My first workshop

Okay, so if you've read my little rant you know that I just attended my first Water use workshop. It was given by Daily Acts out of Petaluma. Lucky for me, my city council sponsored the event so it didn't cost me anything to attend (except the wasted bagels). It's a great thing when cities partner with groups like this to make information more available to the masses.
The workshop was described like this:
Your Water's Worth
Sustainable Household Water Use
Get empowered by this fun and informative Permaculture/ecodesign workshop that'll help you get a grip on water use inside and outside. Inside the house we'll explore domestic water use and a host of easy techniques for minimizing waste of this precious resource. Outside we'll get lit on small scale techniques for harvesting and storing rainwater for reuse and soil percolation, installation of drip irrigation systems, and design concepts to move you towards a more sustainable landscape. You'll be refreshed by the ways seemingly small changes can radically improve our quality of life.
The class was led by Rick Taylor and Trathen Heckman.

We went to a private home and explored the garden. I flirted with Lizzie the kitten and Kona the dog while we waited to begin. Trathen began with an introduction and a 10 minute grounding exercise which included a bunch of Tai Chi. We eventually got to know each other a bit by breaking into groups of 2, talking about ourselves and then being introduced by our partner with our name and a three word Haiku. We talked about the challenges of life, the economy, time, balance, etc. We talked about the value of water. Trathen discussed the overall value, not just monetary value. That was a nice reminder for me because we, at our house, always think of cost first. He discussed the value of keeping water in your land as opposed to letting it flow into the sewers. He said he would give us some tools for doing so.


When Rick arrived, we broke into 2 groups. Rick led us around the house to show us the timer for the drip irrigation system. He showed us his meter. Rick insists that your irrigation should have a dedicated meter and that it should be checked regularly to be sure that you are using your water efficiently. The meter he used would cost about $300 to install. He told us about his timer and that he wants to start using a super high tech timer that connects to a satellite and will adjust according to the weather. He didn't really have any answers for those of us who water by hand. He didn't suggest Ollas or self-watering containers. I don't have a drip system or an extra $300 for a meter. I got a little bored.


When my group went off with Trathen, we went into the house. We discussed the various ways that attendees salvage water in their homes. Buckets from the shower, grey water pipe from the bathtub to the orchard, pasta water on the plants, etc. I joked about my nightmare of dragging a full bucket of water through the house and someone suggested I use a bucket with a lid. I also joked about my old, corroding pipes naturally restricting my water flow thereby saving plenty of water. Trathen showed us a little aerator doohicky on the bathroom faucet which slows water use there. Okay, usable and cheap, finally something. He showed us the dual flush toilet. Handy enough, my Mom has one. He told us to do a whole house audit to be sure there aren't any leaks. One little leak at one drop per second will waste 2,700 gallons of water in a year. That's a lot of water! We did this years ago.

We came back together, talked about the front garden, discussed it's fountain and how much water it wastes, discussed the pathways and how much water they cost to create, the willowwood fencing that no one could actually afford. Rick told us about this lovely little garden and how things are dire enough that no one should be allowed to be so wasteful anymore. And then he told us that he plans to remove some of the plants because they don't look as tidy as he'd like. It's nice to know that we all suffer from the same angst. The fight for truly sustainable beauty is alive and well.

We then sang a song about lunch and Mother Earth and ate lunch. I had a brief talk with Trathen about beekeeping and mostly kept to myself.


After lunch we checked out a big crazy greywater system. It was essentially a little greenhouse with a floor that had been excavated and replaced with baffles, drains, and soil in order to create a sort of wetland filtration zone. Above ground were 5 big barrels making noises like a washing machine. Each barrel held plants, fish, snails, even freshwater clams. The water moves from the kitchen sink and dishwasher into these barrels to be cleaned and then is sent via pipes to some bamboo in the garden. I asked how many man hours went into creating the system and was told it probably cost somewhere between $6000 and $10,000 to create and that it could probably be recreated by 4 men in a week, 160 hours. Rick admitted that this was in no way a cost effective measure. Trathen discussed his greywater system and what he did to get it permitted by the county. Still, no one suggested that you water anything but flowers or orchards with the greywater. Trathen suggested that there are no reported cases of greywater induced illness but gave no more info.

The guys talked about living roofs and how important they are. It was great information but I'm not installing a living roof anytime soon. All in all, I wish I had stayed home and taken a nap. But, I did learn a handy new phrase for something that I think about often:
Embedded Energy: the amount of energy it takes to create something.

I think I'll stick with my own research for a while. Which reminds me that Jonathan and I are doing lots of research on tankless water heaters and recirculators right now and we'll report soon.

The cult of Conservation

This may be a bit of a rant tonight.

I've been working lots lately and have been neglecting my garden. The money I was hoping to spend on the garden is now being saved for what seems like a lifetime supply of meat. That's okay but it bums me out a little. I'm feeling like I'd better spend some time learning more about gardening since I can't be doing and spending more in the actual garden right now.

There was a course being offered by Daily Acts today. It was free to city residents and I thought it would solve a lot of my water angst. I had hoped to leave there with some wonderful new plans to simplify my water use.
I was tired this morning. Really tired. I really wanted to skip the workshop but was afraid that I would be missing something groundbreaking. I had to bring something to share for lunch. I've been working a million restaurant shifts a week and my kitchen is filled with drywall dust and it's 9 in the morning and I should bring something to share with people I don't even know? I went to the bagel shop around the corner. I brought bagels, cream cheese, and homemade peach jam. One person ate one half of one bagel. They sat out on the table in the heat of the day and are now chicken food. $15 worth of bagels and cream cheese, but it wasn't good enough. It wasn't vegan or veggie, organic or homemade. No one wanted my sorry ass bagels. This lunch exclusion just added to my overall feeling of not fitting in. Occasionally, around here, I feel like I've been transported back to high school. I can't be green enough, conscious enough, vegan enough, hairy enough, stinky enough, organic enough, spiritual enough, whatever.
The workshop began with a series of Tai Chi moves. They discussed honoring the Mother, the others discussed the Goddess and native American ways and bringing spiritual principals into ones garden. DUDE! I just wanted to learn about water use. I wanted to learn about different options for watering my garden. I wanted to hear more than that I should fill a bucket in my shower or use my pasta water on my plants. Perhaps I was expecting too much. I wasn't looking for a dose of religion. I am not really interested in learning a blessing song for my meal. What if I had asked them to sing a hymn or kneel before a cross? Ooooh, how about an animal sacrifice? Why is it that alternative religion is okay to force upon people. Why is it that it is assumed that because I want to conserve our natural resources that I must be a pagan or goddess worshiper? I am so irritated by this assumption and the exclusion it creates.
I've said before that I want to find easier ways to conserve. I still do want things to be pretty. I truly think it's okay to want to have something traditionally pretty in your garden. I think it's great to create a balance in your home and in your garden. Temper your need for a stretch of green with some great water permeable pathways. Grow veggies under your roses and feed them with worm tea instead of crap from Home Depot. Life is all about balance. Can't I believe that without rubbing my chakras? I betcha a lot more people would take a little action if things were a bit more mainstream. I guess we mainstreamers will stick with the library and our blogs.

Honestly, I did learn a thing or two at the workshop. I took some interesting photos. I met some nice folks. I'll tell you all about it in a day or two.

Eggs in the Hand

With 2 Ameraucanas and 2 CaliWhites laying and our brown layers coming into their first molts, we are suddenly overrun with white and green eggs. It's so strange to peer into the fridge and see green and white. Especially the white. White seems so "grocery store". I can't wait until my little Orpingtons start laying and we have a better looking assortment. I know, color is not important. It makes me happy, though, to see such a wonderful mish mash of colors. Even Dottie's speckled eggs seem to come less frequently now. Hopefully soon GiGi will begin laying her mahogany colored eggs. Oooh, I can't wait!

