Anvil and Rose

Spiral Garden

April 15, 2012

I am a Spiral Garden! this view faces east, so the gate will be on the right, the favas on the left, peas in front and beans in the back.

I planted a Spiral garden at my new house today! The 10′x10′ box was already there, but overgrown with weeds to about knee high. My plan is the fence the garden with the wire extending behind it to the wooden fence so I have an area for compost stacks, and the garden is safe from free ranging chickens. This house has a pond, a falling down old barn, and a lot of deferred maintenance and it will take some time to tame it.

But the Spiral Garden! Using spirals to design a garden is a permaculture standby. Spirals have a huge amount of useable space compared to rows and also offer a ton of tiny little microclimates and niches that rows lack.

Here were my nerdy plant location choices:

The veggies that will take longer to harvest are in the inner spiral, so I don’t have to walk all the way in for something I use every day. There is Watham, Romanesco, and Purple Peacock broccoli planted in the center, with sweet yellow onions interspersed.

The next layer is mixed kales and chards, with collards along the back mixed with dill, which will get a bit bigger so should be on the north side. The very outer arm is mixed mustards and lettuce.

I planted favas on the north side of the box so I don’t have to trellis and can easily toss weeds to the compost, along the west wall of the box will be English peas, which will cast shade on the lettuce in the afternoon and protect it from the harsh afternoon sun, and along the east side will be beans who like a bit more heat.  The south side won’t have anything planted on it so the light still enters the U-shaped sun trap.

The corners are filled in with potted dahlias and lilies, and nestled around the bases are garlic cloves which I will probably just harvest green. One pot happened to have a slightly bigger nook so I planted cilantro too.

I’ll sink t-posts and tack the wire to the box up off the ground, so I can easily weed. (weeding through wire fences is not fun) In the fall when they’re around and cheap I will create a moat of daffodils to deter gophers and also to be pretty.

In other news, I have been neglecting this blog because of extreme tiredness. I have an Americorps team at the garden this month and have no time to sleep let alone write. Things should calm down a bit soon and I will catch up and photograph the big garden and all the various happenings, which include plans for quail and baby animals of the four legged variety.

Love,

-Gowan

Community Lunch on the Farm

February 19, 2012

We’re doing a monthly lunch, the first Saturday of the month- partially because we love all you guys and partially to lure you into becoming our minions. Feeding people and then putting projects in front of them seems to be a pretty effective way of raising a labor force.

I’m hoping to have a work party every Saturday, with a big food party on the first Saturday of every month- we want more people in the garden!

Look how much fun we have making signs!

We painted signs for the garden- important to have with a bunch of different volunteers running around! We made I.D. signs for beds like “beets” and “lettuce” but more importantly, signs like “just seeded, do not weed.”

…I’m still sad about my cilantro.

We also ate tons of pea soup provided by our amazing Volunteer Coordinator, Natalie, (without whom we would be totally lost) and bread donated by our local bakery, and salad we picked ourselves.

The amazing Cassia touching up our shade house sign- one of our most hardcore volunteers

We also painted tons of cloth flags to pin to the wires Natalie hammered up in the shade house above our sink. The clever deer had been jumping over our sink and going through the shade house into the garden! People painted the flags, potato stamped them, and added wishes and prayers for the garden.

Susan and Natalie in front of the wires, pre-flagging

We had a great time, and I hope its the first of many.

-G

Purple Broccoli by the Sea

January 29, 2012

I’ve been visiting my parents this weekend, who live about an hour and a half south of me, right over the Pacific Ocean. They are old rabble-rousing hippies, and I am incredibly lucky to be part of such a family. I’m also lucky to get to raid their garden, (after being put to work trenching their new asparagus, naturally) and getting to eat this amazing, huge broccoli:

It was the size of my little cousin's head. We checked.

I love broccoli, particularly purple broccoli. Because the plants take a lot of space to grow and time to come to maturity, its not my favorite thing to plant for production in small gardens. But these plants are so beautiful they definitely merit inclusion in a mixed border. I didn’t get a pic of the large head on the plant, since it was pretty much dark when I cut it, but here’s one of the upcoming babies:

Not too pretty to eat, but close.

Broccoli also teases my artist brain. I’ve known people who cast Romanesco, a beautiful spiraled green brassica, in Hydrostone, and I understand exactly why. The delicate florets are fascinating. 

