The shortened days of December were tough; it’s a tiring time of year for me.  But it was brightened by the fact that we were still eating 90 % of our food out of the garden and out of storage, and I made it though the darkest night of the solstice.

As we hit the middle of January, our produce habits have reversed–I’m down to my last few small onions, the potatoes are already sprouting (not in a cold enough spot), I dug up the last turnip today, and the Skipper came up with what he thinks were the last 2 parsnips earlier in the week.  The chickens finally got underneath the row cover veil that has kept the salad greens safe for the last few months, and they demolished the last of the arugula and spinach in a matter of hours!  I didn’t begrudge them their opportunity for a last real feast of greens; I’ve resigned myself to the reality that our own foods have become the supplement to the store-bought staples for the next few months.

But as the days steadily get longer, marked by the extended times that the timer to the automatic door of the chicken coop get set to, the spring chores are looming, and the countdown to the planting season has begun.

I’ve done my seed inventory (taken stock of what I have on hand from the previous 2 years), and made my list.  Thankfully, this year my list is quite short–I just need to top up a few veggies that gobble up seeds like peas and spinach and add some of the crops we want to expand, like everbearing strawberries and asparagus.  I’m thinking the most efficient way to meet my needs this time might be heading to a local Seedy Saturday rather than paying shipping charges for just a few seed packets.  Although I love the idea of the big seed swap meet-up, I found the one in the city way too big and overwhelming a place to actually buy seeds the year I went.  But I needed a lot of everything then; now I’m just looking for a few specialty items.

The sun shone today, and I wandered around the yard trying to assess everything that I want to do.  There is lots of pruning to get to, lots of clearing out and digging up.  We want to take out a couple of trees, and there are some large trellises that are falling apart that we will likely just take down as well.  I have a feeling that those large moves will change the whole feeling of the garden’s space so much that I’m reluctant to plan any more until I actually see the new layout.  It’s exciting to get really stuck in and feel how much space we really may have here, but it’s a dauting amount of work, too, especially tucked into weekends.

So it’s an odd time, winter here; not really a season for rest–though there is a month or so of that, thank goodness!–more of a time of a delicate tension between indoor work, eating lots of soups and slow-cooked meals from the foodstuffs in storage, and feeling the pull of spring just a few weeks away.  Our first year here, February was really fine, as it can be, and I planted peas under cover in the first week!  I likely won’t be that eager again, but at the turn of the month I will need to get digging out anything that needs to be moved, spreading manure and compost, and starting the early seeds on the heat mats in the greenhouse.

With 2 years under my belt, I feel like I’m settling into the seasonal cycles more fully.  I’m no longer disappointed to be eating from the grocery store, as I know with some more practice that will become less necessary.  I can feel that window of dependency shrinking each year, and though I know we won’t be fully meeting our needs again until May or June, the fresh food will start to creep back into our diets much sooner than that.  Asparagus, chives, parsley, rhubarb, nettles…there’s so much to look forward to in the coming months.

We culled a rooster last weekend, and that felt like a primal winter thing to do as well.  As the core flock settles in for the winter, we’re also thinking about what broody hens the spring might bring!  We have no specific plans for chicks, but we’ll see what happens…our neighbour today was talking very soundly about allowing the hens to hatch out whatever chicks they like and then using the results either for replacement layers or for meat birds.  Which means strategizing about our space again…Oh to have 3-5 flat, green acres!

So here I am, in the dreamy paradox of a west coast winter evening.  We’re warm by the woodstove fire inside; the chickens have their feathers puffed up and are snuggled up together in the coop.  We’re measuring out the winter staples for a few more months, while wishing for a few warmer days in the coming weeks so that we can work outside getting ready for the burst into growth that’s just around the corner.

How about you?  Can you smell the spring yet?  Or are you in one of those strange places that has yet to see winter yet?

It was a busy end to the teaching semester, as always.  I have now embraced and accepted that I do not get any time off before Christmas, but that I will often get a week off between Christmas and New Year’s, like everyone else.  The new semester has now begun, but there is a little bit of easing in this week; ironically, I need to catch up on my sleep!

Some highlights of the holiday season:

Our good friend yarnsalad came to stay with us in early December as she waits for her immigration to the US to go through.  Poor thing has been trying to reunite with her husband in North Carolina for 7 months!  I’m mindful of Sharon Astyk’s belief that in an expensive-energy future and a potentially depressed economy, many of us may find ourselves either on the move or bringing more people into our households.  Though that cause does not apply here, the temporary addition to the family is a useful exercise to see how our household resources can stretch.  So far, reasonably well–the new woodstove means we can absorb some increased energy use, the garden and eggs have meant we can absorb some extra food costs.  Friend is more than happy to contribute time and labour, chicken sitting, baking and general good humour, and offers other supplies as she can afford them.  So far, everyone is happy with the arrangements.  But it is a bit of an eye-opener.  One person of simple needs doesn’t sound like it would have much of an impact, but as YS put it, in a household of 2, “I’m 50% more!”  We’ll miss her lots when she finally gets her “go-date.”