We also have a pile of eggs in the incubator. We candled them on Wednesday, exactly a week after we began the incubation process. Some seemed to be void of life and were disposed of. It was hard to just throw them away. I wasn't sure if they could be fed to any of the animals after being kept warm for a week. We marked about 12 with a question mark because we just couldn't quite tell if there was anyone inside. But, we did see some with a definite somebody inside. We even saw a little movement. That was super exciting. The incubator has some pretty wide temperature swings now and then and we're real nervous that our little peeps won't make it. We're taking deep breaths and thinking sweet thoughts. 2 more weeks and we should see some new friends.

Forward with or without me

While I've been traveling from couch to work and back again, my man-servants, as my neighbor calls them, have been busily fixing and breaking things. A freezer full of meat was just the motivation Jonathan needed to finally finish up the insulation and drywall in the mudroom. It's great because, well, it's nice to have proper walls and it'll save us some money in heating costs. It is rapidly becoming Fall around here and our little Rinnai will be cranking soon.
Where's the correlation between meat and drywall, you ask? We were given 8 sheets of drywall for our combined birthdays a good three years ago and they've been leaning against a wall in the kitchen ever since. Move the drywall and there's room for a freezer. Leave the drywall and opening the fridge will be challenging. So, my love moved that drywall. I'm very proud. It required a little rewiring of things which he's quite good at and does with ease. Drywall and mud, however, were totally uncharted territory for him. He's doing a great job and I'm planning to smear some paint all over it next week. Then perhaps a trip to IKEA for some cabinetry. We'll see how the budget looks.

Also on his agenda was to unclog the sink in the upstairs bath. His go-to for clogs has for many years been Drain-O or something like it. A couple of years ago we bought a little drain snake and it's been great. No more caustic chemicals for us! This clog, however, beat that little snake to a pulp. Jonathan poured some kind of really nasty junk into the sink and then proceeded to plunge it. He set the plunger into our clawfoot tub and went back to the drywall. I took the boy up for a bath and found that our well loved clawfoot tub is now etched with 2 circles where the plunger sat and a stream all the way to the drain. That was yesterday. Today it's even worse. This evening it's etched and rust colored. This blows! Now we're going to have to have the tub resurfaced with some more seriously toxic shit AND the sink still isn't draining.
Gotta love old iron pipes. They're rusted and filled with hair. My hair I'm sure since I'm the one who uses that sink the most. Jonathan bought a snake that attaches to the drill but the water still won't budge. Tomorrow, he'll open up the pipe that runs down the back of the house and have a look see.

I'm trying to cost this out in my head:
2 trips to the hardware store $10 gas
new tools $I don't want to ask
toxic drain cleaner $10ish
bathtub resurfacing $ I'm afraid to know

plus, we'll certainly have to replace the 1930's sink that was rotting away before we tortured it. $200ish


BUT, we've learned a lot. Jonathan will feel so great when the problem is solved. And maybe, just maybe, it's still cheaper than calling a plumber? Last time we had to call a plumber we ended up having the gas lines for the whole house redone. $thousands!

I wish we could find a nice plumber who likes jam. How many jars of jam would a plumber charge?????

a week on the couch

Farmer Trish has the flu. Meanwhile, the chickens are wishing for more food (Jonathan feeds them a bit less), the tomatoes are waiting to be harvested, the fridge is getting empty, the winter starts are getting leggy waiting for a new planter box, and the crabgrass is plotting to take over the world.
Thank goodness the mornings have been foggy and the days mild so nothing is dying. The eggs in the incubator are slowly maturing and the bees are storing pollen.
I'm going to snuggle up on the couch and hope the farm can wait a few days.

more thoughts on saving money and shopping local

I was speaking to a friend this morning about shopping locally. We were talking about how the term has so many meanings. It's become one of those slightly irritating catch phrases, used so often that it has almost no meaning at all. I explored it a bit here last week but I have a few things to add.
The are both side benefits of shopping locally and side benefits of shopping cheaply. I think it's important to note a few.
When you buy products in your town, the business owner gives some of your sales tax to your town. They employ people who live in your town, they probably donate to the soccer teams in your town and donate gift certificates to charity events in your town. Plus, you save gas and time staying closer to home.

When you leave town in order to shop with the big boys, you save money and often time, getting everything you need in one huge building. The money savings is important in our household. It allows us to live in this very expensive community. It allows me to work a only few nights a week as a waitress so that the boy doesn't have to go to day care. Saving money means that when the girls scouts come by I can donate some money. When the bloodbank calls, I do have time to give them some of my blood. When the elementary school needs volunteers, I am available. Saving money allows me to be a better parent and be a larger part of my community.

It's a tricky balance. I'm looking forward to the day when we will be judged less for the seemingly little choices we make. I think every decision has so much more thought behind it than most people assume. Nothing is as simple as it seems and each of us makes the choices that allow us to live in whatever fashion we think is right for us, our family, our community.

Musical chairs with chickens

Well, this week our dear sweet Rosie the Rhode Island Red has begun to molt. This is our very first molt at City Mouse Farm and it's kind of sad and exciting all at the same time. Exciting because it represents a forward motion. Our first chickens are all grown and experiencing their right of passage as the "elders" in the coop. Sad because Rosie looks rather pathetic, kinda gangly and balding. In big egg production, Rosie would be bound for the stock pot as she will lay fewer eggs after her molt.
At the same time, Meyer and Pepper, the 2 month old blue Cochins have begun to spend their nights in the coop with the big girls. Jonathan had to add a third perch so there wouldn't be any fighting over space.
And as we move the teenie boppers out, we prepare the incubator for eggs arriving from Tennessee and Texas. The boy has joined 4-H and we're going to try our luck at hatching a few varieties of bantam chickens.

Chickens are truly so fun and easy. I highly suggest that every garden keep a few. Our chickens enjoyed a winter squash as big as my thigh and some fresh grass clippings today. They sang praises to the chef as they ate.

extra information

In our busy lives with a 6 year old interrupting us every time we try to have a conversation, some of the details get lost. Long ago, when it was just the two of us, we each had a more clear understanding of the knowledge the other held, a sort of table of contents if you will. These days, it takes the family blog to reveal some of the smaller bits of knowledge.

Jonathan just told me about something called a water recirculator. I've done just a bit of reading on them this morning and they're quite interesting.

It goes like this: You buy this gadget for somewhere around $500 and install it. It is connected to both your cold water pipes and your hot. When you ask your shower to deliver hot water, the gadget forces all of the cold water sitting in the hot water pipe into the cold water pipe and back to the water heater. It then sends the very warm water straight from the bottom of the water heater into your shower. No slowly warming water slipping down the drain. Is there a cost savings? Well, the jury is out. I'll run the numbers another day.

We hope to install a tankless water heater in the next year or two so the research is pending.

We did it, meat all around!

We got really excited about meat. Truthfully, I got really into the idea of shopping from the kitchen and not wandering the aisle at Safeway or Trader Joes or standing at the butcher counter at Fiesta. I hate standing there, trying to figure out not only what protein is for dinner but what cut and how to prepare it and then to have to figure out if what you're buying is healthy for you or raised responsibly or killed without terror or or or. All the while considering cost. It makes me a little crazy. Especially when I'm pressed for time, which is just about always. I've been working at 2 different restaurants lately which means that with a little planning, I can afford to buy all the meat I want.

I did the research. I purchased a quarter of a steer from Freestone Ranch and a whole 120 pound hog from Gleason Ranch. Gleason Ranch is interesting in that they have containers set up in the kitchens of a number of local restaurants. Chefs and prep cooks put all of their mis en place trimmings into these containers to feed the pigs. These pigs are getting a great variety of organic produce and grains and bread. Gleason Ranch is recycling and feeding their livestock at the same time. Plus, this allows them to offer a really reasonable price. I've committed to a 120 pound hog at $1.40 per pound (live weight). I'll pay the executioner $30 and then pay the butcher about $.75 per pound for his work. I had a very funny conversation with Ryan at Willowside meats. He walked me through all of my options. I chose 3/4 inch chops and plenty of roasts for carnitas. My only disappointment is that you can only choose one kind of sausage. They won't do half Italian and half maple breakfast. I chose Italian thinking that we'll just go with bacon for breakfast and the Italian will be the most versatile for dinners and lunches.

