Retract, Regroup, Restart

As recent weeks and months have passed, I’ve noticed that my energy for the various challenges I’m supposedly participating in has evaporated.  Lots of reasons all converging:  extra paid work that is taxing my time, much free time spent getting the winter’s wood in (still ongoing), feeling mentally down (variety of reasons but mostly relationship-oriented), and the fact that my garden is a bust this year, with only potatoes and chard doing well.  I might end up with four or five winter squash total, perhaps four beets, two tomatoes, three jalapenos, one bell pepper.  Time just got away from me and all of a sudden everyone else was harvesting, when I was still looking at seedlings.  As for the blog challenges, they were generally sucking more energy from me in the guilt of all that I’m not doing, than they were enlivening me with the accomplishments I was doing.

And, I realized recently that there are some things — personal paperwork, housekeeping, reading list — that I really would rather be spending my time on at the moment.

So, I’m officially cancelling my participation in just about everything:  Riot for Austerity, Independence Days Challenge, Growing Challenge, etc.  I will of course still have a goal of moving forward with preparations and skills learned for the future, growing and cooking new things, etc.  I just won’t be taking much time to report on it on a regular basis.  Every now and then, yes — every week, no.  And I’m sorry to say that I will probably stop reading many blogs too — my blogroll had gone from ten or fifteen blogs to several dozen on a reader that told me when a new post was made.  I could easily pass the evening online just reading blogs.  While I may still do that now and then, I’m going to try to wean myself from that in favor of time spent on my own projects — sorry, y’all, no offense I hope!

Hopefully this new direction will mean that I occasionally have something to say here other than an IDC report or whining about how tired I am!

Yes, Deer, No, Deer, Whatever You Say, Deer…

We’ll see how well my garden fence actually keeps out deer once there is something  in the garden that the deer might like.  So far there isn’t much in the garden that is more than an inch high, except for a tomato plant I got from a friend, a few pepper plants, and some potatoes that have sprouted.  More will grow or be planted shortly.

Anyway, here are the photos I’ve been promising of my deer fence.  I had the wooden pickets and wanted to use them just because I already had them.  But they are only about three feet high, and a garden generally needs an 8′ fence to be confident of keeping deer out.  Here’s how I compensated and made do.  Click on any photo to make it bigger.

One technique I used was to take advantage of some terracing of the yard.  The terrace is only about three feet high, but with the shrubbery above it and then a three-foot-plus fence above that, I think it will deter the deer quite effectively along that side:

Then, from the other direction, this is how I tackled the challenge:

You might not be able to see the details in that photo, so here is a better closeup:

I used branches from pruning the fruit trees to extend the posts higher.  Then I strung some thick orange twine across at a couple of intervals, then hung some lengths of twine vertically to create the illusion that the area is “occupied” by a fence.  From what I hear, this will work on deer even though there are gaps that might be big enough for a deer to jump through.  For good measure, I hung some garbage cds to provide shiny movement and distraction.

Two other views from inside the garden area, looking out over the terraced part:

 

Here’s my favorite piece: part fence, part art.  This is a giant metal door hinge that R and I found at the dump.  It’s got a kind of medieval look to it, with the horizontal straps that extend all the way across the door.  I didn’t get to take it when we split up, but when I told him I had a use for it as a garden gate, he was kind enough to lend it to me on a long-term basis.  I searched the junkyard for a lightweight interior door or screen to put in it, but found nothing suitable.  (Not to mention that any solid door would have taken to the air with the first good wind gust).  Finally I had an absolute brainstorm about what to put inside the hinge:

One of the things I like about the fence is the extent to which it’s cobbled together from stuff I already had or stuff I found.  The white and brown pickets were all originally bought by me, but years ago for use at earlier homes.  They were used as garden fence at R’s in a clever double-height scheme.  The green pickets in the hinge were in place at the house I bought in 1996, but when I had a better fence built there, the pickets became part of my “stuff” that moved around with me.  Some of the fenceposts were here on this property and I just relocated them.  Others I bought new, and I might have brought a few from R’s.  The branches, as I mentioned, were pruned off fruit trees here on the property.  The orange twine was here on the property — a giant roll of it, sitting on the scrap lumber pile.  Even the cds were repurposed — they come to the library where I work, one every month or two, and we use them to update the electronic card catalog.  Once we’ve used them for the update, they’re trash — except that I’ve been saving them for months now, in anticipation of this use.  And although I’m not showing off the garden itself yet, until I’ve removed some weeds and until things are growing a bit more, I will point out that the walkways you see in a few of the photos are made from cedar planks that were left over from that fancy fence I mentioned that I had built at another house.  The cedar plank boards came in 6′ lengths, but for much of that project we could only have a 4′ high fence (building permit laws — back fence may be 6′ high, front and side yard fences can’t be more than 4′ — sheesh).  Anyway, I saved all those 2′ lengths of cedar planking, through three moves now, and finally have found a use for them as garden walkways and weed suppressors.

