Dionysus vs. Apollo in the Urban Homestead

Right before imbibing champagne to toast the coming of a new year seems like a good time to reflect on the various veins of viticulture (to be vetted?) for the home garden, particularly for the home garden which includes grapes...

And when you think of wine, surely you think of  "the wine dude," as Nico di Angelo would call him
(see:  The Titan's Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 3) ).

However, as with most things in life, there is a balance to be struck.

And the balancing act is ancient enough to be thought of as a choice between Dionysus and Apollo.

Dionysus was always thought of in ancient Greece as "The Easterner".  Sure, he was Greek and all, but he was "foreign" Greek, not "one of us".  Not being Greek ourselves, we're not sure we can say "one of us" in that way, but you know what we mean.

Dionysus represented wildness, sensuality, abandon, and drunken stupor.  "The Wine Dude", indeed.

Apollo, however, was also (if we are to be frank) a drunkard.  It's just that the contrast was so stark -- Apollonian wine consumption was poetic, not frenetic.  The sensuality, nay, sexuality, of Apollo was a controlled sort of abandon.  With Dionysus, hey, it's not a good time unless it gives you a hangover.  And that's not just about the wine, either.

What does this have to do with gardening?

A lot, as it turns out.  This is because gardens are really a microcosm of everything else that goes on in one's life.  Your garden is an extension of yourself, and as such, it represents your values and your ethos.  A "wildscape" is obviously Dionysian.  It's also ugly as all get-out, and irritates your neighbors, and is associated with bugs and diseases "daecent people" never need to get shots for.  Ahem.

On the other hand, constrained garden plots with perfect geometric shapes, and perfectly coordinated colors and textures are the equivalent of courting one's fair beloved with a checklist in one hand and a stopwatch in the other.

So... what would balance be?  Iconic stadium rockers Rush sang about it on their album Hemispheres; "Heart and mind together".

In the garden, particularly respecting viticulture in the state of Texas, that would require the orderly planting of wild Mustang grapes.  If you go with any of the established varieties of  "wine" grape, you have given in to convention, and are not really striving for balance.  Instead, you are striving for social status, because let's face it, the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $50 bottle of wine is too subtle for you to really taste anyway, unless you are some kind of savant.

And that's what we've done (planted mustangs, not become savants...).  We've got them trellised on the back porch (a nod to Apollo), growing wild on the fence between us and the rent house to our West (a nod to Dionysus), and we are attempting to grow them under the shade trees on a new fence between the front yard and the fish pond (a balance between the two).

Of course, we also plan on irritating not just the classical scholars who will read this analysis and think "What do these semi-literate barbarians think they are doing to my beloved Greek mythology?!?", but also the viticulturalists, who cringe at scuppernong wine, let alone something as primitive as mustang grape wine.  And to make matters worse, we intend (yes, we're planning this!) to mix in heavy doses of other fruits, including (but not limited to) plums, blackberries, strawberries, melons, and even pomegranates.

We might as well be brewing up a batch of Dionysus' favorite 21st century swill, MD 20/20.

Or maybe not.  Mad Dog is not the preferred beverage of Jane Austen fans, after all.

Happy New Year!

And happy farming!

Cold Enough For Ya?

Bombarella and Dot, our two youngest hens, are molting.  They are doing so roughly six months later than the experts said they would, and we suspect it is because they are pampered and spoiled, and living the high-in-B-complex-heavy-bug-and-greens-diet sweet life.

The experts suggest if we put a lamp in the coop to simulate longer days (like the coming of Spring), the molt will be shorter.

We say poppycock.  Or should that be, we say "Poppycock!"

Either way, the birds are acting like it's Winter because, well, it's Winter!

The trees know it is wintertime, too.  We've had to choose which trees to plant here very carefully because of winter conditions, and there are some we'd like to plant that we just can't find sufficient information about.

(Please note:  none of the following pictures are from Myrtle's place.  It's WINTER for cryin' out loud!  Myrtle's place currently looks like the "after" picture from The Day After!)

We have planted Methley Plums, which do quite well in most of Texas.  You want to be careful if you live anywhere that gets below 20° fahrenheit because you'll be approaching survivability limits, let alone chilling requirements.

Speaking of chilling requirements, technically that refers to the number of hours of chilling (between 32° and 45°) required for a particular plant to fruit.  Ask your local nurseryperson for information about any particular plant -- there are a lot of different numbers that get thrown around for the same plants, and Myrtle is no expert. 

The best map we have seen shows our particular little slice of heaven being anywhere from 600 to 800 hours of chilling each November through April.  That isn't a lot compared to most of the United States, so there are certain plants we aren't brave enough to try -- apples, for example.  There are some varieties of apple which do well enough in Texas, but we don't think the subpar quality makes up for the ecological benefit of local production.

Pecans, on the other hand, are the quintessential Texas tree.  There are numerous varieties, none of which have excessive cooling requirements for any grower north of about San Antonio or so, and most of which will do well practically anywhere in the state.  Again, ask your local nurseryperson, because there are some area-specific soil, pest and water related questions for each variety.  Strangely, the zones in Texas are broken up by "East-West" considerations, due to alkilinity and moisture; the Hill Country and westward are more basic; our side of I-35 is more acidic.  We get more rain; they get more dust storms.  We have a Choctaw in our backyard, which is actually a variety that does well in both zones; we're toying with the idea of planting a Podsednik this year; it's a "novelty tree" according to Neal Sperry; it produces utterly gi-normous nuts.  And it does well in the East, so there.

As we may have mentioned before, we're planting pomegranates this year.  There are two varieties which do well in Texas -- Sweet, and Wonderful. 

We were especially excited to see pomegranates on sale at H.E.B. this last week -- at $3.59 per fruit.  This is definitely going to be one of our signature crops when we get them into production.

The great thing about the pomegranate tree, apart from its beauty and its delicious fruit, is the fact that it can grow vibrantly in any of the same conditions as the cursed yaupon we have spent so many hours clearing from our land.  Sun, partial shade, high pH, low pH, sandy, clay, whatever.

Clearly, this is the plant for us.

