Project Homestead

Life lessons, taught by tomatoes.

The tomatoes have been generous this year. We harvested a slew of cherries, including sungolds, sweet millions, and a bounty from one sturdy volunteer in the compost pile. It reminded me that it was one of our favorites last year—a teeny, lemon-colored bunching yellow. We also got a basketful of bigger Brandywines and green zebras. (Apparently I was too busy eating them to take any pictures.)
 
We picked every tomato that showed any promise at all before hurricane Irene blew through. That was a good thing: Most gangly branches were stressed—and several snapped from the wind and falling pine boughs during the storm. Most of the bigger fruiting plants went south after that. There were a lot of them.

Still, I'd picked A LOT of tomatoes. The shallow bowls full of fruits in every stage of ripening stared at me. I felt guilt when I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) deal with them. So, my family held an intervention. This year’s garden was big, to be sure. It included the usual frustrations of woodchucks and bed construction and whole zones of heavy clay. But what I realized, through some prodding, is that manageable = enjoyable.
 
We decided to limit ourselves next year to only the things we know we grow well and are easy to gather—and process. I realize that too many tomatoes makes me feel bad; I can’t keep up with the pruning, the staking or the harvest. And the smell of rotting tomatoes makes my hair stand on end. So I plan to plant fewer of the winners. For us, that amounts to 10. (I totally neglected many of the 32 we grew this year, hanging out near the stakes, below.) I’ll be able to really prepare for and nurture them, and I know they’ll be healthier and more productive for it.

 
I even have a plan for next season that I can start right now. I read in Barbara Pleasant’s amazingly useful book, Easy Garden Projects to Make, Build, and Grow that one of the simplest, low-maintenance ways to fertilize and prepare your tomato bed is as easy as this:

• Remove the plants that were growing in the bed where your tomatoes will be next year. (By crop rotation mandate, they shouldn’t return to the same bed, if you can help it.) Turn the soil by hand and mix in an inch or two of compost, old leaves, grass clippings or other soil amendments.
• Find yourself some hairy vetch seeds, sprinkle some there as a cover crop, and walk away. This perennial legume will take hold, outpace annual weeds in the spring, and fix nitrogen in the bed that your plants can use later.
• A week or two before you plan to put out your tomatoes, cut down the vetch with a sickle or shears. Leave the tops of the plants lying right there to break down and slowly release nitrogen back into the soil.
• Cut 12-inch holes right into the vetch bed (leave the roots in place everywhere else), and plant your tomato transplants in the holes. Mulch right around the seedlings with old hay, straw or eelgrass (my aim for next year). That’s it.

 
My mind was pretty much made up. But I was utterly convinced after reading about this strategy's surprising benefits at the Rodale Institute, near Kutztown, Pennsylvania (home to the 30-year-old Farming Systems Trial). It's the longest-running U.S. study comparing organic versus conventional farming techniques, and researchers there have dabbled in several cover-crop combinations as alternatives to black-plastic mulch for growing food. They found that a fall-planted rye or rye-vetch mulch not only choked out weeds, it mulched the soil (no straw necessary), and it boosted yields.

Plants that sustain themselves? Um, that makes perfect sense to me. I’m off to rip out spent plants and turn over soggy soil. (It's been raining for days here.) While I'm at it, I'll try to remember what these fruits of my labor have taught me: Do less, better.

A wild and beautiful visitor

I was making pancakes, Michael was tidying up, and the boys were organizing toys, when Owen announced how sad it was that a bright red bird had flown into the window and fallen down into the garden. You could see his flaming red feathers as he laid there, looking all but dead.

Michael gently picked him up and brought him inside. We all stared in awe at this bold little songbird—a Scarlet Tanager. He'd flown here from South America, we learned. And his chip-churr song, which we also tracked down, is a lilting and a true sign of spring, Owen thought. We made him a little nest so he could rest. He closed his eyes often, a sign that he was tired, Caleb thought. We all thought he might have hurt a wing, or banged his head, before he fell.

But before long, he flapped out of his box and around the kitchen before perching himself on a stack of cereal bowls. He was restored. And we set him free.

And so it flows...

The snow is finally subsiding here, and I'm reappearing after a long respite. Such a busy and wonderful Winter has melted into a sweet Spring. Why? Well, because the balance of life seems to be finally tipping in the direction of ease. So much of the past couple of years has seemed, well, uphill. Between little ones, big projects and small budgets, it sometimes felt like I could never get ANYTHING done. I won't count my chickens yet (although we've ordered eight new chicks, due in early May). But I will count my blessings.

This, my friends, is one of them.
 

