Straw Bales DO Grow Food

Wide Bale bed growing keeping onions. 

I took some photos of the straw bale garden yesterday. So many of my neighbors keep asking how the straw bale garden is going. I'm as curious as they are. Since I last posted, I transplanted out the rest of my tomatoes, the peppers and eggplants, the zucchini and the tomatillos. I'm not really sure what to say when people ask how it's going. I don't have any reference. On the one hand, the plants are alive, and aren't getting eaten by gophers (despite ample evidence of gophers around the bales). On the other hand, they are growing differently than they do when planted in soil, which until now is the only way I have ever grown vegetables.

I'm not sure if I'm seeing the kind of growth and flourishing I'd like to see. I'm getting the sense that some of the bales maybe aren't as decomposed inside as I would like, but I don't know yet if this is important or not. I can't tell if I'm overwatering or under-watering. Sometimes the plants look dry and the bales don't seem that wet inside, but some bales seem very wet and too cold inside. For now, I'm going with trusting that the bales and the plants will figure it out, even if I am making mistakes.

One thing I'm unsure about is our water line. The author of the straw bale garden book uses soaker hoses to water his bales, but I'm using half-inch drip line, with emitters every 9 or 12 inches (depending on when I bought it!). It's possible that this type of water line doesn't provide enough volume to saturate the bales. 

It also seems like the root balls would like an easier substrate to move through, and that some of our bales more than others are very dense, and even with the decomposition that has started inside, they are fibrous and tight. In the tomatoes, especially, it seems that the plants above ground are reflecting contained roots in a way they don't when grown in soil. Drew suggested it might be the heavy winds we get in the spring. 

All this to say that this method and my use of it are a trial-by-fire experiment, and I'm enjoying seeing the results. There are many aspects that ARE working well: no gopher damage, very little weeding, no trouble with symphylans (a soil-dwelling organism that nibbles on growing root tips, stunting the growth of the plants), instant garden in the front yard, easy access for harvest, built-in trellis and support for row covers, and no need to water, since everything is on a timer. We've already eaten bok choi, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, and peas. Stay tuned! Scroll down for some more photos.

Other Wide bed, with fresh lettuce starts and broccoli and cauliflower.

New broccoli on the way

The pea bed: sugar snaps, snow peas, and shelling peas.

Two of three tomato beds: sauce, cherries, early, and slicers.

Eggplant and pepper bed.

Zucchini and tomatillo bed, soon to add cucumbers.

One lone carrot that made it from the initial planting.

Buttercrunch lettuce. 

Shelling peas, first time ever growing!

Pesky-But-Nice Scotch Broom

That pesky, pesky scotch broom, it's so pervasive, and abundant, and downright invasive. Here is a clue as to why this is so: if you direct your attention to "Exhibit A", above, you will notice that this small sample of scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) branch is literally covered in flowers. There are probably more than a hundred blossoms on this one little piece.

Each of those flowers forms a seed pod, which, given the general characteristics of plants in the Fabaceae (Pea) family, contains approximately 6-10 seeds. After the seed pods mature, they dry out with the cessation of the rain. On a hot summer day, if you listen carefully to a hedge of scotch broom, you can hear a crackling that sounds curiously like a grass fire. The pods burst apart, throwing the seeds away from the plant. In this small sample in the photo, if there really are a hundred flowers, this little tiny branch will make 600-1,000 seeds!

This may have something to do with why our property was about 40% covered in scotch broom when we bought it! We are now nearly 10 years into managing this invasive plant on our place, and are clear it will be an ongoing project throughout the rest of our lives.

Fortunately for us, there are a few redeeming qualities of the yellow scourge. For one, the plant fixes nitrogen, which is a great boon for our wind-deposited soil. If you don't mind all those seeds spewing forth, it makes a great windbreak, and this time of year, it's like sunshine on a gray and cloudy day. And I have also discovered that it makes a decent yellow dye for my yarn project, Lost Coast Yarn. Scotch broom is closely related to French broom, a traditional yellow dye plant. It doesn't take much material to create  a good yellow. Though I won't be harvesting enough to make a dent in the crazy quantity of broom all over our land, I am clipping the most flowery branches to dry and to use as dyestuff. Here's to turning our waste-products into resources! Cheers!