Our Christmas rituals:

Since my father passed away a few years ago, and since my family moved in a couple of different directions, the Skipper and I have struggled a bit to find the right balance of Christmas celebrations.  We decided to let go of gifts altogether several years ago and have never looked back.  We have a couple of people that we put together a special little food basket for–this year it was all from the garden!–and we did buy one small present for my young nephew.  But other than that, Christmas is Skype calls and good food and maybe a bird-watching walk.  Some years we have tried joining extended family for their Christmas feasts, other years we have tried doing nothing Christmas-related at all.  This year, I think we got the balance right, but mostly because Christmas fell on the weekend!  Christmas eve morning, I went outside and gathered some cedar boughs and holly, and made a centerpiece with a candle on the dining table.  Later that day we brought a jar of homeade sauerkraut to the Ukrainian-themed dinner with my sister’s wonderful in-laws.  We came home late, sated with family, friends, and fabulous food.  The next day we slept in, built a fire, had a lovely breakfast, Skyped with the family, and then went for a sail in the bay in the sunshine.  Then we came home, warmed up by the fire and made a dinner of lobster, bread, cheese, and a salad from the garden.  Heaven!

Getting organized for the New Year: When we moved into this house, we got the main parts of the house painted and changed lights and other small fixtures.  Then we went outside and never came back in!  My office has been one of the rooms that never really got any attention.  This past week, I decided that needed to change.  I hemmed and hawed over paint colours, did a MASSIVE cull of my books, and cleared out a closet.  There’s still more to do, but the walls have been painted, the furniture rearranged, and a peaceful workspace created.  Hurray!  As long as I don’t open the closet which houses the “to-file” piles…

Garden Reflections:  I’ll try to do a more detailed year-in-review garden post soon.  But suffice it to say, we continued to eat 90% of our produce out of the garden through the end of December.  I’m so proud!  My most important realization (besides plant earlier, plant more!) is that had my winter cabbages and brussel sprouts and broccoli actually produced something (they were a total bust), we would have little trouble meeting our veg needs well into the new year.  As I had a fantastic spring/summer brassica crop, the winter garden will get my more detailed attention in 2012.  A very attainable goal that will make such a difference!  The garden resources will last another month, supplemented with the grocery store; we’re still eating a little salad, a few turnips and parsnips, a bit of kale, and several leeks.  The storage onions are just about gone, the potatoes are sprouting already (!), and the apples are going soft in the garage and desperately need processing, but there is a TON of garlic, lots of tomatoes, green beans, pickles, berries, and some crab and salmon.  And then there are all those Christmas leftovers and the desire to pare down after all the holiday overeating!

Looking ahead to 2012:

I have no real resolutions, per se.  But we have no shortage of projects that we are considering: in the interest of making our existing veggie beds more productive and potentially adding more, we are contemplating taking down a few trees and digging up several big shrubs.  We need to add some wood storage and improve the chickens’ “summer pasture.”  And there are a number of home improvements to be done.

The biggest shift for me in the year ahead though is psychological.  I have finally become permanent faculty in the university here (hurray!!!), which has opened up the possibility of real financial stability and security.  I say the possibility, because the Skipper would REALLY like to make some big changes in his work life, so the overall picture may not change much!  But the shift in my position has calmed a lot of my “project for the future” energy, and I’m recalibrating.  I suspect there will be a future post on “Why I will not be Becoming a Farmer.”

In the meantime, we have chicken chores to get to–a rooster needs culling and the rest of the flock needs worming.  But the poultry are happy and reasonably content this winter, and we’re still getting 3-4 eggs a day from our 7 layers.  We’re ALL looking forward to longer, brighter days.

Happy New Year to your flocks and families!

Well, that’s the Skipper and me.  Only not the way you might think.  Yes, I’m the one who’s always cold, and he’s the one with the built-in furnace.  But when it comes to heating the house, my internal environment critic goes around turning down the heat until it’s just barely comfortable, and then putting on sweaters, and the Skipper is the one turning up the heat behind me and putting on his t-shirt.

The paradox has driven me crazy for years.  I never felt like it was worth burning energy to heat a whole space when I’m going to be cold anyway.  And I could never figure out how my husband, the same man who looks outside to the coldest, blusteriest, stormiest day and says excitedly, “let’s go sailing!” wouldn’t be able to keep warm at an environmentally-friendly temperature.

This fall, some pennies dropped.  I asked the Skipper one day, “did you grow up in a cold house?”  This was the same house that I knew had no running hot water and only 2 electrical circuits and was insulated with newspaper.  “You mean did we wake up in the morning with frost and icicles on the inside of the bedroom walls?  Watching our breath? Umm…yeah.”  So now, as an adult, the Skipper hates a cold house.

I also realized that I was acting out of some built-in habits and beliefs, namely that being “good to the environment” = being uncomfortable.  Hmmm…Calvinism anyone?!  Deep in my Scottish Protestant bones is still the visceral belief that if I’m not suffering in this lifetime, I’m not doing it right!

So, ’round and ’round we went, the Skipper and I, me trying to suffer, he trying not to, each with our own moral arguments, up and down 1-2 degrees on the digital thermostat.  But no more.

