Good Fences and all that…

Eek! The joke in my banner has come true.

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First Rabbit of the Season

Two of them brazenly hopped right by the bed with the lettuces – our only crop, so far! They passed by it either because they didn’t notice the food, which I doubt, or because they were spooked when they spotted me in the window. I assumed the latter and instantly, in the rain, erected a makeshift fence around the cold frame.

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It just brings home to us that we are going to have to erect a fence around the main veggie garden soon. We’ll do that as soon as the tree work around and above that area is done. It’ll mainly keep out dogs, rabbits, and skunks. I’ve never seen woodchucks (groundhogs) around here, or raccoons, but we might try to fence them out as well. We have seen deer, though never that far onto our property. As for the squirrels and chipmunks, well, they’re such good climbers, and what with all the overhanging trees it seems like I will surely lose the fight, so I’m not going to bother.

I’m thinking to reuse the chainlink fence that the previous owner used to keep her dogs in. It sticks out about three foot up above ground and one foot down into the soil. We’ll line it with chicken wire, and we’ll also lay chicken wire underground, horizontally, for no less than one foot, to stop the burrowers. If any woodchucks and raccoons show up, I’ll add a chickenwire overhang around the perimeter to deter their climbing. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll slowly be hidden as we grow our vines on it.

Learning a New Skill: Pottery

It’s raining which is good: the soil needs it. So I’m stuck inside, with some time to catch up on research, and to show off my creations from my first session of wheel-thrown pottery!

Here they are, thrown, dried, kilned and glazed:

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Their beautiful colors (glazes made by my teacher, Lisa Dolliver) are hard to capture in photographs. I love each imperfection, and the fact that they never turned out to be what I had intended them to be. I sit down at the wheel and play, letting the clay dictate. I signed up for another session and this time will try to be more goal-oriented: try to recreate something, for instance, try to get its shape and volume right.

Yesterday I made two plates/platters, which is great fun to do, all that compressing. I also still need to get the hang of collaring, which looks like so much fun. And my wedging leaves a lot to be desired… I think I shall move “pottery wheel” up on my Tools/Toys list.

Riot for Austerity: Month 6 – and Ode to Freecycle

Riot for Austerity fist with Thermometer

Gasoline

Whenever there’s a birthday party or a school outing, I volunteer to drive ourselves plus several more kids there and back and even around to their houses. This month has been laden with those, and DH has had to drive in to work a couple of times. Result: 9.65 gallons/person, or

23% of the US National Average

Electricity: those lights!

The further jump in our electricity bill (from 484 KWH to 534 KWH) wholly coincides with the addition of one heat lamp (and incandescent) and two more fixtures (2 fluorescents each) for our germination and seedling area. We buy 100% wind energy electricity, though, so:

15% of the US National Average

Still, I’m looking forward to turning the lights off soon for many, many reasons!

Heating Oil for Heating and Warm Water: finally down!

Finally the weather has turned and it shows. For oil for heating and for hot water we reached:

48% of the US National Average!

Phew, what a relief! I doubt we’ll be turning the heat back on until Fall comes ’round again, but we musn’t become complacent: preparations for next winter are the following. (1) A good wood stove and putting more effort into drying the wood we already have (by then it will have been cured for two years) and getting more local wood – perhaps even from our own yard again. (2) Also, a wrap-around greenhouse that will double as a solar collector. For (1) we need to save money. For (2) we need to start designing and collect a lot more windows from Freecycle!

Trash: the usual, so far

Still on track, as we haven’t finished our guest room project yet – waiting for the inspector! – so haven’t reckoned the construction debris yet.

10% of the US National Average

We are still salvaging a lot of construction wood: We’re keeping it out of the landfill and it will all come in handy some time later, no doubt. Whatever we don’t plan to use we put on Freecycle.

Water: waiting for the rain (barrels)

We’ve been consuming more water as the new, small lawn and the larger patches of buckwheat become established and need frequent watering – the promised rains have not come.So we used up 595 gallons of water over the month, that’s

20% of the US National Average

All of us – the Rabbit (co-houser) included – have been very good with showers and flushing toilets, so we’ll just have to suck up the extra consumption, but not for too long!

