ingrid

Holy shit!  It is hot out.  Why I picked this day of all days to cook and pre-cook, I don’t know.  I guess it had to be done though.

What do you get if you take this

this

this

and this?

Pesto man.  And it is freaking awesome!

I threw you off with that photo of the walnut tree, didn’t I?  It isn’t pine nuts, but what the hell is a pine nut anyway?  And where could I get one?

It is so great to make something out of the stuff that you grew (or finagled) yourself.  I made a huge mess of pesto this morning and froze it in a bunch of sandwich bags.  Now when I am dying for a shot of garlicky goodness, I can just grab the bag and toss it in some pasta.

Along the lines of gleaning, the family and I went for a little berry-picking jaunt this weekend.  I was so busy getting sun-burnt that I neglected to take any pictures until we were ready to go, but you can see that we were successful:
Brad says so.

And we got this, which was eight pounds of blueberries.  Woa!  It all got popped in the new freezer in the basement.

Speaking of that freezer, I love it!  It is a new addition which we decided to invest in last week when our refrigerator officially gave out.  I am ushering in a whole new era of “convenience foods”, which to me does not mean corn-dogs, it means preparing healthy and beautiful stuff way ahead of time so that I can go fast when I need to.  I’m am thinking more and more about my urban gleaning goals, which include taking stuff no one else wants and begging, borrowing, picking and canning things that no one else has time for.  I got these suckers given to me:

That is two pounds of potatoes, a little worse for wear.  No problem.  I’m just trimming out the brown bits and cutting these guys into slices for freezing.  That will make a super easy meal addition some evening when I am crazy busy with the kids and need to make dinner.

And I grew these!
I hated beets as a child, but I would like to think that my palate has matured.  I’ve found that beets are best roasted in their jackets.  To do so, cut off the tops and root of the beet, cut the bulb in two and place on a pan or baking sheet doused in olive oil.  Roast until dark.  The skin of the beet should slip off.  Super good stuff, especially with goat cheese, walnuts and chicken in a salad.

Eat up folks!  The world is full of food.  Let’s go find it!

3 Comments | In: food, urban farming | | #

Little brown chick

Many a thing is growing around this place.  I am pretty busy this week, but I thought I could throw some photos up to at least keep my reputation up.

The little brown chick (Helen?) is really huge now.  Or maybe the little black chick is small.  Helen might need to become “Helmut”.  I still don’t know if I have roosters here.  That will be another few weeks.  Helen is super fast though.  It took me about 10 minutes to catch her to get this picture.

Agnes, Helen and Frankie

This is not a fantastic shot, but it is the best one I have to show the size difference between Helen and Frankie.  Remember, one was born one day and the next chick came on out the next day.  Obviously Frankie has had a hard start in life.  S/he got stuck to her momma’s underbelly with rotten egg, I had to wash her off and tore most of her butt feathers off in the process so her rump is bare and weird looking, plus she is just sort of weakly and small.  I hope she will bounce back, but she hasn’t had a promising start on things.  Oh yeah, and she has lice.  I’ve got to figure out how to take care of that issue, as most likely all of the family has it.

Trellis in the front

I was so stressed about this plant just a few months ago.  Spring had started and the dang thing hadn’t done a thing.  I bought this scarlet trumpet vine because the tag promisingly said that it was hardy and liked “poor soil”.  It sounded like a winner to me.  Then it proceeded to languish for a good year and a half.  I should have been smart enough to remember that vines put down roots the first year and then growth the second.  This one is growing about 2 inches a day by my reckoning.  I have to tie it up again every week.  It’s amazing.

Lavender hedge

I moved these once-puny lavenders over last year (?).  I think they like it here.  I had thought that I needed a short fence in the front of the house to keep kids from running out of the front yard.  Now I think that this hedge might suffice.  There is no going through this thing, and what with the profusion of honey bees in there, it looks a little threatening to little eyes too.  It looks beautiful to me though.

Flowers, beats and peas in the kitchen garden

Where once the yard debris pile stood is now our kitchen garden.

