostly out of courtesy to those insisting it is the drink of immortality. Save for one or two times,  I found it dreadful.

My purpose in fermenting things has been to make great ice-box pickles, kraut I can, and the holy grail: golden pepperoncini, my food of the gods. This season I fermented other peppers, notably jalapeño slices and Thai Dragons (whole). For really hot peppers of that sort, fermenting takes the edge off the heat.

I don't offer recipes here. To get started, however, you can consult my gold standard: The National Center for Home Food Preservation. No New-Age mysticism or miracle cures there, just trustworthy advice that will not make you sick. Start there for pickles and kraut and basic how-tos. After that, venture into the briny wilds of the Interwebs. Experiment, carefully.

 Suffice to say I've learned a few things:

• Adding a grape leaf to the fermenting crock helps keep veggies crisp.
• Fermented foods store in the fridge a long time. I do add a bit of vinegar to the top of the jar, heresy to some who ferment but one of my favorite ingredients. My kitchen, my rules.
• Hot, humid weather really shortens the time needed. My ferments in Fall take take several more days. Keep the crocks away from sunny windows, in any case.
  
• Brine matters. I found an excellent online calculator you might wish to try, to get the right percentage of brine for your crock.
• Cheap Morton Kosher or Pickling salts are excellent. Perhaps pricey sea-salt would change things, but my uncultured palate barely can sense a difference. Just do not use iodized salt. 

If you find a good recipe for crisp, flavorful okra, let me know. That was my only fermenting failure this year. And how I love okra.

A Recipe for Middle Eastern Tomato Sauce

 

You have a garden or farmer's market. Use them, and learn to put up food. It's a great benefit of the extra time we have now during this pandemic.

 I was asked for this, and every year I have enough tomatoes to put up about 8 pints, if not more. This will make four quart jars for canning...maybe.

• Gallon pot of tomatoes, any kind, cut up (Romas and similar will make a thicker sauce). You can peel them if you wish. I don't
  
• One onion, chopped
• Six cloves garlic, or more, minced
• Green pepper chopped small
  
• Tablespoon of dry oregano (use less if chopped, fresh)
  
• Other dry herbs such a basil (tablespoon, crushed) or thyme (up to a tablespoon, crushed). Use less if chopped, fresh
• Teaspoon cinnamon
• Teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper or more to taste
• Teaspoon salt or more to taste
• (Optional) 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes.
  

 

That's really it. I often cook the tomatoes down a bit first, bringing them to a boil in a heavy dutch oven, then pressing them down with a potato masher to release the juice. The trick is very slow cooking, and I let the sauce simmer on a simmer-setting burner, with the top tight or just loose enough for steam to escape.
 

Watch the pot and stir occasionally to avoid thing burning. Cook until thick, at least 8 hours!

This makes a great base for lots of Lebanese dishes and it can also become chili con carne, pasta sauces, and more. 

I brown ground lamb and add it, then serve it over basmati rice. Or chop and fry up some okra and add it. You can't go wrong.

It cans well, with the water-bath method.  One thing: be SURE to follow recipes well, including adding citric acid or lemon juice in particular! Granny had more acidic tomatoes than we do today.

Update 2022: I now use a pressure cooker method recommended by The National Center for Home Food Preservation. Their spaghetti sauce recipe is closet to this one in terms of processing safety to avoid botulism.

A Good Set of Snips

Life is too short, and work too frustrating, using cheaply made tools. So today I have two recommendations for an everyday item for anybody with a garden.

One of my favorite local merchants is called Down the Garden Path, and they pop up at local garden shows. They carry lots of decor, but I go to them for hand tools, especially ones from Japan or with specialized, high-quality materials.

With an in-person purchase out of the question for Spring, I contacted them about ordering a larger set of Barebones snips that I'd gotten a few years back. I find them indispensable for harvesting greens, peas, and other produce. They snip twine I use for trellising peas and other spindly things.

I was greatly disappointed that Barebones is out of stock on that tool, but I got a different set and I'll compare how they work.

Barebones Small Shears

My small Barebones shears embody the company ethos: campers, DIYers, foragers, contrarians about consumer culture. People with tattoos who actually work in flannel shirts, not simply wear them at the brewpub or gallery opening.

These are my People: they'd rather split wood than push a button to have heat from a furnace. They'd tell stories instead of watching television. They'd drive a 1970...