We bought an 8.8 cubic chest freezer and are awaiting the call from the butcher.

Now, I don't have to worry about which grocery I'm at and where they buy their meat and how far it traveled to get here and what it ate while it was alive and how the rancher treats his land, etc etc etc. This means a clearer head for me. I could use a little extra space in there.

More preservation

Jonathan made a small test batch of pickles this week. Because the chickens destroyed our cucumber harvest we were forced to buy a lot of grocery cukes this year. We eat a lot of salad and each of us enjoys the crunch of a nice cuke. We've been buying the expensive pickles because they're the yummiest. We buy a lot of them because all of us love pickles on sandwiches and out of hand too. We had intended to make tzatziki and pickles from those garden cucumbers. Hmph!

I ended up buying just 2 pounds of pickle cukes from Imwalle Gardens so that Jonathan could give it a try. Next year, with the girls contained, we'll make a whole lot of pickles for crunching all Winter long. He made 4 jars last night and says they'll be ready to enjoy in a few weeks. The brine has both cinnamon and red pepper in it so there's beautiful sort of ruby color in the bottom of the jar. I can't wait to taste them.

I've got pesto on the brain today. I've been waiting to make it because the bees were really enjoying the basil flowers. I can't wait any longer so the bees will have to find something else to eat. My very simple recipe is from an uncle. In a food processor:
1 cup packed garden basil
2 cloves fresh garlic
1/4 cup parmesan
2 teaspoon pinenuts
2/3 cup olive oil

It freezes well and stores in a jar in the fridge pretty well too. I froze this batch in ice cube trays and then transfered the cubes to a big bag and tossed it into the freezer to brighten those dark days of Winter.

Where should all the money go?

Shop local or go to Home Depot and grab a snack at Costco? Well, this is an interesting philosophical dilemma. I like to support the folks in my community but I like to be able to afford to live in my community. I want to keep businesses nearby but I like to be home, and not off in an office somewhere, when my boy gets home from school. I want to make projects and I want to get everything I need in one place. Apparently, I have the wantsies.

Recently, I wanted to make a cookie bouquet for my boys first school concert. I needed an inexpensive terracotta pot, some lollipop sticks, cookie ingredients, spray adhesive, and a big round of foam. I found the cookie ingredients at Safeway. Yes, I could have gone to Whole Paycheck but I don't have a sugar daddy. Plus, how is Whole Paycheck any better than Safeway? I went to the hardware store for the spray adhesive and terracotta pot. I bought a pot but it was much larger than what I wanted because the selection was kinda sad. I drove all over town looking for the foam ball and found none. I had to buy the lollipop sticks at a specialty store 1 town over. I really tried to shop local and support the little guy. The little guy didn’t have everything I needed. I wasted a lot of time and gas looking and in the end, I paid 30% more than I would have if I had driven straight to Walmart.
Also, I recently wanted one of those galvanized metal troughs. I happened to be at the big feed store in the next town over and asked about them there. They were out of them so I stopped at a Ranch supply on my way home. They were $10 more there, I didn’t buy one. I zipped past home and went to the local Ace hardware. They had them there for a full $30 more than the feed store. Where do you think I bought one? Why must things be 30% more expensive in town? I know. Rents are a bit higher and they don’t buy in the same volume.
So, what about the big feed store compared to the little feed store? The big feed store in the next town has everything we need for the furballs, the bees, and the chickens. Plus they have a great selection and even little 5 pound bags of chick starter. There’s a smaller feed store in my town but they don’t have the same selection. They have only a 20 pound bag of chick food which will not be used quickly enough to retain its vitamin content. They don't carry anything for beekeeping. Jonathan can stop at the big feed store on his way home from work so gas is not an issue. Both stores are locally owned. Both employ local people. One employs more local people than the other. Is there any difference in shopping at one or the other? I don’t really think so.
But then, what about the bigger guys like local chains? What of the locally owned hardware stores? Ace which is simply a locally owned franchise, the huge Friedman Brothers, or Yardbirds which had many local stores (before they sold to Home Depot).
Is it more responsible to shop at one or the other? If I have to pay 30% more at Ace then I won’t be able to build as many raised beds or tomato cages, which means I won’t have as much food to eat. I could shop at Friedman and often do because it’s huge, they have great service and they don’t always look at me funny when I ask for things like rebar for a teepee. Sadly, they are a bit out of my way. Lowes and Home Depot are right on my path to other things like Trader Joes. I like Lowes better and often choose it. Is it bad to support the big chain? Wasn’t it once a single store? Shouldn’t we be celebrating Mr. Lowe for being such a great businessman and smacking his name on huge home improvement warehouses all over the country? Afterall, he employs hundreds of people in each location and is probably able to offer some pretty great benefits because his company is so large. Or should we be celebrating Mr. Ace for talking a bunch of other guys into paying him to be part of his big purchase to get a better price? -This reminds me of co-op shopping. Each household orders what they want. They pay less because of the large quantities. It all arrives and is divided up.- Or do we take pity on the little guy who can only afford to buy a few at a time and must pass on his lack of savings to the consumer?

I guess, for me, I try to support local people doing great work. That means choosing businesses that treat their local employees well. Not just businesses who's owners live in town. I am picky about who I give my money to and want to choose businesses run by honest people who choose to act with integrity. I don't always have that information but will behave accordingly if I am aware of a lack of integrity. Bottom line, I shop where I can afford (financially and emotionally)to shop. Living in beautiful California is expensive and we do our best. Our family is slowly moving toward buying less altogether and shopping in the garden and the pantry more. We are building relationships with other farmers, citified and countrified. We hope to spend less time in the car and more time doing so very may other things. This works for us.

What about farmers markets? Are all those fruits and veggies local? Or did they drive 5 hours to get to you? Ever wonder where all the peaches that aren't perfect enough for the restaurants go and whether or not they're worth $3 per pound? Check out your "local" farmers market. I find great local stuff at the market and great far away stuff and stuff that is so much more expensive than I think it should be. For me, I think I'll dig up some more grass and shop in the garden. Each farmer's market is different and you should do the research for yourself.

What about buying American? That’s another discussion entirely.

Meat Math

I took a local coop tour a few months ago and one of the participants was asking questions about broilers or dinner chickens. I’ve been thinking about the subject ever since. I’d like to look more carefully at the numbers.
Now, let’s pretend I have a garage to raise a pile of little dinners in. I don’t have a garage, but let’s pretend for now because I really don’t think I can stomach the idea of raising dinner chickens in the upstairs bathroom. I don't know, maybe I can, if the numbers work……

I can purchase 25 newborn chickens from McMurray Hatchery for approximately $35 plus $15 in shipping. These will be Cornish Rock crosses and will grow into dinner quite quickly. They arrive here and I set them up with water, a heat lamp and some food. I feed them organic food for about 10 weeks. At this point they will weigh about 2-3 pounds each and can be “processed”. So, there’s the cost of set-up, which is minimal. Heat lamps and chick feeders will cost you less than $10 and can be used again and again. The more important numbers are these:
$54 for chicks
$50 for 100 pounds of organic feed (half that if organic is not important to you)

That’s about $4 per chicken or $2.00 per pound of organic chicken. Great price right? Sure but you’ll pay the same price at Trader Joes plus a little gas money. Grown at home you’ll know they’ve eaten and lived well but then you have to “process and dress” or kill, pluck, and gut your little chickens.

How to kill them? Well, you could ring their neck, stab them in the head, use a chicken guillotine or hang them upside down from a tree and bleed them. Then you have to drop them into hot water and pluck the feathers. THEN you have to cut them open and remove all the innards. Last, but not least, you must wait for rigormortis to release before placing them into the chest freezer for dinner another night. After spending your day processing 25 chickens, my guess is that you eat vegetarian for dinner. After all the reading I’ve done on the subject this week, I may be eating vegetarian for a while.