And it has low chilling requirements.  When you think about where it is really popular... from Italy and Greece, through Turkey all the way to the Iranian/Afghanistan border, where it starts to be too cold for the tree... this is a warmish, dryish climate plant.  And unlike other dryish climate plants, it will tolerate a little soaking from time-to-time, which description fits the Brazos Valley to a 'T'.

We also mentioned that we will be planting arbequina olive trees.  These hardy plants are basically tall bushes, growing to about 10-12' tall, and producing copious quantities of fruit.  They have very specific chilling requirements, and cannot get below 20°, but must occasionally get below 32°... there are several olive groves in Texas, and we suspect that Texas olive oil will become more popular than Texas wines in the near future. 

Actually, between what we've read about wines, olive oils, and pomegranates, we would not be surprised if Texas earns some weird new monicker as the "Neo-Mediterraneo" or some such nonsense.  Only, it's not nonsense. 

We're like Sicily, only with Aggies.  Granted, the Sicilians would not put up with the Aggies, but what are you gonna do?  Don Corleone is nowhere to be found.  And Duck only scares off roosters and raccoons.

Finally, the fig.  We've planted two fig trees, both Texas Everbearing. If the variety is thus named, you can safely assume it is a variety that does well in Texas.  And you'd be right, provided you live in the southern 2/3rds of the state.  From Dallas on up to the barbarian territory of Oklahoma, you're getting into the frozen wastelands as far as figs are concerned.  Our friends from the Middle East all prefer the "purple" variety, but, in reality, you get a lot of differentiation in fruit based on time of harvest.  Breva figs vs. late-season figs is really as big or bigger a difference as one variety of tree from another.

We recently visited the Sam Houston Museum in Huntsville, and while there was an awful lot of information available on that tour, the thing we keep talking about is how impressive the fig trees out on the homestead are.  Two little trees can produce a whole lotta Newtons.  Good stuff.

A lot of our information (particularly that referenced in this post) comes from notes -- copious quantities of notes -- taken from conversations with our friends at Producer's Co-op.  A lot of other information comes from the Texas gardeners' bible -- "Neal Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening". 

Our one big complaint with Neal -- and it is not unique to him, so please don't take it the wrong way -- is that he completely ignores the subject of avocados.  We are still doing a lot of research on this most wonderous of foods.  If we can find the perfect variety, we must, must, must plant avocados.  Man cannot live by chips and salsa alone.  Frequently, there must be guacamole.

Happy farming!

Happy Christmas Eve- Eve-Eve!

Myrtle has asked that we not post pictures of Bombarella for a while.  She's molting, which means she looks like a hedgehog with wings at the moment.

Instead, she has asked that we post her Christmas wish list.  Since she has only been a moderately naughty chicken, we will oblige, particularly since you may wish to purchase the following items for a worthy chicken near you (Note:  management of Myrtle's does NOT need any such gifts; we post this list merely as a service to others):

From the author of "The Poisonwood Bible".  This tome is no less inspiring, but unlike TPB, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" doesn't give Myrtle the creeps.

It actually reads a little like Fannie Flagg's "Whistle-Stop Cafe", only it's less plot-oriented and more New York Times-y.  Of course, Myrtle and the girls think the Times is a terrible paper.  "I can't taste anything for a half-an-hour after I eat the Times." 

So take her opinion with a grain of salt.



We suggest getting a used copy.  Or better still, find a library that is about to be torn down and replaced by a McDonald's, and buy their copy at firesale prices.

Thoreau himself, of course, actually borrowed a lot of money from Emerson to keep going.  And Emerson was a famous preacher whose most famous sermon was essentially his two-weeks notice that he was quitting the profession.  So you may want to save this book for retirement.  Either that, or give it as a gift to your over-ambitious neighbors.  That'll teach 'em!




Alfred North Whitehead's best student, and best editor.  A review of 4,500 years of theology.  Unfortunately, it's not accessible for chickens -- this book always puts Myrtle to sleep by the end of the explanation of the definition of "panentheism".

Don't ask.  We might answer you.  Anyway, this is a brilliant review of the literature; we're not sure which is more insightful, the pieces written by the philosophers, or the brief introductory paragraphs explaining what some of these philosophers' theologies were. 

Myrtle, of course, is an eggsistentialist. 



Myrtle will never actually have children, but if she did, she would want to name her first cockrell "Caleb Garth".  And if only more preachers were like Rev. Fairbrother, it would be a better world.

We should warn you, though.   You can plant an orchard and watch it grow to first harvest in the time it takes to read the first 30 pages of this book.  It eventually picks up, but that is some of the driest introductory material in the English language.  Thank goodness we had to read it, though, because the rest of the book is the single greatest character study in the English language.  And that includes the "Myrtle is a big Woozle" sign Smokey Lonesome hung on Myrtle last week.


Merry Christmas, everyone!

And Happy Farming!

Things to Do at Myrtle's while the Grass is Dead

Okay, it's a bad joke, but as you'll notice now that we are updating "Myrtle Tells it Like it is" on a more regular basis, we are not averse to bad jokes. I suppose it's an obscure movie, and "at Myrtle's while the Grass is Dead" is a bit of a stretch from "in Denver When You are Dead", but on the other hand, it's a title, and we needed one, so there.

One down, one to go:

We finally finished putting in one of the raised beds for the olive trees. As you can see, all the planters are now empty of living, growing, producing fruits and veggies.

The olive bed is that long brown box in back.  It's big enough for 6 arbequina olive trees, each of which will, when mature, be about 12 feet tall, which puts them a little taller than the trellis structure you can see just at the right side of this picture.

We're putting another planter of the same size behind this one (you can see a dirt pile where it will start).  We had initially decided on 10 trees, so the planters would have been roughly five feet shorter each, but it just didn't sound right.  Never having done this before, we do not know how many olives you can expect from such a small planting, but 10 just didn't sound right.  We'd get olives for eating, but probably never enough to press even one container of oil.  12 is still not a large number, but it sounds more reasonable when attached to the word "grove", so we're going with it.

Plus, the space between the rows will make, and this is the correct phraseology for this claim, an awesome picnic spot, so that's where we are building one of our tables.

Christmas is fast approaching, and, of course, we have had our indoor tree up since November 1st, because nothing says "Dia de los Muertos" like a Christmas tree.  Anyway, our indoor tree is a fake.  (Shock! Horror!)  We generally object to fake anything, but if you can think of some way to keep a cut tree green for two months, please let us know.