Imagine a print of that- there’s something so antique medical etching/biological/architectural about broccoli. Of course, everyone wanted to eat it, and so weren’t happy with the idea of me borrowing it to print first.

One head produced a huge amount of florets

...And it was delicious.

Purple vegetables, like carrots and asparagus, often contain much more sugar than their green (or orange) counterparts, and often have a very intense flavor that is different from the more common varietals. And while there are definitely modern hybrids bred for color, many of the most beautiful varieties are very old heirlooms with interesting history. For this reason alone, they deserve some space in the garden.

Also, kids eat them like candy. So while it should be remembered that they take a long time and are a space hog, creative mixed beds should create a niche for these beauties- their broad, high canopies create a nice space for a lower, shade loving crop- possibly tatsoi. Any ideas or personal accounts?

Hey dudes!

…And also while I’m here, I get to visit my Cortunix Quail, who will soon join me up north. I’ll post about them soon!

Hope your weekend was good,

-G

Gift of a Garden

January 28, 2012

A little purple lace from the earth

I got to listen to a great phone conversation today. My Grandma has owned a small parcel of land in Arkansas for many years. We’ve been trying to sell it forever, with no success. There simply isn’t any value in the property there right now, especially land that isn’t zoned for building. Like many people in this economy, simply being able to hold onto our houses is trial enough without maintaining property that can’t sell, and my Grands really can’t afford to keep the place.

The people who own the adjoining parcel contacted us recently about several trees that are leaning and could potentially come down on their fence or house. We can’t afford to remove the trees, especially from across the country. My mom talked to this woman and learned that she had always wanted to buy the land to put in a big family garden, but of course buying land is out of the question for most people right now.

So my mom gave her the land. Of course she checked with my Grandma first, and the decision seemed very clear to everyone. We can’t sell or it maintain it, they can use it. Easy. So we’re signing off on the deed. The unused land will now get to grow food.

Its not every day you get to hear someone learn they’ve been given a piece of land. It was very cool, and my mom and this woman she’s never met were warmly exchanging stories by the end of the phone call, once the woman’s happy disbelief had calmed.

Right now we’re in a housing crisis in this country that is way more complex than I would ever attempt to understand. But the upside is that people who are hard-working, responsible people are losing their homes, and that houses are sitting empty while people are homeless.  Older farmers are losing or selling their land, or retiring on it without anyone to carry on farming, while meanwhile young farmers can’t buy land. The single biggest issue I heard from my farming friends in Portland is how hard it is to find somewhere they can simply grow food.

Joel Salatin wrote about this in his book “Folks, This Aint Normal” which I listened to on my computer while weaving.

Thanks, Mr. Salatin.

He said that one of his interns left his farm and wanted to farm on his own, but lacking land, put a call out asking if anyone would let him farm on theirs. He was offered over a thousand acres, if I remember correctly.

The time has come, I think, to start sharing resources in a more sensible, creative way. Farming our own land is beyond the hopes of many of us, while others fear the day their precious land will be left with no one to care for it, or worse- they might want to age in their own homes, or see their farms continue, but lack the ability to pay to maintain their land. We’re moving into an era where the financial system is so convoluted as to be almost meaningless, and where the only people benefiting are those that run the financial system. I don’t have any overarching solution for these problems, but I think a start might be going around the bankers all together and instead sharing resources so that people’s real needs are met.

My point in all this, I guess, is that if any karma possibly rubbed off on my family from today’s gift, and someone out there wants to let me inherit 20 acres or so of farmland… you have my email.

-G

Sheet Mulch Funtimes in the new Hoop House!

January 28, 2012

We have a gloriously lovely new hoop house! This summer, it will be home to our cucumbers- a new site that doesn’t already have powdery mildew in it is really ideal for these susceptible dudes- they need a strict rotation.

So, how to prep the soil? There were some garden beds there previously- all that’s left is a bed of strawberries that has been raided for viable plants to move to the orchard understory, and a lot of red clover. Red clover is a beautiful, useful, and tough plant. One of the reasons we use it around here for erosion control is that it has very tough, deep roots. As a legume, it fixes nitrogen, its roots add oxygen to the soil as they break down and create air space, and its a great flower for pollinators.

