A perfumed world

Last spring, Jason & I were delighted to watch our yard come to life for the first time; we bought the place in midsummer the year before and had never experienced Spring here.  And what a lovely Spring it was--a carpet of violets in the back yard, unknown daffodils, tulips, and a gorgeous bleeding heart plant popping up in the perennial beds along our driveway, and...lilacs.  Four venerable old lilac bushes that are now more like trees and line the northern edge of our property, in need of some serious pruning and better access to sunlight, but flourishing nonetheless.

We lived a perfumed and violet-colored life for several weeks last spring, and I secretly wondered if we would ever witness quite such a show again--perhaps the temperatures and rainfall of 2010 were a happy accident of lilac-perfection?  Perhaps the violets just had a really great year last year?  Maybe this was a welcome-to-your-new-home celebration from our plant neighbors that would never come again...?

I needn't have worried:

Jason & I spent a blissful hour last night on our front stoop, listening to the misty rain fall and breathing in the wonderfully perfumed breezes that passed through the branches of a nearby lilac on their way to us, the sweet puffs of air like tiny gifts to us from the place we call home. 

The thought occurred to me that this was a family tradition in the making:  we will do this every spring; we will notice the first time that the whole world seems sweetly scented and winter finally vanquished.  we are wealthy in the things that matter most--each other, time to be still together and soak up the beauty around us, lives that give us enough space and peace and health to notice the change of seasons and the evolving tapestry of our land.

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In celebration of Spring, here is the facial moisturizer that I've been making and using lately--it is a wonderfully light, appealing gel that absorbs quickly and seems entirely suitable for oily and dry skin alike. 

It is also incredibly simple:  combine one part vegetable glycerin with four parts aloe vera gel. 

Make sure to get pure aloe, not something in the sunscreen aisle at Target with lots of chemicals and gimmicks added!  My local health food store has plenty of the pure stuff and a range of sizes and costs.  You can add a few drops of a favorite essential oil, if you'd like, and you can make as much or as little of this moisturizer as you deem necessary.  It needs no refrigeration and has remained fresh and viable for several months now in my bathroom cupboard.  While I would never name names, there is another person in this household that is also a fan of this moisturizer--when I was gone for school recently, I was told that I should leave a little at home the next time I go away!

The Asparagus Forest

It occurred to me the other day that I should venture into being more instructive about some of the projects we tackle on our little homestead.  Just because I know how to grow and harvest asparagus, for example, doesn't mean that everyone does, and one of my hopes for this blog is to make what we do at our place accessible to anyone who is interested. 

The first little sapling in our spring forest

As I look back, I remember being quite certain that I hated asparagus while I was growing up--that is, until we moved to a house that had two established asparagus beds.  Once I tasted a stalk that had just been picked and lightly sauteed, I was hooked.  There is no comparison to the stuff that has traveled thousands of miles to reach your local grocery in November.

So, I suppose that is the first suggestion that I have:  buy asparagus in the spring, and from a market that gets its asparagus locally, such as a farmer's market or a grocery store with a clear and specific label on its asparagus display showing from whence it came.  Asparagus is one of the first glorious fresh bits of green to land on your plate in the spring when you eat seasonally and live where the winters are cold.

Even better than a local market?  How about trying your own backyard?  Asparagus is not only an easy vegetable to grow, it is a perennial; once you prepare the bed and let your plants get established, you will be able to harvest asparagus every spring for decades.  In order to get such a long running harvest, however, you have to put in some time and energy at the beginning, so that your plants are as healthy as possible.

A crown, ready to plant

You can start plants from seed, or you can buy crowns that are one year old or more.  Crowns are a section of roots and the point at the top of the roots where the stalk will begin to grow above ground.  The older the crown, the more expensive--but the faster you will be able to harvest more of your crop.  In the picture above, the crown is on the left end, and when you are ready to plant, you would take the roots and spread them out in a circle with the crown on top (the roots are positioned around the crown like a big old-fashioned hoop skirt around Scarlett O'Hara's tiny little waist).  Cover them with soil and mulch them deeply.  Asparagus likes a neutral pH and lives in gardening zones 3-8, with different varieties more specifically suited to different zone ranges. 

The most commonly recommended method for planting asparagus crowns is to dig a trench 4-6 inches deep and around ten inches wide.  Spread the roots of each crown and place them in the trench at least 12 inches apart.  One row will fill in a bed that is 24 inches across; in a bed that is 36 inches in width, you can center two trenches and plant them.  Add some good rich compost (a couple inches worth) and fill in the rest of the trench with fertile garden soil.  Water well.

