Slowly picking up steam

Q:What do you call an IT professional with a really shoddy weblog?

A: Kory

Previously at least.

I have laid out the framework for a new and improved site that makes use of more capable web tools. Hopefully the end will be a site that contains some good static content (descriptions of finished projects, plant databases, etc.) along with dynamic stuff that I can easily update (hopefully from my phone) as the need arises (the regular blog stuff).

In other news, I just finished most of my seed/tree orders (including but not limited to some russian comfrey plants and a sambucus nigra black elder.)

Existential Crisis

I'm not going to wonder myself in circles as to why I stopped a fairly persistent streak blogging. That being said, maybe its spring fever, maybe I was just incensed about the things going on vis a vis the Dervaes trademark scandal.

Maybe its all the crap happening in wisconsin...
Maybe I'm in a better place...or at least have a better plan...

In any event, I was most successful in my efforts when I had a blog to keep me accountable for my progress.

So I guess this means I need to continue blogging if I want to resume the forward momentum I once had.

I think I may need to move the blog to a new layout to accommodate what I am really going after, but for the time being, I'll post here.

Sorry for the extended absence.
Kory
"Urban Homesteader" <-no TM necessary

Homegrown: a movie review

Today I went down to the wescott community center for a screening of Homegrown, the documentary on the Dervaes family. Expecting just a movie I was pleasantly surprised.

First off, I think my shyness is really becoming a detriment. I can't really say I had no idea there were so many in the area interested in home food production and sustainability. I had a hunch, I just did not have the courage to go looking. Today they found me. More specifically a representative wearing one of the path to freedom "revolution solution" shirts found me, and now I'm on "the list." Ok enough about me, on with the movie.

If you have spent as much time on the path to freedom site as I have, there will not be much in here that will surprise you, no new secrets of farming. It was more than anything else a story about the people, not the farm itself. I give them a lot of credit, I wouldn't want cameras in my home for that long. It humanizes and shows a glimpse of the real challenges they have faced. Without being exploitative it expressed the trials and tribulations that come with the lifestyle they have chosen. It offers a warning for those who might leap without looking, but not to the detriment of its ability to inspire. And that it does in bushels.

If it hasn't come to a theater or community center near you, get together with some people and get a showing near you.

Blitz

Been busy lately, no shock there, but I have some catch up to do here, so I'll update as my memory allows.

First the tomatoes...oh the tomatoes. Here's a taste of one evenings take.



not sure what my final poundage was for the year as I still have a few out there, racing the weather to ripen. But there was enough to can about 4 quarts of the most delicious garlicy sauce courtesy of my brother from another mother's recipe. Next year there will be twice as many vines.

The last corner of the potato patch got dug up. Thar be monsters!
granted 1 lbs 1.25 oz may be pedestrian by onestraw's standards...but its a record for me. no final tally yet.

Even more significant. I have achieved a benchmark. I have made a succession plan work. Previously I was just shy a few weeks time to have a good crop of beans after potatoes. I am fairly confident I can repeat the results now. We've had a cool gray wet summer, so even with that taken into account, I can fit the two crops in the same spot and avoid the frost. Yeah! This year, the first major harvest day for the green beans planted after potatoes came in at a touch over a pound. This is enough to have a couple good meals at home and give away the rest before they go bad. Not enough to can though (nor do I have a pressure canner). Thankfully...I only planted about a third of what I could have, so next year we should have enough for fresh and putting aside. Here is about one half the take on saturday morning.



Speaking of beans, the vermont craberry shelling beans were sufficiently dry to pick and shell. It was so much fun that my wife insisted on finishing shelling the rest. Pretty productive, I got a good cup and a quarter of shelled dried beans from about a 10 foot row. Next year I'll buy more seed, since I'll likely use up all these beans in cooking, though I could technically save it.



And lastly, the sunflowers did not happen this year. I think my seed saving methods may be at fault. I only saved one head a year, so I'm betting the lack of diversity lead to an inbreeding depression. Spindly little things that couldn't stand on their own. Here's the real surprise. My wife remarked that she missed seeing them around the house. The same wife who in prior years remarked that their presence was a bit hippyish. I just smirked, she insisted that I not read to much into it...yeah right.

coming up for air

I've been lax in my posting, especially when you consider all that has happened. The situation may continue until the 27th when my work gets the equivalent of a new president. Lets just say I am going to be beyond busy for the next week and leave it at that.