Drumroll please…..

The woodstove is in!

Our house was originally designed for a gas fireplace: there is a chimney box framed in that was then hidden behind drywall.  No gas line ever arrived at the property, but we’ve intended to put in a woodstove since we moved in.  This fall, we decided we were ready to take the plunge, and the Skipper took down the section of drywall, tiled a hearth, and we found a stove that would fit the space and a company to install it.  It’s been in and operating for almost a week, and though the space still needs some finishing touches (paint), the experience of heating with wood has already been transformative.

Forget fighting over whether we “should” be uncomfortable at 20 (68) degrees or whether we spend the money and burn the hydro at 23 (73).  Now we’re both warm by the fire at 25 (77)!  My sweaters are off, guilt-free; the throw blankets I just got are now purely decorative.  The tension in my shoulders that stays until summer comes back is unwinding.  And there’s more!

Our house was already pretty efficient, with a high-efficiency electric furnace and a heat pump, so it will take a few years for the stove to pay for itself, in theory.  Skipper had the system tricked so that the heat pump worked on its own, without the furnace, most of the time.  But the numbers are staggering nonetheless.  Running the furnace (which we do use, once the temperatures are around and below freezing) uses in the 20,000 watts range; using the heatpump takes us down to closer to 10,000 watts.  At the moment, we’re running the blower fan on the stove (50 watts?), and a ceiling fan (200 watts?), and then when the main room gets too hot, we turn on the furnace fan to pull the heat downstairs.  It uses less than 450 watts. So less than 1kw altogether.  Amazing!  Then there are the auxiliary benefits: just like in the summer, it seems RIDICULOUS to use the clothes dryer when the house is so toasty (I know, we could have done this regardless, but we were lazy), and staying by the fire is so nice that we’re not spread out around the house in different heated and lit spaces on different computers.  When I’m cold, I also take longer, hotter showers to help me warm up.  Add to this that the Skipper is scrounging pallets and other waste wood at his jobsite, and there are a LOT of wins here.  For the first time in a while, we’re looking forward to getting our power bill!

There’s nothing like a warm house…especially when it’s guilt-free.

I don’t know how all these things are interconnected, but I’m grateful that we seem to be entering a time of more financial security.  My job is finally stabilizing after many years of being contingent and unpredictable.  We recently received a small, unexpected, windfall that allowed us to pay off the biggest chunk of the debt that we have slowly accrued over the last few years.  Psychologically I no longer feel that I need to pay such desperate attention to the bottom line.

So maybe that’s why I’m finally getting the lesson that I’ve read so often but never fully, viscerally, grasped: the old adage, “we can’t afford to buy cheap.”

A few weeks ago, it came time to replace one of our vehicles.  Skipper had been nursing his 2000 second-hand Chevy Venture-with-all-the-seats-gone “work truck” for more months than we had dared hope.  We had wrestled with what to do to replace it; did we prioritize fuel economy and price and just buy a beater that cost pennies to run but might suck up time and money to maintain?  Did we spend less now and then have to replace another vehicle in a year or two?  Did we get a more practical homestead truck even though the commuter fuel economy might not be there?  Did we buy something new even though it would mean taking on debt?  We went around in circles for months.

Finally, with the small windfall taking care of a big debt, we decided to invest in a new small pick-up: a 2011 Toyota Tacoma that gets better mileage than the van, and that Skipper can drive for the next ten+ years.  It should have felt scary to sign the papers, but instead it feels great.  We’ve invested in quality, we haven’t spent more than we can afford, and we haven’t been “penny-wise, pound-foolish”, making the decision on the short term bank balance over long term value.

Yesterday afternoon, I decided I wanted to go shopping for some new clothes.  I don’t do that very often, but 2-3 times a year, I take stock of what I need and do a big buy of staple pieces.  Aside from underwear and t-shirts, the last time I bought clothes for work was at last year’s boxing week sales, and I’ve been feeling like I’m wearing the same 2 pairs of pants and 2 sweaters every day.  As it gets colder, my choices have felt more limited, and suddenly the winter months ahead are looking dreary, style-wise!

So after work, I headed out to a mall to consider my options.  I went through all of my usual haunts, but left them all unsatisfied, not even trying anything on.  I was looking for another pair of warm pants and another sweater, but EVERYTHING I looked at was made of acrylic and polyester.  I realized that I just couldn’t do it anymore.  I know if I buy that attractive acrylic sweater, I’m going to sweat when I wear it, and after 2 weeks, it will be covered in pills and I won’t wear it again.  And it’s not like I was cheaping out–anything that looked appropriate for my age and profession was still close to $100.  And, of course, the frustrating thing about buying most women’s clothing is that all of it is made overseas in questionable conditions, no matter how much you spend.

So I headed to the department store in the mall and started browsing through the designer labels–something I NEVER do, assuming that I can’t afford anything.  I finally found 2 lines that actually had sweaters made with natural fibers: Ralph Lauren and Jones New York.  Both had attractive sweaters made of actual wool and/or cotton, and to my surprise, the prices weren’t really that much more, especially with some sales on.  I bought 2 cardigans and a merino turtleneck.  Can you tell it’s been threatening snow?