So, the numbers prove that it may well be slightly cheaper and better for your body to raise your own roasting chicken. I don’t know how good it is for your psyche. At least you’ll be truly in touch with what you’re eating. I’d love to find a local processing plant that would do the dirty work for me so that I can continue to live in denial while enjoying the best nutrition. Sadly, I’ve spoken to the guys at Santa Rosa Meat and Martindales and they said, “No, you have to do it yourself.” You MIGHT find someone to do it for $6 bucks a chicken but you may as well buy a good organic free range chicken for that price.”. I think they’re right.

Fine then. What about beef?
We live on a small downtown lot so raising cattle isn’t really an option. If we had a small rural lot we could raise Miniature
cattle but they’re way too cute to be dinner. I found this great farm through my friend Laura. It’s called Freestone Ranch. They grow grass fed cattle that is tender, lean, and tasty and really well priced. The numbers really do pencil out here too. After you pay the rancher, the harvester (rifleman) and the butcher, the meat costs about $5.50 a pound. This includes all the cuts from soup bones, to rib roast, and from T-bones, to burgers. Plus, these folks are acting as stewards of the land. They are concerned with the native grass and take grazing very seriously. They are respectful of the cow as an animal and don't feed him foods which would be unnatural, like corn, just to fatten him up. They harvest quickly and on site so the cow isn't confused and stressed when he meets his end. This means a better life and death for the cow and more tender meat for dinner as it's not full of adrenaline from a stressed out cow. I am very interested in this, so much that I began doing the research on chest freezers. I certainly can’t fit 150 pounds of beef in my regular freezer!

Just a bit more math: An energy star rated freezer from Sears will cost you at the least $370 for a 13 cubic foot size and will store 455 pounds of frozen food. If it’s full it’ll cost you around $44 per year to run. Of course, you’ll need to actually keep it full or the energy costs go up. You could process your 25 chickens, buy a quarter of beef, keep a good stash of frozen garden veggies and apple pies and even homemade popsicles and maybe fill it. Then you have to remember to shop from it when you’re in search of dinner. I think this may be a great idea. I’m not sure we have the commitment needed though. Sounds like we should discuss it over dinner. Not chicken tonight.

On a slightly side note: You can buy a smaller freezer but it won’t be Energy Star rated. While it may cost you about $5 more per year in electricity, a smaller freezer will cost you less to purchase. I guess the savings is in the environmental guilt and not just your pocket book.

A Good Day

It's been a really nice day on the farm today. Yesterday we were all freezing our knickers off when the temp dropped into the 50's from the 90's. Today, it's a normal California day with mellow sun and a gentle breeze.

Amelia Redheart, one of our CaliWhites, laid her first little white egg. I rewarded her with first dibs on the Boys leftover lunchbox innards. She and her sister are supposed to be very prolific layers as they are some sort of Leghorn cross. That's pronounced Leggern for those of you who don't speak barnyard.

I harvested a bunch of corn today. I ate 2 small ears raw with some leftover peach and blueberry tart. Ah, nothing like straight sugar for lunch. If you've only had corn from the grocery, you probably can't imagine eating it raw. Well, let me tell you, fresh garden corn is like crunchy, juicy, candy. It's incredible! You should grow some just to taste the difference. I husked the rest, tossing the silks and all into the chicken pen. There was a silly chicken frenzy, they love corn! I carefully cut all the beautiful kernels off and tossed them into a bag and into the freezer for later. We still have some corn that's not quite ripe yet. I noticed a small pollination problem at the tops of the ears. I've never planted so much corn before and I think I left too much space between my three rows. Next year, I'll do a more dense planting.

Years ago, when I planted my first six pack of corn seedlings, a friend told me that she never grows corn because of all the bugs. Knock on wood. I've never had a real problem with bugs in my corn. I have the occasional earwig which I toss to the girls but that's it. Maybe I've been lucky, I dunno.

Now I need to go pull all the weeds that have been hiding in the corn field and toss those to my girls as well.

We'll be making Pesto with garden basil today and picking up some free Quince fruit. The end of Summer is always so yummy!

Fun with Doors

I have to admit it. I have a thing for architecture. I really like the details found in things like hardware, iron fencing, doors, gingerbread and just the general shapes found in turn of the century homes. I love to wander places like Ray's Trading Post on Hwy 116 to see what treasures have been reclaimed from crumbling old homes.

My living room is quite small and when I was spending a lot of time sitting on the couch nursing a baby, I started to feel a lot claustrophobic. We have a door on almost every passageway. These doors work great for temperature control and energy savings. But, again, they can really make a girl feel closed in. So, for my birthday one year, Jonathan bought me a door full of little windows for the living room. It's great. I love it. It allows us to keep the heat in the room while still being able to see out and about. This left me with a door. One lone door who's 16 layers of paint I began to strip. Then I realized, I had nowhere to use it. Every other doorway in the house already has a door.

hmmm....you know what I don't have? A proper bed or headboard. I am always eyeing the king sized reproductions in Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and the like. I love the simple rectangle shapes I see in some of the brass or iron beds. I decided to turn that unused door into a headboard. I coated it many times with polyurethane to lock in the lead paint-wouldn't want lead paint sprinkling onto our heads all night! I added 3 very small eye hooks to the back of the door and secured it to the wall. Behind the mattress, it rests on a few pieces of plywood. Just a little something to support it in the event there's a shake-up. I used only the little hooks because I wanted the door to be able to return to the house someday, if it was needed. I wanted to use it without stealing it from it's original place.
I really love it. It looks like it belongs and is still just a tiny bit quirky too.


Laying in bed one morning, it occurred to me that I could use doors for my new planter boxes. I'm always thinking of my Santa Cruz friend, Anders Olsen, who used old signs from the University to make his raised beds. It was a great use of tossed away items and looked great too. So, off I went to the county dump. We've got this nifty and thrifty area we call Recycle Town. I bought 4 doors for $20. I plan to give them a good coat of lead abating paint so I'm not leaching anything yucky into my soil and then I'm going to screw on some short sides and fill them up with soil and compost. They'll degrade just like any other wood would but they'll be cute in the meantime. Plus, they cost me a heck of a lot less than sheets of plywood from Lowes.

Quick, turn that fruit into food!

More than a week ago, we bought some peaches. We don't normally buy a lot of fruit. We buy bananas and for now we buy Kiwi Fruit (next year, hopefully, we pick it from the garden). But, I saw an ad on Craig's List for organic peaches for $.50 per pound. My boys LOVE peach jam and we didn't get very many peaches on our new peach tree thanks mostly to the little dog and his chewing phase. So, I sent Jonathan off to buy 20 lbs. $10, great deal!
Well, we've been really busy and those peaches have been sitting on a sheet pan for a while. The hens have enjoyed quite a few bruised and spoiling ones. Last night, before Bee Club, Jonathan finally had some time to make some jam. Here's what he got from what was left of the 20 pounds. He calls it Heaven in a jar. Cost to make:
10 fruit
8 jars
5 sugar and pectin
$23 for 17 jars of jam, not bad.



I swiped a few of the peaches and while the Boy was building a pizza on Trader Joes crust, I tossed together a rustic tart. I had some pie crust left over from making chicken pot pies last week. I rolled it out, hacked up the peaches, skin and all, and added a whole mess of blueberries which had gotten a bit too squishy for morning parfait. I covered the whole thing with a makeshift struesel topping of butter, brown sugar, white sugar and toasted almonds. Into the oven for about 40 minutes. It's not the prettiest thing but it sure is Summer on a plate. It was made even better with a scoop of organic vanilla ice cream.

In the above process, Jonathan learned first hand about cling verses freestone peaches. He asked me what freestone meant just last week and now he REALLY knows. He made me promise never to plant a cling peach no matter how yummy it is touted to be!

