Notes from a Coastal Virginia Farm Garden

Green Cuisine? From the frozen food isle?

2009-12-02T17:19:00.000-05:00

Lord, I know "green" is the ultimate cache for marketing these days but I am truly amazed at the ways in which it is showing up on products. I don't know whether this is all pure misleading hype and manipulative marketing - or whether it is a hopeful sign that businesses are choosing to commit to reducing the environmental impact of their products and their packaging.

Two examples of product "greening" from this week's shopping, both brought home by Rob, the Happy Shopper. (I should note here that my husband doesn't critique labels as he shops. He is 95% impulse buyer - the odd 5% being those items on the list his spouse has given him. Everything else leaps into his cart as a momentary inspiration, triggered by a colorful photo on the package, a sudden memory or simply the joy of a new food discovery. Rob is also primarily a packaged-food eater. He likes entrees he can drop into a pan from the freezer and eat within 15 minutes.)

Contessa frozen foods Paella package now sports a Green Cuisine label on the bag. On the back of the bag, taking up most of the back, is statement that Green Cuisine "comes from the first green frozen-food manufacturing plant in the world", followed by a short explanation of global warming. According to the explanation: "Manufacturing accounts for about 80% of the industrial energy use and emissions. Within this group, the food industry is the 5th largest consumer of energy." and it continues to say, in bold print:
So why not choose food produced in a manufacturing plant that reduces its energy use and CO2 (carbon dioxide) emisisons by more than 65% daily. The approvals/inspections for this are listed and the small print even notes that the package is printed with environmentally friendly ink.

Demerara Sugar's bag now sports seals at the top that is is Certified Vegan (http://www.vegan.org/) and Certified CarbonFree (http://www.carbonfund.org/). The copy on the back of the bag (still plastic, alas) extolls their "eco-friendly farming and business practices". The copy continues: Our renewable energy facility recycles sugar cane fiber (bagasse) and urban wood waste to produce clearn, reliable energy that powers our sugar operations and tens of thousands of homes. Our facility reduces America's dependence on foreign oil, saves valuable landfill space and reduces CO2 emissions. All that from a bag of sugar for Rob's coffee (which he bought because he likes the taste.)

Hype? Pure marketing? If they are really following through on these claims, does it matter if it's good marketing? Isn't increased business - more buyers - the profit that we hope will encourage more businesses to follow a 'clean living' model?

Does this mean that conscientious shoppers have become enough of a force that manufacturers are taking serious heed and are moving their businesses into models that meet the hopeful visions of the consumers? Maybe this is the balance point - that at the same time large firms are working to manipulate the FDA organic standards into meaninglessness , other businesses are moving toward a more sustainable model of doing business.

Things are Looking Up

2009-12-02T16:52:00.000-05:00

During my hiatus from this vbgarden blog, I've been working on the http://www.usefulgardens.blogspot.com/ entries and helping with the establishment of the Hampton Roads VA Buy Fresh Buy Local Chapter. (Find us on Facebook.com under Buy Fresh Buy Local Hampton Roads). It's inspiring to have so many local growers, ranchers, beekeepers and fishermen signed up to be in the new Local Foods Guide. It's a real thrill to be part of energizing our local food community!

Transplanting and Renewal

2009-07-29T19:58:00.006-04:00

I've been out separating daylilies into new plantings. I know it seems like an odd time of year to be doing this but daylilies suffer mid-summer moves well and it is the only way I can judge the bloom color of the daylilies I'm moving - yes, I really have lost ALL the tags. I've been working at this job, off and on, since June, moving clumps into new configurations that better show the colors of each variety.

I think of what this is like for the daylilies as I am tearing clumps apart, ripping the roots free and brutally separating what was a happy, if crowded, family of daylily shoots. Some break, are cut by the shovel, missed in the transplant and otherwise doomed to die. To the original plant, at that moment, the transplanting process must seem like the strike of a horrific tragedy. The shock! The pain! The disorientation!

As I work, I keep consoling them. "It will be better for you in the long run," I assure each traumatized transplant. "You needed to move, to grow, to have a new situation. It will be okay. It is for the best - you will see" .

And as I work I think about God and the scale of things and how our lives are torn and upheaved with traumas we think we cannot endure. And I think of all the platitudes and comforts people say to us with love, with concern, and how we cannot hear them at that time.

And I watch the lilies - how they wilt and they struggle. They don't see me caring for them, watering them, watching over them. Slowly, carefully, they put down new roots. Their leaves lift... and they begin to grow and thrive.

Sometime later when I'm strolling through the garden I see the daylilies growing in their new locations - vibrant, blooming, happy. They have coped, they have survived, they are doing even better than they were.

And I tell myself.... remember.

Organic Gardening Turned Me Into a Ruthless Killer

2009-07-06T19:27:00.000-04:00

Organic gardening has turned me into a ruthless killer.

It’s true.

Back when I used popular chemicals to ward off insect attacks, garden defense was a matter of gracefully waving my sprayer wand over my beloved plants, much in the manner of Glinda the Good gracing the Munchkins with her benevolent presence. A gentle spray drifted down over the leaves and slowly, silently, the offending insects fell to the ground. All was well. No distinction was made between “good” insects and “bad” insects, all were treated with equal dispassion. My plants were inviolate. They probably glowed – gratefully, I would have thought - in the dark. While I was never entirely comfortable with spraying, all of the accepted farming dogma insisted that a carefully followed spray schedule was necessary to produce good crops. I was a good grower, I followed the directions carefully.

Eventually, I gave up standard commercial growing and all the chemical pesticide and fungicide formulas. I couldn’t justify poisoning myself any longer, even for perfect looking food. I also couldn’t justify poisoning the frogs, toads, dragonflies, water, earth and air. The list of victims, the collateral damage, was endless. The results were becoming obvious, even on a small farm like ours. Amphibians of all sorts - frogs, toads - and many of the lovely insects we liked – bees, butterflies, fireflies- were scarce. We began creating meadow spaces across the farm, half an acre here and there, where clover, Queen Anne’s Lace and other wild flowering plants could flourish, hoping to lure back and nurture some of what had been damaged.

But let me point out that what never became scarce were the original offenders, the Japanese Beetles, the whiteflies, the hornworms – all of the munching, tearing, sucking, piercing horde that made gardeners like me take to poisons in the first place. The newly available organic sprays worked to an extent, but I was now the caretaker and defender not only of my plants but also of the beneficial insects I worked so hard to encourage. The new sprays were equally lethal to those newly beloved friends. What to do?

And so it came down to hand-to-hand combat, mano a mano with the bug world. Where I once wandered ladylike, gently wafting airborne particles across the garden, I now crept clumsily, eyes narrowed, ready to pounce. I’ve become a one-woman SWAT team for bugs. I’ve graduated from gently knocking insects into water-and-soap filled containers, flicking them down with genteel distaste, to removing them with glove covered hands (and stomping on them) and finally, now, to quickly and casually squishing them with my bare fingers as I move through watering and weeding. I squint into the leaves and I pounce. I pinch a pair of mating Japanese Beetle and feel a grim satisfaction as the shells crack. No grubs will come from that pair to destroy my plants next summer. I move a waiting mantis and flatten the nearby berry-eating stinkbug. I’d leave him for the mantis but she takes too long. She can have the ones my eyes don’t see.

All of this brings pest control down to a very personal war zone. I have to take personal, individual responsibility for every tiny life I’m taking. I don’t like it. Not only the squishy, icky parts of it, but also not the karmic, I-can’t-pretend-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing part of it. We are locked in a fight for food, these bugs and me. This is what the natural world dictates; this is what it all boils down to. For one to eat, another may not. And it is always this way. When I buy ‘conventional’ produce at the grocery store, I know that somewhere a field has been sprayed and resprayed, like bombers spraying over the far-away jungles we heard about when I was younger. Thousands have died there. Here in my garden, death is selective. If I can move the offenders to a different plant, less desirable to me, then we share. If they are too greedy, too voracious, if the plant is suffering and my crop – the whole purpose of the endeavor – is damaged, then we move to ultimatums. They bite into a fruit; I pounce. They are ruthless in their pursuit of food. So am I.

Leafblowers - The Philosophy

2009-01-28T21:06:00.003-05:00

Today I drove past a number of landscaping crews busily cleaning up business "yards" and subdivision entrances in the aftermath of a quick series of storms that brought down the last of the fall leaves. The workers were armed with safety goggles and leaf blowers, which they aimed ferociously, like weapons, at the leaves and litter, blasting them to new locations off the property they were hired to protect.

It occurs to me that the irresponsible attitudes that have weakened our society can be related to the effect of leaf blowers. (Yes, I know it sounds mad, but hear me out.)

Do you remember, years ago, how each business owner would be up and out early in the morning, diligently tidying the entrance to his/her shop, sweeping and raking the area and gathering the debris into the trash bin or compost? People swept and cleaned the sidewalks in front of their homes. Leaves were gathered and composted or burned (and I still guiltily miss that wonderful fall smell). Each resident took responsiblity not only for cleaning their personal area but also for making sure the material gathered was disposed of properly. Compare this to our manic, modern work crews and residents with their noisy blowers. Sure the leaves and trash get rapidly moved out of the way, from the sidewalk or parking lot into the street - or neighboring property - but is it actually taken care of? No, it's just loudly shuffled far enough to become someone else's problem.

