MamaStories

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!

Sorry to be so absent. It will get worse.  We are traveling to India on the 10th – will be back  on New Year’s Day. That is the plan. Thing is, our passports are still at the Indian Consulate without any explanation, or response to our emails, and no one ever answers the phone. If they don’t arrive today, we’ll have to travel to NYC to get some resolution. A huge hassle! And then, if we can’t make it, tons of money will be wasted, but mostly, we won’t get to see my husband’s family, and Amie’s great-grandmother will be extremely sad. It is too stressful…

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What I do when I get stressed is I go out into the garden. I checked on the lettuce and spinach int he hot box: they’re all doing well. I moved some more pumpkins into the Earth Machine in the hoop house and topped it off with shredded leaves (the aroma!). Then I peeked under the row cover to see what’s growing. A photo-essay.

Summer 2010:

Annotated:

Close up of veg garden:

And these gaps close more and more, every year. It’s time to rethink…

Next year I want would like:

1. a second colony, in a homemade top bar hive.
2. chickens, 3 of them.
3. the beginning of a dwarf fruit tree orchard.
4. a guild around the cherry tree.
5. an earth oven in a straw bale shelter, a strawbale low wall with welcoming arch up front, and  some strawbale benches, shelters and altars all over the property.
6. a small pond system that takes rain water runoff and – if we can swing it – some gray water, with frogs and other wildlife.
7. a front garden for Bees and People. I will want to host a lot of events – community gardening, lectures, skillshares, poetry reading (and writing), concerts – in that front garden!
8. a pottery wheel.

Is that a lot to ask? And is that a silly question to ask because I ask it of myself?

~

Oh,  but life is good.

When told that a friend had gone into the hospital to give birth, Amie asked: “And was it a baby?”

And this is DH’s desk:

We finally have a winter hoop house. We moved the thing from its summer to its winter position yesterday and today. It took us, 2 adults and 1 5-year-old, 6 hours, and about 2 hours of that was spent on making new parts. Not bad. Those end walls weigh a TON! Our trusty Radio Flyer helped.

One half in old position, other half in new

End walls and frame in place

Amie loves to be useful. Here she is hammering in the rebars

Ribs over the rebars

Tough to get the plastic taut, but done. (Trusty Radio Flyer in foreground.)

I also got to put the old summer beds (the four beds to the right in front in the picture) under straw. A new friend came and delivered four bales yesterday, right on time.  I’m rather jealous of her pickup truck. We got to have tea and dinner and chat about herbal medicine, gardening and ducks. She also got to play a prolonged game of “pretend” with Amie.

I joined the a team of parent and teacher volunteers who are working to make the school system in our town greener. We’re working on getting the recycling going. Especially lunch time is a problem, a big black hole that apparently eats only trash.

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I’m still baking, only not as much – a bread every three days. Though in this picture it looks like it was forged in the fires of Mount Doom, Bread No.13 turned out very nicely, with the perfect moisture and crumb.

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The rains let up and I got the chance to plant the hot box, in 54 F weather! I hadn’t until now because the temperature o the soil registered 82F until a week ago. What a long  burn that was! Now it’s at 73F, perfect. In went a Winter Lettuce Mix and some Rainbow Chard. Let’s see how they do. I need to locate the sensor that attaches via a cable to my digital  thermometer. This cable is just long enough to reach from the hot box to the bathroom window.

(Wow, three entries in one day!)

I have lights specially fitted to the bed up front, so it can easily be converted to a cold frame. I’ve successfully grown lettuce in it in April. Now I was thinking of growing something there  from November to March, the coldest months.

The hotbed, finally!

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A, the owner of the horse stable, uses our property to get to conservation land where she can ride. In return I can go and get as much manure as I want. The stable is about a quarter mile away, and I do the entire trip in twenty minutes, if I’m not held up chatting with A or the neighbors. Fortunately it’s downhill from my house, so I get there real fast. Unfortunately it’s also (go figure) uphill to my house, and that makes for a great work out.

the manure, the bed, the lights

I sort of, to the best of my abilities,  followed these instructions.

The bed is 3.5 – 7 feet, but I started with a little less than half of it, as I had only the one 6 cu.f. wheelbarrow of manure. The instructions call for a drainage pit with gravel or cinders, but by the time I dug 14″ deep (from the soil line), I hit rock bottom. There I used my fork to open up the stony soil a bit.

