August 18th- My First Egg!!

In the past week I have experienced some more firsts. I had my first school day of my forth year. I had my first meeting where I imagined I was the Hulk and smashed the tables in half, storming out in a cloud of dust (this happens about four times each school year). Shortly following that first, I found, cooked and ate my first egg. It was a brown egg. It was a delicious egg with the whitest white I have ever seen and the deepest orange yolk that screamed "I am rich in omega 3 fatty acids and beta carotene." I interpreted that as fry me in butter over easy and enjoy. Life is good.

This past Friday, the 14th, I went straight to my garden to decompress from the second day of school. After cleaning up some of the unused portions of the former potato patch, I continued planting my fall garden. Based on the relation to other crops in the patch, I planted the following based on their heights: Winterbor kale, spinach, Savoy Tatsoi (mustard greens), and Royal Red lettuce. The kale and lettuce have already started to pop up. In the same patch, radishes are about to be pulled in another couple of day.

The back yard in also in the process of transformation. Apples trees turned out to be a bad idea in the back. Through the combination of aphids, fire blight and less than 8 hours of sun, on had died and the other was sick. In comparison, I have a 1b apple stock tree in the front parking strip on which I grafted Pixie Crunch bud that is kicking butt even with some aphids. There is nothing quite like smearing aphids on you fingers from the tips of your plants and watching the ants that herd them for their butt nectar flip out. So, getting back to the back yard. After pulling up the apple trees, I created a 10x10 box out of 2x6 untreated boards with pointed 2x4's at the corners. I laid down black plastic in the area of the box to kill the vegetation and set the box on the ground. My plan is to let the plastic sit on it for at least a month or maybe through the winter and then double dig the earth beneath, adding compost and topsoil to bring the level up 4 or 5 inches. This area gets full sun in the spring because the trees are bare, it will be perfect for some greens and early crops that will appreciate the shade from the hot sun when the leaves grown in. I am not sure what will grow during the height of the summer but will do some experimenting. I am planning to put another raised bed box closer to the house where the tobacco is now growing.

I will also add a note to my tomato and pepper plants who are producing at maximum capacity. I have been able to give away some massive green tomatoes and a bag of tomatoes and peppers to the neighbor across the street. My jalapenos also aided me in winning second in my BBQ competition. After drying them in my oven, I crushed them and mixed them into my pork rub. It gave me the bite that set me above the rest.

August 10th-In the Midst of Massive Education

As a teacher, I sometimes wonder what I am doing in a classroom. Over the past 5 months I have taught more and engaged to a deeper level my two 11 year-old neighbors. Each evening when they see me in the backyard they ask permission to help. After scampering over, we usually pull some weeds and feed them to the rabbits and chickens or eat some ourselves. Tonight we munched on some lemon-tasting clover and ate toothache plant flowers which makes your entire mouth like it has pins and needles (like when your leg falls asleep). We then checked the gourds for powdery mildew and mold, the tomatoes for blossom end rot and pulled up this Frankenstein carrot. As we posed for pictures with our monster, a discussion looking into why the carrot didn't look like the ones from the super market ensued. The reasons for this, we decided, was that rocks and clay didn't let it grow straight and caused it to shoot out in all directions. We decided that next year we could make a mixture of sand and compost to put in 2 liter soda bottles with their tops cut off for the carrots, solving the problem of rocks, clay and space. It is seldom that learning, as seen in the picture above, is experienced in a traditional classroom. Possible homesteading classes or farm camp in the future?

For myself, I am trying to educate myself on fall and winter gardens while at the same time keeping my plants producing. My peppers are beautiful but have no idea when to harvest them. The cayenne peppers are 6 inches but still green. The jalapenos are swelling but not cracking. I might resort to taste-testing them but my heartburn from starting school tells me it would be a terrible idea. After losing one gourd to powdery mildew, I placed the others up on wood blocks. Luckily the gourd vines are in my deceased neighbors lawn so I don't look like a complete maniac. Radishes are blasting up in the former potato patch. Having never grown them before, I have little idea of what a healthy radish looks like and will aim to pull them around the 20th of this month, about 30 days after they were planted. They will hopefully become a gallon of Sauruben, fermented diced radish, similar to sauerkraut.

On the sauerkraut note, I processed my first gallon on traditional sauerkraut. It was a simple recipe of brine, caraway seeds and cabbage. The mixture fermented for 10 weeks in my cellar undisturbed in its gallon glass jar sealed with a plastic bag filled with more brine. Pulling the bag out, the sharp odor was amazing although the strings of mold that formed around the edges of the sealing bag were not as appetizing. I sterilized the rim and interior of the jar with a vinegar solution and packaged the kraut for distribution to friends and freezing. Following the traditional kraut, I processed my second gallon of Turkish kraut which is a mixture of fresh ginger, crushed red pepper, fresh garlic, cabbage and a brine. This is only aged for 10 days, making it relatively quick to make with few of the mold worries. I took a pint of this in to school for lunch yesterday with unforeseen benefits that no one wanted to talk to me on account of the potent breath and it also woke me up through the intense and warming consumption experience. The Rio Verde cabbages I planted over the weekend should grow to 5-7 pounds and should put my fermented cabbage production into orbit. I am glad a I grew up in a Pennsylvania Dutch area because it sounds like I have my Christmas gifts taken care of.

I know not many people are reading this right now, but it would be appreciated if we could brainstorm on how to incorporate this homesteading into the classroom to knock down some of figurative walls in modern education.

August 8th 2009- Return to the 'ville

My return to Louisville had some strikes and gutters. The sunflowers got blasted by 6 inches of rain in an hour. The cucumbers died due to bacterial wilt brought on by striped and spotted cucumber beetles. The chickens got a chance to do some swimming also. On the upside, the gourds are going strong. I ate an amazing tomato today. Grape vines, hummingbird vines, artic kiwis, toothache plant and black berries are explosive. I also got to sex my new litter of rabbits today (split them up based on gender).

In removing the sunflowers and other damaged plants, I prepared the soil for my fall crops. After using my pitchfork to break up the soil, I planted 6 seedlings of Rio Verde cabbages which should grow to 5-7 pounds and 6 seedlinds of brussel sprouts. I purchased a package of kale, spinach, mustard greens and red lettuce to start from seed in the next couple of days.

Due to the craziness in the new growth, I also trellised the blackberries and rasberries in the front using five metal posts and mason's string. Hopefully this will allow more air to circulate around the canes and at the same time make them easier to cultivate, prune and harvest.