Cleaning and Storing the Garlic

I came home from work one day last week to find Matt and Jessa getting the garlic ready for storage. It had finished curing while Matt was in Boston, and I took it down and brought it inside, but hadn't gotten around to doing anything else with it.

Before being stored, cured garlic needs to have its roots trimmed off, and the dirty outside layers of their papery skin peeled off (technically, you could store it as is, but it's nicer and easier to use right away if you clean it first. You can also store it hung from the stems, but that takes up a lot more room).

The pile on the left are the biggest and nicest heads, to be set aside as next year's seed garlic.

Giving the bulbs crew cuts. 

Chesnok Red has these beautiful purple wrappers- this one was particularly bright. 

To test whether garlic has cured completely, you cut through the stem about an inch above the bulb. If no moisture comes out of the end when you squeeze it, it is fully cured. 

Garlic stores best where it is cool and dry, and it needs to have good circulation of air around it- otherwise it is susceptible to rot or mold. We are storing ours in old mesh onion bags, hung in the basement, where the temperature and humidity is much lower than anywhere else in the house.

 The small batch in the red bag on the right are the bulbs that got nicked by the turning fork when they were dug up, and had to have one or two cloves pulled out that were starting to rot as a result. Some of these we kept in the kitchen, and when we've used those we'll move to this red bag. The whole bulbs for use later on are the white bag, and then the seed garlic is up top, clearly labeled "Do not eat!" :) 

Feeling rich doesn't have much to do with money around here; it has more to do with seeing our pantry shelves looking like this, and knowing they'll get fuller before the rain starts to fall.

For the Love of (Real) Tomatoes

I am most definitely my mother's daughter. This often becomes apparent in my gardening habits, and in particular my compulsion to plant and eat as many tomatoes as possible in the summer. Matt said something to me the other day that I'm pretty confident was a statement made by my father to my mother some years ago: "We need to have a conversation about the number of cherry tomatoes you planted." Well, so, we're drowning in Sungolds? I don't really see the problem! I love tomato season, because it results in things like this:

Tomatoes are amazing, and delicious, and fun to grow. Real tomatoes, that is. Not the perfectly round, hard, flavorless kind you buy in the supermarket. Until our first tomatoes ripened a month or so ago, I hadn't eaten a fresh tomato in over six months. Not since we polished off last year's homegrown crop. Why? Because through my work with Edible Portland and through readings I did for school this year, I learned exactly how commercial tomatoes come to market. In a nutshell, they are grown and picked by the hands of modern-day slaves (in the U.S. at least. Though I would not be surprised if this happens elsewhere too). Not to mention that tomatoes are at the top of the Dirty Dozen, and studies have shown that commercially grown tomatoes contain traces of up to 35 different pesticides and other synthetic chemicals (which means that the laborers working in the tomato fields are exposed to all of those chemicals). All of this has come to light in the news more in the last couple years, what with Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland being published, as well as some major work by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please go read this. It's worth it.

Homegrown Brandywine (heirloom).

I think the moral of the story is found in this excerpt: "When I asked...if it was safe to assume that a consumer who has eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store, fast food restaurant, or food-service company in the winter has eaten a fruit picked by the hand of a slave, he corrected my choice of words. “It’s not an assumption. It is a fact.”

It's easy to ignore what you can't see. But it's also easy to not purchase a tasteless, poisonous piece of fruit. So if you haven't made the choice yet, I would encourage you to give up conventional tomatoes. If you don't grow your own, then purchase them at a farmer's market, or at the very least buy organic ones if you get them at the supermarket; the person who picked them at the very least was not exposed to terrible and unnecessary chemicals.

These days Matt and I grow almost entirely heirloom tomatoes. As Estabrook points out, tomatoes have been completely bastardized by hybridization and genetic modification, and we want nothing to do with that. The only non-heirloom we grow is the Sungold cherry tomatoes, and I think we'll look for something different in the next year or two. Heirlooms taste better, are far more beautiful to look at, and you can save the seed and grow them again- something you can't do with hybrids.

This is a Cherokee Purple. Huge, gorgeously mauve in color, and with the sweetest and most beautifully textured flesh. Matt and I taste-tested it against the Brandywine, and agreed that this is our new favorite slicing tomato. This year we're growing Oxhearts for making tomato sauce, the Brandywines are great for fresh salsa, and the Cherokee Purple is the best for eating right off the vine. I've also got one Black Krim plant that hasn't ripened yet. I planted a few Green Zebras and gave a couple away, and then somehow the one I kept turned out to be a Brandywine instead. Whoops. Next year I want to add a good big yellow tomato, and try a couple other new varieties if possible.


In other news, Matt is away until Monday night- he flew out on a red-eye to Boston last night, for the wedding of a good friend at Cape Cod tomorrow. Meanwhile, Laurel is currently en route to Portland from Seattle, and when she gets here in a few hours we will commence with a girls' weekend full of sewing and crafting, and hopefully soapmaking. I better go finish up canning some hot peppers and a few more jars of dilly beans so I can be ready to play when she gets here!