I do feel the need to say a couple things though. This past sunday (17th) we had a baptism and party for our children. I am, to my core, normally averse to large social gatherings. This was incredible though. So many people came, including my best friend of25 years. (thats 1st grade for those doing the math)...all the way from North Carolina. I have to be honest, I worked my butt off getting everything outside tidy and presentable in the garden for the sole purpose of impressing people, not because of any vanity thing, but because I am so desperate to spread the word as it were. Nate and I wandered outside and walked around, I gave him a quick tour, he nodded a lot and said. "You know, I really want to start a garden back home."

I'm counting that as three!

I also found out his father in law has similar proclivities for diggin in the dirt. Its amazing who you'll connect to sometimes.

I also discovered that another longtime friend also recently adopted. I don't know if my example planted that seed or simply gave it a little fertilizer, but I'd like to think that in some way I was at least a snowflake in the avalanch of the decision.

Melinda at Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op penned this fantastic piece. Its amazing sometimes how things seem to be "in the air." I'd like to think that my own transformation has allowed me, in at least some regard to similarly manifest my true self. It did remind me how far I need to go. During one of our late night chats with friends who were visiting this weekend, I found that I was the sole person in the room who, if given the chance, would not return to school to persue a more advanced degree in my field. I do what I do because it pays the bills, is pleasant, allows me to work for an organization that I can "look at myself in the mirror each day" and barring major events like the one currently going on...lets me go home at 4:30 and leave work at work.

There are drawbacks to this though. There are times when I feel like I am cheating, I find the work easy most of the time. I spend 40 hours a week doing something which I have no passion for, I simply derive enjoyment from interactions with my coworkers, and the sense of "helping out" that I get from fixing their technical difficulties. I have wrestled with ennui for most of my life, which I'm sure is equal parts genetic, chemical, and cognative. My demons flog me with alterating blows of doubt, anxiety and angst and how far from my goals I am. But there are moments, like this weekend, when I my joy can barely contain itself. I don't think I could proclaim that I too am living absolutely true to my inner ethos, but I think each baby step I take brings me that much closer, and sometimes (like this weekend) its nice to stop and realize how far we have come.

that being said I have tons of other things that I will try to get posted, but bear with me. Oh, and I spotted potato plants poking through!

In the ground

Well yesterday evening, the spinach, lettuce, peas, broccoli, radishes and beets went in the ground. And of course there was a light frost this morning, but nothing seemed to be really bothered by it. This evening I'm starting the tomato plants for my dad's house, planting some podding radishes and flax outdoors, cutting the potatoes into smaller chunks, and approaching my wife about a spot I think would be perfect for another garden bed. Its worth a shot right?

Out and about in the yard I noticed lemon balm, bee balm, chives, mint, and wormwood poking up out of the ground. The buds on the ornamental cherry are swelling, the lilacs are getting ready to leaf out. I've got about 4 1-year-old blackberry primocanes that are budding and 3 coming up out of the ground. The berry yield will still be small but much better than the 7 berries I got last year.

Where to begin...

Lets see...

April 9th 2009: Sara and Jonathan are now officially adopted! After 2 nerve wracking years, countless court hearings, social worker visits, its over. In they eyes of the law (better late than never I suppose) they are our children. We are truly the lucky ones. Two different ages, two different backgrounds, two incredible kids.

I can't stress enough how much need there is out there for foster and adoptive parents. I would be richer than walmart if I had a nickel for each person who has come up to me and said "we thought about doing that." Don't think about it. Do it. If you think to long about it you will find reasons to talk yourself out of it. You may have 5 very good reasons why you shouldn't but there are over 500,000 reasons (children) why you should. Never again will you go to bed wondering if you made a difference.


April 10th 2009: My brother came home from Iraq, safe and sound thank God. As his contractual obligation actually ended almost a year ago, there is little chance of recall.