Too many of us, individuals and government representatives alike, have behaved exactly like those landscape crews. Problems were never really solved, no one took responsibility for seeing that a situation was truly "cleaned up and put away" - things were just quickly shuffled off - with a lot of blustering! - for someone else to deal with... again.

Now when I hear someone say that they took a problem in to be solved and the representative or responsible person "just blew it off", I know exactly what image fits.

New Website - Welcome UsefulGardens.com!

2009-01-18T10:47:00.003-05:00

As a response to the many questions coming in lately from friends and wonderful folks who are intending to get into gardening for the first time this spring - or who are expanding their gardens to include edible plants either for the first time or with a new emphasis - I've created a new website: www.usefulgardens.com. It is designed to be a community site rather than a solo blog, a place where I can offer accumulated ideas, tips and advice to veggie and fruit gardeners. As you all know, I hardly hold myself up as an expert on all things gardening but I do have two great assets - a large store of anecdotal experiences growing both vegetables and fruit for personal and commercial use AND a terrific network of friends who are sensational gardeners.

This is a time when we are all being encouraged to reach out to our communities to offer our talents, experience and enthusiasm any place where we can best serve. I figure this is mine.
C'mon over to www.usefulgardens.com and let me know what you think.

Hugs,
Sybil

Planning the Veggie Garden - Early Spring

2009-01-14T18:04:00.004-05:00

Seed catalogs rest in piles about my house. Lists, diagrams, notes from last season.... all the things that will coalesce into this year's garden seed orders. One of the difficulties for gardeners in a variable climate - like Virginia Beach's pseudo-southern, quasi-northern, rollercoaster weather - is in selecting varieties that will survive the changes in temperature that plague our early spring. It is the spring that is the hardest season for plants here, more so than the heavy heat of summer.

Many varieties of fruits and vegetables are triggered into early spring activity by a few days of 65+ degree weather, only to be hit hard when temperatures roll back into the twenties. (This is why many very "hardy" plants, like the arctic kiwi (Actinidia kolomitka and others fare worse in our variable spring weather than in colder climates where they wake up slowly in gradually warming weather.)

In addition, we all tend to hold off on planting until the spring warms up "just a tad", only to have it roll directly into hot weather - devastating to my plans for early sugar peas and sweet lettuces. Currently the garden is growing cabbages (which are not at ALL happy with the continuing damp), onions and garlic. All of these will be harvested and out of the raised beds by the time I need space for tomatoes and summer peppers.

January is for ordering seeds, taking advantage of any "early order" specials catalogs happen to be ordering. I do love the paper catalogs, even though I generally order online through the company's website. I love the photos - I love the illustrations even more. Mary Azarian's woodcuts were the inspiration for year of ordering from Cooks Garden. Besides, I can slap notes all over the paper catalogs - a service they have yet to add to website displays.

February is for turning the first gardens over thoroughly, mixing in the compost and chicken manure (thanks, girls!). Late February this year, my Sugar Snap peas will go in, along with seeds for bunching onions, the ones that really don't form decent bulbs but are wonderful in spring salads. With some protection, in the unheated greenhouse space, I'll sow trays of lettuce and mesclun mix for cut-and-come-again salad greens. Some of these sowings will become early transplants for the garden in late March, marking the areas where other lettuce will be sown in neat rows.

2009: Unseasonable Weather & New Garden Resolutions

2009-01-06T14:39:00.004-05:00

Another rather dreary, rainy day in Virginia Beach. Our ground is thoroughly soaked, puddles abound. It's a perfect day for staying well inside, happily reading the growing pile of garden catalogs scattered over the coffee table.

The good news is that we have moved out of "Drought" status, according to the US Weather Service and compliments of the recurring mild, wet weather that has moved weekly up the coast. Last year we "lost" the month of June here to terrible, choking smoke from the burning peat of the Dismal Swamp and scattered North Carolina fires. Peat from the swamps has a distinct stench - none of the familiar aroma of wood smoke - and it makes me wonder what on earth Irish homes smelled like if dried peat is the primary fuel.

Despite my best conservative intentions, I am seduced by seed catalogs into plotting (literally - my graph paper spreads beside me) more varieties than I swore at the end of last season I would wedge into the garden this year. We have moved all the vegetables to 6 raised beds and having that space constraint really helps me focus my garden plan. I am the Rotation Planting Queen.

I continually review my resolutions:

Garden Resolutions 2009

(1) I will not plant vegetables that we don't really like to eat. (Eggplant stands out here. I adore the color and the fruit but just can't get it onto the family plates. I know, everyone has a recipe they swear we will adore. I'm sold - work on my husband.)

(2) I will not plant vegetables that are better grown by the surrounding farmers. Sweet corn will be from the nearby farm stands this year, ditto potatoes and standard melons. These folks are our friends, supporting their families with their stands and CSAs. We want to keep those little farms alive, so I allow them to provide for us what they do best.

(3) I will water and feed long before my suffering plants remind me that it is critically necessary.

(4) I will label perennials with labels that will stay on, remain legible and withstand hurricanes. (Any suggestions very welcome!!!) I have an entire daylily collection that has become anonymous and abeautiful, mixed Iris bed labelled simply I. dunno. And where ARE all those fall bulbs planted, anyway????

(5) I will manage a timely harvest of the beans, summer squashes and cucumbers before they are wa-ay past due.

(6) I will turn my compost. More often. At least twice.

End of Year Tropical Wave

2008-12-28T12:30:00.003-05:00

T-shirts! No sweater, sleeves or scarf! It is in the low 70's today - looks like we're having the January heat wave early this year. This is the east coast version of the chinook, that mid-country western wind that can melt several feet of snow in a day. For those of us who live and garden the east coast, cold fronts plowing eastward into the Appalachian highlands and the Blue Ridge mountains force a funneling of air northward from the Gulf and southern states. Within a day, the temperatures here along the mid-Atlantic will rise 20 - 30 degrees, bathed in a strong, 10 - 35 mph southern wind. Daffodils and gardeners pop up like magic, desperate to claim the short hours of warm sun.

Our space, smack on the line between the southern gardening zones and the northern maps, can grow an amazing array of plants if gardeners are willing to juggle their microclimate. I was just out checking the loquats (Eriobotrya japonica, listed zones firmly a warm 8 - 10) onthe south side of the house - they are beautifully in bloom just as they should be this time of year - and, in the same trip, soundly scolding the Magnolia stellata, which wants to bloom and absolutely must not do it now, if we are to have any lovely blossoms later this spring when it should bloom.

My stellata is a weather slut - show her any sign of warmth and - poof! - buds begin popping open. In fact, it's become a weather joke around here that the last freeze will not occur until all the Magolia stellatas are opening into beautiful blossoms - at which time it will blast them all.

These warm winter respites, delightful as they are for the gardener-human, are hell on the plants. Buds swell too soon, onions and garlic bulbs heave themselves out of the ground, little buds appear that will quickly freeze again in the next, only-too-soon frosty drop. The dratted flowering cherries drive me nuts - they burst into bloom, I swear, if you breathe warmly on them. Optimists!

But enough blogging - my snack is ready and my trowel is waiting at the back door. I have a valiant batch of little, self-sown foxgloves that must be quickly transplanted if they are to be saved from my husband's determined mulching. Where on earth to put them???? Don't you hate having to move plants from a spot that they themselves have determined to be their perfect place, demonstrated by happily propagating themselves into a nice, established presence? Will they accept my desperate substitute? Probably not as well, or at least not for a while. Foxgloves, whose beauty surprises me again each spring, are quiet plants in our garden and take a while to settle themselves in a very lady like fashion into whatever spot they and I have finally agreed on.

Time to Spray....

2008-12-21T18:57:00.007-05:00

Weather continues to roll this season - warm one day, colder the next. From here through February it will be time to seize every warmer day for spraying dormant oil on the fruit trees and any other non-coniferous plants to smother any overwintering pests and fungi.

There are few garden treatments as easy, effective and relatively non-toxic as oil sprays. Although some brands have sulfur compounds to help combat fungus, any light oil will do. I suspect I could hike out with the "Pam" cooking spray and accomplish the same thing, if using an aerosol wasn't so time consuming and expensive. Hmmm....I wonder if this wouldn't be a good way to use up olive oil and/or other kitchen oils that have passed their prime?

At any rate, loading the very light, easily misable oils into the sprayer and coating the plants - seriously coating, soaking everything to the point of runoff - knocks out a host of future problems and gives me something to feel virtuous about in the winter. Note to self: Make sure the sprayer gets cleaned immediately after spraying this year!

More horticultural oil info: Horticultural Oils

New Roomates.... Mice, Ladybugs.... what next?