Then I added 10″ of horse manure.  It turned out to be exactly the entire wheelbarrow, though I’m sure it’s going to compact quite a bit, that stuff is so fluffy with all the woodshavings, hay and straw in it.  I made it all sopping wet.

(Sorry, DH, I promise I’ll clean it off)

Then I added 4″ of the original soil and put on the lights.

Now I need to monitor the temperature of the manure. At the moment it is 70 F (by comparison, the soil in my   hoop house beds is at 76 F). I expect it will start heating up soon. As soon as it drops back down to 75 degrees, and stays there, I can put in the spinach and lettuce seedlings.

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I’m going to get a lot more of that manure. Perhaps I’ll convert the entire bed to a hot box. But I definitely want to  use it to dress the other beds that I won’t use over the winter, then to tuck them all in with blankets of cardboard and straw. I like the synergistic straw culture that Emilia Hazelip promotes in the video I posted earlier.  Not to touch the soil at all, just to keep adding, adding… I’d like to play around with that in my own setting.

All the seedlings were transplanted into the Winter beds – the beds that will be under the hoop house once we move it from its Summer position, after the tomatoes, peppers and basil are done.

These are all under one layer of row cover now (Agribon, from Johnnie’s). A third bed is loaded with kale and broccoli. The fourth bed holds onions, scallions, chives and sorrel that I sowed at the beginning of August.

I’ll reserve the empty spaces (about 4 sq. f.) in the fourth bed for transplants from the other beds (I put the broccoli and kale a bit too close together), and I might use some of it to keep some compost from freezing. Some empty space will also come in handy in Spring when I can move the more hardy seedlings there and out of the basement growing area.

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Yesterday I found myself back  in Amie’s school garden. “Back” is not quite the right word because it turns out that the garden I weeded last week was not the garden the teacher meant for me to clean up! (No harm done, I did what I love for a couple of hours and got  to harvest all that dandelion). In any case, there I was, staring at the other garden, trying to decide what they would consider “weed” and “legit”. A lot of the plants were borderline, in my opinion. Luckily the other volunteer came up to help, and she said to pull the lot.

“Even the goldenrod?”

“Of course, that’s  a weed!”

“I’ll take it home, then – they’re great bee plants.”

I hope these do better than the ones I grew from seed this Summer. Those got all those juicy little green buds, but they never flowered into yellow before withering to nothing.

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I also disconnected and rolled up and stored all the garden hoses. Man, that 50 foot long one was a pain! I’m keeping a weather eye on the forecasts. Soon I’ll be empty the rain barrels and store those too.

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Did you know that oil companies won’t come and do a burner tune-up unless you have an oil delivery contract with them!

My Fall Garden? I guess most of it looks like my Summer Garden, only inside the hoop house (where it was a balmy 85 F today, contrasting with the 56 F outside).

eggplants in hoop house

Yesterday I moved most of the (sweet and hot) pepper plants from the outside beds into pots and then into the hoop house. When that gets moves onto the Winter Garden beds, I will move all the potted plants to the Annex (the guest suite, which we heat minimally in Winter) and overwinter them.

potted peppers in hoop house

I was really happy to have overwintered those two pepper plants last time. They were my best producers, giving me two rounds of fully red peppers, and I just harvested another round of green peppers. Peppers are, after all, perennials, so why not bring them inside, if you have the space and the inclination to water them once and a while?

herbs in the Annex window

I’m also overwintering most of my culinary herbs. They are inside already, the prettiest ones in the living room, the rest in the Annex, which has a large south facing window. I’ll be happy not to have to devote so much space to oregano, thyme and rosemary seedlings when I turn on the lights in February. There will be more room for medicinal herbs and flowers.

I harvested 3.5 lbs of green tomatoes (both large and cherries) and pulled the vines, as well as the one cucumber vine, on which I discovered 4 cukes, one of them an overlooked one weighing in at 1.2 lbs.

So most of my beds are empty. The only things that I sowed in Summer, outside the hoop house, and that are left to harvest are the carrots, leeks, and celeriac, all of which improve in taste with a light frost, and kale.

The Winter beds – awaiting the hoop house but covered with just row cover at the moment – hold spinach, kale and broccoli. Tomorrow I might have the chance to also transplant the Minutina, Claytonia (Miner’s Lettuce), Tatsoi and Pac Choi. I am reserving the lettuce and some more spinach seedlings for the hotbed under the cold frame, but more about that soon.