Now welcome, somer

Now welcome somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast this wintres wedres overshake,
And driven away the longe nyghtes blake!

- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parlement of Fowls

Maybe it's not quite summer here yet, but the long black nights have been driven away.  The daylight hours exceed the dark.  I'm trying to see April in a positive light, but it's a tough sell.

April is a month of anxiety, injury, and anticipation.  First I fretted about the asparagus, which didn't show any signs of life until a few days ago.  Had I killed it with the fall pruning, which some gardeners claim leads to water getting down into the hollow tubes of the stalks and rotting the crowns?  I dug around in the heavily mulched raised beds, looking for little nubs of asparagus stalks.  They eluded me, and I had to curb the overwhelming urge to check the bed every. single. day. Then I worried about the ramps that I planted in the shade on the north side of our shed.  Were they goners?  I've been patiently waiting three years now for them to reproduce themselves by division, so that I can eat some of them.  They were very slow to emerge too.  And I still judge that there are too few yet to harvest.  Another year of postponed ramp harvest.  We may yet this year receive some more ramps for transplant donated by a relative.  In any case, I'm determined that we'll harvest some next year, whatever their reproductive rate.  Maybe some of the seeds set last year will result in more ramps too.

And the injuries, yes.  Plenty of those.  I posted about my bashed thumb, which has stopped hurting, and mercifully hasn't cost me my thumb nail.  But I now sport major bruises in all sorts of inconvenient spots, and my right hand and wrist are still strained from not working carefully.  Spring garden work is awfully tough on a body softened by winter's indolence.  This is not a season conducive to rest and recuperation.  I'm getting my calluses back fairly quickly.

Oh, and rain.  April's rain is proverbial.  I try to see it as beneficial to the garden, and all the seeds that I've sown.  It does make for easier weeding, but somehow that's not my favorite chore. And between the all too frequent downpours, we've been seeing near record temperatures in the last week or so.

So enough whinging.  Spring is here, even if we're not out of the woods yet with the risk of frost.  That could come back and bite us where the sun don't shine well into May.  But the spring blossoms have started, and it's a joy to watch the trees of the neighborhood put forth their various hues.  The maples start with a gossamer veil of red, whatever color their leaves will eventually take on.  The plums are blooming pure white, while our two different magnolias have lush blooms of extravagant pink and white.  The neighborhood redbuds are lovely with their thick purplish-pink blooms. Our young pear curtsies to the older pear across the way, with synchronous buds of palest pink.  It's nice to see that our pears will not lack for pollination services.  Other trees put their leaves on first, starting with a yellow-green haze that seems to float around the still bare branches.  Our figs and hazelnuts are slowly leafing out.  The irises (pure ornamentals for which I have a secret weakness) planted near the front door look like they'll blossom this year.

To prevent a repeat of this month's anxiety over various crops, I've finally started keeping a garden journal.  I had thought it would be tedious, which is why I didn't start years ago, as I should have.   But I find I enjoy jotting notes on what I'm doing and observing in the garden.  It makes me more aware of the daily changes that happen so quickly in spring - all in a seeming blur if I don't pay attention.  These notes will give me reference dates for events such as the first robin of the year, or when the violets bloomed, our last snowfall - a handy tool for next year and in all subsequent years.  I can see how comparing this sort of data could become a bit addictive once you have a few years of documentation to play with.  But even one year of data will remind me not to expect asparagus in early April.

It's All So Exciting

I'm back from PASA's Farming for the Future Conference, and as usual, I learned a lot and got my winter dose of motivation and enthusiasm. I did a lot more shopping at the conference on this, my fourth year of attendance than on the previous three years combined. Partly that was because Brushy Mountain Bees had a sponsor's booth, and I was able to talk to someone to help me with my order, AND get free shipping on anything I ordered while there. I got the rest of the equipment ordered that I need to be ready for my honey bees to arrive in April. Then there were a few books and other items purchased because I really wanted them, and because the purchases helped support PASA.

Here's a laundry list of tidbits learned, things that excited me, and other lovely things that happened at the conference:

Biochar is a soil amendment, but does not itself add any fertility to the soil. In a raw state it will actually suck nutrients out of the soil and into itself. Its microstructure allows it to benefit sandy soil by improving water retention, and clay soil by improving drainage. Go figure. It's also a friendly home for soil microbes and mycorrhizae. A great use for it is to add it to animal stalls, where it can become "charged" with nutrients and microorganisms from the animal's manure so that it does not draw nutrients from soil, and where it can help control odors. The hooves of a sufficiently heavy animal will also help break down biochar into smaller pieces, which is desirable, as the animal walks on the chunks. It can also be "charged" by soaking it in urine for a few days. It's not good to breathe in charcoal dust, so you don't want to crush it too fine, and if your raw biochar is very fine, it's best to wet it or mix it into moist compost as soon as it's done cooling. The speaker referred attendees to this video for guidance on making a home scale biochar burner. The chief virtue of biochar, however, is that it sequesters carbon in the soil.