Okay, I need to control myself. Maybe they do like TV, but they make some stunning axes, as well as gear for dining outdoors. We'd already gotten their hori-hori, based upon its heft and obvious quality.

I didn't know who they were when I bought the snips, but something about the design appealed to me. The metal looks sturdy, the wood grips on the handles remind me of quality grips on a old-time single-action cowboy revolver (another fetish of mine). The ergonomics are right; the big finger holes mean that you can get more than a single finger in when cutting, and that reduces strain on the hand when you are, say, going down 100 feet of row. There is no rattling about the pivot for the blades nor screw to work loose. The blades have a positive stop when fully open, so you don't overdo things.

Actually, scissors-geeks call that a pivot ride or balance face. Well, Barebones gots 'em!

It was only after using the tool that I found their site and realized I was in the company of other tractorpunks.

I shop my values, and I wanted snips that would outlive me. Barbones supplied them. We liked them so much we bought a second pair. At under $30, that's a good investment. They have never seen the sharpening stone.

Joshua Roth GardenCut #130

Back to my dread of trying another set of snips, after finding perfection, when the folks at Down the Garden Path suggested that I do so. They sent me these when the large Barebones were out of stock and they were gracious, as the Joshua Roths run 5-10 bucks more than the other shears. Again, that's yet another reason to buy locally. Amazon won't curate a purchase for you like that.

Happily, these "pruning shears," made in Taiwan, worked really well. They have the same dedication to quality I find in the Barebones tools. And unlike tools from the Mainland, ones from Taiwan have always impressed me, so I gave them a go.

Big plus that they are favored for Bonsai, a fiddly hobby I admire from a distance, having enough fiddling to do. Yet that speaks volumes about their sharpness and accuracy.

The reader will see that the blades are actually shorter than the Barebones, but the extra length of the handles and big finger holes mean they can do bigger jobs.

They also open WIDE, so I can snip something the size of a broccoli stalk. I've been using Felcos to cut rose canes, but I think these shears will soon perform that duty.  They do not have quite the tractorpunk gravitas of the Barebones, and, gasp, the finger holes are encased in plastic, I mean "polyflex soft vinyl," not Colt .45 walnut, partner. Despite that caveat, the vinyl has a pleasant give and I challenge you to get a blister using them. The metal is cutlery grade steel, so it should last a long time if treated well.

I'm happy to store both in the kitchen tool drawer. I cannot bring myself to toss them into the garden bucket, and in the kitchen I find many culinary uses for them.  Yes, I'll get more, starting with the larger Barebones. It's a sickness.

Now then, back to gardening!

Down the Garden Path, and Other Metaphors

I have a guilty secret: I am enjoying the lockdown. It coincides with the finest season for putting in a garden. With that in mind, I’m going to bring out metaphors for May that are garden-related.

This post will do double duty in my other blog, Richmond Writing, where I write about language and writing pedagogy.  

At Tractorpunk  I’ve also collected metaphors about time. Use this year’s extra time on your hands well; may I suggest planting a garden? I love growing and preserving (canning, dehydrating, freezing) as much of my own food as possible. I hope that’s a long-term impact of this pandemic. We need more home cooking with local food.

Many of these metaphors do indeed work in academic prose. Lots of them I learned from my mother, an avid gardener. She would sing “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch” when weeding. I got my green thumb from her.

Bad seed: Nothing good comes of bad seeds in the greenhouse. They produce stunted plants or none at all. Metaphorically, a person is a bad seed if they come from a family with a history of trouble.

Down the garden path: I’ve not a clue why this metaphor is negative. It means to be led astray, to be deceived. To me, the garden path is one of the most pleasant places to wander. There’s no deception in a well-tended garden.

Early frost / blooming early / blighted: Though not all early bloomers come to grief, early frost is a sad situation, in the garden or in a person’s life. Things go awry early, and failure results. At least a watchful gardener can put buckets on top of small plants or drape row-cover over the lettuce (I had lettuce all winter this year). You cannot do that for a person who blooms early and then is blighted. Some of us are, however, late bloomers.

Make hay when the sun shines: I have a very small hay-making operation, so small that instead of purchasing a big baler, I hand-bale my cut hay on about an acre of tall grass. The yield is 3 or 4 small bales annually. It seasons for a year in my barn and then becomes weed-block or in our raised-beds or litter in our chicken coops.

