Hen Scratch

2010-03-09T21:13:00.006-06:00

A lot of my friends wouldn't believe this, but I really love order. I like tidy rows and straight lines, equal spacing and symmetry. But in the past few years, I have gotten away from this in the landscape...at least when it comes to the classic idea of a vegetable garden.

Too often, our vegetable plants are sentenced to a back corner of our yard and forced to grow in ranks of like kind. At some point, I began to notice just how beautiful these plants are. I saw the lacy carrot tops, up against the waxy bulk of a cabbage, the structural frill of kale contrasting with the cool grace of pea leaves. Beyond their physical interest in the garden, their functional beauty (i.e. they give us food!) should secure their place among our most precious landscape staples.

I began my own quest to set the vegetable plants free from their sequestered existence in rectangular beds, letting them loose into our ornamental gardens, where they will be sure to fill our bellies and win our hearts.

Following are just a few examples of ways to mix vegetables and flowers, creating a landscape that appeals to our eye and stomach alike.

One of my favorite flowering plants to throw in among veggies, is the zinnia. The flowers go strong until frost, adding a punch of color to foliage-heavy plants. I have used them to dress up homely patches of tomatoes, and here they are paired with cucumbers (in the back).

In this picture, a pink-veined Swiss chard plays off zinnias in the same color family.

This is a photo of the whole bed: "lipstick pink" chard; pink, white, and red zinnias; with the cucumbers on the far side. Cucumber plants have a utilitarian look by themselves, but transform into a necessary visual element when grouped like this.

We eat lots of Swiss chard, so we tuck it into every empty pocket of the existing garden beds. Here is "Bright Lights" chard, showcased by obedient plant (Physostegia sp.) and blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis).

A closeup of the blackberry lily against the chard's orange veining.

And speaking of chard (!), this one is called "Canary Yellow..."

...and I like to pair it with purple. Here, the self-seeding Verbena bonariensis (purple-top vervain) conveniently popped up around it, while "Redbor" kale anchors the vignette in the background.

Many of the leafy plants can be utilized for their color. This is red Choi, and I have to admit: I chose it for it's red-blue leaves more than for its taste.

Here it is in a raised bed, in concert with "Bull's Blood" beets and some red torpedo onions. In the middle (and not visible yet) are pink snapdragons.

Why did the Chicken…?

2010-03-05T18:36:00.007-06:00

The other afternoon, I came home to find one of the chickens ruffed and befuddled on the roadside. Depending on the growing season, the hens have run the backyard for the better part of four years. The fence is not chicken-tight…because it doesn’t have to be. The girls prefer the comforts of home, staying close to each other and all the spots they know for the best dust baths, grub feasts, hiding spots. So when I found my chicken –well- crossing the road, I couldn’t imagine what had inspired her to do so.

Later that week, I slid out the back door for the evening ritual of opening the coop door and waiting for the hens to peck and scratch their way inside for the night. I brought them some fresh water for a before-bed drink and hunkered inside my coat, watching the February afternoon fade. I was cold. And the girls seemed extra thirsty. So I decided to give them a few minutes to drink while I sought refuge in the warm house…

The next morning, I awoke to a shriek. In my sleepy haze, I couldn’t imagine why the chickens would be in any sort of danger, still shut safe in their coop. A Canadian goose for sure, blurred by my dreaming. Then I realized: I had forgotten to go back outside the night before. The girls had been out all night.

I am often struck by the sheer vulnerability of chickens. They are unable to fly more than a few feet, and when it comes down to it, they are slow, awkward and none too shrewd. What they have going for them are the instinctive responses of prey animals and screaming alarm calls.

It was this vocal distress that sent me bounding from my bed to backyard in less than ten seconds. Pajama-clad, I scanned the icy scene, seeing nothing in my panic, but a white blur, slipping below the fence and out of sight. Tracks in the snow confirmed the cat’s presence, but the chickens were nowhere to be found. If they had been loose all night, there was no telling what beasts had threatened them in the dark hours; the cat could simply have been the last of a long line of nocturnal evils.

Cursing my negligence, I poked under the skeletal brush near the cat’s escape point. My hands, shaking with cold and apprehension, moved aside winter carcasses: prairie garden plants and grasses. Then suddenly a chicken: hunkered and stunned, but blinking and alive with fear. I gathered her under my arm, whispering apologies for my absolution, noting a spot of blood in the snow. I examined the bird in my hand, finding a wound just above her foot. That damn cat had had my chicken by the leg.
A questioning cluck drew my attention across the yard, where my old, red hen poked a tentative neck from below the deck.

“Girl,” I said, relieved, “come on out.” And she came to join her counterpart.