2008-12-19T18:21:00.004-05:00

This has been a relatively mild winter so far and it's surprising to see the numbers of adorable but unwanted field mice who are intent on spending the winter in the house with us. I suppose by definition this means each has "evolved" from a field mouse into a house mouse. Everywhere I turn, a little Hunca Munca is hurrying into some crevice or opening we've never noticed before. What interests me is that they have arrived in numbers far greater than we've battled the last couple of years. It's not a terribly cold winter - are they a harbinger of things to come? Do they sense something about the months ahead that our computer forecasting can't determine?

My practical evaluation is that they are coming inside more often this winter because it is the first fall in several years that it has been wet. Really wet. Wet enough, frequently enough to flood underground tunnels and turn cosy nests sodden.

Interestingly, the house mouse has a defined latin name: Mus musculus (which makes me think of a tiny bodybuilder) while the field mouse is not considered a specific species (gotta love that phrase) but is, rather, a collective common term for any odd number of terrestrial rodents. That last is an encyclopedia phrase and makes me wonder about the presence of aquatic rodents.... aerial rodents? (Would that last include bats?)

Well, in person, I think mice are adorable and would probably make room for them were it not for the fact that they have zero bladder control (in fact, I believe they don't have a bladder per se) but, rather, they trickle urine where ever they go. Now, that's just rude. Particularly in my kitchen. Last year we used a nifty little trap called the MiceBox - kind of a scaled down Havahart trap that we could empty wa-ay over in the far field. No such luck this year, I can't find the product anywhere. Rob's hunting with an old-fashioned mousetrap. Oh, dear.

70 Degrees and the Loquats are Humming....

2008-12-10T17:18:00.008-05:00

Once again the temperatures have pushed up into "unseasonal" temperatures with damp and humid weather as the warm Gulf air runs northward up the coast in front of the massive cold front to our west. Like a snowplow, it shoves the warm air up and over into a tidal wave of soft air that has made all of us slow and lethargic. You'd think the warmth would have me out working like mad on gardens and outdoor projects, but the humid drizzle leaves me limp. Windows open! Air circulating! Out with the old, in with the new! And..... nap.

The insects woke up with the warm air and found the sweet smelling Loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) blossoms by the patio irresistible. Although we've already had night temperatures on the barn down to 16 degrees, the blossoms continue to come out of bud on warm days. Unfortunately, temperatures below 25 degrees cause fruit drop in the spring and I lose most of the would-be heavy harvest at that time. The blossoms seem quite hardy, however and I still suspect that this tree could be of great value to beekeepers who now need extended food sources for their hives in the mild winters.

Secretary of Agriculture Post Selection 2009 - Ask Obama for Change

2008-12-08T18:42:00.008-05:00

Many of us who are or have been small farmers feel huge concern over the dismal future of small, sustainable agriculture. Despite the increasing interest in buying local and buying organic (thank you, Michael Pollan, thank you, Barbara Kingsolver), the US government support is always very pro-corporate large-scale, mass-production agriculture.

This makes sense - when you have to feed a nation of people who no longer know or understand where and how their food arrives, what it takes to produce it or - heavens! - how to produce it themselves, and when hundreds of thousands of people have to be fed by a relatively few farmers... well, mass production agriculture is the only way to keep starvation (and I do mean starvation) at bay.

For instance, I look at our own city and surrounding area, Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads. Most folks in this area (over a million) eat chicken in some form at least once a week. Start thinking about how many chickens we're talking about here. Thousands and thousands every day. Now add in the chicken mcnuggets, fried chicken..... fast food..... No one (well, me and a few wacky others - and I don't eat my chickens, only their eggs) are raising their own chickens..... the rest simply go to the store and pick up a package. So, where are all these chickens coming from? For our area and much of the east coast, it's mostly the huge poultry farms on the Eastern Shore. Are they humane? Well, no. You can't produce thousands of chickens, butcher them and get them wrapped & shipped every darned day and treat them well. The birds are crammed full of hormones to speed their growth, jammed into small spaces to economize and killed in whatever way works fast (you hope). It's not fun, it's not friendly, it's not even sanitary. It's factory farming. Simple. That's what it means.

BUT - we are all hoping for more support for small family and community sized farms, support that would allow agriculture to diversify and allow for independent, small-scale producers to raise livestock (and vegetables) in thoughtful, sustainable and humane ways while still making a profit and providing affordable food to the community. I'm not talking about the "la la" upscale, specialty farming here - that venue is going to hit very, very hard times in the recession. I'm talking about practical but smaller and more local farming. And that's farming that needs the same kind of government breaks and support that the corporate farms -- you know, the ones that can afford the expensive lobbyists -- have been getting for years. (Check the 2008 Agriculture Bill if you want to see whether your dollars are being spent in ways your conscience can support.)

What to do? Hike over to www.fooddemocracynow.org/ and join folks like Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Alice Waters, Rosiland Creasy, Frances Moore Lappe, John Jeavons and... me!.... in signing a simple online petition asking the Obama transition team to consider candidates for Secretary of Agriculture who support "sustainable revitalizing our rural economies, protecting our nation's food supply and our environment, improving human health and well-being, rescuing the independent family farmer, and creating a sustainable renewable energy future."

Hey, it can't hurt. You can read the entire proposal - and the suggested candidates - at the http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/ website.

Small Farmer Sybil

Cookies

2008-12-05T21:22:00.003-05:00

I've forsworn gardening this week for holiday madness, including baking cookies for a handful of darling souls that I love. This is More than one would suspect since I actually can't bake worth a damn and only attempt it this one time each year. I have the entire kitchen and porch full of cookies in progress, cookies baking, cookies cooling.... lots of different kinds of cookies. None are as delicious as I always hope they will be. They are only a bit a love from someone who really can't think of anything else creative to share.

Gifting is more difficult each year. I've pretty much worn out giving my dear ones plants. Most of my age group are eliminating, rather than expanding, their gardens and I no longer have all our greenhouses to draw from. I've tried giving charitable donations in their names but it seems self-serving somehow to make my own predetermined donations to charities I've selected and then say, "Oh, this was for you" as if I was perfectly sure that they would share my determination to share goats and chickens with the entire Third World. Even with the nifty accordian-fold gift cards (thank you Heifer Project). After all, I get the tax benefit.

Heaven knows my group doesn't need any more tshatshkes to crowd their lives. Knick-knacks are out, holiday knick-knacks are out of the question. Perhaps the economic slowdown has come just in time to resonate with all of us who are so fortunate that we do not need one single thing more than we have. Not from doing-with-a-little-with-gratitude (there's a word for all that, I know there is, I just can't pull it out) but from simple overabundance. We're full. Our houses are full, our garages are full, our minds are over-loaded.... we need less and lots of it.

Christmas Decorating Mania

2008-12-02T18:58:00.005-05:00

Okay, I admit it. I've begun really enjoying decorating for the holidays. For years I refused to "give in to the holiday hype" by putting up more than a few faux candles or some equally noncommittal decorations but over the last few years... okay, over the last decade, I've really enjoyed decorating our farmhouse. For starters, our house is not in a closely packed neighborhood, where holiday kitsch can be overwhelming. It's on a long road, mostly dark, where the cheery glow of occasional holiday lights really brightens the dark winter evening for our commuters. There's space to enjoy each separate display and what it reveals about the taste and humor of the residents. And there is a huge capacity for amusing the neighbors. Hence the flamingos that are the highlight of this year's display at my house. $15 on Craigslist. Ha! I'm in love.

Winter Rains

2008-11-30T10:32:00.006-05:00

Here in coastal Virginia, we don't pile up the satisfyingly visible drfts of snow with which we measured the replenishment of water tables in the north. Here the winter rains come and soak into the heavy clay, disappearing as the moisture gradually fills the lower spaces where our water resides. November rains bring a kind of laziness - it is so gray and damp outside, better to stay in, curl up, read a book....

When we first moved out here to "south-of-Pungo" where the roads are more like paved dikes between drainage ditches, it wasn't unusual to see the ditches running fast and full of water after a heavy or prolonged steady rain, as if you were driving on a dry strip in the middle of a small river. Sticks and trash would be racing along beside the car as the runoff water ran along the roadside ditches on either side until they turned off into the sloughs that carry the water into the swamp or waterways.

It's been several years since we've seen that kind of rain excess - even in tropical storm deluges. The dryness that lingers from the drought seasons must still have left reservoirs drained in the soil underground, for I never see saturation to runoff anymore. The rain and rain and rain moves down, even through our semi-impermeable clay soil to the still-empty spaces down under. Little water moves over the ground into the ditches.

The land and the trees still seem greedy for the long, cold drink. And, despite the "swampiness" of our local landscape, we - farmers and homeowners alike - are still grateful for the winter rain.

Heaven - the Loquats are fully in bloom

2008-11-25T09:42:00.004-05:00

What a soft, heavenly fragrance - the loquat trees along the fence are fully in bloom. It's one of the best moments in November. As the temperatures come back up toward sixty, the trees are vibrating with bees of all kinds. It is one of the very few things blooming this time of year and a gift to the bees which come out of dormancy with increasing frequency as the winter weather becomes more variable. Last year, out of thousands of blossoms, we harvested THREE loquat fruits. A hard April frost killed the rest of the fruit. Nonetheless, I keep hoping and - even if we never have the fruit to eat - the beautiful blossoms, so wonderfully food for my senses and for the bees, will be enough.