Outdoors, meanwhile, we've got the "self-decorating" Christmas tree in abundance.  Most of the world calls it "holly".  Here in Texas, it's "yaupon holly" for the literal minded, or just "yaupon" for the sensibly concise.  We suppose you could call it ilex vomitoria if you wanted to be a smarty-pants-know-it-all.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Anyway, it looks awfully pretty in pictures like this one.... and it shows its vibrant red berries from late October through early March, making it very desirable, to some people... but not to us here at Myrtle's.  We've kept some of it (like that pictured here) because it makes the wild birds extremely happy.  However, before we cut down all that intrusive yaupon, those boxes you saw in the first picture could not have been seen.  Why?  Because before we cut it all down... the whole yard looked like this:

So, given how exceedingly difficult it was to clear out all the yaupon "weeds" which were choking out every square inch of what is now perfectly arable land, please forgive us for the fact that it's now all "dead", waiting for spring planting.

Sure, we could have onions and garlic growing right now, but we prefer to concentrate on longer term plans during the winter months -- olives and pomegranates will be "doing the work for us" when most veggies can't grow, so we want them planted as soon as can be.  Same thing goes for the herb garden in the front yard -- rosemary, thyme, icicle curry, oregano, these plants are working for us even when we are not working for them.  We'll throw the prickly pear in there, too, for good measure -- we got that from our friend Jack.  I wonder if anybody else thinks of him as "Cactus Jack"?

Happy farming!

Truth or Consequences

Christmas time is fast approaching, and we'll hear a lot of feel-good "True spirit of Christmas" stories, in addition to hearing "The Gift" played over and over on more FM radio stations than we knew existed (really, wouldn't "Blue Christmas" be a better song to overplay?), but how many people really mean it when they say "It's not about getting gifts"?



I'm pretty sure most people's benevolence is a lot like that of the cat in this video -- purely a matter of convenience, and liable to end with a sudden swipe at the "others" with whom we share our time and space. We wish that it were not so, and yet every religion worthy of the name has felt it necessary to express an injunction against unkindness, and to promote that wild and crazy idea that we ought to all treat each other with dignity and respect.

Gautama Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Jesus, Lao Tse, all have expressed variations of the Golden Rule. Even Myrtle thinks Christmas should be more than just a commercial opportunity.

But hey, who are we to judge? We let our lead hen Duck wake everybody up at 5:00 in the morning with her ridiculous crowing.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

And happy farming!

Distill or not Distill, That is the Question

And thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.   --Ezekiel 32:2

We wouldn't have brought it up, of course, if the answer was "Not distill".  But we have a history of taking a strong opinion on subjects where science has been woefully silent.  Best compost practices are our favorite example.

Distilled water is another.  There are all sorts of pseudo-scientific claims about "potential death" from drinking distilled water, much of it (like the linked article) based on fanciful thought experiments which, even if they were true, would be easily mitigated by simple precautions.  Take the "acidity" claim, for example.  Distilled water supposedly acidifies with contact with the air.  Okay, if that's true... then maybe I should keep my distilled water in a glass container?  Hmmm?  Anybody think of that?

The real problem, of course, is that nobody has studied it.

We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of medical professionals saying there are "trace elements in tap water that you need in order to be healthy."  Really?  Which ones?  Why aren't they in my food or air?  What's so special about tap water?

On the other hand, the very "acidity" claim linked above is based on one of the most fundamental characteristics of distilled water that make it so beneficial -- stuff breaks down easier in distilled water.  Do you have any idea how much extraneous crap gets into your body?  From "trace elements" in tap water, to heavy metals poisoning, even when regulations exist, it doesn't help.

So what are we supposed to do?  Sit passively and just accept?

No.  That's not the Myrtle way.

We don't have any studies to back us; as indicated, nobody is taking the question seriously enough to do good science on it.  All we have is anecdotal evidence:

• For 10 years, we were unable to get pregnant.  Six months after starting to distill our own water at home, and one month after giving up, we conceived our son.
• Both of us have been very overweight in spite of eating well and exercising.  A year and a half after starting to distill our own water at home, and making very few other changes, we have both lost considerable amounts of body fat.
• For 20 years, we have been fighting allergies; some of that time medicated, some of that time, not.  A year and a half after starting to distill our own water at home, we don't seem to have as many allergy related problems (though, to be far, pulling up the carpet the minute we moved into our new home certainly helped as well).
• The salt crystals formed at the bottom of each container we distill are significant; frequently, for 2 1/2 gallons, we get two tablespoonfuls of "trace elements".  How much is chlorine?  How much is "other"?  We don't know; we just know it makes a good replacement for Ajax.
  

How much of that is quantifiably related to drinking water?  Your guess is as good as ours.  Commercially distilling water and storing it in glass (not plastic!) is prohibitively costly, so no company is going to do it.  There is simply no profit motive in studying the proper preparation and storage of drinking water, so expecting our profit-oriented system of university research to come up with good data on this (and many other) essential health question is just whistling dixie.

You want real health-care reform?  Start thinking about these kinds of questions, and taking matters into your own hands.

Happy farming!

Fallow Time, or "How I learned to worry about all that other stuff..."

We chopped up and churned in the last of the tomato and pepper plants today.  It was a bittersweet moment, as it is every year.  I think we overestimated our ability to garden while under the influence of colic, but I'd still call it a fairly successful fall crop.  We certainly got more than enough jalapeños for our wintertime salsa needs, and at our house, that's a significant step.

In fact, we joked over dinner a few months ago that if a Pompeii style event snuffed out our familial candle in an eye-blink, what future archaeologists would gather from an inspection of our home would be this:  these people really loved chips and salsa.

Anyway, with the interment of the final veggies, and the pulling up of the basil (our primary annual herb), our garden now just looks like a yard with some boxes and some lumpy patches.  You wouldn't know we actually produce stuff back there.

Next year, knock on wood, we will at least have grape vines draped all over the trellis (that's that wooden structure you see right outside our back windows, in front of the chicken coop).  Granted, muscadine grapes are a deciduous vine, meaning each winter, it will look like we've put a bunch of kindling on a trellis.  Lord only knows what the Aggie bonfire lunatics will make of that.