Two jumpy hens underfoot, I set about the yard in search of the third, inspecting the snow for feathers or –god forbid- smears of blood. Nothing. I looked in every known recess and hollow of my backyard landscape and could find my hen nowhere. I thought back to the spring before, when one of my flock had fallen prey to an opportunistic possum. I had found a limp mound of feathers in the morning, bloodied and still, far from the coop. This was the image swimming in my head when I finally caught sight of black tail feathers, protruding from beneath a coop-side mound of straw.

“Oh no,” I moaned, kneeling beside the body. I reached into the pile, thinking that the predator must have wanted to stow its kill in a hidden spot. The hen was flaccid and soft in my hands, and my eyes stung with guilt. The others cocked their heads and scratched at the ground, embarrassed, as I stood and wondered how I would dig a grave in the freeze of winter. Suddenly, the mass in my hands burst to life in an explosion of feathers and flapping. In my surprise, I all but threw the chicken to the ground, where she shook off my touch and fell into rank beside the others, who were now looking at me, expecting breakfast.

Chickens may not have much in the way of long-term memory, but luckily their human caretakers do. Enough, at least, to keep from resting each night until the coop door is closed with the flock on the safe side. My memory served me one step further, reminding me of the afternoon I found a hen by the road. I walked back to the spot, examining the prints in the snow. Sure enough, the same cat tracks.

As I fed and watered my flock that morning, I smiled at them in relief, apologized once more, then dug their movable pen from the snow. Today at least, they would not have the run of the backyard. Maybe cats don’t remember much either, but I doubted it, and when it returned, it would find my girls behind bars and safe…on their side of the fence -- and road.

Mulch Ado about...

2010-02-12T14:17:00.011-06:00

I have always had a tendency to cast longing glances at piles of steaming mulch. When I can, I go close and smell their peaty perfume, lay my hand on the pile to feel the mysterious heat of decay. Used by landscapers and home gardeners, mulch provides a finished look for an ornamental garden bed, while bestowing innumerable benefits to plant health.

To take a step beyond the aesthetic attributes of mulch, it has been helpful for me to remember that mulch occurs naturally in many ecosystems as plants shed leaves and other organic matter. This dead material forms a spongy, nutrient-rich mat on the ground that slowly breaks down and releases those nutrients into loamy substrate. Natural mulch teems with microbial, fungal, and insect life, which play an integral role in the cycle of nutrients.

At some point, I realized that trying to grow food plants in exposed soil creates a stressful environment for the plants and gardener alike. We struggle to quell competition and maintain soil moisture, while the plants labor for survival in malnourished soil. A thick mulch layer can mimic the leaf-litter of a forest floor, suppressing weeds, inviting beneficial organisms, and retaining moisture. Mulched plants are more robust and productive, not to mention better able to resist pests and diseases.

We have tried various methods of mulching throughout the years, but last spring, we were excited to try “sheet mulching.” This is a layering technique that uses “sheets” of compostable material in order to mimic a natural, forest floor system. The result is a dynamic and fertile stratum in which plants can thrive without a lot of input from the gardener.

The best aspect of sheet mulching is that it does not require any tilling or sod-removal. The sheets are layered on top of the existing sod and that vegetation eventually decays and adds to the fertility of the soil. The sod must be suppressed, however, and we did this with cardboard and thick layers of newspaper.

We hosed the first layer down and sprinkled bone and blood meal on top. This mixture will invite worms and the like to start the composting process, until the very bottom tier of the sheet-mulched bed is teeming with life and nutrients, just like the deeper levels of forest substrate.

Next was a layer of straw, more bone and blood meal, water, followed by a layer of hay. This mixing of brown and green matter has less nitrogen content than the first layer, and will compost at a slower rate.

It was very spongy.

We covered the new bed with fresh compost from our backyard pile.

We edged the perimeters with cedar mulch…just for the aesthetic value of a front-yard bed.

The process took us two full (and fun) days. After that, the only work was the periodic staking of tomato plants, the answering of questions from the neighbors, and eventually the harvest. Even during the hot, dry days of midsummer, we never watered.

Here is the bed at the end of the season...

And some of the harvest...

Waiting for Spring

2010-02-08T12:20:00.002-06:00

In mid-February, I find myself looking outside at weary patches of snow and backyard-barrens of grays and browns, longing for the life and motion of spring. These are the restless times when I flip through seed catalogs and open new bags of germination mix, just to sniff the suggestive insides. I run fingers through my worm-composting bins and rummage through crates of sand for last seasons remaining carrots and parsnips.

Soon enough, I will start the process of growing the cool-season crops for this summer’s harvest. Soon enough, I will dust off my heat mats and test the timer-run fluorescent bulbs. And soon enough, the nascent bodies of kale and cabbage, tomatoes and eggplant will emerge and flourish under my watchful care. For now, I will spend my evenings curled on the couch with a novel, content to rest. After all, this is what winter is for, and it will give way, soon enough, to a world growing and green.