No matter the method, haymaking depends on a stretch of sunny weather, preferably one with enough breeze to dry the cut stalks after they are raked (my favorite part of the operation is hand-raking with a beautiful handmade Italian hay rake). Wet weather ruins hay, making it rot on the ground.

So metaphorically, there’s a time for any activity: do it in its best season, neither hurrying it nor waiting too long: not quite the same as Carpe Diem, but certainly a metaphorical cousin. For problems, you want to nip them in the bud.

Peas in a pod: As in, “like two peas in a pod.” Okay, it’s a simile, not a metaphor, but it’s Mother’s Day and my mother was fond of this one. It can mean anything identical, but for mom it mean two people who did the same things, usually something stupid. Her wit was withering.

Reaping what you sow: I tend to over-seed my beds and then do a lot of thinning. We also are putting a six-acre field into wildlife management, which means suppressing invasive plants without chemicals but with a heavy application (think, tons) of buckwheat, clover, sunflower, bean and winter rye seed. That is most certainly not sown by hand but with a large device that looks like a rocket motor, inverted, behind my small tractor.

But if you put out no seeds, or the wrong ones, you get what you get, in the garden or outside it. When I learned to code, we said “garbage in, garbage out” about sloppy programming habits.  So much trouble results from poor planning and poor execution.

Snake in the grass: one of my least-favorite things. I keep the grass in and around the garden short, since last year I shot four Copperheads right in the garden or by the house. I will spare you the photo of a dead one shot in our chicken run, stretched out by my shotgun barrel–at 30″ they were the same length. In the woods, it’s another matter: snakes can go their own way. I don’t mind Black Racers or Rat Snakes at all, often moving them to spots where they can eat mice and keep the Copperheads at bay; I welcome black snakes into my barn and garage, though I keep an eye out! The metaphor of something dangerous in hiding conveys well with this metaphor. Watch your step around certain people!

Tender shoots: I hear this one each time a recovery comes after an economic downturn. But it’s true: the first shoots of new growth are really tender. They break or freeze easily.

Tough row to hoe: Bermuda or “wire” grass loves to sneak into our raised beds, and I don’t employ any herbicide or pesticides, preferring labor to cancer. So this metaphor comes into play a lot, when the weeds won’t come out of the ground and the bugs won’t go away; metaphorically, we all face similar tasks constantly. I think of this term as Southern, but it may well be universal.

Transplant: I grow a few hundred seedlings every year, moving from indoor grow-light station to greenhouse to raised beds. Whenever we move a plant from one growing medium to another, it’s transplanted. Think of how this metaphor works for humans. We are also uprooted. We put down new roots. We might decide to bloom where we are planted. Or we may wither in the wrong place or job. Mom was metaphorical here, too, about plants. When transplanting, she anthropomorphized her plants, saying “their feelings get hurt.” But in time, the plants would “get over it.”

Weeding and thinning: After venomous snakes, my least favorite thing. Yet you cannot grow plants as I do, without herbicides, without a lot of hand weeding. We weed in our lives all the time, from our personal libraries to our “friends” lists (I seldom do that, as I don’t accept friend offers unless I know someone in person). We also thin things, a more pleasant occupation since the over-sown seedling can go right to a flock of very eager chickens.

Windfall: Often paired with "profit," in economic journalism, but in an orchard wind often means an early crop of perhaps underripe fruit. My one experience with windfalls has been with tall persimmon trees. The fruit is best after frost, and it does not leave the tree easily. I have to shake the tree, pick low-hanging fruit, or wait for windfall before I bake my Thanksgiving persimmon pie.

We keep bees and chickens, and these provide fertile soil for other clusters of metaphors. Stay tuned! If I missed any of your favorite garden metaphors, send them my way. I’ll be harvesting them all summer!

 

Ad-Hoc Patches & Long-Term Consequences

All of us in education are scrambling, breaking old habits and a few rules to deliver remote education. I began to think about longer-term issues for Higher Education, really not the subject of his blog, but certainly fodder for my writing students' final project of the semester.

We'll figure it out. Right now there are bottlenecks, administratively, of the same sort that keep toilet paper and paper towels from getting to stores. The supply is there, but the system has temporarily bogged down.  Except for those items, our stores are well stocked.  Early runs on meat and other staples have abated. Produce is picked over, but for cooking oil, flour, vinegar, and other things low a week ago, stocks are up (just as the stock market is down).

