a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: August 2014

The Magic of Beans

The White Flower Beans are in full bloom. As an experiment, this year I am trimming half of the vines once they get about seven feet tall. I’m also thinning the number of flowers on these vines to see if this will result in larger beans. It works for many other fruits and vegetables, why wouldn’t it work for beans? This fall I’ll compare the beans from the trimmed vines to the untrimmed vines and see if there is a difference.

A steady stream of bees visit the bean vines all day long. They find plenty of food in the blossoms and make sure that many flowers get pollinated in return.
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August 4, 2014
Morning Dew

The morning dew is heavy on the cattails this morning as I head out to weed the potato patch. Near the potato patch, the chickens are already busy searching for worms, bugs, grubs and field mice to eat along the pasture fence. An hour later they may be on the other side of the farm. It’s amazing how far the chickens travel every hour.

A favorite spot for the chickens during the day is the thick brush in the woods. Can you even see the rooster below? Hint: he’s a white rooster.

A few baby potatoes I uncovered while weeding the potato patch. Three little promises of great things to come soon. Potatoes are best when they are still young with delicate, paper thin skins you can peel just by rubbing them gently with your fingers.

August 4, 2014
The Colors of August
This Sunday August morning begins with a hen and her chicks taking a pause after waking up. There are three chicks on the roost with her. You can see one peeking out from under the safety of her legs.

A box of garlic wrapped and ready to be shipped Monday morning.

And a sure sign that it is August, blackberries ripening. This is going to be a banner year for blackberries. And for supper, a riot of colors out of the garden: colorful chard, tomatoes, mustard greens, herbs, blackberries, and a pullet egg. The hens born in early spring are starting to lay eggs.
- “In the reddish-purple stems of chard and the reddish-purple veins in the leaves, scientists have identified at least 9 betacyanin pigments, including betanin, isobetanin, betanidin, and isobetanidin.” ~ the world’s healthiest foods
- “Intake of tomatoes has long been linked to heart health. Fresh tomatoes and tomato extracts have been shown to help lower total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.” ~ the world’s healthiest foods
- “The cholesterol-lowering ability of steamed mustard greens is second only to steamed collard greens and steamed kale in a recent study of cruciferous vegetables and their ability to bind bile acids in the digestive tract.” ~ the world’s healthiest foods
- “Blackberries provide a great deal of health benefits. They help to lower risk your heart disease and stroke, and they may lower your risk of certain cancers. Blackberries may also help to prevent diabetes and age-related cognitive decline. Their low fat and high dietary fiber content makes them ideal for weight loss as they are satisfying without adding on the pounds.” ~ Fitday: The Nutrition of Blackberries
August 3, 2014
A Handful of Rosemary ~ Edible Estates

One of the benefits I enjoy about having space to grow many things, is having endless supplies of fresh herbs. Buying fresh herbs in a supermarket is hardly worth the effort. You get just a few sprigs in a container, and they certainly weren’t picked moments ago. I get to step outside and pick fresh herbs by the handful.

I’m baking bread today, and for a pound loaf, I like to add plenty of rosemary to give it a nice flavor. Oregano, marjoram, chives, parsley, these are all herbs that grow like weeds. It doesn’t take much to have more than you can possibly use. Which reminds me of an article I read today at The Splendid Table about reclaiming the front yard with edible estates. Artist and architect Fritz Haeg is the author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn.

The article describes Fritz’s latest urban garden project in St. Paul, MN. It’s a 4,500 square foot front lawn converted, as Fritz describes it into a “pleasure garden that happens to produce food … The point is to make visible food production in the city, but in a very pleasurable way. I think the whole point is for everyone to look at this and think, ‘I could do this too.’”

This is what Fritz has to say about the front lawn:

By attacking the front lawn, an essential icon of the American Dream, my hope is to ignite a chain reaction of thoughts that question other antiquated conventions of home, street, neighborhood, city, and global networks that we take for granted. If we see that our neighbor’s typical lawn instead can be a beautiful food garden, perhaps we begin to look at the city around us with new eyes. The seemingly inevitable urban structures begin to unravel as we recognize that we have a choice about how we want to live and what we want to do with the places we have inherited from previous generations. No matter what has been handed to us, each of us should be given license to be an active part in the creation of the cities that we share, and in the process, our private land can be a public model for the world in which we would like to live.

If there were gardens like this in every city neighborhood, there could be beautiful hedges of herbs like rosemary and oregano and thyme, with the understanding that they were not only there to be looked at, but also to be enjoyed. Residents would be encouraged to pick herbs by the handful. Residents’ food choices would not be limited to what the supermarkets offered. It would be limited only by their imagination as to what they could plant and grow.

August 2, 2014
Before the Sun is Up

Before the sun peaks up above the forest to the east, it’s time to go out and weed the corn and beans. The chickens are taking it easy … wondering when they are going to be served morning coffee and toast. Often they come out of their covered chicken yard and take a perch. It’s as if they need to take a moment and plan what to do today.

The posts for a new fence are drying nicely. Soon they will be in the ground and support wire fencing to protect another plot from chickens and wild rabbits.

The sun comes out while I am weeding the beans and corn. This is my office, a riot of green and brilliant flowers. There are no desks, no chairs, no sitting, no telephones, no office gossip, just the sound of leaves growing and birds singing. But in the distant there is the rumbling of traffic in the valley, a constant reminder that I’m barely a stone’s throw away from freeways and shopping malls and endless ribbons of concrete.

The urban sprawl of Seattle, 75 miles to the south, keeps metastasizing, spreading closer and closer to this bit of paradise. It used to be 40 miles away. Now it is just 30. How long before it is lapping at my door?

August 2, 2014