The Chicken Containment Plan

2008-11-24T20:05:00.004-05:00

Steps have been taken! Although our chickens occasionally free range about the property, most of the time they are safely within their fenced run. We've had too many sad encounters with stray dogs, raccoons, foxes and other predators not to feel better with substantial protection for The Girls. There's a photo of the 'Chez Mays' (also known as the Coop du Jour) on the right side panel of the blog, if you scroll down far enough.

Alas, the three young hens ("The Debutantes") are quite capable of flying over and out of the fence. Two can capably flap back over to safety in the evening, leaving only Dotty, the hapless Hamburg (Spangled Hamburg, to be exact - see the Dots?), confusedly circling the pen in the growing dark. One-Way Dotty only gets out. She never gets in. Every evening one of us has to hike out to the chicken run and coax her into the enclosure. It's not difficult, she runs up with huge relief, clucking and chuckling with joy - more than ready to go home - it's just a pain in the neck. And one of these nights we knew we were going to forget her and she'd be a midnight snack for Something. It has happened before.

So, this afternoon we reconfigured the panels of their run so that it has a top of chain link to match the sides. We love the ready-made chain link panels that are sold as dog runs. Most sets have either four 10'x6' or four 6'x6' panels, one with a built-in door, but Home Depot and Lowes also sell individual panels. You can generally find chain link dog run sets selling pretty cheaply in the paper or online (Craigslist and such). They make GREAT chicken runs. We use the panels like Tinkertoys, clamping them together in different shapes as we change the areas the girls can access. Now, by using them as roofs as well, the Debs and the Old Girls (you may remember the Mothercluckers) are absolutely safe and they have a run out each side of the coop! I'll have to take a new photo. We've had raccoons claw apart chicken wire, but I defy errant wildlife to tackle this run! And, Dotty, bless her, gets to stay at home.

First Snow

2008-11-21T16:55:00.001-05:00

Blustery day - the kind of day that defines blustery, with winds blowing in several directions at once and huge light eddys of snow swirling around the house. The snow changed from heavy wet snow,almost raindrops, over to the light, frozen, dancing flakes as the wild north winds arrived. It felt as though we were living in a snow globe, freshly shaken so that the flakes swirled in rapid circles around the farmhouse. Nothing stayed, nothing stuck - although the commuters watched nervously. Snow of any kind, any amount, strikes near panic in Southern adults and near hysterical joy in their children. We Northern transplants like to chuckle knowingly and reminisce about blizzards we braved daily.... all true and generally the very reason we're not Northerners any more.

I consider Virginia winters nearly perfect, especially after managing the long dreariness of Great Lakes winters where the cold, gray overcast lasts for weeks at a time. Here we'll enjoy a couple of seasonable days, shivering and remarking about all the snow (that's <1/4") and later this week we'll be back gardening at sixty degrees. Marvelous!

Warning: Persimmon Products Coming....

2008-11-17T16:56:00.005-05:00

Okay - tonight is going to be a hard enough freeze to hit even the persimmons ripening off the tree in tidy racks in the barn. That's it! The moment when all leftovers become persimmon pulp, frozen and later turned into holiday treats. Unless your doors are locked, you can pretty much bet on a tasty persimmon pudding cake, persimmon bars, persimmon-ginger cookies and/or whatever else I can whack out in the kitchen over the next month. Forget dieting!

PS - I couldn't resist this beautiful photo by Marco Del Grande of a persimmon slice with whipped cream on great bread. It was online in the Sydney Morning Herald along with the recipe. (Although, looking closely, I suspect that in an artistic flourish he left some of the leaves on up top, which would not be tasty.) The recipes are in metric units. Get out the Weight Watcher measuring scale - it's the only thing in most of our kitchens that will do grams!

Persimmon and pine nut bread (pictured)
Cream 185g of unsalted butter with a cup of sugar. Add 2 beaten eggs and mix.
Sift 2 cups of plain flour and a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda together and mix in.
Add 400ml of soft, ripe persimmon pulp and 1/2 a cup of pine nuts and mix - the dough should be quite firm.
Butter and flour two 26cm long by 10cm wide loaf tins and distribute the dough evenly. Place into a preheated 170C oven for an hour. Cool before slicing.
To serve, whip some single cream with a little vanilla. (that's whipping cream in the US)
Cut the persimmon and pine nut bread into 1cm thick slices (toast them if you like). Top with the cream and half a ripe persimmon.

Persimmon biscuits
Cream 125g of butter and 250g of sugar. Mix in 1 cup of ripe persimmon pulp and 1 whole egg.
Sift 2 1/4 cups of plain flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder together and mix in.
Add 1 cup of chopped, roasted hazelnuts, 1 cup of sultanas and a 1/2 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ground cloves and ground nutmeg.
Drop with a teaspoon onto greased baking trays. Bake for 10 minutes in a preheated 190C oven. Makes about 90 biscuits.
smanfredi@smh.com.au

Onions!

2008-11-17T13:54:00.006-05:00

November is my time for planting onions. Even as I'm typing, I'm preparing mentally to don my planting gloves and a jacket, ready to brave the rapidly dropping temperatures and rising wind - it is coastal fall weather and a strong and wet cold front is on the way.

I was distressed to find that most of the big stores (Home Depot, WalMart, large garden centers) reported that they no longer sell onion sets or plants in the fall. This tells me that the gardening focus has been narrowed to "spring only", when Christmas displays at last make way in the new year for spring displays. We all love that excitement when the seeds, tools, garden posters and magazines all hit the shelves. Despite grim weather, the promise of spring arrives.

But I digress. Here in southern Virginia, where the ground doesn't freeze, onions are wonderful when grown over winter. The secret is our raised beds, which keep the bulbs up above the cold, wet clay, and a light mix that drains water freely so the bed stays friable. (Same trick we discovered made all the difference in our raspberry patch.) Each fall I turn in a good dose of our freshly-swept-out chicken coop litter which is 75% wood chips and 25% manure. Seems to keep the raised bed fertile and light. I plant the onions now, let the plants slowly and generously mature over the winter season and pull the fully matured onion in early June, just in time to clear that bed for tomatoes and basil. Interestingly, I believe that the onion/garlic rotation keeps nematodes and funguses at bay in the soil so that our tender crops, like tomatoes, are healthier when they follow in rotation.

Like cabbages and winter greens, onions and garlic are a wonderful winter crop, allowing me to rotate our raised beds year around for maximum production. The ripe onions dry well in the barn out of the sun before the really humid days of July and August arrive. (Spring onions would be pulled to dry in October.) We use the "iffy" bulbs over the summer for cooking and salads, then the bulbs that I suspect won't hold for many more months. All the small or slightly sprouted onions are chopped up with the last harvest of our sweet peppers and frozen for use through the winter.

Reasonable Rates of Return on Investments?

2008-11-01T09:30:00.003-04:00

At this point in 2008, we are watching our retirement portfolio evaporate. Thousands of dollars lost, thanks to the shenanigans (notice the careful edit?) of corrupt, money-hungry thirty-somethings and their bosses in the investment management business. So, as they "retire" with multimillion dollar bonuses, we juggle our change and try to figure out what investments will weather this financial storm.

By contrast, I've been computing the investment return from our garden, especially some of the less common items - or what we've done with common items. For example:

At the end of the season, I chop up all of our multi-colored bell peppers, italian peppers and any of the mild peppers. At the same time, I chop up a good number of our harvested purple and yellow onions. The two piles of peppers and onions are mixed together and packed (>1/2 cup) into Ziplock snack-sized bags. This year, I put up about 50 of those little bags. We go through them like mad - they defrost in minutes and are perfect for omelettes, soups, meatloaf, spagetti sauce... you name it!

Well, I happened to notice that our local supermarkets also carry little plastic containers of the very same thing, same size and undoubtably for the same reason - using up produce that would otherwise go bad. BUT! They are charging $2.50 for each container. (Pre-prepared fresh produce is convenience food, don't you know?) So..... without counting all of the dozens of peppers and onions we've used fresh from the garden over the entire summer, our return on about a $10 investment of seeds and plants.... comes to.... $125.00. If the online calculators and my husband are correct that's an investment return of 1250% per year - actually, twice that much since the return only took six months.

Uh-huh. Eight years ago I spent $35.00 each for two asian persimmon trees, one Hachiya and one Fuyu. This year we harvested hundreds of persimmons -- and I do mean HUNDREDS of persimmons. I noticed that the local Harris Teeter, admittedly the "high priced" supermarket in our area, was selling Fuyu persimmons for $2.50 each (it's the magic number, what can I tell you?) At 4/$10, we're up to $750 worth of persimmons in this one season alone from my $35.00 tree. Virtually all of which we gave away. (The rest will continue to be eaten fresh or become frozen persimmon "pulp" for whatever baking inspiration hits this winter. )

Fall Weather... Orange and... Purple!

