Robin Hill Gardens – Page 78 – Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

I got NOTHING done!

Amie’s idea of cleaning up

As I was vacuuming I deplored (again) how often the work of a homemaker is lost. It is lost when half an hour later the flour gets spilled and a day later the dust bunnies are convening under the sofa again. It is lost when the dishwasher is full – or empty – again. It is lost when we step into the made bed, put on a clean sweater, finish the meal… And it is lost all over again when at the end of the day I tell myself:

“I didn’t get anything done again!”

Usually the latter refers to the work on my novel and my garden. I clearly don’t reckon all that invisible work that doesn’t get paid, or appreciated even by the one who does it.

But I feel I want to mark it. It is a large part of my life, after all.Â I played with the idea of recording it in the blog, but how monotonous that would be, for reader and writer alike! Monotony – doing the same thing, over and over again – is the essence of this work, after all, no matter the tunes we dance and sing to.

So once in a while I write it down in my handwritten journal. Recently:

Woke up, got myself and Amie dressed. Breakfast. Dropped off Amie at preschool. Cleared breakfast table. Made beds.Â Dusted furniture. Vacuumed whole house. Emptied dishwasher. Filled dishwasher. Handwashed big pots and pans. Wiped stove and kitchen counters. Picked up Amie. Prepared and ate lunch. Cleared table. Emptied dishwasher. Filled (laundry) washer, ran it, emptied it. Hung laundry to dry. Moved some of the woodpile. Refilled wood basket. Snack time. Played “Max” ten times. Prepared dinner, set table, ate. Cleared table. Put leftovers away. Soaked beans and split peas for soup tomorrow. Dishes. Got Amie ready for bed. Read story and stay with her until she’s asleep. Cup of tea and write this. Got nothing done today!

I can only imagine how much less I would get done if I also had to drive my child(ren) to extracurricular activities, and/or if I had to get to the gym and hairdresser and…

But of course that wasn’t all of my day. For instance, I played “Max” ten times because Amie insisted we get all the animals home safe, and I got to spend most of that time marveling at my daughter’s efforts to reconcile the lives of the chipmunk, the squirrel and the mouse (and their babies, waiting for them in the tree) with the hunger of Max, who would get sick if he only had treats and got nothing wild to eat, and maybe the mouse was worth sacrificing because it has only one baby, whereas the bird has three…

Still, at the end of it, that’s how my day felt. The journal entry may not be a statement of (all) the facts, but of the feeling of accomplishment, which was zilch. In that sense it is a true entry. And in that sense, it has to be recorded, once in a while.

Can I Harvest It Now?

Just in Time

Whew, we got the plastic on the hoop house frame right in time, a couple of hours in fact before the snowstorm blew in. We used 6 mil landscape plastic, which turned out more opaque than we thought it would: will it reflect and diffuse the sunlight too much? Well, it will have to do for now. We bought PVC clamps from a greenhouse store – it was the delay in the order that took us so long. All in all, this greenhouse cost us less than $300. The doorway still needs to be fixed.

I also got a lot of wild wood kindling in, in time before the snow covered it all up. Here is about a tenth of what we have, drying on the old soil screen in the shed. It’s good stuff, especially the long dead, already barkless wood that falls out of the trees on a windy day. These sticks dry out in no time, weigh very little, and they light like match sticks (very fat ones).

The last thing we provided for was food for the birds. I have the feeling that there were much less birds during this Fall migration than last year, though I must admit I spent much less time keeping an eye on our feeder. I’ve seen a couple of juncos, but for the rest it’s just us and the woodpeckers.

Transition: Becoming Indigenous to a Place

During the Transition Training we watched a lot of images and videos of Transition Initiatives, and at first I watched them with mixed feelings of joy and anxiousness. My heart sank because I inevitably thought: “I can’t make that happen.”

That sinking feeling stems from the fact that, though I arrived here over 11 years ago, studied, married, bought a house and had a child here, I still don’t feel at home. Why? Not because of the people around me: I have found each and every one of my colleagues, neighbors and friends – Americans or not – to be sincerely welcoming. So it must be me.

I always assumed children have a natural sense of being at home, for I myself, as a child, felt at home, without ever a shadow of a doubt. But was it because of something a child does or is, or was it because of what my parents did and modeled? Or was it because of the place?

