Thanksgiving in June

We get all kinds of visitors at Myrtle's place, from the curious-but-not-on-board, to the gung-ho and ready-to-roll.  Recently, one of the latter came to see our little project, and she brought her charming father, who brought a wealth of experiences which would interest the most casual of observers.  He graduated from Texas A&M in the early 1940's, and spent three years in World War II fighting in the Far East.  The daughter wanted to talk plants; Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance, however, upon discovering that the father grew up on a farm in West Texas during the Great Depression, would not allow him to speak of anything else; we feared a lack of hospitality on our own part, but more, we feared not getting to hear his fascinating stories.

Among other things, our esteemed visitor discussed all the food his family produced which they could not eat, since they collected eggs and cream for the purpose of trading -- rather than selling -- said produce in exchange for things they couldn't grow themselves.  He smiled when we talked of our own grandparents' fondness for peaches and cream -- getting to keep the cream, after all, would have been a remarkable treat, only reserved for special occasions.  We were, needless to say, all attention.  We were also thankful.  "The Greatest Generation" set an example which our society has lamentably forgotten, of sacrifice, of work-ethic, and of long-term thinking.

These were the thoughts foremost in our minds as we set about our other task for the day, harvesting the grain from our amaranth.  Harvesting amaranth is really unlike any other harvest we have made to date.  It involves three discrete steps:

• Separate the seed heads from the stalk
• Dry the seed heads
• Remove the seeds from the husks

Step one is fairly self-evident; the stalks of our grain amaranth plants were as much as an inch-and-a-half thick, so a good pair of hand clippers was necessary.

To dry the seed heads, we hung them on the grape arbor in our driveway, the grapes being currently six months old, and therefore not having yet climbed the trellis.  We don't know where we'll dry next summer's crop, but then, that is a problem for next summer, not now.

Removing the seeds from the husks will, we imagine, be much the same as it was for our quinoa crop last winter -- we shall have to make a party of it in the kitchen, everyone rolling the dry husks between our hands and collecting the grain as it falls into a bowl.  Fun for the whole family, we expect.

We gave the stalks to the chickens, the leaves now being too bitter for use as potherbs (although we imagine we might not have thought so in 1933!), and much as with our corn harvest, the stalks will also give the birds a much-needed break from the western sun... at least, it will do so until they eat their own sunscreen, bless their little bird-brains.

We then turned the remaining stubble in the garden plot back into the soil with a vigorous hoeing.  After adding a bit of chicken-poop compost, we planted our Halloween pumpkins and a variety of winter squash where our amaranth had been.  The calendar pushes relentlessly forward, even for those who take the time to look however fleetingly backward.

Meanwhile, most folk rightly associate harvest with autumn festivals, most notably the American holiday known as "Thanksgiving".  For a year-round garden, though, harvest happens on a fairly regular basis.  What a shame, then, that "Thanksgiving" only happens once a year, particularly when we have so much to be thankful for.  The hunger felt by the vast majority of Americans in the 1930s is unparalleled in contemporary society, and where it does occur, it fills us with outrage.  It was simply another day, though, for so many who struggled and suffered through it at the time.

We don't often get visitors who remind us of such things, but when we do, we remember them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Grass: Illegalize it!

On a mid-morning jog this week, Mr. Myrtle Maintenance had to choke back his outrage, upon seeing a resident of Pebble Creek – the upper-middle class enclave of College Station – watering his pristine St. Augustine grass in the middle of the day.  Now, some of you might think it was the “middle of the day” part that inspired this ire, but you'd be wrong.  It was the St. Augustine part of the story that really wrankled.

The University of Montana did a survey of grass lawns a few years ago, and came to the conclusion that the only places in the United States where grass lawns may be grown in a sustainable fashion are the Great Plains and a few locations in New England.  Everywhere else, grass lawns must be coddled in decidedly non-sustainable ways, including excessive irrigation, and chemical amendments in the form of fertilizers and herbicides to control “weeds” (the term most lawn growers use to describe native grasses).

Without these non-sustainable amendments?  Nature takes over.

One has to wonder why the cultural norm is an acceptance of this battle against Mother Nature, particularly when we must surely recognize by now Mother Nature will win this fight.  The question is not whether we can maintain our green grass yards; the question is, will we be alive or not when Mother Nature wins and the native grasses take over.

We currently consume three times as much water in this nation on the maintenance of grass lawns than we do on irrigating corn, our number one food crop.  If that number does not astound you, you aren't thinking clearly; we are already facing water shortages in much of the country, and aquifers such as the Oglalla are most assuredly not going to last much longer.  The grand irony of this last Spring was the flooding seen in Memphis where the potable water supply is diminishing at a rapid rate – an all too real example of “water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”

Lawns, let us be clear, are an avoidable evil.  They are morally wrong everywhere but the Great Plains and some parts of New England.

A tad strong a claim, you might be saying, but we insist it is true.  When there are hungry mouths in the world not being fed, and there is perfectly arable land being put to use for something as wasteful and environmentally damaging as a grass lawn, it is worse than neglect, it is spiteful and wasteful selfishness.

So what's the alternative, you might ask, astroturf?  Cement?  No, and no.  The alternative is a reasonable mix of whatever plants are native to your area, and whatever plants go well as companions in each of the many different microclimates in your yard.  Experiment a little.  Go nuts.  Just don't do any square or even remotely linear patterns; plant brambles of berries, bunches of shrubs, fruit trees scattered willy-nilly, and mix vegetable and herb beds in haphazardly, with sandy, wood-chippy, gravel, or flagstone paths in-between.  Your land can tell you best; you just have to listen to it, that's all.