Suddenly, there are few more popping up

One of the most important parts of starting an asparagus bed is making a firm commitment to keep the bed well weeded for the first few years.  Asparagus doesn't compete well with weeds, so keeping them out of the way is essential for a bed that supplies a bunch of food for you year after year.  Once the plants are big, healthy, and happy in their place, you will have fewer weeds to worry about, and mulching deeply goes a long way toward saving you actual weeding time.

There are a few bugs that like to munch asparagus as much as we humans do:  the asparagus beetles, either "common" or "spotted".  They will overwinter in the dead asparagus fronds, so cleaning the beds at the end of the summer and composting the dead fronds can help to break the bug cycle.  Lady bugs and some wasps will prey on the beetles.  You can also hand pick the beetles or--tada!--let your chickens enthusiastically do the work for you, preferably also in the fall when the plants are dying above ground.  After the chickens have done their job, throw a few inches of the girls' dirty bedding on your asparagus bed to fertilize, mulch, and decompose over the winter.

Now:  the fun part.  Harvesting!  Well, hold on a minute.  Remember how I said that establishing such a long lasting bed takes time?  The way that you harvest asparagus is to snap the stalk off at ground level once the stalk is at least four inches tall--you are, in essence, tearing off the entire top of the plant over and over as you harvest each new stalk that appears from the same crown underground.  Now, the crown and roots need the stalk and eventual leaves of the asparagus plant to make and store enough energy to keep the plant alive from year to year...and if you never let the plant put aside those reserves, the asparagus will die out rather quickly.  Whatever survives will be weak, spindly, and extremely vulnerable to disease and insects.

Here comes the asparagus forest!

Instead, you have to be patient and allow your asparagus to store up a bunch of energy; this way, the plant can still be healthy and long-lived, even with you gobbling it up every spring.  The recommended schedule for harvesting goes as follows:  harvest nothing at all the first year.  If you are super-patient, you can skip harvesting the second spring as well, but at the most you should harvest the spears for two weeks before allowing the stalks to grow freely.  The third season, you can harvest for four weeks, the fourth season for six weeks--and after that you can harvest asparagus for a full eight weeks each spring before letting the plants grow to full size.

Here is the beautiful, fern-like foliage of asparagus left to grow.  Please disregard the blurry chickies darting around!

So, is it worth it?  I guess that depends on how much space you have for the garden crops you want to grow, not to mention just how much you love asparagus.  For me, it is easily worthwhile.  Other than planting once and weeding several times, asparagus doesn't require much else from me other than a few minutes daily during the harvest season to snap off the stalks before they get too big to be tender.  Like everything in the early spring, asparagus grows incredibly fast--a shoot seems to grow inches in a day.  This makes it fun for kids to help harvest--from morning to evening you may find a whole new batch is big enough to pick!  Any excess can be frozen to enjoy long after your harvest is through and your asparagus patch is filled with lovely, airy fronds stretching five feet up toward the sun.

 

Blog, what blog? It's spring outside!

Bare feet and violets...ah, Spring!

Well, hello there, faithful readers.  I have not been giving you the attention you deserve lately, and I'm sorry.  One of the many things I forget from one year to the next is how quickly it changes from mind-numbingly s-l-o-w-paced winter to "I'm panicking over my to-do list" spring!  Here's a quick update on what's going on at the homestead:

1.  SCHOOL SQUARED!  I leave this Thursday (ack, tomorrow) for St. Mary-of-the-Woods to present my final project for my master's program.  The project, as mentioned before, is a school garden and accompanying curriculum on urban sustainability.  I've been remembering how to use Power Point (ha!  thank you, ProStaff circa 1999) and preparing my presentation, as well as working through the obligatory organizational start-up period with the other folks on the school garden committee--you know, figuring out what supplies are needed, what fundraising we need to do, grants we should apply for, and also planning a garden kick-off party for Earth Day (4/22).