This is the second year of a garden in this spot, and I am mostly happy with it.  I attempted to enlarge the space and that sort of worked.  It worked over towards the neighbor, but didn’t do anything back towards the north side of our property.  I underestimated what the walnut tree would do when it leafed out.  What it did was shade a whole row of plants.  I have peas, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, tomatoes, basil, and beets in here.  The greens in the final row didn’t make it, so no pak choi, spinach, or lettuce.  Man!  Bummer!  I have thirteen tomatoes so I am thinking of canning them this year.  Fun!

Day lilies from Angella

Dependable roses

Okay, I’ve got whining children on my lap.  I gotta scram.

6 Comments | In: chickens, projects, urban farming | | #

Hi There ! Yes, eggs eating IS a nasty habit for a hen. I can cure her of that by putting her in a curry pot. If you don’t mind, do reply. I could stop by to pick her up asap.

I’m feeling a little sad about Atilla.  I just sent her off on a motorcycle with a nice Vietnamese man.  He was driving, not her.  She was in a little box on the back of a mean looking machine.

She isn’t going far, just St Johns.  And even though his initial e-mail sounded like she was destined for the “curry pot”, he says that he would actually like to keep her if she can lay worth anything.  Problem is that I don’t think she can.  She dropped two malformed eggs last week, and then I haven’t seen anything decent from her since.

So now I am sad.  Sort of sad in that way where you wonder if you made the right decision.  Poor Atilla.  Maybe I should have kept her and just tolerated her worthlessness.  I remember her as a baby.  She has been in our flock the last two years.  She has sort of ruled the roost, and that isn’t just a figure of speech.  Now she is going to have to join someone else’s flock and scratch and claw her way to respect in a new environment.  Man!  Life is hard for a chicken!  I hope I did the right thing.

Atilla as a chick. She is the black one.

But life goes on, doesn’t it?  And Atilla is going to fend for herself just like she always (thinks she) has.

In other news, we introduced the two new babies to the flock today.  I was worried about this as on-line discussion groups were full of horror stories of adult hens pecking babies to death.  But that didn’t seem to agree with my general feeling that these animals should know best.  Surely in nature a hen just trucks back to her flock with her babies when she is ready (or she never leaves it in the first place).

We brought Agnes and the babies out into the fresh morning sun and let the older girls watch them through the chicken wire for a bit.  They were curious, but not agitated.  When it seemed time to bring the older ladies out, they came near but didn’t crowd in.  Agnes raised her feathers and spread her wings, signaling that she would not tolerate any nastiness with her babies.  The older girls backed off fast.

I tried to encourage the kids to sit still and just watch Agnes and her chicks as it is truly fascinating to see them explore.  It is hard for Francis and Zephyr as they want to grab those babies and just hold their sweet fluffiness.  Francis is sure that she needs to mother them.  She has no faith in Agnes’ abilities at all.

I love watching them doing their own thing though.  You can REALLY hear Agnes saying things to them.  I swear I can totally understand her as she instructs her babies.  ”Right here is where you dig for bugs.  OH!  I found some!  Get over here babies!  Bugs!”.  And then she said, “And this is how you drink from the watering can.  Now you try.”  ”Okay, we are going to scratch at the dirt now.”  And they did it.  It was wonderful.  Agnes is a very good mother.

And what about those other eggs, you ask?  I brought the chicks out because one of the eggs had EXPLODED in the nest during the night.  I needed to wash the little black and yellow chick off because she/he was covered in rot.  Thinking that maybe it was too late to get much from the other eggs, I decided to toss them all in the compost.  It was a risky bet as I knew there might be other chicks (although this was unlikely as the hatch date was to be the 20th and we were 4 days late at this point).  Okay so this was GROSS.  Two eggs just cracked and were obviously just unfertilized, but two others were rotten.  They made this bizarre “pop” when I tossed them in the compost.  And the stink was horrible!  It was so bad that I had to go take a shower.  I kid you not.  I felt like I could smell it everywhere.  Yuck.  It was a Templeton moment.

That is a lot of chicken drama around here.  I think it was worth it though.  Here are our pretty babies:

4 Comments | In: Current musings, chickens, urban farming | | #

I just moved Agnes to a box in the shed (quieter and private quarters that she can stay in when the chicks hatch.

Here is a mystery….