So, overall, ten fenceposts was all that I bought new for this project.  Oh, plus some bolts and nuts for attaching the door to the giant hinge, and the hinge to a fencepost.  Not bad!  As long as it works, that is, and the deer decide to admire it from afar only. 

To make the garden also rabbitproof, I have some chicken wire I will staple along the pickets.  That part of the project is coming up pretty soon.

 

Challenges, Challenges

For the last year or so it seems that it’s been popular for bloggers to offer challenges.  At least the bloggers that I tend to read.  Participating in a challenge works really well for me, psychologically.  It’s a good way for me to get motivated to do something I’ve been wanting to do anyway.  I often feel bad when I decline to join a challenge, even if it’s clearly unrealistic for me or even if it’s something that doesn’t even interest me!  There’s just something about being challenged…  maybe that’s how young boys feel when they ‘double dare’ each other to do something?

I’ve joined several challenges recently — some that last a year, some that last a month, and one that will last 3 months (Diva Cup Challenge).  I’ve explained in earlier posts, at least a little bit, the Riot for Austerity and the Growing Challenge and the Independence Days Challenge.  I realized I better explain the others.  Michelle at Green Bean Dreams came up with the “Be A Bookworm” Challenge for May.  We participants each read one or more books in May that were ecologically oriented, or about learning to live simply or be more self-reliant.  This challenge has now continued on into June — maybe it will just be an ongoing thing — lots of us are always reading a book or two!  Crunchy Chicken has been trying to encourage women to stop using disposable menstrual products for a long time now.  She’s a particular supporter of the Diva Cup.  Recently she held a drawing where the winners would get free Diva Cups.  But the catch was, anyone who entered the contest had to agree to use the Diva Cup for the next three months, whether they won the drawing or not!  Now Chile has offered the Quit Now Challenge to give up an addiction for a month, in the name of increasing self-reliance and with the idea that eventually, lots of the things we are addicted to won’t be available any more, and it will be a lot less stressful to quit those addictions now, than to do it in a time of turmoil.

Each of these challenges has a “button” I’ve posted over on the right-hand side of the page.  (However, some of them seem to disappear regularly and only sometimes can I figure out how to get them back, so if you can’t see them all, that’s why).

Anyway, here are my updates for the challenges I haven’t been otherwise reporting on:

Diva Cup challenge:  I bought one, but it arrived too late for me to use it in May.  Once the time comes in June and I get a chance to try it, I’ll report how it goes!

Be A Bookworm Challenge:  In May I finished reading The Forager’s Harvest, which I started in April, and then I read two other books:  Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, and Plenty.  Here are my reviews of these books:

The Forager’s Harvest, by Samuel Thayer. I didn’t read all the plant descriptions, only the ones I was familiar with or that I thought would be found in my area. However, the introduction is so powerful that it’s worth getting the book (at least from the library) just to read those few pages. He describes foraging for food in terms of its history – that is, the cultural path that has gone from foraging as the only option (originally) to the current time where not only do most people not forage for food, but it’s actually acquired a negative reputation: “only poor people forage” is the implication now. He also describes in rather blunt language what he thinks is wrong with other edible plant books, and which ones he thinks are worth having as references. He’s pretty persuasive in that area as well.  Definitely worth a peruse!