Eye Candy

The boy and I recently spent the afternoon at the Copia Edible Gardens Festival. If you haven’t been to Copia and you live in Northern California you need to scoot on over there. Not only is it interesting and full of gardening eye candy but it’s populated with people who can actually answer questions. The newest bonus is that the whole compound is surrounded by all the yummy food at Oxbow Market.

We listened to Serge Lebeque of the Bee Club talk about honeybees, why they’re disappearing and what we can do to help. It felt really good, sitting there listening, to know that my family is actively helping. We are not just sitting around worried about what might happen or even worse, oblivious. We have 2 happy hives being cared for in our very own garden. Serge is a fount of information and Jonathan is looking forward to learning even more from him in a two part class offered by our local Junior College.

We were disappointed that we missed the talk about backyard chickens so we went over to the children’s garden and flirted with the Copia hens a bit. We were also checking out their lone rabbit. How any rabbit could survive a Napa Valley Summer outside is beyond me. That rabbit never looks happy. It’s about a million degrees out and all he can do is lay there panting. I guess they keep him because his poop can go directly into the garden. Rabbit poop need not be composted and is a great source of nutrients for plants or your worm bin. Plus, they’re cute and cuddly. Next time your kid asks for one you might consider your garden before you say “No”.
The whole garden there is amazing. It’s a great combination of wild and tamed. They use some great classic growing techniques, three sisters, espalier, and plain old straight rows. For those unfamiliar with three sisters, it’s a Native American technique. You plant corn, add pole beans which will use the corn as their pole and then add a big leafy squash at the bottom to create shade, keep the soil moist and deter weeds. It’s a great system for even the most novice gardeners. The gardens at Copia are also filled with things of more interest. They have really unusual varieties of flowers and fruiting trees. One of the things I love most is their use of different things for trellis and support. The gardeners there get a little creative and I like it.

Inspired by a lush, green covered teepee, I went to the hardware store this week for rebar. I quickly built a rebar teepee for the boy. I planted one Passion flower on it and will add pole beans when the time is right. He’s going to love his new little fort. My teepee consists of 5 poles now but I think I’ll double it for better hideout coverage. We recently saw pink Passion flower at the zoo and the boy has asked me to put some of that on his teepee too. It’ll attract both hummingbirds and girls!



I also had my eye on this arch built of rebar. I took some photos and know just how I’ll tweak it to work for me. Bending the rebar into perfect arches will take some thought but I’m guessing that it’s just a matter of creating a form out of lumber. The stuff we saw at Copia was so simply constructed. They used wire and zip ties to connect the rebar. So MacGuyver!



The boy wandered through the garden plots taking little nibbles here, there, and everywhere. I probably should have discouraged him but the plants were loaded and you just gotta love a kid who eats multicolored beans off vines and asks you to please bring a big torpedo onion home for Papa.

Places like Copia are great for inspiration and motivation. That simple rebar teepee will make a great addition to my garden. It’s useful for flowers, beans, and people, it was inexpensive to build, and I love the slightly quirky look.

Is Causal Green a crayola color?

We have some things in common with some of the other urban farming bloggers out there. We feel good when we can feed ourselves. It makes us feel strong and powerful even. We like that we can achieve this strength while respecting the earth and mother nature. We enjoy the idea that we have something to contribute, to share, to trade. But the truth is that we don’t want to make all the sacrifices. We, like our LA blogging comrades, enjoy a nice cocktail. Not sure one can buy organic vodka. We don’t want to work so hard to make it all work. And, we don’t think one has to work so hard. We hope to prove it.

Water is a constant issue that I struggle with. I’d love to use the water flowing down my shower drain while it warms up. I could divert the whole shower to a holding tank or right out into the garden. "Hang on, garden, here comes the grey water!" However, if I can’t use grey water on my food crops or what’s left of my lawn then I’ve very little use for it. Sure, I could fill buckets in the shower with the clean, warming water and then carry those through the house to the herb garden. But, I don’t want to carry buckets full of water through the house, over the wood floors, and out into the garden. A great buffalo of a dog will surely trip me and gallons of water will go splashing through the house. Then the little dog will come prancing through and all the dirt on his paws will turn to mud which he will promptly put all over the Ikea (thank goodness for slipcovers) couch. Then the boy will wander through and decide to run his hotwheels through the “carwash”. Plus, what do you do with the bucket/s while you’re actually in the shower? Carry it/them into the bathroom while standing there naked, leaving it/them in the middle of the tiny room so you can trip over it/them on your way out? Or drop your towel into it/them? I just don’t think so.
If someone could invent a lever system actually inside the shower enclosure that allows the clean water produced while waiting for the shower to "warm up" to be diverted directly into the garden onto any plant that would be fantastic. Easy! Enter bathroom, reach in, turn on diversion lever, turn on Hot water, take off clothes, have conversation with child about toothpaste, step in, turn off diversion lever, adjust temperature, shampoo rinse repeat.
And what about irrigation? Fill your garden with plastic tubes and hoses so that you can use less water and spend less time watering? I’m not so sure about all that plastic. Aren't I supposed to be using less plastic? Dig a bunch of trenches and lay pipe for some serious bigboy sprinklers? Well, sure, but what of the cost and the time, and the wife who is notorious for changing her mind? I love the little clay watering vessels you plant in your boxes. They’re called Ollas and everything I read sounds great. You can see them or buy them while supporting an amazing homesteading family here…Ollas

The problem for me is the price. At $25 each with approximately 3 large ones needed in an 8x4 raised bed, I can’t afford them. I asked my kiln owning friend Heather and she says they'd be quite inexpensive to make. If one had the skills and the tools!
I saw one website which showed a thrifty gardener using silicone to attach 2 terra cotta pots together. He sealed the drainage hole on one pot and buried that end. You then use the remaining hole to fill. Maybe it’ll work. That would run you approximately $10 to $15 for the pots and a tube of silicone. Then you have silicone in your garden and all over your hands and probably your patio as well. I don’t know. I think I’ll try it in one of my new beds and let y’all know if it works. But, what do you use for things that are grown in the dirt, not in fancy soil filled beds? What about the herbs and artichokes with are tucked in between lavendar and snapdragons surrounding the lawn? Must I have 1 olla for every other plant? Who could afford that? So then we’re back to hand watering which, when I’m in charge leads to stress, or rubber and plastic running through the garden. Yes, I could make those self watering containers out of 5 gallon buckets like the 215 growers use. But, they’re ugly. Yes, you heard me, ugly. Ugly is a problem. They’re small too. I don’t want 40 million of those ugly things all over my garden. Nope. I must research more options.
Lucky for me there's a class being offered at Daily Acts in 2 weeks. I'll check it out and report back.

Rotten Bananas

From rotten bananas to yummy banana bread made with city chicken eggs and greek yogurt.

Those darn chickens!

So, in the beginning, remember that I promised Jonathan that I had no intention of letting the chickens free range? But then they were so cute. They’d come when you called them and rush to see you when you opened the backdoor. They sing happy little songs as they peck and scratch and rid the garden of all those gooey bugs and earwigs (why are they called that??? Yuck!). The girls love to eat the only bug that makes my boy and I both squeal like girls….the potato bug. They really enjoyed their chicken days clucking around the yard.

