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Gift Exchange

April 11, 2012 //
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Gift Exchange–From April 2009

A. V. Walters

The other day Elmer and I had an impromptu, unofficial gift exchange. In a conversation one evening about wine, I mentioned that I had a gizmo that pumped the air out of leftover wine to slow the oxidation process. (In Sonoma County, even farmers have regular conversations about wine.) He was intrigued. We both like good wines. This was a solution to a problem for him–he’d noticed the deterioration in a bottle of wine over the few days it took him to finish one off. We joked that it was an excuse to chug it down, but that takes its toll, too. So I told him about the pump.

The next day I was in town and happened by a kitchen store. I knew Elmer wouldn’t follow through on the “Vaccu-vin” tip, so I picked one up for him. When I pulled into the farm I saw him in the parking lot. I tossed it to him, told him it was a present. He wanted to pay for it, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t expensive, just something I knew he’d like. He thanked me.

Then he laughed and looked at his feet. He said, “There’s something for you, too, up in the garden.” And, that’s all he’d say.

I walked up to the garden, and there, next to the potato bins were four, five-gallon buckets of sheep manure. I laughed so loudly that they could hear me down in the parking lot. I thought it was a fair exchange. I spent a good part of the next weekend digging it in where needed. From me and my city world to Elmer, from him and his farm world to me. I know why he laughed and looked at his feet; we’re both laughing. It is how the world levels out though, evenly and gently in the end.

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Categories agriculture, farm life, humor

Gopher Control, Revisited

April 8, 2012 //
0

Gopher Control, Revisited

A. V. Walters

 

Today was a day to catch up in the yard. The lawn was entirely out of hand. I had to use the weed whacker to get it down to a level where the lawn mower could be used. (We’re talking push-mower, here.) Calling it a ‘lawn’ is laughable, anyways. Really, it’s just an assortment of weeds, kept shorn. I tell Elmer, it’s not mowing, it’s “weed control”–sounds more agricultural that way. But when you keep on top of it, it looks downright passable. I’d planted the back corner, and suddenly the rest of the yard screamed for attention. Thus the Weed-Whacking-Extravaganza. (Good seats are still available!)

Once trimmed down to a tidy “level,” it became apparent that the gophers have really gone to town. The lawn is riddled with gopher holes (and valleys). Really, what’s up with that cat? He stayed out of sight for the noisy, weed wacking part but came out to investigate when I’d raked up and gone back to gardening. Now, he was peering down a gopher hole and looking pretty smug.

“Hey you, cat, what’s up with all these darn gophers? I thought we had an understanding here–you’re in charge of gopher control.” He smiled and yawned. “Really, look at this, there’s more gophers than ever!”

“Yes,” he nodded and began washing his face.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do about it, what’s to do? These gophers are under control. I’m supervising.”

My jaw dropped. “Gopher control, butterball, means you’re supposed to hunt and kill these pesky gophers!”

The cat sat up and stared. “Excuse me? You never said that. You just said gopher control. Your instructions weren’t very specific, so I handled it my way.” He turned his attention back to the hole.

Damn cat. “I’m glad we’ve finally had a chance to clear up this little misunderstanding. Perhaps with this clarification, you can now do something about all these gophers.”

“Not so fast,” the cat looked up, “You can’t just go changing the rules, willy-nilly.”

“And why not? What’s the problem? Now that you know what’s expected, you could just get rid of the gophers, right?”

“It’s not as simple as that.” He stood up and turned his back to me. “It’s a question of trust. I’ve formed relationships.”

 

 

 

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Categories agriculture, chores, farm life, humor

Farmer/Gardener?

March 25, 2012 //
0

A.V. Walters

Farmer/Gardener?

I’m a gardener. Still, it’s an interesting question and not one so easily answered. I don’t think that it’s just a question of quantity. Measured by quantity alone, I border on farmer. Last season, the first where I had any meaningful and steady help, we produced (and gave away) at a rate that compared favorably to any farmer’s-market vender. One stellar week I distributed grocery bags of vegetables every day, at a rate that would have easily filled any market booth to overflowing. Indeed, an appraisal of the garden by visitors frequently elicited comments about how we could “do the market.” I like it the way it is. I know that some of our garden’s recipients would not have eaten so well without the garden’s bounty. With the economy flailing last year a good many hard working folks found themselves out of work. Here, we had plenty to share. Sharing food, quality food that I’ve grown, is one of the most satisfying and meaningful parts of rural living.