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. They are talking about shifting manufacturing to be sustainable, ecologically. They emphasize the importance of manufactured items being designed to be deconstructable at the end of their lives, and the resulting pieces being used again and again, indefinitely. They divide all components of manufactured items into two categories: biological nutrients and technological nutrients. Biological nutrients are organic materials (animal, vegetable, mineral, water, etc). When they are not contaminated with technological nutrients, biological nutrients can be safely composted (ie discarded), returning their nutrients to the soil and becoming food for some other species in the ecosystem. Technological nutrients are processed metals or chemicals, toxins, fossil fuels, etc.  When not contaminated with biological nutrients, technological nutrients can be retrieved at the end of a manufactured item’s life and re-used at an equally “high” level in another manufacturing process. In order to be able to 100% safely compost biological nutrients and 100% re-use technological nutrients, manufactured items must be made with this cyclical future in mind, and designed so that the biological and the technological can be completely separated. They also talk a bit, favorably, about shifting to a service economy, where the manufacturer maintains ownership of an item, and contracts with the customer for the service only. This is an idea that’s been tossed around for a few years now — for example, instead of buying a refrigerator (which you then have to discard at the end of its life, putting not only volume and toxins into the landfill, but “discarding” valuable materials that the fridge was made of, that now need to be mined/processed again to make more for the next fridge), you might instead buy “refrigeration services”. The company selling you this service will install a refrigerator in your home, but they maintain ownership of the machine. You are paying for the service the machine is providing. When the machine dies, the manufacturer will remove/replace the fridge, and it will be in their economic interest to retrieve and re-use the components of the fridge (metal, plastic, coolant, insulation, etc), instead of just taking it to the dump. I can see the benefits of this approach, but it’s not without its problems too. What they are describing in Cradle to Cradle makes complete sense to me in concept, but I did feel a sense of sadness as I read, in that I think it’s too late for the paths they are suggesting. I just don’t think we have the economic robustness or the resources available to shift/rebuild the infrastructure in the way that would be necessary to follow their route.  One last note: the book is printed using the principles they espouse – the ‘paper’ it’s printed on is actually a form of plastic, that can be fully re-used at the end of its life as a book. A side benefit is that it’s waterproof! As someone who does much of her reading in the bathtub, I can tell you that I felt reassured by that, in case I dropped the book in the water (which I didn’t). :)  On the downside, though, the book was heavy for its size, and bound in a way that made it hard to hold open with one hand. I suppose in the long run that’s a minor detail. This book was not a fast read, it’s a bit dense, but not overwhelmingly so. I heartily recommend it.

Plenty, by Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon: Finished it tonight. Thanks again to Michelle at Green Bean Dreams and Katrina at Kale for Sale for their generous drawing in which I won this book! I won’t review this book since others have (posted on GreenBean’s site), but I really enjoyed it! I’ll be offering it directly to a few friends, then when they are done with it, I’ll be donating it to my local library so others can enjoy it.

For June, I’m hoping to read “Farewell, My Subaru” if I can get it from the library in time.  Whatever book I choose, I’ll mention it here.  I’m also still in the middle of Michael Pollan’s “Second Nature” and I will for sure finish that in June.

Quit Now Addiction Challenge:  Okay, for the month of June, I have three areas where I will alter my behavior to quit an addiction.  First, I will limit my internet usage to four hours a day.  I know that probably sounds like a lot, but I’ve been spending well more than that online recently, so that would be a healthy step back.  The exception, of course, is when I’m using the internet to do paid work.  I also have to remember that I don’t watch tv, I don’t generally use the phone — internet is where I get my news and entertainment, where I stay in touch with friends and even family.  I think four hours should be enough to continue the things I think are actually valuable, but it will limit the mindless part of my online time and force me to plan my time better.  Second, I will not drink anything carbonated.  I don’t drink regular soda, but I do have a fondness for Crystal Geyser juice squeeze (grapefruit flavor), and instead of having it occasionally as a treat like I used to, I’ve gotten into the habit of drinking it more often lately.  Third, I will not have any snack chips in June.  Again, I used to eat none of those, but over the past year or two I’ve started eating rice chips, tortilla chips, even potato chips now and then.  They’re not all horrible nutrition-wise (in particular rice chips aren’t so bad), but I’ve let my consumption go from occasional to frequent, and I want to get away from that.  I’ll start by not having any in June.

So, if you’re in the mood for a challenge, follow the links to some of these sites and sign up!  Or, offer your own challenge!

Growing Challenge Update — A Photo Essay

The activity going on lately for my Growing Challenge involves getting the garden ready — digging beds, mixing in some composted horse manure, and putting up the fence to keep deer, bunnies, and dogs out of the garden.  I’m making good progress on that front, inbetween rain showers, but in terms of the plants themselves, not much is happening — they’re growing, inside in their pots.  There’s not much I can write about them — um, “they’re slightly bigger than last time I reported”…?

