Vernal Equinox, part 2

Out in the nourishing darkness tonight, I closed up the chicken's hatch to their outdoor pen as the snow pelted the lush spring grass.  Overcast skies blotted out any moonlight, and I made my way attended by the beam of a very small flashlight. A soft purr of concern rose up from the flock as soon as I arrived outside the barn, and I calmed my birds with a whispered assurance, "Just me."

 Inside the dark barn, I collected eggs from under sleeping hens, my hand slipping between the hay nest and downy hen feathers, warm as an antique quilt.  As I gathered the eggs, the hens' wings curved around my hand in a practiced move, trying to gather back in the wayward eggs. Had I rooster right now, I'd let those eggs lay where they are.  But it's all ladies in the flock.

Back outside, my dog and I stopped to experience a snow squall ride in to our hilltop from the far ridge.  A dusky cloud of snow swept over the landscape, blotting out the little I could see of the fields and fencerow trees this dark night.  My dog and I paused to drink in the cold air, to feel the frozen prickles of snowflakes on our noses, and hear that lovely singing sound snow makes as it lands on open ground all around you. The simplest prayer is just to listen.

 Good bye winter.  Goodbye snow.  I carried the basket of warm eggs back into the buttery light of the house to where the broccoli and onion seedlings grow under lights.

Welcome spring!
Betsy

Happy Spring Equinox

A snowy first day of Spring follows a mild winter, and finds Hawk's Hill decked in green grass and blooming daffodils.

Earlier in the week, we dug the last of last summer's potatoes. A full pantry and a bounty of spuds last fall led us to experiment with leaving 5 or 6 rows of potatoes in the ground.  We used the earth as our refrigerator over the winter.  For the most part it was successful. The potatoes held indoors in pantry storage have grown long sprouts and gone rubbery. Out in the good earth, we dug up about a bushel of solid, unsprouted spuds. About half of the overwintered potatoes in the garden had gone mushy or frozen. We harvested the other half.  As I write, a pot of Kennebec potatoes boils to make mashed potatoes for dinner. Yum!

Giant Kennebec potatoes 

Natascha golden roasting potatoes and Banana Fingerlings

And the hens are laying, providing me with a favorite springtime treat -- egg salad sandwiches.  Here's a pot of eggs recently boiled.  I love the variety in colors in the brown eggs -- some rosy, some tan, some earthy brown.  Soon, the hens will leave their wintering home in the barn, and roam the fields again, eating fresh green grass.

Wishing you all balance and a return to contact with Nature at this Spring Equinox!
Betsy

Blessings of a January Day

Part of the blessing of these winter days is the quiet openness that extends out on a crystalline morning.  The January cold has stilled our outdoor work, and we simplify, move inward, and tend to hearth and home.  Our spirits rise listening to the murmur of a pot of chicken soup simmering on the stove, watching fine snowflakes drift down from scattered fluffy clouds, or witnessing the sun's brilliance as the clouds part and spill its light into the landscape.  We emerge from the rush of the holidays and return to the stillness of nature, newly aware of the balm and spiritual connection we receive there.

Though seemingly still, the landscape is not empty, as a lively flock of chickadees flitting from tree to tree through the woods reminded me on my morning walk, their spirited voices breaking the morning quiet like a magic spell.  Leaving the woods, I passed last summer's potato bed and the permanent planting of Jerusalem Artichokes, and smiled at the thought of these unseen caches of food still lying underground on Hawk's Hill.  On my way back up the hill to the house, I stopped in the garden, retrieved a spading fork from the tool shed, and tramped down to the bed at the bottom of the garden where our winter carrots lie, kept crunchy and sweet by the cool earth.  Finding a row label marked "July 5 Scarlet Nantes,"  I shoved the digging fork in alongside the ferny tops.