There were only 10 eggs.  I put 12 under her last week.  I am SURE of that.  Where did 2 go?

I cleaned out the whole hen house and even raked around the ground below trying to find any telltale signs of those eggs.  Nothing.  I dug around the edges for holes showing rodent paths.  Nothing.  I shook out the straw.  Nothing.  There is a foul smell in the henhouse which could come from rotten egg innards, but unless the chickens ate whatever parts of the egg remained, I can’t figure how there would be no trace besides the bad smell.

Because I can’t think of any better ideas, I am espousing what I call “The Templeton Theory” which is that a rat came in and rolled the eggs away in the night.  It seems unlikely actually, but it is all I can come up with.  I also liked that scene in the book (and the cartoon!) where he goes rolling the egg off under the pig trough and all the animals are completely disgusted.  Let’s hope this doesn’t end in sorrow-orrow-orrow (anyone get that joke?).

Meanwhile, I need to pick up my Chicken Health Handbook at the library.  Problems are getting more advanced for this novice chicken keeper.  What to do?  What to do?  I might hire this sentry to keep watch over the girls this next week.  She looks trustworthy.

6 Comments | In: How strange, chickens, urban farming | | #

Okay, prepare yourself for awesomeness!

Ready?

Okay!

I bought a jar of “innoculated” mushroom dowels this weekend.  Yes!  I did that!  I actually paid $10 for a moldy jar full of dowels coated with mushroom stuff.  Before you make any Jack and the Beanstalk jokes, check this out:

Here are my moldy dowels.

I drilled holes in this rotten stump in the front yard and hammered the dowels in.

In the fall, this will be covered with mushrooms that we can cut and eat!

And to think that I got a quote to have this stump removed!  The mushrooms I am growing are called “Chicken of the Woods” and they are suppose to be meaty and wonderful.  I gave the other 25 dowels to my dad to put in out in Sheridan where the stumps are plentiful.  I have wanted to grow mushrooms for so long, and now I have my own precious stump of possibility.  Is this not awesome?

5 Comments | In: Awesome!, food, projects, urban farming | | #

It’s true.  I am an awesome mother when I have my own special things going on.  

I have been doing this stay-at-home mom thing for three and a half years now and I think I am getting the hang of how to do it and not feel

1 )  Bored

2 )  Guilty

3 )  Angry

4 )  Lame

For me, the struggle has been to strike some balance between stimulation and quiet.  I like to be doing things, hosting people, planning projects and parties and organizing people, and yet it is easy to suddenly feel completely overwhelmed with just the basic things I HAVE to do in my life.  As a stay-at-home parent, you need to be doing things, but there isn’t always left-over energy to take activities on.  It is hard to meet the needs of your mind and your body all while being exhausted and overworked.  The truth is though, that you are exhausted with laundry and whining and not enough uninterrupted sleep at night, not that excellent physical exhaustion that lets you drop into bed like a rock.  Taking care of kids is strange as you don’t often get the exercise you need and yet you are weary so you don’t feel up to running that mile (or even limping down the street to the grocery store).  You are tired, but not tired of body.  It is more like a spirit tiredness.  And then you are so focused on meeting immediate demands (for clean diapers, clothing, comfort, nap-times, etc), that it is hard to let your mind pursue any deeper course.  The end result?  You feel dull, listless and stupid.  People ask what you have been doing lately and you have a hard time coming up with anything.  They don’t want to hear about potty-training success or thoughts on dealing with day-light savings and bedtimes.  You feel like a lame excuse for a human being.  You wonder if you should go get a “real job” so that you have something to talk about.  You wonder if others see you as simply mooching off your husband (although in my household I KNOW that I damn well earn my keep.  These people would starve and descend into total chaos without me, thank you very much!).  

This week I was a super-awesome mother.  Really, I was more patient and kind and I FELT better.  This is why.

First, the sun came out.  It is super cold, but look at that sun!  I got out and put my face in the sun.  It is amazing how much time I need to spend on the couch nursing the baby.  I think people walk by and say, “Man, that woman is STILL on the couch.  She is ALWAYS on the couch!”.  It is necessary for me to sit a lot and nurse this kid, but it is also good to get off the couch. 

