Long days, bright sun

It's summer! The days are long, the sun is bright, and I'm wearing shorts. Yay!

When I moved here from Virginia, one of my biggest worries about adjusting to the climate was that I wouldn't be getting the oppressively hot summers I'd come to love. That's right, I worried that I would miss the sticky Virginia summers. The gray, wet Pacific Northwest winters, I decided, would probably be OK, but it wouldn't feel like home if I didn't have to kick the covers off in July. I haven't had to kick off the covers yet, but at least I don't need a jacket after dark any more.

I haven't been the only one enjoying the weather. Mini has always hated socks, jackets, and all things warm, so she is reveling in the freedom of shorts and sandals. Ryan has been plotting hiking and backpacking adventures for us, and then spending his weekends and evenings building things outside instead. He doesn't come in until after dark when I scold him, and it hasn't been getting dark until almost 10:00. Boys. The garden has been soaking up all these rays, and is overwhelmingly abundant. (And so are the weeds! Ah!)

Some new things around here: (Photos after the jump!)

-Mark and Deepti are working on re-vamping our pond, which had been swallowed by the blackberries and brush. One day we'll have a pump and some fish and everything.

-We got a couple new hens (1), a Cuckoo Maran and an Araucana. I just put them in with our other ladies last night, so they've been making a racket today to impress each other.

-Ryan built us a new side deck (2)! With stairs! It's lovely. Our house is looking less and less like a junk pile every day. He also built a lumber rack for the carport. Did I mention that he's been building until dark most days?

-I finally named the rabbits. I've been reading Dune aloud to Ryan, which inspired their names: Irulan (3) (the tricolor Rex) and Ms. Atreides (4) (the brown Rex/chinchilla mix). Irulan should be due to kindle (give birth) any second now. She is, in fact, overdue, and I'm starting to worry.

-We (but mostly Ryan) installed 90% of a drip irrigation system in the garden (5). We found out we're just a bit short on tubing, but it's already cut down on the time we spend standing in the garden with a hose.

-I've been applying for full-time jobs teaching elementary school. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

-Deepti is officially a third year resident now. Yay! Her schedule will look more like a normal person's and less like an indentured servant's from here on out.

-Ryan sold his car, and we replaced a non-working 1986 F-250 with a 2004 Dodge Dakota, which brings our fleet of vehicles to 2 working cars, 1 working truck, and 1 almost-working VW camper van.

All together now

We are officially a community now! Forming an LLC together didn't count, and having a bunch of meetings didn't either-- it took all of us living together to make it real for me. Em, Dee, and Mini moved in about two weeks ago. I have been sleeping much better than I thought I would with a toddler upstairs, and it's been great to wake up and have Mini right here on the days when I watch her. We're all working on finding the balance for noise levels, sharing the kitchen, distributing chores, etc., but I think it's coming together nicely. The worst change so far is that I can't belt out with my funny voices during nighttime read-alouds to Ryan anymore, and that's really not so bad.

An update on the rabbits

Tragedy/inexpertise struck my little rabbitry the other day. I underestimated the wiliness of my Silver Fox doe; she escaped her pen one night, only to run to the road and be hit by a car. Major bummer. I cried about it. After I dried my tears, I improved and reinforced my cage system before buying another doe. This one is a tricolor Rex who's had two litters before, one with 8 kits and the other with a whopping 11! I made her a double-wide cage so that she and her huge litters will have lots of room for hopping. Both her cage and the cage of my junior doe (who is getting bigger by the day) are now suspended from the ceiling, which makes for a much more sanitary situation. Cleanup should be a breeze.

Ryan thinks the new tricolor doe is less cute than the Silver Fox was, which makes him more comfortable with the idea of eating her and/or her offspring.

Still. A bummer. I'll be keeping my eye out for a junior Silver Fox doe, just because I'm still excited about that particular breed.

The beginning of garden bounty

Even with a bunch of slugs doing their best to stop me, I brought in our first harvest from the garden last week. It was modest, but hey-- it was a harvest! Spinach, mustard, arugula, and beet greens. We've had about a half dozen strawberries a day off of our new strawberry plants, and several more from the plants of our neighbors who moved out. Dee discovered that we have a cherry tree near the road to the west of the house-- score! Our apple trees have bloomed and have teeny, tiny fruit coming in. We've been busy mowing the grass. Things are growing!

