Just a wee update on the wee homestead during our current Sweltering Season—that runs from about mid-July to October here—where you thank Man every damn day, and especially every night, for inventing A/C, and refrigeration. As miserable as it is, especially when the weather makers continue to steal our rain, this has been the best one yet for me.
When we first came here I swore I’d travel every summer at this time. HA! After that plan failed, I’d give up on the garden by this time, because who really cares about okra and eggplant anyway? I’d ritually whine to Hubby we are over-producing.
Recently pulling out a hot sauce from 5 years ago, with pickles and marinara still left from 2 years ago, Hubby made an astute (yet annoying) observation. “Aren’t you glad now we were over-producing?”
Yes, indeed I am. I haven’t had to don a face diaper yet, and I’ve no intention to. I’ve got a freezer full of grapes and tomatoes to process, a fridge full of peppers and a living room full of pears awaiting the same fate, fall seedlings started, a pack of dogs at my feet, and the plan to take a serious ‘home vacation’ very soon. More details on that forthcoming.
In the meantime, look how the girls have grown!
We’ve established a favorite snack station!
Not for sure if all the sheep are pregnant, but clearly the majority are, fingers crossed.
The hummingbirds and bees are happy with my offerings and don’t even notice the heat, it seems. 6 colonies going strong so far, or so it seems from their activity at the entrance, because I never mess with them in the Sweltering Season.
The old piglets are getting fat while Mamma & Papa Chop are getting reacquainted in the Back 40, planning for more piglets soon on the way, we hope.
I’ll leave out the part where friends and I are complaining about the mysterious lack of butterflies this year.
Just another loungey Sunday on the wee homestead. I’m so grateful I don’t have to go to the grocery store, or venture to town at all or anywhere near where masks are apparently now required, and witness the ‘shitf**kery’ (Decker’s choice expression from Dispatches from the Asylum, highly recommended for anyone who might wish to choose a few minutes of lucid reality) happening all around us, apparently, like a super-creepy episode of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.
Here we have problems, who doesn’t. Even if might be completely unmanageable problems, at least they are sane, rational problems.
Another 20 pounds of wild grapes, whatever to do with them all? And melons harvested a bit early due to disease, no where to store them but the living room as they ripen, so problematic.Girls gone grazing! Whatever to do, what if the kids flock with the sheep and forget all about me? This is what keeps me up at night.Why are some of my very favorite plants considered toxic and are pooh-pooed by ‘science’ and most of my modern-day neighbors (and certainly NOT by my ancestral ones!)? Like this gorgeous castor bean, the ubiquitous pokeweed everybody wants to kill, and especially my most beloved Datura? These heat-lovers belong in the South!A gorgeous volunteer Datura growing here in the background. No poultry have died from it, though we’ve lost more than usual to something mysterious, about 20 now, one or two at a time, with no clue as to why.
Here’s a wonder: why do Lowe’s, Walmart, and all the other shills of the Corporatocracy sell the same zucchini and yellow squash seedlings that are nearly impossible for organic gardeners to grow according to everyone I’ve talked to, including the Master Gardeners to whom I once was a member? Get out there with your hand-vac at dawn, they all said, to gobble up all the squash bugs and vine borers they attract, meanwhile this gorgeous heirloom squash (Trombetta) takes it all, virtually maintenance-free, with the stamina of a giant, even in our crazy summer heat?!
Bubba & Buttercup: “How to stay cool in incessantly manufactured weather, we wonder? Don’t worry, we’ll find a way!”
And here’s to the countless ninnies and nitwits claiming Trump is solving the weather modification/geoengineering issue. Come on now, do I have to go back to photographing the sky every damn day?“Mamma, we’ll follow you anywhere, just save us from the chicanery and chaos of civilization!”
Oh my, I suck again. Of course I already knew goats are notoriously mischievous. And as a habitual novice, I expect mistakes and steep learning curves, but a nearly fatal accident before my new kids are here even a week?
Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending or I wouldn’t be writing it right now. I’d still be sobbing, watching chick flicks, eating popcorn, and overindulging in kombucha cocktails, like I did all afternoon yesterday.
I don’t handle this kind of thing well at all. In fact, even that expression ‘to handle it’ is too generous, because I barely do. What actually happens is I panic, get hysterical, panic some more, act out of sheer desperation, and then sob, whether or not I was successful. I have so much awe and admiration for real farm folk, the kind that grew up with livestock, so that all this life and death drama is second nature to them. But I grew up like most Americans, very sheltered from death and the other common dramas of nature.
I woke up yesterday morning and went directly to the corral where I have the new kids penned up, for their safety, of course. No, not at all of course. Phoebe, once the tamer and more exuberant of the two, had wedged herself in the feeder, she was on the ground not moving, I thought she was dead. Panic ensued immediately. I left the gate open as I rushed to her, and out bolted Chestnut, who then also panicked as the dogs began pursuing her eagerly around the corral.
Guard or chase, we’re getting mixed messages?!