Fire, seeds, and floating row covers-by Erin Brigid

2009-03-21T16:40:00.006-05:00

Well, we know it is spring, when the chickens have returned to their chicken-tractor. All winter, they get to run the yard, rolling in the dirt of our bare gardens, and depositing their scat wherever they please. When the growing season starts, we become a bit more civilized, and cage our animals. This keeps them from scratching up any freshly-planted seed, trampling young plants, or (later) eating any produce. Chickens have an awesome ability to reek havoc wherever they go. The sweet, darling dears!

I fully anticipated the girls to be grumpy after a winter of freedom, but they didn't seem to mind their restricted quarters. That is, until John started burning some debris...

Though the fire made the hens nervous, it didn't phase Nutmeg, who settled in for an outdoor nap--fireside.

It's hard to believe that in a few weeks' time, the air will be consistently warm, and leaves will be bursting from the ground and trees faster than we'll be able to note. Spring weather is so coveted at this time of year, but it comes in stealth, and before we know it, it envelops us in a verdant array of life and green and sunny days.

Today was a taste of that, and I couldn't stop myself from uncovering a few of the raised beds, planting the first rounds of arugula, beets, peas, and spinach. Last summer, I had a dream that I was pulling parsnips from my garden, thick and abundant, so today I planted some for an autumn harvest. Am I too early on all of this? Maybe. This week, the temperatures will plummet again, and we could even have some snow. But we've got our seeds tucked in and covered for good measure, and maybe they'll show their faces soon enough.

And soon enough after...we'll be lost in that spectrum of green.

Roots!-by Erin Brigid

2009-03-15T13:37:00.001-05:00

The first transplant: Redbor Kale. Here is a badly-focused photo of the seedlings, well-rooted and sturdy as heck!

We start many of our seedlings in these 20-row trays, available through Johnny's seeds (johnnyseeds.com). The narrow slots seem to encourage more robust root systems and make each variety of plant easy to remove with a gentle tug (as shown above).

I pull apart the plants and tuck them into the pre-filled cell-packs. It is very important (and I get obsessive over this) to make sure the soil or soiless mixture is pressed tightly around the transplant. This means that I keep a bowl of soil for fill as I tamp each cell of dirt down around its new resident. I don't meant to smother the plants; just eliminate air pockets.

Here are the kids, ready to spread their little roots. Last year, we had five Rebor Kale plants, and they fed us into the winter. This tray is holding nearly 50!

What Betty doesn't know -by Erin Brigid

2009-03-09T14:13:00.007-05:00

Ever since she opened the seed book and rediscovered them, Betty has been talking about the delicious sweet peppers she grew last year. They were sweet peppers, with tapered, yellow fruits: prolific and pretty in the garden.

"Oooh these! Remember these?" She held the catalogue up to me and Mom, one Saturday morning over coffee. The January sun was warm on the back of my neck as I bent over my own compendium of compelling seedery. I glanced up.

"Yeah, those are Carmen peppers," I said, and returned to my hungry browsing. I figured I should know, since I gave her the little pepper plants last year, and forever after found mixing bowls full of the golden fruits left on our kitchen counter.

"Well, GOD, were they good!" Betty said, "We're gonna get a bunch of those this year and grow them all. I don't care if it's the only thing we grow. God, they were GOOD!"

When a sizeable box of seeds arrived on Betty's doorstep, I offered to help start her broccoli and lettuce.

"Can you do these too?" Betty held up a packet of Carmen pepper seeds. "And grow some for yourself. They're so damn good." I grinned, knowing Betty's heart was set on those sweet, yellow peppers. After she left, I showed Mom their picture in the seed catalogue.

"Right here." I pointed to a picture of slender, yellow pepper-bodies, gathered and showcased on a countertop.

"Those are Biscayne's," Mom read.

"Well, they look just like Carmen's," I dismissed.

"Except that Carmen's are red." Mom quietly laid the book at my side and walked away. I stared at the picture of bright crimson peppers, waxy and proud on the page. Then I looked at the calendar and figured that Betty had about 14 blissful weeks before I'd have to tell her about my idiocy. Until then, maybe I could hang subliminal pictures of red bulls-horn peppers in key places between our houses, or convince my family to don red shirts and run past Betty's windows in the dawn dreaming hours. Perhaps I could fill my kitchen with red accessories and say that I've "Carmonized" the place. Or maybe -just maybe- we could share a pot of coffee and talk-garden like she loves to do, and I could break it to her ever so gently. She might even still let me keep a few plants...

What Betty doesn't know yet..

Here's an update on our very first planting of the season, beginning with Swiss chard (the first four rows on the left), and ending with broccoli (last three rows on the right).