April 13th 2009: Easter. I had a great conversation with a friend of a friend about gardening. He (on the suggestion of my friend) was curious about gardening. Originally from Spain, this fellow lamented the lack of selection, freshness and availability of "good organic vegetables" in his area. He commented how different it is where his extended family lives and a lack of garden is unusual. If only.

the seedlings are getting bigger but the frost shows up every morning.

The first rule of fight club is...

you don't talk about fight club. Good thing gardening is not fight club*. I just "bagged" my first convert yesterday. 1 Down 4 to go per my previous declaration.



Although I seem to remember a scene in the movie where some of the "space monkeys" were tending to a garden.

Happy Belated Blorthday

as of the 11th, officially 1 year old. I have made several attempts at keeping a journal in the past which never lasted more than a week at a time, perhaps I just didn't have the right inspiration to keep going.

Anyway, in the year since I started much has changed and much has stayed the same. The anxious tendencies which got me interested in a more simple life seem to have been justified unfortunately. I still have to sublimate my urge to go overboard with this, knowing this is an evolution rather than revolution in our house. I have to give much credit to my wife who has for the most part gone along with each of these projects, though often expressing veto power on the scale of some things.

Will our house one day resemble the Dervaes Homestead? Not likely. What will it be then? I don't really know.

Do any of us really know?

theories, plans, setback and TOMATOES!

Finally! A ripe tomato!


A bit green in the shoulders and a few cracks, but at 14 oz. its got a bit to spare. And yes this is a brandywine, I forgot that the particular strain of Brandywine OTV is orange. And delicious. It had substance but was not gritty. According to SESE's site, this strain is very heat tolerant, could that be a possible way of saying that to a certain extent it doesn't just tolerate heat, it depends on it? Given how cool this summer was by comparison might this be a reasonable explanation as to why I did not harvest the first tomato until sept? I'll be holding on to the seed to plant maybe a vine or two next year since the taste is flat out awesome, but perhaps I should search for varieties which do not include "heat tolerant" in their list of attributes.

And check out the amount of flesh in these. My beloved of course puts in her two cents about the absurdity of photographing a tomato.



Now I know I have mentioned our plan to put a fistfull of fruit trees in the front yard. After having the gas company come out and mark the no-dig spots, it would appear we will need to change the layout from what we had originally intended.

Those flags are the dotted line where our natural gas feed comes in from the street. Right up the strip of land we were going to use....grrrr.

And lastly, as anyone who is married or lives with their partner knows, good relationships mean being on the same page as your S.O. In my case that means clearing and construction or other large projects with my wife before I reach for a hammer or shovel. I want to keep gardening though the winter, I could be happy with just a single row cover tunnel over one bed, but I figured what the heck, lets shoot for the moon with a hoop house and see if she goes for it....She went for it! I think I can fit this over both the beds. Winter greens here I come! Despite the frigid winters I am not going to double layer the plastic unless someone says its absolutely necessary. I'll be using it to basically extend seasons and grow spinach, some lettuces, leeks and so forth during the coldest months, and experimenting with clover as a cover in the unused areas. Clover is a big N producer and grows well in our area/soil. Since I have been doing well with compost, I think a cover crop of clover during winter, plus compost at kill/ planting time should keep the soil in shape. I will test it to see if there are measurable differences.

beansprouts and brain droppings

The bush beans have begun to sprout up in earnest now, tonight I start corn, and hopefully harvest the cabbage to start the kimchi. I bought a shopping cart full of canning supplies the other night, and my wife, who is often my mainstream "reality checker" and voice of moderation, didn't even blink. This weekend we are going strawberry picking with some friends, and then...canning party. Over at PTF there is a news roundup that is rather gloomy to say the least, but it actually had the opposite effect on me (maybe its just my contrarian nature). I realized something. Everyone has a tipping point. I have a bit more of a hair trigger than most when it comes to concerns about the future, but barring instances of sociopathy, eventually when things get bad enough, even stubborn people change.