Perhaps my biggest surprise was how unfazed I felt about the decision to spend more to get better quality.  I wasn’t looking for bargains, I was looking for what I wanted.  Because I finally clued in that the wardrobe that I’ve been relying on this winter so far is made up of staple pieces that I have worn for more than a year already and that still look good.  They are not disposable.  And just like with our groceries, I don’t shop regularly.  If I invest in good staples, I don’t have to throw them out and get more, and the simple fact that I don’t have to go into a mall every month saves me money over the long term.

And you know what else?  Just like with the garden, and the truck, shopping for clothes this way actually REMOVES from my life something that would otherwise require regular mental attention. Making decisions based on quality means I spend less time tied up in knots over making decisions.  Yep, I’m reducing stress and freeing up time to spend doing other things.

I was talking to a friend the other day, who had spent some time that weekend with people who were uber-green and frugal.  “They even buy all their clothes at thrift stores!” she exclaimed.  “I just am not willing to do that!”

We talked about the fact that when we make changes in our habits because we feel we have to, or out of fear or guilt, those changes just don’t take.  But it’s amazing how when you make choices based on joy, there is an inevitable ripple effect, and before you know it, you’re changing all kinds of habits without even noticing.  The more I go down this green path, the more I can see that making choices based on joy is the only way to go, perhaps the only way we’re going to get meaningful social change in the world.

I know we still have many inconsistencies between how we live and how we would like to live.  We commute, we live in a larger house than two people really need, we use too much electricity, and we often forget to bring our re-usable shopping bags to the store.  But we are *really* happy.  And the changes keep rippling through.  We shop less and less.  We eat better and better.  We’re investing in infrastructure and thinking in lifetime cycles instead of marketing cycles.  I feel more and more creative and resourceful–the opposite of how advertising is designed to make us feel, and a rebellion in and of itself.  We spend more time on our most important relationships, and feel less guilty about all the things we’re NOT doing.  I’m more focused on forgiveness and acceptance than on anxiety about the unknown and the out-of-my-control.  And as a result, the future has never felt so peaceful.

So how about you?  Are you making changes through joy, without even noticing?  Are you way ahead of me on being frugal by spending more, less often?

It’s been an interesting few weeks thinking about the price of food.

On the whole, we’re not doing the food production thing to save money. That’s especially clear from our choice to purchase organic chicken feed and scratch (treats) at 30-50% more than a locally produced, high-quality (even non-GMO) feed. It’s also clear by our choice to build new raised beds from cedar, build a chicken coop with mostly new materials, build cedar compost bins, etc. There are MUCH cheaper ways to do all these things, but we have the luxury of outside work, and so expense is not our first criteria (though maybe second!).

At the same time, when I first got the idea to try to produce as much of our own food as possible, part of my motive was to see how much of a dent that would put in our monthly expenses. At the time, the equation of fewer expenses=fewer hours spent working for money seemed clear and important. That first summer, I was unemployed, on EI for half of my regular income, and we reduced our food expenses dramatically. What I learned was how many non-food related expenses we had! I went back to work.

As I’ve focused on food production for reasons other than financial though, something interesting has definitely happened: we’re spending far less money on food.  But it’s not because we’re managing to produce everything we could possibly need–I’m certainly not growing or grinding our own flour, and there are no milk goats in sight (yet).  The biggest reason we’re saving?  We’re not going into the grocery store.

If I ever needed proof that shopping in stores means you always leave having spent more than you intended, I’ve got it now.  Our pantry is full: we have potatoes, vegetables, some fruit, and eggs from the garden, we have cases of  tuna and maple syrup sourced through friends; the freezer is full of seafood.   When we need to go to the store it’s for something specific: milk, bread, flour, nuts.   Which means that rather than doing a once-a-week shopping trip together, we just stop at the most convenient store and pick up the thing we need.  Instead of coming out with a bill for hundreds of dollars, it’s often just $20 here and there.

Beyond this unexpected frugality, I’m slowly realizing that the garden has been insulating us from dramatically rising food costs.  In fact, where I used to track prices regularly at the grocery store, because I pay less attention these days, I’ve only just been clueing in about what most people have probably been anxiously watching for many months.  You just don’t get what you used to for the same money.   But because we’re producing so many of our own staples, those increases have not had a major impact on our overall budget, thank goodness.

So is the garden saving us money?  Is it cheaper to produce your own?  I’m sure that if we were to calculate the money spent on soil, raising chicks for 6 months before they start laying, etc, we are NOT producing our own for less than the grocery store.  But once those infrastructure costs are removed from memory, day-to-day we are definitely saving money.  When January hits and the traditional “hunger gap” begins until May crops begin to produce, we will notice it.  I am highly motivated to keep working on our year-round supplies!