Second, I have sought out “good help”.  I have Inez and Zephyr visiting a neighbor woman once a week for 4 hours.  It was hard for me to justify hiring someone to watch my kids for a bit when I am the one home who is technically assigned to that job, but I can see and FEEL already that this is the right course of action.  I need this time to pursue things that make me recognize myself and remember who I am.  Woa, that’s deep!  

There isn’t time for further talk of “who I am” here, and it might be about as interesting as the potty-training update, but I can simply say that this week I felt like myself because I got time to work in the yard.  I loved my day and a half of garden projects.

This is what I did on Wednesday:

I hired a day laborer to help me level this stretch of thorns and weeds.  This “hedge” was truly disgusting, full of trash and rocks and small, unsightly shrubs.  I can see beauty in all sorts of wild things, but this really was not one of them.  The plan for this stretch of ground is a nice row of raspberries.

Carlos the worker was so amazingly effective.  He, unlike me, was able to start a task and actually see it through to the end!  I worked alongside him doing the easier stuff and totally enjoying his accomplishments and congratulating myself for being smart enough to hire him.

This is what my front yard looks like now:

How about that load of yard debris?  I have to figure out how to get it to the recycling center.  This is what the city of Portland gives us for our yard debris:

Dang wheeling cart is never large enough.  I swear I could pull this thing out every week (maybe twice!).  It took me a month and a half to get rid of our Christmas tree.  I think I still have the trunk in that big lawn pile.

While weeding, I found this!  (While you are at it, check out my mulch!).  Brad loves rhubarb and as I love him, I planted a bunch to call our very own.  He thought it was a goner, but there it is.  Rhubarb takes a couple years to get established, and I was unsure how this might do, so I got two varieties.  Here is her cousin:

I put this beauty into the backyard, which to me is still sort of a wasteland.  There was pretty much nothing there but weeds and butterfly bushes when we got here, and I am still struggling with removing the blights and introducing beneficials.  Blights=invasives like blackberries, straggly butterfly bushes packed together and poorly pruned, garbage and plastic in the soil, tell-tale beer bottles and the stupid bamboo that is creeping in from the neighbors’ yard.  Beneficials= mulch, shade trees, compost, worms, chickens, and plants that add interest and variation to the yard.

Here is another crazy thing I am doing.  While I was in El Paso last, I was checking out the “dry riverbed” thing that a lot of landscapers are doing down there, and I thought it might work fairly well here if I could just figure out how to keep it from becoming a mosquito cesspool.  Ain’t nothin’ stays dry around here.  I have to incorporate some drainage into my plan.  What I am working on is making a dry riverbed leading to a dry “pond” that is actually a sand box.  It will have large rocks surrounding it and be a naturalistic and functional place for kids to play.  The “river” will start up behind the compost and “trickle out” a bit beyond the “pond”.  I think it will look really awesome when I am done.  Right now Brad keeps calling it my “mud hole”, but those of us with vision must live with the detractors in our lives.  It is going to be AWESOME.

Putting in all the new plants has been a great joy, but it leaves me torn.  My chickens are so excited when they see a fresh chunk of dirt; they simply must scratch.  This means that they effectively dig up anything I put in.  I tried to put all sorts of weird things around the new blueberries I put in back, (like a broken laundry hamper), but really the most effective course of action is for the plants to grow large enough to not be hurt.  That will take time.  What do I do in the meantime?  I love my chickens, but I also love my new plants.  The only thing I came up with was quarantine.  Sorry girls.

4 Comments | In: Current musings, Music and philosophical musings, chickens, family, projects, urban farming | | #

Wow, I’ve been really busy this week.  I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that I have been doing, but judging from the mountain of laundry that I folded last night, it was not house-keeping.  This week was fun (I think).  Zephyr and I went to a play at Oregon Children’s Theater.  ”Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type” was pretty great.  It reminded me of The Muppets, the way that humor would work on multiple levels.  In case you haven’t checked out this children’s classic, it is about cows who go on strike after finding that their barn is cold.  They learn to type and in that way deliver their demands to the farmer.  One cow read “Animal Farm”, “The Communist Manifesto”,  and the biography of Malcolm X, so she would occasionally yell, “Down with the Oppressor!”.  Hilarious.  It occurred to me on the train coming back that in The Muppets, the “high humor” character was usually Gonzo.  Maybe that is why I liked him so much.

