Garden flowers

A big patch of volunteer borage among
some of my tomatoes.

 Usually at this time of year I'm all about the garden. Frankly, the garden is what makes summer worthwhile. I hate being hot and sweaty all the time. I'm not one for the beach (though I lived at it as a kid) and the older I get, the less time I want to spend out in the blazing sun. I hate sunscreen and did I mention I'm not a fan of the heat? I'd much rather take cold and snowy or chilly and rainy any day of the week over days in the 90s.

A handful of marionberries.

My garden is pretty typical for this time of year. The peas are unhappy with the heat and I'll likely pull them soon. I dug up two rows of my potatoes (over 50 lbs) and replanted them. I have two more rows to go but that's a lot of work in the hot sun and I don't really have the space in storage right now for another 50+ lbs of them quite yet. However, we have been delightedly eating meals of peas, lettuce, eggs, and potatoes a lot recently. Baked potatoes topped with chili. Curry with garden peas and beans. A big salad with boiled eggs. Quiche. I might hate the heat, but it's a delicious time of year too.

Flowers

One of the things I focused on a bit more this year is flowers. For one thing, we got bees again and I wanted to ensure they'd have lots to feed on all summer. Not that it's too concerning around here--my neighborhood is old and most houses have well established gardens. Not many sterile lawns with boxwood borders here. But flowers are beautiful, and for our own enjoyment I love adding them in. We have nasturtiums, borage, zinnias, and California poppies all over the garden, much of it self-sown from previous years or brought in on the wind. As usual I planted a row of giant sunflowers, which will go to feed my chickens later. I also planted some buckwheat, which puts out many small white flowers, and as usual I let some carrots and onions from last year go to flower to attract beneficial insects. My garden hums all day long, the orange poppy blossoms nodding as the big bumblebees visit them.

Nasturtiums and a volunteer
foxglove peeking out.

In other areas we have calendula, sweet peas, daisies, cosmos, chamomile, and so much more. One of my favorites this year is a flower called jasmine-scented nicotiana. Beautiful white flowers that open in the evenings and let out a delightful jasmine smell, they're moth pollinated. I find that so fun. The poppies close up in the evening just about the time the nicotiana is starting to open, and I love the transition too.

I let my daughters pick out some seeds every year. My older daughter demanded red bell peppers and rainbow carrots, so I gave her an entire raised bed for herself. The first of the pepper flowers are coming out now so in about a month we should have snacks for her. I tucked some of the nicotiana into that bed for visual interest, and I've noticed a volunteer poppy in there recently as well.

My younger daughter wanted cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers. So far the cucumbers have failed, and I'm not sure if it's because the dog was stomping in the containers we had them planted in, or if rats have been eating them. We'll see if this third planting works, now that I've moved them to a new location. But the flowers my younger kid wanted are "coral-lime" zinnias. Smaller than the red zinnias I put in my own garden, they have lovely yellow-green center petals and pink outer ones. I would not have chosen it myself but it's lovely, very different from any of the other flowers we have.

Coral-lime zinnia

I love adding to our flowers every year, seeing all the new things and how they change the look of the garden. I take note of what the pollinators, particularly the native pollinators, love the most and try to add more of those the following year. It seems to be working, since my garden is alive and active every day all summer. And with the addition of night flowering plants, perhaps all night too.

Chickens are the best thing I did for my backyard ecosystem

This is probably going to be controversial, because I know there are plenty of problems with backyard chickens. But honestly, having them has been amazing for my yard and garden. They just do so much work. For one thing, I was close to having an over-abundance of compost this year, which has never been an issue before. Usually I'm scrounging up whatever compost I can and it's never, ever enough. But last year when we put in the chicken run we evened out the area with wood chips, which would also help soak up the excess nitrogen in their poo and keep the smell down. It did so, admirably. We had 6-12 inches of wood chips over the entire area. Over the winter, all of it was broken down by the birds. When I checked in the spring, there was only the thinnest layer of sticks and other larger things left from the chips. Everything else had broken down into this gorgeous compost. My spouse made a sifter for me out of hardware cloth, some old boards, and a few metal handles he found, which took about an hour all together. Then I went through the run shoveling material, putting it through the sifter, dumping out the large pieces that were left. I was able to put a rather thick layer of compost over the entire garden, as well as most of my raised beds, and finally used it to help fill the grow bags and pots we have around. I could have grabbed more, except time and energy said no.

Ithacus and Sunny, eating
a dropped apple.

I've also been using the spent hay from their coop in the garden. I did an experiment over the winter with my garlic. One row of garlic got a thick layer of chicken hay, the other one did not. I genuinely wasn't sure what the outcome would be, since the hay would insulate from the harshest winter temps but would also insulate in the spring to prevent the soil from warming up as quickly. Too, I didn't bother to compost it. I let it sit out in the rain for a week or so, but it still smelled pretty...fresh...when I put it on the garden.* Perhaps the huge shot of nitrogen would backfire and burn the poor garlic?

It did not. BY FAR, the better garlic came from the row covered in hay. Many of the heads are as much as twice the size of those that came out of the uncovered row. Now, if I really wanted to be scientific about this I would run another trial in which I do regular hay vs. spent chicken hay, to see if the nitrogen had an effect. I don't care that much. It's enough that the chicken manure didn't harm the garlic.

Some of the garlic, hanging under the
porch to cure.

The last way the chickens have helped is simply by being their needy, greedy selves. They get some actual chicken food, grain, and I return their shells to them (baked and broken up). They have a large area to roam, lots of insects to scratch for and dine on. Kitchen scraps like stale bread and carrot peelings. But we also try to give them a fair amount of fresh greens when we can. They LOVE greens. Most of this comes in the form of weeds. When we walk the dog, frequently we have a tote bag that we'll fill with weeds we know to be edible to the birds. At this time of year they're also getting fallen fruit, plums and other large fruits that have fallen onto the sidewalk and which we know humans won't be eating. They've got a bounty of apples from our neighbor's tree, many of which fall right into the run so we have to do precisely zero work for it. But also, the chickens get very excited when I go into the garden. I have never cared much for weeding, but now it's kinda fun because it's not weeding that I'm doing, I'm just collecting salad for my chickens. That simple shift in mindset has turned it from a chore into something I enjoy. I love seeing the birds go crazy when I dump a big load of weeds into their run, scratching and making happy chicken noises. I know that the weeds and their nutrients will be returned to the garden next spring from the compost the chickens will make, and the cyclical nature of that tickles me.

Carrot flowers. The seed won't
be viable but they're worthwhile
for their beauty and insect
attracting qualities.

Because of all of this, my garden has been looking refreshed and super happy. The plants are large and the yields I'm getting are making me deliriously happy. Since I haven't changed anything else about my gardening this year, I must conclude that the chickens have been highly beneficial. Plus, they're fun creatures, and we enjoy having them around. The glut of eggs is almost becoming a side benefit to all the rest, the compost and the waste disposal services that they do.

Fall and winter garden time

It seems crazy now, in the middle of summer, to be planning the fall and winter garden, but it is time. Many plants that will survive the winter require a long time, and that also means plenty of time to get established before the temperature drops. This past spring I enjoyed a new crop, purple sprouting broccoli, that was so excellent I'm planting even more of it for next spring. But the time to start it is, in fact, now. Same for winter cabbages, beets, carrots, and overwintering leeks. 