And then there’s the exchange of produce between folks who themselves have gardens or orchards. I call it the Petaluma Salute. I once met a woman from a craigslist ad, in a parking lot in town, where we stood talking politics and gardening as we exchanged zucchinis for pears, tomatoes for eggplants from the trunks of our respective cars. We haven’t seen each other since, but the experience of complete understanding remains a solid memory, as she bemoaned a recent infestation of white flies and I offered her my full repertoire of organic solutions. This summer we were walking down to the mailbox when our closest neighbor came up on a mule with boxes full of zucchini and peppers. He stopped and said he was on his way over to give Elmer some vegetables. We looked at each other and laughed. “It’s coals to Newcastle,” I said. “We’re full to our ears with these and more.” He nodded, and turned the mule around, calling out behind him, “I’ll just have to go find other homes for these.” I live in a world where neighbors leave bags of produce on your back porch, and I respond in kind.

Still, I am just a gardener. Farming is honest work, but it is work for pay, or at least the hope and expectation that the season will pay at the end. It is food as commodity. So far, I’m in it for the very real and sensory gratification I get from working with the soil and season. I note some other subtle differences between farmers and gardeners—which I find akin to the differences between the idea of livestock and pets. We gardeners sweat over the lives of our individual plants. It’s personal. We worry and try different solutions to plant troubles. We water and weed and coax. Dinner conversation can include concerns about what’s up with that last row of peppers. Bugs? Gophers? Or perhaps the long reach of the shadow of the tree-line. (Indeed, this season one whole garden will be repurposed because trees have grown and early afternoon shade dictates that that area will become the home of leafy greens.) Our gardens speak to our hearts.

One gardener/farmer test is how well one handles culling the excess plants that seed-starts yield. Farmers plant the best and dump the rest. It’s a healthy approach but one that eludes many gardeners. Every year I vow to keep the tomato crop down to no more than 24 plants. But there are always extra seedlings—what is one to do? And then there’s the problem of orphan seedlings. Elmer’s cousin starts a plethora of tomatoes every year. Come planting time she gives him the culls—leggy, pale babies. Whether or not I’ve kept to my own limits, these orphan tomatoes always manage to find homes in one of my garden plots. So I am doubly challenged; I have my own difficulties dispatching the less than hardy and I adopt the culls of other gardeners (who themselves cannot bear to waste even the most bedraggled of seedlings.) I have garden space. I take them. I give them their own buckets and water and even manure tea, until they are robust and productive. In my five seasons here I’ve never ended up with less than 36 tomato plants. Good thing for canning, eh? Now, it’s March and we’re still eating tomato sauce and whole, canned romas from the garden.

Farmers, out of necessity, have to deal in numbers. Plants are crops. It’s not the eggplants next to the potatoes–it’s the cornfield, it’s acres. They suffer the same indignities of weather and drought, of predation, but without the personal relationship. They do so on a huge scale, and with the highest of stakes. Still, the financial rewards are often slim and success is never guaranteed, regardless of how much you put into it. Nothing is guaranteed, until the crop is in, or the herd sold—and even then there are the unpredictable vagaries of price. A farmer requires some measure of armor. He cannot afford a personal relationship with his plants or animals. Sometimes, and especially with livestock, this comes off as callous. I have a little trouble with it at times–I bristle at the chickens in their crowded cages. Yet that scale and approach is what’s needed to feeds us all.

And so, I remain a gardener. I enjoy the bounty, but, beyond my pride, I don’t have skin in the game in the end result. I joke at the distinction, but my hat is off in respect to the farmer.

Elmer, my favorite farmer, has chickens and sheep. When it comes to plants, he’s no more farmer than me. When it comes to garden-starts, he has the opposite problem. He goes to the nursery and picks the largest starts he can find. You know the ones, nursery fed on fertilizers, the junkies of agriculture; these baby vegies are literally climbing out of their four-inch pots. They’re bushy, precocious, already sporting blossoms, or even small fruit. They boast of success and productivity. It’s too good a deal to be true! And so it is. These spoiled, root-bound prima-donnas don’t transplant so well. They, too, get their own buckets but the damage has been done; their growth is invariably stunted by their over-ambitious early beginnings. We coddle them, but as yet I don’t know the cure for root bound. It shows that once we’re out of our fields of specialty, we are all gardeners. It’s always personal. For the root-bound, I carefully separate and spread the roots out at replanting time. For the scrawny ones, there’s always the hope of recovery.  I think of this as a lesson, in and out of the garden. I was myself (and remain) a late bloomer.

 

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Categories agriculture, chores, farm life

Musings on Spring

March 18, 2012 //
0

A. V. Walters

Musings on Spring

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day and, with this week’s heavy rains, our corduroy hills have taken on that Irish, emerald green.  I call them corduroy because the ranchers cut the hay and leave it in rows on the hillside. The hills across from us are so steep that a tractor can only go strait up and down–any turn on the steep part of the slope and they’ll tumble. On that steep terrain they cut, but don’t bother to bail or collect the hay. So the cut hay lays on the hillside in stripes–stripes that echo, season after season, on the landscape. The week’s rains have washed the cows and today they stand out starkly–black and white, against the green. With the intense green and the equinox next week, we can’t help but think of spring.

