MamaStories

The Nor’easter of October 2011 hit our town pretty badly. Actually, it was just a small snowstorm, not too heavy, not long-lasting. But the trees were not ready for it. It was only the fourth time that there was snow before Halloween in NYC since the civil war! Add to that that the trees now “think” (for good reasons) that it’s summer at the end of October…

So they were still flush with green leaves, which had only just started turning. The snow stuck to them and that’s what weighed them down. This was the view out my living room window the morning after the storm.

Gorgeous, but dangerous. None of those trunks or branches are usually that diagonal. Several tops snapped off after the picture was taken.

The night before this picture was taken, the night of the storm, I lay awake in bed listening to the creaking and straining of the trees, the tearing of wood fibers, then the crack, then whoosh and finally thump of limbs and branches crashing to the ground. After a couple of hours of this, you just fall asleep from exhaustion, your brain telling you: que sera, sera.

None hit the house, the cars, the roof with the panels. But the hoop house was hit, and two of our fences (metal) are beyond repair. The veg garden is a mess.

There are still a lot of snapped limbs – some the size of small trees – hanging in the canopy, waiting for a good gust of wind to tear them loose. It’s the reason why Halloween is canceled!

Well, to be precise: the town is leaving it up to the discretion of the parents but advises to do an “alternative Halloween”. DH and I know what swords are hanging above our heads, so we’re not letting Amie venture outside.

Another reason for canceling Halloween is that, after over 50 hours, 25% of the town’s population still doesn’t have power back. School was canceled today too, and Amie’s elementary school might still be out of power tomorrow. 56% of people in my town were without power.

We were among them. The evening of the stormwe heard a loud thump and then the power was out.  Our solar is entirely grid-tied. The grid goes down, all our solar harvest gets diverted into the ground.

But we were prepared with one head lamp each with batteries that are always charged.

We also had our trusted stove – the best investment we ever made – and lots of wood! It provided heat, crucial because the temperature dropped to 25 F the following night. The town opened an emergency shelter in one of the schools.

The stove also allowed hot water for washing dishes and even for a bucket shower with shampoo, and for tea. I also made a wonderful stew on it of garden vegetables and sausage.

Our power was restored after 40 hours. Not too bad, compared to last time (after Irene), which was a little over two months ago. That time we were without electricity for 6 days. So we knew the drill (it was warmer then and I cooked outside on the camping stove).

With the way the economy is going I don’t see all those wires and cables going underground, as they are in most of Europe. So we’re looking into battery backup for our solar.

{UPDATE} When I told Amie we couldn’t go trick or treating she burst into tears, so we went along the safe side of the street, just 10 or so houses. She also opened the door and doled out a lot of candy. So she was happy. Not our usual Halloween, but some of it, anyway. Many people from the North of our town, which is still without electricity, came to our neighborhoods.

Saturday started with a sprinkle of rain and thunder, then cleared up for a big turnout for our planned hoop house raising. Ten people came, friends, acquaintances and strangers (i.e., new friends) alike.

First up was dismantling the structure and moving it from the summer to the winter position.

Then everyone got to witness how fence piping is bent to form a hoop.  That’s the Lost Creek hoop bender.

Then they got to do it themselves. We ran into an issue with the pipe connections. They fit into each other and are held together by a self-drilling metal screw. All looked fine, until once installed over the rebar, 70% of these connectors did this:

No amount of extra bending could remedy this. No amount of hanging off them either:

Well, at least we know those ribs are sturdy! As the problem is not structural but a matter of sharp edges tearing the hoop house plastic, it was easily fixed by duct taping foam pipe  insulator  around them.

We talked about gardening, compost tea, bees and herbal medicine while sipping cold mint tea and oat straw infusion.  One  friends also gave us a fascinating primer about drip irrigation. Seeing all those parts and connectors and pumps lit up DH’s eyes! Mine too, since I don’t want to kill myself watering my garden this Summer.