All this thinking led me back to the local and rural; what will be the effects of our current crisis on localism, food networks, rural ways? Here are a few concerns, speculations, and hopes.

Loss of Elders

Though COVID-19 shows itself quite capable of wiping out young people, the mortality among the elders among us is likely to astound us all. I fear here a loss of rural memory, akin to what happens at my university when a key, long-term colleague retires or passes on. These folk have "institutional memory," a real link to the past and how things were done, including during crises past.

Soon we'll have no living memory, save for interviews and film, of how Americans coped the the Great Depression. We may have to rediscover the wisdom of our grandparents the hard way, but saving your twist-ties is not akin to learning how to tan leather, repair a carburetor (something I did today on a balky antique tractor), or fell a tree. YouTube is a pale substitute for first-hand, hands-on learning.

Farmers' Markets & Foodie Culture

These are closed, and some small farms dependent upon them and restaurant trade will go out of business.  One bright spot for a friend who farms at Dellicarpini Farms, Dominic Carpin, has been a Distributor / Online Farmers' Market, Fall Line Farms. Dominic had his biggest order yet this week. By combining services of many small farmers and taking a cut, Fall Line can get produce directly to consumers and allow farmers to, well, farm. From their Web site:

Each week our producers post the products they have available, setting their own prices, uploading their own descriptions and photos. You can read about their farming practices and contact them directly with questions.

Using our Buying Pages, you shop online with us any time between Friday at noon to Monday at midnight. You pay for your order online and then pick it up on the following Thursday afternoon at one of our Richmond area pickup locations.

Orders are delivered fresh, straight from the farms on Thursdays. Our producers share in the delivery process and we rely on volunteers to sort the orders at the pickup locations. This cooperative system allows us to keep delivery costs down to a minimum meaning more money goes back to the producers.

It's not as fun as strolling a farmer's market, but it keeps food local.  Foodies may have to settle for Spring Kale in place of their Tuscan Kale, but that is a real first-world problem. Thank goodness we have greens, period.

Home Gardens, Chickens, and More

A related issue is the increase of interest in home gardening. Where I live most folk keep a garden, but now they are doubling down on expanding for summer "just in case." I plowed and disc-harrowed my neighbor Lloyd's 1/4 acre plot last weekend. He had a garden there last year, but this year he's expanding. If seed sales are any indication, Lloyd is not alone.

Chick and pullet sales are up, too, as urbanites keep small flocks and rural folk expand. I expect there to be an egg glut soon. In Colonial times, as I learned in 2017 at King's Landing Historical Park in New Brunswick, eggs were not worth anything in barter. Everyone had yard-birds.

MOAR Data, Pleeeze?

Rural broadband is expensive, if it exists at all. We are on satellite via Viasat (clever name, that). We burned through our 50 GB of data last month without streaming one movie. We had remote teaching and lots of video conferences. But hope is on the way. Poking about in their Web site, I found an unlimited data plan for $50 more per month, less than I spent last month buying a few additional GB.  These plans may prioritize essential and less-essential sites....so caveat emptor. Still, it's a bargain and we can switch without penalty back to our old plan. They'll send us a new router, too.

I suspect many folks out here are doing the same, with a windfall coming for providers. Likewise this emergency will likely speed the rollout of 5G mobile networks.

So far, that's all I see, but the peak in cases locally may not come until June. Stand by for updates. Let's hope for better news, and stay safe, sane, and healthy!

Early Season "Pesto"

Why wait for the basil? Though we have a lot frozen from last year, I wanted something fresh on my pasta this week. I need the treat: 30 pounds lighter than I was at the turn of the year, I remain on a low-carb, doctor-ordered diet to combat high blood sugar. I found a chickpea-based pasta, however, that lets me enjoy pesto, one of my garden favorites, once per week.

Back to the basil. We usually harvest the first batch in early June, so I've a few weeks to wait. Meanwhile, my chard, lettuce, kale, collards, and mustard greens are so tempting. Here's the recipe, based on my old-school Waring blender, but a food processor will get the job done. The color of the resulting sauce is stunning, an emerald green that keeps its color better than basil-based pesto, especially when refrigerated. The extra garlic punches up the flavor profile, too, since the greens have a milder bite (save for the Mustard!) than basil.