A red zinnia (looks redder IRL)
with shelling peas I'm saving for
seed behind. I'll plant more peas
in the fall for a second crop.

However, many things can wait until August or even September, like greens and peas. They grow to maturity in 30-60 days and will appreciate having, at the very least, cooler nights. Greens are easy to cover for winter harvesting, so I'm planning at least two rows of them. Last year I only had one row and it wasn't enough. My garden is on the north side of my house, so in addition to all the other issues with growing fall and winter crops I have to be very careful about where I plant them, otherwise they'll be in full shade on the rare sunny days. About half my growing space becomes off-limits then. Since these are the areas I also tend to grow my longer-season heat loving crops, like tomatoes and peppers, it's a delicate balance between getting the most I can out of those while also getting my fall and winter garden established before it gets too cold. Thankfully, many greens can be grown as an understory to larger plants that I know will come out before the greens need all the space. And, of course, I can start them in my greenhouse for planting out later as well. But all of this does require planning, and that means I need to be keeping an eye on everything right now for opportunities to fill in gaps and when to do successions. It's work. Fun work, but work.

One of the keys to winter gardening, and this might sound obvious but is too often overlooked, is to get winter varieties of the plants you want. Having bolt-resistant spinach doesn't matter if the spinach isn't going to be getting the hot temperatures that make it bolt in the first place. But Winter Density lettuce lasted far longer into winter, completely uncovered, than the lettuce I grow in spring and summer. I've never had luck growing tatsoi in spring or summer but I got huge heads of it last fall. In fact many "spring" plants don't like the PNW specialty combo of a long, chilly, wet spring followed by sudden high heat and no rainfall for months. Go figure. They do better for me in autumn instead, which is why I'm planning a second sowing of peas in late August/early September. We got a fantastic crop of peas this spring but I'm greedy and having them into autumn will be delightful. We love to snack on snow peas, and shelling peas get added to many dishes in our house.

I wish Smell-O-Vision was a real
thing so that you could enjoy the
nicotiana!

For the last two years I've planted my garlic in the far back rows of my garden, where I put my tomatoes in. (No, I don't generally rotate my crops unless there's a real need for it, like disease. I don't find it to be an issue on such a small scale and in such a diverse polyculture.) This succession has been working marvelously. Garlic gets planted in autumn, around the first frost. By that time the tomatoes have been taken out and the space is available. I plant the garlic as one of my autumn chores when I'm clearing up and cleaning out the garden anyway, leaving spaces for tomatoes to be planted in the spring. The tomatoes get planted in late May to early June, by which time the garlic is quite large. But that's just fine, as the garlic also seems to have a sheltering effect on the tomatoes. I planted the poor tomatoes out a little early this year and was worried that they wouldn't enjoy the cold June, but the garlic protected them from the winds and they grew better than I expected. By July the garlic was sending out scapes, which I pulled off and we ate in various meals, and soon after they were ready to be pulled. This made space for the now quite large tomato plants, which have completely taken over. I suspect that, in addition to sheltering the tomatoes early in the season, the garlic also deters pests that might otherwise nibble the tenderer plants. This has been such a great way to make the best use of that garden space, and I'm looking out for other crops that will have similar beneficial traits for succession sowing.

Sweet peas by the greenhouse. I
accidentally dropped the seed early
in the spring and I guess it was
happy there.

One of my goals for a long time now has been to have food in the garden all year round. No, I'm not trying to be 100% self sufficient. But having some things in the garden in the midst of winter is as delightful as the large summer harvests. I admit, I'm still not great at this. Partly it's a problem of planning. I'm still learning when I need to do everything, and having it all is difficult. The plants or seeds, the time, and the empty garden space is tricky to match up. However, last year I had a lot of fresh food--cabbages and a variety of greens, until we left to visit family for Christmas. While we were gone the temperature dropped and since I hadn't covered anything, most of my leafy greens died. The kale lived, but the lack of light meant that it wasn't growing at all. My broccoli made it through until we had a deep freeze in January, with temps in the low double or even single digits. Since we were also dealing with furnace issues and no heat in the house that week, I had bigger problems than covering my plants and the broccoli that was so near ready ended up dying. (It was an adventuresome week.)

We had only the occasional kale leaf (something only I and my brother will voluntarily eat) until the purple sprouting broccoli started up in April. Still, I consider that a huge success. We had salads well into winter, and I feel like I learned a lot. I know what to do even better this year and I have the tools to do it. Perhaps I'll meet my goal, with harvestable food year-round, but if I don't then it's no big deal. I'll learn more and move on. It's good to have something to strive for.

Baby figs on a baby fig tree.

*I wasn't concerned about disease from uncomposted chicken manure in this instance. First, I know my chickens are healthy. Second, we wouldn't be eating the garlic for at least six months to come, plenty of time for any harmful bacteria to either be washed away by the rains or mitigated via other natural means. Too, garlic gets cured for a couple of weeks out of the soil before we put it in storage, so again that would reduce or eliminate any harmful organisms. Last, we remove the papery outside of garlic and discard it. I would be shocked if harmful bacteria and viruses managed to make it through all of that.

Fermentation

 We've dipped our toes into the world of fermentation for a long time, but it feels as if in the past few years we've finally got things down. We're eating fermented foods nearly every day, and it's wonderful. I won't make wild health claims about the benefits of fermented foods, such as them curing every ailment under the sun. It is known, however, that fermented foods are quite healthy and can have a positive impact on your overall health. Fermented cabbage, for instance, has higher levels of certain vitamins than non-fermented cabbage. And, long ignored, our gut microbiomes have an impact on everything from digestive health to mood. But many fermented foods are expensive, and might not be as fresh as one would like them to be.

It's also much easier to customize fermented foods if you make them yourself. Want it a certain level of spicy or tangy? You can do that. You can mess around with the flavor profile by adding different herbs and spices quite easily, or syrups or sugars. The only thing that MUST be constant is how much of the crucial ingredient is necessary, such as salt used in salt fermentations. Too little can mean spoiled food that has to be thrown out.

Beer and Cider

Beer, not long after college, was one of the first ferments our household made. I don't drink beer so the brewer was my partner. I had fun watching the whole process, and helped with things like bottling. It was fun to experiment with new batches, to see what worked and what didn't. I took a small sip of each batch, just to experience them, and that was fun too.

For a variety of reasons my partner doesn't drink much beer these days, but we usually make hard cider when we do our fall apple pressing. Since we get the apples for free and do the pressing ourselves, the cost for the hard cider is the brewing equipment, which we already have from beer, and some yeast, if we use a cultivated yeast. Sometimes we've done a wild ferment, using only the yeasts already on the skins of the apples. Those can be hit or miss, however.

Our household still buys hard ciders, to be clear. We've never made enough to keep up with the total household consumption. We'd have a hard time storing all of the equipment and bottles for such a feat, honestly. Plus, it's nice to have variety, which is harder to make on a home scale. But it's also fun to have a small backyard fire on a spring evening drinking homemade cider, especially if friends can join.