Some left with a head or two of lettuce and the plans for their own barn raising. Some stayed on for an impromptu vegetarian grill dinner, a few items in which (lettuce, parsley) came straight from the garden.

A successful first barn raising and hopefully one of many to come in our community!

The day after that DH and finished off the structure by installing the plastic.  It is much tighter now, since the ribs are a little larger than the end walls – which hadn’t been the case with the pvc piping.  Since we used the clips again there is still the possibility of taking it apart and moving it. We’ll see over the summer if that’s what we want to, or if we want it there permanently. I really like the possibility of starting the winter harvest in outside beds while the tomatoes are still going strong inside the hoop house, and then moving the structure when the tomatoes are done and it gets colds enough for the winter harvest to need extra protection. Also, it would be another reasons for a bunch of friends to get together over meaningful work and homegrown food.

I gave the inside of the end walls a coat of exterior white to aid the reflection of the light. After being exposed to the snow and rain for months, they were pretty grubby and dark. It’s not the best paint job (should’ve done it before we put the cover on, then I wouldn’t have had to worry about getting pain on the plastic), but it’s not like anyone is going to live in there. I write that one downs as LAL – Live And Learn!

I also transplanted the 50 tomato plants, each with their own cut worm collar.  Took me four hours!

There is one bed left for lima and garbanzo beans.

Next time, join us!

The garden is about 90% planted.

peas and poles for the pole beans. compost in background

Today I sowed all the dry beans, green beans and pole beans – first year I’m growing these – and the squashes, zukes and cukes. Also watermelon, carrots and basil, and calendula, anise and chamomile (German), all from seed.

I have faith in a seed.

new bed in foreground (calendula, anise and chamomile), then parsley and basil, then broccoli and Brussels sprouts, lastly monster rhubarb.

Once my hoop house is moved, I’ll transplant  the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and sow the lima and garbanzo beans (which like it hot).

seedlings

All the trees, bushes and live plants I put in at the beginning of April are doing fine, except for the Wild Ginger. The currants, gooseberries and strawberries that were planted last year are thriving. Not so the hazels, which got stripped in one day by the nasty caterpillars. I hope they come back (the hazels, not the caterpillars). And none of the asparagus ever came back: it seems like some critter ate the roots (which animal would eat those?).

new bed with medicinals

I harvested mint and it’s steeping. The kitchen smells divine. Also rhubarb. Those plants are monsters!

potatoes!

The hoop house is moving on Saturday. “Moving” is not the right word — being moved. Though the hoop house is movable because it’s modular, some of its pieces are darn heavy. DH and I moved it once, just the two of us, and we nearly broke our backs and our (t)rusty Radio Flyer.

celery, carrots, green beans, garlic, rhubarb

So I’m going to invite everyone I can think of who’s near and will call it a  barn raising!

In return for their help, I promise that “you’ll learn about hoop house construction, what to do and what not to do (yup, that too), what you can grow in it, and how these hoop benders work – and if you want one for yourself, use ours (it’s part of the tool pool). You’ll see what is growing in the garden, I can introduce you to the bees, and I hope you will take home a lettuce or two because we’re swimming in them. And when the time comes for you to do a barn raising, I’ll be there!”

It’s about time we started doing it like that!

Want to come? There will be lettuce and rhubarb…

{UPDATE} What happened?

Click for larger

A lot has happened in the garden. The trees are gone and there is more sunlight all around. I’ve planted 2 blackberries, 3 elderberries, 50 strawberries, 4 rosas, 2 hazels, 2 serviceberries, 1 jostaberry, 2 peashrubs, 4 muntead lavender, 8 grapes, 4 wormwoods and 1 witchhazel. I’ve put in 90% of my veggie transplants, now it’s just the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. I’ve filled three beds with potatoes. I’m also filling up the herb bed up front with interesting medicinal herbs. I’m fixing the fence around the veg garden and making trellises. I’m predicting a hot and dry summer, so I’ve also been mulching, mulching, mulching.

