The Benefit of Communal Living

I know we don't mention them much, but we have neighbors who live on the floor below us. They started out pretty active in the yard when they moved here about a year ago, but they have been kind of keeping to themselves indoors for a while. This place can be rather deflating if you allow it to get to you. It's nice because we sort of have the yard to ourselves, but it's not cool if it's because folks aren't happy.

Well they were out and about yesterday and whoa boy did they do something sweet. What you are looking at is the brand new, house fire pit. I think the inside diameter is about two and a half feet.

What I'm really looking forward to is roasting my hot peppers over some coals before I zap them into sauce. I am curious though, is there a particular wood that I should use, or will any old log do? Hmm.

Stripes

I know this is our five hundredth, "Look at the pretty flower!" post in as many days, but, frankly, we've been incredibly lazy about the blog lately. And also, isn't this a pretty flower?

Langhorne Slim at Johnny Brenda's

Last night Meg and I and some of our friends made the trek into Philadelphia to see Langhorne Slim at Johnny Brenda's. I got hooked on Langhorne Slim about a year ago when he showed up on one of my Pandora stations. The entire experience, although not planned this way, was truly a locavore's delight.



It turns out that Langhorne slim is from Langhorne, Pennsylvania, in Bucks County, which is a high-speed-hour northeast of Downingtown. And Johnny Brenda's turned out to be a real gem. They only serve locally brewed beer and their entire menu is made with ingredients from small scale local farmers. Hell, we just wanted to go see a show, but we ended up getting a case of the feel-goods too.

In Which Our Parsley Returns from Beyond the Grave

Don't you wish all those rocks were in your garden? I do.

We've had a really mild winter—less than ten inches of snow and an average temperature of 40°F—and the garden is loving it. Right now we have parsley, swiss chard, bok choy, kale, and lettuce that have slowly been doing their thing since the fall. Temperatures are supposed to be in the mid-50°s for the next week, so perhaps we'll be eating salads by next weekend.

Please, contain yourselves.

If the rest of you 4-week old spinach seedlings want to refrain from bolting, that would be really great. Thanks. Jerks.

Laziness Alert!

We've been kinda busy and neither the chickens or the seedlings have done anything interesting lately, so tonight we're going with that old blogger standard, the link post.

Here are three pretty cool blogs we've come across lately. Check them out!

Our Friend Ben is a relatively new blogger (and fellow Pennsylvanian!) who writes about sustainability, rural life, and how the half & half and 1% milk offered at coffee shops reflect the growing split in society.

Another new blogger, CeeCee, outsmarts her young chickens with pie plates and Playdoh.

Twinville at Laughing Orca Ranch has a chicken that routinely lays double yolk eggs and recently made one with three yolks. Exciting! She lives on a great little farm in New Mexico and has a load of other animals.

What's for Dinner?

Kelly bagged us a groundhog on Easter. Ali, who is from a rural area that's appreciative of the self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyle that we strive for, suggested a few recipes that we might enjoy.

She posted about them here

Delicious! Plus, these recipes are versatile and you can make substitutions and adjustment to fit your lifestyle. Take the Venison or Moose Casserole, for example. How often are you out of venison and you just don't feel like running out to the store right before dinner? With most cookbooks, you'd need to scrap that whole recipe and make tater tot casserole or something. That's not the case here! This recipe is for Venison or Moose, so just pull that extra moose meat out of the freezer, and voila! Dinner is served! Thanks, Mrs. Clara Miller, Crescent Beach, Maine!

Meg & Kelly's Eggcellent Adventure

Since we were visiting people this past weekend and everyone had eggs all over the place for Easter, we decided to loot some refrigerators and do an experiment. Or, should I say, an eggsperiment.

I conducted the eggsperiment using the steps of the highly scientific Scientific Method, as listed by Wikipedia.


Define the question:How much more kickass are our chickens' eggs than gross white store eggs or organic, free-range store eggs?

Gather information and resources (observe):
Resources: My mom stole the white egg, and we stole the organic, free-range egg from my mom. The huge egg came from our birds, obviously. Information gathered: Our chickens lay huge eggs.

Form hypothesis:
Our chicken's egg is gonna taste sooo gooood. Conversely, that white egg is gonna taste like crap.