The recipe:

• Fill a blender's bowl with 2 cups olive oil. Add more as needed to achieve the right consistency as you blend.
• Peel and process 7 (yes, SEVEN) cloves of garlic in the oil. Use more if you dare.
• Wash and chop a LOT of greens. I filled  gallon bowl tonight, removing big stems. A surprise delight was mustard greens, as they add a real punch to the "pesto"
• Add 1/2 cup nuts and process. My recent pick was unsalted pecans, but I've used walnuts, pine nuts, even peanuts! I'd prefer the unsalted.
• Add 1/2 cup or more grated Romano or Parmesan and process. The better the grade of the cheese, the better the pesto. 

Serve over pasta. This recipe freezes very well. I sprinkle my plate with flaked hot pepper, adding salt and pepper to taste.

You'll almost forget that basil. ¡Buen provecho!

Dehydrating Food: First Efforts

As much as I love canning, I have been eager to try my hand at dyhydrating food. It offers some advantages for processing, and unlike my canned goods, dry ingredients do not need refrigeration after opening.

Originally we'd set our hearts upon a solar dehydrator, to the point where I'd purchased a book on how to build one. That ran into a snag right away, though "damp and horribly moldy blanket" might be the preferred metaphor. Central VA summers are too humid for solar dehydration to work, though getting an oven to 125 degrees would be as simple as sitting a box outside on any sunny day from late May to early September.

The Cabelas sporting goods chain sells units that range in size from a large toaster oven to a full-sized range. All of them circulate air over the food as it dries out. For small items like garlic flakes, I put parchment paper on top of each wire tray. Do not use waxed paper unless you enjoy making a melted mess. I was happy to discover that online before my first attempts.

We chose a mid-sized unit the size of  dishwasher that holds many trays of fruit or vegetables.  at 80 pounds boxed, I could easily lift it onto a small table in our shop, where mice won't crawl as easily into the works to make nests.  Plus we have at least one black snake there, on the prowl, helping me with mouse-management strategies.

Our first efforts involved a bunch of organic bananas, and the results impressed me. I set the unit to dry the overnight, and by breakfast we had bananas dry but not crunchy; they maintain good flavor and we stored a quart jar of them out of the sunlight in our cabinet. No sign of mold, yet.

We do not grow bananas, but we do grow several pounds of garlic that I cure in an unheated utility room off the side of our house. It stays warm without freezing; the year before, I hung the garlic up from the ceiling in our root shelter to keep mice at bay. This season, however, I used a lot of the garlic and just stepping down into the utility room made the process really easy.

Two sites advised me on drying garlic. I found the advice at Self Reliant School excellent overall, but I did not wish to vacuum seal the jars. That step adds an expensive piece of equipment. Then I asked Dave, the author of the Our Happy Acres blog about this processing. He assured me that sealed jars left out of daylight would keep a year. That's enough for my purposes. Here are my results.

We used the hand-cranked food processor advised by Jennifer at Self Reliant School; Amazon seems short on them, but I found one on eBay for under $20, new, with free shipping. It made short work of the process, though there was no short cut for peeling 5 pounds of garlic cloves! The processor was sturdy enough to endure the work and cranking it required no great effort. I did freeze all but the center jar; dried garlic thaws well and can be put right into the pantry.

My next week involves peeling and chopping about 5 pounds of carrots that overwintered in the soil. I cooked a few and they taste great. Now we'll extend the harvest with them, as well. Look online and  you'll find many recipes. Unlike canning, this food is simpler to process. It will be safe as long as you dry it thoroughly and store it well.

Garden Lessons, 2017

2017 was a year of many lessons, not all of them good. I don't know that my experiences will help others, but here's what happened.

Weather:

With a challenging summer, first hot and wet, then hot and arid, it was good that we had 1200 gallons of stored rain water. One tropical system moved west, only giving us perhaps half an inch of rain when we could have used two.  We tapped the 500 gallon cistern once, pulling about 200 gallons out after we'd been through another 300 in our smaller rain barrels.  We'll see about adding another 250 gallon tank next year, so we can water young trees as well as the garden.

Our harvest, save for white potatoes, was still very good. Frost arrived a month after the average date, so I was harvesting tomatoes and peppers later than ever. I save a window-ripened green tomato in the fridge now, in time for Thanksgiving.