The place was Antwerp (Belgium), a city within half an hour’s drive of the city where my grandparents and aunts and uncles all lived. A place where my family can trace and place our ancestry as far back as the 1700s. And a place with a culture in which “migrating” is the exception. You see, Belgians donâ€™t leave Belgium: the emigration rate is less than a percent. And Belgium is a small country, about the size of Maryland, so children â€œleaveâ€ (for college, or to live) to within at most a two hoursâ€™ drive away from their parents. In my family I was the third (out of four now) in the span of two generations to move abroad, which makes my family exceptionally migratory.

Letâ€™s put this in context. The United Nations Commission on Population and Development concluded in 2006 that only 3% of the world population is an international migrant (with most migrants moving from developing to developed countries). The kind of mobility within the United States that makes for big moves, in contrast, is high: the Census of 2000 determined that, within 5 years, no less than 8.42% of its respondents had moved to another state and an additional 2.86% to a foreign country. That number has in all probability gone up in the last couple of years.

So let’s just say that my Amie is seeing a home very different from what I saw as a kid. We see family once or twice a year, not every weekend. Mama and Baba have strange accents – and so does she, insisting on “woh-T-er”. Mama and Baba can’t vote and they don’t know how to negotiate certain communal systems. So I am afraid that Amie will not know what “home” is, or that she will call “home” something that I would call but a weak version of my own rich childhood memory of home.

And so I must ask myself: can I, dare I, make this place my home? What if home means not just the core family of the three of us, not just lengthy visits (visits: that says it all) from grandparents and aunts and cousins, not just local traditions with good, good friends that we see often… but also the wider culture of a hometown?

The Training helped me realize that I should make this hometown happen, for myself, for Amie, and that it is possible. That this what a Transition Initiative could mean to me, my family, and the people in my community: not just becoming more resilient in the face of peak oil, climate change, and economic crisis, but first and foremost what our trainer calledÂ “becoming indigenous toyour place”: coming home.

{Previously, about Transition: the giving of gifts}

Hundred Books Challenge

In Home-grown Kids’ Hundred Books-A-Month Challenge, we made it to

in the span of a month. I blame it partly on our bad record keeping skills and the crazy weather, which lured us outside all too often for this time of year.

It was great fun, though, keeping track (mostly) and being aware of how much we read. I think, regardless of whether we do the challenge or not (not in December, but January maybe?), we’ll keep a list of Amie’s reading, and I’ll throw in my own titles too.

Thanks Leslie for a great idea!

Tools for Transition: A Farm for the Future

I just watched a beautiful and well-paced BBC documentary called Farm for the Future. I’m totally re-energized by it. I wish I could find a permaculture course that’s nearby,Â affordable, and spread over a couple of weekends and evenings (not the luxury-resort two week intensive). In the meantime, I shall be hitting the books again. But first, let me peruse the plant catalog of the Agroforestry Research Trust.

And before that, let me share with you the one basic thing I learned (again) from this movie: peak oil is not “oil shortage”. It’s famine.

So let’s start growing!

Transition Initiatives: the Giving of Gifts

I discovered Rob Hopkins’ book, The Transition Handbook, about two years ago and it immediately struck me as the right approach to our problems – climate change, peak oil and economic crisis (all bound up together, of course) – and to our solutions (grassroots, positive, pro-active, hopeful, inclusive).

It still took me a long time to try to act upon my enthusiasm. I tried to set up a meeting in my town to see who would be interested (and no one showed up, which I ascribe entirely to my awful advertising skills). This debacle did result in making a friend in a nearby town, and he urged me to take the Transition Training. I signed up and attended a training in Boston, led by Tina Clarke, about three weeks ago.

That’s the background. Now where do I start?

I’ll start with a conversation I had today with a mom at Amie’s school. It was the first time we talked and we sparked. As the kids played we spoke very passionately and openly about what moves us. From issues at school and global social justice we bounced into… peak oil, climate change, the end of the world as we know it. Only, I didn’t phrase it like that. I called it “this terribly exhilarating and terribly frightful time when we must all be heroes and activists and rise to the occasion of saving the world. Just here, in X [name of our town].”

What was that all about? Where was my usual hopelessness, helplessness? It’s still there (ha, I should be so lucky), but I am rising above it by stepping outside myself into a local community. There I can make a difference: “think globally, act locally”. So I explained:

See, these are the facts, and I laid them all out (my attitude changed, not my brain): oil is in everything and it has peaked, but not in time to stop the burning of it from frying the planet, our health, our spirits, and this economy is just going to get worse. This part took about 1 minute. What took longer was the “this is what I am doing about it” part.