Pumphouse Stucco

The pump house with a coat of stucco

We've been slowly building this cute little pump house and water tank roof for many months now. This little structure is set to become our first true and permanent utility infrastructure on the property. It kind of began with an accident. During our first wall concrete pour, we overestimated the concrete needed by 1/3. That is, we ordered 1/3 more concrete than we needed, which translated to about 3 extra cubic yards. Oops!

Drew asked me, "Can you think of anything we could do with that much concrete?" I thought about it a few moments, and then said, "How about a water tank pad?" And Drew said, "Brialliant!" Our crew, with Karl at the helm quickly formed up a 16 foot by 16 foot pad, and poured within 15 minutes.

For several years, the tank slab has had nothing doing. Finally, this last fall, we decided we needed to upgrade our water system, to meet fire and residential code. The pad will hold three, 3,500-gallon water tanks that will be plumbed appropriately, the little attached shed will house our pressure pumps so that they can no longer freeze in cold weather, the roof will collect rainwater into our agricultural and fire-water tanks, and the roof of the structure will hold our solar panels once we permit our solar-grid intertie system. It is also home to our new PG&E meters, and will be the future home of all the guts of our electrical system and our generator. Now that's stacking functions! As an added bonus, it's also much more centrally-located than our current water tank and pump setup.

Drew spraying on stucco

Planting the Straw Bale Garden

 Gardner pours potting soil onto our straw bales

Last Sunday, which was a gorgeous sunny day, Gardner and I got busy planting seeds into our straw bales. As per instructions, we put a layer of potting soil on top of the bales, laid down our water line, and planted away. We planted shelling peas and snow peas, arugula, carrots, radishes, and beets. You can see what a big help Gardner was. He has asked me every day since we started conditioning the bales if it is time to plant yet.

Gardner planting pea seeds

I put bird netting over the bed, because the little winter flock of dark-eyed juncos, sparrows, and scrub jays are very interested in the spare wheat seeds in the bales, and little birds often like to scratch up newly planted areas, or eat pea seedlings, especially. We are tearing down our big greenhouse, because it is in a bad location, and the plastic had torn, so we're cutting it up into pieces to use for our straw bale garden. I tried using one of these pieces, but that first night we had some of our infamous wind. It didn't want to stay put, and I was worried all the flapping might disturb our newly planted seeds. So I dug out our row covers, and that works much better, though I'm not sure it will provide much of a temperature buffer for the plants. We'll see. We have had frosty mornings the last few days.

The finished, planted bales, with bird netting and greenhouse plastic

Looking forward to spring food, fresh stuff from the garden! I also started two additional beds of bales this weekend. They are lined up in the other direction. These two new beds are a total of 16 bales. I plan to plant all the brassicas, lettuce, and onions I planted in the cold frame a few weeks ago, plus potatoes. I'm feeling excited about our garden this year.

Straw Bale Garden Continued

Today is day 8 of the bale conditioning process. I've been adding feather meal every other day for the first week, and then every day for the last two. They are damp, and sprouting their residual wheat seeds, and they stink like the feather meal. I installed the t-posts today, and two runs of wire, so we can put the mini greenhouse on once plants are in there.

We got a whole new pile of bales for the next round, too, and are deciding where to place them, and in what position. Even though it's going to be temporary, it's still difficult to decide. I want the yard to feel welcoming, and not cramped. I want the kids to have space to play, and yet still have the garden in our midst, AND have the layout naturally help shelter the other beds from the ubiquitous summer wind. In fact, we're having our first wind event today. It's blowing like it's summer out there, reminding me of how much that element affects our every design decision. Drew and I talked yesterday about planting a couple of rows of corn on the terrace above our yard, to help create a windbreak for the garden AND for our own experience of being outdoors. Our wind is so drastic that when it's happening, we can't really enjoy being outside.

Anyhow, if all goes well, we should be able to plant seeds into this first row of bales next week. We also planted our tomato, pepper, and eggplant plants. We also are waiting on germination of most of the brassicas, besides the bok choi, which is never worried about anything. Hopefully the broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage and such will catch up.

Homestead Construction

Whenever we are working towards a roof for a building before the rainy season, which we have done 5 of the last 6 years, I think of the old-time homesteaders, who arrived with their whole families, and needed to get shelter established before our wet, wet, dank winters, and still had to feed themselves with their own labors, while also raising their kids. I think of this when I am struggling with our garden gophers, watching a crop failure of my storage beans, and broccoli, trying to get a house built, and to parent only one child. How did they do it? Were they miserable? Did they have tons of help?