Our very high-tech bottom-watering system.
-

Auld Lang Syne - by Erin Brigid

2009-03-02T20:11:00.011-06:00

A short 36 hours after planting, the kale are up! Following closely, were the cabbages and kohlrabi. We moved them under the light as soon as we discovered their happy green arrival.

For now, they are still on the heat mat, alongside the snapdragons and foxgloves. We're hoping that the heat will also help the latter to germinate in the chilly basement.

Oh yes. Here is John providing the usual entertainment...

...and Nutmeg, being sure to stay involved.

When I was little, I used to gather my stuffed animals on the bed every year on February 28th. Together, we would stay awake until midnight in our own private New Year's Eve celebration. This was because I always considered the month of March to be the official arrival of spring: a 'New Year' more fitting to me, than the one in January.

I realized today, how appropriate it was for us to plant our season's first seeds on the evening of February 28 and celebrate their germination just a day into the 'New Year.' A few yards away, on the basement floor, sits a tub of old stuffed animals, some of which waited out this yearly transition with me so long ago. Maybe they once again held silent vigil the other night as the seeds fell to rest in the substrate. And as I peeked under the plastic today, perhaps they grinned with me in shared delight at this new year.

Son of God, have mercy! - by Erin Brigid

2009-03-01T15:35:00.003-06:00

Last night, we started our first seeds of the season. Some of the cool season vegetables: kale, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, broccoli, and cabbage. And some cutting flowers: snapdragons, and foxglove. Here's John, with his first tray of snapdragon seeds...

We left the snapdragons and foxglove uncovered, since they need light to germinate. The tray of vegetables, we covered with plastic bags and placed on top of a heat mat in order to raise the humidity needed for germination. As soon as the little buggars sprout, we will move them under the lamps and give them 12-14 hours of light every day.

Last year, I started from seed, many of the plants for a local business. If I wasn't careful, I would spend an awful lot of energy being anxious about the fact that a portion of the season's revenue rested in my ability to successfully nurture those seeds into healthy vegetable plants. To translate my worry, I began reciting The Jesus Prayer as I worked, and thankfully found the whole process to be one of gentle growth and peace. In fact, I looked forward to the quiet afternoons spent transplanting tiny lettuce seedling with Popsicle sticks and a pocket knife, rolling my hands through wet peat mix like kneading dough, and tucking tomato seeds into its darkness until they broke the surface, transformed.

As usual, John broke my expectations, turning my evening of quiet into a circus of color and fun.

the liturgy of a garden year - By Erin Brigid

2009-02-23T17:48:00.007-06:00

Last night, mom and I set up our seed-starting workspace in the basement. Two, four-foot shelves, with two fluorescent light fixtures each; a storage area and counter-space; a table for transplanting, and a little space heater ($6 at the thrift store!) for my incurably cold feet.

I have done my share of seed-starting in the past, but having my own set-up feels like a step deeper into the liturgy and rhythm of the growing year. The seed catalogues lie on my desktop, wrinkled and marked by my careful choosing. Coffee cans line our shelf-space, labeled Fabaceae, Brassicaceae, Compositae, ready to house the seed packets of their corresponding families: beans, cabbages, lettuces, and so on. I stare out the back window, imagining the snow away, and mark my calendar for transplant dates.

This weekend, Betty brought over a few jars of last year’s beets, sweet pickles, some frozen beans. We gave her a few bags of carrots. It feels good to know that we are still eating –at least a bit of- last season’s harvest. We will use the last of our storage onions right around the time the Allium cernuum and chives have flushed enough to flavor our salads and spring soups. And our pantry is still lined with the winter squash to take us through the Lenten season.

Kristin and I were talking today about her job at a supermarket in Seattle. The products she works to stock and sell flow through her hands in a torrent of motion, always arriving, always leaving, feeding the insatiable needs of our tables and bellies. She said that it makes her dizzy to have no beginning, end, or variation to this process, and it made me realize that, by growing our food, we see the very ebb and flow that our culture has ceased to know. We see shelves filled and emptied, gardens alive and asleep, food available or consumed until it can grow again.

Of course, we haven’t learned to do this completely. (I had a nice big salad today, compliments of California.) But I keep sneaking down to the basement to peek at those shelves that will soon hold the naissance of our year’s fare. And I realize that, year after year, I will gain a deeper knowledge of this breath before the motion, this final rest before the world erupts again into life and growing. I may become better at saving my hankerings for fresh lettuce and kale, until I can actually cut it from my garden. And every year, I will watch sprouts break the soil, necks bent under the weight of their necessity, bright green with the advent of hope.

Separation Eggxiety -by P

2008-08-28T21:21:00.004-05:00

It may be a fine time to admit that it is not entirely legal to have chickens in our backyard.