At the same time, it was an odd experience to realize over the last few weeks that the idea of spending $5 on a dozen organic eggs was just too much for some to wrap their heads around–or just plain unaffordable for others.  It was the first time I thought about food prices from the producer side.  It’s all very well for us to put as much money as we have into our food production; we’re not trying to make a profit or any income.  A basic calculation showed that a dozen eggs costs us about $4.25 just for feed; $5 seemed a fair price to account for all the other costs (and a nice round number substantially cheaper than the $6.40 currently charged for organic, free-range eggs at the grocery store).  But when it comes to selling, the old adage is still true: it’s only worth what someone else is willing to pay.

But all of this has me thinking again about whether food is, or should be, a commodity.  The garden has profoundly changed my typical sense of myself as a food “consumer” (in the monetary sense).  But that doesn’t remove food from still being something that we buy and sell and will likely always need to use as a means of exchange.  Once again, transforming my relationship with food is transforming how I feel like I fit into the wider world…And it’s sure fun wondering where that might take me next!

You know how you have these great ideas? I’m going to grow tomatoes from seed!  Let’s get chickens! I wonder if we could grow some different hops to make beer?  You know the ones.  Where you think, it will be so easy!  I’ll just order me a packet of tomato seeds/a trio of chicks/ a hop plant from the garden store.

And then you find out that each of these ideas has a miraculous, fascinating history and diversity entangled in historical drama and ancestral culture, and you require not only much time to explore and research, but also MUCH MORE SPACE than you originally intended.

Well, time to add garlic to that list.

Last year, I realized just how easy garlic was to grow after we harvested the volunteers that we didn’t even know we had.  Last fall, I headed to the garden store and bought the standard garlic for these parts, a porcelain hard-neck variety with impressively big bulbs developed on Gabriola Island.  I planted 30 or so cloves, and then realized I was being ridiculous–we needed way more than 30 bulbs of garlic to get us through the year!  So I went to a local farm and bought another few bulbs and planted another 35 or so cloves, so that not only would we have enough for the year, but enough seed garlic to start again this year.

And it was a great success!  I grew beautiful (if slightly rust-affected from the July rains), big bulbs that I happily cured and stored in the pantry.  I picked out my biggest ones (HUGE!) and replanted 70 or so cloves to be able to do the same again next year.  Job Done.

Then one day, I was talking to my neighbour, who told me that her hard-neck garlic hadn’t stored all that well, and that she had run out of garlic in the early spring.  Oh no!  I did a little research into the rabbit hole that is information about the history and types of garlic and came out with 2 realizations: 1) garlic history and families and breeding is incredibly complicated and I could spend a lifetime reading and never fully get my head around it, and 2) I needed me some soft-neck garlic.

A quick distillation of the facts I was able to retain: hard neck garlic has big cloves, produces yummy scapes all spring, but stores for a shorter period of time (5 months?); while softneck garlic has smaller cloves, it doesn’t produce scapes, but that means you can braid it for storage, and it stores longer.

Where was I going to find some soft-neck garlic?

Well, the Skipper and I pass a farm stand every day that is just up the road from us.  They mostly sell animal products and flowers at the stand, so we had never stopped in.  But a couple of weeks ago, we pulled in for a relish tasting that they had up.  (Yum!)  We watched their beautiful Narragansett turkeys range about (surely we could make some room for a couple of these?!) and admired the free-ranging chickens.  Adele, one of the farmers, came out and chatted with us for ages about the farm and everything they do.  Skipper bought some awesome wool socks made from her heritage-sheep wool.  Then we noticed the garlic.

Adele had 4 or 5 kinds out, all with bewildering names.  But I spotted the keyword: soft-neck.  Turns out she was selling the small cloves there inexpensively for kitchen use, but that she had a barn full of curing seed garlic that she could probably go through if I was interested.  She gave me a copy of their garlic list, and I latched on to the only name that meant anything to me from the soft-necks: Creston.  Creston is a town in the BC interior where I have cousins.  It’s as good a criteria as any!  We laughed as she agreed that when going through massive lists of available types, sometimes how the name appeals to you is the only way to narrow your choices.

I took a head of the Creston garlic home to taste, and agreed to come back for seed garlic.  Skipper and a friend and I later compared the flavour of the Creston to the porcelain that I had grown.  Wow! They were so different!  Who knew?

When I went back to meet Adele last weekend to pick up the seed garlic, I had no idea what I was getting into.  I mentioned to her that we had been amazed at the different flavours and heats available, and wouldn’t mind experimenting a little more.  She said the magic words, “well, I think I have some other types handy in the house…”  I jumped at the bait.  I came home with 5 different types of garlic: a bulb to taste and another to plant of each type  if we liked it.

WARNING: IF YOUR GARDEN BEDS ARE ALREADY PLANNED AND PLANTED FOR THIS YEAR, DO NOT LOOK AT THE PHOTOS BELOW!

From the list I had drooled over,

I can't believe I restrained myself to 5!

I picked out the Creston soft-neck, then 2 more Rocambole varieties:

Chinese Pink

and

Cuban Purple

The Chinese Pink is described as:

“Very early season.  Garlic lovers rejoice!  When fall planted, this extra-early-maturing variety will put fresh garlic back into your … recipes a whopping 4-6 weeks ahead of almost all others… in late May to early June.”