You may notice some dirt-piles in the foreground of this picture, as well.  That's the start of our raised olive tree beds.  We've kinda gotten behind schedule on that project; hopefully, we'll be done by Christmas, so we can plant at the beginning of January.

You may also notice that our tallest oak is getting ready to shed.  We haven't raked our own leaves yet (we leave that for last, although we can't remember why), but we are getting a steady trickle of bags of leaves from well wishers.  Thanks y'all!

I should probably point out at this time that someone gave us a bag of leaves with a stuffed animal in it.  Looks like a squirrel or chipmunk.  Is that Mr. Darcy's?  If so, do y'all want it back?

Finally, it's an ill wind as blows no one any good.  We gave away as much basil as we could, and we put cuttings of the african basil in water (Love that stuff!  Beautiful purple flowers, and the aroma is milder, not so anisette, a little more piquant), and then, when we couldn't think of what else to do, we gave the rest to the birds.  They seemed grateful.

That just leaves.... all those projects!  The pond, the leaves needing raking, the blackberries needing mulching, the olives and pomegranates needing planting, the roof on the chicken coop needing replacing, the gutters on the roof needing installing, the benches and seating areas needing building, the brick oven / open pit needing constructing... all while moving from colic to frantic watching-of-the-crazy-toddler-who-is-getting-into-WHAT-now?! 

Looks like 2010 is going to be every bit as interesting at Myrtle's place as 2009 was.

Happy farming!

Why the Virtues are 'Cardinal' and not 'Chicken'...

We have four cardinal virtues in our home:

1. Hard Work
2. Kindness
3. Moral Courage
4. Bounceback

Our children get rewarded (well, okay, our eldest gets rewarded... our 6 month old gets spitty, but that's another story) for demonstrating any of these virtues in an exceptional way.  Going above and beyond on a school assignment, for example, or going out of her way to assist an elderly person, or being kind to a younger child at a social gathering.

These are all examples of the basic virtues we aspire to teach.

It's a lucky thing we're not trying to teach the chickens.  They are some nasty pieces of work when they want to be, let us tell you.

We love our birds, don't get us wrong.  And they do exhibit some virtues.  It's just that, when push comes to shove, they'll be doing the pushing and the shoving.

There's a reason it's called a "pecking order".  The chicken who can peck the hardest (in our case, it's a hefty girl named "Duck") gets to eat first, gets to drink first, gets to crow (did we mention "Whistling girls and crowing hens don't never come to no good ends"?), and is generally known as "She who must be obeyed".

On the other hand, we do notice some interesting interplay amongst our feathered friends.  Over a year ago now, during Hurricane Whichever It Was (you lose track after a while...), we had a sick chicken.  We ended up, on the advice of an elderly Iraqi friend (again, another long story) putting her out of her misery.  That story reads like a scene from Macbeth, and when we are up to it, we'll animate a recreation for you.  Anyway, the point is, one of our sweeter hens, Myrtle, actually, sat apart from the rest of the flock to be with her ailing sister.  That was moral courage, and we respect her for it.

She managed to win back her place in the middle of the flock afterwards, too, in spite of lots of heckling and pecking.  That showed bounceback, the one virtue you can never lose.

Don't judge anyone who hasn't been knocked off their perch, we say.  Judge them by how persistently they flap to get back up.

We like Duck's big eggs.  But we love Myrtle.  There's a lesson in there, we think.

Happy farming!

Walking in a Winter Myrtleland

We don't have a name yet for the catfish pond.  That's probably a good thing, since it won't be fish-friendly for another 18 months or so. 

This is what it looks like now -- all full of leaves.  We don't really have a distinct winter... more like summer and "less summer".    Nevertheless, we have to wait for summer to dredge and widen the pond.

And we've got to either figure out how to build our own windmill, or else find one really cheaply somewhere.  (More over the break...)

Big Shafizzle, Not Even Any Drizzle...

No snow.

Sigh.

Myrtle and the ladies are snug in their beds, however.  We put up the most hideous looking green tarp on two sides of the coop and a couple of sheets on the other two sides; it's not completely airtight, and it's not the best insulation in the world, but it will at least keep them above freezing tonight.

It also helps that they are living on top of compost tea.

We keep bringing up compost, don't we?  That's because it's the miracle cure-all for your urban chicken troubles.  The coop is fully 15 degrees warmer than the outside air.  Why?  Because of all the rotting leaves, that's why.

We would imagine that ancestral chickens, like the Red Jungle Fowl pictured here, were plenty warm in winter, and cool in summer.  Life under the trees is what a chicken craves, and we aim to make Myrtle and the girls as happy as we can in that regard -- without exposing them to the neighborhood hawks or raccoons, naturally.

So, we only got a few flakes, when Houston got pounded.  Big whoop.  We've still got happy chicens with beautiful red flappies.

Happy farming!

Snowmatoes and Peppers

It's beginning to be a tradition.  A mad dash after work to pick all the tomatoes and peppers still on the vine the night before our first freeze... and for the last two years, that first freeze has been a doozy.

Snow.  In College Station, Texas.  Weird, weirder, weirdest.

We'll probably pull up all our basil plants in the morning and feed them to the chickens; there's really only so much pesto one family needs, and I'm pretty sure it's all gone to seed enough that we won't need to buy new plants next spring.

We're going to emphasize perennials from now on, too.  Rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender, the standards.  Make it nice and green for December-January-February, when traditionally we look like the Dakota Badlands around here.

Next year, I'd like to give y'all a budding-to-blooming-to-bronzing look at our oak trees, too.  We went from green last week to bronzish-orangish-brown over the weekend, to bare tonight.  Given that we're talking about a variety of truly towering trees, I've simply got to find some way to share it with you.  It's quite a show.

I'll try to give you some pictures of the snow-bound coop tomorrow; assuming the forecast is correct, of course.

Again, just weird.

Happy farming!

Useful Things We Never Learned in School

No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.  You'd think a lot of husbands would need to know that sort of thing; Tiger Woods would certainly have been better off staying home and helping around the house.

There are all sorts of other things not taught at Stanford, nor at any other college of which I am aware.  How to barter is at the top of that list.