 Saurkraut

We love to eat cabbage. My family would never say so, but cabbage is actually one of the favorite vegetables in our house, and I grow a lot of it. So it seemed pretty natural to dip our toes into the world of making saurkraut. I tried a few times years ago, and it was okay but not great. At the time what I was reading all said that you needed to make kraut in a crock, and I didn't have one. I did have a Crockpot, but I didn't have a lid or plate or anything that fit down inside to keep the cabbage under the liquid and, eventually, it got moldy. Plus, we needed the Crockpot for meals.

    Saurkraut on the left,
kimchi on the right.
We like the half gallon mason
jars for storage.

Years later my husband was the one who decided to start making saurkraut. And, as it turns out, he's really good at it! When your German friend comes over and eats an entire jar of your saurkraut, you know it's good. One of the biggest switches was to making it with purple cabbage. I don't know what it is but purple cabbage makes an incredible saurkraut. Last summer, for the first time, I grew the purple cabbages that we turned into kraut and we're all very pleased with the results. My husband uses a variety of spices (which I don't know) and doesn't slice the cabbage super thin, actually. Having some small stuff would be good to go on, say, burgers and hotdogs, but it would also go mushy really fast. Keeping the slices a little thicker (by cutting with a knife rather than using a grater, as is often recommended) means that the kraut keeps a bit of crunch even after months of storage in the fridge.

He usually makes it in mason jars these days, although I've also heard good things about those flip top glass jars with the rubber rings. The only special things I've bought are some fermentation weights and we're trying a few fermentation lids for mason jars. The regular lids and rings get rusty very quickly when used for fermentation, even if you only use them for storage.

Kimchi

Since saurkraut was such a hit, why not kimchi? And indeed, it has also proven to be a winner. Homemade kimchi is delightful because you can make it as spicy or not spicy as you want. We like ours moderately spicy, with plenty of cheek-puckering tang. We add it to fried rice and after cooking to certain stir-fries. But probably the favorite way to eat it is over leftover plain rice with a runny fried egg or two. So good.

I don't know what it was, but the last batch of kimchi made, last fall, was particularly active. My husband made it just before leaving town to go visit family so I was in charge of "burping" it all. Despite vigilantly doing that multiple times a day, several of the jar lids exploded off one afternoon. Silicone lids, so nothing was broken or damaged. But I happened to be standing in the kitchen when it happened and there was kimchi juice on everything, everywhere. Including me. I had to call my brother-in-law up from the basement to take care of the kimchi (ensuring that it still had enough liquid, salt, spices, etc., since he has also made kimchi) while I cleaned up. We like beets in our kimchi and it took a while for some of the stains to go away. So be careful with this one.

Yogurt

Some friends gifted us an Instant Pot a few years ago. Knowing us, they figured it was a kitchen tool we would end up using a lot and they were quite right. It's become one of the best kitchen devices for this ADHD household, because it automates a lot of things (like cooking rice), reduces the time spent (on things like beans or roasts), and can be started whenever I think about getting dinner ready so it's just ready when we need it. On afternoons when the kids have sports and playdates and whatnot, it's a lifesaver because I put together dinner while they are at school and I have time, ready to be eaten when we get home in the evening.

It also has a yogurt setting, which made me curious. After looking up a few tutorials about how to use it I dove into the world of homemade yogurt. And it turns out to be genuinely pretty easy. The only thing is the timing, because first you have to boil the milk (to get other bacteria out so they don't compete with your yogurt bacteria), then let it cool but not too much!, then go back to add the starter (and anything else you want, like sweetener or vanilla), and then let it sit. Since I've had the best results by letting it sit for 24 hours, that means my IP is out of meal planning for over a day. I need to plan well, since the IP is generally used 5 days out of 7 here for something. But, it's worth it. I can make really decent to excellent yogurt for much cheaper than buying it. Then I save a tiny bit as starter for the next time.

To make Greek style yogurt, it has to be strained. I find this to be sort of a messy process, and only necessary depending on how my family is going to eat the yogurt. If we're eating it as yogurt, we prefer it strained. If it's only going in smoothies or being cooked/baked with, I don't bother to strain it. If you do strain it, don't throw away the whey! It's super good, and quite healthy, and can replace part or all of the liquid in baked goods or pancakes/waffles. It also freezes well, if you won't use it all immediately.

The two big catches to homemade yogurt are that, first, the yogurt loses vitality after a few batches. I'm not sure why this happens, exactly, but I end up buying a little bit of yogurt every once in a while to refresh it. But that's okay because I don't make yogurt all the time anyway, so occasionally I'll find that I saved some starter and it went moldy because the last time I made yogurt was a month ago. Whoops. Yogurt is a cyclical food in our house, where everyone eats a whole bunch for a few weeks and then moves on to other things for a while. If you start making yogurt regularly, maybe you can figure out why it needs fresh store-bought starter every few batches, or if it's simply that I let mine sit in the fridge too long.

Sourdough

When we lived in Fairbanks, a friend gave me a bit of sourdough starter that's one of those ones passed down from generation to generation. I made a few batches of bread and then, of course, killed the starter by leaving it out on the counter, unfed, until it got moldy. Go me. (Don't worry, the original starter was just fine. It's easy to divide and give some away.)

At the start of 2020, hilariously enough, I decided that I was going to really learn how to make sourdough. My family loves sourdough bread, particularly my eldest kid, and while she can't be termed "picky" compared to many kids I know, getting enough food into her is a challenge. So what she will eat, we try to make sure we have in the house.

So I made a sourdough starter, which is pretty easy. Mix flour and water, and let it sit out with a light cloth over it to keep dust out. Feed it more flour and water sometimes. When it bubbles, there you go. Starter! I made a few batches of (rough, but edible) bread, and told a friend about this project. She said that she'd been meaning to do the same thing so I shared my starter with her.

    Sourdough cranberry-orange bread
with salt preserved oranges.

Then the pandemic, and it turned out everyone else decided to try making sourdough as well. LOL. But that meant there were LOTS of tutorials, guides, and recipes being put out there, which is so great. And since I couldn't find commercial yeast in the stores for a long time, this meant that we were still able to make and eat fresh bread. That really got me through 2020, I don't know about you.

I've pared my sourdough routine down to being as simple as possible, because I just don't do fussy. Who's got time? Or energy for that? 

I keep my starter in a large jar. It formerly held olives from Costco, and is probably half a gallon. I try to never let it get below half full because it seems to like having a solid base. Remember, it's a living thing. Or a bunch of living things? Whatever. Just keep it bulked up as much as you can. Occasionally I move it into a clean jar of the same size (olives are another thing my kid likes to eat), and clean all the crusty bits off the old jar and put it back in storage for the next time the current jar grosses me out.

I don't measure the flour and water, I just know the texture of what it should look and feel like while I'm stirring it when I feed it. I also, here, don't fuss with distilled or filtered water. If we were back in Alaska with the crappy hard water I probably would, but here is fine. We have some chlorine in our city water but not enough to make too much difference. However, we also generally have a little bit of water left in the bottom of our electric kettle after making coffee and tea in the morning, so if it's cool enough I reach for that first. Any chemicals have burned off, or gone away with time.