I tasted the best ketchup I've ever had in my life - by a mile. It was lacto-fermented and contained smoked chipotle peppers. The cook assured me that she would send me the recipe by email. If I do get it, you can be sure I'll try it this summer.

I heard about and saw pictures of a good root storage technique, apparently originally from Finland. A thick layer of dry fall leaves are laid down in a large bin. Then harvested and trimmed (but not washed) root vegetables are laid on top of the leaves so that none of them touch each other, and then they are covered with another thick layer of leaves. The bin is left uncovered. In a cool dark space the roots will keep very well for several months. The leaves should be fairly dry when collected and arranged. A refinement of the technique is to use a piece of row cover material (which breathes very well) folded over to contain the roots so that you don't have to search wildly for them or miss them entirely if your bin is very large. The enormous bin shown in the pictures was in a bank barn and made of cinder blocks.

I learned more about home curing meats and am now curious about attempting two versions of cured fatback: Italian lardo, and Ukrainian salo. Lardo is made with rosemary and other herbs you'd associate with Italy. Salo is seasoned with paprika. I have a tentative agreement to get together with two hog farmers I know when they hold their pork curing powwow. Paul Bertoli's Cooking by Hand, which deals with charcuterie, was lauded by the speaker. That book has been on my wish list for a while now. It just got moved to the top of the list.

I attended a humanure workshop by Joe Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook, and came away thinking that the composting of human manure not only makes sense from the perspective of soil fertility and conservation of scarce resources (drinking water being chief among them), but that it's also entirely safe if done properly. I picked up a hard copy of the book, but you can get a free copy online.

Johnny's Selected Seeds was giving away a couple of free seed packets, plus a 14-month calendar. This calendar will carry us into 2011, until we get to the next conference and scrounge a free calendar for next year. When my husband raved to them about the broadfork we got from Johnny's a few years ago, and told them how we proselytized to other gardeners and have agreed to lend it out this spring, the representative gave him a pocket knife. It looks like it's perfectly suited for grafting fruit tree seedlings.

Edited to add: I found out something totally amazing about comfrey, which is already one of my all time favorite plants. As the comfrey leaves die down in the late fall, spiders shelter under them for the winter. If you have a plant large enough to cover one square yard of earth with its dead leaves (and this is totally do-able with a single established comfrey plant), on average 240 spiders are sheltering under there. That's a lot of predator habitat! So if you have comfrey, don't clean up the leaves that die down until late spring of the following year.


I put in the winning bid on a beautiful set of hand-thrown mixing bowls at the benefit auction. They nest together perfectly, and each one has a pouring spout. We've been on a nasty streak of breaking our mixing bowls lately. So let's hope we're finished with that trend. I thought it was a great opportunity to obtain a needed item from a Pennsylvania artisan, while giving money to an organization I wholeheartedly support. Much better than buying stuff imported from China. My husband made pancakes with these bowls this morning. Yum!

Each year the halls and corridors of the conference center are adorned with fantastic quotes that make me laugh, galvanize my determination, and generally transmit optimism. Wandering around to read them is one of the highlights of the conference for me. The Mark Twain quote above is one such. Another great quote at the conference came from Thomas Edison: "Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." I've never seen a quote repeated in the four years I've been at the conference. I wonder whose job it is to find these gems.

I learned a lot about dairy goats, even though I don't have any immediate plans to get any. Like bees, goats seem to be at risk of quite a few diseases.

I talked to a sponsor who was selling shiitake logs and got his views on Fungi Perfecti and another vendor of myco-products, Field and Forest. He greatly prefers Field and Forest because, in his opinion, their various forms of spawn are much more heavily inoculated than Fungi Perfecti's products.

I learned about a Pennsylvania shoemaker that handcrafts his shoes, sells them for $300 per pair, and reportedly will resole them for about $80. That doesn't seem all that different from some pairs of Birkenstocks and their resoling costs. The guy wearing the shoes said it's like getting a reflexology treatment every time he puts on his shoes, and that it's the closest thing to walking in bare feet he's ever experienced.

A blizzard arrived while we were in State College. But on the drive home on Saturday afternoon we found the roads well cleared and we got to watch a gorgeous sunset. As we neared home, the amount of snow that had fallen seemed to lessen, until we were looking at only 6" or so of accumulation. We weren't sure whether we would be able to get up our driveway, which has a short steep section just off the road. But we found that our awesome neighbor had plowed our driveway for us in our absence. I don't know what kind of goodie to give him the next time I see him, (he's not around much) but I've got my thinking cap on.

