Vegetables, Meet Soil: Ready? Set? Grow!!!

Finally got my tomatoes and peppers in the ground, even though “finally” is a misconception.  I bought plants this year; I planned to grow my own from seeds, but my days got away from me and I let the seeds dry out under their lights.  It is definitely not “late” to be planting starts, but it feels like it because I would be so far behind if I were starting seeds.

My former employer, Distinctive Gardens, grows awesome, organic tomato and pepper starts for sale.  They love the funky and the heirloom, and Bud has a thing for hot peppers.  Hot is not my thing, but even the selection of sweet peppers was enticing.

This year I built (okay, Steve did most of the work building these!) two more raised beds, built out of 2x10 construction lumber (whoops, did I do 8-inchers last year??) and treated with boiled linseed oil to prolong their life in the weather.  Treated wood is not an option in my garden, I do not want treatment chemicals leaching into my soils and thus into my food.

Because I accidentally built these beds bigger my normal 10 bags of topsoil supplemented with my composted horse manure (see?  She’s good for something!) was not enough.  The ONE bed took all 20 bags!  That’s okay, though.  I can go back for another load.

So, finally I get to fill those beds and plant those vegetables.  20 bags is 800 pounds of topsol.  That is a lot of hefting, especially at the end of a long day of planting for work.  I got it done, though.

The starts are beautiful, good color and reaching for the sky.  The planting is easy, with all that loose soil, so my soil knife (A.M. Leonard, you will never use another tool!) is sufficient for the planting.

It feels right to be caressing the soil, gently firming around the baby plants.  I stick the tag beside each plant and their names intrigue and amuse me: Red Rose, Big Bertha, Mule Team, Chablis.  They spark my imagination for late summer, when I will be picking luscious fruits from the vines.  That is, IF they grow well and I am not neglectful. 

Last year I got a couple measly peppers and zero tomatoes.  What appears to have happened is a drift of herbicide that sought and found my ‘maters.  They never grew except marginally and in the most contorted way.  Disappointed, I pulled them all.

This year I am hopeful.  I still have another bed to fill and plant, and plenty of seeds that can be direct-sown.  Cut cattle panels will make fantastic bean trellises, and compost will make wonderful mounds in which to grow melons and pumpkins. I WILL nurture these plants and I WILL enjoy the fruits of my harvest this Fall.

Watch me.

The Legacy of a Friend

In 1999 I was newly installed in a country home, had animals on the property for the first time and was actively involved in an organization called Pegasus Special Riders. Pegasus helped me get back involved in horses after a long hiatus, and I loved being a part of the team. I volunteered with barn chores, sidewalking and leading during lessons and, finally, training volunteers. This last task brought me in contact with a woman who would change my life in myriad ways, and all for the better. Laura showed up one morning for volunteer training, and she claims she appreciated the straight-forward way I had during interaction with the volunteers. I knew right away she was an intelligent and sensitive person, and we became fast friends. Laura is unlike most other people I knew. She is a rural girl but not “country.” She is highly learned and very intelligent, but not arrogant.

 I never knew much at all about native plants and plant communities when I met Laura, but it did not take long for her to expand my knowledge and create a solid appreciation for our natural resources and a desire to live more lightly on the land. Conscientious to a tee, animals under her care are always treated with respect and dignity.

 When I think back I ask myself, “Which came first? The chicken or the coffee?” I was completely unfamiliar with either when I met Laura, and she unashamedly got me hooked on both! I knew I wanted chickens, and she said “You should, you will love them.” I had no idea I really WOULD love them and become enamored with their silly ways, their beautiful feather patterns and the precious warm gifts they would leave for us each morning. Six hens quickly turned to a dozen, then twenty. I had a go-around with meat birds, too, and while that didn’t turn out to be my thing it is not off the table yet for our new place. Likewise, the first time she encouraged me to try a Starbucks chilled Frappuchino with chocolate milk I was SOLD! That led to mochas at the local indy bookstore to brewing my own at home. *gasp!* Now I am adept at brewing a cup or two in my French press and making my own mochas at home with ground chocolate and coconut milk creamer.

 Eager to return the enablement favor, I introduced Laura to my own horses. She had ridden and loved horses all her life, but loved being in contact with the Pegasus horses and taking opportunities to ride with me. When the time came for us to find a new home for one of ours she took the plunge and bought him! He was a great companion for her for a few years until life got too busy for her to spend enough quality time with him and he went on to a new home.