Perform experiment and collect data:

L to R: store bought free-range organic egg, white egg, two of our chickens' eggs

Analyze data:
The free-range organic egg was alright. It looked basically like our eggs do, except that the yolk was pretty runny. It broke when I flipped it. The white egg was very watery and stringy. The yolk was runny, and the white part was so thin and watery that it started to smoke and get crispy as soon as I put it in the pan. It also smelled like hell. Seriously. If our chickens were to lay something that reeked like that when it was cracked open, we would have eaten the chickens by now. Ugh. Our chickens' eggs were big and bright and fluffy, as usual. They smelled fresh and nice. I didn't eat the white egg. I scrambled it up and put it on the porch for the outside cat. He didn't eat it either.

Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis:
Conclusion: Our eggs taste awesome. New hypothesis: No one should buy those crappy white eggs. Everyone should have a chicken.

Publish results:
Does this blog count?

Retest (frequently done by other scientists):
Kelly cooked himself two eggs for lunch. He said they were delicious. Original results confirmed.

Spring is in the air ...

The crocuses are blooming, the magnolia is ready to pop, and Kelly shot a groundhog. I hope you all don't mind, but we decided to spare you the photo of that last bit.

Truck: A Love Story

Meg and I are book people; our apartment has piles of books everywhere. A recent addition to our blog is a Books We are Reading widget, in the left sidebar. If any of you see a book you're interested in and would like a preview, just give us a shout.

A while back we got an anonymous comment from someone who liked our blog and wanted to send us a copy of their book. Well, free books are good by us, so we emailed the guy and said we were interested. A bit later we got a big fat envelope in the mail and found this inside:

We both took turns reading the book and I volunteered to post a review to both show our appreciation and to share with you a truly good read. Thanks Mike.

The official Future House Farm book review:

Michael Perry’s Truck: A Love Story is a branching narrative that, in the time it takes to revitalize a 1951 International Harvester, explores the simple complexities of a midwest man in love. After reading his fetching novel I imagined him to be the type of fellow that leaves a key under the mat but never bothers to lock the door. He is a man who weeps at a sad song and can butcher a deer. By the end he leaves you feeling so comfortable and included that it would be possible to knock on his door unannounced and pick up where he left off. However, his approachability should not be mistaken for basic or elementary. His rolling images are generous, but they lay claim to a specific attention.

I admit that it took me about fifteen pages to understand the way Perry was going to present his story. Although the surface story is presented in monthly chapters, he breaks the predictability of a linear narrative with curious branching tales suitable for a front porch in a rural town. He shares smaller and sometimes more private stories from his growing up, which bridges to a richer understanding of why he is the way he is. At times it does feel that he may be going entirely out of his way to paint himself as a softy with a high powered rifle, but when he slips into the story of his unified laundry theory or the bachelor recipe board to explain the lengths he will go to eliminate life’s hassles, I understand that he really could be that Second Amendment sentimental.

If you’re looking for something with action, mystery, or complex plot twists, this is not the book you’re looking for. The narrative does have a level of sophistication worthy to entertain an academic, but the story is easy enough to follow for even the most sporadic of reading schedules. If a slow private talk is the read you desire, then this is a must for your reading list. Amidst the pages of rebuilding a truck and falling in love you’ll find yourself, surprisingly, learning a thing or two about gardening, rural living, and how to relax the right way.

Cause to Celebrate

Today Meg and I have been married for one year. We celebrated the occasion by planting peas.

'Sup, Seedlings?

Have you heard? It's Spring now. You all are going to get evicted, and soon.

You've been hogging the lights and the heat for too long, so you're moving out. The temperatures outside haven't been below freezing in weeks. Just in case, we have a million billion gallon jugs-turned-cloches saved up. You'll like your new place. We raked and pulled weeds, and we even threw fresh compost all over the place. Better start packing.

That grow table real estate is valuable and, while we like you guys, frankly, we like the peppers and tomatoes a whole lot more. And besides, if you hang around in here for too long, we will eat you.

All we are saying is give peas a chance.

The rain thwarted our pea planting plans so we stayed inside to read, get some work done, and listen to NPR. Given all the grim reports on the fifth anniversary of the war, that made for a fairly gloomy day.

The forecast is looking better for tomorrow, though, and it will be the first day of Spring, so perhaps we'll get to the peas then.

