MamaStories

My growth chart now looks like this:

Yes, that’s a x 7. Horrible, this early in the game! The spinaches, lettuces and chards that had germinated were eaten by a mouse!

That sets us back by only (?) a week, but I must say it was quite upsetting to come into the basement and find only stems sheared of all those beautiful little leaves.

I guess that means we have mice in the basement and I need to trap them.  I’ll get some traps tomorrow. The celery is under cover, so it’s safe, and the onions don’t seem to be very popular.

Our friends left a couple of hours ago after a wonderful time filled with chatting, cooking, eating, and a huge snowball fight. We’ll return to our usual programming tomorrow.

Friends are coming to visit for a couple of days, and I doubt I will have the time, or the inclination, to interrupt the fun we always have to post here. But before I go, a few notes:

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Turns out that the bobcat I heard a couple of weeks ago was most likely a fisher cat. My neighbor saw one crossing the street this morning and immediately fired off an email to let me know. And it clicked, because Suldog had raised this possibility in his comment to my post. Apparently fishers make that haunting sound during mating season, though they’re also know to make it when they’re trapped or attacking. No bobcat, then, but pretty wild anyway!

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I’ve signed two petitions in the last two days.

1. One for allowing chickens in Cambridge, Mass. (there’s a blog article about it here, and the petition is here).
2. The other for allowing the sale of raw milk by a dairy farm in Framingham, Mass (about raw milk in Massachusetts, click here, and here, and to sign the petition, click here).

There’s a Food Revolution and I’m on it!

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I totally missed the “Focus on Feeders,” which the Mass Audubon Society organized this year on 6 and 7 February. But I am thinking about sending one or two photos to their amateur photo contest. Here’s a selection (click for larger):

They are: Black-Capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, Downy and Hairy Woodpecker side-by-side, female Northern Cardinal and Red-Breasted Woodpecker (photo taken yesterday).

I like the first two because of their wintry atmosphere: the birds seem cloaked in the snow-laden sky. The Grosbeak was such an exception at my feeders, and I love the color of his breast. The Hairy Woodpecker (the large one) is so darn ugly; even his eye looks scruffy! But it was great to see the two kinds side by side. The female Cardinal gives us such a stern look, and look at the soft colors of her belly. And that last picture is just so vivid.

Do you have any favorites?

Amie has taken to writing me letters – she’s been watching My Neighbor Totoro, in which the oldest girl writes letters to her mother. I can’t come anywhere near her when she is writing. “Don’t look!” she says – not aware, perhaps, that I can hear her perfectly as she sounds out what she is spelling!

(Dear Mama I had an exciting day how are your days)

(Dear Mama I love you are you okay I am okay thank you for the message love Amie)

(Dear Mama I am at the airplane woops I am at the school had to hop off the airplane)

As you can see she is using invented spelling and I am letting her, though in my responses  I of course use the American English spelling, and I take the opportunity to discuss some words. In her first note, for instance, she wrote “deer Mama”. In the second and third one she had corrected it to “dear”.

What a treat this is! I stick the notes in my journal, and she keeps mine in a special box.

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Today is the Valentine’s party at Amie’s preschool. We got the dreaded note on Monday: “Please have your child bring 20 Valentine’s cards to school on Friday.” So all of this week we worked on the cards, handmade entirely out of scrap paper. Last year I’d say I did 75% of the work, this year only about 30%.  Next year, I told her, she’d be responsible 100%. Amie also made cards for her teachers, and she wrote their names on the back: Meree (Mary), Soosin and Soosin, and Raylee. Of course I forgot to take a picture, just like last year.

Happy Valentine’s Party Day!

Lots of herbs have to be started early. So I started them:

1. Greek Oregano (*) x12
2. Sweet Marjoram (*) 3 rows
3. Rosemary (*) x13
4. True Lavender (*) x12
5. Lemon Balm x12
6. Lovage x12
7. Valerian x 12
8. Mints: Bee Balm 3 rows
9. Mints: Common 3 rows
10. Mints: Pennyroyal 3 rows

Luckily most of these (not the *) germinate at temperatures around 60F, so they don’t take up space on the heat mat.

It’s great to know, this time around, that the beds are ready, for all of them. All my herbs last year were stuck in pots and, though I did get to harvest the culinary ones, they never really thrived.

