a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Fields for Someone

    Bicycling home after delivering eggs, garlic scapes, and greens to Tweets Café this afternoon, I had to stop and enjoy the roadside grasses and flowers. All the grass seeds and flowers are meals for many. The blackberries are in full bloom everywhere. Their white flowers provide meals for thousands of bees and insects. When the berries ripen in a few months, they will provide meals for countless birds and people who stop to pick them.

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    Roadside grasses and plants provide needed habitat for so many creatures. Which is why it’s important that they not be sprayed with pesticides and herbicides.

  • Two Moms

    This is a first. There are two chicks with two mothers. Three weeks ago the black hen started sitting on a clutch of eggs. About ten days ago, a white hen decided she wanted to sit on the clutch two. Sometimes the black hen would be on the eggs. Other times the white hen. After a few days, they had the eggs divided and they sat on them side by side.

    Two chicks hatched and today the hens had them outside. The chicks were going from one hen to the other, treating both of them as if they were their mother. When one hen would find something good to eat and call for them, they would come running to see what she was pecking at. When the other hen did the same, they went running to her.

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    I have no idea how this will turn out. I’m thinking that one of the hens will end up being the mother that raises them, but who knows? Maybe they will come to a co-parenting arrangement. See Interracial Lesbian Mothers.

  • Out of the Garden Today – June 18, 2014

    In his Parasites, Killing Their Host – The Food Industry’s Solution to Obesity article yesterday, New York Time’s op-ed writer, Mark Bittman describes how food corporations are killing their customers by producing highly processed food that is causing the obesity and diabetes epidemic.

    Aware that finding solutions to this epidemic is important, some of these food corporations want to re-engineer their food and work with communities to solve the epidemic. Of course, much of this new food is highly processed and as far from real food as the many of the products that line supermarket shelves today.

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    A more long term solution is to enable everyone to have easy access to real food, fresh out of the garden like I have every day. When you have real food this sumptuous, settling for something that comes out of can or box doesn’t cross your mind. Even picking up produce picked a day or two or a week ago loses it’s appeal. Nothing compares to eating raspberries off the vine or munching on peas that you’ve just picked. Everyone should be able to do this.

    Organizations like Seattle Urban Farm Company and Urban Harvest show that this is possible. You can grow a lot of food in the city. And the more people eat real food, fresh out of the garden, the more they will demand it.

  • In the Woods Today

    Recent rains have made the woods cool and damp. The smell of decomposing leaves, twigs, and branches on the forest floor is so fresh. Any day is a good day for a walk through the woods. It takes just a few steps out of the house to be in the woods. It’s easy to take such luxury for granted.

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    Many years ago, I lived in a desert country for a time. The mountains and valleys were barren. Not a speck of green to the horizon and beyond. I’d close my eyes and dream of green. I met a local person who saw photographs of lush, green mountains of distant countries, and he told me that he thought the photographs weren’t real. Only knowing desert mountains, he thought that someone had painted the green on the photographs. It wasn’t until he traveled and saw the forested mountains for himself that he realized there are places in the world that are so green.

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    Stepping out of the woods, I see that the blueberries are forming. This is how blueberries look like before they turn blue. Another month and they will be as blue as the sky.

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  • The Power of Tiny Things

    Life is the story of the power of tiny things. Each of us started as tiny, infinitesimal specs. And yet we are now giants, roaming the earth, millions of times larger than when we first started. It’s the same with beans. Small, beautiful seeds, beans rise out of the earth, pushing aside heavy dirt and brush as they make their ascent toward the sun. They are among the champions of growth and energy, growing taller every day.

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    With these tiny arugula seeds, I hold in my palm the makings of a hundred salads. There is enough energy in each seed to create an entire salad. With these seeds and just five weeks or so, and I can invite a small army of friends over for a small feast.

    Want to be amazed? Grow your own food … even if you just have space for a few pots on a window sill.