Catching up with summer...

My last post was Rodeo Weekend? Yikes, it has been a long time between posts.  I suppose that is a direct result of crazy end-of-the-school-year goings-on.  In the last several weeks there have been finals schedules, promotion ceremonies, graduation, testing schedules, local/primary elections, the beginning of summer school, council and worship team meetings at church, and somewhere in between - working in the garden.  There has been much progress in that regard, which has brought me considerable satisfaction and peace in the midst of all the other chaos that has been anything but satisfying or peaceful.
When our local bond measure for our schools did not pass, the district had to begin the toughest spending cuts of all, even though much fat has been trimmed in each of the last few years.  Little remains to be cut, so now all district employees will be receiving a 7% paycut this fall, anticipated to last for the next 5 years.  Ouch. I was finally getting to the point at which "month-to-month" was beginning to change into "having a little for a rainy day".  Not yet, it seems.  The day after I heard the first rumor of this, I went out and spoke to the owner of a local small business about evening and weekend work.  Things are not looking good right now, so any solace I find in the garden, with the dog, horse, chickens, and critters is most welcome.  Beginning in the fall, there will be little time for anything but work, so my plan for the next 4 weeks this summer is to get many projects finished and hyper-organized so that I can take advantage of the wee hours of the morning (my favorite time of day) and my few evenings at home to spend with Sailor, Jericho, and the farm projects that make me happy. 
One of the things that makes me happy is my hilarious "Hillbilly" garden gate. It is constructed of scrap fence boards, broken garden stakes, small poultry screen, and a couple of hinges.  It is place awkwardly, but effectively, as it keeps the chickens out of my veggies (which was the point, of course)!

My pumpkin, melon, patty-pan, and cucumber seeds took FOREVER to sprout, but now everything I planted is coming up and it won't be long before I need to start canning like a mad-woman. The Tollhouse blackberries should be ready soon, and I won't make the same mistake I did last year: only bought one flat!  This time I will buy as many flats as they will let one person buy, and freeze what I cannot turn into jelly right away. That is, of course, if they make it home from the stand (mmmmm.... purple mouth).  They are, technically, boysenberries, and they are the most amazing berry I have ever eaten.  These berries are wild, but a few local farmers have managed to cultivate them in order to harvest small crops each year.  It is my hope to someday be blessed enough to have a small farm with some of these berries growing like crazy. Boysenberry jelly from Tollhouse berries, strawberries from the valley, corn from Fresno State, peaches and nectarines from Dad's trees, plus all the crops from my tiny little 8'x 8' garden should keep me PLENTY busy canning in the next few weeks!  Whoo hoo!

I made a funky rain-gutter garden on the east side of the dog kennel as an experiment.  It began with a panel of fencing left from the church fence that blew down at Christmas time - thank you Judy and Ron Aylward for helping me load the panel!  I knocked out a few boards to allow breezes and a view for Sailor (those were recycled for use in the rest of the garden), zip-tied the structure to the chain-link, screwed the rain gutter brackets to the fence, put up the gutters, and filled with soil and seed!  Recall, please, that I said "experiment". Umm, yeah.  The gutters are a bit too shallow for even basil and baby lettuce (much of which birds got when seeds).  I have now planted dianthus in the top, and think that I will transplant some thyme there and further research useful herbs that can tolerate a shallow root base.  I had to try!!!

I am very pleased with an impulse purchase, and if the photo ever loads from my phone you will get to see it! I bought one each of a green-blossomed and hot pink blossomed tobacco plant (nicotiana "perfume") and put them in the planter I had reserved for lemon verbena. I still would love a good place for the lemon verbena, but am not sorry about the impulse buy. They are beautiful, hardy, and smell quite lovely.  In fact, next spring I intend to plant more of them in with the scatter mix for the bees. 

