Ringing in the New Year Right

When we moved to Reno in 2010 we had a 5 year plan. 

 Live, love, grow in Reno and then come home to the PNW. 

 In 2016 we realized we had overstayed our plan in Reno and we desperately wanted to move our family back to the Evergreen State. In August after we completed the legal adoption of our two sons, my husband started applying for jobs in the Seattle area.  We were three months pregnant, expecting our third son and fifth child in the middle of January.  The months went by and he got a couple of nibbles, a phone interview, but nothing solid.  Then in February two days after our son was born the call came that would signal and turning tide. A biomedical research company north of Seattle was interested in him for multiple positions.  Two weeks later they flew him up for an in person interview and a few days after he came home he received a formal offer.  We wanted as little down time between jobs as possible. He gave his current employer his two weeks notice and told his new boss he could start in three weeks. Those three weeks flew by.  We got a real estate agent and started packing up non-essentials.  The week before he left we got a curveball thrown our way.  Our adopted sons have a younger sibling, a two year old girl, and she needed a forever home.  The week my husband started his new job in Washington was the week that she started living with us full time.  From the end of April to the middle of June I was a single parent to six kids, 3 months, 2 years, 4 years, 6 years, 8 years, and 10 years old.  Me and the kids worked to sell the house and the livestock from our homestead.  We had a herd of Oberhasli dairy goats in milk, a flock of 35+ chickens and a trio of Guinea Hogs. We found homes for all our animals and a buyer for the house.  I got temporary legal custody over our future daughter #3.  Five days after the kids got out of school for the summer, we got out of Reno for good. My husband had been house hunting in the Northwest and ten days after the sale of our Reno house we were getting the keys to our new digs North of Seattle. The rest of the summer is a blur of signing the kids up for school, unpacking boxes, re-carpeting bedrooms, an emergency re-model of the kids bathroom, 4th of July, filing for permanent full-time custody, getting the new house re-sided, birthdays, establishing care with new doctors, and I'm sure I'm forgetting more.  

2016 and 2017 were about moving forward.

 Just keep moving. 

 If we stopped to really think about all the plates we had in the air we might have crumbled under the weight of reality.  After living months on top of months of just nose to the grindstone, get it done and move on, it has been hard to slow down and settle.  We are in a new city, with a blossoming family, in a new home, the kids are at a new school, we found a new church.  Its all been a lot to process.

I find myself thinking back to Junk Farm and what joy I found in that project.  Urban farming was something to delight in.  I like the bustle of city neighborhoods.  The challenge of small spaces.  I felt like part of something bigger.  I never felt alone. 

It's time to settle. 

At least for a little while. 

And what better way to do that than with a garden?  

Time for some light reading.


 

   

Eclectic Gardening

I know what I said, I was done! I had moved on from my seed purchasing phase and moved into my land prep phase. Well, at this exact moment that is true but three weeks ago I had a moment of weakness. My order of seeds from Territorial Seed Co. arrived and a day later I received a Burgess Seed catalogue.  Those seed companies sure know how to time things.

Hello, my name is Katherine and I am a shopaholic.  I cannot pick up a seed catalogue without poring over the pages and coveting anything green and grow-able in Zone 7.

As you may guess after that confession I made another purchase from Burgess.  I needed to get seed potatoes.  When we were living in our Stead apartment we grew potatoes in a terracotta pot on our porch and were rewarded with Lilliputian results. At the time I had not purchased "seed potatoes" I just used some that had started to sprout in our cupboard.  This time I wanted to do it right.  So under the guise of making a wise purchase, I mean, we did NEED potatoes. I took the opportunity to add a couple other things to my cart.  If I'm already paying shipping might as well make the most of it...right? RIGHT!