________

After the somewhat heavy subject matter of this post, I thought I'd leave you with something to make you smile: Maggie, in her most common napping position:

At the Community Garden

Things are rolling right along at the community garden. I am so glad we decided to get a plot here, it gives us the extra growing space we need, and the ritual and true community nature of gardening here are wonderful. It really has become something of a ritual: walking the leisurely five minutes up to the garden on these warm beautiful summer evenings to water our plot, walking home later with a basket piled high with peas and lettuce. It's literally straight up our street about six blocks, and I have fallen in love with the walk: we pass all kinds of small houses like our own, filled with people of different colors, many of them young couples like ourselves. Most of the yards have been torn up and turned into gardens, like our own, and it is so encouraging to see this practical way of life here on a residential street. And on each walk, we can see the changes since the last walk, that one family's tomato vines have grown taller, and that the couple on the corner has added a new raised bed today. We now know all the dogs and cats on the street, and many of the human faces too. One yard is planted entirely in rows of raspberries. In front of another house, the inhabitants tilled up their curb strip (except there is no curb: past our block, there are no sidewalks, but also no traffic) and planted it full of sunflowers. Many times Jessa or Elliot is there to walk with, having stopped by our house after work or to check on the rabbits.

Three rows of beans (one of Empress and two of Blue Lake), growing wonderfully. I'm thankful they're so big now that they out-compete the weeds! You can also see that I planted sunflowers fairly randomly throughout the plot.

Our two lonely corn plants, the only ones surviving after two full plantings of this bed. We found gopher pilings, but can't trap them because it is against city policy. So we replanted the rest of this bed in leeks, rainbow chard and parsnips, and are hoping that the gophers have moved elsewhere.

To make the most of our 10' x 20' plot, we made a path in an incomplete loop around the inside of it, you can see it where the bark chips are. The middle bed contains winter squash (Queensland Blue, Red Kuri, and Sunshine) and two red cabbage starts. Behind them there are four potato plants, buttercrunch lettuce, and a row of cilantro.

The snap peas (Oregon Sugar Pod) have been going for broke, much to our delight! They did incredibly well here, but not so great at the house. 

A view of the whole plot. One the near (south) end are two types of heirloom carrots, Chantenay Red Core and Scarlet Nantes, and our compost bin. Two days ago I cut back the massive comfrey bush on the right, as it was encroaching on the carrots and the newly planted leeks. I saved a pile of the leaves and they are currently brewing into comfrey tea to use as fertilizer. I also pulled out the two big poppy plants in the corn bed. I saved a handful of heads which are currently drying in the sun in the backyard so I can save the seed. They are gorgeous purple blooms, and I want to someday be able to plant a big bank of them along a driveway or as a border to something. Oh, dreams of owning property....

I love wandering around the community garden to see how other people have arranged their plots, and what they are growing. Some are haphazard, some are very tidy, and some are amazingly creative. There are hops, raspberries, blueberries, huge pea vines and bean teepees, and pretty much every vegetable that grows in this climate. It is a whole heap of inspiration in one place, and we get the community piece to boot, watering the plots of our garden neighbors when they are out of town, and meeting lots of people who live in our neighborhood. Jessa and Elliot's plot is kitty-corner to ours, a woman who lives a block from us has the big plot right across the pathway, and a good friend of Matt's from college, who he hadn't seen in years, is a few plots away! Community, indeed.

Our Flock

The chickens are one year old this week, which also means that we have lived in our house for exactly a year (we brought home our little chicks on our second day here)! With our hens thriving and at the peak of their lay, it seemed appropriate to devote a post to them. (And yes, I am aware that I am now that girl who writes personality profiles of her chickens...).

The hens live on the west side of our backyard. The henhouse and attached coop sits against the house, and attached to it is the long run where they can range about without destroying our yard. Three weeks ago, we (mostly Matt) doubled the height of the fence, due to a certain daily escapee who kept flying over it (more on that below). It looks nice and tidy, if a bit like a maximum-security poultry penitentiary. Matt refers to it as Chicken Fort Knox. There hasn't been a single successful bid for freedom since we increased the height.

 (Click on photos to enlarge)

The hens roost in the henhouse at night (occasionally one ends up on the roof of the henhouse and we have to pick her up and stuff her inside) and the door to the coop (made of welded wire) is barred shut from the time it gets dark till they wake us up in the morning. We haven't had any problems with raccoons yet, but we have seen them in the neighborhood, and we don't want to take any chances (they are almost always nocturnal, so not a concern during daylight hours). Despite our best efforts, none of our flock ever learned to lay in the nest boxes. Instead, they lay their eggs in the straw on the floor of the henhouse, usually in the back corner, which requires us to reach in through the nest boxes at an extremely awkward angle to retrieve the eggs.

Penny, our Barred Plymouth Rock, would probably be rated the "best" of our chickens by any county fair judge. She is big, gorgeous, quiet, and an excellent layer. She was the first of the bunch to start laying and is just a very good backyard chicken!

 "What are YOU looking at?"

Lady Macbeth, our black Australorp, has consistently been the loudest and most obstreperous chicken I have ever experienced (given, my experience is limited). She has been incessantly vocal since she was a small pullet, whining these horrible loud and drawn-out guttural growls from first light every day, when the other hens just cluck mildly to be let out of the coop, please. She squawks all the time, scolds us if we don't bring her food every single time we go into the backyard, and escaped the run every day for two weeks until we constructed Fort Knox. If she weren't such a reliable layer, she would be soup by now.

Esther is probably my favorite of the hens. She's a Rhode Island Red, and she follows me around whenever I go into the run.

She is also desperate to invade the garage every time one of us opens the door (there is a big pile of straw in there that I am sure looks like paradise to a chicken). She is petite and quiet, and lays really beautiful speckled eggs.

Mimi  was not one of our original chicks, although she is the same age. She is a Blue-Laced Red Wyandotte, and came to us in October. She got beat up by the rest of the chickens for a few weeks, but now is fully part of the flock. She is terribly pretty, I think, and also the biggest and fluffiest of all the hens- the sight of her wide, upturned white bum when she is pecking at something cracks me up. Mimi has gone broody on us twice now (none of the other chickens have).

