I don't get it.

We had a wonderful weekend visiting friends in Ohio. We stayed with some dear friends who have a dairy farm. Before we left, we stopped by the calf barn so the kids could see (and smell, and hear, and touch) some calves. They were beautiful, and we had a lot of fun.

However, as we got back on the road, I just kept stewing about what we'd seen. I grew up on a (small) farm, and we raised beef cattle and chickens, and had two big gardens. I know where my food comes from ... or so I thought.

I watched Food, Inc. over a year ago, and it was depressing, eye-opening, etc. And that prompted me to begin my first vegetable garden. We now love eating our own produce. I buy organic milk for the kids, and I figured that was the way to go.

Now, organic isn't enough for me. I keep getting crunchier by the year, and I suppose that it only makes sense. As I learn more, I adjust to it.

Anyway, when we pulled up to the calf barn on Saturday, I said to Bob, "Where's their pasture??" And he said, "There is no pasture." I was stunned. Bob, of course, thought I knew. But no, these calves (and all the dairy cattle) never go outside. They're in their little pens in the barn all their lives. From the minute they're born.

My question to Bob was this:

What kind of world do we live in, that we take newborn calves away from their mommas and give them 'milk replacer' so we can drink the cows' milk, while we feed our own children formula?*

This is messed up.

[Raw milk, here we come. And it is almost enough to make me move to a farm.]

*This is in no way meant as a criticism of women who must feed their children formula. I know there are good reasons for it. But I believe whole-heartedly that the best food for a child is its mother's milk, whenever possible.

Is it spring yet?

I find myself longing for spring. Daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, tulips. Warmer weather. Fewer layers to put on the kids every time we go outside.

And gardening.

Last year was my first experience with a vegetable garden. (Excluding, of course, all the gardens Dad had as I was growing up. Of which there were many.) I made some mistakes. I didn't plant some things early enough. I didn't support some plants enough. And I planted most things too close together. They still flourished, but it was super-annoying to harvest the vegetables.

This morning, I felt like planning out Vegetable Garden 2011. So I got out some graph paper, a pencil, ... and some easel paper, watercolors, a permanent marker, a cup of water.

It helps to include your 4 1/2-yr-old assistant, you know.

Garden Update

I've been letting my fears get the best of me.

You know, we have snakes in our yard. And I've been afraid from the start that the snakes would end up in the garden, and I'd reach into some plant to get a veggie, and I'd touch a snake. I'm not actually afraid of getting bitten; they seem as eager to get away from me, as I them.

Anyway, as the plants have gotten bigger (and bigger) (and BIGGER), my fear has grown. I've failed to mow around the beds, since the plants are growing out into the "paths" and I don't want to mow part of my squash (or zucchini, or cucumber) plants along with the grass.

So, the grass around the beds is overgrown. The plants are huge and overgrown. And today, I decided I should do something about it. I got out our little reel mower, thinking it might be easier to control than our heavy, self-propelled mower. I did a bit of weeding. I threw some overgrown squash & zucchini in the compost pile. (The snake skin on top of a zucchini did nothing to allay my fears.) And I started mowing a bit. All went well until I realized there was a snake in the blades of my mower. I stopped immediately, and it slithered off ... into my zucchini plant. Shudder.

I did a little bit more work before calling it a day. It's hot out, and I just didn't have it in me to stay out for too long. I'm maybe a third of the way done with weeding & mowing. Well, no. Probably a fourth. I did stop to harvest some zucchini, though ... after carefully checking to make sure I could see no snakes.

Next up: zucchini bread!

Let there be light.

Not too long ago, our neighbor's tree came the rest of the way down.

It took our power line down with it. And damaged the entrance cable. And other stuff that I don't understand.

This happened on a Tuesday. We were without power from about 2pm on Tuesday to about 5:30pm on Wednesday. And hosted a party at 8pm on Wednesday. It was CRAZY, but everything came together just in time. I am awfully grateful for electricity. I really take it for granted, but laundry, cooking, keeping food fresh, having light in the bathroom, cooling the house ... all these things are pretty essential to my everyday life.