One of the basic premises of permaculture as a design philosophy is that wherever possible, native and self-sustaining stands of groundcover ought to be encouraged.  In Texas, that includes a lot of possible grasses, most of which are considered “nuisance” grasses by the typical suburbanite.  Johnson Grass, in particular, is hated by the grass lawn crowd, but one has to wonder why.  It is really a relative of sorghum, and is about as drought-tolerant as grasses come.  The green in the few patches of lawn at Myrtle's place are almost entirely comprised of Johnson Grass, and if they have received any water at all when we have given moisture to our fruits and vegetables, it has been purely accidental, let us assure you.

More to the point, this grass might be unattractive as an intruder into a monocropped lawn, but it is highly attractive as a median plant in small patches between other groupings of plants.  In addition, it attracts pests which would otherwise be attacking our vegetables – why would we want to eradicate an effective trap crop?

The same logic that leads homeowners to attack native grasses causes many local hay farmers to curse the name 'dewberry'.  Wild blackberries, you see, are classified as 'invasive weeds' by most local farmers.  Is that not the heighth of lunacy?

Around our house, we encourage the blackberries to grow like weeds.  And they oblige us, let us assure you!  Before too many years are out, we expect that our entire perimeter will be a ring of what we think of as "yardberries".  If these be weeds, let us never hear of herbicides again.  "Weed berry cobbler" tastes better than anything they've ever served in a St. Augustine house.

We will undoubtedly expand on this premise in future musings, but for now, we must go weed out some of the neighbors' St. Augustine; it's encroaching on our wild Muscadine stands, and that cannot be allowed!!  Out, out, damned weeds!!

Happy farming!

Nostalgia for the Mud

The desire to dig in the dirt sometimes garners the pejorative description of “nostalgia for the mud” among those whose tastes run to the more comfortable and refined.  “Nostalgia for the mud” has a different connotation, though, for Texans.  We get a little more literal about the phrase, since we don’t get enough moisture on a regular basis to have much in the way of mud.

It may be a somewhat arbitrary way to track things, but if you start from last November, the Brazos Valley is now at the tail end of the driest 8-month period in recorded history, and there is simply no end in sight to our current drought.

The good news, though, is that La Niña is now over, so any dryness we experience from here on out will be because we are normally dry at this time of year, not because of any abnormal atmospheric events.  Small comfort, true, particularly since droughts can be self-perpetuating – dry ground warms up fairly quickly, and has already caused all kinds of temperature records to be broken all over East Texas this Spring.  In addition, since the ground lacks moisture, the phenomenon of afternoon thunderstorms springing up as a result of daytime heating building huge local cumulonimbus clouds can’t take place – no moisture, no storm clouds.

What’s a microfarmer to do?

Plan for the future, that’s what.  We have taken note of the weather, naturally, because it dictates much of what we can and cannot do in our garden, but we reject wholesale the bellyaching of people who refuse to accept that this is the new normal.  Even in the middle of a drought, we have still received more rain year-to-date than plenty of folk who farm in the middle of deserts all over the world, who manage to produce beuatiful fruits and vegetables.

We recently harvested our meager sweet corn crop, for example, and were grateful for the few ears we managed to salvage.  All over the Brazos Valley, folk who make their living from the monocrop monstrosity known as modern farming fall into one of two categories:  those who planted cotton instead of corn this year, and those who are in danger of going broke.  Corn was a terrible investment this spring for anyone who spent money on seed (we didn’t – we used old seed from a couple of seasons ago).

Tomatoes, on the other hand, are growing profligately, in utter defiance of the drought, and are producing some of the sweetest, juiciest fruit we ever remember tasting.  Same thing for jalapeños, which are currently keeping us in some of the best homegrown salsa anyone anywhere has ever tasted.

We have started cutting and drying amaranth seed-heads, and will be threshing them over the next several weeks.  This is especially important as Myrtle’s place recently became gluten free; homegrown grains are becoming a prominent part of our garden.  As fate would have it, this dovetails nicely with our need to grow crops which don’t particularly care two figs about whether it rains much or not.  Amaranth, sorghum, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, these are all crops which, once established, can thrive without a whole lot of attention.  And the summer trifecta of amaranth, sorghum and millet also doesn’t particularly object to the stress of 100°+ temperatures – each of these crops is perfect for a climate which is semi-temperate two or three months out of the year, semi-tropical two or three months out of the year, and flat out arid six or eight months out of the year.

We have mentioned before the three distinct growing seasons in the Brazos Valley, but we are starting to appreciate that there are “microseasons” as well.  For example, bush and pole beans of all sorts do okay from March through June, but require different treatment depending on when you put them in the ground.  Velvet beans, being tropical, require tons of sun and water, and can take anywhere from three to six months to come to harvest.

And then there's grain.  Amaranth, which we are harvesting now, can go all summer.  We'll have a “mini-season” for buckwheat, which will go in the ground in early to mid September, to be harvested in late October.  We'll start putting quinoa in the ground in October, and stagger plantings until January, so that we'll be harvesting some kind of grain from now until next March, when we plant more amaranth, sorgum, and millet, and start the whole cycle all over again.

We'll be planting avocados, raspberries, and evergreen huckleberries next winter in hopes of making our fruit and veggie harvest become year round, too.  And while strawberries have been the bane of our existance for four years now, we're going to try again this fall, in hopes that if they take off prior to next year's heat wave (May or June, depending), maybe, just maybe, we can harvest more than just a couple of berries from them.

Under no circumstances, however, will we assent to the presence of mopers.  Yes, it is hot enough for us, thank you very much.  Next question!

Happy farming!