We had a friend ask us today if she could buy some of our eggs.  We, of course, told her no, but she could trade us something for them.  "Why don't you sell them?" she asked.  Our answer?  "Because then someone we don't like, or who (more importantly) doesn't really appreciate our chickens might get our eggs."

Production was a very personal thing for most of human history.  In hunter-gatherer societies, you knew intimately everyone involved in the collection and preparation of every bite you took.  You also knew who made your shelter, who raised your kids, and who had your back when you were surrounded by sabertoothed tigers.

Somewhere along the way, civilization has devolved into worse than just a symbolic economy -- we don't really have a problem with using money instead of trading things, but we do find it emblematic of a larger kind of disconnect.  When most people spend just a few hours a day with their own children, when they have no idea how many days ago the eggs on their plate were deposited from a chicken's woozle to the impersonal mechanical egg collector, when they can't remember the last time they picked their own fruit, when they've never ground their own flour... there's something wrong.

So, we barter.  Our friend from today is going to help out with our painting projects this spring.  From another source, we traded for lumber this week.  Some of our friends leave us leaves (Some even anonymously!  Thanks, whoever you were!)  Some give us greens for the chickens.  We're always angling for some of Hugh and Linda's produce (and especially blackberry cobbler!)

The human element is missing from our economy; it won't be brought back by anything other than human beings talking to each other, and reconnecting to our economic origins.  We may not be able to get away from the almighty dollar at every turn, but know this:  if you want to 'shop' at Myrtle's place, your most valuable currency is your good will.

Happy farming!

Use What You've Got, When You've Got It

We plan on buying an electric car at some point.  That preface is necessary, because what I am about to share with you sounds like exactly the sort of nutty, hare-brained-scheme we usually run with, only this time, we're not going to, so I want to make absolutely sure everybody is on the right page before I begin.

You can run a car on chicken poop.

Just a sample:

Harold Bate, chicken farmer and inventor from Devonshire, England says that you can power your motor vehicles with droppings from chickens, pigs or any other animal of your choice... even with your own waste! To prove his statement is no idle boast, Harold has been operating a 1953 Hillman and a five-ton truck on methane gas generated by decomposing pig and chicken manure for years.

 We were looking for some kind of guidance on the science of composting with chicken waste, and we stumbled across this article on Bate's Methane Car.  Which is interesting, I suppose, but is kind of out of the line of what we were hoping to find.

See, every time we mention casually that we deep bed our chickens, and we let their poop mingle with the 2-3 feet deep leaf mixture until the compost tea matures, and we then apply that to our garden beds, we get the same nonsense response from people who think they are being helpful:  "Oh, you can't apply that directly.  It'll burn your plants!"

Yeah.

Because they've tried that very thing so often before, and that's what happened...

Sadly, however, the science of compost is very arcane, and closely held in academic circles.  For practical advice, you'll get "experts" saying useful things like "Put in a lot of organic material".  Really?  Because we had been thinking of trying to compost a bunch of 2 liter plastic coke bottles.  So you're saying leaves and stuff would work better?

The advice we were seeking had to do with:

• What types of leaves work best
• Which specific materials are best suited to adjusting pH levels up or down
• Which specific materials release which specific nutrients, and at what rate, when allowed to rot for certain amounts of time
• Which specific materials work best with each other (Is chicken poop and oak leaf a good combination?  Or should we emphasize pine needles?)

And so on.

We know from experience and from anecdotal evidence that we should use pine needles to mulch our blackberries; the moisture retention properties are just right, and the pine needles tend to acidify the soil to just about the exact level necessary.

Unfortunately, the best available advice and evidence is all anecdotal.  Until we find a good recipe book for compost for the large-scale gardener/small-scale farmer, we'll just keep using old-wives tales, and running across the occasional article about ideas even zanier than our own.

Happy farming!

Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens Don't Never Come to No Good Ends

 "Whistling girls and crowing hens don't never come to no good ends."

That's how we learned it, but apparently, there are several variations on this rhyme:

• A crooning cow, a crowing Hen and a whistling Maid boded never luck to a House. The two first are reckoned ominous, but the Reflection is on the third.[1721 J. Kelly Scottish Proverbs 33]
  
• A whistling woman and a crowing hen, Is neither fit for God nor men.
  [1850 Notes & Queries 1st Ser. II. 164]
  
• ‘A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men,’ is a mild English saying.
  [1891 J. L. Kipling Beast & Man ii.]
  
• A whistling woman and a crowing hen will fear the old lad [the Devil] out of his den.
  [1917 J. C. Bridge Cheshire Proverbs 28]
  
• Royal teased her, Whistling girls and crowing hens Always come to some bad ends.
  [1933 L. I. Wilder Farmer Boy xi.]
  
• A whistling woman and a crowing hen, Will bring Old Harry out of his den.
  
  
  [1979 G. Duff Country Wisdom (1983) 55]
  

We don't have any roosters.  We do have a hen who thinks she's a rooster.

This fella pictured to the left lives on a "real" farm, and watches over a bevy of barred rock beauties like some primitive tribal chieftain, or lead singer from an '80s hair band.

Duck (our Alpha hen) bosses around a small group of backyard bitties whose only major decisions each day involve whether to snack on greens first, then get a drink of water, then scratch around in the leaves for bugs, or to do these things in a different order (they usually don't opt for a different order; "Different is bad!" they may be saying.  Chickens are very particular.) 

The one thing they can definitely count on, though, is that they only perform their limited repertoire of tasks at the whim and fancy of Duck.  This even extends to the nighttime decision of who gets to fly up to the roost first.  We were astounded the first time we realized that the evening rustle, always punctuated by some henpecking and fuss, is extended due to the fact that Duck is lining the girls up and telling them who gets to go where, and when.

She also feels the need to announce to the world as each egg is laid.  It's almost as though she's standing there wanting to pass out cigars.  I don't know how to break it to her that her proud brood is soon to be consumed in the form of omelettes and taquitos.

And now, just in the last few weeks (the birds are about 22 months old now), Duck has started to crow.  Every morning, about 30 minutes before sunrise, there is an unmistakable "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" coming from our backyard.  If we didn't know for sure that she is still laying eggs, I would swear she had just been pulling a Jack Lemmon from "Some Like it Hot".  But no, she really is a she; she's just taking on a role.

