Does Location Determine Eating Habits?

I am absolutely blown away by how productive my little raised bed garden is so far.  Since the kids helped (over)plant tons of greens, yesterday it was my mission to clear out a little of the bounty.  You know, so the other plants could actually get a little sunlight!  I headed to the garden, pulled a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and left with the garden looking barely touched.  

And I harvested a huge basket of green abundance:

You may have heard me mention before (like 10 or 15 times...) how easy it is to grow things here in Oregon.  If you will, compare the above basket of overflowing greens with the puny radishes below:  

Those radishes, plus about 4 little lettuce leaves, were my harvest in Colorado.  All of it.  For a whole year.  They represented hours of building, hauling soil, and watering.  And I was so, so proud of them!  My harvest the year before consisted of three carrots about as large as my pinky.

So what made the difference?  Yes, I learned a lot in the intervening years about soil, deer, water, etc.  But for me, the biggest difference was just location.  Even knowing all that I know today, the thought of trying to garden at 9000 ft. in the Rockies if we ever move back fills me with absolute dread.  To use my best Old English, I have seen the goodness of this land, and I am loth to depart from it.

The amazing fertility of this area makes it so much easier to find local food to make up a high quality diet.  Grass-fed cows roam every hillside, wild salmon teem in the river (and peoples' freezers), half my friends keep chickens for eggs, and I can get pastured poultry from the little town where we go to the library.  It is just SO easy to eat well here, and it was SO much harder in the area where we used to live.  

When we were first getting started in our real food journey and discovering things like grass-fed meats, raw milk, and locally grown produce, I was often so overwhelmed and discouraged by how hard it was for me to find the things I wanted to be able to eat!  Raw milk meant a 2-hour drive every week, the only grass-fed poultry I could find was 150 miles away, and even our local farmer's market had to import produce and pastured meat from over a hundred miles away.  There was no local cheese, no local butter, no delicious local bacon to be had in grocery stores.  I don't think I ever saw a cow laying down contentedly on a hillside in my area...the few I saw were always roaming voraciously, trying to find enough growing stuff to stay alive! 

I remember reading other peoples' experiences of buying all their quality animal products in one place at a cute little local farm, or finding amazing produce at roadside stands in the summer, and I felt like the odds were stacked against me because of my location!  I even once, in frustration, asked a blogger how I could be "expected" to eat anything but grocery store meat without spending a fortune, and was basically told, "thousands of families are making it work, surely you can too, if you just try a little harder."  

Okay, I may be writing this to let off long-suppressed frustration (hey, you are the one still reading this, don't blame me...), but also to remind others in the real food community that just because they live in a place where real food is easy to come by, does not mean it is just as easy for everyone!  

When you get all wrapped up in and sold on this real food thing, it's sometimes easy to think, "Once you know that it'll make you feel so much better, why in the world wouldn't you eat well?  What could be holding you back?"  My frustrated voice is calling from 2 years ago, saying, "Keep encouraging me!  Don't judge me!  It's frickin' hard to find good food where I live!"

If you are frustrated by the local food situation where you are, I so understand, and I encourage you to keep seeking, keep asking store owners to stock good things, and keep instigating positive change in your community!  Or just move to Oregon.  

What is the food environment like where you live?  Are you ever frustrated because you can't access the things you'd like to be able to eat?  Or are there a lot of like-minded real food eaters in your community?  What can people stuck in relative "food deserts" do to find what they need?

Posted at Fight Back Friday, Real Food Wednesday,  Fat Tuesday

Real Life in the Way, and a Small Tragedy

Isn't it a bummer when real life gets in the way of all your spectacular blogging intentions?  It's been such a wild few weeks, but unfortunately, if I had blogged about them, the titles would've mainly included such treats as "No Time for Dishes or Laundry Again" and "Why Do I Overcommit Myself?"  Not exactly relevant to the average reader.

I do have one relevant tidbit, however.  We are down to 6 chickens.  In related news, I have lately become much more responsible about carefully shutting the chickens into their coop at night.  Something about glancing out and meeting the sight of one dead and one nearly dead chicken while eating my breakfast toast has woken me up to the inevitable consequences of being a lackadaisical livestock owner.

The next day, just when I was regretting ever buying our chickens, one of our "babies" began laying eggs!  Maybe the fox attack has scared the eggs right out of her, I don't know.  But it has restored my faith in the whole backyard chicken concept in a very timely manner.  The eggs are about half the size of the ones Lola has been laying, but they are just as delicious, with rich orange yolks.  I am excited for the rest of the girls to begin laying soon!

We have had a few more rather personal developments in our family that I'm not quite ready to share about yet, but that, nevertheless, are stealing some of my time away from useful blog-worthy pursuits like taking pictures of my glorious tomato plants or creating delicious garden-y snacks for the kids.  Well, even if it doesn't make for a very interesting blog, I think we all agree that real life takes priority...right?