I pried the fork back, unearthing the golden booty.  Before I slid the carrots from their good earth, I squatted back on my heels as people have done down the millenia. I looked up at the sky and took in the beauty of nature around me for one grounding moment before saying, "Thank you, Carrot Nation, for feeding the people."  Slipping the slender taproots from the earth, I brushed the dirt off and collected them in a plastic grocery bag I pulled from my coat pocket.  A few more forkfuls of earth yielded enough carrots for our family's needs for the next week.

I have taken to saying this simple prayer of gratitude as I collect eggs from the hens, pluck leaves from the kale plants, even when we plowed out long rows of potatoes earlier in the year.  I learned it from my friend, Brad Silberberg, director of The Mesa Creative Arts Center,  who teaches Native American spirituality and often works alongside us on the farm.  I find the prayer immerses me in gratitude in the moment.  And the more gratitude I express, the more abundant my life feels.

Some of the carrots ended up in that simmering chicken noodle soup we ate for dinner, the rest got scrubbed up and tucked in the refrigerator to be eaten out of hand.  We found long ago that carrots taste best when just pulled from the earth, and that within a few days, their sweetness diminishes.  So, now we're hooked, and we enjoy freshly dug carrots as one of the perks of winter's quiet days.

As to the nuts and bolts of carrots, we start our winter carrots around Independence Day, and plant a row on either side of a drip irrigation line.  One carrot seed is planted every 2 inches down the row.  I make a shallow trench with my finger, place the seeds in, and cover them with fine soil.  I've tried using an Earthway planter, but find the job is best done by hand.  It takes a while, but if you have a partner to chat with, the time goes quickly.  My carrot planting partner is our oldest daughter, Sarah.  A Creative Writing major in college, Sarah spins tales for me, sharing the latest developments from her story worlds --  fine entertainment for a simple task.

Carrots may take up to 3 weeks to germinate, so you have to keep the rows weeded and the ground moist during that time.  Once the ferny carrot tops begin to develop, they will out-compete the weeds, and all we do is keep watering (we try to keep the weeds controlled between rows).  And, of course, we harvest.  And offer prayers of gratitude.

At the end of the day, after my harvest and before the night's temperatures plummeted under the clear blue sky, I covered up the remaining carrots with leaves to blanket the carrots' shoulders from the bitter cold.  Voles like to burrow in such a natural "quilt," and eat whatever lies above ground, so I usually wait to mulch until temperatures drop into the teens or below to hold off the little thieves.  At this point, I figure the voles will get some of the tops, but the rest will be saved for us to enjoy.

May these cold January days also bless you with quiet openings and abundance,
Betsy

Charging up the Permaculture Garden

El Nino and Global Climate Change have given us a warm winter and boosted recent temperatures into the 50s and 60s. Christmas felt more like Easter.  We have put the balmy winter to use by keeping our hens out on pasture later than in any year to date.  It's a Hawk's Hill record.  This morning, we moved the hens to their winter quarters in the barn because I wanted to make sure that they got a chance to eat the weed seeds, bugs and grass that had grown up in our permaculture garden -- the fenced yard behind the barn -- and to give them time to recharge the garden with their manure.

The hens' winter run behind their barn enclosure.  The chicken tractor is parked for the winter behind their yard.

For those of you who are not familiar with permaculture, it's a radically different take on farming that tries to emulate nature, reduce labor inputs, and maintain optimal harvests while eschewing pesticides and building organic matter in the soil.  Chickens make great permaculture partners, as free soil workers.  This morning, the hens took to the work with their characteristic excitement at landing on fresh pasture.  Contented clucking and enthusiastic scratching through detritus was interrupted with low chuckling when one hen unearthed a worm or bug and gobbled it down before another bird could snatch it away. The day was filled with the thrill of such little discoveries for the ladies.

Our little bio-tillers show up for work.