It's amusing, it's annoying, it's informative.  It makes me wonder what else in the wide world of behavioral evolutionary science we've taken for granted, and made silly assumptions about.

Either way, come on over some time, pull up a chair and a hot cocoa, and watch some chickens with us.  It's really quite a floor show!

Happy farming!

What the Experts Don't Study... They Don't Know...

We love our local feed store.  Producer's Co-op is pretty much our one-stop shop for everything Myrtle related.

However, we had a little disagreement with our favorite fount of information there a few months ago.  He insisted there was no nutritional advantage to feeding our birds the weeds we pulled up from the vegetable garden (and the lawn... but that's another story...), and that if we want our birds to lay for as much as a year before molting, we need to put a light out there in the coop to extend daylight hours throughout the year (particularly in winter).

Most experts agree with our fount of information, and not with us.   Witness a University of Florida paper explaining the severe (to us) limits on egg production in hens, the need for particularly rigid feed control (must document their whole diet!) and the need to extend hours of daylight to maximize egg production for even 65% production after 12 months.

Keep in mind, this article is called "Factors Affecting Production in Backyard Chicken Flocks".

We do none of these things.  Our birds do get  bagged lay pellets manufactured at Producer's, but their diet is heavily supplemented by table scraps, the aforementioned weeds from the garden, and every bug we can catch.

And forget your paltry 65% production at twelve months... after 18 months, we are regularly hitting 95% production (that's 46 to 47 eggs per week, for those playing the home game)!  Seven birds, laying just under four dozen eggs a week, six months after the experts say we should have expected a serious molt.

Clearly, there are other factors involved which have yet to be studied.

This, to me, marks one of the multilateral failings of the alternative foods movement:  big science has no interest in doing any kind of serious study of the microagriculture movement, and small science has no budget to generate any kind of credible study.

You're left with anecdotal evidence.  And we've got plenty of cute anecdotes, let me tell you, but they hardly constitute good science.  We just know our eggs taste better than the grocery store eggs -- yes, even from Brazos Natural Foods.  We also suspect they are healthier for us.  Again, we haven't taken our eggs to a chemist to break down their component nutrient levels... we just "know" what we "know".  Unfortunately, when all the anecdotal evidence suggests that there is something wrong with the evidence accumulated from the factory-farming world.... it seems to us that the state of nutritional science is not much better than a series of wild guesses.

Happy farming!

Micro Aquaculture - Backyard Catfish Farming

So, we got to thinking a while back.... what crazy idea have we not yet actually tried?

Because, hey, this is us we're talking about.  If we haven't tried it yet, we're going to do so soon, right?

Anyway, the answer is... backyard catfish!

We had this discussion a couple of years ago, after clearing the underbrush on the back corner of the lot; frankly, when we bought the house, we had to just accept the realtor's word for the validity of the most recent survey.  See, the yaupon holly had grown so thickly under our 150+ year old oak trees that you literally could not access fully 1/3rd of our property.

And after we had cut most of it to the ground, we obviously had to next begin the laborious process of removing the stumps.... which left some gaping holes in the ground... which then filled with water the next time it rained.  Between that and the size of our water bill the first year we planted corn.... the wheels started turning.  Why not have a pond back here from which to water the vegetables?  And if we're going to have a pond, why not keep fish in the pond?

This crazy idea is actually not so crazy as it sounds.  On a somewhat larger scale, my grandfather did the same thing on his land back in the 1970s.  Of course, his land was several acres on the Llano river between Llano and Castell, and if you've never heard of those places, you aren't alone.  It's not exactly urban, like our little plot of land is.  But just because we're in the middle of the city doesn't make our pond any less fish-friendly.

So, like all other great ideas, it started with a bit of laziness and a bit of imagination.  Throw in a little internet research, and we found that we were not alone.  In fact, there's even handy video footage available for those whose research skills tend to fade to test-pattern levels of attention when faced with wordier "how-to" manuals.

We're not sure we'll be naming the catfish, though.  We may never plan on eating Big Myrtle, but fried fish with hush puppies is bound to become a 4th of July tradition at Myrtle's place.

This is a long-term project, though.  I've got to dig the pond a lot deeper, figure out how to line it cheaply and in an environmentally sensitive way, control mosquitoes, and build a windmill-driven aeration system.

Any ideas would be appreciated.  Drop us a line if you have any suggestions!

Happy farming!

Which Came First, Gallus Domesticus or Gallus Prezygoticos?

We keep running out of egg cartons.  This makes sense -- we give away eggs, but we never buy any.  Ergo, any cartons we have are naturally going to have a very short shelf-life.

This is in keeping with our radical deconstruction of Feng Shui, which requires constantly evaluating the necessity of any item on our property.  Basically, at our house, if you aren't wearing it, typing on it, or using it to actually consume something, it's liable to either be given away or thrown out.

Now... why would I use a phrase like "radical deconstruction of Feng Shui"?  I'll tell you why:  because I want to.  We are completely open to examining our lives from any fresh vantage we can find, but we will not be tied down to any set of rigid principles; the Bagwah is very useful as a starting point, a palette if you will, but not so much as a rule and measure for how to live a simple life.  The only rule and measure for a simple life is "Is it all too much?  Or is it just about right?"

Another idiomatic expression of this idea comes from the Swedish term "lagom".  We are told it doesn't have a really solid English translation, but I think that is not quite right.  "Plenty good" is lagom when it comes to translating "lagom".

So, if you are wanting to start your own little backyard experiment, maybe going beyond your usual tomato plant or two to actually putting in enough crops that you can prepare meals for weeks on the food grown on your own land, or maybe you are going to get into the backyard chicken game, or keep a milk goat, or get into micro-aquaculture.... don't let idioms or preconceived definitions stop you.  Don't get caught up in a chicken or the egg debate. 

Plenty of people will tell you it can't be done.  You don't need that opinion; it's too cheap and easy.  What you need to do is ask yourself  "Why not?"  "What if I tried it MY way for once?"  "Why should I listen to conventional wisdom?"  "Where did I leave my car keys?"  Oh, wait... that last one was a legitimate question.

Happy farming!

Almost Tree Planting Time Here at Myrtle's Place

Come January, we are going to plant olives and pomegranates.