Best of all, we got to come home to a home we love. I'd even given myself the gift of a clean kitchen to return to. Made tea this morning with our own well water and nary a tinge of chlorine. Home is best.

Fantasy Fiction and Reality

Sharon posted recently on her craving for retail therapy and other forms of escapism. I can relate. My preferred form of escapism is fantasy fiction, though I long nurtured the not-so-secret conceit of good taste when it comes to literature. I've been re-reading Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, and relishing every line of her austere, majestic storytelling. But strangely enough, I had a couple of wallops straight to the gut while reading these novels.

In A Wizard of Earthsea this bit of dialog from the Archmage to Ged leapt off the page and brought me straight back into my own world:

"And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and as his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do..."

And then just last night as I finished up the last novel in the series, The Other Wind, Le Guin returned to this theme and reminded me yet again of what's been happening in my own life:

"Once when my lord the Archmage was here with me in the Grove, he said to me he had spent his life learning to choose to do what he had no choice but to do."

These brief passages spoke to me powerfully. I'd read these books years ago, and loved them. But if I took any note of this idea back then, it was most likely with a sense of dread that ethics might someday constrain my freedom, my choices, frivolity, my ability to indulge my whims.

The world looks very different to me now. I see that each action of mine has consequences. And I know that most of those consequences affect other people - people far away, and people yet to be born, and other living things as well. I have a sense of myself and my place within the larger pattern of life. Yes, the way I can follow now is narrower and, by the looks of things, becoming ever more so. Yet I don't feel constrained. This is not something imposed on me, and it's not a burden I resent. It is my path. I don't claim that it is either easy or perfect. On the contrary, it is difficult and involves a great deal of struggle, and I'm still learning to choose. But I can say that on this path, my heart is less heavy. I choose, more and more often, to do what I have little choice but to do. I can no longer turn away from that responsibility. While the path before me is narrow, there is a deepening, a sense of putting forth roots, of finding my purpose, of integrity and homecoming and wholeness. I'm hinting here at what cannot be fully expressed, but that thing is what allows me to continue willingly and happily.

What began for me as a shift to a more frugal lifestyle has become a life path of much larger dimensions. Frugality is still a part of much of what I do, and I desperately want us to be free of our mortgage debt. But thrift has become almost an incidental. More central now is the idea of restraint, of finding a way to live my life within means that are sustainable and just. And when I have time to raise my head above my own tasks, I have visions of sharing what I have learned. Sharon's Jewish faith charges her to contribute to the "repair of the world." It's a daunting command. As an atheist, religion offers me no motive, neither the promised rewards nor punishments. Nevertheless, motivation has found me, and I am willing and even hoping to be a small part of the repair of the world.

I know this isn't the usual fare here at Living the Frugal Life. Thanks for listening.

The Planting Schedule

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field." - Dwight Eisenhower

There's great pleasure, for me, in planning a garden; always has been. I like to work with graph paper to give myself a spatial representation of what the garden will look like. But I also work better with a progressive list of planting dates, so I can keep track of what I need to plant when. I've already begun sprouting some seeds. Among these are crops that need the longest season to mature (onion, leeks, and celery root), as well as fast growing plants that tolerate cold temperatures very well (lettuce and kale). In my ambition to produce as much of our own food as possible, I will sow seeds and transplant seedlings from February through August this year, saving the garlic bulbs to plant last of all in mid-October. If this year is anything like last year, we'll harvest apples in November, and continue harvesting leeks throughout the winter. But I also hope to have more root crops and more cold-tolerant greens under cold frames and row covers for fall and winter harvest.

The timing aspect of sowing and planting comes down to local conditions as well as individual knowledge of the gardener. I could tell you when I plant, transplant, and direct sow my seeds in zone 6, but it wouldn't be very helpful for those of you in other hardiness zones. Fortunately, there are plenty of useful guidelines out there. Indeed, Ali at Henbogle recently linked to Kathy's Personalized Seed Planting Calendar which you can customize with the dates of the first and last frost dates in your area. Once I plugged in the relevant dates for my own area, I found it to be an excellent starting point for my scheduling. But the schedule includes some plants I won't be growing and omits others that I plan to include. Also, my own experience will guide me to diverge slightly from the suggestions of the automated schedule.


For instance, while the conventional wisdom is to plant tomato seedlings two weeks after the last frost, I prefer to plant even later than that. In my experience, exposure to temperatures lower than 50 F will prevent even the smallest, greenest fruit on the plant from ever developing into a tomato with good flavor. So I transplant when I can be reasonably certain that the nighttime temperature will not fall below 50 degrees. In my area, that means the tomatoes don't go in the ground until June 1st. It's worked well for me. I don't get the earliest tomatoes, but my first tomatoes are worthy of the name.