One permaculture principle is to plant your gardens near where you live and travel every day so you can keep an eye on them.   Last summer, I noticed how I walked to the barn for chicken feed every day, right past a nicely fenced, fertilized patch in open sun.  It was a "Duh!" moment.  Summers find us stretched to the limit for hands to weed and harvest our gardens, and last year, we added two new potato patches to the farm while one of our helpers -- our daughter Kate -- left for a month to study in Japan.  Still, I couldn't help but make use of a plot of earth that would otherwise just fill up with weeds.

I planted Kentucky Wonder pole beans, Vilms paste tomatoes, Tromboncino squashes and Green Apple Cucumbers along the fence, added Benning's Green Tint patty pan squash and Howden Pumpkins to the center of the plot.  Finally, I tucked in a single sunflower my friend Mary gave me for Mother's Day.

The garden's water source.

The hens' winter quarters in the permaculture garden.

I mulched around the squashes with old hay and leaves to keep the produce off the ground and to reduce weeds.  Of course, grasses and lambs quarters grew up in the space alongside the food plants, so the plot wasn't picture perfect.  I watered occasionally, filling a large bucket (blue one in the photo) set in a wagon, with water from the rain-barrel bathtub around the corner.  My goal was to spend no time weeding and just a little time watering.



And it worked.  The plot produced a lot of food -- bushels of squashes and more pole beans than I could harvest.  We picked pumpkins for Halloween decorations, squash blossoms for frying, and tasty plum tomatoes just to eat out of hand.  I still have a couple of tomatoes in my kitchen that I found just before the first frosty night, and several long, curled Tromboncino squashes flop out of their bushel boxes, waiting to be roasted in the oven like Butternut Squash.

What made it work?  The hens' efforts over last winter scratched the land clean of weeds while adding their fertilizer to hay I laid out over the snow for them.  We grew plants vertically to keep them off of the ground and to aid in my watering efforts.  I could haul my water wagon around the outside of the plot, pouring water from a bucket or watering can at the base of the fence and water the majority of the plants' root area.  Super fast and simple.  As I passed by the fence, I could check quickly for squash bugs on the climbing Tromboncino squashes or Mexican bean beetles on the pole beans.  I spent less than 10 minutes a day on average tending the plot after the original planting was done.

The girls excitedly cleaning up the permaculture garden.

Now the hens are back to their work tending the permaculture plot, tearing up some leaves I tossed in the enclosure this autumn, fertilizing, eating insects, cleaning up weed seeds, scratching the grass roots out and tilling all the organic matter back into the earth to prepare for next summer's permaculture garden.  The only question is what to plant next year?  A Three Sisters garden of corn, pole beans and squash would work, but good gardening practices require rotating new crops in for a 3 year cycle.
Potatoes would be out, because any leftover spuds could poison the hens in the winter (chickens can't eat raw potato skins).  Onions and garlic must grow undisturbed over the winter, so they would be out.

A grain like wheat or oats would work, as would dried beans, lentils or field corn.  Sunflowers grown for seeds would be a good choice, and the seeds that fell on the ground would feed the hens when they arrive next December to clean up.  Melons would favor the fertile soil in a wet year.  Peppers & eggplants seem a little fussy to take the weed onslaught, but could be grown with enough mulching.  Cherry tomatoes on the fence would be ideal.  But for the best crop rotation, a cover crop of daikons in the spring would break through the clay soil layer and pull up minerals from the subsoil, followed by summer cabbages would be the best move.  I can imagine rows of fat cabbages lined up where the hens now scratch and peck.  The way I farm, it's likely to be slightly less organized and more serendipitous.

The best part of the permaculture garden for me is feeling in partnership with nature and my little flock of hens in tending this earth patch that I am lucky enough to call home.

Wishing you all a New Year abundant with nature's blessings!
Betsy

Ducking back into the barn to lay an egg.

If you are interested in reading more about permaculture, my favorite book of late is The Resilient Farm and Homestead by Ben Falk, but there are plenty of books, sites and videos out there.  This is the perfect time of year to start making plans for your garden and homestead.

This Spud's for You!