A lot of the new activity happens down the hill, near the street. Neighbors drive by and slow down, as they usually do (sometimes to wave, sometimes to ponder me doing my bee hive dance), but now they stop and roll down the window and chat. Many are asking why we took down the trees, and I’m sure we’ll have more enthusiasts coming by once the solar PV comes up. They ask what bushes I am planting (down here? Elderberry, jostaberry, serviceberry,witch hazel, all of which like it moist) and what mulch I’m using (first, a top dressing of compost, then a thick band of shredded leaf mulch. I like it, chatting with the neighbors about the garden, the food. I sincerely hope we can get that bottom area done this Summer.

That brings us to the still to do’s, some big, some bigger:

1. receive and plant sweet potatoes and sunchokes, for which latter I need to dig and make a raised bed. The former go into containers, which I plan to put up so the vines can trail down.
2. move and fix hoophouse, plant peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants in it.
3. dig trench for roof-runoff into pond, dig and plant pond.
4. terrace the slope path up front (too much erosion, grass seed washes away.
5. tackle front garden: raised beds with flowers, perennials, more bushes, paths with grass, central area for meeting.
6. install drip irrigation in veg garden.
7. as soon as the pile of wood is sawed up, split and stacked, the whole area called “woods” next to the driveway opens up for more bushes and dwarf fruit trees. First up: work on soil there.
8. saw up, split and stack that pile of wood.
9. solar PV installation (still waiting for the go-ahead from the state).
10. and, if there is money and energy left, get those chickens!

Our insane wood pile after tree removal

I received a large box in the mail on Friday, the kind of box that could only house… plants! Fedco. Of course they had to arrive on the busiest weekend since last Summer. Of course I wasn’t ready…

So after our Earth Day Celebration I stuck almost all of ‘em in pots. Tere were some herb plants like Good King Henry, Asclepias tuberosa, Butterfly Weed, Lavender, Marshmallow, Arnica,  Black Cohosh (or Black Snakeroot), and Valerian. There were also 2 pieces (?) of Canadian Wild Ginger and I couldn’t even tell what was the top and what the bottom, or where vis-a-vis the soil line it had to go. And 1 Purple Coneflower – of the 12 seeds I put in downstairs, only 1 germinated, so I have high hopes for this plant. Last but not least there was the Elecampane. What an interesting, fat, huge root. It reminded me of the mandrake in Pan’s Labyrinth. This one I put in the herb bed up front, which gets a lot more sun now that the trees are gone.

Then there were some bushes. I put the Red Pearl and  the Regal Lingonberry in pots. But I planted the Belle Poitevine Rose in the East bed, next to our “official” (not our mudroom) front door. What a robust plant. Prickly too! And the two Bluebell Grapes I planted next to the kiwi vine that went in last Spring and that is, to my great relief, budding. (So are all the other bushes I planted last year.)

The 50 strawberries crowns are still in my fridge. They’ll go in tomorrow, along with lots of vegetable seedlings.  We have many more bushes and vines coming, I really need to start prepping the place. I’m afraid I filled  up all my large pots today!

In other gardening news, we received our hoop bender from Lost Creek and we’ll be moving and rebuilding the hoop house next weekend if we can persuade some friends to help. It’ll be good to be able to get all the seedlings out of the living room. And out of the basement too: the mice are going wild down there! They went through my lobelia like a grass mower, and they’ve ruined all the wormwood seedlings (luckily the wormwood I grew and transplanted out last ear survived the winter and is growing again) . They’ve dug up lots of other seeds. And I’ve caught  not a one. The glue traps are obviously not working either.

There is lots of mycelium growing in the mushroom bed (didn’t have many mushrooms last year but might this year) and… a few days ago we ate our first lettuce from the garden (the hotbox). Yum!

Some days ago I had a chance to run out and pull one side of the hoop house plastic out from under the leftover snow (it thawed some, finally!). It involved breaking up the huge slabs of ice that had formed inside the “hoop sloop” and pulling them out, then draining the melt water. You can see the pile of plastic – still intact, that woven stuff is strong! – behind the structure. It is still stuck in the ice and snow on that side.