The problem is we’re wavering with the rain barrels. They cost a lot to buy new ($100 a pop). I’ve pursued all the avenues I can think of for free/cheap barrels that we can convert to rain barrels ourselves and no luck: that market seems to be “saturated” already around here. A tank, maybe? That would have to be bought online and shipped, and also costs a pretty penny…

Consumer Goods: good, depending how you count…

We bought some big things in April. Some were garden related, those I’m not counting (a hoe, for instance, which came to a pretty penny!).  Other expenses were for our guest room – for our family, all of whom live far away and visit for long stretches, and co-houser(s). They include a toilet, a shower enclosure, an interior door, and the usual construction stuff like studs, dry wall and subfloor… Just like the garbage, I’m going to count all these next month, when the project (hopefully) finishes. Then we’ll tally it all up. It all goes into a yearly average anyway, at the end. (*)

So those expenses excluded we did reasonably well, with two take-out dinners, coffee (I’m counting these here as I’m not counting food), and a couple of dollars for books from the library book fair: $160, that’s

19% of the US National Average

(*) I want to add we did quite well by getting a lot of good stuff on Freecycle: a slider for the main entrance to the room, off the mudroom, a casement window that will let light from the mudroom into the room, and a really nice window for the new bathroom.  As for other things we kept out of the landfill: Amie spotted a clean, almost new and more importantly *real* Pooh Bear at the good-goods-exchange at the dump, and what could we do? Poor “not-real” Pooh Bear!

My Child Will Not Eat Vegetables

Gasp! See that gap?

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A lettuce was taken from under the shade cloth! Ah, there it is:

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And here:

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This last picture, my dear readers, shows a true miracle. For Amie will not eat vegetables. No peas, or corn, no cucumber, no cherry tomatoes, no broccoli. Mashed potato, yes, and rice, but that is it. Something to do with color and texture. Luckily she’ll eat any fruit you give her – but try convincing her that tomatoes are fruit!

Maybe she understood how important this very first harvest was – or maybe her Baba quietly told her… As soon as I came in with the handful of leaves she asked me: can I taste it? And after I washed it, she took a bite, and another, and another. Three, yes. And though she didn’t seem wholly convinced, and had no more after that, she congratulated me:

– Mmm, Mama, that’s pretty good lettuce!

It sure is!

Here she is again, hanging out with most of the seedlings “hardening off” in the afternoon  heat – maybe the hardening off only begins once theyre returned to the much cooler basement!

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Reading and Writing Checks Already, Arithmatic, and the Metaphyics of Time

What with all the gardening around here it’s been a while since I wrote about Amie’s non-gardening doings and goings. Here are some newer developments.

We’re working on her letters. She recognizes all the upper and lower case and can sound out and read three-letter words:

But writing them is something else altogether, especially those pesky rounded lower cases. Numbers too are a challenge. So this spring break we’re working on all those.

These days Amie sees us writing a lot of checks (unfortunately) and she was curious what that was about. I explained it to her and even found an old checkbook from a defunct account for her to play with. She wanted to write out her first check to me!

– How much do I owe you, Mama? she asked

– Oh, I said, by the time we’re done, mm… about a million

No problem. She asked our co-houser to help her fill it in, and when he – we call him Rabbit, so I’m going to start referring to him as Rabbit as of now – started writing in the amount, she changed her mind. When he had formed “10” she said:

– I want to pay Mama ten million dollars!

When he had added another 0, she said:

– Yes, a hundred million dollars!

She is so very generous!

She has been doing some multiplication with single digit numbers and division by 2. She needs her fingers and concrete things to do it: “If we have 6 ice cream sandwiches and there’s 2 of us, how many do we each get?” works, but “What is 6 divided by 2 make?” doesn’t.

Her Baba also taught her to add up a big and a small number. For instance, 76 + 4. This is how she explains it: You put the big number in your head: 76 (pinches thumb and index fingers together and touches her forehead, turning them and making a creaking sound, as if turning a key in a lock). Then you put the smaller number on your fingers (arranges her hand so 4 fingers are out). Then you count: 76, (takes away one finger) 77, (takes away another finger) 78, (takes away another finger) 79, (takes away last finger) 80!