That's right, pomegranates!

We are going to order arbequina olives from Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard, and a mixture of wonderful and sweet pomegranates from Womack Nursery (where we ordered our blackberries, grapes and pecan trees last winter).

Ordinarily, we follow every bit of advice we can get from Neil Sperry, who would say we should buy locally nurseried potted trees, but the selection just ain't great shakes when you are asking for varieties as off-the-beaten-path as olives and pomegranates.  Producer's will occasionally have a few pomegranates, but they are a little pricey, and we trust the root-stock from Womack's.

Why are we talking about a January project in November?  Because... it's also a November project!  We have to get the beds ready.  Beds?  For trees?  Yes, beds.  We are going to plant the olives in two raised containers of six; the biggest problem olives have in East Texas is drainage.  We're planting them on the side of our yard which is a mixture of sand and clay.  Not loam, a mixture of sand and clay.  You want a visual, picture a slab of marble.  Anyway, drainage is our big problem; raised beds is our big solution.

And that means..... chicken-coop-compost!  We're taking all the leaves out of the coop, and putting them in our new raised beds this month.

If you want to contribute to the welfare of the homestead, we need MORE leaves than usual!  More, more, MORE!  So, if you've bagged up leaves and pine needles, the ladies would be happy to have your leftovers.

:)

Happy farming!

On the Naming of Chickens.... (Or, how do you eat someone so cute?)

When I was a kid, I remember meeting Arnold, my grandparents' hog, during summer vacation.

I also remember eating Arnold, my grandparents' breakfast sausage, during Christmas vacation.

For a lot of farm folk, that's just the way of things.  But we're technically not farm folk, as much as we like pretending.  Our little homestead is right in the middle of the city, and we don't have a huge flock of chickens, we have seven.  Eating them is just right out of the question, at least for us.

This is a dilemma all backyard chicken fanatics must face at some point:  are your birds for food or for fun?  While I grant that there can be some of both, this decision is really critical from a cost perspective; veterinarian bills alone could cripple your efforts at sustainability if you have some feathered friends in your backyard instead of some organic working capital.

That having been said, yes, our ladies have names:  Duck, Smokey Lonesome, Big Myrtle, Spectacles, Edna Flapjacks, and from our smaller second flock Dot and Bombarella.  Amelia and Little Myrtle, rest their little souls, fed the local raccoon population before we figured out how to properly secure the coop.

Which brings up a related subject -- depending on your local ordinances, where you put your chickens may have an effect on how you feel about them, and how you feel about eating them.  In College Station, chicken tractors and other portable devices are not allowed in the city limits.  The coop must be at least 100 feet from the nearest domestic building.  This puts them right outside our back door.

After we solved the smell problem (see deep bedding method in Bedtime for Bombarella), we were left with the no less significant problem that the ladies were now close enough to be members of the family.  We had originally intended to eat them, you see, but this is no longer possible.  They lay a lot of eggs (we're averaging 1 a day from each bird, in all seasons and all kinds of weather, including a hurricane), and we eat a lot of eggs, but we just can't eat the chickens themselves.

Oh, we thought we could find a way originally.  College Station does not allow roosters, and had any of them been mis-sexed by the feed lot, we intended to have homegrown fajitas... but they were all hens, and now we're just going to have to live with the consequences.

So, unless you are a hard-hearted sort, you might want to consider your backyard birds to be a source of delicious eggs... and not meat.  Just a thought.

Happy farming!

Bedtime for Bombarella... Best Practices in the Coop

We are constantly amazed at the capacity for human beings to ignore the obvious. 

What's the number one complaint about chicken coops?  Yup.  The smell.  What's the best possible solution?  Daily cleaning?  Bah!  You'd go crazy inside of a week.  Little air freshener thingies like you hang on your rearview mirror?  Puhlease.

No, the best solution is proper bedding.  And by proper bedding, we mean *DEEP* bedding.  There are numerous suggestions out there, including shavings, shredded paper, etc.  However, it astounds us (especially at this time of year) that people don't think of the obvious.

What do you have a lot of (maybe even too much of) every autumn?  That's right - leaves!

We happen to be fortunate in that regard, as we have a mixture of deciduous trees which defoliate at different times of year.  Elm, red oak, shumard oak, chinquapin oak, water oak, post oak, lots of lantana and hibiscus, and various shrublike undergrowth we haven't chopped out yet and don't know what it is, in addition to all our mustang grapes and garden veggies (which also qualify as leaves, doncha know!)

Every winter, we put in a good 2-3 feet of leaves, stomped down, and by spring the ladies have turned it over, pooped it clear through, and generally made of it the best possible compost you could imagine. 

And best of all, there's NO SMELL.  NONE.  Let me repeat -- that chicken coop stench you remember from visiting a factory farm as a kid, and being so repulsed you became a vegetarian for a while (or maybe even forever)?  It's NOT THERE.

So, if you have chickens, and you have trees, you're in business!

Happy farming!

Chickens at the White House

Urban Chickens has a great idea!  There should be chickens at the White House!  It's one thing to garden.  In fact, it's a glorious thing to garden.  It's another thing altogether to get into the business of real sustainability.

In a day and age when most of our food comes to us from over 1000 miles away, and it doesn't even taste like it should to boot, there's really no excuse for not maximizing all our green spaces.  Backyard poultry farming is not just fun, it's sensible.

When the first family got into the business of raising vegetables, we at Myrtle's place thought "Why don't they raise chickens, too?"  We then watched with happiness (and humor) as the District of Columbia decided to join the ranks of the civilized.  We wondered even more, "Why not Presidential chickens?"

And now, even Beliefnet has gotten into the act.  This is appropriate, as backyard chicken raising is as much a spiritual endeavor as it is an environmental one.  Don't believe me?

Then you obviously haven't spent a weekend calming down from your hectic work schedule by watching a bunch of Barred Rock hens chasing bugs, grapes, each other, and various imaginary chicken-foes.... I'm telling you, we've saved thousands of dollars in therapy just by having chickens.

Happy farming!

Recycling? Or hoarding?

We are fascinated by the A&E show 'Hoarders'.  Partly it's because this lifestyle is so antithetical to our own, and partly it's because we have a neighbor who is, herself, a hoarder.

