Strength in Spring

Thursday was the first day of spring. Hurray for glimpses of dawn, wherever we can find them.  Day 9 of official pandemic. Lots of things in the world are bleak, AND not immediately going to get better, but I don't need to tell you that. But friend, dear ones--remember Aslan's montage of "Courage, Dear Heart(s)." 

Right now, this week planting seeds seemed like both the simplest and one of the most important things I have ever done. Here in eastern Wisconsin, where our frost date can be quite the gamble, the fact that most things can now be begun indoors (skip the squash, melons and tomatoes) was a grace. Cali helped and she's been very dutifully watering them. She did say that, "it's much better to plant seeds because then you get to watch them the whole way, otherwise you are just watching them go in the ground. I'm trying to be a better, more attentive gardener and learn from past mistakes. So here's some tips I'm incorporating if you want to plant along. Also, start SOON. I'm already encountering multiple seed sites that are selling out or partially or totally closed. 

Tip 1: Buy/swap great seeds

Here are some great options: 

https://gardentowerproject.com/product/garden-towers-container-seeds-collection/ (Great starter variety pack)

https://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/seed-index/collections/itty-bitty-veggie-garden.html (Really fun later season for small spaces and containers)

https://sustainableseedco.com/products/grannys-garden-seed-collection?variant=3719682850856 (For heirlooms) 

Tip 2: Paper towel pre-sprout

I'm trying this this year, after already having started many of my seeds but this is genius. The easiest way to kill your seeds is in those first few weeks when they dry out or mold. 

Tip 3: Sprinkle don't soak

For those first few weeks when your seeds are extra vulnerable try a squirt bottle instead of a watering can. You don't want them to get too wet and rot. 

Tip 4: Good potting mixture

There's lots of ways to go about this and it's true that vermiculite and peat are not the most ecological sources. Coconut fibers also travel a long way. However, these things are readily available at garden stores and not bad choices for beginners or quick starts. However, I'm also hoping to add this local moss product to help protect against fungal action in trial this year-- also super curious how this works out ecologically. It’s also cheaper to buy (if you don't have any available) and mix compost and topsoil with a small amount of sand. You can also plant in bags of topsoil directly. 

Tip 5: Grow lights

If starting indoors, don't skip this step. I'm trying out these.

Tip 6: Starter pots

There have been years when I have made pots out of toilet paper rolls or newspaper. While your kids are out, it could give them something to do. Perk is that you can start your seeds in bigger pots. However, the trays with the lids are convenient and do help keep good humidity. 

Tip 7: Grow up not out

There are lots of ways to accomplish vertical gardening, but when you get ready to transplant, (or you live some lucky place that is already warm enough to direct sow, growing up helps to maximize space and sometimes reduces pests, or allows for more intensive plantings.  

What are you planting? How are you growing hope?

Garden Folk

 

A couple of Saturdays ago I got to be on the other side of the table at a Farmer's market event at the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Food Cooperative store. For the first time I was there as a vendor. Wow! What a beautiful day doing business the way it was done for many years at this location in it's prime. Getting to know these farmers and regular variety garden folk was really touching to me. Plants make people happy, pure and simple. And I got to give part of that happiness. I was there selling cards and garden seeds but I got to sit next to the plant people- those who know hospitality, heirlooms, and handshakes.

 

My newly found friends are amazing. My friend Dev Vallencourt and her husband Kip Francis at High Tides and Green Fields grows 147 different varieties of peppers. Pretty sure you will never see a tenth of that many varieties in any grocery store. She also was teaching me about some innovative (or perhaps wise, antiquated ways) she has begun to grow winter crops in hugelkultur method from Germany that creates so much heat by planting on top of old wood that she was able to grow crops all winter long, uncovered.

I met a young farmer, Samantha Lamb who was managing a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) endeavor on her grandparents homestead in the Medicine Park area. I met Michael Ruzycki who is farming and hosting a store in Choctaw, The Veggie Lounge who said he started because he was always amazed at how much leftovers his grandfather always had from his garden. Two other guys have started an event composting and zero waste company, Fertile Ground in Oklahoma City. Others, like Renrick farms are working diligently to provide more drought tolerant, native, and butterfly loving flowers. Double R farms  was there  selling pastured lamb and eggs and Barb was trying to figure out what growing things looks like in Oklahoma after living for years in Alaska. There was experience and there was youth, but above all there was energy. Urban Agrarian hosts an all local market five days a week and their staff was busily working indoors sorting crates of tomatoes and processing local foods from all over into a wide assortment of baked goods while the old dog swatted flies with his tail on the porch. While we sat in our store outdoors community organizers from a "Better Block" project had gathered and were literally painting the town- covering over years of neglect and breaking ground for new beginnings.  