A super worthy cause

Some friends of mine started an organization that facilitates the escape of LGBTQ people from Uganda. Uganda passed a law in February that criminalized homosexuality, with sentences up to life imprisonment. As a result, LGBTQ people throughout the country have been arrested, harassed,  and attacked. This organization, the Friends New Underground Railroad, is helping LGBTQ people who wish to leave the country to do so. As of June 7th, they have helped 78 people make their way out of the country as refugees, and have 90 more on a waiting list for assistance-- that's huge! I know they are working with a very limited budget, and a little will go a long way if you have the money to make a donation. Please consider donating to them, even if it's just $5, and please help to spread the word. Check them out: Friends New Underground Railroad

Cages and Fences

What makes a farm look like a farm? Is it a big red barn? Is it a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, a row of corn? In my opinion, it's the fences. Fences show that you mean business. We have fences now-- does that mean we're official?

Fence #1: The Garden Fence

Vegetables are delicious. I want to eat them. You want to eat them. The deer want to eat them. With all these vegetable seeds and seedlings in the ground, it was time to start keeping the deer out. See the fence in the photo at the top? It looks like it's just vertical pieces of wood, but there is super lightweight deer netting strung from post to post with a wire at the top for extra support.

Pounding eight foot tall wood poles into the ground sure is fun when you're just over five feet-- I'm sure I looked pretty funny on a ladder with a post pounder in the middle of a field. Dee and Ryan helped hang the netting, and Ryan rigged a gate that hopefully will do the trick. It doesn't look like much, but it's something for the deer to hit their noses against and think twice about jumping.

Fence #2: The Chicken Fence

After the deer, what were the second most pesky animals in our garden?

Chickens. Yes, our very own, beloved, egg-laying chickens.

Chickens like to scratch. They like to make dust baths. They poop everywhere. They eat tender young greens. In short, they are a menace to the vegetable garden and any low-lying landscaping. It was time to put an end to their reign of terror.

Here is a recipe for a chicken fence for the amateur fence builder:

6-ft T posts, enough for 10-ft spacing around your perimeter
One post pounder
4-ft welded wire fencing to the length of your perimeter
A whole bunch of UV-resistant zip ties
A gate that Em found on the side of the road
One 4x4 post that's a bit too long
Time
Ryan
Carabiner(s)

First, measure our your perimeter and pound in posts at each corner and at approx. every ten feet between the corners. Then, begin to secure your welded wire fencing to the T posts using the zip ties, trying to get the tension tight enough for the wire to stand up fairly straight between the posts. A tensioner would be helpful here, if you have one. Stare at your second-hand gate until you figure out how you're going to use it, attach it, etc. Send Ryan to the store for supplies accordingly. Walk away and let Ryan install the 4x4 post and the gate. Tip: Carabiners can be very helpful for latching gates open/closed.

Run an extra wire around the top if you notice that the friskier hens are escaping, as ours did. Luckily, chickens don't jump as high as deer do, especially if you have the chunky "dual-purpose" hens that are so popular on homesteads these days.

To top it all off, they actually have two separate pastures in there, so we can do a bit of rotational grazing just like the books say you should.

Cages #1 and #2: The Rabbits

(Okay, they're not fences, but they are enclosures. I think it's close enough.)

Readers, I have a confession to make: I discovered that I like eating meat.

If you have known me for very long, this may come as a shock. For those of you who are new, let me just say that I've been vegan or vegetarian since 2006, with a few exceptions here and there for studying abroad and similar occasions.

My choice to be vegetarian/vegan was based mostly in environmental reasons. The meat industry is huge, environmentally irresponsible, and downright gross. The dairy and egg industries aren't much better. Although there are groovier options out there, the labeling is often misleading and the prices are high. And, honestly, buying shrink-wrapped flesh gives me the heebie jeebies.

And so I decided to raise our own. I decided to raise rabbits. I plan to write a post expounding on the virtues of rabbits as a meat animal, but for now, suffice it to say that rabbits make a lot of meat with little input. For this, you need rabbits bred to be meat producers-- none of those adorable dwarf varieties or perky, active pets. No, you need rabbits that were bred to be little bricks, rabbits that will eat their food and then hunker down and convert calories into pounds.