Top O' the Onion to You!

Heh. Should have thought of that yesterday, for St. Patrick's. Oh well.

We continue to diligently trim up our onion tops, as per the advice of our brilliant commenters on this post.

Every time we do this, we end up with a yummy little pile of onion greens, which we throw in whatever it is we're having for dinner.

On Pruning

Everywhere there are subtle hints spring. The birds are filling the trees, the squirrels are making a mess of the lawn, and the chickens are laying eggs every day. Another sign of spring is some bushes and trees are starting to bud. The sap is rising.

Our adopted apple tree needed to be pruned badly. A while ago we posted about our lack of knowledge on pruning, and we received some very helpful advice. I think we leaned towards what El had suggested and went with our gut.

We knew that the spikes in the middle were sucking all the life from the other branches and if the spikes bore enough fruit they'd be liable to snap. So on the large scale we took out three hefty branches from the middle of the tree. On the finer side of the operation we cut some of the smaller branches that were rubbing against one another.

There's still one questionable big branch to take care of. It's the one that kind of swoops from right to left. We decided it would be best to save that one for next year and not risk shocking the tree any further. Standing back, it certainly looks more like how a fruit tree should.

Got deer? Got bamboo?

Then sharpen the bamboo into spears and kill the deer! Or build a fence.

Deer have been stomping around our garlic patch and threatening to turn our tidy rows of bulbs into mush. We don't really want venison that's been raised on the neighbors' ChemLawn grass and Miracle Gro shrubbery, so we decided against the sharpened spears and went with a fence instead.

There is nothing the deer particularly want from the garlic garden—it just provides a convenient shortcut for them to take when they move from chewing off the tops of our blueberry bushes to rolling around on the herbs. Our fence basically needed to provide enough of a barrier that the deer would walk around the garden rather than through it, so we planned a fence that would be tall enough to keep them from jumping over it.

The first order of business was a trip to the bamboo forest.


Bamboo will be the first thing we plant at future house. We use it for practically every single garden project we do, and it's plentiful, cheap, and pretty. The above picture was taken yesterday—while the rest of the area is still in gray and brown winter mode, the bamboo is a nice cheery green, like it always is. We chopped down about a dozen tall pieces and dragged them over to the garlic, where we proceeded to attach 6-foot bamboo poles to metal stakes and pound them into the ground around the perimeter of the garden.

Then we took looong pieces of bamboo and tied them to the uprights, parallel to the ground, so they went the whole way around the garden (minus opening we left at one corner). We ended up with sort of a bamboo split-rail fence. For extra insurance we ran pieces of twine between the bamboo, so that the deer won't be tempted to climb through the gaps.


Now, let's hope it works.

Rain Harvester Reactivate!

We have aroused our rain harvester from its winter slumber. With the ides of March upon us, we figured that the threat of a hard freeze has passed. To be quite honest winter never really showed. I'm sure we'll get a few more cold spells, but nothing deep enough to burst our lines.

The process was pretty simple. All I had to do was remove the garbage bag cover and two layers of plastic underneath the bag. The screen and chicken wire we covered the filler barrel with to act as a debris shield was still in tact and in great shape. We closed the spigot we had left open to allow any condensation to run out, and that was that. All that's left is to wait for some rain so we can check for leaks. The whole process took maybe ten minutes.



If any of you are planning to invest in a rain harvester, now is the time to do it. The spring rains are either here or on their way. It's nice to have a bit of that water stored up for planting season, which is right around the corner.

Chicken Down!

We've got a gimpy chicken.


Apparently Steveo looked outside this afternoon and saw two chickens frolicking in the yard and the third laying under a bush. He went to investigate and found that the chicken in the bush was Stella, who proceeded to hop to him on one leg. When we went outside a bit later and found them all hanging out, Steveo caught us up on the situation. Chickens are not the most graceful animals, so Stella looked pretty pathetic hobbling around on her one good leg.

We couldn't see any visible injury—she didn't step on a nail or anything—so Kelly held her while Steveo felt around on her leg and her foot. She didn't seem like she felt pain in response to anything he did to her, and aside from general chicken resentment at being held and poked, she didn't react much at all.


