beginnings

We have the beginnings of a garden growing in our house.  I have begun about 100 seedlings and most are growing at a terrific rate.  They have actually exceeded my expectations for how fast they grow and I'm left wondering if I will be able to get them in the ground in time. 

I have yet to put in the irrigation, figure out exactly how many seedlings I need and where they will go and all that deliciousness.  Currently, I'm fretting over the fact that they seem really spindly and leggy and I can't figure out if that's because I used the coconut coir plugs and they need fertilizer, or maybe they need more light? 

Seedling truly are a mystery to me.  A wonderful, amazing, and slightly bewildering mystery.  But we should have lots of food in a few months all this fretting will be forgotten. 

of trees and change (now with pictures)

I waited and waited to post this entry as I wanted to have some pictures to go along with it.  I took said pictures and patiently (ok, not so patiently) tried various cords and configurations but, alas, the pictures will not move from my camera to my computer.  Ah well, perhaps that's for the best as the pictures are not for the faint of heart.  Enough with preambles, though.... Got the camera working!

This weekend we cut down three of our fruit trees.  It's hard for me to even write that, to put it out there to the world that I purposely led to the death of three healthy trees.  But the decision was not made lightly.  I had been mulling the idea over for some time.  Years, actually.  You see, we cut down three trees on our second level of property.  We cut two grapefruit and an orange tree.  For years we had been dealing with growing issues on our property- we just had too much shade. We put raised beds wherever we saw that there might be sun for at least 4-6 hours out of the day to grow vegetables in.  But 4-6 hours is just not enough sunlight for most vegetables to thrive.    We (by which I mean Jed) spent hours climbing the orange and grapefruit trees each spring to cut off growth on the north side to try to keep a minimum of sun on our veggies below and even more hours collecting uneaten fruit that inevitably dropped to the ground and rotted.  We contemplated adding veggies to our front yard and while I'm all for the Food Not Lawns movement, we don't have a lawn in the front (or the back for that matter) and I am too in love with the natives garden we are slowly but surely creating in our front yard to dig it up and start over.  I thought hard about water usage, accessibility, land use, hours of sunlight, what foods I wanted to grow, etc.

So, the other day, the stars aligned and I realized that three of our trees would have to go.  I saw that we weren't eating enough of the fruit, nor were we around enough to pick fruit to bring to shelters or food banks, we didn't have enough sunlight in our garden to grow anything more than kale and chard, and so the decision was made.  Within a couple hours the trees were down and land was cleared.  Another few hours later and all the ripe oranges and grapefruit were loaded into 2 cars and an SUV and hauled down to the food bank in San Marcos (all 1,057 pounds of it).  And now there is possibility.  I have ordered some drip tape for irrigation, some seeds for planting and we've found some local compost that we hope to get this weekend.  Eventually the wood will be chipped and used as a mulch for the new growing area.

But I have to admit, every day I wake up and look out any of our north facing windows, my heart still drops a little.  There was something comforting about being able to look out into the canopy of mature citrus trees and feel sheltered by the greens and oranges and yellows.  Our yard is more of a wide open space now (granted, we still have 15 other fruit trees) but, while I'm so excited about the possibilities of gardening with sun again, I'm still feeling the loss of those trees.

I love when seemingly small actions become huge metaphors for the way I live my life.  In this case, the loss of these trees (particularly a loss that I intentionally caused) reminds me how difficult it is for me to deal with change.  I like things to stay the same, I enjoy the comfort of the familiar.  Yet, as time has gone on, I'd like to believe I've gotten better at determining those things that would be best left as they are and those things that might need to change.  I doubt I will ever really stop wondering if I made the right decision- I will always wonder if I should have just found some sunny spots and planted seeds where they were, spent more time collecting the uneaten fruit and shuttling it around town to those who are hungry, and on and on- but at this point none of those options were realistic.  My desire to feed my family from my garden is realistic, but only if I had a sunny area large enough, and now I do.  So, I feel that soft spot in my heart when I look down into our yard, but I can see it being transformed into something new.  The possibility of a working vegetable garden and the hundreds of pounds of food we can grow, eat, preserve, share...the hope of something even more amazing.  It will just take time, and patience, and lots of sun.

There's the passage from Ecclesiastes that was turned into a song.. .a time for everything, a season for everything, and all that.  I'm not going to quote that again.  But shortly after that passage, it is written "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil- this is the gift of God." Ecc 3: 12-13.