After trying several techniques of getting her un-broody, to no avail, I came across a website that recommended dunking a broody hen in cold water in order to lower her body temperature (a hen's body temperature goes up when she is broody, in order to incubate the eggs). We decided to try it, more because it was funny than because we actually thought it would work- but it worked a treat the first time. She has now been broody again for a week, and we have started finding some broken eggs in the henhouse, so we may need a new technique. Matt is the brave soul who regularly extricates her from the nest (she growls loudly) and gets soaked when she tries to flap herself dry.

Goldie is our Gold-Laced Wyandotte. She holds the position of second-most-annoying-hen--she seems to choose one day every week on which to be very loud and screechy from dawn till dusk. We think she is Lady Macbeth's protege, and that they conspire together to irritate us with their noise. Despite my paranoia about the neighbors reporting us for the noise (we have a permit for a large flock, so the number is perfectly legal, but noise complaints are legit), that hasn't happened yet, so we're probably in the clear. Goldie hasn't gotten as big as many GLWs I've seen, but the iridescent green in her feathers is magnificent.

We have decided that our old Ameracauna, Vivian, is going to be "retired" soon- whenever Matt gets an afternoon free to butcher her. It's sad, but we try to be practical, and has laid us a grand total of two eggs (one of which was yolkless) in nine months, and the reason we keep chickens is for eggs. We've put it off a long time, but she will go, and provide us sustenance in the form of chicken stew. We are deliberating about getting two pullets to replace her, increasing our flock to seven (the maximum we can have under our permit) and thereby expanding our (very small) egg business.

Despite whatever gripes I might have about noise, keeping hens is a real joy, and I love watching them hunt around in the run, come racing down the fence whenever one of us goes into the backyard, and collecting eggs. We have learned so much in this year, and next time we build a coop and a run we will know what to do differently. Since having our hens, we have zero food waste in our house. It is nice to know that even if we let the end of a loaf of bread go stale, the chickens will love it, and we will still get food from it, in the form of eggs. They give us endless fuel for the compost pile, they love when I give them big piles of weeds from the garden, and they are our slug and caterpillar disposal system. Now that I've gone down the road of chickenkeeping, I don't think I can go back to a life without chickens in the backyard.

Mulch from the Animals

I just came in from a couple hours spent outside between rain showers this afternoon. It was chilly! I wore four layers of long sleeves, a wool cap and two pairs of socks. Brrrr. I did some raking of leaves in the backyard and investigated the progress of the winter garden, but primarily I worked on mulching various beds around the place. Our little menagerie might be here to give us meat and eggs, but they also give us lots of extra goodness in the form of their poo! One of my weekly chores is to rake out the chicken coop and henhouse and move the droppings and soiled straw to wherever we are using them, and then fill the coop with fresh straw for the next week.

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

The freshly cleaned coop.

I've mentioned before that we're adding in more vegetable growing space in front of the house--this is where I've been putting the chicken straw for the last month or so, with a little bit siphoned off for the compost heap. There are still a few gaps as you can see, but one more cleaning and I'll have it all filled in. I'll try and get another thick layer on in the next couple months, then we'll just let it sit and do its thing for the rest of the winter. Chicken poo composts "hot" and so can't be used to mulch vegetables because it can burn them. It needs to break down first, which our long wet Portland winter will help it to do. In the spring, we'll till it all in, and plant potatoes here. Our front yard faces due south, so it should be prime growing space! This soil around the edge was dry and compacted before we tilled it up this fall, and I'm eager to see what it looks like in four or five months!

The bunnies in the garage live in suspended cages, so all of their droppings and urine are collected in straw spread on the ground below them. I raked a big batch of this up today and used it to mulch the garlic. Rabbit poo has a different chemical composition than chicken poo, and is safe to apply straight to the garden without composting first.

 This mulch, spread on top of a layer of shredded newspaper, will keep the garlic bed nice and warm until the cloves are ready to sprout.

I can't tell you how glad we are for all that our animals give us, even before we've gotten meat or eggs from them! Their litter is revolutionizing our garden and our compost pile, the chickens have created exponentially better tilth of the soil under the fruit trees than was there a few months ago, and of course both our furry and feathered friends are endlessly entertaining. Everything they provide us with gets used to sustain the earth or ourselves or both. If you're pondering a small backyard menagerie of your own, I definitely recommend it!

Friday Foraging

These days, for a variety of reasons, Matt and I try to get things for free when we can. Not because we're trying to live off the backs of others or because we're just cheapskates. We're kind of poor, so free is nice, but we also don't like seeing things go to waste. We would rather an item get reused than thrown out, and if good food is available at little or no cost, we'd rather take advantage of it than spend money that could go towards things like paying off student debt. We constantly make use of the Craigslist "free" page, Freecycle, and the awesome free box culture here in Portland. My girlfriends and I swap clothes instead of buying new ones. Matt gets free meat and eggs from his work on a regular basis. We sometimes trade for items with friends. We occasionally dumpster dive for goodies for the compost or the chickens or ourselves (many Portland restaurants and supermarkets have specific dumpsters for food items). And, we have taken to gleaning fruit where we can find it for free. There are a few different fruit trees around that we check on, numerous chestnuts, and today we stopped by a grapevine I spotted in the neighborhood during the summer. It must be ancient, as it is growing up through a fifty-foot-tall fir tree, covering most of the tree, and hanging down into the parking lot of a local business (I'm not saying where :). Only a few clusters of grapes were really ripe (and within reach), but it looks like there are plenty more, hopefully they will ripen soon. I don't know much about grapes, but these ones taste like the Concords that I've had several times.