Death by Pretzels: Success and Failure

First, a success.  In case you were wondering, holding your breath, worried sick about my poor, hail-damaged garden cover, it has been remade, with slightly shoddier plastic, but still good enough to keep the frost and the chickens out.  It's amazing what you can accomplish during naptime!

I am starting to fear that this greenhouse cover will require ongoing plastic-replacement.  I am not really okay with having a "disposable" greenhouse cover, but the budget right now does not have room for a more permanent structure.  We shall see if this cover makes it through the winter.

Next, a failure.  Some very kind friends had a family reunion nearby, which ended Monday.  They lovingly brought all their leftovers over to our house, since they didn't want to transport them all the way home.  Great!

Or not so great... when the leftovers include a quarter sheet cake and a full bag of pretzels.  This could have been fine...I could have hidden/given away the less-nutritious items and let my kids enjoy the cheese and corn salsa.  But I was tired from spending my naptimes fixing the garden cover, and my resistance was weakened.

Einstein gorged on pretzels for every snack for 2 days in a row.  His poor little system didn't know how to handle such a white-flour overload, and he had itchy knees and elbows (an ezcema warning sign for us), grumpiness, tummy aches, and fatigue until I came to my senses and hid the pretzels.  Now we are back to more wholesome snacks, and all feeling a lot better.  It was a good reminder for me, though, of why I take extra trouble to feed the kids real food instead of "easy" food.

What have been the big successes and failures of your week?  Do you ever have days when you're wiped out and tempted to take the lazy way with your eating habits?  What do you do?


Posted at Show and Tell Saturday and Check Me Out Saturday

Garden Math

Plastic greenhouse cover + Wild hailstorm = A little repair job ahead of me.

At least it still keeps the dog out.

Grass Farming Attempts

You've probably heard of Grass Farming: the practice of carefully managing grass so it can be used to raise healthy animals.  Joe Salatin of Polyface Farms is one of the most visible faces of modern grass farming; his pastures support cows, chickens, pigs, and rabbits, in an inspiring cooperation that nourishes the animals (and those who eat them) and improves the land.  Many small-scale farmers and homesteaders have adopted this method to improve their own properties.

The title "Grass Farming" is a bit of a misnomer in my case.  Where I live, most people don't have lawns (I don't think I personally know anyone in my area who owns a lawn mower), just native scrub.  I never really cared about this before, but having chickens has done something funny to my brain.  I see every blade of grass in my yard as potential egg-enriching nourishment for my birds.  Last weekend, while visiting family in a suburban area, I couldn't help but see every beautiful front lawn as a perfect spot to park a flock of chickens for a while.  If only I had their grass...

This is my grass.  Not exactly enough to nourish a flock of chickens.

Here is yet another example of doing what we can with what we have.  My chickens, sadly, can't eat delicious grass as often as they want.  They would completely destroy the grass that we do have.  But I cut some grass for them almost everyday, and a few times a week, they get to come out and run free in the yard.  I am hoping their droppings will help improve the soil and encourage the growth of new grass in the next few years.  I try to keep the most noxious invader weeds at bay, and when I water the garden, I let some fall on the grass as well.  That's about all I can do at this point.

As I investigated grass farming for this post, I came across a review of a Bud Williams article on Grass Farming - the review itself is so-so, but comment that follows is particularly informative.  If you're interested in grass farming and the positive impact it can have on our health and economy, you should read the comment.

Logistics of High-Altitude Gardening

I've been biding my time, waiting patiently since March to add my own commentary to the increasing number of bloggers going green-thumbed this year.

You may be thinking, "Wow, you sure are getting a late start... what's the hold up?"  Well, this is the holdup:

My poor garden, along with 6 inches of snow, on May 11th.  We had 4 more light snows after this. 

Now, at last, most (not all!) danger of snow is past now, and it's actually warm enough to take the kids out to play in the yard while I work.  The aspens just started getting leaves in the last few days.

Things are warming up and getting busy!  Today, I finished (for now) the "greenhouse" cover my husband built to put over my 8x4 raised bed square-foot garden.  The intent of this cover is to enable me to grow "warm" season vegetables (like tomatoes, corn, maybe bell peppers) in my "cool" season climate.  This is the first attempt of its kind for us, so we will see how it goes.

I am using the Square Foot Gardening method popularized by Mel Bartholemew for both my warm and cool season gardens this year.  Since I have to buy (or compost my own) any dirt I plan to garden in, I can't afford to waste space or soil.  Square Foot Gardening seems like the most efficient use of both.  You are technically supposed to have your square feet marked off with something more permanent than string, but hey, we are really cheap around here.