I have been dreaming of tapping our own maple trees to boil clear, drippy sap into golden, earthy maple syrup—for years. Visits to sugar houses, where hobbyists and seasoned families fire up their evaporators and serve sugar on snow, got me hooked. But the short sugaring season snuck up on me every March—until this year, when I finally got geared up in time. I felt giddy as we left Slattery's Maple Supply with a stack of used sap buckets and taps, and I listened to them rattle around in the way back on the bumpy backroads home.

The boys and I spent the next afternoon drilling and tapping 10 maples, to start. We soon figured out how to do it, drilling a slightly uphill hole into each with a 7/16 inch drill bit. And we picked trees that were close to the house and big enough to share some of their sap with us.

The boys hung the buckets and threaded the covers over the taps to keep out rain and debris. Fruit flies seem to find their way in, anyway, but we filtered them out later.

As soon as we hung the last bucket, we heard it: on cue, the bright "plink"..."plink" ... "plink" told us the sap was running. (The cold nights and warming days of late March get trees pumping.) I was so grateful. The fact is, so many  homesteading projects require well-planned effort and exacting efficiency. But everything about this was so uncomplicated that I could just concentrate on the fun.

A day or so later, we hauled a huge lobster pot out of the basement, built a fire in the belly of an old grill beneath it, and we started boiling. Between the spring sunshine warming our backs, a fire warming our hands, and the smell of woodsmoke mixed with moist, sweet maple in the air, Owen said what we were all thinking... "This is just plain pleasant, isn't it?"

We cleaned up gardens while it boiled. We fed the fire as it boiled. We ate supper outside as it boiled. We fetched more cool sap from waiting maples as it boiled. And, at the end of our first sugaring season, we'd made just about three quarts of gorgeous, golden, maple syrup to pour over everything. Without even tasting it, I feel all warm and happy inside. Spring is sweet. Muddy, but sweet.

Buying, selling and broody hens

I've been weighing for a while now a decision I have not taken lightly. (Yes, I tend to over think things.) I like bucking consumer culture. I admire others who do, too. But I have been inspired lately by my friend, Jules, who founded the site Daily Grommet as a way to support what she calls "citizen commerce." We are going to spend money; we should make what we do spend, count.

In that spirit, I'm pleased to say that I will begin reviewing books and tools and even sharing good deals from suppliers of goods I really dig.

The fact is that as much as we strive to make do with what we have and enjoy what we can make (eggs, check; honey, check; vegetables and fruit, check; some of our clothes, check), there is plenty I will never do myself. And there's plenty more to learn. Good tools help make big jobs much faster, more efficient, and, most of all, fun.

Naturally, I'll only write about gear and suppliers I love—and I think you would, too. And if you buy something I recommend and link to here, I get a teeny, tiny cut of the sale. Every little bit helps. So thank you.

I already run a handful of advertisements, but I'll dive deeper with an outfit called OpenSky. These friendly folks will help me run my Project Homestead Store, featuring some of my favorite things (cue Julie Andrews). The doors will open here early next month, so stay tuned!

As I wade into these uncharted waters, it seemed fitting to first recommend a book that I can't live without. I keep it on my desk and smile whenever I (or the boys) open it.
 

It is Minnie Rose Lovgreen's Recipe for Raising Chickens, and it is the most charming little book I've seen—maybe ever. Minnie Rose was supposed to sail across the Atlantic on the Titanic, but she got restless and hopped on another boat. She made it, and moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington, in the 1920s. For the next three decades, she and her husband, Leo, raised a family and chickens on their thriving dairy farm.

Minnie Rose's old friend and neighbor, Nancy Rekow, taped Minnie Rose's stories some 35 years ago and hand-lettered her advice on 36 pages. (It has just been reprinted.) Most are neatly written text. But a few feature wonderful illustrations by another neighbor, Elizabeth Hutchison Zwick, like this one.

The observations are so folksy and commonsensical, you feel like you're hearing advice straight from your chicken-loving Nana (she doesn't miss much)—all while she's filling the hens' pail of oyster shells. Simple truth No. 1: "The main thing is to keep them happy." Minnie Rose herself wrote ...

 

I love Mrs. Lovgreen. She makes me love my chickens even more than I already do.

The tractor man cometh.

Meet Andy.

Andy is the "tractor man" of my dreams. He has helped friends carve out, rototill and maintain farms, fields and gardens of all sizes. I've heard how fast he works, and how many things he can do in no time. For more than a year now, I've had a grand plan in mind for our hillside permaculture garden. And Andy has been the lynch pin for realizing it.

We were finally ready for him. One wonderful morning last week, he pulled in and hopped onto his friendly Kubota. The boys instantly recalled Mary Anne, the steam shovel of their storybook imaginations. Owen was happy to offer directions: Head over the bridge, to where Mama is waiting. With color-coded sketches for you to follow.