We'll definitely be checking the vine again in a week or two to see if we can get some more! Yum!

Fridays tend to be pretty simple, relaxing days for us. Right now we both go full tilt at work/school Monday through Thursday, so Friday feels a bit like Saturday. It's the day we sleep in, cook a fancyish breakfast (pancakes and bacon this morning) and catch up with each other a bit. I always like reconnecting with our little homestead on Fridays, especially now that I'm usually gone dark to dark, I don't see much of our various animal friends or the garden during the week.

Here's five of the six hens, digging into some squash rinds from our dinner last night. They LOVED them. About twenty minutes after this picture, nothing remained but a few small bits of rind scattered around the yard! No one's laying yet, all of our young'uns should start to lay around Thanksgiving, unless they decide it's too cold and dark. We're trying to trick Vivian into laying sooner by extending their "day" with a light on a timer that shines into their coop for a few extra hours at night and in the morning. No luck so far.

I spent a chunk of today working on my midterm for my Foundations of Public Health course, and researching for a program analysis I'm doing on the Cooking Matters program and a policy analysis of Oregon's school nutrition policy, which kept me inside (sometime soon I'll write more about the amazing stuff I'm learning these days. I'm completely in the right program, I know it). Tomorrow I'll spend some quality time with the garden. I can see from the windows that all the cover crops are doing well, but we had two frosts this week so I'm not sure if my (tiny, slow!) kale sprouts are alright. It's been wickedly cold, for Portland, and I even managed to leave my warmest, and favorite, gloves on the bus yesterday. I think I'm going to start wearing my weatherproof bike gloves for everyday, they're pretty nice looking and totally waterproof and windproof. Better than buying a new pair, unless I can find some for free :)

New Daily Habits and Fall Chores

One of the advantages of both me and Matt being unemployed right now is that we are getting to put a lot of time in on various projects around the house, yard and garden, albeit usually in the morning or evening, when it's not ridiculously hot outside. Matt has been officially chicken-proofing the garden, fastening chicken wire to the bottom of the fence between the backyard and garden, to prevent any chicken escapades into our precious berries and vegetables.

Since Cluck's death and because the weather is so hot (the coop gets full sun exposure for about two hours every afternoon, and the poor chickens get really warm and are not super smart about staying in their shady areas or dust bathing), we are now letting the chickens out to free range for a few hours in the heat of the day, so they can get into the shade under the lilacs and fruit trees. They dust bathe under the trees, but not in the coop, I think because the soil in the coop is so compacted. We've got the fences all around the yard secured so the chickens can't get out (they're not flying more than two feet high right now anyway) and so neighborhood dogs can't get in. It's a nice new routine for all of us, to have the chickens out and about, taking care of all the weeds and bugs in the backyard and occasionally freaking out for no apparent reason and racing back into the coop.

Another new habit we've adopted this week is keeping a dishpan in our kitchen sink all the time, to collect non-soapy water from rinsing hands and vegetables and dishes. Our sink is big enough that one dishpan takes up less than half the sink, so we still have room for other uses. This way, we are able to get twice the use from any non-soapy water -- when the water in the dishpan builds up, it is used to water the fruit trees, roses, houseplants, or garden, whichever needs it most.

Speaking of fruit trees, while my dad (guru of all things orchard) was here this past weekend, he pruned our fruit trees (one Asian pear and two apples) for us and gave us some pointers on maintaining them to get maximum yield. We moved in too late this year to do much, but now we'll have a good start for next season. The trees clearly hadn't been maintained for several years, and Dad thinks they're five or six years old. They look much happier and healthier now, and we're going to get a decent harvest of apples, although we can only find about six Asian pears on the other tree. We're now getting into a routine of watering the trees every other day, and will set up a drip-watering hose next spring, and one on the raspberries as well. For now, Matt has drilled three holes in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket, and we fill it with water and set it just uphill from the base of the tree, and let the water come out slowly. A lot of it still runs off, because the soil under the trees is so compacted, but we raked all the dead leaves around the trunks to mulch and shade the watering area, so hopefully that will help the soil absorb more water.

With only three weeks left till I start school and with both of us home most of the time, we've been working our way through a list of chores for this fall (how, exactly, did it get to be September already?!). Still on the list:

• Prune back the neighbor's cedar trees that are overhanging the back fence by about six feet and encroaching on the fruit trees.
• Build a portable chicken pen/tractor the size of the garden beds, so we can contain the chickens and let them till up our beds later in the fall, once the veggies are done. 
• Plan our fall/winter garden, amend the soil, plant cover crops and garlic later in October.
• Cut out all raspberry canes that won't bear next year, and top-dress the raspberries with some fertilizer and mulch. 
• Cut back/pull out all the English Ivy and blackberries (both invasive weeds) that are infiltrating our yard from two sides. 
• Start tilling and amending the strips of soil out front where we will plant potatoes next year. 
• Organize the garage/shed and get the rabbitry set up. 

Rabbits? Yes, rabbits! Matt and Eliot (Matt's sis's boyfriend...our boyfriend-in-law?) hatched the plan to raise meat rabbits a few months ago. We really want to raise our own meat as much as we can, and while we live in the city, rabbits and chickens (all our hens now are for eggs, but they will become stewing hens when they've had their two years' of laying) are pretty much our only options. It took me awhile to come around to the idea of rabbits, but it is in line with our goals of self sufficiency and we will be able to ensure that our animals live a happy and healthy life and are killed in a humane way. We're trying to be pragmatic about our animals and not keep them just as a hobby. The fact is that rabbit is incredibly tasty, and is one of the most cost-efficient types of meat out there. So we will raise rabbits, starting next month. In Portland, you have to have a permit from the city to keep more than 3 small livestock (hens, rabbits, miniature pigs, pygmy goats), and, with our landlord's blessing, we have taken our required steps toward officialdom. Today we notified all neighbors within 150 feet that we intend to keep rabbits and more than 3 hens, and then submitted our application to the county, along with a check for the seemingly random amount of $31. Wish us luck!