I keep my starter in the fridge almost all the time. I feed it when I use it, then put it back in the fridge. If I remember, in the morning when I'm going to make bread that evening, I pull it out and feed it again so it has time to warm up and get bubbly.

Last, I never discard. I hate the waste, and when I thought about it I couldn't imagine my foremothers--frequently living in poverty or on the edge of food security, worried about famine or getting their kids through the winter--throwing away so much food. Because if you feed and discard even just once a week, that's so much good food going to waste! Yes, there are sourdough discard recipes galore but also...why? If you don't have to discard at all, then you don't need to come up with ways to not waste that starter. So I tried it and, as it turns out, nothing bad happened. In fact my starter seems to like getting big and bulky before I use it. Since I'm using it at least once a week, and frequently more often, this works out fine for me. And it's one less thing to remember.

Some of our favorite sourdough recipes are:

White sandwich bread (I generally do half whole wheat flour) - This is BY FAR the best homemade sandwich bread recipe I've ever tried. It has the texture of store-bought white bread, being not too crumbly while staying soft. But the taste is so much better.
Maple oat sandwich bread - A fantastic toast bread
Sourdough English muffins (big batch)
Sourdough English muffins (small batch)
Crusty Dutch oven sourdough - Delicious paired with soup or stew for dinner.
Sourdough cranberry orange bread
Sourdough pretzels
Sourdough bagels

For the English muffins, I have two recipes depending on if I want a large or small batch. Since our chickens are producing a lot of eggs, one way we enjoy them is as breakfast sandwiches. I'll make a big batch of English muffins and freeze some so we can pull them out as needed. The smaller batch recipe makes muffins with more of the holes, however, so it's really good for toasting up and putting preserves or jam on.

I had a friend over the other day who saw me making the above cranberry orange bread and some English muffins. This friend used to be a professional chef and shuddered at using sourdough. She said she thrives on a fast pace, and waiting for sourdough to ferment takes too long, she loses interest. I also know others with ADHD who've mentioned that sourdough just doesn't work for them. For me, it really works. If I get distracted while sourdough is rising, an extra hour on the counter won't hurt anything. Normal yeast has, to me, much more specific needs on timing. It can be a little tough for someone who struggles with distraction and time blindness to be there at the exact time yeast bread needs to get formed into loaves, or put in the oven. Don't get me wrong, I really like yeasted breads. I enjoy baking them. But not as much as I do sourdough. 

The fact that I can break up sourdough making into small chunks of time and attention required is wonderful. A little bit in the morning, pulling out and feeding the starter. Then nothing until evening (hopefully--if I remembered that I was going to start bread that night; if not, I feed the starter again and set a reminder alarm on my phone for the next evening, and set the starter on the counter in a spot that I can't miss it so I remember to feed it yet again in the morning). The next morning there's no rush, I get around to shaping or cutting or otherwise setting up the second rise whenever I get around to it. Then I go about my business for a few hours, and check on it whenever I happen to be in the kitchen, until it's finally time to bake. If I have to leave and go get the kids, no worries. It'll wait the half hour until we all get home.

A lazy baker's secret: I don't actually preheat the oven. I just stick the bread in, then start it heating up. I generally add 2-5 minutes to the bake time, depending on the recipe, and maybe a little more after that if it needs it. Many of the above recipes call for multiple bake temps and multiple times, and I do some of them. The maple oat bread says to preheat the oven to 400F and then turn it down to 375 when you put the bread in. Um, I don't do that. I just set it to 375 from the start and it turns out great. This also means it doesn't get super dark on top, so I don't have to fuss around with making a foil "tent" for the top of it. So feel free to play around with things like that, rather than taking everything in a recipe as gospel.

I also don't spritz anything with water or use a baking stone. The one recipe above that calls for the baking stone, when I've tried using it (very carefully following the recipe as written, including preheating the oven) my bread has ended up with a large bit of uncooked dough in the center. I'm happy enough to drop the extra steps, and the bread turns out better. Maybe your oven is different, but it works out better for me not to do the fussy parts.

Shaping also doesn't have to be a big production. Shhh, sometimes I just get it into a loaf blob that fits into the pans and call that good. No one has noticed the difference. The stiffer the dough, the more shaping matters. For soft, loose, moist doughs, though, don't do more than you have to.

The few tools I have found necessary: a Dutch oven and loaf pans. A bench scraper really does help a lot, though it's not strictly necessary. A rolling pin, for some things like the English muffins. And I almost always proof my doughs in a mixing bowl with a lid. We got these as a wedding gift and they are insanely useful. I've also used a regular mixing bowl and put the lid to a pot that fits (well enough) over it. For the long bulk ferment that sourdough needs this keeps the dough from drying out far better than anything else, and doesn't create a bunch of unnecessary garbage like plastic wrap and proofing bags.

The friend I mentioned sharing sourdough starter with? She shared it back with me when I once again left mine on the counter until it got moldy a few months ago. Go me.

Salt Preserved Lemons

A couple of years ago my kids begged and begged and begged me to make lemonade from real lemons. So I bought a big bag of lemons at Costco, and we did. But then I had a big bag of fresh lemons and no idea what to do with them. I made lemon curd (THE BEST!!) but I'm the only one in the house who eats it so I didn't make much. I looked around for other ways to preserve lemons and, aside from the million and one ways to freeze lemon juice and/or zest, I found recipes for salt preserved lemons. Wut? I'd never heard of them before but was willing to give it a go. And it turns out it's really easy. Basically, put a teaspoon of salt in the bottom of a glass jar. (I use an old peanut butter jar.) Then put in a layer of lemon slices, peel and all, and more salt. Keep going until the jar is full, topping with salt. Make sure the lemons are under the level of the juices, adding a bit of water if necessary. Let sit out for a couple of days until they've fermented, then put it all in the fridge until you want to eat it. Ta-da! There are tons of recipes to use them. I've even used a slice or two instead of lemon zest in recipes, including cookies. I just omit the salt when I do so. It works surprisingly well.

I know there are preserved lemon and pasta recipes out there. I need to find those and try them.

This year I've expanded and made some salt preserved oranges. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with them but I'll figure out a use.

Kombucha

Last spring my entire family caught a nasty tummy bug. I mean nasty. Short-lived, thankfully, but absolutely wretched to experience. Everything hurt for 24-48 hours and nothing could be kept down, or in. I'm so thankful my brother didn't catch it, because he ended up watching the kids while both of us parents were sick at the same time.

After, for many weeks, my stomach hurt every time I ate. I thought it would go away but, like clockwork, half an hour after each meal or snack my stomach would start cramping up until I was doubled over with pain. That's no way to live, and even worse is trying to parent through that. I finally realized that the only times I ate that didn't cause excruciating pain were when I ate anything fermented, particularly still live ferments like yogurt, kimchi, and saurkraut. As best I can figure, being so horribly ill upset my gut microbiome in a way that made digestion difficult, and live ferments added back the things I needed. But I needed to keep eating them so they could repopulate my system.

    Kombuch with the mother on top,
and vinegar fermenting.