How cool is that?! I started to realize that if I really got organized, I could plant different varieties to stagger harvest and storage times in order to have a steady stream all year round…

The Cuban Purple:

“In most years, the darkest of the Creole garlics, … a distinctly purple colour that can be almost a dusty blackish at times.  TASTE=WOW! a rich, earthy garlicky flavour with very little pungency.”

We confirm; the taste is awesome.  It has a bit of bite at first, but then quickly mellows into sweetness.  It was almost overpowered in a salad dressing, but I bet would be amazing in an aioli.  See? You need different garlic for different dishes!

Next up is a Purple Striped variety, which are described as having 8-12 cloves per bulb that keep well.  I chose the lovely Siberian Red Stripe:

Siberian Red Stripe

Are you ready? I’ve saved the best for last.  It’s an heirloom French variety that literally took my breath away when Adele brought it out.  If she’d brought it out first, I might not have taken anything else!  We have confirmed that it has a fantastic flavour, with the perfect amount of punch for salad dressings.  Adele’s catalogue description:

“a French creole variety that is medium-hot… loved for its unique flavour described as a “deep sort of muskiness.”  Harvests mid-late season and stores 7-8 months.”

Except for the temptation of some of the others on the list that I may have to return to for next year (Tibetan! Tuscan! Korean! Persian Star! Yugoslavian!), this last one I think may become our signature, house garlic.  ‘Cause you know, everyone needs a signature garlic.

Drumroll please…

The spectacular "Rose du Tarne"

Do you see why I’m in trouble?

So now the real challenge begins.  I clearly need a bed set aside for all of these types to be grown as experiments.  As it is, though, I don’t have space to rotate my tomatoes and potatoes this year unless we create some new beds… so…time to reorganize the garden to create more vegetable beds!  And I guess garlic will go on my Christmas gift list for next fall, while I whittle down my choices so that I can keep to the same 70 or so bulbs that should get us through the year and that I can fit in the space I have.  Hope I haven’t created the same problems for you!

If you’d like to contact Adele or get a copy of her dangerous, corrupting garlic list, her family’s Legacy Farm (no website) is on Koksilah Rd, with the red roofs, just as you turn off the Island Highway.  I can pass along her email if anyone is interested.

I have a mixed relationship with fall.  I live for the heat and abundance of the summer.  I’m one of those annoying cold-all-the-time-skinny women, and in this maritime climate, I don’t get days very often when I’m willing to leave the house without a sweater.  So when the real heat hits, I rejoice, and then I mourn its passing painfully as the days get noticeably shorter.

Once I accept that fall is truly here, though, I can acknowledge and celebrate its beauty.

And fall has lots to offer!  The summer harvest still trucks along, even though at this point I’m pretty sick of eating the tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers that have been our mainstay now for 3 or so months.  Their harvest has been good, though, and there are jars of sauce and pickles in the pantry, as well as bags of frozen whole tomatoes and blanched beans in the freezer.

As with the rest of the year, I’m looking forward to the transition into the next crops: fall carrots, chard, kale, leeks, and salads.  Right now, those precious crops are getting as big as I can get them before the weather really turns; I’m hiding them under row cover to give them as much warmth as I can.

In other good news, after a non-harvest last year, our apple trees this fall are LOADED.

Now the fun begins with what to do with them all for the months to come!  The freezer is full of berries, but those will mostly become jam, so the apples are really our only homegrown fruit crop until the rhubarb pokes its big fronds up in the spring.  I see many pies and perhaps a dehydrator in our future…. not sure yet about applesauce.

Sadly, it looks like I’ll be headed to the farm or to the store for my fall cabbages and brussel sprouts.  Though my winter leeks look good, yet again I just don’t think I got these brassicas in the ground early enough.    I also don’t think this bed is getting enough sun in the summer–so there are some shrubs and trees that I’m eyeing dangerously! Note the bounteous weeds and make-shift chicken proofing in the photo below…

It’s an in-between time, this autumn season.  The Skipper and I start to turn our attention inside, to the house projects we might get done over the winter.  We start the fall clean-up outside, which enables us to see the bones of the garden that had disappeared in all the lush summer growth, and we start to strategize about which projects might get tackled before next summer.  On the list for this year, inside and out: a woodstove (hurray!), painting and decorating my office, reconfiguring and adding some new veggie beds (which may mean taking down some trees–more another day!), siding the Skipper’s small shop.  There are always more projects than we can tackle in a year, but those feel like the top contenders at the moment!

But in the midst of all this planning and reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, there is still bounty coming in that needs dealing with!

  Sigh.  Looks like a big batch of green tomato bread and butter pickles, and maybe a batch of relish or chutney.  Christmas presents anyone?!

These last days of summer are zooming by so fast it is literally making my head spin.  There have been visits and social times, big changes in my work circumstances (and seemingly new ones every day!), and in the midst of it all, the constant rhythm of harvesting, canning, crabbing, freezing.

I’m reflecting all the time, and mostly grateful and overjoyed that this is my life.  But anytime someone asks me how life is these days, or asks about adding one more thing to the whirlwind, the answer I hear myself give is that life is “crazy” and “crazy busy”.