 The photo above shows my 6 bought tomato starts (my attempt at starting them from seed indoors was unsuccessful... I accidentally left them out overnight and they got snowed on).  I still need to hunt down a bell pepper plant and some seed potatoes, and I'll be set.  The rest of the garden is being started from seed.

As usual, the radishes are the first seedlings to appear.

In addition to the covered bed, we've added a new 4x4 raised bed this year.  We got some leftover manufactured garden bed pieces from my parents, and we are taking advantage of them!  Since we have to protect the garden from deer, rabbits, and, especially, the dog, I needed a way to cover it before planting.  I am working on a better method for when the plants get taller, but this old gate I found is working really well for now!  I love that it swings on the hinges and I can just open it up when I want to work in the garden.

Posted at WFMW at We Are That Family,  Simple Lives Thursday at A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa, and Living Well Moms

High-Altitude Gardening: Drawbacks

This is what my garden looks like right now:

Here is my covered raised bed

And my new little 4x4 raised bed

This is why we don't plant until the end of May.  This is why we don't grow tomatoes and watermelons and summer squash and all those good things without some serious planning.  This is also why my giant, stinky baby chickens are spending the whole day fouling up (ha!) my laundry room.

Warm Weather At Last: Outdoor To-do List

Oh, the weather.  It's that one thing about our carefully-planned lives that we just can't control.  The destructive storms that have been in the news lately (or maybe in your own backyard!) make me so thankful for my family's safety, and thankful that we don't live in a very disaster-prone area!  Interestingly, it turns out that my area is more disaster-prone than I thought it was, and according to this fascinating map, if I really want to risk-proof my life, I should move to Corvallis, Oregon.  Whaddaya know?

Anyway, after a few days of cold, wind, snow, and wondering if maybe spring forgot about us this year, the temperature is finally back up to a balmy 55 degrees!  Now that I can actually see my yard, I can continue working on my plans for improving it this summer.  These include:

• Building a new raised bed (just a little 4X4) for my cool-weather crops (yes, we grow our cool-weather crops in the middle of the summer here).  This will be covered in wire to keep the dogs and chickens out (hopefully...oh, please, please, work this year)
• Finishing off the cover for my 8X4 raised bed, which my husband has been working on for me.  The goal for this bed is to attempt some warm-weather crops.  We will see how successful it is, but I've heard positive rumors about neighboring gardens actually being able to grow tomatoes!  Tomatoes are my goal this year.  I also need to add some more compost to that bed.
• Building a new compost bin.  The one I have now is based on a plan I found online where you punch holes in a large lidded trash can, then roll it around the yard to mix the compost... yeah, it didn't work.  I don't know how the lady in the YouTube video got her trash can lid to stay on, but I need some pointers.  Also, my trash can already had some large-ish holes in the bottom, and I think chipmunks have been sneaking in all year and stealing the good stuff.  I keep adding and adding, and it never fills up...  Anyway, I will probably be hunting around for some abandoned pallets and making one of those three-sided square bins, so that I can have easy access to mix it periodically.  But mine will need something to keep the dogs out, and I guess the chipmunks will continue to have unlimited access.  
• Moving the baby chicks outside!!  Hooray!  This probably won't happen for a few more weeks, because they are only 4 weeks old, and a few are kind of runty and don't have all their feathers yet.  And it snowed yesterday.  Warm box indoors to snowy chicken run?  Sounds like a recipe for cold chicken disaster.  Oh, how I wish we had a garage.  Or any other kind of outbuilding.  I have 7 chickens in my laundry room.  They are no longer cute balls of fluff.  They are huge, stinky, they emit astounding amounts of poo, and they are starting to yearn for adventure (i.e., escaping from their box and running all over the laundry room, pooping).  So they are going outside as soon as it seems safe for them.  

I know, this probably doesn't seem like a very extensive outdoor to-do list.  Someday (maybe...far off in the future) we will have our own place, and my to-do list will include all kinds of exciting things like greenhouse-building,  major landscaping projects, planting glorious fruit trees and perennials, having a goat, and making our yard the permacultured oasis I dream of.  But we do what we can.  And this little list will take a really long time to do anyway, because I'll be spending three quarters of my outdoor time making sure the kids aren't whacking the chickens or riding their scooters off the steep hill in the backyard.

Now if only the weather would stay nice...

Posted at Domestically Divine Homemaking at Far Above Rubies and Titus 2 Tuesdays at Time Warp Wife

Gardening Economics: To Save or Not to Save

It seems like almost everyone I know is planning to start a vegetable garden this year.  This is quite remarkable in my area, where we don't really have soil, just decomposed granite, but we do have plenty of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, and an extremely short growing season.  This is not like the fertile Midwest, where there are feet and feet of topsoil just waiting to be planted.  If you want dirt, you have to either compost for 15 years to accumulate enough to plant in, or buy your own.  But I digress...