In my Michigan hometown, up on Lake Superior, they’re thinking of spring, too. My mother, even in her mid-seventies, is a rabid gardener. As soon as the snow retreats she hustles to rake up the garden in preparation for spring planting. It’s a big job, one she tackles in stages that are measured by the progress of the snow’s melt. She races against time, knowing that when late May fades into June, it’ll be blackfly season–and she’ll want to be indoors for that. It’s been a mild winter in the North, too mild. This week they’re having a false spring. It was eighty degrees in the Harbor today–a record breaker by all accounts. Most of the snow is gone, or nearly so. I can picture my brother-in-law standing in the parking lot of their general store, broom in hand (his excuse for being outside) face tipped to the sun. In fact I’ll bet all the inhabitants of the Harbor were out today, drinking in the summer-like weather.

It’s not necessarily a good thing and they all know it. In separate calls to my family today, three of them mentioned the obvious danger of too early a spring. The trees can be fooled, lulled into an early bloom. Flowers have the same risk. When that happens, winter reaches her icy fingers back to what March should be and the bloom will fail, taking next summer’s fruit with it. And nothing is quite as winter-numbing as the sight of a daffodil in it’s crystal sheath, after a freezing rain. Still, standing outside in shirtsleeve weather has its own hooks, after months of cold and grey.

Today in Two Rock the rains gave way to blustery winds. The clouds have been chased away and the sun shines on new hills. The grass is growing faster than the sheep and cows can eat. Walking out to the road, to get the mail, I spooked a huge flock of black birds–invisible in the tall grass until the moment they launched, en masse, into the sky. I was startled and laughed out loud at the surprise of it.

During the worst of the rains I was scheduled to collect signatures for California’s referendum to require foods with genetically modified ingredients to be labeled as such. We were positioned at the door to Whole Foods. (Yes, I know–shooting fish in a barrel.) Still, it was interesting. The signatures flowed easily between cloudbursts but when the rains really came down, the shoppers hunched their backs, scrunched up their faces, avoided eye contact and ran for their cars. I can’t blame them, it was cold and wet. Some people stopped to say they’d already signed, and to thank us for being there. One well-dressed man shook my hand and told me he hoped it wasn’t too late already. I couldn’t help but agree.

It’s an early spring here, too. To a lesser extent we have a similar problem as my family back home. We’re not clear of the danger of frost, not until May. But the equinox is a milestone. I can start hardy seedlings indoors next week. Then, in the weeks after that I can start some of the more delicate vegetables. I struggle with the temptation to rush the process. I’m no different than the folks back home, who sweep parking lots in the sun, where only a week or so ago there was snow. We all yearn for spring, for planting and the promise of summer’s warmth. And that’s what’s up in Two Rock.

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Categories agriculture, chores, farm life, Uncategorized

Spring?

February 28, 2012 //
0

A.V. Walters

Spring?

I may have spoken out of turn when I announced it was Spring in Two Rock. It’s something, but I’m not sure just what. Northern California seasons can be a little confusing, especially if, like me, you’re from areas that have real winter. I’ve been here over thirty years and I still get caught short by faux seasons.

So we’ve had gorgeous days in the 60s and 70s. We walk up to feed the emus and, from the vantage up the hill, the valley is beautiful. The daffodils are in bloom, even in Two Rock. (I say even because Two Rock is always a couple weeks behind Petaluma–and more when it comes to frost free nights.) The grass is lush, mostly from melting frost or fog, because we’ve had so little rain this season. I just barely got the peach tree pruned before the buds started to swell. A few of the blossoms have popped open like popcorn. Plum trees are in full bloom throughout the valley. Over the weekend we drove to Santa Rosa and saw them pruning the grape vines in the vineyards. The most dramatic and confusing thing is the mustard. Farmers put it in as a cover crop, sometimes mixed with rye grass. The mustard is in full bloom now. Whole fields of yellow, sloping with the contours of our rolling hills, take your breath away as you crest the hill and come down into the valley. How could it not be Spring with that display of yellow?

Three nights of sub-thirties temperatures is how. We still need to keep the fire burning to keep the house from slipping into the 50s. I’ve always thought that this mid-winter hesitation was a feature in the California winter. It’s too early to plant but you can still clean up the garden, prune (though you best hurry up on that at this point), plan, divide bulbs and generally get things ready. If you’re really old fashioned, you can clean and sharpen all the garden tools. (I always wished I could be that dedicated. Instead I sharpen on the fly, as needed, and almost never clean a shovel or spade.) My first Spring here I was chomping at the bit to plant. Elmer said, “No. We see frost until the first week of May.” Every year he’s been proved right. So I wait, leaf aimlessly through the seed catalogues and peer anxiously at the dwindling wood pile.