Now... Don't get the wrong idea. It's not exactly illegal either, but let's just say if we weren't shipping a dozen eggs to the local sheriff each month, we might be in trouble. That's why when I heard a terrible ruckus of squawking about midday today, I quickly poked my head outside. If the care of a chicken isn't quite enough on a given day, our effort to keep certain neighbors out of the loop is.

Upon my first examination of the pen, everything seemed to be fairly in order. There were Smokey and Jayber, newly combed and quite large now, radiant in the boiling sun. There was the lilac bush, huge and sprawling up and out over the side, and there was the little black compost shell in which Selly and Tomah, our mature laying hens, usually find a quiet secluded place to lay an egg once a day. However, beneath the lilac bush, hopping on the spot and squawking loud enough to announce a county-wide weather condition was Selly, clearly agitated and- I quickly noted with a tremor of fear in my heart- quite alone. Tomah was nowhere to be found.

I scoured the pen, the carrot patch, the tomato plants and the squash, but found not one glimmer of red in all the green. Yesterday morning around 6:30 AM our neighbor Betty had apologetically phoned to say she saw a possom sneaking along our fenceline. This is the worst fear of a small-flock hen farmer. A possom! The memory is all too clear of the phone call last March, proclaiming the sad news of Crow's death mostly likely at the hands of some unknown critter; but now we knew: it must have been the blood-thristy possom, and now he (or she) was back for more!

Obviously, when Tomah went missing this morning, my first thoughts were of pulling her mangled form from beneath the towering cup plant in the native corner of our yard-- and home alone, as I was, it was just a little too much to handle. After calling for reinforcement and finding no one answering their cell phone, I quickly resigned myself to simply sit post, to make sure Tomah's agitated sister didn't dive over the fence after her, as I knew she was quite close to doing.

Breathless, I ran upstairs, threw on a pair of shorts and returned with a book tucked under my elbow, ready to sit out the afternoon, a faithful shepherd. You can imagine my surprise then when I pushed open the screen door to find the air now sinisterly silent. Selly was gone. Jayber and Smokey looked up at me with sweet oblivious eyes as I shouted, "Where did she go?"

"Bawwwwk, buk buk," was their reply as I hopped off the deck, and frantically searched all the likely spots. They had been known to bed down in mysterious places to lay their eggs, so I checked again: the carrot patch, beneath the tomatoes... and there it was! A glimmer of red.

"Selly!" I yelled, laughing in spite of myself. Well, this was a change: the garbage bins where we grow potatoes? But now was not the time to examine the laying habits of middle-aged hens. She looked unnaturally still and serious, so I flicked her comb until she blinked and ruffled her feathers. "Oh Selly," I moaned, "...here you are, but where is your sister?" She stared stoicly onward. Apparently all was well now that she could lay where she preferred, and thoughts of her companion were far from her mind.

However, the sighting gave me hope. If Selly was just looking for a new place to lay, maybe Tomah was as well. Sure enough, twenty minutes later as I was making the rounds- from the coop to the deck, to the pen, I caught sight of her beneath a mass of Swiss chard gone to seed and under cover of shaggy carrot tops. She, too, looked especially serious and I couldn't help stroking her in relieved affection and then finally poking her in the eye until she responded (I had to be sure). Two ornery chickens flew the coop to support odd egg-laying habits, but who was I to complain; they were alive.

Dizzy with relief, I went inside to eat a meal and pour myself a glass of wine. A half hour later I went outside to check on the girls and found Tomah clucking around the tomatoes. I scooped her up and dropped her back in the pen where she was greeted with clucking and applause.

Well, at least one good thing came out of this, I thought to myself as I searched through the carrots for the fruit of all of our labor: the still-warm brown egg. I cradled it like a precious gem as I walked toward the house, a smile finally on my face, then slipped on some fresh chicken scat and dropped it-- splat! -- onto the hard wood of the deck.

"Bawwwk, buk buk," I heard from the pen and looked back to see all four chickens looking up at me in surprise- at the sound of the egg breaking or the expletive, I can't be sure.

But of one thing I was sure as I hosed the rich yolk from the wooden slats: Four hens would live to lay one more day.

Harvest -by Erin Brigid

2008-08-26T21:18:00.010-05:00

Curing the onions

Red cabbage

Peppers (any ideas on what to do with them now?)

Swiss chard -a variety called "lipstick pink"

The Tuttle farm.

Cutting Back -by P

2008-08-26T19:56:00.008-05:00

It’s about that time of year: It is as if an invisible hand has begun to crank up the controls; the sun is brighter and hotter in the sky, and most days I feel like I’m swimming in humidity even before I jump into the pool. Daylight hours are long, but obviously waning now and broad green leaves so succulent and robust in June seem to wilt mere hours after watering. A weekend or so ago Erin led my parents and I around a local prairie and gleefully pointed out each tall or leafy plants’ adaptation to the heat and relentless sun, but I am not so resilient, nor well-adapted. I too have begun to wilt and worry with the coming of hotter days. With every sunlit hour that passes I am reminded that I will be uprooting soon and unable to take with me any of the comfort and familiarity of home in any tactile sense of the word, not least of which is my backyard and all the sunny faces I see whenever I walk outside.