I’ve become a little worried that when a friend hears that, s/he might think that this means we are overwhelmed, or that what we’ve taken on is too much or maybe too challenging for any less ambitious person.  And maybe it is, a little.  It’s true that when friends or family ask me about going to a movie or a play, I can barely remember the last time I did such a thing.  And squeezing in a trip somewhere–even a weekend trip to the mainland to visit family–feels nearly impossible most of the time.   Because we’re just too busy.

I regularly feel the tension of trying to live a more direct, less outsourced life within the requirements of a twenty-first century world.  The last time that the mass population grew, harvested, hunted, processed and strored its own food (let alone produced much of its own clothing, energy, or household goods), the world was a very different place.  Society may be dynamic and always changing, but it is also a whole, integrated system.  Back in the days before industrial production, gender roles meant that women devoted ALL of their time to managing household systems, they had many children and extended family as labour, and men earned the supplemental necessary cash.  City-working men were paid salaries that recognized that they had families to support. (In fact, one of the reasons that women still earn less is because when they entered the workforce en masse, male business owners rationalized that working women were adding extra money to the household income, not supporting children, and so they didn’t need to be paid as much!)

I was reading yesterday about haying, and how in traditional communities, every other task needed to be dropped when the right weather hit for haying.  One trouble today is that all of society doesn’t work around these cycles any more, but farming often still does.

In no way do I romanticize the past.  There are excellent reasons why families encouraged their children to leave farms and find a “better” life, and I am exceedingly grateful for the running hot water and high-efficiency washing machine and dishwasher that my mother-in-law raised three children without.  And I’m even more grateful that I am not bound or chained to life and behavioural expectations based on being female.

I’m recognizing more and more that what we’re doing here on the Backyard Homestead is not going back in time, though it might look that way, and it is often inspired by pre-industrial practices.  Instead, Skipper and I are learning and adventuring into the future, into uncharted territory.  We are successfully growing a significant portion of our vegetables.  This year it’s 100% from June and counting.  We are learning to harvest wild foods as a significant portion of our protein: salmon and crab are now staples in our diet.  Our chickens are providing eggs and the occasional roaster.

We are also building what Sharon Astyk calls a Real Economy.  This is her term for the bartering and trading and relationships that have sustained humanity through all time, even in times where contemporary economies collapse and by all rights populations should not be able to survive (Cuba, the Soviet Union).  So through relationships with friends or friends of friends, we now are stocked with locally caught and canned (and some smoked) tuna, and cases of maple syrup from Quebec.  Our neighbours are getting a milk cow this fall, and we’ll figure out a trade for enough milk to make butter and cheese (wow!).  We’re giving away our excess produce to everyone who stops by!

All of this feels like resilience, like diversity, like networks of security.  It’s also delicious.

And all of it takes substantial amounts of time and labour.  Sustaining life was once an almost-full-time job, a job that was the primary focus of the family and of wider society.  Today, no matter how I crunch the numbers, how much we simplify our lives, earning enough income in the form of money is the necessary full-time job, and certainly is the focus of wider society.  That’s the reality of where and how I live.  I have, technically, other options; Skipper and I COULD go live somewhere cheaper, we could live in a trailer or other cheaper home, we could forgo the Energy-Star appliances and new materials for raised beds and drip irrigation.  But we don’t want to live far away from family, we want a home large enough to accommodate visiting family and friends; we love this climate and the culture and community here.

And so we celebrate the privilege of having enough work to have the freedom to make the choices we have, and we fill in our life-sustaining homestead in around the edges.  Which does take up all the hours in the day.  But all this busy-ness is purposeful and joyful.  The satisfaction of the filling pantry and freezer, the routine of evenings spent making jam and shelling crab, of eating simple meals that are often the product of our own land and labour is richly meaningful.  And we still have time for friends and for sharing the bounty with visitors and neighbours.  And I know now that come winter, the dark, cold evenings will bring time for movies and music, for cuddling, relaxing, and for dreaming about the spring to come.

And THAT’s the message that I want my friends and family to hear.  Not that I’m too busy.  Not that life is simple and decluttered and zen-like in its minimalism.  But that life is FULL.  So full it’s brimming over all of the time and there aren’t enough hours in the day to enjoy it all!  So much fun and so satisfying that you should try a little of this kind of life too!

Most of the year, “eating out of the garden” for me means just that: the garden is my grocery store, and I just harvest as I need supplies for a meal.  I actually find myself forgetting that I even have produce in the fridge, which is dangerous! But this time of year, the produce doesn’t work that way.  Lettuce can just sit in the ground for a couple of weeks, but tomatoes can’t sit on the vine.  It’s a new phase in the cycle, and I’m often sluggish with the transitions.

So I was unexpectedly grateful when my Mom came to visit this weekend, and ended up kick-starting me into preservation mode.  Mom’s a hugely experienced cook, gardener, and spent much of her early career in commercial food service, which turned her into a self-proclaimed “food factory.”