What about situations where your fate is tied to others who may be sympathetic but not as shall we say ready to make a 180 degree change. A casual observer might remark that my wife and I are polar opposites. Not true at all, we share the same values and goals, we simply prioritize differently. Having that outside perspective to hold a mirror to my own is an incredible asset. I would wager that our relationship might be analogous to society at large. In the end I believe to my core that there is more common ground out there than the media and powermad politicos will allow us to see.
In the end all we need is the right motivation. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive to this but I have rarely seen in my brief 30 years the kind of inspiring motivation that I think is so desperately needed. GreenBean hits home, and after talking to my wife who has spent several years now teaching children with special needs, or in impoverished areas was expounding on the difficulty of reaching children and families who do not have their basic needs met. Her talk about Maslow's heirarchy got me thinking. For the longest time the green movement has been using the same tactics essentially as those who would endorse an "everything's fine" approach to the status quo. Appeals to deficiency primarily at the basest levels. Food, safety, health, protection, employment, and yes even status. When we offer alternatives to the current system they appear merely as competing opinions. Its the reason so many people have taken one of two approaches to politics, cynicism: they're all evil so why bother to worry about anyone but myself, and compartmentalization: my political beliefs have no effect on any other aspect of my life. What the "green movement" needs to do is to make the old appeals obsolete. Sustainable living can bring food security, employment, nutrition, and ultimately safety, but those are perhaps the least rare to obtain. Most conventional philosophy can self rationalize themselves into the belief that their method of living can provide those things. Sustainable societies can bring something to the table that the others can't. Sustainable society can transform humanity from a thought pattern of competition and conquest, to one of cooperation and creativity. Sustainable societies empower, conventional societies exploit. Everything is connected whether we see them or not, if we continue to use the same appeals we will be doomed to the same cycles of failure.

Appeals to the lowest levels, while essential to start the ball rolling so to speak cannot keep it going. To be truly effective, the method and the message must be sustainable. Any conversation which starts at the lowest level of needs must end at the highest, and then we will truly display the advantage to our alternative.

Hope Faith and Love

Hope: twice in one day our daughter, completely unprompted and unprovoked, blew my mind. First in the home depot while we walked by the toilet aisle on the way to get screws to fix the deck gate. Her: composting toilets? they compost your poop? Me: yep Her: can we get one? Me: I don't think it will be equally appreciated by everyone in the house. Her: huh? Me: ask mom.

second, while riding in the car with the family and my mother a roadgoing monster passed us. Her: Was that a hummer? Me: it certainly was. Grandma: Do you like hummers? Her: No, they waste gas and pollute the environment.


Faith: Yesterday I saw the first buds of the potatoes pushing through the soil. I'll say it again, I'm an anxious person, and I'm sure by now I've spent hours staring at that side of the garden. Being my first time with spuds I was apprehensive. Did I plant to deep too shallow? upside down? was the soil to dry? too wet? Anyhow, as of this morning, about 6 of the 50 or so have completely pushed their leaves up through. As Tyler Durden would say, stop trying to control everything and just let go.

Love: Yesterday my brother shipped off to 29 palms california for 2 months training, after that, iraq. The family event at the reserve depot was remarkably different from the first deployment 4 years ago, you could read it on the faces of everyone there. The trust is gone. The trust in safety, in the rightness of the mission, in the leadership. Gone. The most unsustainable, unrenewable action a government can enact, wanton destruction of participant and bystander alike, the squandering of resources, starving the needy to feed an all consuming beast, and somehow, by not spending every breath trying to avert it, are complicit in the crime. No More.

Anger is not sustainable, Faith, Hope and Love are.

Out with the Hippies, in with the Yawns, and why did you change?

According to CNN living lightly...even if you have the means to do otherwise is a growing phenomenon. Seems almost fitting that its popular emergence is amoung the well to due. I suppose once you realize you can buy almost anything, there is a good chance you realize that buying everything won't make you any happier. I would hardly put myself anywhere near the income bracket of some of the referenced examples, but I can say that my wife and I earn a comfortable amount of income, and I do feel a certain kinship with the people in the article, even though the difference between potential and actual consumption is less pronounced in my case. I imagine that the individuals in the article climbed up to the top of the consumption mountain and said: geeze, I'm no happier than I was at the bottom. I am guessing, but its probably harder for someone halfway up the hill, still intent on reaching the top, to understand the rule of diminishing returns as it applies to materialism.