As of today, I have two rabbits. I am hesitant to name them, so for now I'll call them what Mini does: Brown Bunny and Black Bunny. I bet you can tell which is which. They're both females, or does. Brown Bunny is a Rex/Chinchilla mix, and she won't be ready to breed for another couple months. Black Bunny is an adult Silver Fox, a heritage meat breed that also has beautiful pelts. Black Bunny spent some time with a male rabbit yesterday, and I'm hoping for little black kits in about a month.

Ryan has promised to build a real shed for them, but for now their cages are housed in a hand-me-down greenhouse I got from a crazy woman on Craigslist. There's always something build around here. Fences, sheds, decks, community...

The garden is in!

Well, the garden is in. At least, the soil is mostly where it belongs and I dug the paths out. Just in time, too-- the sky opened up a few hours after I put my shovel down. The rain is helping to settle the new garden beds into place. They initially looked craggy, and today they're just a little rugged. It's been raining on and off all day today, which put a damper on my plans to get some seeds in. With water below on the paths and water above from the sky, it was too much water for me to persevere beyond adding the amendments and a bit more topsoil. (I shoveled the paths down and the garden beds up to improve drainage for the beds and their soon-to-be plants, but that means that the walking paths are now walking moats.)

I did manage to add the amendments, though, so that's something. I added Calpril lime, feather meal, and bone meal, to be precise. The meals were to boost the nitrogen and phosphorous, respectively. The lime was to boost the pH, and to do all the other lovely things that lime does to your soil. (I found the website of the guy who gave the inspirational lime workshop I attended a couple weeks ago! Check it out; perhaps you, too, will be inspired.) The lime I used is a "pril" or pelletized lime, and it smells wonderful because they stick it together with molasses. Yummy.

Tomorrow's forecast is "chance of showers" rather than today's "showers," so I'm hoping I'll have a few dry hours to get some beds planted.

A couple short pieces of news:

-A have continued to experiment with eating Japanese Knotweed. I am so far still alive, so the internet must have been correct about its edibility. I made a pie with it, which has received mixed reviews. Perhaps I will add some strawberries next time, or at least some grated beets to make it a more appetizing color. Pie fillings are often slimy, but people don't seem excited about them when they're green and slimy.

-I am still taking aerial class, and it's awesome. I can feel myself getting stronger, and we're starting to learn tricks/moves that actually look cool. I have an intense notebook to keep track of what we've learned and what I've been working on; I guess I do miss academia sometimes.

Yards of soil

Friends, today I belatedly announce the arrival of ten square yards of soil in our driveway. Yes, indeed, ten yards of top-quality, deep black, compost-smelling soil found themselves in front of our carport on Monday afternoon.

Many of those yards were destined for our nascent garden. (About five of them, if you want to be exact about it.) Do you have a guess as to who volunteered to transport it to our garden plot? Little ol' me!

Little ol' me made a discovery: soil is heavy. It's heavy in the shovel, it's heavy in the cart, and it's especially heavy in the cart when you're pushing it through mud.

Nearly halfway through the pile!

If you live 'round these parts, you'll know that things have been getting less muddy for the past couple days. We have been blessed with a few days of sunshine, and can reasonably expect two or three more. In fact, we very reasonably can expect our soil to dry out enough to till it and form it into our garden beds! That's why I spent six hours shoveling, carting, dumping, and distributing soil yesterday, and about three more today. Tomorrow will see me rototilling that good stuff in. If I feel up to it after that, I'll start shoveling soil from the walking paths up onto the garden beds to raise them for improved drainage. If not, I'll do it Friday. And Saturday? If the garden beds are done, I'll be planting! Hallelujah, it's finally happening!

I'll also be starting some logs for mushroom cultivation (shiitakes! oysters!) on Saturday with our neighbor, who happens to be one of the best neighbors I've ever had. He's not just super friendly. He also is doing most of the things that I want to do. He has chickens, rabbits, sheep, and pigs. He has a garden. He grows mushrooms. He's probably coming to Burning Man with us. And he owns the house, so he'll be sticking around for a good long while. Hooray!