Together we harvested, blanched and froze green beans and tomatoes, and she turned the extras into sauce for eating that day.  She boiled up pickling brine for the beets that had turned into giants in the garden, and explained in detail how easy refrigerator bread and butter pickles are to make.  She also made mayonnaise with me, so that I could get the technique down and get used to using our fresh eggs for this task!  After she left, I was motivated enough to keep going; I canned the sauerkraut that had been fermenting for the last few weeks and started digging up pickle recipes.

I’m a confident and experienced cook, and none of these tasks is difficult.  I like to remember that our ancestors did all this with few recipes and technologies, so it can’t be that hard!  But getting started isn’t always easy, and feeling overwhelmed as the dining table starts to get swallowed by the vegetables covering it is often my first reaction.  So it was great to have Mom come and just get stuck in without hesitation.  And there’s nothing like having someone offer all kinds of smart tips to make the job seem easier and less time consuming.  One great one I noticed?  When blanching tomatoes to freeze, stick the freezer bag upright in a yogurt or other tall container!  Then you have an easy routine of “plop tomatoes into boiling water, scoop into cold water, squeeze off skins and drop into bag”.  No step of “open bag with wet, sticky fingers and try to carefully slide slightly mushy and slippery ball into narrow opening”!

Thanks to that support, I’m ready to get fully into the canning season.  Diced tomatoes, garlic dills, canned bread and butter pickles, and probably some more green tomato preserves of some sort, as well as ultimately (fingers crossed) some tomato sauce.  I’ve been out picking wild blackberries, and the raspberries are piling up in the freezer to be ready for the Skipper’s fall jam-making sessions. Bring it on!

Thanks Mom!

And the harvests shift too.  It’s a paradoxical time in the garden; the real crops of summer, the tomatoes, beans, zucchini, and cucumbers start to finally come into their prime at the same time as I start nervously taking stock of what might continue into winter and what I might be once again behind in planting.  Will it have time to size up during these cooling, shortening days?

But most of all, this time of year, the pantry and freezer slowly but surely start to fill.  The staples that will sustain us for another year are ready to be put away, and each year we gain confidence in our backyard homestead and manage to stock up on a little more, understanding how much we might need.

I planted garlic in two batches last fall, and the last one is now ready to put away.  It was a good harvest of almost 60 heads, which should give me enough to replant from my own stock in a few months.

This year I was also on a mission to learn how to grow onions; the beautiful Bedfordshire Champions are a heritage yellow storage onion that was very successful for me.  They bulbed up really nicely, and I only seperated these two out for quick use due to potential rot (the rest are curing outside out of today’s rain).

I also tried Thrifty Red onions that have bulbed up reasonably well but haven’t toppled over yet; I’ll take the water right off them once the rain has passed.  Between both types, I was hoping for enough onions to take us through the winter, but germination rates weren’t great for either, and I didn’t end up with as many transplants as I was hoping.  I’ll go big with the planting for next year, though, now that I’ve had this success!

Also now harvested and ready for storage: 120 lbs (?) of potatoes!

There are more in the box behind!

The final weigh in isn’t totally complete, but that’s an educated guess and if anything, it’s conservative.  These are the Kennebecs and Russian Blues that we hope will get us through the year, and so far, it’s looking good!

The tomatoes are starting to come in steadily, and the onslaught of beans (first bush, then pole, then dry/shelling) is underway.  It won’t be a good squash year, but with a nice September and October, we might get a few.  It’s a GREAT year for apples–I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with another 100 lbs of those to store.

And lastly, the freezer is stocked with Sockeye and Spring salmon after strong local returns this year, and Skipper and I are in the thick of crabbing once more.  Another week or two and we should have enough crab in the freezer to keep us going until next summer (though, truly, people crab year-round here, and there really is no pressure to store enough for the year.  But it’s an intensive routine that’s nice to do in one go).

It’s quite a remarkable feeling to stock up and realize that we will be able to meet so many of our food needs through the year.  Protein? Salmon, crab, eggs, and a few chickens in the freezer (well, the extra roosters.  That’s for another post. ).  With any luck, some home-dried beans.  Supplemented with purchased cheese, nuts, tofu.  Starch? Potatoes! Supplemented with rice, pasta, oats and bread/flour.  Veggies?  Stored onions, tomatoes, squash; carrots, turnips, beets, and winter greens and brassicas in the garden for as long as we can stretch them.  Possibly some beans and other veg in the freezer; there will be a little sauerkraut and possibly some other pickles in the pantry.  Dried herbs and garlic for seasoning.  Fruit? Apples, frozen rhubarb and berries, jam.  Skipper has a batch of his own beer on the go, and the hops are ripening on the vine.  Next year they will be in full production, and our cherry and plum trees will slowly come on line as well.

I wish I could find the words to express the awe I feel as I take stock of these staples.  Perhaps it shouldn’t be a measure of security, but it does feel that way.  As well as just immensely satisfying.  It’s a primal, visceral sense of connection to land, people here, ancestors, but it’s also a joyful pleasure in the abundance, the return on months of happy labour, and the signal of winter feasts to come as we share this delicious wealth with friends and family in the months to come.

Here’s to fall!