I don't have much to report these days. Nothing new to the house, except the new electrical service. But I've been taking pictures of my garden, so that's what you get today.

That's a carrot.

A black-eyed Susan, transplanted from my sister's front garden in PA.

Begonias. (Still waiting to be planted.)

Lettuce. I like it.

Mother's Day rose. Still lovin' it.

A tomato blossom.

An eager cucumber vine.

If I can just keep Lily from destroying any more plants (current count: one bean plant, one squash plant, one leek), I'll be in good shape. The rope fence is not entirely reliable at keeping her out. We're looking into other options.

Gardens make me happy.

My garden is starting to look like a garden, finally, instead of three burial plots.

Most of my vegetables are up and recognizable, but a couple things are looking like they're not going to sprout, like peppers and spinach. (I should have started both much, much sooner.)

I'm going to take you on a partial tour of the garden today.

Lettuce:

Cucumbers:

Leeks:

Carrots:


And now, we'll move on to the rest of the grounds. Last summer was our first summer in the house, and Bob wanted to let the garden area around the garage do its own thing, so we'd know what we had there. Ooh, boy, did it look junky in all its glory. Tons and tons of weeds, with a few flowers thrown in.

This year, Bob's worked really hard (with the "help" of the girls) to weed the bed and prepare it for new flowers. We left the flowers that were there, of course. And by "we," I mean "Bob."

Some orange lilies:

Pink lilies:

Yellow and red are still waiting to bloom. They're gorgeous. Last year, we put some of the orange & red ones on my father-in-law's grave for Father's Day. I plan to do that again this year, if they're still blooming.

This hydrangea was part of the Easter flower arrangement at my mother-in-law's church. She gave each of the girls a plant, and I put them in the ground in front of the garage. I did a poor job of tending them, and we weren't sure they'd come back ... but they did!

My Mother's Day gift that keeps giving.

2010 is the Year of the Coupon at our house. This tree was free, using a coupon. I thought I'd killed it, leaving it for too long in our refrigerator, and not planting it in a big enough temporary pot. But when I finally put it in the ground, I started really faithfully watering it in, slowly & deeply, so the roots will grow well. And now I'm beginning to see little green buds on what was once a glorified stick. (By the way, these are the first pictures for which I've EVER used the manual focus option on our camera. It's a learning process.)

The first blossom on my new geranium.


The funny thing is, though, that as much as I love plants and flowers, I don't like to have too many in the house. I get overwhelmed by too many houseplants. My kitchen/sunroom have been overrun for months, and I'm dyin'. I'm moving them out. I can't take it anymore. Good thing they can all go outside, this time of year...

April showers

Leviticus 26:

³ " 'If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, ⁴ I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. ⁵ Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land."

...

⁹ " 'I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. ¹⁰ You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. "

These are beautiful verses, and now that I have a garden, I feel much more in tune with the weather. I need rain for my crops. All of a sudden, we have been sent rain in its season, and my little tomato plants are liking it.

Unfortunately, the beautiful big old weeping willow tree that's between our house and our neighbor's? It didn't make it through the rain unscathed. It was in rough shape already, scarred, awkwardly trimmed, but what was growing grew well. Tonight, I was really sad to discover that a huge portion of the tree, almost half of it, fell today. If it hit their house, it was just barely: I don't believe there's any damage to the house. But, oh!, the tree! Even in its uneven, awkward state, it was still a thing of beauty. Now it's mostly ugly, with a patch of beauty.

I am grieving.

An archaeological dig...

or at least it feels like one.