So I thought a photo essay was in order:

This photo shows the top shelf of my “baker’s shelf” that I have sitting in the bedroom, looking out to the west through the sliding glass door.  What you can see there, from the top of the photo to the bottom, is cilantro, buttercup squash (which I don’t remember if I ever listed, but is something new to me, so it counts for the Growing Challenge), and 5-color silverbeet chard.  I’ve not grown that before either, but I’ve grown regular chard.

Okay, here is a “back” view of the middle shelf of the baker’s rack, with (left to right):  cayenne peppers and mesclun mix.  On the bottom shelf is onion from seed, Thai lettuce, bell pepper, the no-show simpson black-seeded lettuce, and catnip from seed.  Nearby on the floor, not shown in the photo, is transplanted catnip from a friend’s yard, eggplant, and onion sets (well, one set is all that sprouted).

Now on to the kitchen counter.  Here we have the dipper gourd sprout, with a second sprout that appeared just a few days ago but is almost the size of the one that sprouted weeks ago.

Next are the rhubarb seedlings.  Just barely hanging on, they don’t seem to be getting any bigger.  I’m about to put them into a bigger pot, but I’m not sure why.  I’ve heard that rhubarb is difficult to grow from seed, and perhaps I’m seeing some of that difficulty here.  But I’ll keep them alive if I can!

Now this might look like an empty pot, but there are actually five tiny lemon balm sprouts here.  They’ve been up for a few weeks now, but not getting much bigger.  However, I did notice they’re about to put up their second set of leaves, even though the first set is still so tiny!

Here you see the turnip sprouts.  I had expected them to get big fast, like the squashes did, but no, they’re staying tiny as well.

Then there is the honeydew melon sprout, with a couple of recent popper-uppers that I think are actually dipper gourd (they started out in the same pot) but I’m not sure about that.

Here we have my banana pepper sprouts.  They are new to me as well.

No photo for the ground cherry as none ever sprouted.  I have other things sprouted indoors: four kinds of tomatoes (cherry, principe borghese, ping pong and marvel stripe), brussels sprouts, cauliflower, onion (some from seed, some from replanting the tip of spring onions), more catnip,  a few snow peas, a second round of cilantro, and a tray of beets.  Plus a mystery herb a friend gave me that hasn’t been identified yet.  Oh, and the starts I got from the co-op, butternut squash and delicata squash.

Out in the yard, so far, there is a bed of strawberries, a row of peas, and comfrey, valerian, catnip, stinging nettle.  Adding the dozen or so fruit trees at this rental house, there are apple and apricot trees for sure, and a few unidentified trees that I’m hoping are pear or (dare I hope?) cherry.  The weather this spring has been, shall we say, odd, with heat and then freezing, mixed with random winds, and I’m not assuming that any of the trees will actually produce fruit until I see it for myself.  There are/were some flowers, and what appear to be fruit buds, but as I said, I’ll wait for the results before I’m sure.  We still have at least one snowstorm before summer, I’d bet…

And while I’m running around with the camera, here’s what the partly dug, mostly unfenced garden looks like at the moment. 

 

For this year I will probably only plant in the lower terrace, but because it only takes two fence lengths to double the area fenced, I’m going to go ahead and include the upper terrace in the fenced area.   I figure that someone (whether it’s me or not) will want to be growing a big garden at this house in coming years, and will appreciate the bigger fenced area.

You can see the pickets lying roughly where they’ll go once I get the fenceposts in the co-op order tomorrow.  Eh?  What’s that you say?  Why, yes, I *am* aware that the gate, which if you click the photo you will see is standing proudly by itself, will not actually keep out the deer unless some sort of fence is attached to it.  :)  Thanks for mentioning it though!  :)

I’m going to experiment with a double row of low fencing instead of one high fence.  I hear that deer can’t or won’t go over two fences that are pretty close together, like maybe 3-4 feet apart.  I also have a bunch of branches saved from the fruit trees I pruned, that I will use to extend the apparent height of the fence.  It’s hard to describe — I’ll post more photos once it’s in place, and you can see what I mean then.