2008-09-23T18:06:00.008-04:00

Asters, Verbena and Angelonia are blooming wildly, turning all the little front garden into highlights of purple. Suddenly, it's cool and blustery. A N'oreaster is piling up off the coast and we've shot down to 65 degrees. Trees are turning before our eyes, with winds whipping the fading leaves over our heads. Everything here seems to be purple and/or orange - our VaTech friends would be delighted.

The asian persimmons appear to be decked in autumn pumpkins. There are hundreds of persimmons ripening on both the Hachiya and the Fuyu trees we planted eight years ago. It's their bearing year - every other year they produce astounding amounts of fruit and then rest for a season. I understand that the commercial production persimmon farms have a thinning, pruning regimen that keeps half the fruit spurs unproductive each year so that there is a good harvest repeatedly -- we've tried keeping up with thinning but eventually gave it up and have given the trees their freedom to do what they wish. I anticipated less harvest -- but it ended up being more.

The Hachiya is vibrantly upright, very fast-growing (we've pruned it repeatedly until giving up this past spring). It's sweet acorn-shaped persimmons always ripen first and are turning dark orange now, mid-September. Delicious, they are also full of 4 - 8 large seeds which sprout readily if they land in a protected place when we spit them out. The very latest ripening fruits will be more acrid, like the wild persimmons and will have to soften on the tree before eating.

The Fuyu has fruits easily three times the size of the Hachiya on all of its very slow growing, horizontal branches. We lost about 1/3 of the tree through Hurricane Isabel a few years back, but it valiantly healed the wound and continues slowly growing on. Its pumpkin fruits will be ripe at the end of October, amusing any Halloween guests. In the past, we have even sold Fuyu to local chefs if we had enough without any of the very typical black spots that show up randomly when they are fully ripe. Perhaps this year we'll have enough excited friends to give them all away. At $2 - $3 in the local markets, we have perhaps $350 worth of fruits on this one $35 tree. And Rob thought I was being extravagant when I bought them!

The Cool Evenings of .... August?

2008-08-16T10:12:00.003-04:00

In a flurry of unexpected gifts, mid-August has blessed us with unseasonably pleasant nights. It makes up for the miserable smoke and heat of June. We can actually work outside early and late in the day without perishing of sweat and heat. In fact, this entire third week of August is predicted to remain in the mid-80's. Unheard of! Delightful!

Slugs have wrecked havoc on our pepper plants and only vigilante staking and foliage removal seems to deter them at all. Diatomaceous earth is just frustrating since it deteriorates with every watering and every rainfall. We are going to try adding a layer of sharp aquarium gravel to the surface of the raised beds to see if it will discourage the darned slugs. I've been fond of slugs ever since reading an article on how they have a tender courtship (antennae in, antennae out, caress, caress) that goes on for hours. But with red and gold bell peppers at $3 each even in the summer, that harvest is important to me and I'm going after the little romantics with a vengence.

What is HOME?

2008-07-24T22:33:00.003-04:00

I went online today to find out what is home. That is, I know what "home" defines to us, to our little farm and to our lives. My question was what would appear if I went online and searched for "home". What came up was everything but that which I sought: I found Home Theater, Home Page, Home Depot. Home Equity, Home Insurance, Home Improvement, Home Rule...

But when people yearn for HOME, I'm willing to bet that none of these subcategories of home commercialization have anything to do with what their hearts are seeking.

When I think of HOME, I'm not thinking of Home Business, Home Modification, or Home Staging. I am thinking of those subtle indicators, assessed almost by radar, that tell us when we are home. Home. No where else. What are those vibrations that tell us when we are close to home? No GPS can be as accurate as the human heart. Often the strongest pull is not when we are geographically close, but when we are emotionally close. Can any mechanical device follow those unseen paths? I think not.

For those of you who have found the path..... welcome home.

Water Lilies, $80 Million and Poverty

2008-06-24T21:39:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure I know how to live in a world where the same news webpage tells me that Indonesian families are giving up their children to orphanages - not because the parents are dead, but because the parents are not able to feed them - and Monet's painting of water lilies sold today for $80 million dollars. The Indonesian families make $2-3 dollars a day, selling bottles and such that they scrounge from the dump. They hope the orphanages will feed and teach their children. How many children, exactly, do you suppose $80 million dollars might feed? Was it bought by an institution? By an individual? The article doesn't disclose the seller, which makes me think it was one person. $80 million dollars. Well. I shall have to try to sleep on this conundrum, if I can sleep at all.

Fava Beans

2008-06-21T09:44:00.003-04:00

You know, we never did really figure out how to make the preparation effort these beans require worthwhile but they were extremely satisfying to grow, filling the garden with rambunctious plants in the winter (yes, winter!) and with huge, fat early beans long before the summer crops were even planted.

Where does the time go?

2008-06-21T09:28:00.003-04:00

Amazingly, it is now mid-June and the wonderful cool spring has given way to true summer. We suffered a week of record-breaking heat at the start of June - temperatures over 100 degrees, which is unheard of here that early and rare even in the "heart" of summer, our August doldrums. What does it portend? We can't anticipate.

We did discover do-it-yourself drip irrigation in a desperate attempt to help the native persimmon grove (Diospyros virginiana youngsters left over from the nursery stock) we planted in May. We simply laid out some of the 100' hoses remaining from our greenhouse supplies along the rows of trees, using the oldest and crummiest of the hoses, and drilled small holes at each tree's base. Voila! Nice drip and we didn't even bother bringing down the speciality drip hose and emitters stored up in the barn. Took about half an hour and the young persimmons are thriving despite heat and dry weather.

We are determined to return some of the space formerly cleared for our greenhouses and nursery yards (pots on landscape cloth) back to native and wildlife friendly plantings. Our little farm would probably have more value if we left the "back five" acres bare. The primary real estate market out here is to families who want to pasture a horse or two. But we crave trees. The fact that we'll probably be in the old folks home before these are truly trees really doesn't bother us. Like all good things, you just have to start and pray for patience.

No Time for Spring!

2008-04-27T19:13:00.006-04:00

We continue to enjoy unpredictable spring weather. Unlike the dry heat of the last relentless drought (which started in the late summer of 2007 and continued straight through until very early this spring of 2008). Each week is a division of warm, sunny days that fill us with gardening ambitions quickly dashed by the return of gloomy, chilly days. We vacillate between May and March, weather-wise and our energy levels match the barometer. If the pressure is high, so are our spirits. Low... and we are too.

Now, if we could just get loose from the to-do list long enough to lay around and enjoy the advent of springtime before the dratted flies and mosquitoes arrive!

Last week, we had the pleasure of a full, glorious rainbow in the morning drizzle... followed by a sunny warm day... and another rainbow with the evening showers.

Everything that has been planted or transplanted is thriving in the wonderfully damp ground. A nice comparison to the many plants that were moved from the nursery into the farm land and lost during the drought months.

Fighting for Good

2008-03-07T16:28:00.003-05:00

Over time we have become increasingly aware of animal suffering throughout our area: dogs crammed into small cages outdoors or stuffed for hours into "crates" indoors, lost and abandoned animals of all kinds left out "in the country" to survive or die, backyard animals chained and ignored. When you have loved and pampered pets, it's hard to believe others can treat their dogs, cats - any pets - so cruelly. The good news is that there's never been a better time to volunteer on behalf on animals. Public sentiment has been stirred up and peoples' awareness of animal suffering is growing.

Amazingly enough, in Virginia Beach - a city with a growing population of animal-savvy volunteers and plenty of residents and businesses (think PeTA) who support the fight against puppy mill breeders - a new dog-selling store, PuppyVille, has opened. The publicized that they would be receiving 60 - 80 puppies a MONTH. I am appalled. We will do what we can to help stop this cruel insanity. This same week, Shih Tzu & Furbaby Rescue (www.stfbr.com - the rescue effort for whom we rescued Jonathan and Oliver, who are now our beloved pets) has taken in 65 terribly sick and neglected small dogs from an outfit in Texas. They are frantically looking for foster homes and permanent adoptions for all of these pathetic and oh-so-hopeful little dogs.

The next time you see someone "shopping" for a dog at a pet store, or you yourself are in a pet store that carries puppies and kittens.... ASK THEM: What happens to the ones that aren't sold?

February... Is it Spring yet?

2008-02-17T11:57:00.004-05:00

The weather rollercoasters back and forth. Frost in the mornings, warm afternoons. The edgeworthia blooms have finally opened -- deeeeelicious!

Photo is from Smithfield Gardens, one of our best local garden centers. Although we did internet-order nursery work for a decade, I still prefer to get my own plants, when I can, from our local nurseries where I can look the plant over and make careful decisions, especially with woody perennials that I hope to have last my garden's lifetime.

The humorous thing about this photo is that if you actually wanted to get this view of the blooms on a planted edgeworthia, you'd have to be flat on your back. The flowers hang down, stiffly, not pendulously, so that one encounters the delightful fragrance first and then must peek under to see the charming yellow of the open blossoms. Luckily, it blooms long before it leafs out, so the many small blossoms are obvious - much like the lovely, understated way a witch hazel blooms. The lovely fragrance should be one's first clue - this is a member of the Daphne family. No wonder such rich folklore surrounds the Daphne. Such beautiful perfume would lead any poet to assume the plant had received a special blessing from the gods. So far our main blessing seems to be that our daphne-ite has survived a truly unpleasant location (good for my love of scent, lousy for the poor plant) without doing the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't crash that is such a part of daphne gardening.