I’m going to sum up this week’s changes in bullet form.  That will be fun, right?

• Inez is a new baby.  A better baby.  An improved baby.  The crying is over and this kid is so super sweet and mellow.  She doesn’t seem to cry hardly at all now, except when I totally neglect her and leave her in the swing too long.  She is excellent.  I am so glad that the colic has gone (back to hell where it came from!).
• Beer.  We have a lot of it because of Dad’s 70th birthday party this last week.  We tried our best to empty the keg in our kitchen, but after being quite drunken last Sunday (or Saturday?  Monday?  Huh?), the beer is not as appealing.  It is hard to wake up to feed a baby at 3am if you are reeling around the room.  If you are my neighbor, you are getting mason jars full of beer on your porch today.  I need to empty this sucker and get it back to Widmer.
• Mulch.  My obsession is paying off.  The front yard is looking pretty good where I dumped all the mulch from the fall.  I haven’t gotten out there as much as I want to, but the sun is peaking out around here and spring does look like it is on its way.  The weeds are smothering, but now I have to go pluck up the particularly determined ones.  Did REM do a song called “Night Gardening”?  Or was that “Night Swimming”?  Anyway, that is when I garden these days as that is when the kids manage to leave me alone.  I can’t wait for more time in the yard!  I want plants!  I want weeding!  I want life!
•  Chickens.  I need to figure out how to keep them penned up more.  There was entirely too much chicken shit on the back lawn.  On the positive side, the grass sure looks healthy!  I did a walk through with the hose and sprayed all the turds, making the most potent fertilizer this side of the Dallas cow shit ponds.
• Chinese media!  I am reading “Peony in Love” by Lisa See.  It is so engrossing.  I love it.  I am not getting enough sleep because I just want to read.  And I have “Tuya’s Marriage” from the library.  Technically it is a Mongolian movie, but it is close enough to a Chinese film to give me fits.  I can’t wait to watch it.  I love Chinese movies.  LOVE, I tell you.  If it has Gong Li in it, I swoon.  She is my girl-crush.
• Music.  I have a bunch of stuff to practice for Saturday and Sunday.  I am doing music for Family Mass the third Saturday of every month.  This is great as it means I get my Sunday church obligation out of the way and can relax on Sunday morning.  Oh but wait!  I also sing in Gospel Choir the fourth Sunday of every month.  Do these sound like different weekends to you?  Not this month they aren’t.  They aren’t next month either.  Geeze!  I have a bunch of stuff to sing in Spanish on Saturday and then I return Sunday and have soloooooooooos to stress over.  It is all good, but requiring attention and effort.  I have a small headache thinking about it.

Okay y’all.  I wish you music, beer, great kids, fertile chickens and less weeds this week.  Oh yes, and awesome Chinese movies!

7 Comments | In: Music and philosophical musings, My super freakin' cute kids, Reading, chickens, family, urban farming | | #

Here is a list of expensive things:

raw-edged (meaning lazily unfinished) designer clothing

movies shown in little tiny movie theaters

local beer in glass bottles

old bikes put together for a non-profit

brown free range eggs

anything to do with plumbing

those really good laughing cow tiny cheeses

new things made to look old

syrup that comes from trees

buying a bus ticket for someone else (the ticket might be $15, but the “gift” fee is $18)