I put the Echinacea seeds into the freezer to stratify them. If I sow them in warm soil in 3 or so weeks, they’ll break dormancy and germinate, I hope.

In the interest of record keeping, I started the following growth chart (IN and OUT means sowed inside, or direct seeded outside):

Let’s see if I can keep this kind of record keeping up. If so, think of how colorful it will be in a few months! I’ll see if I can make it a public document, so you can see the updated one at any time.

The first of that big snowstorm assailing the East Coast has flurried in, and so did the flocks of birds. I’ve noticed that the regulars – the flocks of snowbirds, sparrows, finches and mourning doves, and the lone cardinals and blue jays – come out to the feeder when it starts snowing. Maybe it is something about filling the belly before it all gets covered?

Today, though, the largest flock by far was made up of Robins. They flew in en masse right before the snow started falling. About two dozen of them foraged in the leaves and straw, and ate the berries off the bushes near the feeder.

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The seeds are safe and snug in the basement. My hands are itching to tuck some more in, but I am going to stagger sowing this year. Let’s see how long I can manage to hold off!

Of course we could also stagger eating. At least the lettuces and spinach, no? Mm…

It took me three hours to wash all the plugs and containers from last year. Or should I say, another three hours? I had washed them at the end of last  season, but storing them on the screened-in porch turned out to be not a good idea. So I washed and scrubbed in a bucket of water, dipped into a bucket of water+chlorine, rinsed in a bucket of water, dipped into a fresh bucket of water+chlorine (really don’t want pathogens in that tiny, contained micro-climate that will soon house most of my vegetable garden of 2010!), and rinsed in fresh water again. Let drip.

This is the collection of recycled containers – there are more than it seems from the pictures:

With the 50 or so peat pots left over from last year, I think I’ll be all set. I do love those green containers that mushrooms come in: they’re strong, the right depth, and because they’re rectangular, they waste less space in the rectangular setup. 8 of them snugly fit one flat.

I did have to buy two new heavy-duty reservoir trays, which at $10 a pop will have to last me many, many years. The ones from last year are so leaky. They were the flimsy plastic kind that comes with the plug sheets, and got banged around quite a bit, from rack to bench to hardening-off area to garden, and back. So I won’t be using them for bottom-watering my seedlings, only of holding the seedlings on the light rack. I was thinking of punching holes into the leakiest ones and planting large batches of lettuce in them.

I installed the heat mat plus thermostat on the bottom shelf (the heat will rise and warm up the rest of the rack), but I won’t be using it yet: all the seedlings so far like my basement’s temperature (a constant 56F).

Here’s a wishlist for my potting area:

1. clock
2. radio
3. brush
4. trash can

And what went in?

1. Olympia spinach (an incredible 38 days to harvest!) 2 x 10
   
2. Longstanding Bloomsdale spinach (last year’s seed) (42) x 11
3. Tom Thumb Bibb lettuce (46) x 20
   
4. Cracoviensis lettuce (last year’s) (47) x 20
5. Winter lettuce mix (50) x 20
6. Bright Lights chard (last year’s) (56) x 8
7. Bright Lights chard (56) x 8
   
8. Safir cutting celery (60) x 24
9. Ventura celery x (80) 24
10. Redventure celery (last year’s) (84) x 24
11. Brilliant celeriac (89) x 10
12. Clear Dawn onion (last year’s) (104) x 20
13. Clear Dawn onion (this year’s) (104) x 30

If my last frost date is 3 May (according to NOAA, there’s 50% chance of a later date at 32F; you can find this info here), then I’m sowing 13 weeks (oops) 12 weeks before the last frost date (BLFD). A bit early, I know, but I’ve got season extenders. I’m growing in raised beds (always a bit warmer, earlier), and I’ll be warming the soil in those beds with black plastic, and they’ll be covered with a hoop house and/or cold frames and/or extra row cover.

The first seven batches (those in italics) are so hardy, they will already have moved out by the time most seedlings need starting (6-8 weeks BLFD). Some of them are actually so fast-growing, they might even be ready to eat by then!

Spinach, in 4 weeks? Dare I dream it?

