Bobby's Sunday Summary

To quote Alice about what happened this week "Blugh Nothin", although I think she just doesn't remember. She had her best friend come over this week and they played for 8 hours straight with no fights or problems what so ever.  That was the same day that we had 4 cubic yards of compost delivered.  So our garden is almost don't we just need to put the plants in.  We also have 3 huge 55 gallon plastic barrels that we are going to use to plant our blueberry plants in.  Susan is still deciding where to put them.

Susan also had a very busy week.  She had things in the evening almost every night last week.  So I got to put the kids to bed.  They are getting better with me putting them to bed.  Well that is about it.

Adventures in Eating

SPINACH

Eating dinner the other night, Buddy asks for more chicken, "Mo' hickin?"

"Sure, Buddy. I'll get you more chicken when your spinach is all gone." He puts a leaf in his mouth and starts to chew. Moments later, I hear a happy voice, "Mo' hickin!"

"Good job eating that leaf. I'll get you more chicken when ALL of your spinach is gone."

"Ok."

I turn away to pay attention to something else. Buddy suddenly exclaims with glee,"Ta da! All gone!" and points to the now empty spot on his plate where the small pile of spinach leaves had just been. He had moved them to the other side of his plate.

"Uh, not quite. You have to EAT them all gone." Bobby and I look at each other and bust up laughing.



PETUNIAS
Alice earned a good chunk of money recently, and decided that she wanted to spend some of it today at the Farm Store (I'm looking for ingredients to make an organic/natural/slow release fertilizer for the lawn and garden). What on earth can a kid get at a farm store for a couple bucks?! I was dreading the pack of gum or cheapo key chain that she would settle for in the check out lane. Turns out, we started in the outdoor section and she fell in love with a 4-pack of pink and white striped petunias. Yay! She was going on about how this could be the magic flower when she plays "Rapunzel." I didn't pay much attention to that statement at the time. Alice then asked for a garden "all her own", and I was willing to give her some garden space, but the soil isn't going to be delivered until Friday. She just couldn't wait. We planted the petunias in pots and put them on the back patio. She even let Robert help scoop the soil and water them a bit. Once they were settled in their new home, she promptly picked the only flower and put it in a cup of water. It steeped for a while, then she put the cup to her lips...true to her "Rapunzel" plans.

"Alice! No! Wait! I don't know if petunias are poisonous!" I screamed. The look of horror on her face was hard to decipher. She froze. I couldn't tell if she was more terrified for almost drinking 'poison' or for purchasing and planting four new 'poisonous' plants for our backyard. I quickly rephrased my cautionary statement, "Let me look it up. Some flowers are edible. I just don't know yet if petunias are edible." Her face relaxed a bit and her voice quivered a bit, "You don't know if petunias are edible?" A quick search online indicated that petunias are, in fact, quite edible. Whew. Alice flit about the house with glee. The petunia water didn't taste any different, so she decided to taste the flower itself and found it pleasant enough. Then she started planning play dates where she could invite her friends over to nibble on her flowers. Bobby mentioned later that the flower could have been coated in fertilizers and pesticides from the nursery...oops. He's totally right. We'll see if we get any barfing tonight. Dang it all!



MANGO
Alice and Buddy are fans of mango. The little, yellow Atualfo mangoes looked really good at the store this week so I picked up a couple. We shared them at dinner tonight. Each person got a half that was scored in a checkered pattern and splayed out like a flower:

 

Buddy and Alice were a little disoriented by the new presentation style (we usually cut the chunks off before giving it to them), but not for long. They sucked and slurped and scraped those peels clean with their teeth in no time. Buddy asked for more. I told him that was all the mango we had, but Bobby remembered the seeds. When you prep a mango like this, there's a little bit of fruit left around the perimeter of the seed. It's usually Bobby's treat because he's usually the one dicing mangoes for everyone else. This time, he let the kids have at them. When I put one of the seeds in front of Buddy, his eyes got huge, "*gasp* Ohhhh." Pure delight and awe. Alice was thrilled, too. Buddy bit into it and realized that there was a seed in the middle, but quickly sucked and slurped every remaining tidbit of fleshy mango from the outside. Both kids made quick work of it. I love to see my kids love real food.

Like I Need More Motivation...

My sister Erin gave me The Urban Farm Handbook for Christmas and I ate it up. This challenge just looks like fun. I'm already involved in urban food production up to my eyeballs, and I'm a little late to join in the challenge (it started in February), but I look forward to trying something new every month. Heck, I'm most excited to learn tips/tricks for integrating the different farm components I've already assembled. Chickens and orchards and compost and veggie gardening...they are less work together than they are separately, but only if you can integrate them. I look forward to learning more about that.