I worry about the weather. Though the surface is damp from the dew and frost-melt, too little rain has left the soil dry any deeper than that. I worry about the well and about whether the dry soils will be a challenge for the garden through the summer. Will this cold weather kill off the blossoms and spoil the fruit tree harvest? Can the peaches and plums pollinate so early–when the cool days and nights impede the bees? But I’m a worrier. Probably it’ll all be fine. By April I’ll be planting seed starts for transplanting when the soils warm up. In May we’ll be digging in buckets, and it will fall into place, like it does every year. In the meantime, I’d better throw another log on the fire.

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Categories agriculture, chores, farm life, Uncategorized

Food for Thought

February 18, 2012 //
1

A. V. Walters

Food for Thought

I don’t generally include my political beliefs in my blog. Please bear with me, this rant is related to the topics of the blog, and after I get this off my chest I’ll retreat to my usual, bucolic subjects.

My blog includes issues of rural living, gardening and the slower, and possibly richer, human dynamics that go with a rural lifestyle. I’ve confessed to years of organic gardening, even when I lived in the city. What I haven’t revealed is the depth and length of my interests in food issues.

Back in the late seventies I did my undergraduate thesis on World Food Scarcity and Sustainable Agriculture. Even back then it was apparent that our efforts to export “modern” agriculture were wreaking havoc in the third world. A closer examination of those same practices here, revealed the early cracks in the crumbling view of American agricultural invincibility.Doesn’t anyone remember the Dust Bowl? It was time to look in the mirror. Even then, soil erosion, pesticide contaminated underground water supplies and the dangers of widespread monoculture were beginning to illustrate cracks in our agribusiness model. Some changes and improvements did occur–university extension programs hailed crop rotation (like it was a new concept) and alternative tillage approaches. But the solutions offered all came in the form of agribusiness management models and, at the encouragement of government programs, our farms began to look less like farms and more like chemically dependent corporate entities. We continued to lose old-style and family farms to corporate agribusiness. I became a believer in the alternatives.

After college, I kept my convictions about having a smaller footprint on the planet. I’m not perfect, but I knew (and know) that one person can make a difference. I supported California’s early efforts to develop organic standards. I grew much of my own seasonal food in my postage-stamp sized, urban, back yard. When possible (and early on, it wasn’t easy) I sought out and supported local organic farmers. I rejected fast food. I believe deeply in the value of cooking for oneself and those you love. I think sharing a quality, home-cooked meal with friends and family is the essence of civilization and one of the most enjoyable forms of social intimacy. I tried to convey the essence of those pleasures in The Emma Caites Way, as the characters bonded, sharing common goals and great meals. I am a slow food advocate.

For a brief while, in the late seventies and early eighties, I supported the idea that the then-new concepts of agricultural recombinant DNA (now called GE or GMO crops) could revolutionize agriculture in a good way. I thought there was promise in the concept, much as the Ford Foundation’s advanced hybrids had brought us short stalked rice–a boon to food production on marginal lands and in resource poor countries. (Yeah, like some earlier folks had hailed the then-new technology of television as a boon to education!) As the science developed, I was horrified when, instead, the technology brought us Frankenfoods and pesticide-resistant (or worse, pesticide-containing) crops–and all without adequate testing–not only of the impact of those crops on the consuming public, but also on the environment. How can a crop be a good thing if planting it requires ever increasing amounts of chemicals to be flooded onto the soil? Even worse, the very licenses under which these GMO seeds are sold prohibit further scientific review. We, the consuming public, were advised that the intellectual property rights of the Corporate Agribusiness Elite were more important than public safety. We are the guinea pigs. And we are expected to be satisfied with Monsanto’s and Dow’s assurances that these products are safe.

In a warning shot across the bow, a decade ago we saw the Gen-Star debacle, in which strands of wheat DNA were inserted into corn. No need for testing, we were assured, because the products were intended for animal consumption only. Yeah, right. Sure enough, this restriction was ignored and human food products were manufactured from this FrankenCorn. People with wheat sensitivities reacted. Products were pulled from the shelves and the government of Mexico protested that the crop was grown, without disclosure or permission, in Mexico, where the original seed stock that made modern corn possible lives. I cannot begin to explain how important that fact is–because of the dangers of gene stock contamination.