Phoebe’s neck was twisted in a horrific way, but she was still breathing. And I couldn’t get her out. I struggled for what seemed like 20 minutes but was probably more like 2, absolutely beside myself. I thought for sure if her neck wasn’t already broken, I was breaking it without a doubt.
I did at last get her out, she tried to stand, head and neck terribly deformed, and fell right back down again. My mind was racing and whirling and the very thought that I was going to have to put her down had me collapse in a heap of sobbing.
She barely moved all day. Miraculously though, she’s now recovering. She doesn’t have her voice back at all, she’s more skittish, but she’s eating, and I am so grateful, and so lucky that my ineptitude and panic didn’t cause nearly as much pain as expected.
Something good in fact came out of it—I realized the wild grapes are ripe as I tore at the vines to bring the kids. Today’s a new day and there’s no time to keep crying over milk not even spilled.
Grapes for the adults and vines for the kids. Now get busy crushing, woman!2 huge tomato plants found dead, mysteriously, full of unripe fruit. No time to cry or wonder why!
A warm thanks to those kind souls who click like on my weird poetry. I really appreciate that, because I consider them like word salads. I love making salads, but I’m consistently better at the edible type. Both of these salad varieties I make from true love of craft, which is really the only way to go for me, because then failures become almost meaningless. I can’t imagine what might stop me from always trying again.
But poetry is just fun for me. What I really do for (a) living is create delicious beauty and abundance under pretty tough circumstances and often alone.
What I actually mean is: I coax and nurture nature to feed our bodies, minds and souls!
What’s your super power?!!
Welcome to my office!
I’ve had loads of failures already in the garden this year, and it’s still early. Under the constant attack of man in the way of weather warfare and in the terms of nature, who feels the assault as well, of course, but takes it out on me, personally.
Mexican sour gherkin, normally a heat-lover and such a cute plant to grow, but showing stress already.
Just as the first crop of melons were coming ripe voles or moles took out 6 of 7 plants. I out-smart them this time by planting melons in a few locations, and at different times, but some sort of mite has just found the second patch and their population is exploding practically overnight.
Then they took over the cucumbers and are feasting on the eggplant leaves too! Greedy pests out to torture me vicariously.
I always avoid spraying any manufactured chemical in the garden. Sometimes I have to do something though, or it will all be dead in a fortnight, and right before harvest after so much hard work. The bees are all over these same plants too, which is why I tend to wait too long and hope the problem will just go away.
When I do finally cave, I go for an oil/dish soap mix that’s actually pretty effective on the mites but gentle on the bees. I do it early in the morning on an every other day schedule between overhead sprinkling. We do not (but will, I hope!) have a well, so that is treated water going all over the garden constantly, because the weather terrorists have stolen our rain, again.
Someday, when there are more folks growing their own food, weather will matter to them again, and they will realize it’s being manipulated and they will join me in finding this practice completely unacceptable. That’s my big dream anyway during this best Apocalypse ever.
My current nightmare is the drip irrigation and the grasses. We will be evolving our design, again. Boxes lined with heavy duty wire mesh everywhere. Probably no grass at all, eventually. Those damn rodents also got a bed full of jalapeños, the parsley and some lettuce. We’ve lost countless young fruit trees to them, too.
It’s a really good way to teach and learn strategy and problem solving, and it never ends. Gifts of Ba’al, as James True likes to say.
My current paradise is in the salads—growing them, crafting them, sharing them. I’m getting a bushel full of cucumbers every day. I got so sick of processing green beans I’m letting them go now for fresh and dried beans. That’s another reason I love these gorgeous ‘Blue Coco’ beans, they are so prolific and can be eaten for months as young, mature, or dried. Unfortunately they are also showing signs of great stress, which considering it’s in the 90s every day and there’s been no rain for about a month, it’s not surprising.
I always let some of the greens and herbs go to seed. Not only do the bees love the flowers, but the tips have loads of flavor and add an attractive addition to salads and soups.
The blackberries are still coming in heavy, and, drum roll please, we’re days away from salsa season!
My new favorite garden addition is Trombetta squash and I haven’t even tried the fruit yet. I love it just because it’s so beautiful and it’s still flourishing, even though all the zucchini and yellow squash died before producing anything. I’m convinced after years of failure that they cannot be grown here organically without far too much headache than they’re worth. That makes it all the more thrilling to find a squash that just might make it into the rotation.
If you’ve never experienced going grocery shopping in your own garden, crafting it up your own unique way in your kitchen, and sharing it (even if it’s just with the pigs because it didn’t turn out that good) you’re missing out on what I consider the most satisfying work I’ve ever done. I’d have to be dragged kicking and screaming back into the office, or the classroom, ever again.
And that’s another reason why this is the best Apocalypse ever!
For any of y’all who want to talk real weather, meet Mike Morales.
The garden mystifies
and delights aggravates
marvelates
weaves good fate
commands and sighs
sings and slights
full of frights
feeds and fries
mocks, schemes and lies
laughs and dies
As do I