 Laura and I had many great times together. When our kids were younger we would head to the local bookstore, drink coffee and chatter with the store-owner. We would read the organic gardening magazines together and talk about our fantasies of having our own, self-sufficient gardens and animals. She introduced me more fully to the world of art, and helped me fall in love with an artist or two. Many beautiful prints hang in my home now because of Laura’s influence.

Laura was a faithful friend. She still is. She never judged me, at least not to my face! She was always patient and kind and helped me reach my own conclusions on weighty matters. When I struggled she stood by and held me up. When rejoiced she sang with me. When I cried she cried.

 Things are a little different now. We don’t talk as often, seldom, in fact. She is working full-time now, as am I. The farm here keeps me as busy as my professional work does, and spending time any friends is difficult, let alone the ones who also work much. The other night we had a lovely conversation on the phone, and I was reminded again how much I care about and miss her, and what a precious gift she has been in my life. I can honestly say, without exaggeration, that there are several big aspects of my life now that would not be there except by her influence- my school and work careers being among them. It is probably safe to say that she helped me grow as a person more than any other person in my life.

 The only picture I have of her and me together; a terrible one of me but one I cherish nonetheless; a morning we spent canoeing on the Rock River:

                        

I hope I never take her for granted, and that she knows how important she is to me.
 I think I’ll tell her.

How Tight is YOUR Coop?

It is quiet on my work front today, has been for a couple weeks now. A minor back injury has sidelined me and left me chomping at the bit to get going again. I have already learned that to rush it will only be worse. I have still been able to meet with clients and do some drawing and planning, but maintenance has been out of the question, and that includes my gardens here at home. My landscaping (for what its worth) and vegetable -garden-to-come are in shambles. I am about ready to recruit me some boys to get all this back in order and ready to roll for the season!

The good news is that I have managed, with Steve’s much-appreciated help, to get the chicks out to the barn and into their stall-turned-coop. They are now four weeks old, and nearly completely feathered out. They officially look like miniature chickens and not like infants! They sound like infants still, and that is strange.

Back when I had full back function I built the coop door to hold two catch latches and eye-screws to which I can clip a bolt latch. The combination of these will render the coop impenetrable to raccoons…at least by this avenue! They have been known to rip through chicken wire, but that is a gamble I have chosen to take, seeing as how the cost of using the alternative, hardware cloth, is very expensive.

So, the other day I was visiting said chicks in their new home; for some reason they are much bolder and easier to catch out there, so I was catching and cuddling a few. I saw the cat coming to check out the happenings, so I pulled the door tighter to make sure she could not squeeze through. Unfortunately for me, that top latch performed exactly as intended and latched me in. Oooh…did someone (besides me?) manage to get a latch string installed yet? One that would allow someone to unlatch themselves from the coop from the inside? Nope. Dangit. No one was answering phones at the house. The only alternative left me was to unwind pieces of chicken wire where it was exposed on the edges and form a strong enough hook to reach through the wire, snag the tiny hole on the arm of the latch and let myself out. Second attempt was the one that gained me my freedom, whew! Fortunately it was not cold, and Steve was expected home any minute. I was glad, however, not to have to yell for him to let me out. We still got a good laugh at it.

Monday Musings, 3rd edition

It has been a whole week since I updated my blog, and I hope this will not set the pattern for the duration. It HAS been a very busy week, though, and I have hardly had time to sit down and play, let alone come up with something useful to share. My schedule has been amazingly full, which is good AND bad. I have hardly had a chance to finish preparing for the season before it was jump-starting a month early. So nearly every free minute last week was taken up with cleaning and organizing my work stuff and doing that boring admin work. This is all in addition to the regular family stuff like cooking dinner, paying bills, grocery shopping, building a chicken coop, caring for chicks, etc.

We finally got the tractor started and running. It needed to be jump-started last week, but I guess we didn't let it run long enough, for when we tried to start it again the battery was completely dead. but now the pastures are mowed and filling in beautifully, and even the lawn got done with the bush hog. Yes, it was that long. *sigh*

The chicken coop is nearly done, and I am thinking "just in time!" The chicks still have plenty of room to run around their pool/box, but they are getting rowdier by the day. They frequently overturn their waterer, and will scratch their feed into the shavings in about 10 minutes flat. Grr! Plus, their darting and flapping and shrieking has become a nuisance at night. They are still super-cute, though, piling together on their kindergarten-perch or stretching all out on the shavings for a nap. Their wings are nearly completely feathered, and their tails are getting so long. hard to believe they are only two weeks old!

Griffin tried to grab a brat off the counter last night, but I caught him before he could figure out he only scored the bun and not the meat. I gave him a tongue-lashing and banished him outside (boy its great to catch them in the act!) but that hasn't yet deterred him from his behavior. he gets a nice 'come-to-Jesus meetin' " every time I catch him (third time?)to no avail. Not sure what to do about it now.

