a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Author: theMan

The Right to Grow Food

On September 26, 2014, Governor Brown of California, signed into law,
Assembly Bill No. 2561 – Chapter 584, which gives homeowners and renters the right to grow their own food. The purpose for passing this bill, was to encourage people to grow food instead of lawns. It targets landlords and homeowners associations, prohibiting them from preventing renters and homeowners from growing food.

The entire bill is short and easy to understand, so click on the link above to read it. I’ve quoted two paragraphs which describe the bill’s two main objectives:

This bill would require a landlord to permit a tenant to participate in personal agriculture in portable containers approved by the landlord in the tenant’s private area, as defined, if certain conditions are met.

This bill would make void any provision of a governing document of a common interest development that effectively prohibits or unreasonably restricts the use of a homeowner’s backyard for personal agriculture.

With all the hoopla about the right to bear arms, it would be nice if people were just as concerned about the right to grow food. You can eat a carrot. You can’t eat a gun.

Hopefully, there will be many who have been prohibited from growing vegetables, who will now enjoy looking at the beauty of, and savoring the sublime taste of fresh vegetables, picked just before eating.

After a hard, stressful day at work, coming home to a lush vegetable patch, and being able to cover your cutting board with just picked produce, will melt the stress away and make you smile all evening long.

November 16, 2014
I Won’t Grow Up

Sometimes around here, it is a laugh a minute. One of Lucky’s two month old chicks still wants to take a nap under her wings. About the only thing he can fit under her, is his head and neck. The rest of his body sticks out. He doesn’t want to grow up. Perhaps she misses having her chicks snuggling underneath her. When he wakes up, it’s clear that he had a great nap.

Lucky and her chicks are quite the family. I’ve never had mother and chicks who are such a close-knit family for this long. Each day I expect her to be on her own, but each day she surprises me. Usually by now, either the chicks are off doing their own thing with a mother frantically trying to catch up to them, or she’s had enough child rearing and will chase them off if they approach her. Not Lucky and her chicks. They stick close together all day long, and roost together at night.

November 16, 2014
Frost’s Paintbrush

The last few days of frost have pretty much taken care of the outdoor vegetable beds. Frost is nature’s blanket, telling the plants that it’s time to go to sleep. Each day, the leaves are more curled and closer to the ground. Once the frost is gone, many will spring back up, only to lie down again when frost returns. Many will refuse to sleep until they are covered with thick snow. Some years it happens, some years it doesn’t.

November 16, 2014
What Mother Spent the Summer Here?

With the leaves falling off the bushes, it’s easier to see the nests the birds made this season. So what kind of bird made this nest? A goldfinch perhaps? There are many who spend the summer here. A thrush? It doesn’t look woven tight enough to be a robin’s nest.

Did the eggs hatch and was the mother able to raise her young? Did the chicks leave this place full of fond memories, with plans to return to this little paradise next summer? Did they laugh at the chickens? Fly away when our dogs ran through the woods? Did they watch me working in the vegetable patches? It’s a mystery, and I’ll never know. Life is like that. We go through life not knowing much of anything at all. Until today, I didn’t even know a bird family spent a summer, using this bush, so close to our house, as a home.

November 15, 2014
Death Stalks You in the Brush

A clear, dry day like today is perfect for trail maintenance. The chickens don’t need the trails, they can easily dart through the underbrush, even when it is very dense. But if they hear me working on the trails, they will come to see if I am stirring up any good bugs for them to nab.

Lucky has brought her chicks. She knows that if I’m around, she doesn’t have to worry about coyotes or eagles or hawks swooping in to nab one of her chicks. She’s been a fearless mother, and even though her chicks are two months old now, roosting and very capable of being on their own, she still guards them ferociously. I wonder if she is such a good mother because she misses having a mother when she grew up. As a very young chick, she injured the back of her head and neck, and we had to separate her from her family while she healed. She had some very lonely days as a child. Now she has a family, and has been a remarkable mother.

However, as peaceful and lovely, maintaining trails can be, you need to be very careful when you venture into the brush. You must go prepared to do battle with the deadly menace of the Pacific Northwest, the carnivorous blackberry.

You often read about hikers in the Pacific Northwest who go missing and are never heard from again. This is what happens to them. They fall into massive blackberry thickets and get so entangled in their vines and thorns, that they are unable to escape, and die of starvation. The more they try to escape, the more flesh the blackberry vines extract from their bleeding, weakening bodies. At night the coyotes, foxes, opossums, owls, and scavengers pick apart their flesh, leaving just their bones.

I’m positive that a thorough search of the forests would reveal dozens of skeletons of those unfortunate to have entered the woods without proper protection, like a pair of sturdy clippers or pruners, to free themselves when these vines attack. And attack they do. Out of nowhere their vines fly through the air, slash your skin, and dig their thorns into your flesh. They are like man-eating plants. Instead of devouring your flesh outright, they kill you as you struggle in vain, and then suck your nutrients out of the ground as your body decomposes and falls apart. You never hear about it, because those who succumb to a carnivorous blackberry vine never survive to tell their harrowing tale.

The next time you are hiking in the Pacific Northwest and encounter a blackberry thicket which spreads over acres, imagine how many hikers it has already devoured, and stay a safe distance away. And always carry a pair of sharp clippers. It just takes a few snips to free yourself from its thorns of death.

November 15, 2014