And then there were the customers. The lady who got a "pet" fern. The radiant Reverand who had been healed from a stroke. Everybody who marveled over how strawberries grow. Those whose garden was an epic fail last year, but they were trying again because they were determined to get their eight year old to like vegetables. And then the lovliest of my day, a young girl who had just come from a workshop where she had made a planter box a few inches wide by about three inches deep. She was absolutely bursting to find a way to plant things. No one had showed her the dirt in her own yard. She was so enthusiastic she could have made seeds sprout just by sheer wish. "I just want to grow something I can eat she told me." So we made a deal and I sold her two packets of lettuce and peas... And, hopefully, a share of the garden.

Blue Skies, Nothing but Blue Skies

Blue jays. Blue birds. Blue bonnets. Blue skies that seem to go on forever. And occasionally, very occasionally, blueberries- in Oklahoma. These are some of the things that color my world.

 

Berry picking is such a delight. But perhaps even more so, when you realize how hard it is for these little guys, the underdog, the bottom race horse, the low man on some proverbial mid-west agricultural totem pole to get here.

No doubt, this climate is rough. Last year over 90 consecutive days over 100 degrees and we continue in a drought that rivals the dust bowl era. In recent years the record high and the record low can occur same year. This year Lavon Williams, of Maple Creek Berry Farms in Poteau, Oklahoma told me it was the giant hail (think bigger than softballs) that threatened his entire crop just two weeks before it was picking season. Last year the pond dug to water the crops was unexpectedly alkalizing their soil. Tiff-tough that's what his farm is made of.

In southeastern Oklahoma he raises berries organically and in June we got to pick some! The $22 for a large 5 quart bucket or $4.50 a quart seemed more justified considering the challenges to get them there. And picking you own is certainly one of the most affordable ways to get your own organic fruit. Eating organic fruits whenever possible, also means you are minimizing everyone's exposure to pesticides- many of which began as derivatives of neurotoxins devised to be weapons of war.

To me blueberries are one of the most delightful berries to pick. Little gems that keep shape without getting mushy. And you don't look like an axe murderer when you are done. As my baby daughter and my husband sought out the shade, my two sons came to help me pick eye-spying which were ripe in each cluster.

Plunk-plunk-plunk like prize marbles in our buckets. Marbles won in the game against shrewd mockingbirds greedily sitting onnearby trees. Hard earned loot for the six year old who learned the value of closed toed shoes as he combated ants.

With two small handfuls in his bucket, my three year old had stopped abruptly. "Me go ask man if me have 'nough put mine ice cream." Indeed. His objective met, he was contentedly finished.

In forty five min we amassed about four cups of blueberries and were reminded to pick while willing, but pack up soon enough they want to come back for more. Stay tuned for blueberry scones and breakfast in bed!

Creating a "Farm City": A responsive book review

Recently, kind of by accident, I had the pleasure of discovering and meeting Novella Carpenter.  I was so impressed with her book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

and can't wait to visit and revisit her new book The Essential Urban Farmer. I was impressed at her poetry and honesty about the realities of raising and butchering animals. And the whole thing combined with my reading of Green Metropolis had me wishing for a Utopia in which city dwellers can only have yards if they will relegate and utilize them for something with ecological usefulness: habitat, water purification, food sources for local organisms, or food production by themselves or their green thumb neighbors. [Update: For a good laugh, go here to see what God might think of your yard] Everyone else must live in hip urban apartments...One can wish.

Cheaper Nuggets: A series about fun and frugal farm food

By Hannah Harder

This begins the swashbuckling tales about one eco-mom's shortcomings and successes in getting her family to eat and learn about sustainable local sourced food. 

Cheaper nuggets!

The plethora of sustainable food choices that has grown in Oklahoma in just a few short years is increasingly delicious. Admittedly, in my attempts to eat well and in line with my convictions I have been known to way overspend on groceries, particularly because I am much more prone to drooling over recipes rather than dabbling with receipt books. I have also too frequently bought into the lies that sustainable food is usually extra expensive and inconvenient.

However, quite by accident, when adding up the ingredients I used for my first post, I was astonished when it came out to be cheaper than a fast food restaurant!