I'm also incorporating an organic approach to lawn care this year. Illinois soil is some of the best soil in the world. The general idea is if you can keep the soil healthy (i.e. compost, natural fertilizers, proper mowing technique, and some hand digging of weeds), then pests and weeds are much less of a problem in the long run. It also makes the lawn safer for kids and animals (i.e. free of pesticides and semi-toxic fertilizers). I'm not a fanatic about it. I just want to try this method first.

Let's see how things pan out by the end of June when the heat sets in and the weeds REALLY get going :)

Labeled, finally.

So, you know all that farm stuff I do? The gardening, the canning, the hens, etc.? It has a name. It has a movement, actually, and it's not as "weird" as it used to be. I learned this at the low tunnel workshop I attended yesterday. When people ask me what I'm into, I can respond with "urban food production" and they'll...um...raise their eyebrow in a questioning look.  Okay, it's not the coolest name, but it's accurate and slowly gaining respect. It certainly elicits more respect than "I like to garden", which sounds like an old lady hobby ;) and can easily be misunderstood as a flowers and shrubbery kind of passion, which is not at ALL what I do (outside of red dahlias, of course).

So, I'm into urban food production.

Speaking of the workshop, it was loads of fun. I was glad to have my friend Susan there with me to bounce ideas and criticisms off of. We were clearly the youngest of the bunch, by a couple decades. The low tunnel itself was elegant and I learned quite a bit about construction and some nifty tools/hardware that will make my future in urban food production much more efficient and beautiful. I asked the instructor specifically about keeping squirrels out of my garden. He suggested I kill them.

Um...all of them? In the whole neighborhood? 

The tunnel he constructed in front of us has lots of potential, though. It looks simple enough to make it taller for sweet corn, and I could easily use a variety of covering materials to fit my gardening needs throughout the season. It's well-designed and sturdy. It's also affordable. So, will I make one? Certainly. Not sure exactly when, though. I've gotta tweak the design a bit and set up an experimental plot. Maybe Heidi can help me with that this summer :)

Growing fresh greens throughout the winter is an addictive idea. He grows kale, spinach, baby salad greens, and others all the way into February. It's tricky business, and there are several new considerations with mid-winter gardening, but if I could somehow manage to learn it...garden fresh salads and sauteed greens for winter holidays...*gasp*...real, slow, high quality food at the intersection of food and family/friends. Another dream come true. 

Pickies of the Chickies

My apologies to those of you aren't into the farm/garden side of this blog. I will be returning to deep thoughts on life and motherhood when I don't have so much excitement going on in the backyard :)

My fruit trees are springing to life. We aren't supposed to hope for a crop the first year. Apples and peaches may start producing a bit next year, but pears won't be for two years yet. I'm just delighted to see green tufts!

Here's the chicken coop and attached chicken run in situ. The chicks are dark-feathered and still smaller than pigeons, so they're hard to see resting under the coop in this photo.

Close up of the chicks. You'll notice that we again have THREE chicks. Once Katie P. showed me how to fit three full size birds in my bitty coop, it didn't take much more convincing for me to fill the vacancy :) Another one of my urban-chicken-raising buddies let me have one of her chicks that was hatched about the same time mine were. So now we have Agnes (blurry black one perching in the foreground), Edith (furthest back with the silver/grey accents), and Penny (in the middle with the gold/copper accents).

Alice had a tough time deciding on Penny's name. She wanted to stay with the Despicable Me theme, and didn't dare name a second bird "Margo" ("that would be confusing when Margo comes alive again"...we're all about resurrection at this household). She briefly considered naming the new chick after the "mean mommy", Miss Hattie, and lingered longer on the boy names like Gru, Vector, and Dr. Nefario, until Bobby suddenly remembered that there was another little girl in the movie. Penny is the one in Miss Hattie's Box of Shame. Ta da! No more chicks are allowed to die. We're all out of little girl names.

I find the chicks' personalities and behaviors fascinating, but I don't dare share them here. It's one thing to gush about kids. It's another thing entirely to blab on and on about one's newest pets. Like. Anyone. Cares. I care a lot, but only about these birds. The only other pets I seem to care about are those I've personally taken care of at some point (I could chat about the Parents' critters all afternoon). Thus, I'm keeping my birds' antics to myself...after I tell you this much: Agnes does everything first. She's obviously not top chick (as Edith is wont to remind her often), but she just wanders and explores and lingers in ways that indicate she's either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid...I can't really tell. Agnes is just a little bit different. Kids can catch her, for one. She just doesn't seem as nervous about life as the other two.