I started with myself: I am taking back my food and my health, by gardening, by buying local, by keeping chickens (soon), by beekeeping (soon), by Independence Days, and I am lowering my consumption, by Rioting for Austerity, by Freezing My Buns, etc.

But that’s not enough: now I want to re-localize my life to within my community, by promoting community gardening and orcharding, or by organizing workshops on how to build with local materials, or by relearning to have fun and make art together, or by helping to retrofit and weatherstrip houses, or by setting up emergency supplies, or by giving frugality and sewing workshops, or by starting a bulk food co-op, or a local currency, etc.

I put it so that, even if my friend didn’t “believe in” peak oil or climate change (terms I had mentioned just that once), she could still find one or two items on my list that would appeal to her (thus the “or”s). She could still see how our town, the place she invested in and where she is raising her kids, would be better for it.

That’s what finally dawned on me at the Training. That’s what I think Transition is really about:

all-inclusive: whoever shows up is the right person
non-prescriptive, non-directive: give people access to good information and trust them to make the right decisions
Let it go where it wants to go, which is where the community takes it

As our wonderful trainer said:

Transition happens when someone says: I have a gift (any gift) to give to the community. And the reply is: Be welcome! And thank you! And here is what I can give to you!

As such Transition is a “movement” only in the most basic sense of a change. It is not a “group” but, simply, community. Those who start it and guide it somewhat aren’t “leaders” but facilitators. It is not a “label” in the pejorative sense but only very basically a name, because it is facilitated by an organization that shares its experiences and its tools – free of charge,Â run with ’em and let us know where they are taking you so we can learn from you.

This realization was important for me. I abhor conflict. I was scared to be a Transition initiator and facilitator in my town because I foresaw people confronting me on “Peak Oil” and “Climate Change”. “Prove it!” they’d say. How could I? [shudder]. But now I realize it’s not about peak oil or climate change, it’s about Community.

So, you deny climate change? That’s fine, but can you show me how to sew this quilt? Or what are your ideas on a local currency? Or do you know what’s wrong with my lettuce? Or… [trails off having too many things to do to stand around arguing, already!]

Another Composty Day – and Our Garden

I set up the kindling dryer – very simply the old soil screen under the shed roof. Amie and I hauled some more kindling, because I figured once it starts snowing it won’t be visible and for the picking anymore.

I also finished the putting to bed of the beds. As I was looking around when I was done, I thought I would share some pictures and show you parts of our property that I rarely show. Click on the thumbnails to see the image larger.

This is the view North (from the Front”, see below):

three large beds under straw, two smaller beds to the right, which will be mainly berries and herbs. We hope the grass corridor in between will withstand the runoff erosion (the grass didn’t take too well) until we fix the problem next Spring (see below).
There is a very large bed in front of the house (16 x 4 feet) for herbs.
The veg garden (hoop house still without plastic) lies to the West ofÂ the house.
Behind the house is a large backyard, which is just trees, forest floor (no grass to speak of), and a playhouse. It is entirely enclosed by a chain link fence, and that’s where I hope to keep the chickens.
Around that fence runs a strip of “wild”Â area, home to squirrels, chipmunks, birds, snakes, foxes and deer, and behind that runs a lane 0f conservation land that forms a great wildlife corridor.

Above is a 180 degree view, from East (driveway) to West (veg garden) – so curl the image around your field of vision.Â I labeled it so click on the image for a better view. From East to West:

loam under blue tarp on parking lot
the driveway runs from behind it down to the street
a “wild” thicketÂ which in Summer provides a lot of privacy, the mosses there are beautiful and we’re leaving it as it is: maybe a narrow path with a small moss-covered stone bench hidden in the thicket.
I drew in the proposed ditch which will carry runoff and rainwater to a small wetland below
the two terraced beds you see to the left in the picture above
grass pathway that leads down to
the “Front”: septic leach field, bad subsoil, choked with weeds and mostly shaded: our greatest design challenge
three beds you see to the right in the picture above
more “wild” thicket where we could grow mushrooms
two tree stumps that we’ll make into a bench
more wild area behind that, where the horse path runs all the way to the back of the property
vegetable garden

Riot for Austerity – Month 13

We entered the second year of the Riot. I’ll keep last year’s averages (calculated here) visible as a baseline. In case you’re wondering, I use this calculator.

