Time out of place...

partly sunny

17th of July, half the United States is baking under the sun and suffering from drought, and we are still waiting for something like real summer weather. Our winter lasted well into June and weather conditions stay off-kilter from what we used to consider the norm.

Not like the TV weather ever mentions the words "climate change" during these months of extreme weather events here and around the globe, but something in the weather has definitely been changing over the past few years. Living close to the land makes that more obvious.

Plants and animals are getting thrown off their timing so we have had stuff blooming early and other things coming on late. Mostly late.  Currently I am noticing that all my alliums (onions, garlic, shallots) are going to flower. The onions & shallots are early, the garlic is late. The garlic should have been ready to harvest last month, but isn't ready yet. Beets and radishes are flowering before making, well, beets and radishes. Lavender usually blooms in June here, and we should have been picking Tayberries then, too, but they are both now just starting to come on. Our Yellow May-blooming waterlilies waited until the end of June, but they may have been delayed by the deeper water level in our pond. The garden sits, suspended, and when the rare warm day comes everything grows like mad only to stop as it cools back down.

Fruit trees that try to bloom at the normal time have not been well pollinated the past few years not, as ordinarily sometimes happened, by late rains, but by freezing snow! At least it appears we will have some fruit this year.

The insect population has been effected - honeybees (who have a lot of environmental burdens these days) are relatively scarce, but so are Yellowjackets, oddly. A nice thing in some ways, but I know there is a corner of the ecological balance that they fill, too. The higher humidity, of course, leads to plenty of mosquitoes. But for mid-July, many other insects seem to be in smaller numbers - and also the birds that feed on them.

I'm curious - what have you noticed?

Honoring Those who Serve...

Like Veteran's Day (See earlier post: War and Peace ), Memorial Day is set aside to recognize and honor those who serve in the Armed Forces but it's origin is much older, beginning just after the Civil War. It specifically commemorates those have given their lives in service to the Nation.

Officially proclaimed by General John Logan, Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, Memorial Day was first observed on May 30, 1868, by placing flowers on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states.
After World War I the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war. Starting in 1971 it is celebrated across the country each year on the last Monday in May.

Many answer the call to serve their community and Country in various ways, but few of these jobs demand the sacrifice that can come with enlisting in the military or reserves. While no one wants to go to war and be killed and, while we all wish for a world at peace, for many reasons conflict continues and lives are lost. Those who put themselves in harm's way and pay that price deserve recognition and respect.

Today, and other days as well, take a moment to pause and remember these men and women.

Adult Delinquent

Despite my promise to myself to post at least once monthly I have not managed anything longer than FaceBook addendums the past 2 months as life spirals wildly around me!

Since last post we have had a sprained ankle, more snow, more rain, started the garden (barely), gotten chicks (layers & meat birds both),  had 3 of our Granddaughters move in until the school year ends - in addition to the normal work & homestead life.

Not only that, there have been earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis & nuclear meltdowns. Floods, tornadoes, protests, rebellion, assassinations, and the end of the world (not).

My intentions are good. Stay tuned.

Why Organic?

Our soaps are made with 100% Certified Organic base oils. How could this possibly make a bit of difference in a bar of soap? Good question, and the benefit for your skin over natural soaps made with conventional oils is probably negligible.
But you will have the satisfaction of knowing that no oils from genetically modified crops or pesticide residues can possibly be in them.

On the other hand, the difference for farm workers and the farms and plantations where the oil plants are grown, and inherently the Earth as a whole, is immense.

The habitat that makes human life possible on our humble planet is a community of organisms and non-living components (like rocks and water) that work together to create a fertile and healthy environment. While some of these are viewed negatively as they interfere with our goals (weeds, diseases, gophers!) they are still part of the overall picture, helping to create the delicate balance that makes it all possible.

Many things can throw this system askew, such as drought, or a hurricane, volcanic eruption. But generally, given time, the environment heals itself. Some events can effect the environment over a long period of time, such as excessive amounts of nuclear radiation. This is one reason why people are so alarmed over the possibility of Nuclear Reactor failure. Yet when we take some of the artificial chemicals we have created and use them to control our agricultural environment, they can cause damage to the soil that is irreversible for decades as well. Not to mention having ill effects on the farmers who use them and, potentially, the consumers who come in contact with it over time.

Sometimes I think it's like taking a broad spectrum antibiotic when you are sick. It kills all the bacteria, good and bad, that live in our bodies, usually throwing one system or another off kilter until we replace the good microorganisms, through diet or another pill. What makes the Earth's habitat friendly for humans and the life forms that sustain us is balance, not chemical warfare.