I started eating a lot of those fermented foods, even just as a side, with each meal. But they got old and tiring, eating the same things at least three times a day. Four, if I had a snack. I was at the store one day and saw bottles of kombucha, remembered that it's fermented tea, and decided to try some. Delicious. But also, expensive. I would treat myself to one each week, generally spread out over two days (since I needed a little bit of fermented something at each meal to avoid pain).

Since it's pricey, I started looking into how to make my own. Like many of these things I had tried it once before but didn't keep up with it. This time, however, I had the incentive of making my stomach not hurt. So I used this guide and pretty soon I was making my own. At first I made plain kombucha, which is plenty good on its own. But I missed the flavored ones I'd been buying and wanted to play around with that. By happenstance, I made strawberry top syrup (from the tops of strawberries I'd used to make jam) and thought that it would probably go really well in the kombucha, with no fruit parts to strain out later. I was correct, and over the summer I made several types of fruit syrup. Good on pancakes, good in kombucha. 

For bottling, I use the flip-top bottles we already have from brewing beer and cider. They are, like David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, under pressure. It's important to not just use any old bottle but one made to handle the forces of carbonation. Otherwise you'll end up with a kombucha explosion and glass everywhere. If you ever buy it from the store, take note of how thick the glass bottles are.

    Fresh kombucha on the counter
for the secondary fermentation. It'll
go in the fridge in a few days.
In the meantime, I cover it with a
cloth so the light doesn't bother it.

Kombucha is the only one of my ferments which makes a "mother" SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria & Yeast) and she often has "daughters". I generally use a strainer over the cup I pour it into (I almost never drink a whole bottle at a time) so I don't accidentally drink the daughters. They won't hurt you, and might even be good for you?  But it's got a rather mucus-y texture if you drink it straight that is unpleasant, so I try to avoid it getting in my drink.

Since it has a tendency to make daughters, however, that makes it super easy to share. I've given several daughters away that friends then turned into their own full SCOBYs to make kombucha for themselves. It's fun to pass kombucha around the group to try all the different flavors that everyone experiments with. One friend prefers making kombucha with yerba mate and while that's not generally to my taste there have been some epic flavor combos, like yerba mate kombucha with blood orange. Yum!

I'm pleased to say that my stomach problems cleared up, although at the time it seemed to take forever. I'm continuing to eat as many fermented and live foods as I can, however, to ensure it doesn't happen again if at all possible.

Vinegar

This year I'm trying to make my own vinegar. Apple cider vinegar, to be precise, from some of the cider that we made last fall. So far I've made an acceptable dry hard cider, to which I added a Tbsp of raw cider vinegar not too long ago. Making real ACV, rather than scrap apple vinegar (which is most of what you'll see if you search for "how to make apple cider vinegar", and which I've made before), is a fairly long process, but I'm hopeful it'll be worthwhile. I realize that ACV is not exactly expensive, nor do we need tons of it each year. I'm only making a half gallon. BUT, it's something fun to try, and we happened to have both extra cider and the dregs of a raw vinegar to use.

I've seen other recipes for how to make vinegars that look fun and interesting to try, and I'll probably branch out in the future. Particularly to make into things like salad dressing, it would be fun to have a variety of small batch vinegars around.

Are we nuts?

When it's all written out like this, it seems like the work of crazy people. Why do so much extra work? I can't even assure you that we aren't nuts, because we're all a little mad. However, it seems like more work when it's written out like this than it is in real life. And a lot of the work is stuff that we find enjoyable. I like making sourdough, and so I've made it part of my routine. I like making yogurt and kombucha, and my partner likes making saurkraut and kimchi. If we didn't like it we would quit. And there are plenty of times we don't do these things. The last couple times we've had yogurt in the house I just bought a big tub of it, because it's spring and I have limited time. Making yogurt was not worth it at that moment, but it will be again. Many of these things are also made seasonally, like the vegetable and fruit ferments. It would be silly to buy a bunch of expensive lemons out of season to preserve them, I do that in winter when they're cheap. Saurkraut only gets made when we've got a purple cabbage that's ready to go, and even then we only make kraut if we're running low. Same for kimchi, which tends to get made once or possibly twice a year, then kept in the fridge while we eat it down. This, by the way, is why our fridge usually looks so full.

It's nice to have skills that we can depend on even if we don't have to. If there's another yeast shortage then I probably won't notice because I'm already using wild yeasts most of the time anyway.  If nothing like that happens again (please!) then at least we get to enjoy the benefits of good, healthy foods, as well as the joy of making them.

Meet the flock

 We got chickens this year. It's been something I've wanted for well over a decade now, but my husband was adamant that we'd never get chickens. Never never never. Thankfully, he loves me enough that he finally relented. And what do you know, he's often the one out there talking to the birds and holding his favorite!

Because I had so much time to dream about chickens, it also gave me plenty of time to decide what breeds of birds I wanted. I had three main criteria. First, that they be gentle and good with people, because we have kids. Second, they had to be good egg layers. And third, I wanted at least one or two birds that laid pretty eggs. For the kids, and because it's just fun. The breeds I eventually settled on are Plymouth Rock, Black Australorp, and Easter Egger. 

I have heard many, many horror stories of people ordering chicks through the mail only to get a package full of (or at least half full of) dead baby chickens. Awful. When the "no" turned into a "yes" this spring, I looked for a local-ish farm that sells chicks and found one in Fall City, about a 45-60 minute drive away. To make it even more fun, we didn't tell our kids what we had decided. (This is how we've gotten our last two dogs as well, so I suspect they'll catch onto this pattern pretty soon.) The day we went was a school day for our older kid, but our younger one came with us, knowing we were doing something that would be fun at some point, after the loooooong and boring drive.

I wish I had a picture of her face when we arrived at the farm and she saw all the birds. They had way more than just chickens, so we got to look at ducks, quail, geese, and many other birds, both adult and baby. 

And then my girl figured out that we were not just looking at chicks, but picking some out to bring home. The joy, people. ALL the joy! The young woman working there helped my daughter pick out chicks, and skillfully redirected her away from one that was "a bit sleepy"--in other words, a baby chick that likely won't live. But my 5-year-old doesn't know that. We got six chicks (two of each breed) and carefully transported them home.

We didn't tell our older kid what we'd done when we picked her up from school. I just told her to go get something out of the master bath, where we were storing the chicks temporarily in a tote. (They need to stay warm, around 90F, and in winter that tiny bathroom was where we figured we could regulate the temperature the best while also giving the chicks some natural light.) My kids spent the rest of the afternoon delightedly watching their new chicks hop around, cooing over all the little noises they made, giggling at them. 100%, the chicks were worth it just for that afternoon alone. 

Mind you, this hasn't been what I'd call easy. Adding more animals/pets to our household has meant a bunch of changes and coordination. Who will feed and care for them if we go camping for a week? What are we going to do about them getting out of their run all the time? (An ongoing problem--mostly because they love our neighbor's yard.) We've had to figure out a bunch of it as we went along, and move or change things around as we realize that something doesn't work. 

There was also all of the work to put up the coop, which first meant tearing down a rotting, awful wood shed one of the previous owners of our house built. Several times while disassembling it I put my foot through the floorboards, it was so rotten. We made a new area for our firewood (for the backyard fire pit) on one side of our shed. Then we had to level and mulch the ground, THEN we could finally build the coop and run. It took a couple of months, and meanwhile the chicks were in a box in our living room.