Living here in the 1860's, the journey to town for supplies you couldn't produce took two days on horseback. People might only do it twice a year. Our less than two hour car trip is nothing compared to this. It's just kind of interesting how low the stakes are for someone like me to "try" to grow my own wheat. Granted, I've never done it, and we are learning, but it would be unacceptable in that era to make the mistakes I made. My family would go hungry.

Back to our roof...it's no wonder the old, old-timers started out with small, one-room cabins with available materials, and their whole families suffered through the crowding together because there was no other way. Having a large house would be unthinkable, without the luxury of temporary housing that we have available, everything from trailers to yurts. And don't even get me started on sheet materials. I count ourselves lucky, given what we have available a short distance away.

Back to Homestead Project Reporting

OK, Swine Flu out of my system, ready to report on the latest goings on...yesterday was my first full day home alone in almost three years, and I put myself to work on some larger-scale garden/homestead projects: constructing our first, true compost pile, and revamping our graywater system.

Compost Pile


The compost scene before all the work


The pile under construction, with a few layers of dirt, green stuff, and dry stuff


A layer of freshly pulled fava beans, aka green manure


The finished product, in view of the kitchen composter, solar panels, and orchard

Having a small child has altered my ability to put in garden time as I would like. Tasks that need to be completed always keep a to-do list full, and compost is no exception. For the nearly three years we've lived here, I have just piled weeds and such for compost without much attention. This technique does produce useable compost, though at a much slower rate than with concentrated effort. We finally had enough material to build a large pile, and we also needed a spot for the graywater sludge I was about to pull out of the stinky graywater pit, as well as the slowly increasing supply of chicken droppings.

So my first order of business was to consolidate the two windrow style piles I've made with last year's corn and tomato stalks, brassica remains, and this years grass and weeds I've pulled from beds I'm preparing for planting. First you layer some sticks or woody stuff, to try to create some aeration at the bottom of the pile. Then you layer dirt, green stuff, and dry stuff alternately until your pile is the size you want! Oh, and it is also important to water your pile as you build it, aiming for the moisture of a wrung-out sponge. I'm not sure how you test this, but keeping it moist helps the pile get active and rot faster.

Graywater System Overhaul


The beginning of new excavation and sod removal, with the stinky "before" mess showing


First layer of dirt removed, ready to move the lava rock gravel


The pit all dug out with the mound in the center for a tree. The bathhouse, source for a lot of graywater, is the boxy building in the background.


The newly created pit with woodchip mulch bottom and raised sides, looking toward the outlet pipe


Finished mulch pit, showing some of the plants that stand to benefit from the installation (blueberries, fig tree, garden bed, etc.)

After lunch, I took on our graywater pond. It's been in operation for about a year now, and within a few months, it's ability to digest all the particles of food from our kitchen sink was overwhelmed. It seems that the volume of water compared to the size of the "mulch pit" was too great as well. This represents a design error on our part. But after viewing a great graywater video interview with my friend Trathen Heckman of the non-profit Daily Acts about his awesome graywater system in Petaluma, CA, I got some ideas churning. This was helped out by Drew hiring our neighbor to make a giant pile of woodchips this past weekend.

I decided I would greatly enlarge the mulch pit area, and fill it with woodchips, constructing a much-improved, true mulch pit. This involved a lot of dirt and mud wrangling, hacking up a fresh part of the lawn, and rearranging the gooey water and gravel such that I could work with the space. After several hours of shoveling and hauling, I admired my work, exhausted! The idea of the mulch pit is to plant something in the center, like a fruit tree. I am going to wait and see how it performs, but just may add a plum or apricot, or some such thing, if the pit demonstrates its ability to process our bath, kitchen, shower, and washing machine water. I'm optimistic about a non-stinky location to recycle all that great water for garden use.

We also may cover the outlet, and fill up the pit further, so it's less of a pit, and more of a depression. Then we could use the space instead of avoiding it all together.

Bath House Finishing

Before...


After...


Sean Nailing Recycled Redwood Tongue and Groove Wainscot


Window with Wainscotting


Door All Done Up


Sink and Medicine Cabinet, Cheezy I know, but hey...

I can't say we have a reputation for fully finishing things around here, and this project is no exception. After nearly three years of use, our bath house was still unfinished around the bathtub (with flashing paper flapping around and allowing water to hit the wall when toddler tidal waves hit unexpectedly), it didn't have door trim, it didn't have baseboard trim, it didn't have light fixtures, it didn't have a mirror or medicine cabinet, and it still doesn't have a finished ceiling. But with the visit of dear friends with a toddler in tow, we managed to accomplish a lot in that little space, making it so much more pleasant to use and enjoy! (Thank you so much, Sean, Jen, and Myrika!)