Enter my mini orchard.  In addition to the Fruit Cocktail tree (super cool, they graft two kinds of peach, a plum, a nectarine and an apricot onto one tree), and 5-in-1 Pear that I had ordered and planted in November, I was now in anticipation of an Hardy Almond, a pair of Kiwi vines, Sugar Sweet Cherry (a self-pollinating variety of Nanking), and two Paw Paw trees.  Say, what's a paw paw?  That is exactly what I was thinking but when I heard that it was also called a Sweet Custard Apple I had to satisfy my curiosity.  True, its also called a Poor Man's Banana in some places but that's hardly as delicious sounding.  Add in my pre-order on that Negronne Fig and my excitement level is bordering on unhealthy.  Now all I have to do is pray that each lives through its first 3-5 years and I will be up to my eyeballs in exotic, eccentric, delectable fruit!

This seems like a good time to fill you in on my fruit list.

 

Cantaloupe
	Hearts of Gold
	Minnesota Midget
Grape
	Canadice
	Niagara
Raspberry
	Canby
Trees
	Almond
	Apple
	Cherry
	Fig
	Fruit Cocktail
	Paw Paw
	Pear
Vines
	Kiwi
	Vine Peach

Not that I am not "real" with you all, all of the time.  But I just need to take a time-out and "get real".  My fucking stupid laptop did it to me again, again!  I had a sweet ass paragraph all typed out and I was just going back an re-reading it for continuity's sake and then somehow my stupid, fucking, remedial, ar-tarded laptop hi-lighted and deleted the whole thing.  WHAT THE FUCK LAPTOP! But this stupid, asinine piece of equipment cannot silence me! Nay! I say! Nay! WHAT IS DEAD CAN NEVER DIE! WINTER IS COMING! A PETERSON ALWAYS PAYS THEIR DEBTS! (Adam and I just watched the third season of Game of Thrones in like two days, too much?)

To continue, if my laptop permits, I was saying that I had kickass plans for a fruit collection that would make Adam and Eve's mouths water.  But then something happened that tempered my excitement.  I went to a work bee with my Perma buddies (shout out to Northern Nevada Permaculture!) and mentioned my grand plans.  I knew that a fig tree was risky, time consuming and potentially a waste but as I said before I am a romantic.  My buddies, who have been facing the subtleties of Reno's intermountain desert climate for most of their lives, informed me that while cold was a problem it wasn't the only one.  Fruits like Fig, Paw Paw and Kiwi can live in the cold but they don't do great in excessive wind, drought, or aridity.  Hmm, my neighborhood sometimes feels that a wind tunnel, and I wasn't planning on buying a dehydrator because it gets so hot and so dry here.  I think this is a bad sign.  I knew it would not be easy, so even though this news deflated me (only a little bit) it also encouraged me and gave me insight on where to place my new plants and how to prepare the area.  My ingenuity and inherent, innovative genius will surprise you when this exciting subplot is continued in the upcoming chapter "The Side Garden".  Don't touch that dial.

An Optimist Does Not Give Up When Faced With His/Her Own Shortcomings

So, perhaps it was a little too optimistic for me to be able to catalog all of the progress we made on our kitchen renovation, considering it pretty much concluded with the birth of our second daughter.  But, hey, I tried! Now there is no time like the present.  I am not going to catch you up without too much exhaustive detail but I will give you the highlights.

I did a brief stint working with my husband, Adam, at a local research facility.  I made it about 10 months before I got canned for "recurring behavioral issues".  I know that I am not everybody's cup of tea and this most recent experience just proved that over and over again.

In early October I was released and a certain degree of relief came over me.  I was free to stay at home with my girls and be...  Awww! Wait. Be what?  Huh?  Yeah, when I was growing up the only thing I really wanted to be was a great mom.  Now I am a mom and I don't really know what to do with myself.  I didn't realize it a first when I started moving in the direction of urban farmer but slowly it became more and more clear.

The first thing I did after getting fired was go to a poultry show and buy a small flock of Muscovy ducks.  I ended up with three ducks and five drakes, lucky me.  A few weeks before I had purchased a Costco chicken coop.  I got to work, my daughters in tow, and put the coop together.  Then I brought the box that the duck rancher had dug out of the feed store to pack the flock in.  It was roughly 1'x1'x4' and as I carried it from the car all the ducks scooted to one side and I lost balance and the box went crashing to the ground. Whoops! A bumpier ride than anticipated but the ducks seemed like they were alright with the exception of some ruffled feathers. Mildred and Aida were enthralled.  Aida loved (loves) climbing in the small run attached to the coop and chasing poultry around.  It became evident very soon that there was a rivalry between the two older lady ducks.  Sophie (named by Mildred) hid in the coop all day and then when it got to be night and all the the other ducks wanted in she would have to vacate and wait for dark to fall before Candace (who I named, because I think Candace is a bitchy name) would let poor Sophie back in without pecking her to pieces. 

