a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: August 2016

  • Last Harvest

    LastHarvestA

    Picking tomatoes for tomorrow’s Bow Little Market was tinged with sadness because tomorrow’s market is the last regular market day of the season. Onions, tongue-burning peppers, sweet peppers, a lot of food has come out of our little garden and gone into meals enjoyed by people I don’t even know. Another summer has gone by, and on we go to who knows what. Every day the door opens and you never know what will greet you on the other side. Every day is a surprise.

    Some of the still ripening tomatoes will make it to the upcoming Sunday market in Alger. More will end up on our own table. There’s a benefit to not selling food your garden produces … you get to eat it yourself, though my husband wishes I didn’t cook with so many onions and garlic. He’s glad that I’ve sold nearly all the garlic, and will be happy if customers buy most of the onions too.

    LastHarvestB
    LastHarvestC
    LastHarvestD

  • If a Lettuce Falls …

    LettuceFallsS

    If a lettuce falls in a hoop house, does it make a sound? I’m surprised I wasn’t waken in the middle of the night when this lettuce came crashing down. The ground must have shook violently. It explains why so many tomatoes fell during the night. It goes to show how soundly I sleep.

    The tumble didn’t break its stem, and its flowers will still bloom. A lettuce like this would make a grand first course. You could put it on a long platter, set it in the middle of the table, and let your many guests rip off the leaves for their salads.

    LettuceFallsA
    ChickenPeckedAppleA

    Besides grapes, chickens like apples too. I walked by one of the apple trees and had to laugh when I saw an apple cut in half. What? I had to investigate. The apples were on a low hanging branch, within easy reach of the chickens. They’d pecked the bottom halves clean.

    ChickenPeckedAppleB

    One thing I find puzzling about chickens is that they have no trouble flying up to roosts five and six feet high to sleep. It would be easy for them to hop up into a fruit tree and climb along the branches to eat all the fruit they want, and yet they never do that. Maybe they rationalize that if they did that, it would be heads off for the lot. Maybe they are more rational than I think. Perhaps they comprehend the results of their actions and behave accordingly.

  • Determination

    20160809A-DeterminedDog

    Ena 枝那 is a determined dog. Three times now, she has dug up this bed. She hears and smells something underneath. I might as well forget planting anything in the bed until she finds whatever she is looking for.

    20160809B-JacobsCattleBeans

    The Jacobs Cattle Beans are almost ready. If only they would stay so beautiful when you cook them. I’m determined to someday figure out a way to cook colorful beans and keep their vibrant colors.

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    20160809D-WagonOfLeaves

    The dry summer has the alders and cottonwoods dropping leaves months earlier than usual. It’s sad to see the trees so stressed. Instead of raking in October, I’m raking in August. Will there be anything left to rake in October?

    20160809E-Garlic

    The elephant garlic will appreciate the leaves. Worked into the soil and spread on top of the garlic beds, the leaves will break down and turn into lovely humus. Garlic grows well in beds full of organic matter.

    20160809G-EatingGrape

    The end of August means the chickens get to enjoy one of their favorite foods, grapes. The champagne grapes aren’t ripe yet, but the chickens don’t mind. They jump up to get the low hanging ones. They go nuts when I toss them extra bunches to gorge on. Vineyards would do well to employ flocks of chickens. They’d keep the vineyards weeded, eat many bugs, and snatch any grapes that drop to the ground.

  • The Last of the Chioggia

    ChioggiaBeets

    I picked the last of the Chioggia beets on Thursday morning for Thursday’s market. Thankfully, no one bought them. These are my favorite beets. They taste as good as they look.

    I had some Savoy cabbage left from the market too. When you look at a Savoy cabbage leaf from above, it’s as if you are flying over a lush, green, hilly landscape with white rivers flowing to the sea. No, those aren’t rivers, they are deep, fog-filled canyons where pterosaurs soar from canyon wall to canyon wall, hoping hapless earthlings will fall from the sky and into their monstrous beaks. If you put your ear next to a cabbage leaf, you can hear their bloodcurdling shrieks. Don’t listen to your mother. Go ahead and play with your food. Life is too short not to.

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  • The Secret to Happiness

    InsideOfASunflower

    Putting your face into a sunflower is the secret to happiness. You’ll forget all your troubles, and smile.

    Tonight, a bumblebee has decided to spend the night in that sunflower. Some researchers think that maybe honeybees, at least the foragers, might dream. They spend up to a third of the time sleeping, and use this time to store memories, something humans do, so possibly bees dream too. What could be more pleasant than dreaming while you’re sleeping in a sunflower?

    BumbleBeeSleepingInSunflower