I am one of those chemically sensitive people. I can’t tolerate scented products. I have food intolerances and serious food allergies. I can’t take most antibiotics. My life became much easier in the mid-nineties when food labeling meant that I could go to the grocery store, like a regular person, and read the labels to see whether I could eat the processed foods. Now everyone reads labels to check for vitamin content, or sodium, or sugar. Labeling empowers us to take control of our diets without having to grow all our foods in the backyard. (Not that it stopped me from doing so.) When food labeling was first proposed, the food industry screamed that it would be ruinously expensive, that it would result in lost trade secrets or secret recipes, that businesses would fail and that consumers weren’t sophisticated enough to use the information anyway! Pshaw! The world didn’t end. Millions of Americans assiduously read food labels today. We accept without question that we have the right to know what we’re eating.

Which brings me to my soapbox today. (What, you thought I was already on one?) We have the right to know. I want to know what I’m eating and I have that right. In my case, cross-contamination of foods could result in illness or life-threatening allergic reactions. The Gen-Star incident showed us that GMO crossed foods could result in triggering food allergies in unsuspecting sensitive people. You don’t have to be for, or against, GMO agriculture to recognize that Americans have the right to literally put their money where their mouths are. In my case, it is a critical question. But every consumer has the right to align their dollars with their convictions. To do so, you have to know. According to the average grocery cart, most Americans are already eating GMO foods, though polls show that under thirty percent of us think so. Today, over 50 countries (covering 40% of the world’s population) require GMO labeling. It’s shocking that we’re so far behind the curve.  A California initiative currently collecting signatures would require labeling of food products that contain GMO materials. It’s that simple–you disclose your ingredients and let the consumer decide. It’s a pretty American kind of solution to a thorny problem. I urge all Californians to sign the petition for The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act of 2012 and to support it in the election in November. It’s a no-brainer.

And now, if someone could help me down off my soapbox…(that’s an unscented soap soapbox.)

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Categories "The Emma Caites Way", agricluture, farm life

Crows

February 11, 2012 //
0

A.V. Walters

Crows

(from June 2008)

Elmer is killing crows. I heard the first blast early this morning and wondered if that might be the case. It was confirmed when, minutes later, the phone rang and Elmer said, “Humans 1, crows 0.” I laughed and he hung up. A while later, another report but no call. Not too surprising, given Elmer’s reputation as a marksman.

This is my doing. Yesterday, Elmer, Dorothy and I were discussing the garden and I complained about the crows eating my sprouting beans. Had they just made off with them, I wouldn’t have been so offended. What they’re doing though, is pulling them up, eating the bean parts and then tossing the ravaged seedling back on the soil. We get to count the victims. Elmer laughed and said he’d noticed that the crows had relocated from the crow tree on the dairy, over to his birches. They’re a noisy lot, so when their pattern changes, we notice. We discussed the possibility of a scarecrow, which didn’t impress Elmer. I suggested we make one out of Don’s clothes and give it a coffee cup before he gets back from Oregon, so as to offend both the crows and Don. Elmer liked that. Elmer said with crows you had to teach them a lesson, to which I only laughed.

Later there was another blast, and another call. Our score (Humans) is improving. I asked Elmer whether I was supposed to dress in black for the burial. He laughed and said no, we needed to leave the crow corpse out in the garden, to teach the lesson. I asked if he was making stew tonight and he really laughed. Elmer loves to walk into a straight line, “No, I try not to eat crow.”

It’s been funny, we’ll see if there’s any learning going on here. In any event, I’ll be more careful now about complaining about the neighbors.

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Categories farm life, humor

Weed-Wacky

February 1, 2012 //
0

Rick Edwards

Weed-Wacky

As a kid, my primary job on weekends was to get on my bike and put as much distance between myself and home as possible. I’d be out the door, after a hearty breakfast of Froot Loops, and wouldn’t return until sunset. (All without parental notification, or an approved safety helmet.)

It wasn’t just about the open road, the call of vacant lots or feeling the wind blowing through my crew-cut. There was a penalty on weekends for not getting out early and under the radar—unpaid over-time. Beyond the daily chores and the generous compensation package, “Froot Loops don’t grow on trees, ya know.” (Amazingly, when I was growing up, nothing grew on trees, according to my mother), one of the more dreaded weekend employment opportunities to broaden one’s skill-set, was pulling weeds.

Some call it a chain-gang or a forced-labor camp but on the inside, we called it, “The Backyard.” Though the word is thrown around a lot these days (mostly for comic effect and as the ultimate exclamation point), my dad really was a weed-Nazi. To his credit, he never used weed-killers (other than his children), which may be why my kids were born with the desired number of fingers and toes. A friend of mine I call Agent Orange, thinks weed control comes from a container, the contents of which are “only to be used in a manner consistent with its labeling.”  (Preferably wearing a Haz-Mat suit and a respirator.)