Balancing the Compost

Our compost heap has been suffering a bit, oddly from the opposite problem from what has plagued us in the past. It used to be that our compost was always too wet, as we couldn't come by enough brown, carbonaceous material to balance out the amount of green waste and kitchen scraps we produced. These days, with the amount of chicken litter (pine shavings + chicken poop) produced while the chicks were in their brooder box, our compost is heavy on the browns, with too little in the way of greens. This morning I got to work early, before the heat set in, and killed two birds with one stone by cutting back a bunch of herbs that were going wild along the back fence and using them to green up the compost pile.

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

The compost heap first thing this morning: mostly brown

The chicken poo does a great job of firing up the compost, but in order for compost to really work, and for the contents to cook themselves and break down quickly, the ratio of nitrogen-rich (green) materials to carbon-rich (brown) materials has to be correct. Different sources claim different ratios as the best ones, but the one that seems to work best for us is one part green to about three parts brown. I think it may have to do with the fact that things are fairly humid and wet around here in general, so a little extra dry material in the pile doesn't hurt. For carbonaceous matter, we use the litter from the chickens, dry leaves, shredded newspaper, and dried roses when I dead-head the rose bushes. The brown materials take longer to decompose, so they need to be in small pieces, not big chunks. I've been pulling all kinds of big sticks out of the bottom of our heap- those would take ages to compost. 

The green material should be in smallish pieces too, but as the fresh green things decay faster, it's not as crucial that they be small. The green, nitrogenous materials we use are all scraps from our kitchen (besides meat and bones, although we do put fish in the compost if it's in very small pieces), weeds from the garden and grass clippings. Lately we've been short on the greens, because we're no longer mowing the lawn (we don't water our lawn, and in this hot weather all the grass has gone brown and isn't growing) and because we are giving more of our kitchen scraps to the chickens, because we want them to have a good varied diet and lots of fun bread and radish tops and veggies to eat in addition to their feed.

So, I set out to cut down this bank of oregano and lemon balm:

And this clump of mint, which was beginning to choke out my winter squash anyway:

We adore lemon balm, but it has a tendency to quickly outrun us, and we have about five patches of it around the house, so we always have a good supply. We also have other patches of oregano, so I cut it all to the ground. I have no concerns whatsoever about the mint growing back (it will be back in a week or so, I have no doubt!) so I cut it down completely as well.

The oregano is a bit too woody to put in the compost, but I added all the lush green lemon balm and mint, cutting it up with pruning shears. Every time I had a nice big green pile on top of the compost heap, I mixed it into the heap with the pitchfork, giving the entire heap a good turning while I was at it. We turn our compost every few weeks, to stir it up, aerate it, and give everything a good chance at getting mixed up together. 

While mixing up the pile, I found that the very bottom was composting well, and I did find a good number of worms and other wormy-type creatures that work at breaking down all the goods into nice dark compost for us. If everything is decomposing properly in a compost pile, that also means that there are lots of invisible microbes hard at work in there too.

 I think the pile already looks so much healthier, and it smells all minty-fresh too :)

Compost also needs occasional watering if it is drying out too much, so with any luck these added greens will decrease the need for us to use water to spur on the decomposition. 

When our current compost heap has been built up for a few more weeks, we'll stop adding to it and start a new one in the middle bin. Then we should be able to get a good rotation going, to have one active heap that we are adding to, and one that is available for us to take from, to enrich the soil in the garden. We have enough time left before fall that maybe our current heap will be ready for us to use when we amend the soil before planting fall crops. 

The nearest bin is where we put woody branches and stems. Some we keep to use as stakes for vegetables in the garden, but most end up in the big yard debris wheelie-bin that is included with our curbside garbage service. I was very excited to find out this week that starting in November, the city is switching the garbage pickup from weekly to every other week, and switching the yard debris pickup from every other week to weekly! This will be a great incentive for people to cut down on garbage, and to compost more! The City of Portland has been running pilot projects that include household food waste in the yard debris collection, and that program is going citywide in November as well! This means that all households will be able to put all their food scraps- meat included- in the yard debris bins, and that means a huge decrease in the amount of waste going into landfills from Portland. I know it will take awhile for people to get used to it, but I'm very proud of my town for taking the initiative to force people to re-think the amount of waste they produce, and to give everyone the option to compost, whether or not they have space to do it at home like we do.

Simple Living at the Wavehaven

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
@ The Wavehaven

The original purpose of my blog was to write about my efforts to live simply, with low spending and higher self-sufficiency. Since it's been pretty quiet around here and we've been good and settled here in Oakura for quite a while, I thought I'd do a post on how we've been trying to engage in these simple living goals while traveling, and particularly while living here. (I was intending to intersperse a few photos, but that function is not working at the moment, so I apologize for the giant chunk of text).