They have this great coop with a double-wide nesting box, two roosting perches and a nifty slide out bottom for easy cleaning. The run, however, was small, difficult to move, kinda sad and the chickens didn’t like it. Soon, we had too many chickens for the little run anyway. So there they were, free ranging singing their songs. Turning the garden into moonscape (thanks to urban evolution for the term). There are crater-like pits in the pretty green lawn, and the strawberries are gone. As are the beans, cukes, oregano, thyme, garlic chives, squash, tomatoes, figs, limes, kumquats, you get the drift. They do not like the regular chives or the bell peppers. Those were allowed to live.
I already mentioned the poop. Everywhere. Gross.
So, we tried to corral them. I bought 50 feet of 3 foot high chicken wire and some inexpensive metal poles that look like green bamboo. Why? It was what I could afford. Have I mentioned that I’m a part time waitress? Money is tight. Plus we have priority issues, that cruise to Mexico sure looks like fun. Okay, getting sidetracked. Another day we’ll talk about money and credit and Jonathan’s big plan.
Today, we talk chickens.
New corral, plenty of room. I used the entire 50 foot roll of chicken wire and they should have been happy. Then Indy started to dig under to steal their kitchen treats. A visiting dog, dug under and promptly killed one young chicken. The chickens started digging out and flying over and landing on the wire and bending it over and then even the fat ones could just jump out. They were everywhere again. The Caliwhites were even hopping the picket fence and exploring the neighborhood. Neighbors knocked on our door to tell us a chicken was out. They were eating the corn and the pumpkins on the East side. They were lolling around in the middle of the street. They were out of control.

I want to plant things and see them fruit. I want to eat that fruit. I spent a week or so trying to make everyone happy. I watched the chickens in the garden and discovered their favorite spot. It turned out that they love the Southeast corner of the back yard. We have 2 fruit trees there. One Nectarine and one grafted Apricot and Plum. There’s lots of shade thanks to neighboring trees. The soil is damp and nice for a little dust bath. The more I thought about that spot, the more I liked it. We moved the coop just under and between the 2 fruit trees and off I went to find some fencing.

Again, not a ton of money, also a little afraid of anything too too permanent in case they hated the new spot and wouldn’t stay put. I found some galvanized steel fencing in little rectangles. 5 feet high, 50 foot roll, $50. With that I bought Steel U posts. I began the project and then went back for more wire fencing. All in all, I think I spent close to $200 to reign in the chickens.
I added a temporary little brick pathway to check for aethetics and function. I think I like it. It brings the farm into the back end of the garden. There’s more continuity now. I’ll have my eye on Craig’s List for some more free bricks and I’ll set a proper little path with sand. The girls seem happy back there. They have sun and shade and a bench to sit on and under. There’s a pot to perch on and an umbrella to hang out under. They like it. We like it.
One problem: 3 chickens keep flying out. Miss Mary, our newly laying Ameraucana. And the twin Cali Whites, Pearl and Amelia Redheart. Those Calis are on my list. If we decide we want new chicks next year it’s the CaliWhites who will find themselves living with someone else. Hello internet, grab scissors, catch chicken, clip wing, replace. Problem solved. Nope. Still flying out. Rinse and repeat. The clipping of wings is hard to watch. It’s sad. They lose their long pretty feathers and their liberty all in one little snip. Not to mention their ability to fly away from predators. Sadly, we just can’t have them wandering the yard and the neighborhood anymore and needed to remind ourselves that they are indeed livestock.

They seem to be staying put now. Like I said, if they don’t they’ll be rehomed. Having a local network of chicken lovers is really helpful for us backyard flock owners. It’s nice to be able to get just the right mix by moving one or two around.
Next I need to get some of those cute scalloped shingles for the front of the house. A little solar porch light would be great and Jonathan will build a real gate. We love our new chicken land.

Moving forward honestly

I need to lay some things out here. We don’t want to misrepresent ourselves: We are not terribly Green, nor are we conscious (Jonathan will tell you what he thinks of that word later). We just love to grow food in the garden. We find contributing to society to be satisfying. We like to be self sufficient. We’re not afraid of big brother, we’re not hoarding food for the big one, we’re not looking out the windows expecting to see zombies. We just like to do things ourselves. We like that we don’t have to drive to the market every day. We like that we have a pantry full of things in glass jars and a freezer filled with our own corn, apple pies, and the like. I made my own baby food because I could, not for any grand reason. Baby food is expensive and it smells funny so I made my own. We raise foster kittens because they’re cute.
Yes, we might be more prepared than another household if the big one flattens our homes, or not. We will raise a son with a love of the land and knowledge which will allow him to feed himself. We don’t have a lot of money. We reuse things to conserve the money we have. We shop at the flea market because it’s enjoyable not because we can’t afford a coat at Mervyns or because it’s better for the environment. That's just a bonus. We like to be able to trade and barter for food and services. It’s fun, did I mention we like to have fun? In our town we might be considered fairly conservative. When we leave this little “island” we appear to be crazy liberal. We don’t claim either title. We are just doing what seems right for us in this moment. We have a little lot, just under 7000 square feet with a tall house which leaves a fairly small footprint. That leaves us with a lot of dirt. We just want to do something with it without spending a fortune and while having some fun. There’s that fun again!

That said, my all time favorite book (since I was a young teen) is Earth Abides and I’ve been thinking about learning to shoot a gun. You just never know. There was a show on one of the movie channels called Jeremiah that I very much enjoyed and while watching it I promised myself I would teach my boy some life skills other than just reading and math and the internet. I’m typing this on my Apple Macbook balanced on my Ikea table with the flatscreen TV on in the other room while my boys watch reruns of Star Trek and I’m wearing clothes from Walmart or Target or Ross and vintage jewelry. People are weird and I am no exception!

The neighbors keep asking about the farm so we’ve decided to call our home “City Mouse Farm”. My friend Melissa has scribbled out a little mousey logo for us. Her abilities astound me and if anyone needs someone to illustrate a children’s book please contact me for her info. She drew our logo while on the phone with her Mom one morning. I can’t even draw a straight line with a ruler! I think her little city mouse is the best around. He needs a name. Neville maybe. ooops, technical difficulty. Neville will be posted soon.

The farm needs a lot of work. The house needs a paint job and it will need a roof soon. Our very large kitchen is filled with 3 different sets of cabinetry, all of which I’m sure were hand-me-downs. It’s not pretty but it functions and we don’t really have a spare 30 grand to make it pretty. I did choose a paint color and actually started to paint the house only to find that it’s way too high for me to paint. Hopefully, sometime soon we will be able to afford a proper paint job. There’s lead paint under there so it needs to be cleaned carefully. The windows could use some restoration but frankly, we want to go to Disneyland, so the windows will wait. Prioritizing is a challenge here.

We made dinner for a friend dealing with cancer and made extra for ourselves. Dinner tonight is homemade Chicken Pot Pie with lots of organic veggies from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, one of my favorites. It’s a time consuming recipe that involves poaching a chicken, making a crust, stirring together a rich veloute and making a dripping mess of the oven. It’s full of vitamins and love and just plain yummy. We’ve got double chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Now I need to pry my boys away from the Star Trek marathon.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the moving of the chickens.

Chicken addiction in others

Did you know that you can buy diapers for your chickens so they can roam the house like a tabby cat? My new friend Jen even built a chicken coop in her kitchen proving that anyone, anywhere can keep chickens. I'm thinking she just peels her carrots right over the coop and doesn't even bother to put the eggs in the fridge. You just lift a hen and fry up your egg. Crazy fun!

Grass without a special card

Back to the garden. I made a little trade with an excavator friend and had the old shale driveway removed and carried away in just under an hour. Amazing what a tractor can do! I would have spent 2 Summers soaking and pitchforking and shoveling that out only to have no way to dispose of it. Stevie-T carried it all away in his dumptruck and then we had lunch. Sadly, we lost the big triangular planter boxes as they were in the way and starting to fall apart anyway.