The past few days Erin has been busy cleaning out the garden, a task most mysterious to me, consisting of seemingly counter-productive digging up and cutting away. Though it may seem strange at first, this process gently reminds the active plant parts exactly where they should concentrate their growing: not in the old sprawling fruit, but in the new, tender sprouts. There is something melancholy, but also wonderful about this work, not to mention absolutely necessary by mid-July when all the spring or early summer crops have bolted or flowered or digested in our bellies, possibly finding themselves now soft rinds in the chicken coop or buried amongst the worms that eat our garbage. Yesterday I asked to help and she set me to task cutting away several tall, bushy monstrosities that have gone amok in the recent thunderstorms and long, sunny days. And after only twenty minutes I had cleared away a big gaping bald spot amongst the foliage. There in the middle stood an island of spikey green fingers pointing up at the sky, shorn ends white and exposed. I waved back and thought about leaving.

On the first of September I will be moving to Seattle where I am told by the sweet women in the Downer’s Grove Organic Garden Club that food grows all year round, like the Garden of Eden. So these days I keep my eyes peeled for Northwest Gardening tips and think hopefully about whatever small harvest I might sustain next spring. But I also look longingly to my own Midwestern, sun-scorched backyard where I am already so firmly planted. It’s coming on August, and there is a definite feeling of movement in the air. I feel like buying school supplies and getting ready for Cross Country camp, but this year I am not going back to college and the impending move is much more permanent and less known. This year I will say good-bye without the knowledge that I’ll see Mom and Dad at the first Cross Country meet of the season or the assurance of returning for Thanksgiving dinner. Instead I will board a plane with two bags stuffed full of clothes ready for rainy weather and twenty bucks in my pocket to buy dishes at the local thrift shop. This year I say goodbye to the hens and the worms and the bees knowing I will probably not be here next summer at all; I may never see the pullets become mature egg-layers; I may not witness the first honey harvest; I will not be able to help Erin hull in the massive kohlrabi crop and cut them into French fry blocks on our knees beneath the wild Elm. The yard looks lovely and sparse today since the cleaning, although it is easy to feel disappointed at all the empty spaces. There is a myth perpetuated by our intoxicating American values that mass and intensity is a mark of value and wealth. But we seasoned gardeners know: to cut back is to grow.

10k -by P

2008-08-24T23:07:00.000-05:00

After three years of collegiate running, I finally convinced Erin to do something she had sworn off since high school mile trials: run! Not only did she concede to tag along for workouts, but she signed up with me this August to run a distance I myself have never raced: 10k!

So, on August 24th, Erin and I competed along with my trusty running buddy, Mike.

Here we are after the race, showing off our official numbers, relieved and thrilled to have the hard work behind us.

Here follows a reenactment of the race:

At the beginning.

At the fourth mile marker... (Erin's still looking good!)

And the fifth...

A full ten minutes after I finished, I looked down at my score card and noticed I had finished second in my age group: my first award for racing! (All the twenty-two year-olds must have slept in that day!)

A different sort of feather bed -by Erin Brigid

2008-08-23T22:42:00.000-05:00

The sun is setting, and the hens are preparing to roost. Before settling down, however, they ritually greet their care-takers at the door.

Can you spot the hen trying to get in and let us know its time for bed?

Selly likes spaghetti too!

We'll share our dinner, but not our beds... Back outside girls!

On Planting and Growing and for my big sister, Erin -by P

2008-07-30T16:03:00.003-05:00

On your day off, we planted a garden— —Or you planted: four squash mounds, a few stray lambs ear, and three skinny sunflowers. I cut sod: foot across metal cross bar, little rivers of sweat at my temple, dirt beneath my fingernails and caked across my ankles. I dug a long tunnel down into the ground with a trowel while you lowered in orbs of root and soil from a plastic pot. Then with a grin of satisfaction you stood, letting bits of earth trail behind you and I watched you walk away, stop at the spigot, bend to stretch your arms around the long green hose. You are skinny as a rail, and the little girls at church tell you so. They’re right, I realize: I can see your shoulder blades through your tshirt and your wrists, also freckled with soil, peek out beneath your sleeves, slender and fair.

You are dwarfed by tall green leaves and purple florets against the sky. You’re thin enough to scoot between the bee balm and the hive, the shallow planters and the chicken coop. Your long arms wriggle through a maze of chicken wire to reach the rain barrel. I watch you work bent small beneath your wild produce: plant, pull weeds, and haul the hose.