When it came to weeding, there was only one rule in The Yard (besides, “Stop whining!”) and it was, (if you like you can use a German accent) “You must remove all of the root!”  Even as a child I, begrudgingly, understood the importance of that rule. I understood that a weed could grow back, even if only a tiny piece of its root was left behind. I really got that! And what kid doesn’t want to make the old-man proud. But looking back, I can’t help but wonder if it was all just a cruel joke or one of the ways parents like to remind us of who is really in charge. Let’s look at the facts: Weed season means it’s hot, the ground is hard, I’m just a little kid and I don’t even remember getting any kind of gardening tools or gloves. I mean, I’m living off Froot Loops and riding around who-knows-where without a helmet―what the hell do I care whether the weeds grow back, or not? I’m lucky to be alive! Needless to say, I “dutifully” removed the tops of the weeds, even when I tried to get all the root. But, I figured if I kept my nose clean, and didn’t fight with the other detainees, I’d get time-off for good behavior.

I’m living on a chicken farm now, (of course there’s a story of how this came about, but that’s not why I asked you all here) and last spring my partner and I put in what’s called the community garden. It’s actually three gardens, covering over 4,000 square feet and as you can imagine, that’s a lot of weeds. Given my history, you’d be right to guess that I had a visceral response when the late rains brought forth a bumper-crop of weeds. But I didn’t run, screaming, in the opposite direction. I’d swear that, off in the distance, I heard a bugle playing a call to arms. I didn’t sow those weeds but, by God, I’m certainly reaping them now, roots and all! Given that watering is usually done by others on the farm and there’s little else that needs tending to, except weeding, it has become my obsession.

I guess when it comes to weeds, after all that’s said and done; I am my father’s son. Most of the weeds here, live (briefly) in fear of me, and those that choose to remain are learning to stay on the outside of the garden, looking in. (Under the radar, you might say.) I think my dad would be proud if he saw the gardens and even more so because he was the kind of parent who hoped that his children learned more than he did. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned (that he didn’t), it’s that you never, ever ask your kids to pull weeds. (Oh, and don’t let them eat Froot Loops!)

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Categories chores

The Evolution of Buckets

February 1, 2012 //
0

A. V. Walters

The Evolution of Buckets

Give. You learn to recognize it very quickly, once its import becomes clear. While sometimes it’s obvious, with loose piles of dirt in evidence of the travesty, you soon learn to tell even when it’s the most imperceptible shift, a softness underfoot, not quite spongy, but the ground seems to pull away as you place your weight. You learn to see the signs, a slight rise, or cracking on the surface of the soil. You test it with your foot and there it is, the slightest give, and you know you’ve got gophers. Maybe they’re just passing by. But maybe your favorite pepper plant has some wilt at its extremities. Tomorrow the plant will be gone. I mean, completely gone! Pulled down a gopher hole with no trace except, perhaps, a slightly sifted loamy texture to the soil. Kiss those artichoke plants goodbye; they haven’t got a chance.

Buckets started as a way to save water. Initially we lopped off the bottoms of the buckets and used them as half buried tubes to direct the watering to the roots of our pampered vegetables. This really works—plus it offers some protection from wind (here we can have some pretty fierce winds) and as a ‘curb’ from dragging hoses. But our magic system offers no protection from the underground menace. (Right about now you should be hearing the theme song to Jaws.)

A few weeks into my first year gardening here, I got the shocking introduction to the reality of our biggest downside. We have gophers, big time. I’ve never lived anywhere where there were gophers. I’ve had deer problems, the scourge of many insect pests, even the occasional bunny, but never gophers. One day, one of my baby artichoke plants seemed a little droopy. It was a warm day, so I gave it a little extra water, figuring it would recover by the next day. There was no next day. It was gone! The next week saw the end of artichokes, each day another one limp and then dragged down to the zombie underground. I began to rethink buckets.

Buckets are perfect for the kinds of vegetables that, a) gophers don’t like; and b) grow large enough to not be well suited to garden beds. So tomatoes are a bucket natural. So are the various squashes, winter and summer. I’ve only ever lost one tomato plant to a gopher. When you figure that we might have thirty to forty tomato plants in the community garden (we weren’t kidding about the community part) that’s an acceptable level of loss. Squashes are similarly gopher hardy. Granted they gave the delicatas a run for the money but the hardy ones prevailed. The peppers do well in buckets, except for the damn gophers. So, I started changing the bucket configuration.

Initially we used clean five gallon paint buckets. These are nicely sized, but they get brittle in the sunshine after the first season. By year two, we’d graduated to black nursery buckets, in various sizes. These are easier to cut and they remain flexible for years. Our first effort was to put heavy duty screens in the bottoms. The screens worked well, but had sharp edges. Planting and pulling resulted in gardener injuries. We looked for a gardener friendly option.