While at times not ideal it hasn't been the worst project we've undertaken, and it's been both an interesting and a fun journey overall. The learning opportunities for the whole family have been immense. For example, the old saying that "birds of a feather flock together" really holds true. While they all like to be a group, which is what I thought the saying meant, this is especially true of the breeds, who like to pair up together. Birds of a feather, not just a species.

There is also a pecking order, though mild. None of the birds has been bullied particularly. It's just that there is a pretty clear leader, with her breed-companion enforcer. (It's the Barred Rocks.)

We got six birds and there are, generally speaking, six people who live in our household. (My brother-in-law splits his time between us and my in-laws in Alaska, so it's about 50-50 whether he's here or not.) That meant everyone got to name a bird. They are: Cluckinator (Plymouth Rock), Waffles (Plymouth Rock), Sunny (Easter Egger), Hotdog (Easter Egger), Ithacus (Black Australorp), and Rick James (Black Australorp). Any guesses who named each bird?

They are heritage breeds, so while there are breeds that start laying by 18 weeks, these ladies needed some more time. With the falling daylight going into winter it's a bit iffy how many eggs they'll lay this first year. Our fault, we got them late in the spring because it took so long for us to decide that yes, this year is the year. But that's okay, and we're really just stoked to be getting any eggs at all. Right now it's roughly 3 eggs per day, although I suspect one of them might be laying in the neighbor's yard when they go over the fence and we just haven't found the "nest" yet. This has happened before. For a while Cluckinator was coming up on the porch to lay her eggs in a box we'd set out for recycling. Ithacus was escaping the run to lay eggs in a mulch pile, until she got caught out there during a thunder storm. I went out after the worst of the rain had passed and she was just standing there looking distressed. I picked her up to put her in the run and that was when I realized I could understand sad chicken noises. She hasn't laid eggs in the mulch again, and in fact she's happily using an old enclosed cat litter box that I filled with hay and stuffed in the coop, as are the others we know are laying.

We have figured that at 3 eggs per day we likely will not have to buy eggs from the store anymore. Of course we can happily eat more eggs than that (husband and I can go through four eggs at breakfast by ourselves) but that's our minimum. We'll see how that theory holds up.

Building the coop

Yeah, but is it worth the money?

I don't have an answer for this one yet, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to truly answer this until at least year 3. Right now we've had all of the upfront costs with very few of the monetary benefits (in the form of eggs). We had to build the coop, which was not hugely expensive but it wasn't free either. We bought some fencing for the run. We've been feeding them for over 6 months.

I'm a nerd, so I have been tracking the costs. All the coop and run expenses, the feed, all of that. And on the same spreadsheet I've got a section to keep track of the eggs. Last, I have a section to keep track of the average cost of grocery store eggs in my area each month AND the price I would pay for more ethically raised eggs, just for comparison. As I said, I'm a nerd. It's not like we're going to get rid of the chickens, but I still want to know.

We have done our best to keep costs down. Many of the materials for the coop have been sourced from the 75% off bin at the local big box hardware store, and some of it (most of the concrete footers) were actually a Buy Nothing score. The wood chip mulch we put down in the run was from our last Chipdrop, and was free. We feed the chickens scraps from the house (stale bread, leftover rice or plain cooked beans that were pushed to the back and forgotten, apple cores, vegetable peelings and ends, etc.), weeds and fruits scavenged from the neighborhood (dandelion greens, knotweed, fallen apples or plums, invasive blackberries, invasive knotweed, oxalis, and more). They also get a lot of stuff from the garden, like chard and kale, or tomatoes that squirrels half-chewed before abandoning, the ends of beans that I cut off. I've learned that I can't grow my zucchini or cabbages too close to the garden fence because if the chickens get out, they'll stick their heads through the fence and eat those. Several cabbages had the hearts chewed out by the chickens so the rest of the plant was cut out and tossed in the run, to much delighted warbling from the birds. A few zucchinis have had their ends lopped off and the half-eaten part tossed in for the birds as well. The birds got the sunflowers I grew, and they go nuts for the insides of pumpkins/winter squash. The amount of "waste" from the house and garden that goes to the chickens is astonishing, really. We try not to have much, if any, waste, but it happens. So the birds get the bread crusts my little one refuses to eat, or the last sad end of a hotdog bun that wasn't eaten. I've also tossed a handful of oats in our cast iron skillet to soak up the fat from something we cooked, then tossed the whole mess to the chickens for a treat.

Box chicken laying an egg

For the winter I'm growing a bunch of kale, much of which is destined to be given to the chickens as a high vitamin, quality food supplement that they go crazy for. Since many greens are something one either has not enough or too much of, I don't even feel bad. I grow plenty of chard for my family's needs, it's the excess that goes to the chickens. Or the beet greens do, which we don't particularly care for. (They taste soapy to us.) I have a variety of winter lettuce this year that's doing pretty well even after all the hard frosts, but some of the outer leaves have been damaged due to cold and those go to the chickens as well. In this way, the chickens are increasing the efficiency of what I grow, since less of it is going directly to the compost.

Because we share so much food with the chickens we've only had to buy five bags of grain feed for them so far, the last one of which is less than half gone. And I'm looking into more ways to feed them for free, or things that can be grown in and around their run to feed them. I have big plans for how I want to change my yard for next year, and a lot of it is centered around the feature that is the coop and run. Since chickens were understory jungle birds originally, they still enjoy the feeling of being surrounded and covered by trees and shrubs. I'll have even happier birds next year if their area feels more forest-y, and if they have more to forage for themselves.

Secondary benefits

In addition to reducing our household waste and providing eggs, chickens are one of the best ways we have, at our house, to make compost. Their run is made mostly of wood chips (carbon), which is being combined with their poop (high in nitrogen) and the greens or other food scraps they don't totally finish eating (nitrogen). Add water from the rain and the stirring action of their scratching, and the run is one large compost pile. It's breaking down remarkably fast and by spring any compost I need will likely be sourced from the run, shoveled out and sifted. We have wood chips in reserve so occasionally I throw more into the run, covering up the weeds they didn't care to eat and throwing on more carbon to keep everything in balance. It also gives the chickens a treat in the form of worms and insects to search for and eat. I don't even have to spread it out, just dump in a few buckets of mulch for them to scratch through. Happy birds.

Not having to buy compost will help make my garden even more impactful in terms of money saved, even when factoring in the costs of chicken feed, and it will help boost the output of my garden as well. From my perspective it's a massive win-win. I know there are "veganic" gardeners who manage to do it all without domesticated animals and more power to them, but this is what is working best for us.

Sorry for the poor food photography
but I've never seen such orange
scrambled eggs before.

In even less tangible benefits, the chickens are just fun. The whole family has been having fun watching them, laughing about their antics. Ooh-ing and ahh-ing over each egg, the collection of which simply hasn't gotten old yet and maybe never will. When my brother and niece were recently visiting my niece had a ball looking in the coop for eggs, and my brother joked about getting chickens. (That's how it starts....) 