Gasoline. I added DH’s miles on public transportation (shuttle), which I neglected to do last year. This was an exceptional month, as we made a round-way car trip to NYC and one to Hanover, NH, as well as a couple unavoidable ones into town.

19.44 gallons pp in own cars +Â 45.33 miles pp on public transport

=Â 48 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 24.8%)

Electricity. Aargh, we left our coffee machine on for an entire weekend while we were away! We’re also occasionally using our small electric heater to warm up the bathroom for a bath or shower. Either way, all that didn’t make much of a difference in our wind-powered electricity consumption:

363 KWH (all wind) = 10% of the US National Average

(Last year’s early average: 18.2%)

Heating Oil and Warm Water. Most was for hot water. On those days when the day-time thermostat dipped below 58 F, we were on top of it with the wood stove. November has been so warm, in the 40’s during the day and at night around (mostly above) the freezing point. At night it’s been below 55 F inside only once, necessitating the furnace. For wood we’ve only used up one ring so far, which we calculated at 1/8 of a cord. But I won’t count it yet until we’ve reached that cord.

14.45 gallons = 23% of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 77%)

Trash. Our weigh-in of our trash for the 3 of us for 1 month was very low, thanks to watching the packaging of what we buy, not buying anything at all, and reusing anything that can be put into an arts and crafts project:

3 lbs = 3% of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 7.3%)

Water. We’ve put the rain barrels out of commission in anticipation of the freeze (that hasn’t come yet), and are flushing (selectively) with tap water again. Winter with its many and bulky layers also makes for more loads of laundry (though we’re careful: I do about three loads a week, at most). How to bring this down even more?! Any rain water flushing systems will have to wait till Spring…

444 gallons of water pp = 15% of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 16.5%)

Consumer Goods. This was an exceptionally expensive month. Several things needed replacing. The dryer that came with the house is about 20 years old and very slow and energy-consuming. I don’t worry about it in Summer because I line dry, but In Winter and Spring we can’t hang our laundry outside because of 1) rain and 2) wood smoke from our neighbor’s when the wind is wrong. I am line drying in our basement again, but we need the dryer for smaller garments, for quick drying, and for when we have a big load. So we bit that bullet and got an energy efficient but not too expensive new one. The old one we’re keeping – could we use that motor for a pottery wheel? – and we’ll be reusing the box for sheet mulch. We also bought a new winter jacket for DH, winter boots for Amie and Mama, and hats and socks. All that makes more or less for:

$600= 73% of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 27.2%)

Food. Our food consumption is steadily shifting to bulk, and I’m succeeding more and more in buying the “wet” foods like dairy and vegetables in the local category. It hurts to have to buy the staples we had counted on from the garden, like potatoes and onions, but there you have it. We’re hardly eating meat anymore, and we eat more (local) eggs. Our Winter Harvest is coming along well, thanks to the clement weather.

A Composty Day

{UPDATED} below

Bright and not too cold out. Amie back to preschool after more than a week’s hiatus. I’ve got two hours to spend in the garden!

get horse manure from neighbor
spread manure/compost mix on empty beds, cover with straw and cardboard
make compost tea for beds in operation
set up “kindling dryer”
rearrange some firewood, if there’s time
harvest chard

{UPDATE}

The horse lady was not at home, and just 2. took all of the daylight, and still isn’t finished. So I can’t cross anything off my list as yet

It does feel like I got a lot done, though. Four veg beds have been cleared of leaves, branches and acorns, hoed, covered with about 10 inches of homemade compost, then a good half foot of fluffy fresh straw (which is now $9 a bale at the feed store!). The five large front beds have been cleared and hoed, but only two of them have been given compost, and none are covered with straw. Tomorrow, if the weather permits again. I will have to break open a bag of MooDoo, because I’m out of finished compost. I’m thinking I’ll put the cardboard on once the straw has settled a bit.

When digging up my three compost bins I saw a noticeable difference between them. The one made of chicken wire, which held mostly veg garden scraps, was the least decomposed. The compost in the Earth Machine that’s also in the veg garden was nice and crumbly, but I spotted not a one worm. The Earth Machine that receives all our kitchen scraps was loaded with earth worms, thousands of them, with hundreds curled up together in balls, but a lot of the stuff in it wasn’t finished yet – it gets replenished every day. One lesson: I need to turn my heaps more often; there were several anaerobic patches. Another lesson: I’ll need more compost bins, and sturdier ones than the one made of chicken wire.