The garden above where Andy cut a comfortable path was a swath of land I cleared myself, over several weeks, last spring. It was backbreaking. And slow. Once I knew how good the soil beneath the encroaching Japanese honeysuckle was—and how much sunlight bathed it all—I couldn't wait to open up the rest of the hill. (See the color of that soil? My beloved arugula bed is just above it.)

Andy's tractor dug twice as much in half a day as it took me a whole season to clear, weed, and till. To say I was giddy would be an understatement.

It may look like unconventional farmland, and I suppose it is. But I was inspired to reclaim this sunny hillside for growing food by an Austrian permaculture pioneer/loveable kook named Sepp Holzer. He grows apricots and peaches, tomatoes and lemons—all on his high Alpine forest farm, at an altitude of between 3,300 and 4,900 feet above sea level. (We're at sea level.)

Holzer's theory of expending fossil fuels once to carve a productive annual and perennial garden into of bright hillside (and mild microclimate), made perfect sense to me. Access is key. That's why I love my terrace path so much.

Of course, I'm not the only one who loved Andy. I think the boys would invite him to move in, if he'd stay.

Wouldn't you, if the earth-moving amusement park came to you? It did for all of us, in a way. The boys took several spinning bucket rides. And I've planted tomatoes on the top of the new path, where they'll bake in the heat radiating off the new hillside. Pumpkins, beans and melons are ready to tumble down the lower hillside. I'm so elated that something I've dreamt about for so long exceeded my expectations. Now comes the work of soil improvement, replanting, and patience.

I can't wait.

Honeybees, welcome home.

They came a week ago—all 10,000 of them—in a screened box. Their queen was hiding in plain sight, inside a small screened box of her own. Michael poured our new honeybees into their new top bar beehive on Sunday. And by Thursday, they had eaten through the candy plug to release her, and get to work.

And I mean work. Their family is only one-sixth the size they will be. Yet in four days, they'd built four bars' worth of virgin beeswax honeycomb. When we checked in on them, they were clinging to the comb they had built in a catenary curve, and moving over and under each other with ease. There's nothing frantic or frightening about it: Michael and our great beekeeping friend, Winnie, naturally wore mesh hoods when they opened the hive. But the boys and I can open the hive's back window anytime (with no protection at all) and take a peek ourselves.

Bringing home a colony of honeybees is hard to describe in the way bringing home a baby is. We have been planning for the arrival of these delicate little ones for months. But they are not cuddly and sweet and completely dependent on you. (And they don't grow up and help you tend to projects you all love.) They're the opposite, in many ways. From the get-go, they know where they live. They're already collecting plenty of nectar. They're making their own home.

Yet watching an intelligent, cooperative community thrive, when it can live as nature intended, is kind of awesome. These acrobats hover around blooming honeysuckle and again right outside their one-inch wide front door—telling the others where the good eats are. Honeybees each have their role, and they work together to keep the colony healthy. They're so good at it all that their sweet honey feeds us, too.

Truth is, they give me hope: Another living connection to all that grows in the ground reminds me that life is good. And bees are great.

stacking wood

 

Woodstacking lends itself to folksy phrases (which I'll translate later). My favorite is the old dandy, "stack it loose enough for a mouse to run through, but not for the cat to follow." Perhaps it's because every step of the way—from cutting the timber, to splitting it, to hauling it, and, finally, stacking it—leather-gloved hands are handling the wood. And those hands have time to think.

Burning wood is said to warm you three times (splitting, stacking, carrying it inside to burn). In our case, it's four. We made a mistake of inexperience our first year, when we we ordered "seasoned" wood. It was supposed to have been dry, ready to burn, we thought. But it wasn't. Wet wood takes far more time (and cursing) to heat up. So, that year, we burned through far more fuel oil—our heating insurance. That lesson taught us to season it ourselves. That means we order our firewood at least a year in advance. We stack it once in a "fieldstack" back behind the house, where it dries in warm sunshine and cool breezes. By the time we're ready to stack it near the house, patience has turned what was green and damp a warm, silvery gray. Deep cracks through its ends, known as checks, reveal that it's ready to burn. Then, we stack it once more. 

Well, by we, I mean Michael. He's got a knack for spacial relations and details. So we specialize. I haul it. He stacks it. And here's where the folklore comes in. He tells me that he learned a lot of what he knows about burning wood—from BTU output to stacking to fire-starting—from the astonishing Woodheat.org. (Go there.) Stacking wood takes ample patience and a fair bit of problem-solving ability. But one good trick is to bookend each unsupported pile with the familiar "Lincoln Log" pattern. It's bomber.