I forgot to take a before photo that showed the underneath of the tub structure without a cover at all. I did take one that shows the walls surrounding the tub mostly uncovered with wainscotting.

So this weekend, we installed that wainscotting, installed the door trim, baseboards, two light fixtures, a medicine cabinet/mirror unit, and covered up the area under the tub. It really does look fabulous. The last thing that will make it so very nice will be to sheetrock, plaster, and paint the ceiling. Not sure when we'll get to that, but I hope pretty soon! Enjoy the images.

The CHICKS Have Arrived!

I took my first solo town trip since Ella was born last Friday. I had a doctors appointment, and our chicks were scheduled to arrive at a local feed store.

While I was waiting to be seen at the clinic, I got a call from the feed store...they said, "The hatchery shorted us 20 chicks, so we're calling everyone to come as soon as you can, and it's first-come, first-served at this point." **ARG** Well, I'd already been waiting a half hour, so I asked at the window when I would be seen. The surly desk attendant phoned to the bowels of the clinic, and nodded, and hmmmed, and uh-huh'ed, and hung up. "It's going to be at least another half hour". Well geez. I decided to go pick out the chicks, lest they get snatched by someone else.

When I got to 3G's, they still had 17 of the 25 buff orpington hens we had ordered. I then randomly chose seven more birds from the mixed breed brooder box. Two of them are roosters for sure, but the other five are anyone's guess. Hope they turn out to be hens. I picked pretty looking ones, it will be interesting to see what they turn out like. While I was choosing them, the phone rang again, and the clinic receptionist told me "They're ready to see you now." It had only been 12 minutes.

They had quite a wild day, driving all over the county, culminating in a trip over the Wildcat on their way back to the ranch here. They took it all in stride, and though it probably wasn't a very good idea, I couldn't help but hold a few of them while I was hurtling down the highway at 65 mph.

All but one are doing really well. It's kind of like having newborn around, just a little. They need a constant temperature of 95, and continuous supply of food and water. We've been experimenting with lodging and lights, litter, trays and hot water bottles. We doubled their brooder by attaching a second box, with a door cut through it...now they have a bedroom with a warm light, and a living room with the food and water. They are really fun to watch! They already scratch in the food, and peck at specks that they think might be bugs, and they zip around unexpectedly when spooked. My favorite is when one of them falls asleep in the food dish, just lays down and droops it's head, and closes its eyes. There is sure to be more chicken writing in the months ahead. Stay tuned!

And Life Moves On

My Little Babushka


Sitting on the Step Between the Living Room and the Music/Office Space...Pallets of Wall Block Stacked Behind


Our New Horse Trailer, in Trade for "Little Car" as a Parts Car


Cloud Reflections in Slab Water


Ella and Drew Leaving the House Through the Master Bedroom Door


Ella Running Through the Massage/Guest Room

Accomplishing a big project, a slab for example, can have a little bit of a deflating effect. I felt so excited about the slab, and rightfully so, as it is such a significant moment in the sequence of our house. But now, the open road of endless construction tasks stretches out ahead of us again, and daily life intervenes to temper the pace of progress. Drew is leaving for five days to go to an aikido seminar, the garden calls, desperate for moon-appropriate action, taxes are due, and the yurt needs regular cleaning. So we breathe for a moment, inhaling perseverance to continue the one-step-at-a-time movement toward our distant goal, relaxing the desire for immediate gratification in the form of a fully constructed house.

Yesterday, I replanted all the seeds I so lovingly sowed almost a month ago. We lost all the peas to gophers, and the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants got nipped by a small critter who thought they would taste yummy just as soon as the poked out of the soil. I changed my trajectory, moving the hot weather crops into the yurt in hopes of speedier germination, and planting peas in a flat, covered with wire and bird netting. I'm going to try giving them a head start before transplant. I also transplanted out approximately 80 onions into the raised beds, and began preparing the bed that will contain the newest rounds of brassicas, carrots, beets, lettuce and spinach...spring garden!

Enjoying the longer days, and slightly warmer nights...

Floor Days: Part 2

Friday dawned even windier than Thursday. Our concrete contractor advised the concrete company to include an additional hour of retarder, which slows down the curing process. It produced the desired result...the concrete cured much more slowly, despite warmer temperatures and more steady and stronger winds. The crew worked at a much more relaxed pace over the entire day. And the floor looks fabulous.