In the course of digging my garden, I have come across:

4 marbles
1/2 of a bone
1 souvenir-type bicycle license plate from California that says JOSHUA
1 clothespin
1 piece of some kind of gear
1 metal tube, rusted, and filled with soil

and, of course:
lots of earthworms
a snake hole, I think
rotted tree roots
tons of ants
some rocks

It's been fun. And I'm not quite done. Beds 1 and 2 are complete and ready for planting. Bed #3 has been single-dug (as in, all the soil removed to one spade's depth); next up is to turn the next spade's-depth worth of soil with a pitchfork, then put a layer of compost on top of that, and then return the topsoil to the bed. Bed #3 has been my most efficient yet, with the single-digging taking an hour and a half. The turning and composting is fairly quick, and I hope to get that done today. The most tedious part for me is breaking up the clods of topsoil so that the top of the bed is airy and ready for new roots to dig in.

I hope to plant the first seeds in the garden by the end of the week, and my seedlings that I started inside are doing well already.

I'm finding gardening to be very addictive...

Spring weather makes me happy ... and productive.

This time of year, I just can't get enough time outside, and the kids are perfectly happy with that. We inherited some horseshoe pits in the yard, and Bob took the wooden frames of the pits out, but we left the sand. Good thing we did! The girls dig and dig and dig in that sand. It's by far their favorite thing about the yard.

My favorite things? The size of the yard, the amount of sunlight, the fact that we have big trees (though I would change the kind of trees if I could), the fact that it's fenced (though it's a chain link fence in disrepair).

Since 2010 is the year of the garden for us, I've started digging the beds. Following the instructions of the books my dad gave me, I've been double-digging. I've been pleased with it, so far, but it is back-breaking work. As in, this morning, I found getting out of bed to be a bit of a challenge. That's okay, though. I can use the exercise.

Before:
The newly christened gardening gloves (a Christmas gift for Bob from my sister). (And, yes, I used them first. I feel a little bad about that.)

Digging out the first layer of soil.

My four-legged helper. I love this dog so much.

First layer out, second layer turned. Next: compost, then topsoil back in.

It was at this point that my neighbor said, "That's a pretty small garden!" And I thought, YOU go turn over 40 square feet of soil by hand, and then we'll compare notes. Especially since I've got another 80 square feet to go.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I had just brought in the mail, when I happened to glance out and see a box on my front porch. Did the mail female bring it? Did the UPS truck stop by when I wasn't paying attention?

I wasn't even expecting a package.

But when I saw Gardener's Supply Company on the box, I thought, it must be from my dad. Yep, sure enough, the card says "Happy Birthday! -Dad"

When my parents were here not too long ago, I was talking with Dad about how this is the Year of the Garden. Bob & I have made this pronouncement before, but this time, I'm for real.

So Dad said, "I'm going to get you a seed-starter kit for your birthday!"

The kit includes two of these 24-seed starting trays, soil, fertilizer, little stakes for marking, and more. I can't wait.


And since my sunroom, the area where my computer is (which Bob calls my InterNest), the place I'm sitting right now, gets tons of southern and western light, I know just where I'm going to put them.

The tough part is going to be figuring out what to plant, and when. Although, when my parents arrived, they came bearing gift after gift ... and I'm not sure that I can claim to not have enough information now.

But seriously, I could see us growing lots of herbs (basil, of course, and thyme, dill, chives, parsley), and tomatoes, potatoes, onions, leeks, asparagus, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, green beans, sweet peas, bell peppers, garlic. I could go on.

Anyway, lots of planning ahead.

I'm excited at the prospect of growing things without chemicals, knowing that everything was ripened in the sun, nothing was shipped anywhere, shrink-wrapped, etc. I also like the idea of saving money. Big surprise, right?

Moving on.

Remember when I said I failed to take pictures at our house blessing? Well, I lied apparently. I found a couple shots of Caroline & Bob, when she was pretending to be a daddy (drinking a beer) and pretending to be a momma (drinking a diet coke). That girl is too much.

And I found our to-do lists, which I apparently left sitting out for God and Everybody to see during the party. Classy. But at least everyone knew I'd taken a shower. (And Bob actually finished his to-do list, he's just not as OCD about checking things off his list. Funny. He seems to prefer the actual DOING of things.)


P.S. It's not actually my birthday, and won't be for about a month. I think my dad was just really on the ball this year.