Fooled by a Banana Pepper Wannabe

I should have known.  That little sprout in the Banana Pepper seed pot didn’t look like a pepper plant, if I’d stopped to think about it.  Which I didn’t.  I was just happy to see green appearing out of the soil.  But I did wonder why just the one sprout (although I have several other seeds where only one of the bunch sprouted, so…).  Two days ago, five sprouts, looking just like each other, suddenly appeared in that pot, making my mistake obvious.  Not only *are* they obviously peppers, but just the fact that five lookalike sprouts appeared all at the same time, looking very different from that little weedy sprout I’ve been watching for two weeks, would have been more than enough to be sure even if I hadn’t a clue what pepper sprouts looked like.  Silly me!

Bottom line is, I’m so glad to have more than one Banana Pepper sprout!

 

Who Knew? The Lemon Balm Was Listening…

The day after I posted a “come in” call for the Lemon Balm, it sprouted!  Two little dabs of green rose up overnight.  No such luck with the Ground Cherry — maybe it needs a second pleading here?  Come on,  baby, you can do it!  And let’s hear from some of the other plants that have only sprouted ONE sprout…

Thursday’s Independence Days Challenge actions:

* Growing Food:  I dug *part* of a garden bed, pruned *part* of an apple tree, and *started* to set up a compost pile.  I don’t really want to count things that I only partway do, especially since I have a history of starting what I don’t finish.  But I do want to report the progress.

* Food planning/Eating from storage:  Soaking some *really old* red beans that I’m finally using up.  They’ll go in the crockpot Friday and be dinner, with some rice.

* Eating from storage:  Thursday’s dinner, along with a salad, was baked potatoes and roasted beets, both grown in last year’s garden and root cellared ’til now.  (Hey, if they’re both in the same oven, how can one be baked and the other be roasted?  I guess they’re baked beets then…)

In other news, I’ve taken the next step towards a new part-time summer job that looks like it will see me once again earning more than I’m spending, at least for a few months.  It also has the potential to turn into a full-time job with benefits, etc after the summer, but I’m not sure I want that, so I’m not focusing on that for now — first, I’ll just see how the summer goes and see how I feel about any other opportunities later.  More details once it’s official.

At home, I’ve unpacked a few more boxes, moved around a little more furniture.   A little at a time, pressing myself to keep making small progresses, seems to work best for me, rather than planning an all-out long slog of a day, which I usually end up slothing and not doing.  You could say it’s the same kind of mentality needed for the Independence Days Challenge, which is why I’m hoping that challenge will be a good one for me to participate in.

Dipper Gourd Ho! Honeydew Ho! Come In, Ground Cherry and Lemon Balm?

Growing Challenge update:  A dipper gourd seed has sprouted!  Just one.  In addition, I have one and only one healthy-looking Afghan Honeydew sprout, one and only one small Banana Pepper sprout.  The Mesclun Mix sprouts (a couple of dozen) are about 2 inches high.  A dozen or so Turnip sprouts, and half a dozen or so Rhubarb sprouts.  Still no sign of Ground Cherry or Lemon Balm.

In other garden seed-starting news, my healthy and fast-growing Cilantro sprouts were, I just realized, seeds packed for 2000 — eight years ago!  That’s encouraging to me that they stayed viable for so long.  On the other hand, the Simpson Lettuce seeds from 1995 have not shown any response yet.

I notice that I’m reluctant to plant seeds in groups of 2 or 3 as is often suggested, with instructions to thin out the smaller ones and keep the healthiest sprout in each spot.  Each seed feels too valuable to me to risk “wasting” them by thinning.  Where I have room, I’m instead just trying to sprout extra seeds, far enough apart that I can keep all those who grow.  But in a few cases I might have to thin a bit.  I’m also trying to decide when to just plant what I would want for myself (I don’t need more than 1-2 squash plants, for example, of each variety) or when I should plant many and then offer the starts for sale at the early farmer’s markets.  The market will be starting in early June, and I doubt there will be much for sale there at first, since that’s just about outdoor planting time around here!  Only what people have started indoors or in cold frames might be ready by then, and since this is a new farmer’s market, I don’t know that many people are growing for it.  Which might make any starts I have to offer that much more interesting.