There are many personal reasons, as humans, that we should support organic practices. Many have written about them in length. See the Top 10 Reasons to Support Organic here, and enjoy this video from Stonyfield Farm:



Eat organic food, better for you and your family and the planet. And when you use products made from agricultural ingredients, try to make sure those, too, come from organic sources. Until we refuse to purchase anything else, toxins will continue to be used.

And know that Simmons Special Soaps are made with 100% Certified Organic base oils, with people, the planet, and a healthy and sustainable future in mind.

Waiting to Garden...

Spring is in the air, the Vernal Equinox is in only 2 weeks (March 20, 2011) but the weather is still very winter-y. I have been itching to get out in the garden.


A confirmed Plant-a-holic, I have houseplants to keep me occupied in the winter months, but there is nothing like getting out and digging in the dirt. We have had a large organic vegetable garden for the past 42 years and expect to have one until I die. But I have to admit, gardening our sloping mountain terrain was getting to be more work every year.

So we have been working on making our garden easier to work so we can be happy playing in the dirt as long into our future as is possible. This is a multi year project, of which 2011 is year 3.

Our garden is about 1/8 of an acre. In 2009 we built a retaining wall and leveled out the top 2/3 of our garden area. This had a downhill slope of 6' from top to bottom, not to mention the differences side to side. We built a 4' tall wall and dug down 3' at the top. This required moving a LOT of dirt!

The Skid Steer moving dirt!

Moving this much dirt is more than a shovel job, luckily we were able to get a Skid Steer to use. We carefully pushed all the top garden dirt with years of mulch & amendments to one side as we dug down into the thick clay that makes up most of the land here.

The area where the wall went needed to be level, with a big enough area to put in drainage behind the wall. Then we could begin to assemble the retaining wall block by block. The wall is of landscaping blocks that lock together, and requires no mortar.
Once the wall was built up we backfilled it with the dirt we had set aside and some topsoil we had trucked in from elsewhere. We left a wide sloping  path up one side to run wheelbarrows up to the top of the garden.

Garden steps and beds with mulch

There was still some steep slope beyond what we had planned on with the wall, so we put large rocks and made stairs for access to this part of the garden.

By now we were itching to get our plants in the soil, and the first part of our plan was actually accomplished! I cannot tell you how much easier it is to work level ground than the free form terraces with the endless raking they needed.

Finished wall with garden & dedicated flower row

In 2010 we did phase two of our plan. This required making three broad terraced areas out of the remaining bottom third of the garden and starting to install raised beds. We purchased raised bed kits from Naturalyards, as we wanted to take advantage of those who had a lot of experience. This was far too important a project for us to reinvent the wheel, and we learned a lot. We really wanted to make these beds gopher proof (see our earlier blog on Gophers - not for the faint of heart...), and try to keep out the noxious bindweed that plagues us here, as well.

Attaching hardware cloth to the bottom of the bed.

Our plan was to attach weedcloth, and then 1/2" galvanized hardware cloth, to the bottom of the beds before installing and filling them. This won't last forever, but it will last a long, long, time. We have a hardware cloth lined bed in our greenhouse that we installed in the 1990's and is still intact.

Assembled bed showing the cross braces

One of the important things we learned about raised beds is, if they are longer than 6 feet, you need to have cross bracing to keep them from bowing out when they are filled with dirt. These beds are assembled with aluminum rods (aluminum won't rust) that are driven down through pre-drilled boards. Where there is a joint between two boards of a long bed you insert a metal strap and run the rod through that as well, to hold it in place.

Another thing we discovered is how much better it is to have a top trim on the bed so you have a place to sit or place tools or harvest baskets.

We use drip irrigation (from DripWorks) in the beds and T-tape, another form of  drip irrigation, to the beds in the terrace for ease of irrigation and conservation of water.

These changes have been a complete success. We raised onions, greens, cabbages, beets, broccoli, and the most perfect gopher-free carrots we have ever grown, in these beds last year. Currently we have fall-planted garlic and cabbage, as well as this years onions and beets in the ground. The terrace behind the retaining wall has proved easy to work and had a fabulous harvest of corn, tomatoes, squash, beans and other larger crops. On top of that, it was easier than it has ever been to keep our garden going

If all goes as planned, we hope to build 2 to 4 more beds this year. In every way these changes have met or exceeded our expectations, and I see wonderful fresh vegetables and flowers in our future.