Aida and Millie helping construct the new coop

Muscovies!

Now to add a run/yard

Adam and I discussed gardening quite a bit around that time, conversations driven mostly by the giant pile of composted horse manure that sat in our driveway (provided free of charge, complete with delivery by Craigslist Angel Chuck).  So one fall weekend while the weather was rather nice we demolished the shed that took up the majority of the barren dirt plot that forty years ago had been known as a garden.  My husband, who has a checkered history when it comes to constructing things (like play kitchens) is a demolition monster.  Yeah, my stud made short work of that shed.  He was even gentle enough that there were metal panels we could salvage.

Our First Garden Beds

Using the salvaged iron siding from the shed that stood here before

A week or so later I went to a rabbit butchering tutorial at a local hobby farm and learned A LOT! Like rabbits are incredibly easy to skin and gut (and when you are at someone else's house and they do all the prep and the clean up it cuts butchering time in half). While at Flying Fossil Farm, as Jessi and Danny like to be called, I was introduced to the local permaculture meetup group.  All sorts of doors were opening for me.

A week or so after that I saw, as I was obsessively surfing Craigslist, that a local egg farm was piecing out their chickens because they were going out of business.  Once again I packed up the girls and headed into the great unknown of rural Reno.  The former owners of Reno Egg, were super nice and even did the chicken wrangling for me.  I came away with three Ameraucana ladies, Betsy (white), Rosie (red-brown) and Melanie (black).  I had re-used the duckbox for transport and this time I made sure I had a firm grip on either end of the box before hefting it to the coop.  I tried housing Sophie with the chickens, while letting the rest of the ducks free range... no dice. Sophie seize the opportunity to be top duck (as it were) and pecked those poor girls raw.  Coming from a chicken farm the girls didn't have feathers on their rumps to begin with and after a day with Sophie they each had bled a bit.  What can I say? I tried! So Sophie was exiled from the coop and then ultimately shunned by her flock.  Sigh... The animal kingdom.

I started reading up on urban farming and sustainable agriculture and ecologically conscience living.  I read Farm City by Novella Carpenter and The Quarter Acre Farm by Spring Warren, I tried reading My Empire of Dirt by Manny Howard but could not get into it, boy was long winded.   I also perused a slew of gardening books, all courtesy of Reno Downtown Library.  Every Tuesday I take my girls to story time there and gather an armful of books.  I rarely read them cover to cover but I find helpful tidbits in most.  The first day I decided to "expand my mind" I found that what I really needed was to increase my arm strength because carrying a sixteen-month-old and herding a two year old was near impossible with my arms wrapped around twelve hefty garden tomes.  Luckily one of the librarians took pity on me at check out and gave we a promotional tote. A tote for my tomes, it made things easier but, dude, knowledge is heavy! no matter how you lug it around.

Novella Carpenter had an epiphany of sorts about urban farming and through her self-expression I was freed.  Instead of combing Zillow every other day looking for a homestead that was close enough to town to be convenient I was free to homestead what I already had!  It was like underneath my conscious being I always wanted this.  When we were house hunting I was firmly opposed to HOAs, I didn't want some nosy neighbor telling me what I could and could not do with my yard.  I wanted my chickens! And I didn't want to have to be in the country to have 'em! But now I was having to reel in my enthusiasm for urban homsteading and reason with myself that although a mini dairy goat would be AWESOME, we just didn't have space for it... yet. In time all things but first things first.