In related news…

Sharon Astyk has presented a challenge she is calling the Independence Days Challenge.  You can read about it here.  The bottom line of the challenge is to do something each day for one year that forwards your level of independence:  plant something, harvest something, learn a new skill, cook something new, preserve food and manage your storage, help create/sustain a local food economy (or a local economy for anything sustainable or subsistence oriented, for that matter).  I’m going to try to do something that fits this challenge each day.  I might not post about it every day, but I will try to post at least weekly, listing my Independence Days Challenge activities for that week.  So far, for example, I have:

• Monday April 28 — I volunteered sorting orders at my local food co-op, and took possession of my own order, which included some bulk/storage food (25# rice, 25# black beans, 15# sugar, 3 gallons olive oil), and some food storage items (four gamma seal lids for 5-gallon buckets).  My order also included six organic butternut squash starts and six organic delicata squash starts.
• Tuesday April 29 — I planted eggplant seeds in a pot indoors.
• Wednesday April 30 — I planted Principe Borghese tomato seeds in a pot indoors.

See how easy?  That’s the idea, that each day’s action might take only a few seconds or minutes, but the challenge is to keep it up on a daily basis.  Come play along!

Growing Challenge — 3 Steps Forward and 1 Step Back

Three steps forward:  three of my indoor pots have produced seedlings so far:  turnips, mesclun salad mix, and brussels sprouts.  (I guess that means I have a brussels sprout – er, sprout?  :)  I haven’t grown mesclun mix before, so I guess that counts as another Growing Challenge item, though I hadn’t decided to plant it at the time I listed my inclusions.  I’ve grown brussel sprouts before, years ago, and I assume I started them from seed, but I really don’t remember.   Even though it was about 80*F here today, it’s supposed to get cold again in a few days, so I’m glad I’m starting all these guys indoors.  Within a week or two, though, I’ll have to put the turnips in the ground, as they’ll get too big for their pot.  But they’re hardy, so I have hopes that they’ll be ok.  As I mentioned before, I’ll plant some seeds straight in the ground at that time.

Now for the step back:  when I got home this afternoon, I checked in on the kitchen windowsill to see if anyone new had sprouted, and I saw that one of my containers was upside down on the counter and in the sink!  Potting soil everywhere!  Oh no!  It was the container with the dipper gourd seeds.  I think the cat must have been climbing up around there and stepped on the container, which extended out just a bit off the sill, due to the window being open to let a little fresh air in, so…  Darn!  I put all the soil back in the container.  I didn’t see any half-sprouted seeds, either.  I saw one or two seeds that still looked like seeds.  Hopefully they will still sprout ok.  Keeping the cat off the counter is another story though…  I’m pretty sure he was chasing flies — yesterday when it was so nice, I opened up two doors and a screenless window and just kept them open all day, to air out the house on such a nice day!  I hoped the flies etc would fly in and then just fly right on out.  Erm, it didn’t quite work — the house was FULL of flies and mosquitoes!  I’ve been snapping towels at them, catching them in jars to put outside, encouraging the dog and the cat to think of them as toys, anything!  Haven’t noticed any more mosquitoes today, I might have gotten all those, but there’s still lots of flies I haven’t vanquished.  I’d bet anything the flies were hovering in that kitchen window and Bear the cat was ‘only trying to help’ when he stepped on the potted gourd seeds.

OK, I’m over it now.

Exciting Happenings Around These Parts

The owner of the local cafe posted a sign much like this one a few weeks ago.  This photo is for the second meeting, happening Tuesday evening.  She’s started a new business across the street from the cafe, a commercial kitchen with all the accoutrements.  Her idea, which was discussed with high enthusiasm by 15-20 people at the first meeting, is to create a local food “brand”, by combining local growers with local “processors”, the latter being people with recipes and products they are interested in producing commercially.  In other words, if someone wants to produce, say, apple butter, or jarred pasta sauce, they coordinate with the local growers to get the right variety of tomatoes, apples, etc.  After buying their ingredients (mostly local as possible), they make their product in her commercial kitchen, which has all the certifications and equipment needed to be legal.  UC Davis will provide us nutritional analyses of recipes submitted.  Items produced in this way will be eligible for the local brand label, and hopefully the local markets will be interested in carrying these products.  Of course they could also be sold at the Farmer’s Market (for which, in a parallel project also coming out of the cafe, there are plans to hold a second Farmer’s Market each week, the new one being in the middle of town and held on Saturday mornings, so that tourists and 40-hour-a-week-ers will be able to attend — the current Farmer’s Market, which will also continue, is held on the hospital lawn, which is *not* in the middle of town — even if it’s only a quarter-mile away — and it’s held at 3:00 on Friday afternoons, and is usually done by 3:30.  Not too convenient unless you happen to be right there).