Hot Peppers: 

Let's start with the bad news. Despite beds that grew into thickets of hot-pepper bushes, it's likely my last season growing them in bulk for a local restaurant. At the prices I can get per pound, we are better off giving up some of the garden for increasing our flock of laying hens. We just cannot meet demand, and if we even sold two more dozen per week, we'd make as much money as we do with the peppers.

The hours of work starting seeds in the greenhouse, transplanting to larger pots, then harvesting the peppers simply do not add up to economic sense. I've yet to tell our customer, but he may want a different source in any case: despite cross-pollinating our Thai Dragons with super-hot peppers, the heavy rain early on and the later-than-normal harvest may have made their heat content too low.  I watered deeply once per week when the dry weather came and stayed. That should not have been excessive, but the peppers lacked the bite we want.

I've learned an adage that my friend Dominic, at Dellicarpini Farms, told me: focus on crops that provide more pounds of harvest. Thai Peppers are small and difficult to harvest. I'll still grow a few for myself and to continue my cross-pollination ideas.

We also lost a verbal contract for a crop of super-hot Ghosts and Scorpions. The would-be buyer had told me he'd buy "every pepper I grew" the year before, then turned about to say he'd not need any at all. I sold a few pounds, but about 20 pounds froze on the plants and are now compost.

So next year several raised beds dedicated to peppers will go to other plants, as we rotate our garden and let the soil rest.  Two beds will be given up entirely, as we expand the chicken run to add a coop for a laying flock and our first rooster.

One good thing that came from the pepper crop was a method I learned for curbing weed growth. We rolled out 4 oz weed-block fabric from A.M. Leonard, and then we cut slits in the fabric for transplanting. It's labor-intensive at first, but in the long run we saved hours and hours weeding. The fabric gets rolled back in winter, so our chickens can scratch up the raised beds.

Tomatoes:

Okay, I gotta cage the beasts; next year it will be welded wire cages. We had good luck with Mortgage-Lifters, Long Keeper, Yellow Pear, and Sungold Cherry varieties. I saved seeds from the best plants; some of the Yellow Pears had wilt and others did not. So I chose wisely when saving seed for 2018.

Cucumbers:

We experimented with using Doctor Bronner's Eucalyptus soap (1 part to 9 parts water) on the plants weekly. We did not pickle this year, but we had slicers until the vines died in the heat of early July. Squash bugs were rare this year. I'm going to try the same treatment next year on our cukes and our squash; we did not put in any this year.

Our Lima Bean harvest was sufficient for the two of us, and there too I sprayed the Dr. Bronners a couple of times. It's cheap enough on the scale we grow.

Garlic:

While our multiplier onions only produced enough bulbs to replant this fall, we hope that next year we'll expand our crop enough to actually eat some!  I need to side-dress the onions a bit, as the bulbs were small.

Garlic, however, proved a real bonanza for us. I credit Ira Wallace's workshop from the 2016 Heritage Harvest Festival. She plants late, up to mid-November in prepared beds. We more than replaced our seed garlic this year, both hard-neck and soft-neck varieties.

I froze a lot of last year's crop, in March, that we stored in our root cellar. I put the peeled cloves in olive oil and froze that, in small tubs. We used that all summer for a weekly pesto dinner.

Greens:

These have been another ongoing success. We ate lettuce (Slow Bolt) into June, and I replanted with seeds (that variety plus Tennis Ball and Spotted Aleppo) in September. We are eating lettuce now that we put under a row cover.

Chard survived the summer, looking horrid and blasted, to feed us again in Fall. The freeze nipped it, but we keep cutting and cooking good leaves. Our mustard and collards, however, are thriving after the freeze and are very sweet. We put them in in the bed that had the garlic and onions until harvest.

Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes:

I stupidly planted the white potatoes in not enough soil, over a layer of weed block. We got four small tubers and ate them in one meal.

The Becca's Purple sweet potatoes, however, were amazing. In a raised bed I got nearly 60 pounds that will carry us through the winter. They are great weed-blockers, only needing attention when the drought got really bad or when Japanese Beetles really got after them. We handed picked the plants daily, and the crop shrugged off the pests.


Berries:

Our first year of jam! We had a nice early crop, and we'd have had more had I weeded more later. That is the plan next year. The plants draw critters, and I shot one groundhog in the patch, despite good fencing: the whistle-pig found a gap at the gate.

Rabbits also had fun in there, but with a scoped small-bore rifle I rid the garden of a few of them. Our livestock guardian dog got others, to judge by the skulls at the back of her run.