At our house, the rule is, if you aren't wearing it or using it, it's likely to get thrown out.  This presents a few problems:

• We don't believe in sending things unnecessarily to the landfill
• We believe strongly in reusing or recycling whenever possible
• We don't like having trash or things that look like trash lying around
• We like to barter

So, the question becomes 'What to do with this leftover stuff?'  We have odds and ends from various construction projects which are a perfect example.  The area of our house which would be a back porch if we weren't too cheap to actually construct a porch is graded pretty steeply.  We could have built a deck, but that is too costly, too labor intensive, just too much.  However, as an easier approach, we built what for lack of a better word could be called a retaining wall out of scrap lumber bits (none longer than a foot and a half) left over from building rooms for our kids and from the treehouse.  Most of this was donated lumber to start with, so it has now been recycled twice.

We filled in the graded area behind this wall with dirt from the pond dig, and with leaves from our mighty oaks.  Come spring, after we have built a table and chairs (hopefully with recycled lumber), we will mulch the entire area with cedar chips, and voila!  An inexpensive porch made out of old stuff nobody wanted!

To make it even better, it is surrounded by a post-and-wire trellis on which wild grapes are growing; if they do half as well as the wild grapes in our faerie ring area, they should reach the roof next summer.

All of which leads to a request; for those of you living in the Brazos Valley, if you have leftover lumber, leftover cement, leftover bricks, etc., consider a trade:  eggs for your stuff.  Drop us a line and let us know what you have in trade, and we'll see if we can't work out an arrangement to keep your place and Myrtle's place both looking ship-shape.

Happy farming!

Mad City Chickens is now available on DVD!

Backyard chickens are not a new phenomenon, by any stretch of the imagination.  In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lucas makes a particular point of the fact that her connubial bliss is less dependent upon a happy choice of husband, and more dependent upon a full larder, and well tended poultry.

Our own chickens are more important to us than a lot of other material items pop culture tells us we must purchase.

For anyone considering getting into the backyard chicken habit, I highly recommend this movie!

Lots of changes on the way!

We're changing the layout of the blog, which is only appropriate, given that we've changed the layout of the land (and house!) a lot over the course of the last few months.

The pond is a work in progress, but we've fenced it in, and will be planting mustang grapes and raspberries back there.

The privacy fence which turned into another grape fence is now backed up by a *real* fence built by our neighbors who were worried about their dogs getting loose.  Good for them!

We've cleared out a bunch more yaupon holly in the front yard, which has left room for more herbs; we're expanding our use of african basil next year; we've got lavender, curry icicle, sweet basil, thyme, oregano, and three different kinds of rosemary taking off in front, in addition to the grape tomatoes, cayenne peppers, banana peppers, pimiento peppers, and jalapeños.  And that's not even counting the blackberries, the loblolly pine tree, or the honesuckle we've planted up there in the past year!

So... lots of pictures to come.  We've also decided that since we were able to build rooms for our 10 year old daughter and our 6 month old son (converting a 1 bedroom house into a 3 bedroom house in the process!) we can jolly well build a roof for the chicken coop worthy of our prize hens.  Their current roof survived a hurricane, but let's face it, these ladies deserve better!

Soon to be back in action....

Hey, y'all!

A five and a half month layoff due to colic, etc.

We had forgotten how hard all that could be!

Anyway, fall harvest is half over, and we're about to start on some serious new projects, including a new roof for the chicken coop, sturdier footing for the back porch (which is now a grape arbor... pictures to come!) and getting ready to plant our olives and pomegranates.

See you soon!

Only May... and its almost harvest time!

Our corn has gone nuts. Which, I suppose, is a consequence of a) planting it in exceedingly rich compost comprised of rotted leaves and chicken poop, and b) an exceedingly large amount of rainwater. Much of which fell from the sky, but more of which was carried in a bucket by hand from a pond I'm desperately trying to drain.

The plum trees didn't sprout leaves until, oh, a week ago.

The basil is finally showing signs of fertility, which is good, because it was embarrassing to see it struggling for so long. If you can't grow basil in the Brazos Valley, then there's no hope for you. Bryan/College Station is like Sicily with Aggies. Actually, I've met a Piedmontese who would say Aggies are an improvement over Sicily, but as he had lots of other opinions with which I disagreed, I'll end my digression.

Anyway, the Chickens are still somewhat happy, given the new abundance of weeds and greens, but a) they need a fan during the afternoons, and b) we've taken to hosing them down. Them, and their hammocks. And the reed fencing along the sides of their pen. And we put a tarp over their roof to shield them from the sun. They just might get through the summer without broiling. Mmmmm.... broiled chicken.... sorry, another digression.

You may notice the grapes are doing well, also. The intentional ones are Thompson's Seedless, which are not really adapted for our area, but they were cheap so we figured, "Hey, why not?" The unintentional grapes, however, are mustangs. Muscadine, for the non-native Texans in the audience. And they are beautifully, wonderfully, magically, maliciously invasive. Which is good, because we WANT them. They are more acidic than their cultivated cousins, but when we mix them with other fruit (blackberries, strawberries, plums, raspberries, pomegranates...) they should make some pretty good wine. And jellies. And cobblers. And who knows what all else.

Finally, we're giving birth this month. Well, one of us is, anyway. But the point is, it may keep us from posting for a while. We'll try to keep up, but no promises.

Happy farming!

Now we really are GREEN!

Finally! Spring has sprung! Blackberries, corn, herbs, loblolly, figs, pecans, mustang grapes... It's ALL green!










There's actually water in our fish pond, too, but since there's not *SUPPOSED* to be, we won't show you those pictures. Be grateful we can't share the smell, either. Phew! We can't get it aerated fast enough, I promise you!

March Madness... What's this wet stuff?

We're getting greener by the minute! I don't have the intestinal fortitude to stand in the rain and photograph all the corn, tomato, pepper, cucumber, lettuce, radish and watermelon plots... but I can stand on the porch and photograph the herb garden getting soaked and a few odd pictures of the backyard.

Also, the fish pond is only 1/3rd of the way dug... but it's holding water already! I'm going to have to figure out how to drain out about 10 inches of standing water before I can start digging again. Sigh.

Anyway, enjoy the random wet-stuff-falling-from-the-sky pictures!