Also, I'll plant my pumpkins and winter squash on the late side, because I want to harvest them when outdoor temperatures are as low as possible. Warm temperatures shorten the shelf life of pumpkins, and a mid-May planting will mean a September harvest. I'd rather see them finish off in early October, so I'll wait for June to plant them. That will let me store them well into the late winter months.

Another excellent timing reference that I rely on is Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest, which contains an index of planting guidelines for late season crops, based on the first frost date in the fall. The indices alone are worth the price of the book, in my opinion. Also, don't forget that if you live in the US, you have a great resource for local gardening knowledge in the Master Gardeners. You can reach these volunteers through your state's local Agricultural Extension Office. There should be one in every county in the US. These trained and experienced gardeners will have some of the most specific recommendations for your location.

While various authorities can give you general guidelines for planting dates, it's important to remember that these sources will be giving you averages. But different varieties of a given crop also vary in the number of days they need to reach maturity. Tomatoes may take as few as 55 or as many as 80 days to produce fruits from the time they are transplanted. That's a big range; more than three weeks. Lettuces range from 50 to 70 in days to maturity. Check the seed packets of the specific varieties you've ordered to find this information, in order to plan accordingly.

If you're an experienced gardener, you may well want to decide your planting dates for yourself. Here's a nice online tool I use to help me count backwards from two different dates: the average date of the first fall frost, and the date when we'll see less than 10 hours of daylight at my latitude. It will also help you count forward from a given date, based on the days to maturity for your seeds.

It's hard to compare your location to another one for several reasons. Hardiness zones reflect the average low winter temperature in an area. But within a given zone, there's a wide range in the first and last frost dates. Your last frost date might easily match that of a distant location in a warmer or cooler hardiness zone. And latitude determines day length, which also has no direct correlation to either frost dates or hardiness zones. To see evidence of this, just follow any east-west running line across that hardiness map to see how many different zones exist at a given latitude. There's a lot to learn about how the weather behaves in any given area - and we haven't even mentioned precipitation!

I know that when you're inexperienced with gardening the details can be sufficiently overwhelming to induce paralysis. Don't let that discourage you. Plants want to live and grow. They will do most of the work if you give them a decent chance. Try a wide range of plants, and something is bound to do well for you. Just don't get overeager and plant seeds so early that the seedlings get rootbound in their containers. Few plants can rebound and produce well if their roots are constrained early in their growth. Keep some notes on how things do in your garden each year, including planting dates, harvest dates, and a few weather notes, so that next year you can make better decisions. Most of all, just try it! Gardening is definitely something you learn by doing.

Green blessings for your garden this year!

Related post:
Late Frost and Tender Seedlings

The Seasons As Seen By A Gardener

I don't have much to report for the moment, but I thought I'd share this funny and dead on quote from a fellow gardener:

"Spring: A mischievous sprite, a warm breeze that moved housebound gardeners out of doors to happily waste themselves, despite whatever mercurial weather tested their commitments. Summer: A Rubenesque goddess who swelled the garden with far more bounty than anyone could tend, let alone eat, even with the help of rabbits and bugs. Fall: A scolding harpy who recited gardeners' failures to them as they picked their way through weeds and sprawling vines to glean tomatoes and squash before the apocalypse of frost. Winter: A wraith who hovered over what was once the garden, whispering, "Gone, gone....Return to your VCR and supermarket vegetables."

-Barbara Damrosch

None but a bona fide gardener could come up with these impossibly accurate descriptions of the four seasons, especially fall.

The Promise of Garlic

"Spring keeps her promises, no cold can keep her back."

- Natalie Merchant

I realize I never posted anything about getting our garlic into the ground in mid-October. But the sight of all the little garlic sprouts poking up above the first snow of the season this morning made me smile. For me, it's Spring's promise of good things to come, telling me to keep faith through the dark days of winter. Garlic doesn't mind the cold. Like any self-respecting bulb, it just hunkers down and waits for warm weather to resume where it left off in late fall.


It's far beyond time to get garlic into the ground in any part of the world that I'm familiar with, so I'll make a mental note to describe my garlic planting routine in detail next fall. Meanwhile, here are some more picture of my wintry garden.

A late groundfall apple dusted with snow - hint of color in a stark landscape

Icy patterns on the window of my hayframe

Critter tracks in wan morning sunlight

Pampas grass dusted with snow

Related posts:

Garlic Harvest
The Limits of Garlic

Friday Quotes

Here are a couple of inspiring passages that recently caught my attention while reading:

This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. - G. B. Shaw

To the extent that things we seek are limited in supply (money, fame, victory), there will be strife. To the extent that we seek treasures that deprive no one (wisdom, health, skill) or treasures that help others (love, friendship, justice) we take part in building a better world. - William Coperthwaite