a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: July 2016

  • The Early Bird Gets the Tomato

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    I had some tomatoes for Bow Little Market on Thursday. They sold out quickly. The only ones who got any were the early birds.

    This year I’m severely pruning the tomatoes as they grow, limiting each tomato to a single main stem. I’m also removing half of the flowers to limit the number of tomatoes which develop. It’s working. The tomato plants are very manageable, and the resulting tomatoes are nice and plump, up to a pound each. A few more weeks and I’ll have a full basket of tomatoes for the market each Thursday.

  • Something New Every Day

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    There is something new every day. Even if you think there isn’t, during the night while you slept, the sun has taken you about 7 million kilometers, over 4 million miles, from where you were when you went to bed. Every morning you wake up in a new spot in the universe, millions of miles away from where you were yesterday, and there is no going back. Or as they say, “To infinity and beyond!”

    Not as dramatic, but 15 baby chicks I ordered arrived this morning. It has been many years since I’ve ordered live chicks, but I wanted to add Brown Cornish chickens to my flock and have not been able to find a reliable source for fertile Brown Cornish eggs.

    Since I had two broody hens, both sitting on wooden eggs, I ordered the chicks, and this morning, as soon as they arrived, I carefully placed them under the two hens. It was a lesson again as to why every chick deserves … actually every chick craves a mother. The 15 chicks were peeping their heads off when I arrived at the post office just after 7 a.m. to pick them up. They peeped all the way home. But as soon as I placed them under their respective mothers, all peeping ceased. Later this afternoon, I found the chicks singing. When little chicks are happy, they make a singing, chirping sound which you can hear in the video below:

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    I’ve been checking on them throughout the day, and the two mothers have taken well to their new chicks, and the baby chicks are happy as can be. It’s a fallacy that baby chicks don’t need a mother. Oh, they’ll get by and grow up, but all that frantic peeping they do when they are tiny is them crying out for a mother who never comes.

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    Also at the post office this morning was the new tofu press I ordered from Earth First Innovations. The sturdy press has a wooden handle and a plunger that you hold down with sturdy rubber bands to press your tofu.

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    The timing was perfect. I was making tofu this morning. After filling up the press with curds, I pulled down the handle and secured it with two rubber bands. Thirty minutes later, I had a nice block of tofu.

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  • The Soft Time of Day

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    The sun is down behind the trees. It’s the soft time of day when the colors drift off to sleep, slowly, quietly.

    A flower falls onto the soft leaves below.

    The dogs pounce like foxes in the meadow.

    The heavy grass seeds bend to the ground.

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    Flowers sigh for departed bees.

    A stone rests on a warm block of tofu, pressing it into shape.

    Pressed, the block of warm tofu floats dreamily in cooling water.

    The soft time of day is a poem which flows like a gentle stream into night’s pleasant dreams.

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  • Punctuality is the Virtue of the Bored

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    Writer Evelyn Waugh is said to have said, “Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.” I chuckled when I read that in a BBC article about the punctuality of the Swiss. Many of my ancestors were Swiss. When I visited the farm in the Jura mountains where one of my great-great-grandfathers once lived, I couldn’t fathom why he decided to leave. The area was a paradise of forests and green pastures. It turns out that he left because a tavern opened a mile or so away from his farm and he did not want his children to grow up so close to drinking and dancing. I don’t think his decision to move all the way to rural Ohio was the best choice, but who am I to judge. His action didn’t work as there is beer in my fridge and wine on my shelves.

    The need to be punctual fails me when I’m at my desk in the garden. I’m never bored, so maybe I’ll never be good at being punctual.

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    The dogs are never bored either. They always find something meaningful to do, like trying to rip the weaving off a lawn chair. I give them the benefit of the doubt that they are just wanting to take it apart to see how it is made. Dogs are curious that way, you know.

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  • What Do Potato Flowers Dream Of?

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    She’s a shy one. This little Turken cross chick is growing up fast. She’s got a very protective mother. Get too close and she will attack! To get a better photo, I’ll need to get the camera with a zoom so I can stand a long way back when I snap the shutter.

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    The Korean red garlic are bagged and set aside for planting in the fall. Next year, I should have plenty of them to sell all summer.

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    Out in the garden to gather ingredients for supper, I caught the potato flowers going to sleep. At the end of a long, summer day, potato flowers close their eyes and slumber until dawn. What do they dream of when the stars come out? Do any peak to see what the night sky looks like?

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    Supper’s are best when they are fresh out of the garden. New potatoes, mustard greens, and beans, we’ll eat well tonight. The only thing missing is a salmon stream meandering by the garden.