Sitting outdoors at my picnic table and drinking hot tea this overcast August afternoon, the sun’s warm rays reach through the cloud deck and warm my skin till sweat beads on my lip. My mind, dulled by the fatigue of late summer, needs the caffeine boost to keep alert as I peel a half bushel of potatoes.  My steel paring knife cuts through each hard white potato, cleaving off the skins juicily and shedding the peels into an antique enamel pan at my feet.  Another white potato cleaned of its dusty cover, drops into a massive, speckled stock pot.  Soon, I will take the cleaned potatoes into the kitchen for a last wash, a chop and ten minutes of boiling to prepare them for canning.  

The bounty of spading fork-speared, bug-bitten, green-skinned second-quality potatoes lying about the house will not last for more than a week or two before going soft and stinky.  Better pare off the bad spots and can them up now to line the shelves of the pantry for winter’s quiet, cold days.

Peeled potatoes ready to be quartered and boiled.

Simmering Kennebec potatoes before hot packing in jars and canning.

Though the late heat has finally arrived, I can feel the earth swinging steadily in its orbit towards fall.  The shorter days, the fattening apples, the ripe, orange pumpkins lying among dry grasses announce  autumn’s dawning.  And that makes the potatoes in my stock pot feel like money in the bank against winter hunger.

A dozen quarts of pressure-canned potatoes stand ready for winter.

At harvest time, I like to imagine what early people would think of the box after box of tubers the potato plow unearthed.  After David’s tractor has pulled the long potato furrows and turned up hard, fat spuds -- goose-egg sized Red Gold and Natascha golden roasters, or long Banana fingerlings, or Yukon Golds as big as a man’s fist, or massive Kennebec white potatoes almost as big as my foot -- I calculate the wealth in calories we possess.  At the end of each 25-foot row of our potato patch, we fill a bushel box, netting roughly 20,000 calories of energy.  More for red-skinned potatoes (440 calories/pound for russets), and less for white (319 calories/pound for white, boiled).  At 60 pounds per bushel, that’s between 19,140 and 26,400 calories in a box.  Looked at another way, the USDA defines a serving of potatoes as a single, half-pound potato, so that 60 pound box contains 120 servings of potatoes -- mashed, roasted, baked or fried.

Our first harvest of Natascha Golden Roasters

These white potatoes will serve us this winter, but my favorite summertime potato recipe is for roasted potatoes, using the special golden roasters we grow each year:

Hawk’s Hill’s Favorite Roasted Potatoes

1 quart roasting potatoes

1-2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Pour olive oil onto large cookie sheet.  Wash and dice into 1” cubes, Red Gold or Natascha golden roasting potatoes.  Or slice Banana fingerlings lengthwise.  Pat dry.  Place, cut side down, onto cookie sheet.  You may brush tops with more olive oil.  Sprinkle on salt to taste.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, until tines of a fork insert easily into the potato pieces.  Serve immediately.  We make a dinner out of chili beans and potatoes, with sauteed greens, summer squash or green beans on the side.  Quick, hearty and delicious.

Bon appetit!

Betsy

Market Night Dinner

We arrived home after selling produce and baked goods at Weirton Market tonight with a zucchini, a giant beet, and a box of onions leftover from market sales.  Also a collection of fresh herbs and two quarts of French filet beans.  Tired from the day's labors, and wanting something healthy for dinner, I shredded the beet, zuke and an onion, chopped basil, oregano and cutting celery leaves, and mixed it all with 6 fresh eggs and a cup of whole wheat flour to make veggie pancakes.  While the pancakes fried in an iron skillet, I sat down to snap green beans.

 Dinner was sweet, herb-y vegetable pancakes alongside green beans sauteed in olive oil with a few squirts of soy sauce for flavor.  A delicious, satisfying and quick meal that didn't take a lot of thinking or waiting.

Try your own mixture of vegetables.  This time of year, it's a good idea to have some go-to recipes that work well for a variety of vegetables.