Well, this post was largely about the mundane, but tomorrow I will post about the WONDERFUL visit I had with Aunt Jean and Uncle Mac up at the cabin on Father's Day.  That lovely evening provided much more interesting chat about family history that is far more provocative than scrap gates and radishes (oh, yeah - my radishes are deeeee-lish)!

G'nite!

Jericho - my sweet boy!

Rodeo Weekend...

Well, the 98th annual Clovis Rodeo is drawing to a close, and I confess to a little feeling of nostalgia.  My parents are members of the Rodeo Association, and spent Thursday and Friday nights up in the VIP booth watching the bull riding and other action. My brother Tom and his family, Mom & Dad, Uncle Tom and my cousin Debi's daughter, Christine, all joined me for the annual pancake breakfast at the Clovis Veteran's Memorial building then we walked over to the parade. We had a nice time, and it was fun to see some of my special needs students in the parade, a colleague sitting on the curb with her grandkids just across the street from us, and my cousin Alethia on the float for the restaurant at which she works. It reminded me that, even though Clovis has grown to over 90,000 people, and we mountain folks are not technically "Clovis", we really are pretty small town.

I am nostalgic, though, about the days when my brothers, cousins, and I were kids.  Rodeo weekend is always the last full weekend in April, so was around the time of PopPop Wright's birthday.  All my cousins on Dad's side of the family would come from all over the West Coast for a weekend of sunburns, food, playing, plotting, cowboys, falling asleep in cool sheets, and waking up knowing you were in the best place in the whole world - with family.

When we got up in the mornings Granny and Pop Pop often had a little routine: We were up and about, and - without fail - Granny was loooong up and busy, but Pop Pop would still be "asleep".  Granny would tell him it was time to get up, and he would snore louder. So Granny would get a cup of cold water, motion us to come in the room, then - just as Pop Pop was in the middle of a very convincing, dramatic snore - pour water on his face! He would sputter and cough and say something like, "Oh, is it time to get up?" as we shrieked with laughter. I don't remember how old I was when I figured out the whole thing was a game, but even then I still wanted to watch. Granny and Pop Pop together were quite a sweet team!

When we got old enough, Dad let us cousins help with the Lion's Club pancake breakfast.  We kids were probably the only ones there who were sober, even at 7:00 am, but boy -howdy! did those Lion's guys have fun making pancakes for the masses.  Some of them had pretty impressive skills with tossing a pancake through a basketball hoop or across the room onto someone's plate.  We children got to crack eggs into a HUGE stock pot one year.  That year, those eggs had extra crunch and calcium from the egg shells and seasoning from the arms of 4 - 7-year olds trying to retrieve the shells.  Mmmm - - delish! 

Our parents were not without humor, of course.  They were very convincing in their enthusiasm for turning the crank on the ice cream maker, and "Tom Sawyered" us into vying for a turn at the crank.  I can't wait to try that out on some unsuspecting kid with a vast excess of energy.  In the meantime, when I want homemade, I use my Cuisinart.

The crowd which assembled at 406 Sierra usually included the Christiansens (from Big Creek), and the Girards, and an occassional "old timer" from the mountains or Southern Cal Edison.  Granny and Pop Pop wove a tapestry of friendship, family, and goodness that, I have observed, continues to live in my cousins and brothers to this day.  We are not together as often as when we were kids, but there is an ease in our relationships that is a testament to the roots our Granny & Pop Pop gave us.  My cousin Terri and I would always pretend we were glued together when it came time for them to return to Cathedral City, and a few times we were persistent enough that our parents must have been annoyed. I think Granny and Pop Pop made that glue.

We loved the horses, cowboys, the whistle of the trains that used to run right through Old Town Clovis, the taste of fresh peaches and homemade ice cream, and the sound of our family's laughter as we stood just oustide the light of the front porch listening to the grown-ups share stories. Mostly, though, we loved being there - together.

The newest addition to our barn family... Meet Mr. Roo!  He is very chatty, pretty calm and sweet, and the ladies like him. Whoo hoo!
(or, rather, Cock-a-doodle-doo!)