From there, you can get fancy. We left our stack ends wide open in the middle (using two logs per row instead of three) to allow for even more airflow ... we were also getting tired. In fact, this is a great way to ensure that your well-dried, well-built pile stays put through the coldest days of winter. As for the rest of the pile, we stack it straight on, piece by piece. And we nestle the logs together with gaps that are "loose enough for a mouse to run through, but not for the cat to follow." In other words, no gaping holes. But airflow is key. Remember: Dry wood = hot fires.

Woodstacking is a rite of autumn around here. But, log by log, it's also one that feeds a tangible, monetary, sustainable fire. Once finished, Michael couldn't help grinning and taking deep breaths of satisfaction every time he looked out the window at our pile of winter heat, waiting to be burned.

I'm off to bed, and feed the woodstove...

stay in touch.

If you're here, I can't thank you enough for your support. Shepherding aside, we've got plenty of exciting homesteading projects in the hopper. [Apple picking and cider vinegar, wood stacking, and a pickled egg tutorial are coming soon.] Just enter your email address in the box to the right, then press the "subscribe" button. Instant inspiration—and connection! Thanks again for reading; we'll keep you posted...

Getting our goats. Someday.

 

Well, dear friends and family, despite your overwhelming support, kindness, and more than 300 votes, I have some disappointing news: We did not win a starter flock of angora goats. Thanks to you, our essay  earned the 11th largest number of votes among 49 worthy contest entries in Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm's great Goat Giveaway. We can't thank you enough.

Truth be told, I'm actually OK with it. There's plenty of fall gardening yet to do. We're keeping a watchful eye on this year's chicks (now four months old), who just moved into the henhouse with our big girls. A few pecks aside, they seem to be getting along well. Besides, it's apple pressing time here. I'm itching to try my hand at making apple cider vinegar and, if I'm feeling really oatsy, a foray into hard cider. Both make good use of the fruit from our solid but less than scrumptious old apples trees.

Possibility is a heady thing. Word was still spreading about our goat project while we buzzed around the Common Ground Fair late last month. With each friend we ran into who told us, "I voted for you and asked my friends to, too!,"  I couldn't help but feel like we'd already won—with the warm wishes from all of you behind us.

We were quizzing everyone we could about goats in general and mohair in particular, when we met possibly the most entertaining breeder/lover/dealer of angora goats in Maine. Pogo of Friends' Folly Farm, whose own hair curls a lot like the little one's above, assured us how delightful angoras are to have around. Who knows, maybe we'll become shepherds yet one day.

It's a cozy comfort indeed to know just who to call when we're ready to dive in, head first.

Fairly full from Common Ground

I just returned from a glorious, enriching day of lapping up organic living and growing in Unity, Maine, home of the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association. The group's annual Common Ground Fair is so full of information, friends and amazing food, I left feeling full to bursting. Here's what I can remember...

• Angora goats are “addictive.”
• Organic, locally grown fair food is VERY expensive.
• The Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association, a.k.a. MOFGA, is magic: Its fair is simultaneously down-home and ethereal.
• Young bulls are called bullocks.
• Who needs roller coasters, when kids can slide down a grassy hill, using only cardboard, for two hours and 17 minutes?

• Top-bar beehives give bees room to build honeycomb in the size they naturally need. Some beekeepers plant lavender and thyme beneath their hives to keep mites at bay.
• If you have a cordless drill, you can whip amendments into worked soil with the nifty Tilther from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. 
• I pine for Johnny’s Six Row Seeder.
• “Chestnut” crab apples are sweet, juicy and bright; the perfect size for little hands or a few big bites.
• Apples are the most interesting fruit I know.
• You can make fire by rubbing two sticks together … after tying a basic bow, carving a peg to rub in a whittled plank, and kneeling very carefully while rubbing furiously. Having a friendly Maine Guide nearby is a big help.

• Sheep are far easier to herd than goats. Sheepdogs have an easier time doing it than kiddos.
• Spinning wool is a quiet art; spinning "in the grease" works wonders on dry winter hands.
• “Fingers look like carrots” to livestock.
• Friendships made in the course of pursuing your passions are lasting and real.
• Forests selectively harvested and replanted with varying species are less stressed than single-species stands of timber.
• Hula hoops whirl around hips longer if you stand with one foot in front of the other, spread apart a bit. If you can manage it, your kids will cheer.
• You can live without cell phone service for an entire day.
• Garlic is easy to grow in fertile soil (6 inches apart on 12-inch rows). Hardneck varieties are easier to peel than softnecks. Curing bulbs in a dry place will help them store them well for months.
• Abundance is all around us.

It's time to harvest just about everywhere. Eat up, and enjoy.