And then there is the other argument I'm heard that living ethically is expensive. All the green goods and carbon offsets and local foods are more expensive than piling everyone in the car and going to burger king. And who the heck has the time to cook if you're working two jobs to pay off the debts. Its easier to plop the kids in front of the tv and buy them whatever is being pimped this week than to spend time with them after a stressful day. Being an "instant" father I recently have begun to see the seduction of the things I so cheerfully criticized prior.

So what motivates someone like well me and you to stop trying to claw our way up the hill of consumerism. What motivated me? Well read back to my first post, but I'll tell you up front I was not happy. A quarter life crisis so to speak, coupled with an obsessive tendency to dig deeper into the things that caused my anxiety. Eventually I reached a point where one way or another I was not going to keep ending up panicing, and by extention surrendering to defeat.

But life "outside the box" is alien to most, its lonely at times, and often requires the living to separate from the ways of the dead. Not an appealing proposition.

So why did you leave your box?

So Long "green" revolution, hello "Green" revolution

I'm really trying not to let this blog devolve into just another whackjob pontificating on the evils of the world, so rather than talk about the bad side of a story, I'll look at the positives.


The Bad:

Fertilizer is getting expensive. Since much of the commercial fertilizer is petroleum based...well you do the math.

and the P in the NPK is getting harder to come by: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/13/64820/6921

The Upside:

The eternal struggle of agriculturalized society has been to maximize output of the land. More readily available nutrients makes for faster growing plants, thats the bottom line. These nutrients can come from a bag that you buy and spread on your crops...And keep you dependent on an industry. Fortunately, there was a time before petrochemical fertilizer when people were able to have good harvests without such inputs. Its called a circle of life for a reason. One organism's waste is another's food. Somewhere along the line we convinced ourselves that life was a one way street, and recycling is something you only do with manufactured goods. Now faced with a shortage of a precious commodity we will have to kick that old habit, and learn to walk on our own feet again. Forced with adaptation or exctinction we WILL remember how to nurture life from the soil without fertilizers or pesticides. I'm not concerned about my own garden plot, I make all the NPK fertilizer I can possibly use. Humanity will learn to close the loop again or we will not survive. And this challenge is something I am actually optimistic about, because challenge brings out the best in us, so long as we carefully stand guard against the worst in us.

the horrors of change

How are we ever to grow if people like this get paid to write this crap...an excerpt which is at the heart of the problem.

In "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore preached to us about downsizing our
lifestyles. He wants us to take colder showers, hang our clothes outside to dry,
avoid driving, use less heating and air conditioning and generally reduce our
standard of living.

emphasis mine.



It doesn't matter what the overwhelming evidence says, if a person percieves that there is no problem, then there is no need to change. If a person percieves that to change requires sacrifice, and that ultimately that sacrifice will only result in an intangible change in total, then there will be no change. No one wants to reduce their standard of living, especially when the net gain will be negligable.

What we must first attack is the idea that the change in lifestyle is a reduction at all. Ask Mr. Dervaes if he is happier now, or before. Ask the folks over at elements in time if they are happier now? Everytime anyone consciously makes a decision about where their food, clothes and life's necessities come from, everytime someone realizes that personal responsibility and sovreignty is as much about choosing what you really want, and not what everyone seems to want...they are that much closer to truly being free and fully actualized. It is not so much a reduction in the standard of living as a realization of what living really means.


And for all the talk about the so called sacrifice not having any effect? Every person that stops by Path to Freedom and says, "wow, I never thought about that, I might try a few of those ideas." Every person that stops by the farmer's market "just to check it out" Every person who looks at the news and sees what the monsanto's of the world are doing, and wonders where the food in their fridge actually came from...

is one step closer to the turning the tide. Person by person the tide IS turning, and someday people who think like that WILL be in the minority, but by then, they'll just blindly follow what the rest of us consciously decided to do long ago.

and if its all for naught, at least I can meet my end knowing that I tried.