Soon I sit on the porch, tucked into a novel. You fold yourself into the foliage, working, planning, throwing rinds from last night’s dinner to the hens, all softly clucking their thanks beneath the lavender bush, tall and sprawling. I think of all the people you’ve ever planted with. They sit like ghosts among the vegetables, crowding the potato cans, crouching beneath the deck with the old buttercup roots and scaling up the bean poles. You don’t ask them to leave. I turn the pages of my book and move to the swing beneath the old tree Betty gave us when it was still a sapling: a little sickly, spindly, but now tall and wild, reaching out to brush the tops of our heads during dinner. I want to sit amidst the growth; I try to soak in your day’s work, wishing myself into its difficult, taxing process, and lovely produce. I watch the ghosts paw the soil at your feet; I wish on them, too; I will them away from here, from you, avoiding their many-eyed gaze and the dull whooshing of their presence, movement across the yard.

But you neither avoid, nor address their watchful posture. You plant around, through and because of them. You lace the ground with their stories, sometimes telling them silently in your work, sometimes remembering them across the dinner table where I smile, toss the rind of your tale to the birds and they partake, find nourishment, make the compost you will fold into our new garden later: skinny sunflowers, lamb’s ear, four mounded squash, leaves fat and green.

I rock back and forth in the swing now. You are pushing the wheel barrow across mulch paths. Tall and muscley, you heave the left-overs to the back corner of our yard by the fence. I peer over the pages of my book to watch you plant the weeds into compost, where they’ll grow quietly anyway. You cross my path once more, stride long and purposeful: you are taller now, and my eyes follow you as you walk away: you grow! The ghosts begin to prance nervously from their posts, eyes downcast from your gleaming face in the sun. You dwarf them all, but still you never ask them to leave. Large and larger you bloom, now towering over the tall leafy perimeters of our yard, encompassing everything green, soil, sun and sky: long feet, broad shoulders, hat as wide as a garden gate, sun-touched hair curling in a sea around you, blonde florets against the western sky.

Abundance -by Erin Brigid

2008-07-20T22:17:00.007-05:00

The other evening, Kristin and I sat on the backyard glider, cups of coffee in hand, the beverage warming us from the inside, while the sticky July air hung on our bare shoulders and legs. In the elm tree above us, a katydid clicked to his distant counterparts, and a slight breeze (very slight) riffed our hair. We talked about family, relationship, theology (the normal stuff), then quieted while the summer night ascended in a cacophony of sound. I looked at our sleeping garden, the leaves of Swiss chard, now giant and shadowed, the squash ever growing, eggplants hanging heavy and shining in the darkness. Any weeds happily merged with the ghostly verdance that surrounded us, and I suddenly was filled with a sense of abundance and wealth. This was due, of course, to the food and beauty steadily dwelling around us, but as I smiled at my sister, I knew riches to run far deeper.

Here are a few pictures of a family outing to the Rocky Fork State Park, where Mom and Dad were married.

Here they are, saying their wedding vows, the souls of their unborn children hovering above them.

The first time Mom and Dad came here to check out the chapel, they found the trail gaited and locked. Mom promptly hopped the fence and Dad was impressed by her gutsiness.

Rig-Raise-Rejoice (part two) -by Erin Brigid

2008-07-04T20:52:00.003-05:00

We were so proud of our spontaneous engineering and innovative use of the resources on hand...

...until we realized that the passenger door was wedged shut.

She's a stubborn one, though...

It's a tight squeeze.

And it's a girl!

We were a little worried that we wouldn't be able to create a smooth bend in rebar as thick as our index fingers. But the first piece went up without a hitch.

And the second...

By this time, the work began eliciting some cuss words. Kristin stood back to pass her judgment.

Aside from one lopsided arc, we were pretty pleased with the finished product. --Two hours, from the time Kristin said "OK" to the conclusion.

Capture-Tame-Transport (part one) -by Erin Brigid

2008-07-04T20:20:00.007-05:00

I've had the yen for some time now, to erect a rusty dome in our yard. A rebar trellis, if you will, for vining vegetables (cucumbers, beans, squash). Most of my visions remain just that: unrealized ideas that sit with rusty appeal in the corner of my imagination. I talk a lot though, and luckily Kristin caught my verbal train the other morning, handed me the keys, and soon we were rolling to the local hardware store.

After securing our four pieces of rebar, we realized our problem: twenty feet of rusty steel to fit in our 12 foot-long minivan.