Beginning the 2012 garden!

Welcome to my tiny little garden! I have had a small garden the last few summers, but this year am getting quite ambitious. I've done some reading up on square foot gardening, companion plants, and various other matters pertaining to growing veggies in our region.  It never ceases to amaze me that even within our "zone" we have so many micro-zones. I am going to rely far more heavily on experienced locals than other sources, but am also willing to experiment with a combination of all. With that said, I am NOT going to experiment with what I do and do not like, so my garden will contain many of the "usual" suspects (especially pickling cukes! I LOOOVE dill pickles...). The real experiment this year will be two-fold: how many vegetables can I grow successfully in this manner; and, how good will I be at succession plantings for fall/winter crops such as broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. 

The photos below show the early preparation of the garden... Enjoy the tour!

 Above: On the left is the dog kennel/chicken coop. There are ten 2'x2' raised beds (thanks, Dad!) in this view. Top center is a little seating area and the shallow area I use for seasonal bee-mix flowers. These are Susan's (landlord) hens - mine are wandering around the other side of the truck.

Above: the 4'x8' bed has served as a great herb garden for a few years (again, Thanks, Dad!) This is the view from the landing on the way up to the apartment-over-the-barn. Clearly, I have no problem growing oregano, thyme, or rosemary, and the chives, garlic chives (thanks Dora Cundiff!), and parsley are coming back. The gaping hole in the upper left of the bed is from the the Greek Oregano that I transplanted elsewhere since it was being overtaken by the Italian Oregano. There is a political commentary in there, I'm sure...

A little seating area for morning coffee or evening wine... Looks hillbilly right now, but when the pavers are in under the table, the ground cover fills in, and there are sweet peas climbing up the side of the chicken coop it will be lovely! Need to put pine shavings down in that coop, though, to avoid the stinkies.

A view from the north end, facing the barn. Getting excited about the next couple of weeks and getting the seed into the ground!

Welcome to the Barn!

Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod!

My little animal family lives over the barn on 40-acres in the Sierra.  We are, as the crow flies, almost equidistant (north to south) between Yosemite and Mt. Whitney (the highest peak in the lower 48!)  Our barn-home is at an elevation low enough to grow most things we like in our garden, but high enough to get a little snow in the winter.  I should be clear, now that the 3 chicks are big enough to be outside without a heat lamp, the only members of the family who live over the barn are the dog and I.  The cat lives wherever he wants, except inside.  The horse lives in the pasture, and the chickens live in the dog kennel-soon-to-be-converted-into-kennel/chicken coop. 
Our landlords are terrific - letting us have the dog, kennel, chickens, garden, etc, right outside the barn.  Susan works with my horse (because he's 4 and still not quite saddle broke and I need as much training as he) and has several other equine friends on the property to keep Jericho company. She also has a few cattle, including a bull who is almost as sweet as a dog (he'll lick you if you give him hay...)
First family update: My family = me, Sailor (my mini-Aussie), Jericho (my quarterhorse), Buster (the cat which tolerates us and eats HUGE rats), and Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod (my little pullet hens).  Winkin' is a Barred Rock, Blinkin' is an Australorp, and sweet little Noddy is an Easter Egger.  Sometimes we have raccoons, deer, bats, coyotes, mountain lions, fox, bobcats, skunk, and rattlesnakes, but they do not live here.  They simply visit.  Rattlesnakes sometimes die here, a just consequence for entering a certain proximity to, well, me or my dog! .  Occassionally the bats will come inside, and I tend to get a little girly when they fly at me, but I'm not too wimpy to get them out by myself. 
I love living on a farm, and hope to have one of my own someday.  Right now, the only thing missing from our little family is a hot guy and a couple of kids (the people kind, not the goat kind).  Hmmm... the goat kind are alright too.  Probably cheaper than the people kind...
Anyway - welcome to the barn!