Why am I in such a mood to rant today? yesterday evening I broke my forked spade. Its not even a year old and snapped right at the tang. Post mortem revealed cheap cast "steel." Buy cheap buy twice. But hey I just caused economic growth, because I will have to buy another spade. Sell cheap, sell twice. Watch the GDP rise! the economy is GROWING! Hurray!

Grrrrr.

I love my wife

We had been discussion the direction of our abode recently, our family has grown beyond our original expectations when we bought the house, so its either make some significant alterations or move, ultimately deciding to grow where we are planted. Part of the plan was to add a front porch of sorts, and you can see my vision for it below. Hers was a bit more shall we say...encompasing. In her words an enclosed sunporch, an enclosed sunporch that connects to what will become the diningroom. In my words a passive solar space. I said, ya know hon, If we did that we could keep dwarf citrus trees in there, since it faces south and should get enough light. Her response, "How cool would that be"

How cool indeed.

my vision, note the feeblness:

my wife, the true visionary:

Golden Opportunities

I guess I never put two and two together before. Nature does not create waste. All organism find ways to use the byproducts of the others. Manure is an obvious one, but not something my family would find palatable were I to start using my own poo in the compost heap, nor would they be particularly welcoming of a sawdust bucket sitting next to our standard issue water waster.

Then I came across a few drops of info that made me think...
But what about pee? Diluted 10:1 it has been proven an effective fertilizer. In africa it is finding widespread use. Do I dare keep a jar in the shed to fill for times when fertilizer application is called for? And in between on the compost heap to replenish nitrogen. (we usually end up with a lot of browns from the sunflowers, vines, leaves, etc, but very few greens from the smallish lawn. Might a quick shot of recycled refreshment every morn keep an otherwise slow pile moving?

I'm mischevious by nature, and normally I would giggle at the thought of people dining on my peepee powered vegetables, not because it is unsanitary, but their initial shock. Being a family man though, I do feel a certain need to warn them. After all, isn't part of this whole change in the way we get our food a matter of taking control of exactly what goes into our bodies as much as possible? Who am I to deny them that choice.

Family greening

SFgate has a great article (if brief) on transitioning to "the crunchy life" with the least amount of stress. Read it. Especially if you have kids. I have known for several years the direction I wanted my life to head, but I always considered the change to be a burden, after all who wants to be different. The addition of two children to the mix last year changed things a bit, I still have the desire, but do I have the ability? Can enough of a change come soon enough to to satisfy where I believe that I personally or we as a family should be? How do I best communicate these motives without seeming like a crazy person?

Advice is always welcome.

Ask and ye shall recieve

No sooner did I pose the same connundrum in Onestraw's blog post than I recieved a quick and helpful response from Mr. Straw himself (actually he shares his real name with a poet, which is really cool...but I digress)

I got the answers I needed, in the form of a link to Fedco seeds. How I missed these guys before is beyond me, for some reason they didn't show up in any searches, unless I actually looked for "Fedco Seed" Bottom line: fantastic selection, I was able to find everything on my list I still had remaining, like 70 and 90 day corn, potatoes, onion sets, early cabbage.

And as if that wasn't enough, last night I stumbled upon my wife thumbing through our new (well, new to us) copy of Gaia's Graden. She handed it to me with the section on keyhole gardens open and said, lets do this instead. I was floored, despite her professed lack of artistic capability, she has a finely tuned eye for the asthetic, it makes itself know in demands for symetry and order. I was able to manage a concession for the herb and perennial area so that I could maintain a more wild feel, but I would have never guessed she would be inclined to abandon the orderly rectangular "banks" of raised beds for keyhole mounds. I'm stoked. Now I have to get out the graph paper and the compass and come up with square footage estimates...and retool the layout in the Jeavons book.

Convincing Pt. 2

Just when you think you are alone in your crazy eco-freak delusion...

My wife explained to our daughter why we don't put things like plums in her lunch during the winter. I never brought up the idea of food miles in the house. And usually (due to her enormous work load from her job) she has little time for "recreational reading." I didn't ask where she came across food miles, I just smiled.

Now thats hot.