Instead of just chopping off the bottom, we started to experiment with cutting holes in the bottom—sized to keep out gophers. A couple seasons later we’re drilling six to eight holes in the bottom and a row or two up the sides. With fewer holes, we were having trouble with wet feet—essentially root rot. These perforated buckets are more difficult than the bottomless ones to pull at the end of the season—they have to be “dug” out. But so far they appear to be gopher-proof.

Where buckets are less helpful are for lettuces or things that really grow nicely in rows (like radishes, beets or onions.) Unfortunately, and surprisingly, these are all prime targets for gopher predation. Buckets do work, but they aren’t sized well for leafies or root vegetables. This year we’re planning a section of raised beds—with gopher screens across the bottoms. We plan to build them out of used metal roofing. We’ll have plenty of row vegies for the full season.

We don’t really approve of gopher poisons—they just end up in the cats (which tells you that our cats, especially Bob, are doing their jobs.) We’ve heard stories about the Rodenator. It’s a gopher zapping contraction that fills their burrows with propane gas and then detonates! I’ve even gone on line to watch the videos. Quite impressive. It’s tempting, expensive but tempting. The Landlord is not so thrilled with the idea though. A bad experience with a similar solution left him wary. He’s afraid we’ll blow the whole place up. I understand why—his experience with trying to address the gopher problem was perhaps more successful than he’d planned. He started out with a home-made version of the Rodenator, filling the gopher holes with propane. But he and a buddy decided (for some reason) to set it off with a stick of dynamite! We can’t be sure if the problem was the dynamite or too much gas (probably both), certainly it had something to do with beer, but he blew-up his mother’s back yard and cracked the foundation of her house. For us, at the moment, it’s buckets and raised beds.

So, now when Bob and I walk in the garden and feel that give—I know my plants are safe in their buckets, and smile. And Bob will have to make some minor adjustments to his gopher catching techniques.

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Buckets

January 20, 2012 //
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Buckets

A.V. Walters

Elmer isn’t just a chicken farmer. Being a farmer requires many skills and those skills translate into other areas. Obviously, since he’s my landlord, he has property management skills. Since he has the farm, and the farm has roads on it, he has road building and maintaining equipment. He has to keep the well in shape, so he has experience with pumps and piping and such. One of the secrets of farming is that you have to know some of everything to get by. It may also be one of the reasons so many farmers are employed, at least part-time, off the farm. They make good employees, because they know so much. Down side is, well, they have a lot of common sense and know how to make do. So don’t be surprised if stuff works fine, but looks a little funny.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that Elmer has some rentals, on and off the farm. He and his farm crew maintain them, especially in the off-season. I haven’t yet figured out when the off-season is for chickens, but from time to time this place is deserted because everyone’s out stringing fence somewhere on the property or for another farmer, or paving a church parking lot or painting a rental somewhere. All that painting uses plenty of paint. Plenty of paint uses up lots of buckets. Empty buckets never go to waste, they just hang around inside or outside of the barn we call Number Four, waiting for their second calling. When Elmer told me to look around for stuff to address the garden/drought issue, I saw piles of buckets. Big piles of buckets, the five gallon kind.

Having lived in the city for decades, I am fully aware of the ups and downs of container gardening. It’s a lot of work, filing the chosen containers with earth and compost, arranging enough drainage, planting, tending, harvesting and then emptying the containers each season. One of the risks is that the container will get too hot and cook the poor plants from the roots up. Planting in the ground provides a home that maintains a moderate temperature. But planting in a traditional open garden environment wastes an enormous amount of water. With row crops, you water the plants and the area all around them. I proposed putting our vegetable garden in buckets, which were themselves in the ground. Elmer and the farm hands smiled that okay, Miss city slicker, knock yourself out kind of smile.

I arrived on the farm as a woman without tools. Not that I’d never had tools, or didn’t know how to use them, but that in my retreat from urban living suddenly a lifetime’s accumulation of shared tools suddenly became a gender specific kind of marital asset. Really, it just wasn’t worth fighting about. Nonetheless, it landed me here more helpless than made me comfortable. One day I asked Elmer if I could borrow a saw. Naturally, he wanted to know what for? When I told him I wanted to cut the bottoms off a bunch of those buckets for the garden, he leaned back and considered it. After what seemed like a very long time he leaned forward and asked, softly, “How many buckets?” Then I knew, whether curious or just in it for sport, Elmer was game for bucket gardening. That was half the battle. Not that there weren’t other queries, why was I cutting off the bottoms? What was the point of the bucket? Was everything going to be in buckets? But I had answers.