With not much space to plant this year I started to seriously eye the East side yard. Technically, it’s part of the front yard because we live on a corner. It’s full of grass. Seriously ugly grass I refuse to water with any regularity and we never use. Last year I planted a Stella Cherry tree out there. More than one neighbor questioned my placement thinking that it would not get enough sun. Well, ha ha I did actually watch the sun before I chose the location and it’s thriving and makes some yummy sweet cherries. To me this means I should plant some more stuff out there. I need to plant somewhere other than the backyard because the chickens are killing everything I plant back there. I’ve been talking about removing the grass for many years and Jonathan really loves it. After a long conversation, which nearly escalated into an argument, I finally got him to delve deep and tell me why he’s so attached to the stupid grass. Grass makes him feel at home. That particular grass makes me feel frustrated. I love the grass in the backyard. It’s lush and green and soft. It’s soothing and cooling. It begs for the hammock and a good book. The grass in the front and side yard is dry and brown and useless. Poor Jonathan came home to patches of that grass being removed. I doubt he was truly surprised. I promptly planted 40 corn plants and dug out some more grass. I planted a Winter squash and then dug out some more grass. I planted some Pumpkins and then dug out some more grass. There’s still more grass to come out and now I have to go back for the crabgrass which seems to be thriving without all that taller grass to smother it. Where the heck does all that crabgrass come from anyway? Some flippin’ bird carries the seeds in his belly from the Central Valley? No one in Northern California plants crabgrass! It has had to travel from afar and I will have to spend the next 3 years pulling it out of my soil.

On the West side of the house I removed, shovel by shovel, about 120 square feet of grass and planted flower seeds and three fruit trees. The gophers got the apricot despite the gopher cage but so far the bing cherry and asian pear seem happy. I have room for one more dwarf tree over there. Haven’t decided what yet. Tons of crabgrass over there too.

On the East side of the house I am removing maybe 500 square feet of grass. In neighboring communities they pay you to remove grass. I’ve heard they pay $.50 per square foot in another local town. But not here….. Noooooo. We’re all hippy dippy and progressive and conscious but we’re not giving out money for grass removal. We’ll leave that to the larger more development-ridden cities. I could buy a lot of fencing and mulch and seeds with $.50 a foot.

There’s still grass in the front and there’s still that lovely patch in the back. Jonathan still feels at home.

Speaking of Jonathan, he has a new farming project of his own. We were watching a beehive at the fair this year and I said it would be nice if we could have bees. Well, guess what, this instant gratification family now has 2 beehives. They live on the West side of our porch and give that side of the garden a purpose. The bees love the cutting garden the boy and I planted and when the Bing and Pear trees bloom next Spring we should have bumper crops! We’ve had the hives for nearly 2 months and have only had 2 stings so far. Someone knocking on wood for me? The neighbors have noticed more bees on their fruiting and flowering plants and we really feel like we’re doing something important for this amazing little species.

And so, happy readers, I think that brings us up to date.

And then there were chickens!

Somewhere along the timeline, I decided I wanted chickens. At first I think I was joking. I love animals and have always believed the more the merrier. Then I noticed a house by the park with a chicken coop. It wasn’t stinky, there weren’t rats and flies circling it. The chickens were friendly and seriously cute. The boy went off to preschool and they had chickens. I loved to visit the chickens at pick-up time. They were always giving away eggs with such gorgeous golden yolks and pretty brown shells. They even had chickens at the Occidental Ecology Center. More and more, I wanted chickens. Jonathan kept saying no. He was afraid they would be running the streets wild and that we would be inundated by rats and other yucky critters. I started wandering the internet, reading about chickens, breeds, feed, housing, you name it. I told Jonathan about what I was reading and finally, one morning he gave in with one condition, “that we get one of those chickens with the feather pants”. I met him at the feed store that same day. We planned to bring home 6 chicks. We intended to have 5 hens and figured that chicks would be fragile and at least one might not make it to adulthood. When we arrived at the feed store the boy fell in love with a little Ameraucana chick and Jonathan found out that they had Cochin chicks in the brooder. We brought home 8 chicks. We set up our 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Barred Plymouth Rocks, 2 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Ameraucana, and 1 feather pants wearing Cochin in the upstairs bathroom in a cardboard box filled with pine shavings. We gave our little egg shaped friends medicated chick feed, water and a heat lamp. They grew well and soon, we had 8 young chickens. We watched them play and schedule their pecking order. We watched Ruby and Lulu fight for top chicken. They’d fly at each other, slamming their chests together. Well, soon Ruby began to crow. We rehomed Ruby and within a day Lulu began to crow. Lulu also had to live somewhere else. Our mostly tolerant neighbors were not pleased with a crowing rooster in the hood.
Jonathan built them this fantastic Tractor with wheels so that we could roll it around the garden. Chicken poop is great for the garden and we did wheel it around every couple of days for a little while. The truth was that it was really heavy and our garden is really lumpy and it was difficult for one person to move. It began to stay put for weeks on end. We’d move it somewhere new every once in a while. The chickens free ranged most days. Just as I had promised they would not. They were so happy wandering the garden. The problem is that chickens destroy gardens. I mean they really destroy gardens. They dig up everything and eat every seedling. We don’t have any snails or slugs but we don’t have any crops either. They love squash and cukes and bean plants and tomatoes.


Meg the orp will happily spend her whole day in the Sungold plant waiting for them to ripen and then jump up and eat the tiny tomato in one snap of her beak. Plus, there’s the poop. It’s everywhere. On the sidewalk, the patio, the patio furniture, the grass. Everywhere. And if that weren’t gross enough, if we leave the backdoor open the chickens come into the house looking for dog kibble or other tasty snacks. Dottie is always the first in. She’s so sweet and always says hello but then she poops on the kitchen floor and that is simply not the way friends treat each other.
There have been trials and tribulations, accidental injuries, raccoon decimations, replacements and disappearances. Come Spring of 2008, we had a flock of 5. Our red laced blue Wyandotte wasn’t happy without her silkie friend so she went off to live in Marin. With only 4 layers, we never had any excess eggs. If I wanted to bake I had to buy eggs at the market. We began fortifying our flock. We added: 2 Buff Orps, 2 Cali Whites, 1 gold laced Wyandotte, 1 more Ameraucana. Then I saw someone with the most incredible eggs. They were dark and shiny, almost mahogany colored. I had to have eggs like that! I went back to the internet and found that I needed a Cukoo Marans. I found one in Cotati. Joan, the chicken queen always has just the right chicks. I also found Jonathan a new feather pants. This one was a very expensive ($15) blue cochin which I spent nearly $10 in gas to fetch. Given that most chicks cost $5 at the most, this was one precious chick.



More trials and tribulations: Coco, the Wyandotte, was injured by Indy, the puppy, and had to go the vet. My vet won’t see chickens. I guess they creep her out. I read on the net that there was a local doctor who loves chickens. Off I went to see Dr. Dan the chicken man. Now, this was a young chicken. Maybe 2 or 3 months old. She cost us $3.50 and frankly she wasn’t all that friendly. She went to the vet because I’m too “chicken” to put a chicken out of her misery and Jonathan wasn’t home. I thought Dr. Dan would just euthanize. Dr. Dan the chicken man said the injury was totally treatable and I made a quick mental note that because I allowed her to be injured by my puppy that the guilt was worth approximately the cost of dinner. So I was guessing I would top out around $50 in vet fees for my $3 chicken. Well, Dr. Dan says, the Gold Standard treatment would be to sedate, suture and treat with pain meds and antibiotics, $150. I’m sure you readers can imagine that I asked what the other options were. Next down the list was bandage it well, change bandages every other day until the wound sugars, treat with pain meds and antibiotics. Cost: Visit, meds, and he would waive the bandaging fee because we had been in the waiting room for over an hour before we were seen. Quick math (based on what my beloved Dr. Sue charges to see the rest of my critters) $24 bucks for visit, $15 each for meds. I look at Dr. Dan and say, “okay, let’s do that. But, pain meds? For a chicken? Really? Are those necessary?”. He looks at me like I’m a total bitch and says that yes pain meds are important, that this is a very deep wound and must really hurt. He's just met me. He doesn't know how much time and money I've spent on my cats and dogs. I quickly realize that I should smile and nod because you never know when you might need a chicken vet.
He shows me how to bandage a chicken. Advising me to provide lots of padding to allow breathing room and explains that her skin will turn green as it heals and I should not be alarmed. He shows me how to give my chicken her liquid meds via beak. Being careful not to send the meds down her windpipe and drown her. I gather my chicken and my boy. I notice that the clock has been ticking and it is now too late to get home and get dinner on the table while still getting the boy into bed on time (school night). So, there I am, standing at the front desk, waiting, counting what’s left in my wallet. Trying to figure out which fast food chain I’ll be driving through on the way home with a chicken in my lap. Did I mention that I was waiting? I waited another 15 minutes just to pay the bill. When they finally accepted my money, they wanted eighty five dollars. $85!! For a chicken we don’t even like! Nice! I gave my final twenty to Carl’s Junior and went home to medicate my chicken.
Lessons learned:
Chickens are more durable than I thought.
How to bandage a chicken without strangling
Green skin while healing, Gross!
What the inside of a chickens mouth looks like, very strange indeed.
The term “sugaring” in wound terminology, a whole new view of creme brulee.