So, we aren't really sure what happened to her, nor do we know how the chickens ended up outside of their pen. My theory is that they were feeling adventurous and Stella kung-fu kicked the door of the pen open, hurting her leg in the process. Or maybe not.

She's mobile and she can hop up into their house, so we think she'll be fine. She also puts her pain aside and breaks into a lopsided, limping sprint when you trick her into thinking you've got food. Damn birds.

Sorry 'bout the shaky camera work ... I was trying to outrun the chickens.
They move quick when there's food involved

Garden Girls Gone Wild

I'm sure that most gardeners have a spray bottle of some fashion laying around for the occasional spritz. We are no different. Our bottle looks like any other bottle and quite honestly it never really gathered much attention beyond a few squeezes to keep the ferns happy and the grow lights from torching our seedlings.

So things were cool; we were basking in the whole ignorance is bliss thing and then, like those silly cats in Eden, we got curious and paid for it dearly.

Our mothers read this blog (hey Ma, hey Laurel), so I typically try to keep the foul language to a bare minimum—but what the fuck is going on here?! I don't see a happy gardener, I see wet t-shirt contest garden erotica. Look at this poor lady. She's just trying to have a little QT with her plants and all of the sudden some big brother sprayer is dousing her chest. Have you ever seen the movie Flash Dance? Yep, she's like a maniac alright.


Okay, yes, I know I'm taking this a little too far, but we're currently stalling while we put together some long overdue posts about a new friend of ours who drives a 1951 International Harvester. We did find the bottle a bit odd, but how fuckin' nuts do you think we really are? Oh shit! Sorry Ma, sorry Laurel ;)

Night School

On Mondays and Wednesdays, from 6-9, I teach an amazing group of students who are prepping for their GED test. Tonight was the last class of a ten week session and a few of us left with teary eyes. I can't guarantee they'll all pass, but I know that they will all give it their best. Their resiliency is amazing and their character is inspiring. Cheers to second chances.

Blooms

Spring is still nine days away, but the warm weather has inspired some flowers to show up early.

A School Lunch

We are political eaters. Now this doesn't mean we're perfect eaters—I can tear into a cheesesteak like an alligator eating a gazelle—but I don't think either of us has stepped into a a fast food joint (bathroom breaks included) in at least five years. I believe that the processed foods we buy at the market are officially nonexistent and just about every meal we eat requires some sort of preparation that can't be done in a microwave.

We don't eat like this to look kickass to everyone else; we do it because our bodies just respond well to it. There is also great pleasure to be had from food that is allowed the freedom to communicate its flavors in the simplest expressions. I think that everyone would have a healthier relationship with their food if they just gave it time. Unfortunately, time is probably the greatest reason why people feed themselves food not from their own kitchens.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my "long days." I leave to catch the train at 7:15 in the morning and get back around 4:00 in the afternoon. On Mondays and Wednesdays I'm usually back by 2:00 before I have to teach a 6-9. Yeah I know, my life is rough.

On my long days, I pack a lunch which usually consists of fruit, a PBJ, and some soup. There isn't a microwave for me to use, so if I want something hot I need to bring it in a food jar or start a fire. I figured that I would save the later for after I get tenure.

Before the semester started I bought a Stanley food jar and it has been the talk of the town/faculty lounge. To keep in line with our political appetite, I make my soup from scratch (broth excluded until next year). I chop up a bit of potatoes and veggies the night before and bring them to a boil in broth the following morning. By the time lunch rolls around, the potatoes are cooked through and the rest of the veggies have added a little boost to the broth. It's pretty simple and the fact that I only have to do it twice a week really helps keep it interesting.

Mail Call!

About a week ago, when I posted our seed inventory for the coming season, I mentioned that we forgot to pick up carrot or parsnip seeds. We were going to run to the overpriced fancy-pants garden store that's down the street and pick some up, but Jenny quickly jumped in with a much more fun alternative. She recently went to a very enviable seed exchange and netted hordes of extra seeds; lucky for us she offered to share her extra carrots and parsnips. When we heard that offer we said, "Hell, yes!" or something to that effect, and a few days later these guys showed up in the mail:

Early Gold and Scarlet Nantes carrots, a mystery parsnip, and parsley root. Awesome!

If you're not familiar with Jenny's blog, Seeded, definitely check it out. She writes about her garden, of course, and cooking, and about how she is covertly turning her husband into a local foodie. Also, she just put up a great diy on how to roll your own ... seed pots. heh.