And perhaps that's the point of this all...that I'll always be making decisions, some easy and some hard.  But I hope that I 'do good' and work to remember that to 'find satisfaction in all [my] toil- this is the gift of God."

field trip

It's that time of year again...pumpkin time.  Jess and I normally love to go out to Bate's with the kids but we had some bad timing this year- every school in north county seemed to be there and it was way too hot for our liking.  The kids seemed pretty unphased, though, and had a great time.  It seems that as long as a John Deere is involved, it's always a good day.  I love four year old boys :) 

what's cooking

I came upon a New York Times article by Mark Bittman last week.  It tackles some of the reasons why people eat junk food over healthier options.  The article begins by considering one of the 'truths' people often come up with- junk food is cheaper.  This just isn't true and it has been proven countless times.  One of my favorite websites is Linda Watson's Cook for Good.  She gives price breakdowns, recipes and the like for cooking on a super-cheap budget healthy and delicious meals for your family.  Another idea that Bittman considers is that of 'food deserts'- areas in the country where real, healthy food just isn't available in the same way that fast food is.  In the end, he describes our culture as a "food carnival."  He talks of the addictive nature of fast food, that it literally changes our brain chemistry.  And he goes so far as to compare it to cigarettes and the politics that went into changing the tobacco industry.

His solution is two-fold, changing the food culture and limiting the marketing of junk food.  As he writes:

What’s easier is to cook at every opportunity, to demonstrate to family and neighbors that the real way is the better way. And even the more fun way: kind of like a carnival.

And as much as the liberal, crunchy, earth mama in my applauded his article and agreed with his premise and understood the importance of this change, admittedly, I also felt a bit chagrined.  I can tell you that we eat out a lot.  Not as much as the 'average' family but enough for me to realize that it's more than I like.  And when I really examine my heart for why we are eating out so much I realize that there's definitely a bit of Bittman's idea that cooking has become defined as work and after a long day that's the last thing I want to be doing, but I also realize that, for me it's also the social aspect of eating out.   My life has become very insular lately.  I find there can be multiple days where I have casual conversations with neighbors or short conversations with friends, but the majority of my 'social sphere' is just Jed and Nate.  Cooking and eating naturally feel like a very social activity, something I want to share with others.  Yet with everyone's different schedules, eating restrictions, bedtimes, kid's eating preferences (and we have our fair share of all of these things in our house, for sure) it makes cooking for friends and their families really hard.  Sometimes I find that 'sharing' a meal with a server or the strangers next to me at a restaurant, feeling the camaraderie of ordering a similar item as other people, allows me to feel a connection that's bigger than my small family.  Sometimes I don't want to feel like I'm in some strange mothering competition where the woman who makes the most elaborate 4 course meal for dinner wins.  I just want to sit down with a bowl of pasta and chat with some friends. 

And, yes, maybe I'm over-thinking all of this but I realize that this is one of those 'truths' I've begun to realize about myself.  I do like to cook.  I have ample food- in the stores, the markets, my own backyard. Yet it can get lonely cooking for my family of three (or 2 in the morning/lunch) and sometimes I just want to hand a friend a grilled cheese sandwich without being judged if the bread its on is homemade, the cheese organic or if I used real butter or not and have an honest to goodness conversation as we eat some cheesy goodness.  And, if I'm going to be completely honest here, sometimes I'm just too lazy to want to make the same old thing again.

Hmm, clearly this article got me thinking.  I suppose I could go on and on about the breakdown of society, etc etc.  Or maybe I just need another piece of banana bread with chocolate chips :)  Either way, food for though, right?!

and then there was one...

We have been feeding the local coyote population healthy and organically raised chickens for the last few weeks.  In the course of 2 1/2 weeks we have lost 3 of our four chickens.  First Busty, our sweet girl who lay blue eggs, then Polly and finally her twin sister Buffy.  Our sweet Rosie is left.

 Nate and I were home when the last one, Buffy, was taken, we heard the alarm squack and, unfortunately, I was as far as I could be from the backyard when we heard it.  We ran as fast as we could, shouting and yelling all along, only to get to the top steps of the backyard and see the coyote bolting with Buffy in his mouth through the yard and over the fence into the neighbor's yard.  Because, yes, we are the smart family who decided to raise chickens knowing full well that a duo of coyotes lives in the overgrown bamboo thicket just 2 houses down.  

I think of the three of us, I'm the most devastated.  Nate is truly taking it all in stride.  I mean, if we're going to be honest here, he wanted to eat them along along too.  

So, now, I'm left trying to figure out if chickens get lonely and, if so, should we fork out $20 for a full grown chicken to keep Rosie company.  Chicks will take at least 4 months before they can go into the coop with her or else she'll kill them herself.  We'll be doubling our run size so that they can have more room to roam while we aren't downstairs and I'll be committing more time spent in our backyard so that Rosie can roam around and be safe.  

Life on the farm.  Ugh.