I’m ready to start sowing in my basement light setup. I checked it and everything still works. I just received the first batch of seeds from Fedco. We also found a great deal for a 4-flat heat mat with thermostat, so jumped on it – and that has arrived as well. I bought my seedling starter (I splurged on a huge bag of Country Cottage Seed Starter). So here’s the plan for this weekend:

INDOORS: start seedlings in basement

1. short term seedlings destined for cold frames: lettuce, mache, chard, spinach, some brassicas
2. long term growers: onions, celeriac, many herbs

I also need to figure out how to make seedling flats. I don’t feel like using those plastic plugs anymore (except for those seedlings that really enjoy their own space). I’ve saved up a lot of plastic containers, but I am thinking I might build some flats out of scrap wood, maybe making them so I can easily remove the sides when it’s transplanting time…

OUTDOORS: prepare Spring Garden

The weather is cold (28F max) and gray, but there’s no snow or rain. I’m wrapping up to do some outdoor work as well. Here’s a map (made with Plangarden) of the early spring garden (click on it for a slightly larger image):

1. plant carrots and most hardy lettuces in beds 10 and 15 inside hoop house (indicated by red crosses)
2. start fitting and making extra box plus windows for on top of beds 3, 5 and 10 (circled in frosty blue)
3. put black plastic on beds 8, 12, and the one in front of the house, to start warming the soil (circled in camo green)
4. clear and check ground that will become bed 11 (circled in brown): this is located inside the hoop house so the soil might not be frozen, in which case I could start digging on one side – the compost bin is standing in that spot, but I doubt I’ll get to that side

I also want to walk the property and take some serious measurements so I can start placing the pond, the channel that will take the rainwater runoff from our roof there, the chicken coop, the studio, the beehive, and take some decisions about potentially getting some more trees removed.

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In the image, hardy crops that will be ready for harvesting when most Summer crops go in are in in bright blue (after last year’s bolting incident, I’m planning on freezing a lot of spinach this time!). Crops in darker blue are already in there (mostly overwintered in the hoop house). Crops in light green go in early as well (favas, peas and carrots), but they will stay in throughout the summer. Crops in pink are also longer term (brassicas) or succession crops (more lettuce, etc.), but their beds aren’t ready yet.

I have two of these maps: one for Early Spring, one for Late Spring/Summer, each with most of the crops I want to grow fitted in. I’d love to show them, but I need to find a better platform to show them along with my spreadsheet.

Do you think about the future? Do you wonder what it will be like? Or do you live like it’s always going to be the way it has been?

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I found at least 5 entries like this one, all in drafts, abandoned. As I prepare for the growing season with more resolve and urgency than ever before now that my apprenticeship is over (ha!), I need to line up my motivations like a general does her troops. This is just a declaration, not a proof or demonstration: others are supplying the data much more clearly and comprehensively than I ever could.

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1. We’ve got problems

I believe that sometime in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my daughter, life will be changed, drastically. This is because three changes are already happening.

• Peak Oil

(I believe that) there will be a chronic shortage in oil production and thus cheap oil. This year, in 20 years, I don’t know, but in my lifetime. This will not just affect the heating of our houses and our trips to the grocery store, but also the delivery trucks’ trips to the grocery store, and the farm equipment that “grows” our produce, and the factory equipment that put together all those plastic containers for our shampoos, and the pharmaceuticals producing our medicine, etc. (cf. The Oil Drum)

• Economic Depression

(I believe that) increasing debt, decreasing value of money, hyperinflation, the precariousness of globalization and the lie of never-ending growth will soon mean the end of any value to our national currency, the end of imports, the closing of  businesses and banks, rampant unemployment, the end of the middle class as we know it, and the cessation of public services. (cf. The Crash Course)

• Climate Change and Overpopulation

(I believe that) the Earth is changing and that it’s too late to do anything about it (if we ever could), that several tipping points have been already been (b)reached. The effect is the disturbance of the climate pattern upon which our agriculture and settlements developed and rely, and thus a growing difficulty for growing food and maintaining our towns and cities. This means a growing number of climate refugees and massive immigrations of our immense world population.

All three are interrelated. I suspect Economic Depression will be the first step, soon exacerbated by Peak Oil, then, more gradually but much more insistently, Climate Change. (Read also, John Michael Greer’s “Endgame” and Richard Heinberg’s Museletter).