Our full house -by Erin Brigid

2008-06-28T18:47:00.003-05:00

Our house always seems to be full –full of people, chaos, quirks, or all of the above. Today, Mom’s parents are visiting –Granny and Papaw, up from Ohio to celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary, here on the Tuttle farm. A UPS truck delivered another box from Dadant Bros. bee and wax supply (who, interestingly enough, make Paschal candles their main business), and now the house is filled with pounding and laughter as Mom, Dad, and Granny assemble the second deep-body hive (to sit atop the first and give the bees more room to expand their numbers) and honey super (from which we will extract the honey).
“Thelma, you can really wield a hammer,” my dad tells his mother-in-law. “Harold taught you well.” Granny snorts.
“Harold didn’t teach me nothin’.”
“What was that, honey?” Papaw looks up from his copy of TIME.
“I said that I knew how to swing a hammer long before I met you.” A few snide remarks fly around before the hammers drown them out, and Dad, who was purposely trying to get a rise out of the Throckmorton women, raises his eyebrows and grins at me across the table.
Kristin comes down the stairs, followed by Kaylie and Makenzi, the two little girls for whom she nannies. The girls, beautifully browned by sun and dressed for summer, plop down on the couch next to me and say that they’ve decided that yellow warheads are the sourest. Shea is somehow sleeping through all the pounding, and I’m pondering the possibility of putting in some more tomatoes and winter squash. If I do it today, we might have a few more vegetables in winter storage.
People are always offering me their house when they go out of town, thinking that I must long for some quiet –and sometimes I really do. But mostly, I love this crazy nest and all the people, plants, and animals that fill it. Thing is, we all like each other a lot (most of the time), and learn from each other (hopefully for the best), and the way I see it, we are living in a way that is fundamentally counter-cultural. Our society puts a lot of pressure on kids to move out of their parents’ house as soon as they finish with school or get an “adult” job. Our family, by an array of circumstances both common and strange, still finds itself under the same roof every summer, and when we do the house erupts with stories, laughter, sometimes yelling… A quilt, half-finished on the dining room table, Shea bent over the cloth, stitching her care and cussing simultaneously. Mom and our neighbor, Betty chatting in the kitchen over coffee, Dad planning the evening menu and subsequent game night, Kristin reading Harry Potter for the seventh time, and me eternally tracking dirt and straw through the kitchen. I don’t have to love every minute of it, but to have this creative motion of life and love lining our walls, bursting through the soil, and flooding the streets reminds me that I have been shaped and sustained by it…and, well, I feel pretty rich.

Buzzzzzzzzz... -by P

2008-06-06T20:45:00.004-05:00

On May 29th we installed the bees: It was more stressful than I'd imagined. We all gathered after dinner, wearing our lightest clothing- Mom donned her bee-keeper's hat and pollen-colored gloves- and tromped through the backyard, stepping over log and errant hoe to crowd around the Bee Balm and Phlox among which Erin has surrendered a 2 x 2 plot to the latest members of our family: 11.000 Russian bees.

There we laid the bottom board and hung the first five frames of the hive. Gingerly, Mom transported the bees themselves from the deck to the yard in a wooden crate- the same one that appeared on our stoop the previous day buzzing sinisterly- or sweetly, depending on who you ask. It started to rain and three of us switched our cameras to night vision, flashing like the paparazzi and the hens- especially Jayber and Smokey- started chirruping their protests to the ever-darkening sky. Mom bravely pried loose the top of the crate to the sound of applause and advice and three clicking cameras, four sleepy hens and Shea, reading as loud as she could from Bee-Keeping for Dummies, straining to be heard above it all.

It was sort of dramatic: Mom like a surgeon, calling, "Get me the hammer!" and Dad or I darting into the house to retrieve it as quick as possible. At least for me it was a welcome escape from the corner of the garden becoming more and more infested with bees; 20 or 30 of the 11, 000, but even so.

Mom had to shake the crate several times: "jar" is the technical term, I believe: first to move the bees to the bottom of the crate, then to transfer from from the crate to the wooden belly of the hive itself. We literally shook them off, like transferring cream-of-anything soup from can to pan, but much, much more alive. At this point the queen- packaged separately of course- came tumbling out to everyone's surprise. We tried to attach the suggested nails to the package but it broke and the queen buzzed royally free for one terrifying moment before mom clapped the tiny box shut around her again with an expletive and rushed her bodily back to the hive, dumping her in with the others with a prayer that they wouldn't kill or destroy their newly initiated queen.

We all jumped after Mom's every move like attendants after the Queen, tripping over chicken tractors and garden rakes and almost falling face-first into the Daylilies and onions edging the northwest corner of the yard.

Next came the lid, a- believe it or not- clump of grass to plug the hole (kentucky bluegrass'll do the trick) the top cover and with a massive collective sigh of relief, we were done. It was nerve-wracking and felt a little hodge-podge, but in the end no one was stung.

Dad and I rounded up the birds and secured them in the coop for the night while Shea and Erin stooped to untape Mom's khaki pants from her socks and gather bee-keeping tools and rush the books in out of the drizzling rain. As a final step we found an Orthodox prayer for the salvation of the Russians, which seemed appropriate.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on them, the little sinners,

and

God save the Queen!