Steve is off for a couple days, today and tomorrow. Tomorrow we will hit up an art museum and maybe a garden; today is still up in the air. A trip to Barnes and Noble is about all I know for sure. I DO know that it has been awhile since we have spent a day together and I am looking forward to it.

Today or tomorrow I start the Green Smoothie Girl's 12-step program to healthier eating for life (www.greensmoothiegirl.com) but I am not looking forward to it. I can probably tolerate a mostly-vegetable smoothie, but I really don't like raw vegetables. Apparently cooking them higher than 116 degrees destroys the good enzymes in them, so I understand the benefit, but for the first time in my healthy-eating journey I am feeling a little distressed about my diet. The program is meant to be accomplished one step per month over a year, so we'll see how it goes. Maybe slow will be the trick.

Guess that's it. The birds are back and in full courtship mode, and barn chores wait for no man.

Random Musings, Redux

Wow, the weather went from balmy to brrr literally overnight! It feels quite like March today, then back into unseasonable temps for the next ten days or so. This weather makes it a lot easier for me to transition into my landscaping mode.

Our chicks arrived last week, and they are just so cute and funny! We are all enjoying them, even the dogs. I put a chicken-wire lid over the brooder box so they could safely stare at them as much as they want- which is quite a bit, actually. Every chick in the shipment arrived healthy and has stayed healthy.

We were disappointed to think we were going to have to replace the starter in our '48 Ford 8n tractor, but turns out the battery was just totally depleted and our charger gauge is inaccurate. Got it jumped, turned over and ran the first time! You can't beat that old machinery with a stick, when it is properly maintained.

I have an incredible small group to attend every other Sunday evening. Our leader(s) is/are committed, Godly, humble, and wise. My fellow group-attenders are a fantastic group and are not afraid to speak their minds when they don't understand or when they have something to offer the group. Our church has a handful of elders that oversees the goings-on of our church, but even outside the elders our church is populated with many God-seeking men who spend the time to search God and stay in love with Him. Over the years we have lost many such people to the mission field or moving, but as Francis Chan says in "Crazy Love," the analogy was used for him once that a group of Christians is like a pile of manure. Leave it growing in a pile in one place and it is a stinky mess. Spread it out, though, and air and light gets to it and it helps make the plants grow. So it can go with Christians, too. It is bittersweet when we send someone else out to make a difference somewhere else.

I have to mow the lawn already. I like to mow, but it is time-consuming and wasteful of fuel. Last Fall we over-seeded our front 1.5 acres with prairie seed, and killed off a big section of lawn on the west boundary to be over-seeded with prairie grass. Between shrinking the lawn, adding prairie and gardens, the mowing should be reduced to highly-manageable levels in just a couple years.

I came home from small group last night to see Matt walking up the drive with a flashlight. "What's going on?" I ask him as I pull alongside. He and Jeanette heard a startling noise and he went out to see if our Minnie-Kitty (our barn cat) was alright. She was nowhere to be found, and we nervously chalked it up to her being out hunting. At chore time I found clumps of grey and cream fur that could have been hers and could have been from a rabbit. Gratefully Phil spotted her on his way back home a while later. We fully understand that Minnie's outdoor home comes with her potential peril every night when the coyotes and raccoons are out and about. Even one, big feral cat could do her in.

Work is busy; I like it. I think I picked up another job yesterday in the course of random conversation. It is going exactly the way I had hoped God would allow it- jobs just keep coming up, not too fast that I cannot handle it all, but enough to encourage me that I am going in the right direction.

Life is crazy; life is nutty, and fast and awful and beautiful. But God is good; I truly believe that. It is harder to believe it when the crappy times hit, but I do nonetheless. To Him be the glory.

Full Steam Ahead

I knew this would happen. This scenario is what I have been preparing for since the end of LAST season: the weather takes a turn for the better (okay, aMAZing!) and immediately there will be 101 things that need doing outside here on the property and landscaping jobs that are ready to roll! Rest assured, this is NOT a complaint. It is exactly how I imagined; however it is a little hectic, the white space in my calendar disappears rapidly, and the housework piles up. Somehow I can’t bring myself to be stressed about that housework though, because it is still March. There will be inside work days- like today. Still a pile of tasks to accomplish, but I have already accomplished so much. I am working with a clarity and focus that I haven’t really had for about four years. That is startling to me. It also makes me excited for the rest of the season. After all, this is what I have been working toward for three years, and where I believe God has led me.