They have been, at times, a lot of work. We're learning how to do this and that will always be work. For a while they were roosting on the roof of the coop and, scared that the racoons that live nearby would eat them, we had to pull them off the roof each night and shove them in the coop before closing it up. That problem was only fixed by making the roof inaccessible to them with fencing, and has reduced quite a bit of the work. If we can keep them in the run that will reduce the work to benefit ratio down to the point that the work of the chickens is, for us, negligible. So far it's been roughly 50-50, with me definitely weighing the "fun" portion of that heavier. It's hard not to when my kids have spent whole afternoons gleefully watching chicks. 

Last spring I took them to my older daughter's class for show and tell, and it was amazing. It's a very poor urban school, a Title 1 school that offers free breakfast and lunch to all kids because the poverty rate is so high. When I was standing off to the side waiting to introduce the chicks (I only brought 3), the tote started peeping and the little boy closest to me looked over with the most amazed, delighted expression to ask, "Is that the chickens?" I said yes and he had the BIGGEST grin on his face. I'm not sure I'll ever forget that moment. Again, 100% worthwhile just to introduce some city kids to livestock for the first time ever, in many cases.

Drawbacks

Leader of the flock, Clucks

I already talked about the work and the learning curve we're experiencing. The other big drawback so far has been rats. I'm not certain this is entirely a chicken problem, since I've seen evidence of rats in our yard for several years. We even saw one scurrying off our porch in broad daylight several years ago, after it had chewed a hole in a bag of dog food. This also seems to be a particularly rat infested year. I've seen multiple complaints on local gardening pages from people saying they've never had rat problems before this year, and two different families have complained to me about the rats that started nesting in their attic. As if all that wasn't enough, port towns are rather known for having rat problems due to the nature of shipping. So, it's not just us. 

However it is a known thing that having chickens will attract rats and mice. They're drawn to the easy food. While I'm doing what I can to minimize that, like keeping the chicken feed in a rat-proof metal bin and keeping the feeder inside the coop, those bold MFers have been seen going in and out of the coop to steal feed.

For the first time ever I've felt the need for rat traps. I bait it with a bit of chicken feed and leave it just at the entrance to their burrows. It's been, sadly, highly successful. If I was willing to go that route I could feed them to the chickens, who have eaten rat corpses a few times when they escaped. (Disposing of just the head, caught in the trap, was both morbid and distressing.) But I'm too concerned about disease to want to make that a common practice. We put them in the same compost digester that we put dog poop in (with layers of mulch), because that compost will never be used in the garden and won't be used at all for a long time.

Dogs and Chickens

We were a bit concerned about how the dogs and chickens would take to each other. Not so much about our old man dog, who we frequently joke doesn't count as a dog anyway, but the puppy. She was sooooo excited for the chickens, guys, just soooooo excited!!!! When they were chicks we had to keep her from leaping into their box a few times. But as they've gotten bigger she's become much more respectful. My brothers' dogs also respect the chickens. My younger brother has a bird dog who just wanted to love the chickens please until the first time she got pecked on the snout. Now she gives the birds a wide berth, though she still watches them interestedly. She just doesn't try to get at them.

The only dog that has been a problem, honestly, is my in-laws' tiny spaniel. I doubt she could to much to the chickens but she certainly does agitate them. She doesn't seem to be wary of them at all. It makes the birds nervous. Mostly I think she's just set off by the rats, whom she's out to eliminate (yes please!), but the chickens aren't smart enough to know that.

This is not to say that the young dogs (mine, my older brother's, and my younger brother's) don't like to play with the chickens. All of them very much enjoy pouncing at the fence when the chickens are close to it, just to make the birds flutter and cluck. But it's good-natured and the chickens seem to know that because they don't otherwise act scared of the dogs. Nor do the dogs actually chase the chickens most of the time, leaving the birds alone when they escape the run. 

Our puppy, hilariously, seems to enjoy herding the chickens and has collected them up on our porch a number of times, acting very proud despite the fact that I've told her I really don't want porch chickens.

So...worth it?

Yes, it really has been. If you have the space and time, I cannot recommend it enough. There's a reason the crazy chicken lady comes close after the crazy cat lady, although I do promise not to change my decor over to chicken stuff. But they've been a great addition to our lives and I'm happy we tried this. I love going out in the evenings to close up the coop, hearing their soft coos and clucks as they sleep. I love hearing an egg song outside and knowing that one of them is strutting because she just laid an egg. And I really love the eggs.

The Phoenix

 "This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning." - St. Augustine

It has been a long time since I've felt like writing much. Well, that's not true. Everything I write has seemed trite and insubstantial. What can I say that is meaningful in the face of what the world around us all has become? My words won't stop school shootings, reverse climate change, fix our dysfunctional political and justice system. What can I say in the face of such large, seemingly intractable problems?

I also haven't wanted to write much since my mom died. Watching someone die, being there for the death vigil, is a profoundly transformative experience, and even though it's been almost two years I'm still processing it. And it's really hard to talk about because how do you describe what it's like to help usher your parent to the end of their existence? There were many wonderful moments, actually, with my brothers and a cousin, who lives nearby and was able to join us for parts of the 3-day vigil. There were also some deeply moving moments while I waited for the family to assemble, when it was just me and my mom. I read out loud to her, just in case any part of her was still there and able to take comfort from my voice. I held her hand when I could. I learned that, even though I'd been reassuring her we would be fine without her and that she could let go, a big part of me would never be okay again. 

Columbine amid strawberries,
bluebells, tulips, and a grape trellis.

I have been forced into learning true acceptance, particularly of the fact that I will never have answers to many questions that I never thought to ask before it became too late.

I had to forgive, all at once, the ways in which we were imperfect together and to each other. She was not a perfect mom and I am a far from perfect daughter. I apologized to her, mostly for coming too late to an understanding of all the sacrifices she made for us, for me, and the choices she made. It wasn't until becoming a mother myself that I began to really understand my mom, which happened when we were already losing her to Alzheimer's.

I've spent a lot of time over the last two years meditating on death and life, and what is meaningful. One of the ways I think the best is while working in my garden. It's an incredible activity to do while thinking of death, because gardening is an inherently life giving, sustaining, and building activity. It's an act of hope. And I really need those things right now. In the face of all the horrible things I can't control, I can at least make my insignificant patch of earth better. Better for every creature that lives on and around this property, right down to the soil microbes.

All those white things are blueberry flowers.

Last summer's garden was awful. After about three years of only taking from the garden, giving not much back, the soil was pretty spent. I frantically searched for answers on how to make it better and landed on going back to basics: feed the soil. I mulched heavily, and went to convoluted lengths not to use straight tap water on the garden. (It might have helped that my kids broke our big sprinkler that covered the whole garden.) When we ran out of rain water I filled barrels with tap water to let it sit for a few days and get most of the chemicals out of it before putting it on the garden. It did seem to help, and we're working on putting in even more rain water storage.