“handling” charges on theater tickets

framing $5 posters

decision making with children

chicken feed in the city

I went shopping with Kendall today.  It was fun, but sort of an ordeal.  First of all, you can’t just go shopping, you have to arrange for baby sitting, move car seats around, and plan for nap times.  Then, even with the best of planning, once embarked on the actually shopping part of the day, I had to stop for 30 minutes to change and nurse Inez.  It seriously cut into my shopping!  I am also struck by how shopping with a child causes me to make many errors in judgment.  I know that studies have been done showing how people will spend more than they should with a credit card.  What about people who spend more than they should and buy things that they don’t quite consider fully because of their children?  Case in point:  recently I bought a bed for the basement.  We really needed a bed down there as we had guests coming.  I knew the bed that I wanted, but it was out at Ikea and would need to be transported home somehow.  I arranged with a sister to drop the kids and borrow her car so that I might pick the bed up.  Once I got to the store however, I found out that the bed I wanted was only HALF in.  That is, some of the parts were there, but others were not.  The parts weren’t interchangeable.  The sides that I needed “might” be in after a week or so, but then again, “they might not”.  In my exhaustion and haste, I decided to just buy a freakin’ bed already, because it had been such a big deal to borrow the car, arrange child-care and find the time to get to the store.  I bought a bed.  Now I realize that the one I chose takes up the whole room.  The headboard doesn’t push up against the wall because it has this special flare design.  Now I wish I could take it all back and get the bed I wanted, but it is too late now.  Man!

I bought pants today that I think are too short.  I couldn’t find what I thought was the right size.  Inez was screaming her head off in the store and I was almost done.  I needed to meet Kendall in a few minutes.  I couldn’t actually remember what length I was looking for.  The numbers were blurring in front of my eyes.  So I just grabbed the nearest pants and headed for the check stand.

When I was NOT pregnant with Inez, I ran out to find a swimsuit bottom.  I had 15 minutes.  I tried on tons of bottoms, but as I am of traditional build (that is a “Number One Ladies Detective Agency” joke), I find that I usually had more than enough bottom for my bottoms.  I finally found a good butt sling, carried it to the cashier, waited a long time in line, and then he said, “I will have to go check on the price on these as they are maternity”.  Wah?  I guess I could have stopped him as he ran off to figure out how much my prego-pants were, and mind you, I WASN’T PREGNANT, but frankly I didn’t have the time or energy.  I just bought them.  I also thought, “Great!  Now I am going to get pregnant!’.  I know that is not the way it works.  

I went searching for chicken scratch yesterday, and found myself at the city chicken plant nursery place in our neighborhood.  They are a little snooty there anyway, but their offer of a $30 bag of cracked corn really amazed me.  What happens to the $12 bag to make it arrive at $30 once it gets to the city?  I don’t get it.  Here is a case where I did not succumb to my haste.  I will not pay $30 for chicken scratch.  There is a reason people have the expression, “Awwww, that’s chicken scratch!”, and it is not because $30 is a deal.

My sister was very patient with me when I followed our trip to Banana Republic with a request to find the nearest feed store in Woodburn.  I mean, we were in WOODBURN, and that is sort of like the country!  I found my chicken scratch, slapped down my $9.99, and slung the 50 lb bag on my shoulder.  Yeah!  That is more like it!  Chicken scratch, man!

This is a cautionary tale people!  Don’t be like me with your money.  That is, only sometimes be like me, but without buying too-big beds, too-pregnant bathing suits, and too-short pants.  Remember chicken scratch!

1 Comment | In: General bitchin', chickens, urban farming | | #

1 Comment | In: urban farming | | #

Last month while generously pulling button weeds from my front yard, my mother-in-law said, “Look, you have a cantaloupe!”.
“No….” I earnestly corrected her. “It is just a cucumber.” She would not be swayed. She insisted that it was a cantaloupe. My mother-in-law is very smart, especially about a whole class of things that most people know nothing about, like canning and knitting, drying walnuts, and how to put in invisible zippers. Now I need to add “identifying vagrant melons by tiny leaves” to her list of accomplishments, because folks, I HAVE A CANTALOUPE.
Two things perplex me about this cantaloupe. First of all, where did it come from? There is just one cantaloupe plant, growing in the very front of the house. Certainly I compost, so I can imagine that it made its way to the dirt there when I was amending soil and planting other stuff, but why then aren’t there lots of cantaloupes? Why this one?
Second thing is: why have I never been able to purposely grow a cantaloupe? Do cantaloupes have free will? What is stronger and more self-determined about this one?

I am proud of my little cantaloupe and hope I can be a good host to it. It shows the strength and determination of many immigrants to this place, trying to make a new life for itself, emerging and fruiting even though the night time temperatures have dropped down to 45 degrees.

When can I eat it?

2 Comments | In: urban farming | | #