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!