Most of the people I know who are planning their gardens are doing it for one of three reasons:

•  to have access to fresh, local, organic produce, 
•  to help their kids get involved with and learn to love veggies, or
•  to save money on produce.

These are all fantastic reasons to garden, and the first two seem pretty fool proof: if you organically grow fantastic veggies with your kids, you will all probably end up eating better.  It's that last one that's a challenge: saving money on produce.  Especially for novice gardeners, who may need to invest in new equipment (shovel, watering can, trellises, or materials to build raised beds), soil or soil amendments, and seeds, the start-up costs may seem to outweigh the savings.  

Personally, I think if you can in any way afford it, the experience you can gain by starting a garden is worth a poor return on investment in the first year.  My first garden was a dismal failure, but I learned so much from it that my second garden was only moderately disappointing, and I have very high hopes for my third!  Even if
garden #3 is not all I hope it will be (which is likely in this climate), I will have learned so much from it that I think the new-found knowledge is worth the expense.

If, however, you are hoping to at least break even on your first garden, or if you'd like to save even more money on the garden you already have, you've probably already done some planning.  As with any budget, you want to reduce costs going in (soil, amendments, supplies, seeds/transplants) and increase yield (both quantity and quality).  If you're looking for some more helpful hints, check out this article on saving money gardening from The Saved Quarter.com.  It has some great suggestions, although it doesn't mention composting (is there any better way to turn trash into treasure?), and it advises against planting items that are cheap to buy year round, like carrots and potatoes.  Sure, if space is at a premium, you may want to stick to crops that are expensive to buy, but if  you have plenty of room, and especially if you save your own seed, why not grow your own?  Homegrown produce will be miles ahead of even the best organic store-bought produce from halfway around the country.  In fact, there was a recent article at Sustainable Eats about overwintered carrots that were more nutrient dense than their "fresh" grocery store counterparts.

Since this post is basically just showing off other peoples' good ideas, one thing I can't stop myself from mentioning is permaculture.  If you start investigating the concept online, it's easy to get turned off by rampant charts of herb spirals and guilds, but the core principle is very accessible: working with nature, instead of against it, for mutual benefit.  Anything that works with nature to make your gardening more productive sounds like a good, money-saving idea to me.  Some of my favorite concepts from permaculture are keeping gardens within easy access (like a kitchen window herb garden or a little salad garden right outside the back door) and using natural methods to solve problems (example: a permaculturist would say, "It's not that you have too many bugs in the yard, it's just that you need a duck.").  I think Polyface Farm in Virginia, run by Joel Salatin, as described in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, is a good example of a permaculture system at its best, using the sun as its only energy input, and allowing plants and animals to act as nature intended them for their own benefit and that of their human caretakers.

Whether you are growing a square foot garden on your city apartment balcony, or you have an all-out homestead, I hope these resources are helpful for you as you try to make your garden economical and productive.  Happy Gardening!

Posted at Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS 

Anticipating Spring in the High-Altitude Garden

It's that time of year for most of the country: daffodils are appearing, snow is melting, and long-neglected gardens are being tended again!  I say "for most of the country" a little bitterly, though, because where I live, above 9,000 ft in elevation, spring will not arrive until April (and it usually snows at least once in June)!  The old-timers here say, "We only have 2 seasons, winter and July."  It's nearly true.  It's a good thing winter is beautiful here.

So what's a mountain girl to do when the rest of the world starts digging and planting?

• Plan to sync with nature!  At my altitude, only cool-season crops are viable.  We really have to cooperate with nature up here, because warm-season crops just don't grow.  At all.  So as much as I'd like to have corn and watermelons, I'll be sticking to mainly greens, beans, and roots.
• Extend, extend, extend!  To ensure that everything has time to mature in our approximately 90-day growing season, most veggie gardeners up here use season-extenders of some sort so they can get seeds/seedlings out earlier and harvest a little later.  This is my first year to try a season extender, and it won't be fancy - it'll be homemade covers for my square-foot gardens.
• Plant indoors (maybe).  Planting seeds indoors to transplant into the garden helps get things going a little early, too.  Unfortunately, the bulk of my produce is root vegetables, some of which are notoriously picky about being transfered.  So we'll see.  
• Protect!  Like many of you, we have deer, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks (and the occasional marauding St. Bernard), so I'll be amping up my garden-protection this year.  
• Live vicariously through others!  What are you doing in the garden this spring?  I would loooove to enjoy your green, blooming outdoors while my surroundings lay dormant!  Would you leave a comment with a link to your garden posts?  I would love to read them!

This post is shared at Fresh, Clean and Pure Friday at la bella vita., as well as Simplicity Saturday at Cottage Homestead