I also did something that I considered pretty absurd before--I made my own "fertilizer" or weed tea. Grass clippings, dandelion leaves, worm poop from the vermicompost system, egg shells, even shrimp shells when we had some, all went into a bucket with rain water to sit and ferment. I started adding that to the garden and 

and

it worked. I honestly didn't expect it to, but it really did. Just a small amount, about a cup in a 2-gallon watering can, helped struggling plants. Tomatoes stopped getting blossom end rot, and I was able to actually get a decent harvest. Squashes that were almost dead burst back to life and produced. Everywhere I used this magical, horribly smelly weed "tea" life flooded back to the garden. I fed the soil and the soil started feeding us again. I made more weed tea over the winter, and have been watering all my new crops in with it to start them off in the right way. Once again it does appear to be working its magic.

Overview of the main garden.
Looks very mulchy and brown
but underneath is rich,
dark soil.

I'm also seeing even more the benefits of the work I did last year with mulches. At the end of spring I laid down a fair amount of homemade compost, but only on a few rows because that's all I had. Some of the best I saved for seed starting. My garlic/tomato/sunflower row, at the back, got some of the worst, least finished compost. It is honestly mostly unfinished woodchip mulch. I was hoping that, since there was so much time between that mulching (Jan/Feb) and the planting of tomatoes (May) it would break down some more, but it looked like nothing more than a bed of large wood chips when I went to plant. But the garlic is doing well so I crossed my fingers. On tomato planting day I dug down a couple of inches and marveled at how dark, rich, and friable the soil there suddenly was. The wood mulch was all on top, protecting the soil underneath. The mulches from last year are almost entirely broken down into beautiful soil, with a good layer of fresh mulch on top now to protect it. Even after almost a week of hot, sunny days and no rain, the soil under the mulch is beautifully damp.

The homemade compost was just what was in our round yard waste bin, which is not a hot compost system. This means that it had a ton of weed seeds waiting to germinate. But, it also meant that the lettuce seeds I tried to save and accidentally threw in there were perfectly viable. So were a few chard seeds that went through. I have volunteer lettuce popping up among my tomatoes, squashes, peppers, and brassicas. It's an old adage that you shouldn't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. Well, in the garden I don't believe in interrupting food plants that want to grow. Even if they're not where I wanted them to be, who am I to argue with them about where they should grow? If they're easy to separate then I will happily put them where they're "meant" to be, but otherwise they can grow in their chosen place. This especially works with lettuce,

Sugar pie pumpkin with
volunteer lettuce understory.

which is a short-lived crop in summer so it won't take too much root space or nutrients from its companions. (And hopefully this time I'll be able to actually save the seed instead of accidentally dumping it in the compost.) 

I start most of my plants in old plastic tubs and containers that I've saved--from small yogurt cups to large Costco-sized sour cream containers for the squashes. Tomatoes are mostly in papery milk jugs with the tops cut off, because tomatoes have roots that grow deep but not particularly wide. There was plenty of space on top for the accidental lettuce seeds, but also to purposefully double-plant with companion herbs or flowers for some crops. Last year I accidentally dropped a couple of carrot seeds in with some tomatoes and they not only germinated but those were the two best carrots I grew all summer. This year I companion planted carrots with tomatoes in a more purposeful way. It's not a ton of carrots, I have more in a separate row, but since there's the space and it's worked well before, why not? Basil (Genovese, tulsi, and Thai) were companion planted with other tomatoes and with peppers. One pepper got a nasturtium, which is growing beautifully and will help draw pollinators to the garden when it starts to bloom. Not all crops came up in every container--a few squashes never germinated for example--so it's nice to have not wasted the soil/compost and my time/effort. That zucchini might not have come up in that pot but there are some beautiful lettuces and a basil there instead, so it wasn't at all a loss.

Leaf on the right is severely slug damaged,
leaf on the left is after I started
picking slugs out of the garden.

Feeding the soil has helped in many ways, but it can't help with all the pests. Slugs have been absolutely wrecking my garden, having mowed down my first two successions of brassicas in their entirety. I've been going out pretty much every evening and every early morning to pick slugs off my crops and drop them into a jar of soapy water to drown. My goal is, in fact, total slug eradication. In my garden. They're welcome to live elsewhere. Of course this will never happen, and every day I find dozens more slugs. But I've also got brassicas and peas that will actually live to produce food, so I'm content with my efforts.

The one crop that I won't put in the garden anymore is my Napa cabbage. I've started so. many. of them over the past couple of years and have yet to harvest a single one because of the damn slugs. Apparently Napa cabbage is like slug heroin, and even a larger plant will get eaten to death in one night. This year I'm growing it in food safe buckets in the

Napa cabbage in the greenhouse

 greenhouse. I get the buckets by asking for old frosting buckets from the grocery store bakeries when I'm there. (These are also what I'm making my weed "tea" in.)

The next major change we had to do was to put a fence around my garden. Between us and my siblings we've had four puppies regularly running around the yard over the last three years, and for not insignificant stretches (weeks) we've had FIVE DOGS in our house due to dogsitting for friends and family. Yelling at dogs to get out of the damn garden! and chasing after them was clearly not working, nor was having me plant something and then cry because the dogs ran through again and dug it all up. That's why I didn't have any kind of a winter garden recently, because it got run over and dug up until I gave up. So, a fence was a necessity. My wonderful brother made it for me out of materials we already had. I resisted a fence for a long time because I worried about the shade it would cast, but now I've fully embraced it as the opportunity it is. I can grow vertically, and use its support for tall things like my sunflowers. My peas, sugar pie pumpkins (with extra support), zucchini, beans, and acorn squash (with

Troublemakers!

support) can all grow up the fence, instead of requiring complicated or secondary trellising. I'm also adding more flowers to the vegetable garden this year, instead of keeping them segregated, and nasturtiums will grow beautifully up the fence. My brother put a decorative wooden trellis over the gate, and I've got a nasturtium planted there. Hopefully by late summer it will all be as beautiful as it is productive.

The final big change this year is that we got chickens. For so, so many reasons, not least of which was my younger daughter asking when we could go back to visit my aunt in Maine because "I want to feed the chickens again". The kids didn't know we were getting chickens until the day it happened, and it's made them so happy. They have spent hours staring into the box where the chicks are being kept until we get the coop set up. They'll pop up at random times and declare, "I'm going to go check on the chickens!" and run over there. We haven't officially named the chicks yet--we were going to wait until they get their adult feathers, in part because we didn't want one of them to die and then have to deal with a child whose baby chick that they named had died. Thankfully no chicks have died, and unofficially the kids have claimed the two Easter Eggers as theirs and named them. (Hot Dog and Sunny.) As we have six chicks and six people in the house (with my brother and brother-in-law), we each get to name one.

They're so cute!

The chickens, in addition to weed control and eggs, will be an excellent source of compost. They'll feed the humans and the soil, and the good soil will feed us humans even more. I'm very excited for all of it. Wondering where to put the chicken shit is, in this case, a very good problem to have.

My garden is imperfect, as all gardens are. The mint and bindweed have found their way back in and despite thoroughly going through to dig out mint in the worst rows, it's everywhere. But that's okay. The corn is starting to pop up between the mint anyway, so it's going to be fine.

I'm still working my way out of the soil deficit I built for myself but it's rewarding to see my hard work paying off, and to know that I'm helping to create even more life around me. After all my meditations on death, I've come to the conclusion that my purpose, at any rate, is to foster as much life as I can, no matter how tiny that life may be. I think that's a pretty good purpose, and one my parents would be very proud of.