Heavy Dry Winds and Fires

2008-02-11T18:32:00.000-05:00

2-11-08 A day of long, heavy winds, maintaining at 30 mps and gusting to 55, have spread brush fires across the southeaster VA/NC area. We can see columns of smoke along the horizon and the sun set fiery red in the haze. The wind brought cold and robins, both from the north? At the feeder, the goldfinches are turning true to their name, the males starting to shine gold along their backs. Snow geese have already passed through in their elegant, angled configurations. Daffodils are beginning to bloom. Despite the clear, cold air (when the smoke turns away from us), the sun is warmer every day, longer every day and spring is faintly but firmly in the air.

Spring Creeping Nearer....

2008-01-30T21:26:00.000-05:00

Surely spring can no be far off. The pile of gardening and seed catalogs has taken over most of the office coffee table, threatening to fall over in a glorious heap of expectations. I pore over them each morning while sipping my coffee and impatiently watching the Weather Channel, hoping for optimistic news. Although the cold, blustery days seem even more biting in February, the sun's rays are a bit warmer. They appear earlier each morning. The snow geese came flying through this week, swirling over the fields along Princess Anne Road. They tend to show up there, in the fields of tender winter wheat sprouts, early in the morning and the slanting, golden sunbeams light them from below until they all look dipped in gold.

Winter Respite

2007-12-28T12:49:00.000-05:00

Ah, the joys of a mild coastal winter. We are allowed these lovely episodes of gentle days that enable all of us procrastinators to get out and whack away on the projects we originally scheduled for fall... and then ignored. Southeastern Virginia is finally getting a bit of rain, softening the rock hard clay soil into a workable, plantable medium. Reluctant as I am to set plants out just in time for the true cold of "winter" here, it is the first planting opportunity we've had and the poor potted specimens are begging for root room. The garlic and onions are up! The mesclun mix and first romaine lettuces are ready for early picking/thinning.

The most amazing member of our winter garden are these fava beans! Winter bean plants? Who knew? www.tradewindsfruit.com/fava_bean.htm I'm just fascinated. I thought they would never be tough enough for our winters (northern gardeners are laughing, I know) but they have made it through two nights below 20 degrees and kept (slowly) growing. Shall we have early beans? Amazing.

Of course, all the remaining rare figs that were awaiting transplanting from the last greenhouse into the field - and who have been sitting out in their pots valiantly braving the weather without a house cover to protect them - have lost their tags in the heavy windstorms. Oh, bother! Now I shall have to wait until they fruit to figure out who's who. In some cases, these are the only remaining ones of their kind here on the farm. We moved most of the hard-to-find figs out to collectors and other nurserymen who were interested in continuing to propagate them, hopefully to continue and increase their availability in the trade. To me, there is no greater selfishness than someone who hoards plants when they could share stock with others. Unless someone out there knows the secret to discouraging slugs forever and just isn't sharing it with the rest of us.

The Centennial kumquats are ripe now, Meyer lemons and Key Limes are in full production. We have moved them inside the glass doors of the studio to avoid a couple of early cold (teens) nights but they really don't need the protection and during the day the screen doors allow lovely fresh air into the studio where the citrus are blossoming. Of course, to get any further fruit indoors, I'll have to be wandering about the plants with my little paintbrush, playing Ms. Bee.

Cooking Fresh from the Mid-Atlantic

2007-11-25T16:00:00.000-05:00

You know, I get a lot of questions from gardener-cooks asking about recipes, organic foods and cookbooks. We are adding recipes back onto the little website I created for our "retirement" page,Paradise Nursery, because I heard from so many online friends who'd been using the fig recipes we'd collected from our customers and other sources.... but I've also added some of my favorite books about food to the recipe page: Paradise Nursery Recipes .

There is a marvelous trend in cookbook publishing these days - books that have not only delicious recipes but also inspiring essays by chefs, local organic farmers and others who love food and love the land. One that I'm enjoying this fall is entitled Cooking Fresh from the Mid-Atlantic (our own region). It is a season-by-season tour of fabulous restaurant recipes, each season accompanied by a wide-ranging assortment of essays by foodies of all kinds: growers, farmers, chefs, environmentalists, families.... although the Mid-Atlantic is the focus, this is an inspiring book for any food-lover. And the recipes... wow! I bought my copy used from Amazon.com - my most convenient book shopping place, I'll admit. (Hey, it's 30 miles to a bookstore -- I'm definitely an internet shopper, just as - thankfully - our own wonderful online customers were! ) Here, I'll put up the link I used to find the book:

It's Fall! - no, spring.... no, it's Fall again....

2007-11-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

This Thanksgiving holiday has been a shot of "indian summer" - temperatures up to 78 F degrees (a tie with the record high in 1991). It was a lovely time to be out cleaning up garden beds, harvesting pomegranates and, surprise!, some lovely pineapple guava fruits. Didn't even know they were there, the small green fruits hide in the foliage so well. What a treat - truly, I consider ripe feijoa fruits - ripe, mind you, not the acidic ones found half-ripe in the supermarkets - one of the most fabulous fruits you can grow in the mid-Atlantic. They are such a treat and our bushes are finally getting old enough to give us a little harvest of half a dozen fruits. These are perfect fruit plants, they require no spraying and only an occasional bite of fertilizer and a bit of pruning to keep them from overgrowing their space against the house. Their foliage stays the same all year, lovely teal-green with silver underneath each leaf. Their flowers are fabulous... and delicious! And then to top it off with mouth-watering fruits in the fall? My, now THIS is a plant to be thankful for!

But the rains have come while I'm typing and the temperature is falling with the rising wind. It will be in the 40's, they say, by tomorrow morning. But at least I had the joy of puttering outside all day today. And, yes, I'm thankful.

New Dogs at the Farm

2007-11-09T21:20:00.000-05:00

Meet the new farm residents! Oliver and Jonathan were rescued from a nearby animal control shelter on behalf of Shih Tzu & Furbaby Rescue and are sojourning with us until everything is set for their adoption by some loving home. We really love them and are delighted to be sharing our home and hearts with these little loving fellows. It's inspiring to work with animal rescue groups - even though the need is so huge that it is often depressing to hear the sad, sad stories, it is a good feeling to give some help. I am convinced that every individual who gets involved moves us one step closer to the "tipping point" when animal abuse and abandonment will never be "just an ordinary part of things...."

And if we can move enough dog lovers to stop paying absurd prices to unscrupulous breeders and pet stores for "designer" dogs - purebred or otherwise - the puppy mills will be shut down naturally for lack of income, rather than as a reluctant response to the horrible conditions uncovered and battled by investigators.

The fall has been moving along so fast that I haven't bothered to keep up with my little observation blog. Fall came late; we still had temperatures in the mid-80's through October and the warm temperatures and severe dry conditions kept us feeling that we were trapped somehow in an endless summer. Finally, the weather broke and we went straight to late fall. Frosts came in at the end of October. We pulled all the remaining tomatoes and peppers, beans and annuals... making room in the raised beds for the winter greens and salads, onions, garlic and a few fava beans (this year's experiment). The marvelous Jaclyn raspberries continued to produce a small berry harvest right into the severe frosts. Italian Golden Honey figs were still ripening, as were the always-late, black Violette figs. Now we are busy with farm upkeep and repairs, painting and such. November will be time, hopefully with more rain, for planting the few pots of plants that remain from the greenhouses - all of which are now moving out to new homes. Strange to see the empty spaces where so much used to go on! Retirement has its odd moments....

Oliver & Jonathan

2007-10-20T09:30:00.000-04:00

A week ago, we set out on an emergency errand to spring 9 tiny dogs (furbabies) from the Isle of Wight shelter where they had been held pending a court case on their neglect. They are sojourning at the farm as foster pups until everything can be sorted out and permanent placements arranged. What cuties! While Jonathan is the brains of the two, little Oliver (in the photo) is the heartthrob. Hopefully, their world will become beautiful as Forever Homes are found in their future. Meanwhile, they are content checking out the farm, irritating patient Lady LuLu, the aging poodle) and planning how to get to the chickens.

Tiny Visitor from another.....

2007-10-08T11:07:00.000-04:00

It's obviously that hardship time when baby raccoons are tossed out to fend for themselves. This lost and unhappy little fellow found himself at our house and much terrified about it all. He took temporary refuge in the loquat trees along the pool fence just long enough for me to snap a couple of photos. When I retreated back inside, the tiny one must have made a beeline for the high weeds along the ditches for he was nowhere to be seen. We wish him luck and better pickin's than our chickens!