Since pour day, we've been watering the slab multiple times daily to help it cure more slowly, which increases its final strength, and to reduce cracking, which has begun in a few areas. We labored over the decision of whether to put tension joints in the floor at the time of the pour, making it look like big tiles, or to cut joints in later. The cure rate of the floor decided for us on Day 1, and the fact that we don't have the tool means that we are just going to watch it crack. So far, they are very organic looking, and I think the end effect will be pleasing to the eye.

Drew removed the form boards yesterday, revealing the formed bullnose on the edge of the upper slab. This will be the upper of two steps that will lead from the upper level to the lower level living room, kitchen, and dining room. Our friend (and electrician) Karl got Drew going on the electrical, which is our next step before wall block stacking. Folks, we are on a roll! Karl is pumped to get us moved in by Thanksgiving. At this point, I think that is a realistic goal.

I do admit to feeling a little conflicted over the use of all this concrete, not only in the foundation and slab, but in the walls as well. All my previous research and studies point to the high embodied energy of concrete, and thus its effects on global climate change and use of non-local materials. I've had to weigh this against the alternatives and consider our desires. The reasons for use come down to 1) convenience of method and delivery (common material with common expertise required), not to mention speed of creating the product (we have already been doing what I call glorified camping for 5 years...I am ready to stop! An earthen floor would have likely taken several months to complete.), 2) earthquake stability (we live in one of the most seismically active areas in the US), 3) extreme weather conditions that rot buildings (our rainfall is one of the highest in the lower 48, and with our winter storms, we have horizontal rain with winds of greater than 50 mph, sometimes for 24 hours or more at a stretch), and 4) we don't have a local source of clay, meaning that if we had gone for a more "groovy" method such as an earthen floor, we would have needed to import the clay. We did some calculations regarding the embodied energy, and as near as we can determine, if the slab performs as intended, as an insulated thermal mass, we will save many times the Btus in firewood that were expended in its creation. Amortized over the life of the house, I consider it to be a regenerative use of concrete. What do you think?

Floor Days: Part 1

Please enjoy this slideshow I took of our pour today. It's almost a time elapse series...thanks for the suggestion, Beth!


Concrete Truck Arrives on a Cloudy, Almost Drizzly Morning


The Pour in Progress


The Crew, Screeding and Troweling


Drew and I, With the Finished Slab Behind Us

After approximately five weeks of work (if you put them back to back), we were ready for the concrete trucks to arrive and pour the lower level of our floor. This is no small feat, as all the plumbing drains, supply lines, vents, some electrical, propane, and hydronic tubing needed to be in place and all hooked together just so. Once we pour the floor, there is no fixing it, or accessing it again, as you can in an above-the-ground house. Design and forethought has been our blessing and nemesis throughout this project, but ultimately, I am proud of all we've thought of and put together in preparation for today.

The crew arrived at about 8:30, and the first truck at around 9:00 AM. Never having seen a floor pour, I wasn't sure what the pace would be like. Our foundation was quick and crazy, the pumper squirting a soda-can-sized stream into the forms, while a crew of about 6 people worked behind him to screed it before it "went off" (for those of you new to concrete, that means when it sets up).

Today, by contrast, was relaxed in getting going, with the early delivery quite smooth, and the concrete appearing to be soft and easy to screed and work with. Our neighbor and local concrete pro Greg spent last week getting the screed boards set up just so, in sections, so the crew could pour, screed, float, and trowel. Once the guys got started, they worked as an interlocking team, everyone seemed very relaxed and confident of their roles. The pumper would fill an area, Greg and Josh would screed and hand trowel where necessary, and then Roy would follow with the float, a convex wood plank on the end of a long pole, working and jiggling the "cream" to the top. While Roy was doing this, the pumper would move on to the next section to repeat. After it had set up a little, someone would return to the floated area, and use a magnesium trowel to smooth out the wood-made finish. Even later, this was finished by hand and with a machine to further work the cream, which creates a durable slab floor.