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2.  Collapse

I believe that even just one and certainly all of these events together will lead to collapse. I don’t believe it will be as bad as zombies or The Road, but I foresee some hard times and, at the very least, the end of the way we live our lives today.

I can’t say that it is my hope that this won’t happen. Don’t get me wrong, it would be great if it didn’t. If, for instance, we found some renewable, clean and omnipresent source of energy, freely and democratically available,  capable of powering our fleet of vehicles and our agricultural and factory equipment. Oh, and if it could also reverse the climate change tipping points… Sounds like heaven on earth to me, but I’ll just go ahead and prepare for if that doesn’t happen.

And it’s not like we have a lot of time. Collapse is already happening. Maybe not to me, or you, but to many in this country, in the world, and to whole countries even, to some degree or another. But for reasons that will become clear, here I just want to talk about myself, my family, and my neighborhood.

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3. Hope

Still, I have hope. I hope that (for myself and my community, at least), collapse will be gradual enough. I hope it’s not a precipice, but a staircase, and that at each step enough people will (have to) take sufficient action to “catch up” on the decline. I hope that we can descend gracefully: without famine, violence, the destruction of culture and civilization…

A funny thing, though, this hope. I hope it’s reasonable (unlike “aw, come on, nothing’s going to happen!”). It will require hard work and sacrifices,  but we could pull it off. And to those who say “forget it, it’s too late, TS is really going to HTF,” I say “I hear you,  but you know what? I have no choice but to hope. My child leaves me no choice.” I must do my best to make my hope, her hope come true.

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4. Starting descent

How do I do this? We, myself and my immediate family, have already started to power down. For instance, this month, February 2010, is our 16th month of the Riot for Austerity. In the Riot we try to decrease our consumption of oil, water, electricity, and consumer goods, and our production of waste, all to10% of the US national average. It’s tough! We’re almost there with certain things, but not anywhere near 10% with others.

We changed our eating habits: less meat, less food, more bulk, dry goods, and very little eating out. We are establishing a large food garden, with a hoop house for a winter harvest, and hopefully a beehive soon, and chickens. We work on our food storage and emergency supplies. The immediate goal is to grow and store enough and a healthy variety of food to feed two families, and to plant an extra row for the hungry. You can find more details of our lifestyle changes on the “What We Do” page.

Why are we doing this, making these sacrifices in the time and the land that is still plenty? Do I  think it’s going to make a difference to climate change? I’m not that naive.

• But I do it out of principle: to take more than what one needs is to be greedy and bad for the soul.
• I do it because, when I make something myself, with my own time and genius and effort, I take responsibility for it and I take care of it as a thing that I love. When I buy it, I just get the responsibility, like an extra price tag, easily snipped off. I “take care” of it only because it cost me so much – or, more frequently, I don’t take care of it at all, because it cost me so very little. I want to take control, responsibility, and care.
• I want to be prepared – practically and psychologically – for a future with less cheap oil, less income, less security, more manual labor, the need for different kinds of skills, etc.
• I do it to set up a model for others, for when circumstances will force them, too, to adopt such a lifestyle. That’s my next point.

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5. A model

We take these and many other actions as an average (middle class) family, with an average income and debt. We can’t bring in the big machines to flatten the land and mow down all the trees that shade our vegetable garden. We can’t tear down our 1950’s ranch and put a zero energy house in its place. We can’t buy the $1000 compost toilet, the photovoltaics, the hybrid car. And that’s good, because that makes our place an attainable model for anyone in our quite average situation around here.

As people start realizing they can no longer afford the $300 electricity bill, the $4000 oil bill, or the cable subscription, we can show them that it’s possible both practically and psychologically, for them to descend without hurting and actually even gaining something. For we don’t need television and video games to entertain ourselves, and digging in the garden is better exercise than the gym, and eating from that garden is healthier than take-out. I hope to demonstrate by example that living with a little less at a time does not need to hurt.

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6. Will that be all?

Do I think that what we are doing and working on – this 90% reduction in consumption of this and that, this 50% (?) self-reliance in food, this reskilling, etc. – will be all that is required of us?

Not by a long shot! But as a first step it’s the perfect preparation for the second step.