I was wary that the first meeting, which was attended by much of the gardening crowd, would produce lots of growers but no processors.  However, when asked to show hands, there were a good 8-10 people expressing interest in producing a product.  Many were also growers.

My role in this project is likely to be grower only, unless I discover something I really want to make as a finished item.  And, since I’m in a new place and don’t know the details of how the garden will do this first year, I’m pretty tentative in what I can offer anyway.  I’m more likely to bring whatever does well in my garden to the farmer’s market.  Committing to provide X pounds of tomatoes or potatoes or whatever, will have to wait at least one growing season, as I learn what grows well in my location/soil/water.  On the other hand, there are a dozen mature fruit trees in my yard, starting to bud out as I type.  I know most are apple, I know there’s at least one apricot, and I suspect at least one peach and one pear.  Soon as I can figure out what varieties they are, I can make at least a tentative offer to provide some of the harvest for any processor who needs those ingredients.

My other role in this project is that the lower fields at my house will be used by my friend KH, who plans for large garden beds.  Her aim is to provide produce for the cafe directly, plus for the farmer’s market, but it certainly includes providing ingredients for the processors.

There are so many things that might possibly go wrong, both in my yard and with this project in general, but I am so excited to see it being discussed and tried!  I think this is just the kind of conversation we need to be having now, so that when/if a time comes, next year or in several years, when this valley returns to being dependent on its local growers for most of its food, we’ll not be starting from zero coordination at that time.

Also, Growing Challenge update:  I started a few seeds from each of my items yesterday.  They’re on the kitchen windowsill, in the plastic tubs that I buy organic salad greens in from the market.  (Of course, once I’m growing my own salad greens, I’ll have to get my indoor starter containers elsewhere :)  There are lots of other garden items I want to try starting from seed too, but other than some catnip, I haven’t planted those seeds yet.

Growing Challenge — my selections

Okay, I’ve mentioned earlier that I’m participating in Melinda’s “Growing Challenge” for the upcoming garden season.  The rules of the Challenge are to grow at least one new thing in your garden this year, that you haven’t grown before, and to grow it from seed.  And, to report at least weekly, either to her or on a blog, about the experience.

So this week I’ve selected which items I’m going to grow for the Challenge.  Melinda started the challenge months ago so that people would have time to think/decide before buying their seeds.  Well, I went about it a little backwards — I bought my seeds months ago, as a hedge against the fast arrival of troubled times.  It just seemed like a good idea to have a good supply of open-pollinated seeds, so I placed my orders from Seeds of Change and Baker Creek back in November or December.  Of course, I figured that if my paranoia didn’t come to fruition, I could always make more seed purchases come spring.  But since I was ordering, I went ahead and ordered quite a bit.

So once I decided, just recently, to participate in the Challenge, I went through my stack of seed packets and pulled out any packets I had that were for items I hadn’t already grown before.  Then I mulled these over and decided which ones to use for the Challenge.  I realized as I perused, that I’ve grown lots of things before, but not very successfully!  So I still have lots to learn, lots to try.  But for the purposes of the Challenge, anything I’ve grown before won’t be officially part of the Challenge.

Okay, so here are my choices for the 2008 garden:

Sweet Banana Peppers (I’ve grown — barely — bell peppers before, but I maintain that banana peppers are different!) — I have some Ferry Morse seeds (last minute grab from the local grocery)

Turnips — Purple Top White Globe from Ferry Morse (ditto)

Lemon Balm

Honeydew Melon (Afghan Honeydew)

Ground Cherry

Rhubarb (Victoria Rhubarb)

and, the one I’m most excited about:

Dipper Gourd.

Now, I haven’t done detailed research about which of these items are best suited to my bioregional climate conditions or to my microclimate yard.  But I don’t care.  I have a friend not too far from here who grows bamboo in her yard, even though the zone charts say that would never happen.  She just tried it in a variety of microclimates until she found three places where it survived.

I’m going to further experiment by starting a few seeds of each of these things now, and then when it’s ground planting time, in addition to putting my starts in the ground I will attempt to sprout them from seed directly into the garden at that time. 

This will be fun!