It became very evident that we needed more garden space.  I had used some the metal panels leftover from the shed tear down and made some raised beds but we needed to up the ante.  I mulled and pondered our options.  I wasn't ready to commit to tearing out the entire front yard but I was thinking that we could bring in the back yard a bit.  While I thought this to myself and made mental sketches I also tried to intuit Adam's reaction to this new scheme.  We are constantly getting in tiffs because I want to do some project (and of course I want his help) and he is less than enthused.  WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GET BEHIND ME ON THIS!  I frequently shouted and in my mind I was shouting it again so you can imagine my surprise when Adam suggested that we bring the back yard in a bit by adding more raised beds. What?! Yeah, I love this guy.

Back to Craigslist I searched for pavers, thinking we could build the beds with those.  I lucked out and got a good deal on left over pavers from two different people, both times strapping my girls into their carseats and heading out to load up our Honda Pilot with concrete bricks in a rainbow of dusty rose, gray and tan.  Once home though it seemed obvious that the pavers I had acquired would look best in the form of a path.  I got to work and laid out a path around where I visualized the beds would be.  Then Adam sacrificed another weekend to me and cut out raised beds using the plywood that had previously made up the floor of the long gone shed.  At long last the horse shit had a home and our driveway was emptied.

Ah, beautiful pavers

Raised beds and a new location for the chicken coop

Itching to fill our plots with something I bought a Farmer's Almanac and was enticed by ads for Burgess Seed Co.  I gorged on sense of purpose and bought a slew of seed packets and spent tens of dollars.  They promised to deliver live plants in time for fall planting, if not they would hold the order till spring.  Fair enough I thought.  Days stretched from late October to early November and I accepted that I would have to wait till spring.  Then one night, there came a knock on our door and all of my Burgess packages had arrived.  So November 19th I planted three Canby Raspberry canes, a 5-1 Pear tree, a cocktail tree, two kinds of grape stalks, and a twenty Mary Washington asparagus crowns.

That lasted me for a time, snow came. Christmas. New Year's. And then as is the wont of our fickle Northern Nevada microclimate we got some unseasonally warm weather.  Enter Steve, a Craigslist Angel with a dump truck full of clean fill dirt.  The local permaculture group had recently introduced me to the concept of hugelkultur and I was very, VERY eager to give it a go.  Another person was giving away rocks (small boulders it turns out). Yet another Craigslist Angel delivered a truckload of branches.  Perfection!  Adam had just made short work of chopping up a dead cherry tree from our backyard.  There was cellulose a plenty and some dirt to cover it, along with some dead leaves that we never bothered raking up in the fall. The last couple weeks I have been stacking the wood in long strips along the garden beds in our front yard and slowly mounding dirt on top of it.  I enlisted Adam's help for the bed separating our driveway from the driveway of our neighbors Gene and Emmy.  We had just piled on the last wheel barrow and collapsed into a leisurely viewing of Black Snake Moan when it started to snow again.
                          

                                     
               



My most recent adventure is quail, I don't even know how the idea originated but I decided quail would be a welcome addition to our backyard flock and next thing I knew I had two dozen hatching eggs on their way to me via the USPS.  Turning to my best friend Craig to list some of his friends that could loan me an incubator for a month or so I was turned onto the local 4-H chapter that graciously loaned me the equipment. No questions asked. And... no instructions given.  So my eggs arrived and I thought I had figured out the incubator situation but after checking several times that first day to find it scorching and then languishing at room temperature.  I have to pray that my baby quail didn't sacrifice their embryonic lives to my learning curve. February 17th or 18th my babies should be here.  In a few days I may try to candle a few just to get a picture but my inexperience coupled with the dark shells doesn't give me much hope for reassurance through that process.  I plan to keep all the eggs in the incubator for 22 days (incubation period is 17) and I hope that all the people who said infertile eggs will explode after a while meant like a month by "a while". 

I admit I am eons away from declaring myself an urban farmer by vocation but I can aspire to it and it feels incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully, euphoric to be working toward a goal.  Especially one of those goals that really is all about the journey.  If life is a road I am tired of hitchhiking and waiting for rides.  Look on y'all, I am striking out and I don't care if my feet get sore, or I wear holes through my shoes, here I am and here I go and here I enjoy the going.