Which is? I don’t know. Ask me on a good day, then ask me again on a bad day. All I know is that what my family and I are doing right now is not what will be required, at some point, of all of us, and that after that, there will be even more.

Think of it. When oil hits $5, or $10, or $50 a gallon? When the shelves in the grocery store stay empty? When we are freezing in our houses? When half the people on the street are unemployed, and one third is homeless to boot? When a shift in climate wipes out a major crop? When the majority of us can no longer ignore or evade the situation, because our money can’t buy anything? Now we’re talking collapse.

There are times when I think the worst and that head-for-the-hills feeling flares up. When, in essence, I lose hope. But I squash it. Many reasons make it impossible for my family to pack up and dig in. It wouldn’t work for me to want to live as if collapse has already happened. It would wreck my family and isolate me. That’s not what I’m aiming for.

So if in the eyes of some I take it too fast, and in the eyes of others I take it too slow, so be it. I hope I’m hitting that golden mean, but I also know that mean is sliding down as we speak, until at some point “too much” and “too little” collapse into one.

In the meantime I hope the forerunners can be helpful, by their example, to the masses descending behind them. But if there’s suddenly going to be a whole lot of people barreling down that ever steeper and narrower staircase, it would be good for those who are ahead to install a railing as they go. Or else we’re all going to end up in a big, crushed heap at the bottom.

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That railing is relocalization, but about that, next time. It takes a lot out of me to write this, and it takes a long time to write, because I know that most of you don’t agree, and I feel I have to be argumentative, on the defensive, and watch my words. While I just want to say it like it is for me, so we know where I stand.

Well, yesterday evening was eventful. I heard a wild cat (or a fisher? – see the comments) in the street. Someone in a drive-by knocked our mailbox right off its perch. I saw the brake lights, heard the crash, the door slam and it speeding off, but it was too dark even to see the color of the car. And before that, I had my first class of Bee School – and this one’s about that.

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I take Rick Reault’s class at Codman Farm in Lincoln. About 35 people showed up; there was barely enough room to contain all of us. The instructor told us this matches the growing trend of the number of (small) beekeepers in our county and in New England.

He also told us that, these days, about 50% of the honey bee population (in hives) dies every year.

Half the bees!

Suppliers (growers) of bees cannot keep up with this rate. He didn’t want to go into the causes yet – that will be the third class, which is on diseases and stresses. But things are not going in the right direction.

I am keen on starting a hive. My neighbors gave us the thumbs up. There is no red tape to trip me up: no town rules and no need for permits in my town. Rick said there should be plenty of food for a hive in a New England suburb. He stressed beekeeping is challenging, in both senses of the word. He emphasized the need for honeybees. He gave us a sense of their plight, and I know about our plight, if we lose more honeybees.

If I want to get a hive this year (set up is in April), I would have to order by the end of February at the latest.

I need to decide soon!

So this happened half an hour ago, at 10 pm.

I’m sitting in my living room, working on the laptop. Suddenly there is a racket in the street. A small dog barking very, very loudly? Surely that’s not a dog? I go outside with my flashlight. It’s 10F and I’m wearing a skirt and a thin sweater and my breath is almost obscuring my vision, but the first new yowl I hear sets my whole body on fire. Hair-raising. Repelling, but oh so magnetic too…

I see two dark shapes moving across the street, about 40 yards away, down the hill in and out of the bushes. A large and a smaller shape. Cat like movements. And that cry: a short, repeated scream from one of them.

My street has no street lights, but there are some small porch lights – I wish it was one of those crystal clear full moon nights we had a couple of days ago. Then I see the eyes: two large yellow eyes sharply reflecting the light from the neighbor’s porch, and perhaps my own flashlight. A pair of smaller yellow (or was it white-bluish?) eyes right behind it.

By now, curious, drawn in, I’ve moved about 20 feet outside my door. The lit eyes disappear and I lose sight of their dark shapes. The screaming too has stopped. They’re invisible, who knows where, and I realize I’m easy prey – no really, that was my realization, here, in a Boston suburb!

I run inside and close the door.

It was this sound, the first one on that page. A lynx or bobcat, maybe a mother and her young.

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It was exactly around this time year that I heard the Great Horned Owls singing to each other behind my house. I’ve not heard them yet. The world is full of wild creatures, reminding us of what we are not. How good it feels, to be reminded!