Plus, I figure that $85 bucks earned me some future cred with Dr. Dan the chicken man if and when one of my favorite chickens needs medical attention.

Then, little Penelope the blue cochin was sick. We couldn’t figure it out. We asked the internet but she didn’t make it. We sent her body off to UC Davis to be examined. FOR FREE. Thanks to the local online chicken community for this option. They called and emailed with the results. One MALE chick. Vitamin A deficiency. It turns out that chick feed must be really fresh and kept airtight in a dark place or the vitamins will escape into the ether. Huh, now we know. It would have been nice to know before some sweet young critter lost a life. Funny though, that it was another MALE!

I added the last 2 blue cochin chicks from Meyer Hatchery onto another local chicken keepers order and in July we had 2 little balls of fluff to raise. They are named Meyer and Pepper and are growing steadily. They now spend their days with the hens and their nights in a box in the kitchen. Uh oh, I think one of them just crowed.

The birth of Son and Sun

In the Winter of 2001, we added a baby boy to our family. We began to spend more time at home enjoying parenthood. We were dressing warmly because we had three ridiculous Eisenhower era wall heaters but we were happy. Then there was the big storm…..that darn tree let go of three limbs, each at least 30 feet long, one of which hit the side of our roof. Luck for us it didn’t do too much damage but we had had enough! We called a tree guy. We didn’t know how we were going to pay for the tree guy but we’d have to figure it out. We were terrified that tree would crush our house or injure our precious child. The tree guy explained that the tree had been improperly pollarded many years ago and would never be a good shape. We would have to have it trimmed annually at a cost of $1000 to stop it from losing branches. It was suggested that we spend closer to $2000 and remove the tree. Well, we couldn’t imagine our yard without the tree, but we couldn’t have it threatening our safety. We had to petition the city to have the tree removed. We had neighbors crying and trying to talk us out of it. We had to attend a tree board meeting and beg to be given permission to remove a tree from our own property. I’m not usually irritated by “the man”. I like laws, I think they’re important. However, the process of removing a tree from out very own land was a bit much. Finally, we were given a permit. We shelled out a bunch of cash and the tree was removed before lunch. It was astounding how quickly the tree disappeared.

Then, the beauty…..we had sun! Lots of sun. So much sun! Jonathan built a shed in the back corner of the yard. We had somewhere to store dog kennels, weed whackers, car parts. After so many years with leaves falling all year, the backyard slanted toward the house. Our little concrete path from the backdoor to the back gate was constantly covered in mud. I spent the entire Summer of 2002 trying to level the backyard. Our growing boy would play in an exersaucer or hang out in a backpack while I dug and dug and dug. I made a huge pile of dirt on the patio. I say dirt because that’s what I thought it was. I later realized that it was some serious topsoil. Enriched, deep black and so fertile. Duh, we live at the bottom of a hill, next to a laguna with soil being enriched by millions of falling leaves each year! Oh, how far we’ve come. Anyway, I had to stop halfway because there had been a driveway there and it was a 3 foot layer of compressed shale. That remained it’s own little hill until the Summer of 2008.

So, there we were with sun, a big pile of dirt, and some scrap wood from the shed building. Jonathan built me 5 huge planter boxes. We put these 3 foot high boxes, one rectangular, four triangular on top of the compacted shale in the bright bright sun. I filled them with “dirt” and planted stuff. All of the usual suspects were there, squash, toms, cukes, strawberries, peppers. Whatever was handy at the nursery and sounded yummy. In addition to the herb garden next to the kitchen, we now had more food than we were prepared to deal with. We were still spending lots of time away from the house and would arrive home full from eating out only to see the veggies shriveling in the crisper. We left a basket by our back gate and filled it with excess for our neighbors to enjoy. The zucchini plant looked prehistoric. It was huge! Oh, right, great soil! I think even the neighbors ran out of uses for the zucs. We went on this way for a few years. I don’t know how long because I live in some sort of weird timewarp. We learned where to get more interesting varietals and where to get organic stuff. We began frequenting the Occidental Ecology center for plant sales and brought home some great stuff.
We realized that we really love to grow food. The truth is that I am not a happy gardener. I do not enjoy pruning and weed pulling. I now understand that fresh food makes those things doable for me. I am slowly becoming obsessed with eating my meals from the garden. Also, there is something so wonderful about watching your child come home from school and forage in the garden for a snack.

Nearly 10 years ago

Nearly ten years ago, my new husband and I fell in love with a house. We had been quite happy in our little rental cottage. Then we met this tall, empty house and neither of us could stop thinking about it. We weren’t looking for a house. We just sort of stumbled upon it. We didn’t have any real money. We were in our twenties, just beginning our “grown-up” jobs. I guess real grown-ups call them careers. Still, this house had taken us hostage. So, we scraped together as much cash as we could, liquidated our small portfolio (mostly the Apple stock Jonathan loved so dearly), and took a first loan at just over 9% and a seller carried second loan as well. Perhaps we’re a little impulsive. Perhaps we’re a lot impulsive. We purchased a 100 year old two story brick house with no garage, no driveway, no crawlspace, and plenty of termites. We were in love and thought we were handy. Ha!

After the eradicate-every-bug-in-the-house tent was removed, we, Jonathan, Trish, and our two cats, moved in. I promptly bought my self a sledgehammer and began removing the random and strange fences and posts throughout the back yard. I removed the termite infested raised beds. I dug disconnected pipes out of the ground. I removed an awkwardly placed patio. We found treasures of old and tons of obsidian. Poor Jonathan started to call me “Destructo Girl”. I think some days he was afraid to come home. We painted, and removed paint, changed doorknobs and light fixtures. We made very few repairs of any consequence and even now still have a broken window in our upstairs closet. We did take care of the wiring and some minor plumbing issues. Jonathan met a bat in the attic and named him “Guido”. Hundred year old houses need lots of work and I don’t think we were even 2% ready for it. Surprise! we are still learning how to be handy.

We continued forward, going about our busy business away from home.

In the Summer, we got a gorgeous puppy. She was a steal at $50 and is 3/4 German Shepard and 1/4 Rottweiller. All grown-up now, she is our beautiful, sweet, gentle, long coated, super-fluffymous Zoe. With Zoe, came more time in the backyard. All the strange fences were gone but the yard was filled with weeds and drowning under a huge Elm tree. I started pulling the weeds and planting random things. We had no idea how to be homeowners! I didn’t know how to keep anything alive. My neighbor suggested I try watering the plants. I couldn’t figure out why the foxtails just kept coming back. Afterall, I pulled them, didn’t I? What I didn’t realize is that one must pull them before they turn brown and release all of their seeds. We even laid down some sod we had gotten for free from Shakespeare in the Park. We didn’t water that either. We were getting our asses kicked by this house and still spending most of our time being busy outside the home. Our focus had not yet come into focus.

The elm tree was a huge pain in the behind. It rained leaves constantly. We bought rakes, blowers, sucker-uppers, nothing worked. Then it started to lose limbs. With windy days came great anxiety. Poor Zoe dog, with her big velvety shepard ears was miserable. She would try to hide behind us from the wind. We would go outside after the windstorms and just cringe at the mess. And then, we’d go out.