Ultimately, the point of our travels here is to see and experience as much of another country and culture as possible, which does lend itself to a lot of spending, and we knew that going into this trip. We have spent a lot of money getting here and since we've arrived, but in the end, I can't think of anything we've done that wasn't worth the money. In terms of touristy or expensive things, our list includes our trip to White Island, hiking the Tongariro Crossing, cruising Lake Taupo on Barbary, soaking in thermal pools, and several visits to museums and thermal areas. Matt and I have agreed that every one of those experiences was worth what we paid, and we feel that we've done a good job with our research and making sure we get the most for our money. When we went to White Island, Lyn & Kate were able to give us a 10% discount through their tour company, the Tongariro Crossing only cost us $40 per person (simply transportation to and from), and in retrospect I would have gladly paid much more than that for the experience we had. We've simply gotten lucky too- the day we went to White Island and the day we hiked the Tongariro were stunningly clear and beautiful, and when we went out on Lake Taupo, we were the only people on the cruise so got a really unique experience that was fully worth what we spent.

Since arriving in New Plymouth, our main expenses have been petrol and food. Once settled, we were able to buy groceries to last us for awhile, so we've been buying things like rice, tea, and couscous in bulk, and getting fresh fruit and veg from the local produce stand, which is exponentially cheaper than the supermarket. We do most of our shopping at Pak'n'Save, which allows us to stock up for a pretty cheap price. We buy all the budget brands, which I feel much better about doing in New Zealand than I would in the U.S. In the states, the budget brands tend to have the worst ingredients and be the least local. In New Zealand, almost everything is local, because the country is so small and isolated that imports are relatively rare. And, in general, products here are made with much healthier ingredients than in the U.S. We have yet to find a single product that includes high fructose corn syrup, including Coca-Cola. Everywhere outside the US and Canada, soft drinks are made with cane sugar.

We cook the vast majority of our meals from scratch, which is a pleasure to do because we have such fresh ingredients, a great kitchen, and usually the company of Megan and Nigel or Graham cooking at the same time we are. That's one of the really lovely things about a communal kitchen. In the last month and a half, we estimate we have eaten out about 6 times, plus bought cheap sandwiches a couple times when in town longer than we anticipated. Usually if we know we'll be in town over lunchtime, we pack sandwiches and fruit to take with us, and always have a couple full water bottles in the van. We have only succumbed to fast food once, and the rest of the time chosen locally owned kebab shops, cafes and the like. It is important to us to eat out occasionally to get a taste of this country's foods, and I feel like we've hit a pretty good balance. Unfortunately the coffee here is amazing, and we've had to make an extra effort to not buy a flat white every time we walk by a coffee shop- so enticing!

As for petrol, we live about 15 km from New Plymouth and about 5 km from our favorite surf spots, so a tank of petrol lasts us well over a week, barring a road trip to see a new spot. We go into town (New Plymouth) probably 4 times a week, including Matt driving in to work. We try to combine trips so that if I want time to go to the post office or library or if we need a grocery shop, I go with Matt and do errands while he is at work. Parking is metered in the city centre, so we have figured out where the very closest free longterm parking is to the business district, and always park there and walk the 5 minutes to the town centre.

Unfortunately, we've had to put a fair amount of money into the van to keep it safe and legal. Between the work on an oil leak, the lock system, and door handles when we were in Opotiki, and all the suspension work we had to have done this week to renew the Warrant of Fitness, and the renewal of the registration, we have put over $1,000 into the van since buying it. We are hoping that there will be no need for anything else- both registration and WOF are now good through June 2011, after we sell it and go home. We were lamenting all of these costs when Matt pointed out that if it weren't for Lucy, we would have spent far more on accommodation than we have. We did the calculations, and realized that in our entire time in New Zealand, we have spent less than $120 each on accommodation. We've only paid for 4 nights in hostels, and 4 (cheap!) nights of camping in the 2 1/2 months we've been here. Otherwise, we've freedom camped or worked for accommodation, and we feel pretty good about that!

We've also done our own fixing and repairing, as much as we are able. Matt has done all of our minor surfboard repairs, and when he got a hole in the neck of his wetsuit, he got the supplies and repaired that himself as well. We do our own mending, I trim Matt's hair, etc.

For entertainment, we're pretty well set. We surf, hang out on the beach, I write lots of letters, we read loads of library books, and have TV and loads of DVDs here at the hostel. We play cribbage (we brought a travel board with us), and last night had a great game of Rummikub (which I grew up knowing as "Tiles") with Megan and Nigel, after Megan found a set in a closet here. In terms of paying for entertainment since we've been in New Plymouth, we went to the cinema once to see the new Harry Potter movie, and have bought tickets to see Fat Freddy's Drop (a famous NZ dub band) just after Christmas, here in the village. That's it. (Well, we might go see the new Narnia movie...).

I feel really good about our environmental impact here as well, and that of the whole hostel. All washing is hung out on the line to dry, the dishwasher is run only about once a week, the lights are all on timers so they turn off by themselves after about 25 minutes, and between everyone here we only put out about one large bag of rubbish each week. Matt and I drive so little distance that at the moment I think we have a pretty small carbon footprint. Our recent repairs to the van will also improve our mileage, so there's a plus. We try to buy things without loads of packaging, we reuse plastic bags, and keep as many of the same sustainable habits from our life in Portland as we can.

So that's that, and now we're looking forward to the holidays, which are coming right up. Merv & Michele have invited us to their farm for Christmas, to celebrate in true Kiwi fashion, although Michele said she may not be able to guarantee us a Pavlova! We may spend a night or two there as well, although we are looking forward to spending Boxing Day here at the Haven- it's a much bigger holiday than in the US, and there should be a good party here. An important part of simple living is community, and it feels wonderful to have built a small community here, where we surf and hang out with our friends who live at the Wavehaven, got everyone together to share Thanksgiving dinner, made the effort to connect with a local farm to get that experience, which blossomed into a friendship, and act as informal hosts at the hostel, showing new guests around and trying to make them feel at home. We also are still keeping up with Lyn & Kate, and friends like Jamie & Kate, who we met up on the Coromandel.