She is not only a mathematician, like her Baba, but also a metaphysician, like her Mama (used to be). The other day she was acting all grumpy and DH observed that she was becoming a two-year-old again.

– No-o, she said, I can’t go back; I can only go forward.

Potting Up and Seeds (Indoors, Outdoors, Ordered)

I made it to Volume Two of Edible Forest Gardens and am enjoying reading about Pattern Languages. I really like the way Jacke and Toensmeier blend philosophy/psychology and practical garden design: patterns that live… I already made some observations on our property that I wouldn’t have hadn’t I read their advice. I feel ready now to do a proper site analysis and a basic design of permaculture zones and sections. Our landscaping last weekend has also given me confidence that we can make incisive changes, with bigger elements than I would have dared to use before, like removing and planting trees and bushes, and laying paths. My vision for the garden is finally taking on a more definite shape.

I’m glad that we’re taking the design of the larger garden slowly and deliberately: most of it will happen over the next couple of years. It seems like we’re rushing (into) the more conventional vegetable garden now, but that would be ignoring the winter months of study and planning that went into it. But it sure feels like rushing now, in that great rush of Spring, and notwithstanding all the study I often feel like I don’t know what I’m doing – and I feel fine with that! It’s part of the great change that is also happening to me.

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As more of my time gets spent outdoors I feel less and less drawn to the basement, but that is still where most of the vegetating goes on. I’m seeing some very fine asparagus shooting up fast as rockets in the hotbox, and the elecampane and the stevia are almost ready to leave that area. I sowed a new variety of bell peppers (Vidi Crimson from Renee’s Garden) and am waiting for its germination. I had no luck with the Peacework sweet pepper I got from Fedco: only 4 out of entire packet (more or less 26 seeds) germinated.

Some days ago I took advantage of Amie’s playdate to do some major potting up. Most seedlings needed it: they were bursting out of their cells or shared containers. The difference potting up makes was made clear to me by the two catnips that germinated in my first batch:

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The first one was potted up two weeks ago, the second only yesterday. What a difference! That big catnip is now touching the lights at their hihest setting. Almost time to go out! The basils, anise hyssop (smelling so good!), borage, parsley, thyme and sweet marjoram also got their own pots.

Giving more room to the roots of course also meant sacrificing more space in the seedling area. I’ll only be able to sow new seeds once I’ve moved the faster-maturing veggies (spinach and perhaps some onions) into the cold frame and the slow growing celery and leeks into the one raised bed that is ready. The potatoes have already made some nice sprouts and will go into the next available beds and bins. Soon it will be time to pot up the tomatoes and the eggplants as well.

To be started inside:

  1. cucumber
  2. squashes
  3. more spinach
  4. more lettuce: different variety this time
  5. bee balm (aka Bergamot)
  6. more burnet (give it another try?)
  7. the chamomiles
  8. more garlic chives (or straight outside?)
  9. more chard (or straight outside?)
  10. comfrey (or stragiht outside?)
  11. coriander
  12. cumin (in hotbox)
  13. dill
  14. fennel
  15. fenugreek (in hotbox)
  16. more parsley (in hotbox)
  17. more peppers (in hotbox)
  18. sorrel (or straight outside?)
  19. valerian
  20. brussels sprouts
  21. Welsh onion (if I can find seed)

To be planted outside as soon as weather and status of beds allows:

  1. potatoes (“seed”)
  2. onions (seedlings and sets) some in cold frame, others under plastic cover
  3. spinach (seedlings) in cold frame
  4. leek (seedlings) under plastic cover
  5. celery (seedlings) under plastic cover
  6. chard (seedlings) under plastic cover
  7. kale (seedlings) under plastic cover
  8. parsley (seedlings) under plastic cover
  9. chives (seedlings and seed) under plastic cover – in perennial bed
  10. mustard greens (seed)
  11. radishes (seed) under plastic cover
  12. peas (seed)
  13. beets (seed)
  14. carrots (seed)

Can’t wait for that last frost date! Not long now. If only it would stop raining and I could go out there and dig some more. In the meantime I couldn’t of course stop myself from ordering… more seeds!