This took about an hour, at the end of which I was cold and sopping wet. And it started the rain. Still, I had just enough stamina left to cover the three beds with row cover (Agribon) and plastic. I am happy to report that these beds still have –  miracle of nature! – living plants in them. They’re not exactly thriving, but they’re still there and will hopefully take off soon.

I came in and washed my freezing hands in a bowl of warmed up ginger tea – the tea I brewed from the ginger peels. Aaaaah!

DH and I tried to save it, but the snow inside the “boat”/”float” is unapproachable. The bent pipes are still holding it up, about 1 foot off the ground, which is good on the one hand because the beds inside aren’t (totally) crushed, but which is also a problem because we can’t just jump in and shovel out the snow. We tried to push it up from the inside, but the snow load is too heavy. Raking, shoveling or sweeping the snow out from the sides only got us so far.

So we decided to leave it as it is.

If we get a big thaw we can drain the thing and put it aside. I’ve given up on the produce inside – grown and nurtured from seed, transplanted with my Mom’s help in September, covered with row cover and later with the top heavy hoop house when we moved it from its Summer to  Winter position. If it survives, we rebuild the house or cover each of the beds with their own plastic.

~

At least there was something to cheer about – it’s good to look around for those. The slightly warmer temperatures brought out some bees. They took cleansing flights and shoveled out a whole lots of dead bees. Signs of life, at least.

~

I also washed my indoor plants again. I am resigned to having the whiteflies in the house, and that just like mites on the bees I can’t get rid of all of them, but can only  manage their numbers to tolerable levels. It felt good to wash off as many as I could, though. The plants look a lot happier too.

I also found a good trick to keep the soil from falling out of the pots and muddying up my bath tub:

We woke up to one more foot of snow and this:

That’s not the shape it had yesterday. Something gave.

I’m still smiling here. I don’t know why.

A peek inside: one of the connectors snapped.

Should I go in and try to push off the snow from the inside?

It’s creaking ominously…

Better not, because…

Good call.

The clamps could no longer hold the weight and snapped off. The plastic slid off and the whole thing caved.

On the inside it now looks like this.

None of the plants in the beds are crushed.  There is wonderful mache, by the way, but I had to get out of there before I could take a picture, and all the broccoli was still alive. If the thing keeps this shape, and if the vegetables survive tonight, then tomorrow when DH is back we might be able to save the whole thing, rebuild it.

I need winter boots and snow pants.

This is what the view out of the window looks like at the moment. Glorious!

DH and I spent three hours digging out our driveway on Wednesday (1 1/2 feet of heavy  snow over about  2000 sq.f) and it had been a long time since I had been that exhausted. As I trudged back up our hill and felt like just falling down, face first into the snow, like you see in the movies. Instead I took a hot shower and took a two-hour nap.

But where are the plants – the overwintering peppers, the herbs – you might ask. Good question.

They’re in the tub.

The plants started out with a population of aphids and whiteflies from the beginning. I kept a lid on the infestation by washing them once every four weeks. I’d never get all of them, of course, so they would repopulate, but they never got to affect the plants too badly.

Then we left for India for three weeks and took a week to recuperate and BAM: population overshoot! It was pretty bad and some of the habaneros might not survive. But some of these pepper plants are overwintering for the second time, and they are my best producers, so today I washed the whole lot again and sprayed neem oil.  Let’s hope it does the job without stressing out the plants too much.

There was a neem tree right in front of my parents-in-law’s flat in Calcutta, where it is thought of as the Sacred Tree. The leaves taste really bitter. DH told me a horror story of how he had to eat neem leaves fried in oil.

Neem tree (not the one mentioned) on the left

~

And now back to here and now:

What a contrast! Well, I guess I won’t be visiting the hoop house any time soon… But I will be at the NOFA MA Winter Conference tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you there? I’ll be the one wearing a red scarf!