And we have another exciting social development to look forward too- we just got word that Matt's sister, Jessa, is officially booked to come visit us for 10 days in January! She will fly into Wellington, where we will pick her up and spend a couple days seeing the sights, then come north to New Plymouth via some rafting or other adventures around Wanganui, and hopefully be able to show her all of our haunts and take her surfing at our local breaks! We're both really excited to have Jessa come visit, and also an excuse to get out of town and go see some other places with her!

With that, I'd better go get some laundry out on the line and see how Matt is doing with his latest surfboard repair- he snapped a fin off while surfing Ahu Ahu yesterday in overhead (6-7 foot) waves with Graham and Jono. Then hopefully we'll get down to the beach for awhile- the surf is still far to big for me, but the sun is out for a day before another 5 or 6 days of rain, so I'll take advantage.

Spring Budgeting Update

I blogged here in January about starting a real budget rather than just "curbing my spending," since that wasn't working. And guess what? Budgeting works! I adapted my budget system from the cash-only system described at Down to Earth here.

After tracking my spending for a couple months, I calculated how much I was spending outside of rent and utilities--between $450 and $500 per month. So I cut that figure down to $400 and decided that was how much I would allow myself every month for spending on food, entertainment, and of course all the random things like toilet paper and shampoo. I also wanted to keep my credit rolling, but wanted to put a limit on how much I would put on my credit card every month. I always pay off my credit card completely, but decided to spend only cash for the first month (February). So I paid off the entirety of my credit card balance and let a month go by without putting a single cent on my card. I withdrew $400 from my checking account at the beginning of the month and that's what I spent. I do not set aside certain amounts for entertainment, groceries, etc, and that works for me. Other people might need to put aside money for each of these categories, but I just evaluate as I go, and it works well for my life. I had around $5 left over at the end of February, which I deposited into my savings account (yes, the bank teller thought I was nuts). It strikes me now that starting this budget on the shortest month of the year was an interesting, if unintentional move!

I am now still operating on $400 per month, $250 in cash and $150 on my credit card. I find that setting a limit on my credit card spending also helps me spend less- it's hard to hit exactly $150 so the total usually hovers around $140!

By the way, if you are an REI member or want to be, I will put a plug in here for the REI Visa card, I don't usually promote things like that, but their customer service has been impeccable and you will receive rebates from all purchases, and these will end up in your REI dividend, which equals free stuff! My caveat to this is, if you use a credit card, please please try to pay it off as soon as possible. Credit card companies make a killing off of people who make only the minimum payment. Please pay attention to that. Happily, there are new laws in affect now that are here to help raise awareness about the treachery of credit card interest rates! If you look on your next credit card statement, you should see a warning and a calculation showing how much extra you will pay over the next couple years if you only pay the minimum payment each month. Please be aware and save yourself some grief and money. If you don't think you can pay off what you put on your card every month, than I suggest going with the cash only system until you feel like you get your spending to a manageable place. It's amazing what you can live without without your quality of life decreasing.

I was worried that budgeting like this would put a lot of constraints on me, but I don't really find myself wanting anything extra. If I know I have a big purchase coming up (e.g. buying a dress for my brother's wedding) then I stock up on groceries in advance and pay for that big purchase within my budget. I have also been helped along by the fact that Matt chips in for food costs since he's at my house so often, by the Chinook Book coupons, and Bernard at Full of Life Farm giving a free dozen eggs to any customer who filled out a survey about his products this month! We only go out to eat a couple times a month, and our fallback for dinner out is the taquería two blocks from my house, where tacos are $1.50 apiece.

The only obstacle I have run into that did not fall into my budgeted spending was taxes (once again, I screwed up my W-4 this year and did not have enough withheld, so had to pay a big chunk to the fed all at once). Also, I recently decided to begin contributing regularly to my IRA which I had set up at my previous job. I have never actually contributed to it, but that company did. Now I am planning to deposit $25 per month. It's not much, but it is what I can afford right now, it will add up, and will create larger interest. It's never too early to start saving for retirement, I suppose, and I might as well contribute while I am steadily employed! I'll put in another plug here as well, for Calvert investments. While I am no investment expert (whoa. Far from it.), I am pleased that the Calvert Group invests in socially and environmentally responsible companies.

I am very satisfied with my budgeting  and pleased that it actually works, and here's the biggest reason: I am managing to put $500 into my savings account every month now!

Why Do I Live the Way I Do?

I’ve been thinking that I need to write a more reflective post, about why it is that I maintain the lifestyle I do and place such value in gardening, simplicity, and lack of investment in the commercial world. Bear with me, because this is not a short explanation!

I define simplicity a little differently than most people. I think that’s where it starts. When I say simplicity, and what I mean by a simple life, is that one is very in tune with their purpose, their ambitions, and the effects of their actions. It is a conscious decision to live a certain way, and with that comes a simplicity of spirit, a clear understanding of one’s self and a lack of many of the complexities of modern life. Let me elaborate.