42¢ a day

Two months ago we bought a 50 pound bag of chicken feed from Organics Unlimited. Their operation is big enough that they need a fork lift, but small enough that the plant manager helped us carry out one the bags from our recent order.

Every aspect of the operation is done on site, which is tucked into a Chester County farm area about 20 miles from our house. I'm not sure where they get all of the ingredients, but there was a very intense smell of roasted sunflower seeds when we pulled up to the plant. Sunflowers aren't local around here, so I'm guessing that not all of the ingredients can be supplied from the neighborhood farmers.



Each 50 pound bag costs about $25.00 and it can feed our three ladies for two winter months. That averages out to about 42¢ a day. The amount of feed we have to give them goes down considerably in the summer when they are on a much preferred grass and bug diet.

In Every Home

I have a little exercise for you all to try out. I want you to go into your refrigerator, grab a bottle of beer (or soda), and search your entire kitchen for a piece of furniture or cabinet hardware with which you can open the bottle. There is one in every home and a majority of the time it's in the kitchen.



We lucked out with the cap catching drawer. In the last place I lived, the opener was a hinge on the refrigerator and the handle on the screen door. I don't believe this knowledge will reduce our carbon emissions, nor is it a measurable forward step towards self sustainability; but I can guarantee that you will gain a few cool points with at least a handful of your friends. Cheers.

Aah, crunchy jeans.

It's not officially Spring yet, but it sure feels like it.

Want a free compost spinner thing?

Hanna at This Garden Is Illegal got offered a free compost tumbler that she's not going to use, so she's holding a contest to give it away. You can enter once a day until the end of the month, and I guess the company that makes the thing will ship it to you. It's shaped kind of like a cannon, which makes me think it would look pretty sweet with our pirate flag, but alas, we have ten thousand compost schemes going already and really don't have a need for a tumbler. We make the chickens turn our compost, anyway.

And, hey, since we're not entering the contest your chances of winning are that much greater. Go for it!

Bring on the Bugs

A good omen, perhaps?


I spied this little ladybug when I was giving the onions and brassicas a spritz with the ol' water bottle earlier today. The garden so far only amounts to four flats of seedlings under grow lights, but hopefully the beneficial insects will continue flocking to it when stuff is actually growing outside.

They don't lay as many eggs...

...but they are easier to keep in line.

Dill

Last year, as Meg implied yesterday, the herb garden was allowed to go to shit. There were a lot of herbs we had to go without and needless to say we were not pleased. Aside from some sage and thyme, nothing survived the wave of weeds. This year we plan to plant herbs intensively to reestablish the order of things. We hope to grow enough to dry some out in our new dehydrator (should arrive tomorrow).

The other day some of the dill we planted sprouted. It's interesting to learn what plants can be started indoors and which need to be direct seeded. Apparently dill doesn't transplant well and should be started outdoors, but we are so damn hungry for fresh herbs that we figured we'd take our chances.

Our pool isn't usually that green.

Earlier today I was playing around on Google Maps, trying to figure out the location of a random windmill we can see from upstairs in our house but not from the road. I never found the windmill. Instead, I got distracted by looking at satellite images of the area.

Google must have updated their aerial photos recently, because the last time I looked, our house had been photographed in the winter—everything was brown and dead. This new image is from the spring, and since the trees are all filled with fluffy new leaves you can really see how little of the 3.5 acres are actually usable for gardening. I envy those neighbors across the street whose yards get great sun all day.


The coolest thing about the new map, though, is that if you zoom in all the way you can actually make out the individual raised beds in our garden. In the picture below, I highlighted some of the prominent garden-related spots in the yard.


The herb garden and the current garlic and onion patch used to be well-tended gardens, but they turned into giant weed pits over the past year. We're attempting to reclaim them both, as we'd like to be able to spread our plantings around a bit. Kelly is going to stick most of his hot peppers in the herb garden, and after reading Patrick's advice to us on this post, we'll probably relegate our wild tomatoes to the herb garden as well. The two red Xs mark the trees we chopped down last fall, and the chickens were relocated a bit to the left—their yard now shares a fence with the southern edge of the garden—but other than that, this is pretty much what the yard looks like right now.