Ending a Winter's Silence

It has been awhile since I have taken a breath. Over the course of the past year life has changed drastically. The short of it is I have a new boss that asked me to make his school like my lawn. Consequently I have expanded that idea to include the other schools in the district. A student construction crew and I have blasted in 10 school gardens since late winter. I have mounds of soil and cedar at my school. We have started a school wide composting system. The future is looking bright.

On the home front we are cruising along. I will add some pictures soon describing the changes since I am down to about 25 sq feet of grass left on my lot. Ducks have been raised and consumed. Taters, garlic and onions put up and eaten. Cabbage fermented and consumed. Cucumbers, okra, peppers, tomats, and beans pickled, some still left. Chickens are clucking at an illegal rate.

Spring is on us. I planted the garlic in a new way which I thought would bite me as the fall turned into winter. I dug an 8' to 10' deep trench. Forked it and added a layer of recently hot compost. Buried at about 6', backfilled to a slight mound and mulched with about 3 inches of leaves. While others were talking about their garlic poking up in the end of November, my rows were shootless. The end of winter was the same. I pulled back the leaves on warm day and said a mix of insulting and encouraging words. Once the sun hit that ground, the garlic blasted up faster than any others I have seen to this date. My theory is that my cloves spent the whole winter building their root system in preparation for the spring. When I took those leaves off, they took the hint and used that foundation to blast off. I used this method in Shelby County at West Middle were the same results are present. All together it will be a stinky year with Music, Susanville, Elephant, Hot Polish, some type of italian and a random clove here or there.

The most exciting situation right now, besides my girlfriend (sorry, saw that one coming back to bite me in the ass), are the people around me tearing up their yards, getting chickens, baking bread, getting excited about fermented produce, understanding compost and having amazing ideas that never even crossed my mind. I do not claim to be the genesis of this on Ellison Ave or at the Creek but I really enjoy being a person that others come to for answers, conversation, advice and to tell their stories. I often feel like an outcast and strange because at bars and with new people I don't particularly get excited with conversations revolving around sports, music, facebook, day-to-day stuff, television shows. The reason behind this is that I don't care. As this sustainable community grows, I can go for a whole evening talking about stuff that I care about. For some reason when I wrote that I felt selfish. Screw it. Let's talk about legumes.

Getting back to the homestead. New things on the property that I am stoked about:
1) Planted Jersey Knight Asparagus Crowns. Coolest alien looking plant ever. Already popping out. Had so fight my problems with commitment but bit the bullet.
2) Planted Sunchokes aka. Jerusalem Artichoke. Will never get rid of them now. More commitment.
3) Experimenting with high nitrogen chicken manure/heavy carbon mixtures for planting. Trying to jump start without burning.
4) Buff Orphingtons on the horizon. Straight run with meat bird run.
5) Rain garden with "trash sculpture" (thanks Fouts) water catchment system.
6) More and more perennials.
7) Taking over more yards.

Alright, don't want to over do it the first time back. Plant your peas. Taters? Greens. Onions. Strawberries. Brassicas.