The reason I wanted the bottoms cut off was to let the water drain through so the roots wouldn’t rot. The bucket tops stuck up above the garden surface and served as a reservoir for watering. That directed the water straight down, to where the plants roots were. But not everything could go in buckets; corn, for example, has very long roots and needs to be planted bunched up with other corn in order to get proper pollination. But that first year, we put the thirsty guys, tomatoes, eggplants and squash, into the buckets. Elmer told the farm hands to cut me as many buckets as I needed.

The crew watched from the sidelines, behind those same smiles, fully expecting failure. The garden flourished; water usage was minimal. Buckets had other advantages, too: they served as hose curbs; because the watering was directed into the buckets, they kept the unplanted areas dry and thus the weeds down; they kept the West County winds at bay when the seedlings were little and they kept the garden tidy. Elmer was won over. He even gave tours to friends of what he called the best garden the farm had ever had and extolled the advantages of bucket gardening. The farm hands shook their heads, with a bit less of a smile. The only hurdle left–gophers.

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Bucket Farm

January 17, 2012 //
1

Bucket Farm

A. V. Walters

Let me just say at the outset that this is not a dirt farm. It’s about livestock. And gone are the days when the average farm had a big garden that provided the fresh food and canned goods for the family. Farmers get their groceries from Costco now, like the rest of us. More often these days, family farms run on such a thin margin that one or both of the resident farmers have to work off-farm jobs to support the lifestyle. At the end of the day, there just isn’t enough in them leftover to keep a garden, too. And so it goes, the almost audible last sighs of rural living.

Today’s farms, by necessity, are specialty operations. This one is a chicken farm. We produce eggs. We have some sheep, too. Elmer, the good-enough farmer who owns this place would prefer that I call it a ranch. But somehow in my mind a ranch is a big spread with cattle, and, well, maybe cowboys. I just can’t see it as a ranch, and every time he says it, I picture our farmhands out lassoing chickens.

I’m no farmer. I’m merely an urban transplant—a tenant who occupies the old original farmhouse from the turn of the last century. From my vantage here at the top of the hill, I witness most of the goings on around this place.

We’re out in west county, which were we one county over, would bring connotations of Birkenstocks, solar panels, gourmet cheese and oysters. Here though, it’s a proud lot of hard-scrabble ranchers and dairymen, land-rich and sometimes cash-poor. The area is peopled with second and third generation cattle, sheep and chicken farmers. At least so far, we’ve been spared the headlong rush that’s infected most of our county–to cover every slope with upscale vineyards. Our microclimate here is, thankfully, too cool for that.

Elmer, used to have a garden. But his wife passed away and with her went the warmth of the homemaking arts and the tradition of canning. When I arrived he was still planting every year, but all too frequently the vegetables hung neglected on the vines.

One of the attractions of the farm when I first applied as a tenant here was the promise of a community garden. Elmer had let the garden go, its decline symbolic of his losses.  He almost decided to let it go entirely, but I would have nothing of that; I didn’t relocate to this country setting to buy my tomatoes by the case at Grocery Outlet.  So I took charge of the farm’s community garden.

I’m a vegetable gardener from way back. Even when I lived in Oakland my postage stamp-sized backyard was a lush cornucopia of the season. There, limited space pushed me into French Intensive and Square Foot gardening. I had a library of back issues of Organic Gardening and every February I’d thumb through them to plan the year’s approach. Several years ago I suffered some reversals in my life so I repaired to the country to lick my wounds and reconnect with the me of me. Gardening was one link to who I’d always been and I needed the challenge of the community garden. And it was a challenge. Accustomed to tiny quarters, I was daunted by the expanse of it. Though, thankfully that first year it was just the one garden. Now there are actually three gardens on the farm, combined they are just over a tenth of an acre. My first spring I was given what we now call the main garden, an equilateral triangle of dirt of about 800 square feet. Oh, and there was a catch, water.

That winter’s scant rains had Elmer nervous. When he turned the garden over to me he was already worried that our wells would run dry before the rains started up again in October. We have the usual Northern California seasons—no rain from May until Halloween. Elmer said that the three water priorities on the farm, in order, were—chickens, tenants and only then, watering. So, in my assignment, the largest garden I’d ever dug and the prospect of drought, I had to be creative.

There was one more mother-of-invention factor. I was broke. Sure, I could afford seeds, and a few starts, but otherwise I couldn’t count on drip irrigation or any other fancy water-saving gimmicks. I had to figure a way to minimize my watering footprint. Typical of most farmers, Elmer rarely throws anything away and nothing goes to waste. The older barns are full of, well, stuff. We joke about it now, but that first year Elmer just waved in the direction of a barn we call Number Four, and said I’d find stuff in there that might help. And that’s how we came to buckets.

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