However, its pretty tough to remove and goes weedy quickly. People have a lot of strategies for dealing with this- I’ve heard of people using a tractor to till it under, using herbicides once the plant has added the nitrogen they want (counter-productive in my view) or solarizing it under clear plastic. This technique won’t work on our scale or our time frame- when the sun is out and strong I want plants growing here! Pulling it out by hand isn’t really an option- that stuff is tough.

I could probably rototill it in, but I prefer not to do that for a number of reasons- it kills the soil life that is the foundation of fertility, and creates a hard packed soil beneath the tilled surface. Really, the only time I rototill is if I’m making a swale berm and am loosening the soil prior to removing it.

So, we need another solution, and thankfully, we have a good one.

Sheet mulch!

The basics: Sheet mulch is the idea of building soil from the top down, by using compostable material in layers over the surface of the soil. It’s often called “lasagna gardening” for its layers. People usually use cardboard, straw, some kind of nitrogen/soil biology source, and then a layer to cover the mound, either cardboard or burlap, which is sometimes covered with straw again.

I prefer to think of it as a house.

I'm the floor!

A thick layer of cardboard right on the soil surface, (which has ideally first  been poked with a potato fork to aerate it) does everything the floor in your house does- prevents weeds from growing in your living room, insulates the house, and supports the life on top of it.

I'm the furniture!

The cardboard should then be covered by a thick layer of straw. It takes way more material to do this whole process well than you’d think- we used almost three bales on half the hoop house. This straw gives the microorganisms a medium to climb around in and fuel to break down, and help regulate the temperature and moisture level. I’ve seen some people make this layer with newspaper, but straw is the most common.

We're the people! We're gonna live here and have LOTS of babies.

The compost layer is a rich, dark, mostly but not completely broken down horse manure. It provides the soil life that will make the entire project work. Some people dump their leftover mixed fertilizers in their sheet mulch, and that’s fine, but nothing replaces the organisms. You can go slightly thinner on the compost, since it will make more of itself shortly, but it still takes a lot of work, and a huge pile. We probably did ten loads and we’re not close to done.

Many times the human population of earth are in this shovel

This in itself is a good reason to use gentle methods in the garden- each of our actions affects untold multitudes of beings, whose fate is closely connected to ours. We need to do our best to keep them happy!

Kathy the Great waters the sheet mulch roof

The top layer of cardboard keeps weeds from sprouting, keeps the internal temperature even, and regulates moisture- protecting the organisms from either drying out or becoming too wet, much like our roof shades us in the heat and protects us from the cold. In our hoop house, we’ll have to water the mulch periodically.

So that’s about it- in a few months we’ll fork this delightfully fluffy, dark humus into beds, and the cucumbers will be happy from their tendrils to their roots.

Other ways to use sheet mulch- When using burlap, people remove the top layer prior to prepping the soil. We may have to do that here, depending on how broken down the top layer of cardboard becomes. Some people plant right into sheet mulch before it breaks down by opening a hole in the top layer, adding some soil, and setting a start right into it. This works fine, especially for plants that enjoy a lot of organic material, like cucumbers, melons and squash.

Sheet mulch is the best in its second year, but its a really effective and fast way of adding nutrients, and creating a garden bed without resorting to mechanical tilling. Its a compost pile that is already in place- so that the beautiful black soil that always forms under your compost heap is where it needs to be- in the garden.

So what other ways have you seen this done?

-G

Portfolio shoot time!

January 21, 2012

Holy crap stuff everywhere!

This is what my work bench looks like right now. And this isn’t even scratching the surface. Next week I hope to have a real shoot and get some of this stuff documented, until then, please pardon my crappy home photography! What to do with all this stuff is also an issue. Should I sell it? Put it in boxes or on shelves? I’ve never really displayed work in my house at all, but I’d like to resolve to start. Maybe oddly, despite always making these little objects I’ve never really known what to do with them afterwards.

Put them… places?

So I’m making a resolution to start integrating art into my home a bit better.

Its a start.

-G

Early Spring- Killing frosts to pouring rain

January 20, 2012

Our cold, dry January has finally starting raining and storming, driving me inside. Well, for now. A door blew off of a hoop house yesterday, Remay has to be firmly attached (and re-attached) to tunnels, seedlings temporarily in a hoop house while the greenhouse gets purged need watering… but for now there’s a lull.

This is the extent of my activity right now.