Here's a cute neighbor story: Awesome Neighbor (known as AN) came over to our house. Looking out our kitchen window, AN spied a particularly nasty exotic invasive weed known as Japanese Knotweed. He expressed his sympathy and wished us the best in our eradication efforts. I hadn't encountered it before, so I looked it up after he left. I confirmed his identification-- yup, definitely Japanese Knotweed. But what's that, Wikipedia? Did you say that it's edible? And that it's a lot like rhubarb and makes a pretty decent jam?

I harvested a laundry basket of Japanese Knotweed, tore the leaves off, peeled the stems, gave them a rinse, chopped them up, and treated them like tasty jam-makings. After more time in the kitchen than I'd like to admit (this was my first solo jam-making), I had seven jelly jars and a couple overflow containers of knotweed-and-orange jam. It's tangy (hopefully in a good way), and it didn't jell quite right (it was my first time!), but it's totally edible. I had it on a PBJ for lunch today. As the best ending of this story, I walked myself over to AN's house, presented him with a jar of knotweed jam, and thanked him for identifying the plant for me in the first place.

Digging, digging, in our garden

We had a patch of a few days without any rain, which meant that it was time to start tilling. You don't want to work the soil when it's too wet, especially when it has a lot of clay in it like ours, so hoping to till in the springtime is a nail-biting experience. I don't know if you've heard, but we get a lot of rain around wintertime here in the Pacific Northwest. If we take good care of the garden beds we're putting in this year, we won't have to till next spring-- I'm already looking forward to it.

The fellow who leases land from us to grow blueberries has a rototiller. Small motors tend to be finicky, and this one has its quirks. It likes to pop out of gear, but it otherwise runs pretty well. It did give me a huge blood blister when I tried to start it the first time, but I choose to think of that as an initiation ceremony. It weighs a ton. Not literally, but it sure seems like it when you're trying to push it around in mud the consistency of peanut butter. (OK, maybe we should have waited for a longer dry spell before tilling.) We marked out a 1600-ft area for our garden, and tilling it really drove home how big of a project gardening it is going to be. It's one thing to draw the layout on grid paper. It's one thing to poke tiny orange flags in between the dandelions. It's entirely another to shove spinning tines through every inch of it to hack the grass to pieces. We didn't even kill all the grass yet. When our next dry spell arrives (keep your fingers crossed), we're going to till the whole thing again, adding amendments to the soil while ringing the death knell of the sod.

In preparation for what I'm sure is going to be a glorious garden plot, once it's tilled and fenced, I've been starting seeds. You may have heard about the time I killed all of my tomato seedlings a few weeks ago. Well, folks, I am proud to announce that all of my new seedlings are alive and well. I've been diligently watering our tomato, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts starts. Yesterday, which was about three weeks away from our statistical last frost date, I started more tomatoes, basil, a whole bunch of squashes, and some melons. Yes, melons! This particular strain was developed in Minnesota, so hopefully we'll get some juicy melons out of our garden even with our short growing season.

Also in preparation for having a glorious garden, I've been brushing up on food preservation. This, of course, is in anticipation of having an overwhelming bounty of homegrown vittles. Specifically, I've been stopping at a farm stand on my way to aerial class twice a week to stock up on whatever they have that's cheapest. Lately, it's been pears for 59 cents a pound. Awesome. Once they're home, they are sliced, soaked in an apple cider vinegar solution to prevent browning, and tossed in the dehydrator, where they stay for about ten hours. (I have the dehydrator plugged into an outlet timer, and I now think I'm the smartest person since Richard Feynman.) Dried pear slices are irresistibly delicious. I fill a half gallon mason jar with them every week, and every week it manages to empty itself just as the next batch is ready.

That half gallon mason jar, by the way, is housed in a beautifully repainted kitchen. The kitchen used to be an atrocious lime green-- countertops, cabinet faces, and wallpaper-- paired with very dark wood paneling. We kept a bit of the dark wood, but mostly the kitchen is now cream and blue, with a stencil for fun. It's lovely. I'll take pictures some day when it's clean.

Oh, and I started aerial class. It's awesome. I am going to be so strong eventually. For now, I'm going to grunt and sweat and whimper. But at least I'm on a trapeze while I'm doing it.