The Transatlantic Touch

2007-09-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

Wow. I am SO glad to be back home. Visiting the UK was delightful, with stunning scenery and huge fun with old and new friends, but - alas - I am not an easy traveller and coming back to the lovely VB fall weather was perfectly timed. What does this have to do with a little backyard garden blog? Well, I returned to the States with a full realization of what lousy food we generally settle for here! The U.S. is known for its quantities of food but most of our European friends are horrified at the quality of the food we eat, both from the store and in restaurants, and now I can see why. For two weeks, travelling around public eateries and staying at the homes of friends, we never saw pre-prepared meals. No "instant" anything. NO fake foods, no artificial flavoring or coloring, no fake sweeteners. I was staggered by the extent of the emphasis on locally grown, organically produced, fresh veggies and meats. According to all the travel jokes, Hell is where the cooks are British.... but we found the food to be delightful! The old days of overcooked vegetables and podgy porridge have given way to a new paradigm that combines the old recipes with a wonderful freshness.

We've come home to harvest the last of our fading garden - had friends over to help eat up last, delicous figs and che fruits, glean out the end of the tomatoes and peppers and help us feel we'd gotten every ounce out of our summer production. We'll spend the next week cleaning up the raised beds and replanting with the winter crops of mesclun mixes, lettuces, garlics, leeks and winter greens. Can't wait!!!

August Doldrums

2007-08-15T16:41:00.000-04:00

T'is the season to lay in a sling backed chair on the screened porch under the gently spinning fans. Humid. Hot. Lazy.

The first figs are ripening on the Celeste and I'm preparing to do battle with the tiny black "sugar ants". Their scouts led me to the first, hidden ripe figs. I'll repay them by wrapping duct tape, sticky side out, around the trunk of the tree to capture the followers. Hell of a way to die, it occurs to me. These years, I have a hard time justifying anything that torments another haphazard being.

In past summers, we did battle with kitchen ants - same tiny black "sugar ants", making their way onto our counter tops and cupboards. I learned to squash the first few scouts and leave them in place. Shortly after, replacements would appear, following the same invisible track and encounter the bodies of the slain. Antennae waving frantically, they scattered away back along the trail and into the invisible places of the farmhouse. No more ants would appear along that route.... but I'd find them winding their way through other avenues. But this was serious consideration - these ants knew how to assess a situation, minimize their losses and recoup for better strategies. Can hardly consider them mindless automatons now, can I?

This summer, the cracks in the concrete parking pad that formerly housed the sugar ants are all occupied with equally tiny reddish ants. Not fire ants, just the Other Ants in our immediate world of ant politics. The black sugar ants have retreated to the yard itself. They have not entered the house -- and the red ants are apparently not "house ants". Who knew?

However, all ants -- and all living creatures -- love figs. Who could not? If someone tells you they "just don't like figs", assume that they have only had the supermarket prepackaged figs, picked wa-ay too soon and stored wa-ay too long, or they have experience with some nasty dried commercial product... or they have no sensuality left to them, in which case they are verging on soulless and better left alone to suffer.

Dog Days of Summer

2007-08-08T12:36:00.000-04:00

It's truly the dog days of summer. Temperatures at 98 F and humidity at 90%. The entire body wilts upon contact with the outer air. We're living indoors, hopping out only to check the chickens and move some sprinklers. Yes, amazingly, we're still drought-ful (-7" from normal last month alone) and the rains which keep the humidity up seem determined to skip over our farm. Just enough drops fall to maintain the hot, clammy humidity.

The lovely pigeon has gone on to other haunts. Perhaps home at last? I believe that he may have been in love with our beautiful, tiny Japanese banty hen and left in despair when that affection was not returned. It might have been - he was lovely, after all, but she was a bit distracted with the 4 (now 3) chicks pestering around her feet.

Only one or two figs are ripe yet. Can the dry weather be delaying harvest? At least the signs of fireblight that showed up on the spring growth that was late freeze damaged has not continued, so perhaps the dry June-July period stalled its progress. These fungal things never truly die, they just become dormant. At least in latency they are not causing more damage. It is quite tricky moving everything to a mostly-organic regimen. Organics require that one practice preventive practices -- you are restricting yourself from using those easy "silver-bullet" chemicals that can wipe out those things you missed treating at the proper time.

For the first time in our farm history, we actually found a bagworm on the loquats! With a nice bagworm bag created out of cleverly munched bits of fuzzy loquat leaf. Eriobotrya is NOT a normal bagworm-affected genus, as far as I've ever seen. They should be on needled things like the Leyland Cypress hedge on the north side of the farm, which has been completely infected this summer thanks to our neighbors discouragingly infested evergreens. (Now we will have to go to war with Bt sprays next May and June, relentlessly, if we hope to save the trees at all.) More fun for everyone.

Speed Racer

2007-07-28T16:05:00.001-04:00

www.niparacingpigeons.co.uk/ is the source of this photo. I could not get our winged visitor to hold quite still enought for a photo, but it was an identical bird to this one. Who knew I'd find pigeon raising so fascinating? After this, I may give up my pedestrian chickens for some of the truly fancy pigeons - it has been so beautiful to see this one whirling over the farm. I will not underestimate pigeons in the future!

Amid the dazzling heat waves and sporadic, never-enough showers, a new visitor arrived at the farm. Back at the chicken runs, a beautiful pigeon flew in, hungry and thirsty. It was obviously "more" than an ordinary city pigeon, not that we get those out here anyway, but it had all the habits of a domestic bird - it was used to people (although not willing to be caught) and used to commercial grain feeds.

When it didn't continue on its route, staying with the chickens during the day and we still don't know where at night, I eventually made note of the leg bands and began computer searching for pigeon info. Turns out we have a racing pigeon harboring over, possibly lost from a race or from a transfer between owners. AU 2007 CL 1831. That's the band. She/he hails from Chautauqua NY - Mayville being the closest club. A local pigeon racer is checking on ownership for me. Although I feel responsible for returning the lovely bird to her owner (wouldn't I want any of my pets back?), I'm already aware that I will miss coming out to hear the melodious whirring of her wings as she settles in to greet me when I walk back to the chickens.

I assume someone wants her back -- after all, she really didn't do a great job of "homing", poor thing.

June 25 - Baby Chicks!

2007-06-25T11:05:00.001-04:00

The tiny, tiny, tiny baby banty chicks have arrived and are out of the coop. (It was two feet off the ground and blocked at the doorway by 10" of cardboard - how do they DO that????) They are hopping about the coop yard and merrily ducking in and out of the chicken wire designed to hold larger chicks in place. They are awkward, happy and excited, tumbling through the hay and obstacles like tiny dandelion blossoms that have suddenly sprouted feet and are unsure what to do about them. Their mama clucks, pesters and herds them as best she can. 8 hatched out of 10 eggs. It is enough.

The Frogs Knew It....

2007-06-20T07:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I stepped outside in the hot, hot afternoon (heat index 100) to hear the small toads trilling in the ditches. It was the first toad song in at least a week and I was struck that they would be singing in the afternoon and in that heat. Then I heard thunder in the distance. Rain was coming. The toads knew of it before any of the signs reached my preoccupied senses. They sang with anticipation. Unfortunately, the rains missed our farm again - offering only a spattering of drops before moving on. The toads went silent; no mating today.

The beautiful Japanese Beetles arrived on schedule, smack on the days when the Chinese Chestnuts bloomed. All things Asian on one timetable? I always admire the first few, with their iridescent coverings. Then they begin munching and mating and I go on the warpath. It's them or my garden. War!

I have gathered the components for my semi-famous Japanese Beetle Trap/Automatic Chicken Feeder and will assemble this morning. I read somewhere - years ago - something about hooking a standard Japanese Beetle trap to a pipe (rather than the plastic bag included in the kits) and letting the trapped beetles rattle down the pipe to one's chickens. When I finally had some chickens of my own, I remembered this dimly, and made one of my own. To my amazement, it works like a charm. The beetles are lured into othe top of the trap and fall into the PVC pipe attached to it. The chickens quickly learn the sound of a beetle falling down the trap's pipe and dash over to gobble it up as it falls out onto the ground. As the love drunk beetles swoop about the pheromone tabs, the chickens leap to try grabbing one out of the air. True amusement for chicken watchers. We renew the pheromone, pour a couple glasses of wine and settle into the coopside lawn chairs for a half hour of evening entertainment.

Heat Wave

2007-06-18T16:21:00.001-04:00

Temperatures in the 90's and I now spend my days watering. Even a brief pause and the poor plants wilt pathetically - not always from lack of H2O, but as their natural response to heat. (Now with the tomatoes, that afternoon wilting is important to harvesting tomatoes with real flavor. It seems that true tomato flavor can be "watered down" by overzealous gardeners!)

The yard grass has never really greened up. Protected from the heat in their huge, air-conditioned combines, neighboring farmers are harvesting the large, golden fields of wheat.... unleashing hordes of thrips, who will all come over to visit my yard and garden. Phooey.

The garden's toads would like to mate and each morning generaly requires fishing a pair or two out of the swimming pool. Less frequently now that it's truly hot and dry - the amphibians must be estivating, that summer hibernation to escape the drought. Several times I've found the female toads almost drowned, pushed under by the weight of the smaller male toad determinedly clinging to their back. Not clinging as a lifesaving measure, mind you. The male continues clutching the female in a mating lock, even as she flounders and sinks. Seems to me I've watched some marriages that were similar, if only in an emotional sense.