  1. Alfalfa (Lucerne) and more Blue Lupine, or Bluebonnet: nitrogen fixers for terraces
  2. My Castle Red Russell: another Lupine, this one red
  3. Valerian
  4. Bountiful Gardens Mild Kingdom Mustard Greens Mix
  5. Windsor Fava Bean
  6. Italiko Rosso Chicory for winter crop
  7. Claytonia for winter crop
  8. Verte de Cambrai for winter crop
  9. Early Mizuna for winter crop
  10. Tatsoi for winter crop
  11. Purple Beauty Sweet Pepper
  12. Wild Bergamot, aka Bee Balm
  13. Borage: love that stuff!
  14. St Johnswort: “Was even used in the Middle Ages for sword wounds!” (Fedco Seed Catalog)… who can resist!
  15. Carpet of Snow Alyssum
  16. Alaska Nasturtium Mix
  17. Panorama Red Shades Bee Balm
  18. Blue Flax
  19. Queen of the Meadow, Eupatorium purpureum, also known as Joe Pye Weed or Gravel Root: flower
  20. Fedco Beneficials Mix
  21. and a big bag (4 lbs) of Buckwheat as a ground cover / compost crop for the lower part of our garden: that part will be in soil enhancer until next Spring.

Two Games: the Sucker (Energy Saving) Game and Max

Our co-houser was very interested in pruning the house of “suckers” – appliances and battery chargers and the like that suck electricity even though they’re not in use. He was pulling them all over the place – especially the microwave, which is mostly my fault. He got so into it he devised a game:

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Each member of the household gets a little plate. Each time he or she spots a sucker, he or she gets an object from the central pot – if you spot something you left sucking, you get nothing, but so does anyone else (either does no one else?). The first person to collect five objects gets to chose who will cook her or him a meal of her (or his) choice. Amie was the first to get one!

The other game we’re playing a lot is Max, the cooperative game I wrote about earlier. It is a great game to teach Amie about both strategy and the concept of “luck”. She now understands that Max needs to eat too, and not just treats (which recall Max to his porch when he gets too close to the little forest creatures). Still, that doesn’t stop her apprehension when the fate of the little bird or mouse hangs in the balance:

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In this particular game all three creatures got eaten. Afterwards Amie decided to make extra treats for Max (the game has only four: after that the creatures are fair game). She made at least twenty little cards with drawings of catnip and milk, and also grapes, worms, and donuts! I’ll have to explain that Max will get too fat…

Marathon Monday Garden Work

Marathon Monday weekend was that for us: a marathon! We had three days of free time, good weather shining down on us, a mound of soil and “compost” (really deteriorated mulch) delivered, and friends with wheelbarrows and stamina come help.

We rototilled and amended and terraced the most problematic part of our front yard: the slope. The terraces – some in the sun, some in partial shade – will be perennial beds for herbs, and there is lots of room for flowering shrubs around the bird feeders. The path in between we seeded with Nichols Nursery Ecological Lawn. Let’s see if it takes. The robins and even the squirrels already like it). I really wanted to plant some buckwheat to amend the soil, but we couldn’t wait for warmer weather…

We also rototilled the entire vegetable garden area, path and all. It will be much easier to dig and sift the loosened soil into the raised bed frames. Some areas had huge amounts of stones, so I pretended I was digging for potatoes. Here is Amie carrying some of that huge bounty away:

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If those were really potatoes, we’d win some sort of price at a fair! Amie also got to sow some bluebonnets (blue lupine) in the flower box:

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Lupine is a nitrogen-fixing flower, and I wanted to give it a trial run before I plant it in the perennial beds to make them ready for the perennial herbs later on.

Of course there was also time for a wheelbarrow ride!

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And while we worked – especially when we were hammering in the stakes that will hold the terraces in place – we had a visitor:

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It’s that elusive Pileated Woodpecker! He was fearless, came to within about 10 feet of us, checking us out, making a right racket!

Inside the house I have started greening the potato seed.

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Yup, that’s the bedroom dresser. It’s not like we had gotten ’round to decorating our bedroom anyway!