That, too, is nature. Everyone has to eat.

Our wild blackberries came in heavily. This winter I need to bushhog two thickets of old canes, so we'll get young canes and new fruit. We got enough as it was to freeze several pounds for winter.

So next year I'll put these lessons to work and see where 2018 take us all. In dark and difficult times, full of so many disappointments and tragedies in our nation, it's good to at least eat food you grow yourself.

Overwhelmed By Tomatoes? Get Crackin' Now!

Time for my annual exhortation to can your own vegetables.

I'm abnormal when it comes to modern American life; I cannot identify most TV shows or celebrities, but I can tell you more than you'd want to know about what a friend calls "fierce hobbies," such a model making, reloading my own ammunition, or, yep, canning. All of them require a lot of attention to detail and tend to focus the mind and body completely.

Yet of them all, canning is perhaps the most gentle and productive. A few generations back, many folks, urban or rural, did it every summer. And to be honest, the longest part of making good tomato sauce for canning is slow-cooking it. The canning can be done in two hours. So please do not tell me you lack time to can your own sauce. There are few more rewarding things in one's kitchen, in the dead of winter, than opening a jar and evoking summer again.

As to how to do it? I've long favored a U Georgia site for the scientific principles espoused in the recipes.   Now that tomatoes are cheap, why not save some money and put up a few gallons?

Some advice if  you are ready to get cracking with this wonderful way to save the harvest. Modern tomatoes lack the acidity of older varieties, and even when I can heirlooms, I add a teaspoon of lemon juice to every pint jar.  I also tend to pressure-can tomatoes these days; granny never did, but the science of food preservation has come a long way. Cherish her recipes but use modern techniques in the canning kitchen. I employ both my first canner, a Presto, and my heavy duty All American Canner for summer chores. Great advice on canning marinara sauce, as well as a decent recipe, can be found here.

I have little time for folks who tell me "I don't have time to do [insert DIY activity]."  If one were to count the hours and hours wasted on the "smart" phone or watching videos of people injuring themselves, there would be enough time to restore a Model T or build a lake cottage.

Get Cracking. Summer is swiftly passing us by and the boxes of canning tomatoes will soon be gone from the farmer's market.  If  you grow your own, I find that a bushel of tomatoes yields about 3 gallons of finished sauce, depending on the variety of tomato and how much you cook it down.

Chickens in the Garden. Hah.

We have had chickens for more than 18 months, currently a flock of 13 hens. Number 14 (I don't like naming them; my wife does) perished in the heat last summer, getting trapped in a raised bed garden and unable to escape the fencing.

As we have discovered, those cute pictures on gardening books that feature chickens are comfortable lies.

Photos like the one above (not our garden, not our chicken! They'd make short work of the Nasturtiums) make a novice gardener think that hens will simply avoid plants you want for food in order to get at the lovely scratch and chicken feed you set out for them. I'm guessing that these are the same urban owners who put little sweaters on their chickens and walk them on leashes. Perhaps they are working on a much smaller scale than we employ; our big garden measures over 5000 square feet, about 3000 of it in raised beds, so projects like building "chicken tunnels" and other elaborate structures run into the steamy reality of Virginia summers where weeds can grow 6 inches after a bad week of heavy rain.

Our experience with chickens shows us that they can be wonderful in and around fallow beds, where they turn and manure the soil. They turn compost faster than I can. I did add boards to keep them from kicking out all the topsoil and compost into the paths, but when I added mesh fencing to beds, chickens would get into the smallest hole, and often they could not get out. They do fly, a bit, and one variety, the Golden Comet, is a great flyer even when we trimmed back the feathers on their wingtips. Over the fence they went!

To prevent more dead birds and ruined crops, we will keep the chickens out of all the beds in summer of 2017. The flock will now have a nice shady run and  their own coop area for scratching and resting. In fall, we'll have 5' tall permanent horse-fencing around our strawberry-and-rhubarb spot and the asparagus bed we are gradually expanding to about 150 square feet.  One other bed will get the 5' fencing and host our winter-greens garden.

I enjoy our chickens. They are good entertainment, they eat a lot of bugs, and they give me breakfast every day of the year. They can, as this author claims, do many things that farm machinery or back-aching labor accomplish.

But, in the end, they are livestock, not pets. If you want to keep chickens, keep in mind that vigilance is the price of having them near a garden, let alone in one.