Late yesterday afternoon, I paused for a sit at the picnic table on the edge of our little clover field where Iris Kitty waited impatiently for pets. Sitting in the shade and petting a little cat (such a shady character) is a true delight. And while sitting, I began to notice more and more honeybees working the clover! Finally! Bees! More than we have seen to date and all of last year - obviously allowing the clover to grow and flower has been a wonderful favor to them. We feel that our attention has been returned - suddenly we are communal with the feral honeybees. I call them feral, since I know of no beekeepers in our neighborhood and I feel that they may be the hope of the species - safe from the hive-borne and propagated diseases and problems.

Now, when I drive down the roads, all of the flat, all-green turf lawns look like a barren wasteland to me. As they probably do to the bees. Between the pesticide sprayed farm fields and the manicured, empty lawns, where can they go? To my clover, I hope. Happy bees, happy me.

And all along the weeping willow's edge and along the break of the ditches, fireflies blink-blinked at each other. Not where I had just closely mowed the house lawn, but where there were some weeds and taller grass. Habitat? Who knows. We're beginning to look askance at mowing period .... except to keep the general growth at bay and we're talking about a natural flower meadow next spring - between the fig trees and the raised vegetable beds, where all of our many rows of thornless blackberries used to be. Perhaps we can return our overworked little farm to something natural after all!

The Peacock Returns

2007-06-15T19:57:00.000-04:00

Happy discoveries! The peacock remains - apparently our chickens are the most likely females he's found. One can't help but feel, watching him pace around the chicken run at sunset, that he'd like to be inside with the others. I don't think our pen or run will be sufficient for him and fear that he'll injure himself trying to fly up into the covering. As is, he's made himself comfy on the roof of the old dog runs next door and seems content to spend the night there. True to the hints on the web, he seems to enjoy dry cat food. He did one full display, which I missed, but there's no question that he's on the mating quest.

The Chinese chestnuts are in bloom. If things move as per usual, this is my warning that the Japanese Beetles will come up as adults next week when the temperatures warm again into the 90's. Drat. Time to get the Surround spray back on everything before the beetles can wreck their usual damage.

And we're in long shirtsleeves. Typical for the temperature that surprises everyone each year at this time. I wonder why the TV weather forecasters never seem to make any connections between one year and the previous years. Do they just not know? After a decade of keeping records here at the farm, nothing seems much out of sync. The schedule continues, almost unerringly, from year to year. It will be very cool this week and will pop back into the 90's next week.

Visitor from Another Planet

2007-06-14T14:32:00.000-04:00

Guess who arrived on the chicken coop this morning????? NO idea where it came from. It likes corn and is making goo-goo eyes at the chickens. The roosters are having heart failure.

After the Rains....

2007-06-06T17:32:00.001-04:00

And so, in a clap of thunder and a heavy splash of rain, summer arrives in Tidewater. The drought is broken. The afternoon sky now wears that hazy dove gray that we've come to think of as Confederate Blue.... the water vapor in the air blurring all the colors and the edges of clouds. Humid. The word is... humid. Welcome to summer. After a happy month of congratulating ourselves on our energy conservation, the air conditioning is on. Almost every room has a ceiling fan stirring the air. We come in from outside cranky and moist. The AC feels delicious.

Retirement can be summed up by afternoon naps. Naps, glorious naps. Naps in the cool inside. Naps under the fans on the porch. Naps in the breezes stirred by the thunderstorms. Naps. The delicious feeling of laying back and letting the world gently slip away.....

The dieback amid the farm trees is indeed Fireblight. The infection is rampant across Hampton Roads (coastal Virginia) and all areas that were hit by the April freeze. Apparently, the damage to blossoms and early shoots and fruits provided injured tissue that the bacteria could infect - even on cultivars previously considered "resistant". There is really no solution. I am pruning out affected wood, diligently sterilizing pruners between cuts and disposing of the cuttings. Everything depends on how far down into the main wood of the stems the cankers go. (I started to write 'cancers' - how appropriate!)

With the last two days' rains, the first real outbursts of toad and frog calls began and a handful of hardy fireflies made an appearance along the ditch edges. The ragged calls of the amphibians and the sputter-blink of the fireflies really create an interesting dance. Even so, there are only perhaps a dozen fireflies visible at any moment -- a pitiful count down from the hundreds and hundreds that lit the fields when I was a child. Is it the mosquito spraying? We debate every year whether to allow the city to spray our property or whether to avoid the chemicals. The lots on either side of us are sprayed, so the drift probably negates any environmental stand we are making, but I feel compelled to try. Rob loathes the mosquitoes and, after a month or so of bug buildup, is more willing to tolerate possible long term damage (to the small residents and to us) than to put up with the bites and scratching. We vacillate. If we don't spray, in time the dragonflies will come... a moment I wait for with joy each summer. I think I will sneak out this evening and take the bright green "okay-to-spray" card off our mailbox.

A Beautiful Drought

2007-05-30T14:47:00.001-04:00

The weather continues dry and beautiful - low humidity, gentle breezes - but it's a deadly beauty. Everything on the farm is gradually showing terrible drought stress. It's been several weeks since we had a truly nuturing rain, critical in this fast-growing spring season. The grass crackles when we walk and the golf cart leaves permanent brown trails.

There are no fungal problems showing, always a delight, but we are still seeing this new kind of damage about the farm, some kind of stem dieback on almost all of the woodies: apples, pears, figs, bush cherries. Some young figs are now dead all the way to the ground. Is it fruit limited? I doubt it (why would it be?), but so many of our plants are edible, it's hard to tell. The ornamental Whitespire pear next door is terribly affected - in fact, it may be the original source of our woes.

Additionally, some new weed that appeared appros of nothing last year is taking over lawn areas. Not that we don't cherish weeds. We do and we have quite a collection in our eclectic, country "turf", but this is a nasty, short "sandspur" type weed. I can't walk across the farm barefoot anymore! The @#$* thing has the sharpest little spiny seeds I've ever encountered and I'm a sandspur hopper from childhood. Why? Why?!

A Blight Appears in Paradise

2007-05-25T21:10:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, for the water-dissected Tidewater area, we are still in very low humidity air - dry enough that even in the predawn there is no dew on the lawn or plant leaves. The weather service says that El Nino ended early and we will have worse hurricanes as a result. So far, for the East coast, they have been consistently wrong. One thing has become clear over time: May has become a very dry month for us. And since it is the most popular planting month, this means extra stress for the young plants.

Something is after the apples - maybe even the figs. Twigs are dying back at odd places. In the figs, entire large stems have died since last summer. Looks as though something has bored in and left larva which cored the stem. But it's not clear. Back to googling about on the orchard sites.

Sprayed all of the apples and pears with Surround organic clay protectant. Way too late, of course. At petal fall we were busy packing other people's plants. Last spring for that, however! Next spring I shall be alert and prompt! Let the last apple blossom petal smack to the ground and I shall leap forth with my sprayer, armed and ready! Alas, this year the tiny apples are already scarred where the mother bugs have laid the larva in, bites have been removed from the leaves... and, again, there's that thing with the twigs. Lord, but we gardeners are hopeful. Does it ever occur to me that I'm taking on all of the natural universe when I insist on fighting for these little trees? What are my odds of winning, really?

For the Love of Chickens....

2007-05-23T19:11:00.000-04:00

The tiny frizzled banty chickens left a little egg the size of the end of my thumb in the nest I constructed for them a few days ago. Pigeon, the lovely grey, was on their ittybitty nest (hay stuffed into a terracotta plant pot and placed into the little hen house) when I passed by, so I suspect this first egg is hers. This is first egg ever for these little folks and we are thrilled. In fact, I was so thrilled that I started this blog - somewhere to record the tiny joys that make living here the heart satisfying routine that it is.

The Mothercluckers are laying routinely now, this being their second spring, although the ones remaining (4) show no signs of maternal instincts. The Bitchy Chicken, the big mama, has passed on - thanks to the racoon that peeled back a loose section of chicken run covering to get to her, seeming to know instinctively that she would not leave that nest to save her life. The others had been laying into her nest, shoving her aside with their plump bodies to deposit an egg, which she would cherish and push to the warm safety of the growing pile on which she serenely sat. Poor chicken. We had already come out that same night to find her nesting smack on top of a very large and satisfied black snack which was in the middle of eating her eggs. I grabbed him/her by the tonsils and rapped the head on the nest until it spit out whole the egg it was attempting to swallow. None of her collected eggs seemed to be fertile when candled, so all were removed but one -- and then she was killed later that night. We were deeply, deeply saddened.

What an amazing thing a small household chicken flock is. It connects us to the processes of life, natural cycles and reality in a way that plant matters can not. Chickens let us know their feelings - perhaps we should be grateful that our plants can not. I don't think I could take the additional worry. The plants are stoic, they work silently to survive our kindness and our neglect. What signals they send us, we are unable to sense - or we perceive them only in the extreme stages of decline or richness of abundant health.

Sybil