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!

An Unbelievably Satisfying Moment

Picking the first blackberries of the year proved to be as phantasmagorically satisfying as an experience could be.

They're still just slightly red when you pick them right now; usually, folk wait until the red has turned to complete blackness (hence, "blackberry"), but we are 1) not patient enough for that, and 2) perfectly happy with that tart little bite at the front end of the berry experience.

There are few things in life as tasty as berries from your own backyard.  The fact that they also double as a thorny hedge is just a bonus.

We'll probably have several buckets of berries by the end of the week (you can see all the red ones on the vines right now, and they turn very, very quickly); we've already noticed numerous canes volunteering their way up in between the current plants, so we'll have to mark carefully when we pick the berries -- the idea is to prune this year's producing canes all the way back to the ground some time after harvest; next year's berries are on the empty canes from this year.

They are about a month away from harvest, but we are also going to get our first production quality wild grapes this year.  We probably won't get enough for wine-making, but we will almost definitely get enough to try our hands at some mustang jam, which will be quite an experience.  Hopefully, next summer, we will be producing our first batch of home vinted dark black cheese accoutrement.

Which brings us to the week's big rumination....  We want to make our own cheese.  But what do you have to have in order to make cheese?  Some form of dairy product, right?  Like, say, goat's milk?  Which would require... let us think... what is it?  Oh, yeah, a goat!

There's no telling exactly how many complications we will run into along the road to goat ownership -- a tall fence around the pond area, for one thing, not to mention getting permits and all that legal folderol -- but when the proprietors of Myrtle's place set their hearts on something related to self-sufficiency, we've come to expect that it will happen, sooner or later.

Just witness the berries!  Two years ago, we planted puny root stock, and now we are swimming in juicy, sweet, tart little berries!

An incredibly satisfying experience, indeed.  Now we just need to make some good mustang wine, bake a nice blackberry cobbler, and eat a good home-grown salad topped with home-grown feta.  If you can think of a better way for us to be spending our time, by all means let us know.

In the meantime,

Happy farming!

Once More, From The Top...

Those of you who have been reading Myrtle's doings for long enough may be wondering whether we ever intended to compensate our flock for the loss of Duck the Drake due to the onset of obnoxious rooster behavior.

The answer, until this week, was going to be a resounding 'No!' but we thought better of it.  Since our family is mourning a loss, we thought it might be a good time to make a new beginning in other ways.

So, we've got some new chicks.  They are, naturally, Barred Rock chicks, though at this age, they look an awful lot like three or four other breeds; they're a little older than the last batch we got from the same supplier -- they were already feeding and drinking when we got them, so we didn't have to do the weird routine of forcing their little beaks into the proper dishes.  They are in every other respect as dependent as can be, however.

We're keeping them in a box in the bathroom at present; we have to keep the heater on in there, and we're keeping a lamp on them.  We'll move them to a bigger cage (a converted compost bin, if truth be told) in a week or so, and then, when they are mature enough, we'll make a cage-within-the-coop to acclimate the bigger birds to the smaller, and vice-versa.

We have other new beginnings going on, too.  Our wild grapes (of both the Mustang and the Muscadine variety) are fruiting this season, and between that happy news and the cornucopia of blackberry blooms on the vines this Spring, it looks like we're going to be more than ready to start on the more pleasurable part of our self-sufficiency program, the making of jams, jellies, and wine.

In addition to these utilitarian motives, of course, is the fact that grape vines are exceedingly attractive.  Our borders are soon to be demarcated by lush green vines bearing beautiful bluish-black fruit, and judging by the quantity and the nature of the clusters seen here, they will be bearing quite a lot of it.  This is one plan which is turning out to be far more successful than we ever dreamed it would be.

To top it all off, of course, the vegetables are coming up quite nicely.  We've thinned out our corn, the zucchini is ridiculously happy, as are our four varieties of tomatoes, five varieties of peppers, three varieties of basil, our cucumbers, etc. etc. etc.

We only regret that Papa Dave won't be around at harvest time to enjoy it.  However, we do intend to have quite a party when the corn comes in, so all Friends of Myrtle, be on notice.  Keep a date open some time in late May, early June.  We'll expect you to come hungry!

Happy farming!