All this went along quite nicely, until the day began to warm up, and the wind picked up, making the concrete dry faster. We were also getting to the bottom of the truckload. The guys became a bit more tense, and picked up the pace, and were scrambling to float the pour before it got too hard. They played it pretty cool, but in the end, they were stressed. With good reason...there are some areas of the floor that didn't get finished quite as nicely as all would have liked. But fortunately, Drew and I like it, and we think we can clean up some of the difficult spots with a ?buffing machine? We kind of like a more organic look, really, so in an unusual moment, we are actually in agreement about a cosmetic element of design. Or maybe we're feeling pragmatic that we can't possibly do too much about it, and so we are graciously going with the flow of the universe! In any event, I feel SO excited that half our floor is done, and that soon we can walk around on it, and experience flatness.

As a final touch, we each placed a hand print, Drew's and mine connected into the shape of a heart, and Ella's hand right next to ours, just inside the exterior door in our bedroom. I later inscribed "2009" next to it. I felt a little teary-eyed at all that, that we'd be looking at it for many years to come, even when Ella is grown up and moved away.


Our Family Hand Print, Once in a Lifetime

Tomorrow, we do the upper half, and then, the sky's the limit...

Pour Day A'Comin

Though we didn't do any work on the house while we were gone, Drew and a great and willing crew of diligent workers tried very hard to get our next phase of the house done before we left for 5 weeks. We had a lucky, long break in the weather, where winter felt like summer (during the day, at least), and we got within striking distance. Now that we're home, it's taken us a little time to get back to it, but we are hoping to have a floor next week. WOW! That is exciting and crazy to think about!

Since we're doing a slab-on-grade, anything that might go under the floor has to be just perfect, and thought of ahead of time. This includes all the drain plumbing, all hot and cold water lines to all bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry, some electrical, and the warm-floor tubing. Just the floor project alone has tested the strength of our design skills. It has pushed us to make decisions such as, where will the bathtub drain go, how much space does a toilet need, do we want the ability to put a sink in the kitchen island even if we don't do it now, where exactly will all the interior walls go, and so on. By the time this floor is done, all this planning will have put us into a position of knowing a lot of design details, and the building process can proceed more quickly, we hope . It's a process of getting organized and set up. If you do it right, you can just jam later on.

I'll post some photos of the progress soon!

Favorite Day

Our cold-hot, rainy-sunny, winter-spring weather continues on the first day of Daylight Savings Time. This weekend has been filled with family time, with yesterday almost a mini-vacation at home. We hiked the big hill with our neighbors, taking it slow for Ella, and for Deva, who is 8 months pregnant. Ella fell a lot, simply because she is learning to walk in her own big feet. When we reached the top, we all laid down in the grass on the south side of the knob, the sunny, and leeward side. With the green velvet valley spread out before us, we loafed in the warm sun for a long time, having adult conversation, while Ella and Maple rolled a little ways down the hill, and made grass braids.

But today, Drew, Ella and I worked all together in the garden, preparing beds, planting seeds, catching up on tasks that are past due. This was simply divine, and I realized that this is the life that I want, spending Sunday gardening with my family. Yesterday, we helped Deva dig up some extraneous raspberry canes that were sprouting in the bed next to their intended home, and she sent us home with them. This was a serendipitous moment, as we have been planning on getting raspberries. So we prepped their future home today, by mowing the cover crop, forking the soil, and sheet mulching the beds.


Raspberry Beds Settling In and Waiting for Plants


Raspberry Plants Ready to Go

Then we moved on to preparing the bed for our peas, by removing all that runner-type grass, adding some chicken manure compost, and oyster shell flour (to lower the pH). Then we had to build a trellis out of old fence posts and wire. At last, after lunch, I sowed the seeds, and mulched the bed and watered things in. This year, I'm growing both sugar snap peas and shelling peas. I've never tried the shelling peas before, and I'm hoping I'll have enough to freeze.


Sowing Shelling Peas


Pea Bed All Ready with Trellis

The other day, I transplanted the long-awaited artichokes. I can't wait to eat their yumminess. The artichoke and raspberry beds should behave as a wind barrier to protect the annual garden plants from the northeast wind that swoops down out of the sky during the late spring and summer.


'Romanesco' Artichoke

One of the best parts of having Drew and Ella out there with me is that SO much more got done than if it had just been me alone. That same amount of work would have taken me at least a week. Amazing what we can do when we do it together! And Ella is increasingly helpful. She worked very hard scooping oyster shell flour, and planting pea seeds, all with a little help, of course.

Then as a grand finale for today, an amazing rainbow arched its vibrant colors directly over our homestead, from the back of our flat, to the other side of our house, which I luckily captured on film to share with all of you. Looking forward to eating all those veggies and fruits coming our way.


The Pot of Gold...