I really enjoy the connections I've found between the homesteading concepts that I've personally explored this year (and continue to explore) and the garden ecology concepts I want to include in lessons with the kids.  Here is what we will study:  Sun, Water, Soil, Plants,  and Birds & Bugs.  For each of these garden entities, I've been developing lessons and activities for the little ones that help to inspire good questions and ideas about how we live our human lives in relation to Nature.  What better way to talk about solar energy than by making a jug of sun tea from the lemon balm we are growing?  Or, even more magical, using a solar oven to make a snack of chips (kale chips, that is, with kale leaves from the garden, olive oil, salt & pepper?)  And what about putting on a play depicting what happens to the Good Bugs and the Bad Bugs when you spray a pesticide?  (If you are curious, read this about the Volterra Principle, one of those mathematical and ecological truths that Monsanto would prefer you ignore).

2.  Garden!  Girls!  Keeping ye old homestead a'runnin!  We've had to make some changes in the backyard, now that the wheel has turned:  the girls are grown and the garden is back to babyhood.  The chickens no longer get free access to the garden--at least until summer, when the plants are well established.  So, we have a temporary fence around the garden, and the girls are a bit miffed, primarily when I am working in the beds and they can't come "help."  Ramona, in particular, being the shameless beggar of the flock, has been sidling along the fencing, murmuring little coo's and peeps and giving me, as Jason would say, the stink-eye.  If she had visible eyelashes, she would bat them.  Good grief.

Safe, for now, from the hungry girls

The garden is already a fun, green place to be, thanks to the coldframe that I made last fall.  This is my first real attempt at extending the season, and it is very gratifying to have produce already flourishing!  We can now be gleaning from four collard plants, several clumps of spinach, some scallions, cilantro, and our favorite heirloom lettuce from last season, called "Forellenschuss."  I moved the coldframe down the row, and have planted some cold-friendly varieties in it, so that the frame can act as a safe, warm nursery for the next month while the seeds sprout and get established--broccoli, alpine strawberries, parsley, brussel sprouts, and two types of kale.

Forellenschuss, cabbage, spinach and scallions

The asparagus is also up and thriving...one more year and we will get to start harvesting from the plants, but for now we let them all grow and allow the roots to get nicely established so that the bed will be productive for decades.  It is hard, though, to resist....




In other fowl news, the chickens are slacking off in their duties!  Ever since we have switched to letting them roam the yard for most of the day, I have been getting fewer eggs.  I think there are several factors at work in the ladies' lives that are contributing to our dwindling egg supply, the first and biggest being that I acquired these little lives in the Fall, rather than the Spring, which is just not quite fair or in-step with the natural order of things.  I am hoping that their little hormonal systems even out a bit as light and warmth return.

Of course, the other potential factors here are that the girls are

A) now confused about where the nest box is, even though it has remained in the same spot

and B) they are probably hiding their eggs somewhere in the yard.  The other possibility (and my favorite, although it is a bit more crude) is that 

 C) they are simply being lazy.  I call them, fondly, Lazy Sluts.

Lazy ladies lounging in a sunny dust bath

 {Ahem.  While I am a huge proponent of choosing your words carefully, using inclusive language and making a practice of being as PC as possible in the larger world, I reserve the right to abandon my PC ways when I am nick-naming backyard poultry.}

SO.   Lazy Sluts or Fat Biddies.  These are my terms of endearment for the chickie-gals lately.  As we were all getting accustomed to having free-range of the backyard, I had been leaving the (human) garage door open as another potential escape route for the girls, in case of a hawk fly-by.  However, the girls decided this was their new awesome clubhouse and started oh-so-casually hanging out over in one corner, behind some bikes and the lawn mower.  You would walk in, and everyone would shut up and freeze.  I was reminded, forcibly, of teenaged girls sneaking cigarettes in the alley and gossiping about boy--except that these girls leave behind feathers and poop (and who knows, maybe hidden eggs), rather than ashes and butts. 

Not happening.  No more garage access.  So now, they just tear across the yard every time I go to that door, hoping--apparently--that I will forget to close it.

And did I mention that Roxie is molting?  Twelve months earlier than expected?  No pretty blue eggs from her until her little body can turn its attention from feather-making back to egg-producing.  And in the meantime she looks like a balding middle aged person going through a midlife crisis.  Not pretty.

(Hmmm.  Balding Lazy Slut.)

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Hooo-kay.  Hmm.  I think the stress of school has finally damaged my brain.  I was going to continue on and share our dreams and plans for constructing a greenhouse later this spring, but at this rate, I'll be swearing and raving by the time I'm done.   Perhaps it is best to wait until next time.  :)  So let me send you off with a pic of my latest yarn splurge:  cotton, cotton, cotton.  It is time for my green/red/brown kitchen to get accessorized....