The farm has been beautiful in the cold bright days, but we’ve badly needed the rain. The rain brought some warmer temperatures and hopefully my poor favas will mostly recover from the slapping they got from several hard freezes in the last week.

Frost makes favas need a nap.

So, I was sad for a bit, then ate the greens. If you’re not allergic to favas, the greens are like a sweet mild spinach. I’ve been eating them with olive oil and lemon pretty much every day. Its awesome.

I also got the carrots in and covered with Remay this week, which will soften the impact of the hard rain while still allowing water to pass through the fabric. Remay is my friend with carrots in particular- the fussy little guys really benefit from a blanket.

Here’s my carrot strategy- I fork the soil deeply, making it nice and light and fluffy. Then I water the bed so its nice and moist, then rake it lightly. Then I broadcast the seed, and then I broadcast a fine layer of light soil over the seeds. I do it this way because in my experience the issues with carrots is that they need to be moist ’cause they dry out easily, but they can’t force their way through a crust made by watering the soil after planting. Its a bit dorky to walk up and down with a bucket of topsoil, but it works! Carrots are one of those vegetables that everyone has a trick with- feel free to share yours.

Happy Spring, hope you’re keeping warm and dry.

-G

Hey. I have a blog.

January 15, 2012

…Thanks to the efforts of a good friend. These computers are fierce and wily beasts that I do not pretend to understand, and in fact setting this site up has been entirely beyond me. So here’s why I wanted it.

I make things. I’ve always made things. I went to school to learn how to make things better, with mixed results. I’ve worked for a high-end jewelry designer, and I’ve owned my own business and sold jewelry on consignment in boutiques and in galleries. I’ve taught art for years in summer camps and art centers, and dabble in all kinds of different media. I also grow things, have some formal growing-things type education and manage a Learning Garden and small-scale production farm serving my local school district.

My life, for the most part, is busy and happy. I love what I do and feel beyond lucky that I get to do it every day, for a living. A combination of dumb luck and working my ass off has given me some amazing gifts.So why do I feel I have a blog-shaped hole in my life?

I have two main reasons for wanting a blog. First, I want to demystify some of the craft world that I am a small part of. I often have people ask about my work, tell them I made it, and have them have zero idea what that means. A woman asked about this piece, once:

Not pre-assembled, or pre-tarnished. My neck sweat is responsible for the patina.

I told her I made it and she said; “That’s lovely- where did you get the bead?” This confused me. “Um, I made it,” I replied. I ended up awkwardly trying to explain about dapping blocks and sheet metal and soldering. This happens to me so often its really not funny anymore, though it is understandable. Few people really make anything by hand these days, so there’s no reason for someone to be familiar with how a person might go about it. I want to show what I do. I don’t do it perfectly, or the smartest or best way, and I certainly work differently than a lot of other artists whose methods are just as valid. But this is what I do and I’d like to be able to shed some light on it. I don’t like the culture of Trade Secrets in a lot of the craft world, and I don’t like the tendency to act like craft art is some exalted, incredibly inaccessible thing. Its not. Its often messy, in a lot of stages it looks like crap, and just about anybody can learn how to do it.

The other thing is, I suck at documenting my work. As an artist, you live and die by your portfolio. I always had this repeated to me, and I always ignored it. The slightly younger version of me was terrible at pacing. I did too much, all at once, and often finished things and handed them off without even a snap shot, much less a usable portfolio shot. So much work I have functionally lost because I have no record of it. Or I have terrible photos that should never have been and make perfectly good work look awful.

Silver and garnet plugs. Also my messy-as-fuck work bench.

Yeah. I’m pretty sure I took that picture the way I took most of them back then- by holding up my Mac laptop my school required I buy and using its photobooth app. I didn’t own a camera. Also my workbench was purple at that point in my life, and I had not yet developed the strict workbench hygiene that working with tiny expensive stones would soon teach me. These plugs were pretty cool- not that you can tell.

So I feel like having a blog might prod me into doing a better job of documenting my work.

Now that I’m a farmer for a living, I also find myself actually loving my art work again, and trying new things without pressure to produce. I’d like a record of my evolving relationship with craft art, especially as I have nefarious plans to mix media.

So that’s what I’m doing. Maybe someday I’ll have an Etsy and sell some of this stuff again, maybe not. I’ll be blogging this season on the farm, and might cross-post here, and hopefully have a balance between my art and gardening both on and off the internet.

We’ll see what happens.