It is going to be an adjustment for everybody: myself, the people who are here during the day, even the dogs. I have re-discovered joy in my home tasks; I still hate how much time cooking takes, but I love planning meals, prepping and cooking, and when Phil texts me “Is there food at home?” I can say “Yes! Yes there is food at home.” It will get squirrelly at dinner-time from here on out, and finding recipes for the slow-cooker that are also healthy is proving to be a bit of a challenge.

On a side-note, my coop is almost ready, albeit it in most basic form. It will be a few months before the chicks will be big enough to go outside on their own into a pen, so I have made my first-stage goal to build a door and enclose all openings in the stall with chicken wire. This is nearly accomplished! The door needs hardware, bracing and chicken wire, but fudging around with dimensions and figuring out the logistics of stringing the netting is finished. Next is cleaning out built up yuck from the previous owners, setting up perches and arranging nest boxes and feeders. It will be awhile before they will be ready for nest boxes and perches, but chickens are not super-smart, and the earlier they are accustomed to their new landscape the less they have to be freaked out by the addition of new “scenery.”

So, this afternoon I submit my first proposal of the season, and tomorrow I meet with a new client to discuss a BIG design job. The day after that I begin a new season at an old client’s house, and Thursday I join a friend in cleaning up her yard and establishing new veggie garden areas. Always a treat there, with the chickens and dogs and fish pond and snakes. The snakes make me squeal every time I see one, but only because I am easily surprised. I do love them, even if I don’t want them climbing up my pant leg!

Well, would you look at that! Time to go already….vroom vroom!!!

Thinking on Heaven

I can’t think of anything more impossible than a human being trying to imagine what Heaven will be like. An awful lot of people think about it habitually, particularly true followers of Christ. I am sure our thoughts all run a whole spectrum of images and reflections, but how can an earthly mind even begin to comprehend the eternal and the perfect?

This is one of those fine Spring mornings when my heart is still, the sun is soft and the breeze delicious and fresh. In the wee hours of the morning a tremendous storm cell rolled through our area and surrounding counties, lashing rain upon earth that has been parched from a warm winter, and splitting the clouds with thunder that shook the foundations of our homes. Lightning lit the skies like daytime. As so often happens after just such a storm the day dawned bright and clear. It is the kind of day in which I could be still all day, just feeling the breeze and listening to the birdsong, not saying a word. The calm in my heart and mind is yet unaffected by the cares of the day or the world.

Additionally, some friends posted photos taken in Nepal, where they are doing language surveys in remote Himalayan villages. Ben and Holly are abundantly blessed with God-given talents, and Ben’s photos are National Geographic-worthy, to say the least. He is also somewhat of a purist, relying on the knowledge he has gained and his experience behind the camera to capture the pure heart of each scene. In this age of digital revolution when any person can manipulate an image into seeming perfection, Ben’s photos are beautiful and technically wondrous just as they are; the images are minimally manipulated if at all. This morning I came across this photo, and it was so overwhelmingly beautiful I didn’t even look at the rest; it is difficult to take in so much beauty all at once. (Please click on this photo to make is larger)

Now I think of the best this earth has to offer: I try to imagine standing on that mountain in Nepal, with the stunning beauty of the Kiev Chamber Choir singing ‘Bless the Lord, Oh My Soul’ (one of the few pieces of music on this earth that will move me to tears EVERY time. Sometimes even when I am only thinking about it…like now…) ringing in my ears, with this morning’s ambrosial breeze on my face, and my mind quiet and at peace. I can’t help but to think that Heaven has got to be like this. I let myself bask in that thought for about a minute before I venture forward in my thoughts a little more. I know, intellectually, that Heaven will be nothing like this. It is so far beyond the best of this imperfect world that I cannot even reckon it. Then there is that final thought, the subject of Jesus.

I am working my way through Francis Chan’s book “Crazy Love,” and it is a wonderful book. Within the narrative he puts forth this challenge: If every one of our favorite and most amazing things will be waiting for us in Heaven, but there is no Jesus, will we still want to go? It is a perfectly legitimate question. We as Christians are called to be so in love with Jesus that NONE of the rest of this stuff, as amazing and visceral as it all is, matters. What only matters is to be with Him, the Author of our salvation. After all, this is why we were saved (if we are) in the first place, to gain access to the God of Heaven and of Earth. (Ephesians 2:5-7)

So we might think, when considering these awesome earthly wonders, that it does not get any better than this. Our mind cannot comprehend what it does not know.

‘But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"—‘ I Corinthians 2:9

So I soak in the light, and bask in the beauty of the day….and think about the time when it will be unimaginably better…even better than this.