A lot of who I am has to do with the way I grew up. That may seem like a very obvious statement to make, but it is very true in my case. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that my parents are simple people (that implies that they are ignorant, which couldn’t be further from the truth) or that their life is very simple (not accurate either- they are invested in many aspects of home, community, and environment). But they have always been very sure of the things they want, of the purposes they are dedicated to, and very aware of how they want to live their lives and the way they impact the world. This has been apparent to me from the beginning. My mom and dad are people of steady spirit, a strong but healthy work ethic, and an unwavering dedication to friendship, advocacy, and goodness in general. That, I think, is the kind of simplicity I’m talking about. It’s being sure of yourself, moving steadily forward while always checking your motivations, and not slipping out of your chosen path simply because society tells you to do so or tricks you into thinking you’ll be more comfortable that way. Simple living is achievement through the small things that add up, not through making an earth-shattering discovery or donating a million dollars to charity (though I certainly approve of those achievements as well!). Dad donates blood every month and goes to Middle Eastern and African drumming classes in Spokane with good friends. Mom teaches new gardening skills to her community and is involved in yoga and Zumba classes at the Kalispel Tribe of Indians’ athletic center. My parents take good care of themselves, are involved in their community, and also put in lots of time maintaining their home and property without buying into corporate America. For more on my upbringing and my childhood homestead, read my article in Mother Earth News magazine here.

In the last year I have made many decisions that all add into my version of living simply. I have chosen to only eat pastured meat, because I know that these animals are treated humanely and are fed their natural diet, which dramatically increases the nutritional content of their meat and ensures them a good quality of life. I buy locally whenever I can, because I believe in supporting my local economy, and because buying locally decreases pollution by fossil fuels used in transporting food. I buy most food in bulk, to save money and also to eliminate waste—by bringing my own jars, containers, and produce bags to the bulk section, I am not paying for packaging that will end up in a landfill somewhere. I make a conscious effort to buy items that will last me a long time or that can be reused or remade so that I can get the most value from them and again eliminate the need to throw things away. I grow as much of my own food as I can, because this increases the health and fertility of the earth, saves me money, and increases my own skills, health, and self sufficiency. I look at the ingredients of any processed foods I do end up buying. If I don’t know what one of the ingredients is (or I do know and I don’t want to eat it), chances are I won’t buy it. I freeze vegetable scraps so that they can be made into vegetable stock, to get as much value from my food as possible. I keep myself on a budget of $400 per month beyond costs of rent and utilities. This enables me to save for future education, housing and traveling and makes me think twice about whether a purchase is really worth it. I mend, sew, and crochet so that I can repair and make things for myself and others, rather than supporting commercial industries. I read about simple living, sustainable homemaking, and do-it-yourselfing on a regular (constant!) basis. I don’t own a car, and Matt and I make efforts to cut down on driving his car whenever possible, or at the very least make sure to carpool, to reduce emissions and motivate ourselves to walk or bike instead.

I just read all that, and it sounds like a giant paragraph of bragging. I really don’t mean it that way. But I am proud of how I live, and my purpose here is to help spread the word and educate about this lifestyle and hopefully encourage others to do what they can. No one can do everything exactly as they wish- we are all limited in some way, but to do what you can and feel good about it is the important part. I can personally attest to the benefits of living simply and always making conscious decisions as a consumer. Since changing my diet away from processed foods and commercial meat, my immune system has strengthened unbelievably. Growing my own garden from scratch gives me satisfaction in knowing that I can provide for myself and that I know exactly where my veggies are coming from. Limiting my spending makes me more aware of what it takes to really live well- friends, music, good food, and not too many possessions, but all of them of good quality.


I encourage you to look around your life and see what you can simplify. Simply put, it will be good for your mental and physical health, for your community, and for the planet.

Matt's Latest

To deviate from my usual garden-heavy blogs, I thought I’d tell you what Matt has been up to lately. Having recently entered into the world of unemployment, Matt has taken up an activity he has always wanted to get into: surfboard shaping! And has proven himself an adept wood worker in the process. He just went for it- bought the Spanish cedar boards, cut and glued them into a blank, cut out the shape with a jigsaw, and did the planning and sanding and oiling to shape a beautiful traditional wooden board! This kind of board is called an Alaia (pronounced “uh-lie-yuh”), it is a very early traditional Hawaiian style, much thinner than modern foam longboards (my nine-footer is three inches thick in the center, Matt’s Alaia is ¾ of an inch thick) and without a fin. This allows the surfer to do “helicopters” and other tricks, turning the board around on a wave without moving your feet. They ride very differently than modern boards and, frankly, are much nicer to look at!

Our efforts to test out the new board last weekend were kyboshed by an inaccurate surf report and terrible weather at the coast-- we drove from sunny, warm Portland and as soon as we crested the Coast Range, we drove into a wall of fog and wind that had blown out all the waves at Short Sands, our favored surf spot. So we drove up the coast a few miles and Matt tried out The Cove at Seaside with his longboard, but not being familiar with the site didn’t want to take out an unknown board.

Here is photo documentation of the whole construction process (done entirely in Matt’s apartment, resulting in cedar dust everywhere but well worth it).

(Click on images to enlarge)
Gluing the blank in his living room

Drawing the shape onto the blank

Cutting out the shape with the jigsaw

Matt sits on the field of victory (to test the board's flex) after several days' hard work with the hand plane.

Done sanding, now cleaning up the kitchen.

Matt went prematurely gray from all the sawdust...

Finished sanding, look at that shape!

End view to show how thin the Alaia is.

And finally oiling with linseed oil.

Finished product, really a beautiful work of art.

As he continues to shape more boards and considers forming a small surfboard shaping business, Matt’s dad is giving him a space in his garage where they will make a shaping room of plastic sheeting (standard procedure to keep sawdust and fumes under control). Matt is committed to keeping his shaping process and potential business as environmentally friendly as possible and is looking into sourcing local wood for his boards. All of the wood shavings from the process go into my compost bin.