Vegetable Pancakes

6-8 cups mixed veggies: summer squash, beets, carrots, onions, potatoes and/or fresh corn sliced off the cob
5-6 eggs, scrambled
1-2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp chopped fresh herbs
oil to fry (I used pan coating spray)

1. Shred the vegetables, and mix in a medium sized bowl with chopped herbs.
2. Scramble eggs, and add to bowl.
3. Mix flour and salt into the bowl, stirring quickly to incorporate into dry ingredients.
4. Heat an iron skillet or griddle to medium heat; add oil, and ladle batter onto hot pan.  Cook pancake about 2 minutes per side, then remove to a plate and cover with a tea towel to keep warm while you cook the remaining pancakes.
Serve hot.  Makes about 8 large pancakes.  Enjoy with fresh fruit, or a salad.


Here are a few photos of a last Saturday's market in Beaver

Wishing you lots of fresh veggies and inspiration to put them to good use!
Betsy

Stories for a Rainy Day

Monsoon season seems to have visited Hawk's Hill Farm.  With the changing weather, I joke that our farm is like the floating island of Hugh Lofting's imagining in The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.  Now we find ourselves floating in the Pacific Northwest.  Where will this weather ship go next?

One rainy Saturday at market, I stopped at the neighboring booth to chat with David, a septuagenarian  farmer who has been at the market for years. Probably longer than anyone else.  A woman farmer friend had told me that David outlined for her how to grow potatoes that would last through the winter in storage.  My potatoes never make it through February before softening and growing gangly white sprouts.

 "You have to plant your potatoes on June 20th." David instructed intently in his soft, hoarse voice, dark eyes peering through the thick, dusty lenses of his glasses.  "And when the tops die back, you have to leave them in the grahnd until the soil temperature drops to 50 degrees."  Every word was carefully considered and enunciated in his aged and whispery voice.  As he talked, his eyes glittered, and I could tell he was revisiting his childhood, farming with his father.
"What if I have potatoes that I started in May?  Can I leave them in the ground until the soil cools to 50 degrees?"
"You'd have to leave them in the grahnd too long.  You shutn't leave potatoes in the grahnd longer 'n abot 3 weeks."

We talked a little about growing fall broccoli, and he said that for spring broccoli and cauliflower, his dad had started the seeds in a cold frame outdoors, and when the seedlings had grown big enough, he and his dad would carefully pull the seedlings from the soil, dip the roots in a wet clay mixture and then plant them in the field. He smiled up at me as he described this method, delighting in its cleverness, and I smiled back, the recipient of a great secret.

 The clay slip protected the roots from drying out while they were being handled.  I relished the ingenuity and simplicity practiced by these farmers from back in the day.  They didn't buy soil mix, they didn't heat a greenhouse with propane, they simply used the earth's and sun's heat to start their Cole crops.

In just a few words, David had outlined for me the way that farming used to be done before the proliferation of consumer culture, before one large corporation dominated the seedling business.

This past spring, the mercurial weather wreaked havoc on our onion starts.  As we planted -- one day wearing parkas against the cold, another day in the same week more comfortable in Daisy Dukes and a tank top -- we cheered on our little green buddies, and watered the bejjeebers out of them against the heat.  All our care couldn't keep about 30% of the onion starts from keeling over in the sudden heat.  I considered ordering replacements, but our vendor was sold out.  The only other source was a larger farm that had sent us onion plants complete with several fat onion maggots that fell out of the plant bundles once several years ago.  I didn't order replacements.

As we attempt to move into a more self-sufficient cycle on our farm, I keep asking how to make the big picture work out.  How to provide for our own seed and plant needs when the weather gets increasingly squirrely.  We just keep putting our best effort out there, and listening to the voices of the past, like old David's, and hoping to be a fraction as clever as they were back in the day.

May your floating island drift into a gentle weather cycle,
Betsy