Riot for Austerity: Month 5

Riot for Austerity fist with Thermometer

“Rekenen,” Dutch: to count

Am I reckoning month 5 already – or only? Sometimes it seems like we’ve been doing this all our lives, other times it’s like we only started yesterday. It shows that we’re not totally “in the habit” yet. I’m 16 (!) days late in reporting. Also, this month is ugly: our consumption went up on several counts, because of our seedling setup in the basement (electricity) and our co-houser (water), but mostly because we were less vigilant with our consumer goods purchases.

Gasoline: 16%

Between us we consumed 19 gallons. That’s 6.3 gallons/person, that’s:

15% of the US national average.

This is getting better every month, and better days are ahead as the weather gets warmer and drier and we can look forward to hopping on that bike!

Electricity: 13%

We pruned the house of all the suckers, but still our electricity consumption went up from 371 KWH last month, to 484 KWH.

It makes for 13% of the US National Average.

Considering we have an extra person staying at our house as well as over a hundred seedlings under lights and above heatlamps in our basement (*), and that all our electricity comes from wind, it’s maybe not too lamentable.

Heating oil and warm water: 109%

The days are slowly warming up and the Freeze Yer Buns challenge is over, (though it’s going to freeze again over the coming weekend). Our heat is still on (at 62 F during the day, 58 F at night), but I’ve shut off the heat and opened the windows on several more days, and we no longer heat the Annex, the part of the house we are working on.  It has shown in our consumption (67 gallons of oil this month against 79 gallons last) and it’s giving me some hope.

109% of the US national average

Heating oil is definitely our weakest point. Now, as we approach the time of year when the boiler will only come on for heating our water, we need to start working on alternatives. Quite a few of them are under review: several solar hot water systems, as well as better insulation of our hot-water tank and the pipes.

Thinking a bit longer term, I’ve ramped up my lobbying for the wood stove, especially now that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Part III, Section 1121, Energy Conservation Incentives) promises a tax credit for the installation of efficient stoves. And then there are the plans for a greenhouse wrap-around, which will act as a solar wall and solar thermal collector next winter…

Garbage: 10%

We’re making less and less household garbage each month, and are well in the range of the 90% reduction. Work on the part of the Annex is still ongoing, though I believe most of the demolition is done, and we’re looking mostly at building from now on.

We salvaged quite a few good two-by-fours and other pieces of wood, one of which is already shielding our third compost bin from the wind and rain. Once the trash company comes to pick up the leftovers, we’ll weigh in.

Water: 19%

Our water consumption is up by way too much since last month. We consumed 580 gallons a person, which makes for

19% of the US national average

It was a shocker, because that’s up from 14%. Sure, the seedlings drink quite a bit, about 2 gallons a day, I should say, between all of them, but that hardly accounts for a 605 gallon jump!

I know the problem: our co-houser takes a daily shower. DH and Amie and I were trying to compensate for his extra usage by showering less, but this month, it turns out, our co-houser sometimes took two showers a day. I’m such a non-confrontational person, it took me so long to discuss it with him that in the end he was the one who brought it up. He is very open to reducing (he’s helping with “pruning the house” – a constant effort for which he devised a neat game – about that soon!). He was shocked that his consumption counted for so much, and now we’re back on track.

Consumer goods: 51%

This is where it gets ugly. We splurged this month. It hurts after being so victorious last month.

I had to buy gifts (got craft materials) for two birthday parties, clothes for Amie (we’re usually in a reliable hand-me-down pipeline: don’t know what happened), and materials for our Annex (that cost will go up drastically next month as we enter the building phase).  (Our purchases for the cold frame I will, as per usual for any garden-related costs, not count.)

Our biggest expense however was books. I bought that wonderful and expensive set, the two volumes of Edible Forest Gardens, and we spent quite a lot in our favorite bookstore, the Brookline Booksmith, on that memorable weekend.

Altogether that makes for

51% of the US national average.

Yikes!

Food: ?

I’m referring to an older post for my reasons for not reckoning this category. We sinned a bit here too: got take-out twice, and made a large order of coffee ($65: gack!). DH on his trip had no choice but to eat out a lot…. I’m not even going to ask him for the bills!

We’re working on our garden, of course. Slowly we’re nudging the food deficit into the black…