Strawberries Are In Bloom!

Despite endless rain, early season warmth followed by frustrating, dreary, cool, sunless weather, the strawberries are in bloom! My garden journal indicates that I just may set another record for the start of my harvest. First quart was picked May 14th in 2008, May 22nd in 2009, and May 8th in 2010. We'll see if I can top 83 quarts this year--from three 4x8 raised beds, mind you.

I still have quite a few pints of strawberry jam left, and about a dozen bags of frozen whole berries. What will I do with more? Maybe I should go into competition with my Amish neighbors and start selling them! I can underbid $5.00 a quart.

Potatoes and onions are in; lettuce, spinach, greens and peas are up; tomato, basil and peppers are tiny but growing inside under lights. Hens have cleared the garden in preparation for a dose of mushroom soil and a quick turn under before planting.

So why is it I still feel like I am behind?

We're Expecting!

   I know what you're thinking: we're crazy. We already have too much on our hands. But I have begun thinking that two just is not enough. After all, pretty soon they will be out of the "nest" and then what will we do? My motherly instincts kicked in this spring and I found myself preoccupied with babies. So I am pleased to announce that sometime around April 27th, we will become the proud parents of just-hatched Black Australorps and Barred Plymouth Rocks.

Barred Plymouth Rock

     They weren't my first choice. I wanted Buff Orpingtons and Silver Laced Wyandottes. For a while, I thought about Speckled Sussex. In the end, I had to decide on breeds that were available at the same time as the broilers I was ordering. The white broilers will mature in about 8 weeks, which is just before we go on vacation. As usual, I am behind.

Black Australorps

     Plymouth Rocks were the traditional breed on Delmarva farms before the broiler industry revved up in the 1930s. My Delaware chickens are a cross between Barred Rocks and, improbably, red-feathered New Hampshires. (See my blog entry "Chapter One: My Chicks Are Born" describing these breeds). Black Australorps are actually an Australian breed, known for laying even in hot weather and for their luminous black feathers. They are also hardy in winter. My only other requirements were that they lay brown eggs, are productive and are "heavy breeds." I don't want them to get beat up by my other hens.
   I am worried whether we have enough room for more chickens, and how I will find the time to care for them and raise them right. But like any other parent, I will do the best I can and try to focus on the joy they bring me--not to mention the eggs.

Fresh Eggs, From a Cage Near You

 Photo by CA4A.org from TEACHKIND.org

     Last night, at an ISE egg farm not five miles away from my home, an estimated 300,000 chickens were killed as the result of an accidental fire that burned for over 3 hours. Ten fire companies responded to a blaze exacerbated by 20 mph winds with gusts up to 45 mph. Residents 10 or 15 miles north of the fire reported smelling the odor. Several years ago, there was a a fire at a nearby horse barn and seven horses were killed. It was a tragic loss, devastating to the owner and heart-wrenching to imagine how the animals suffered. Initial reports about last night's fire did not include the number of chickens housed at the facility. Perhaps that information was not yet released by ISE, perhaps it was not considered an important detail.
    Several people on Facebook and in the Delaware NewsJournal joked about the death of the chickens, making comments about barbecue sauce and fried chicken. You get the idea. There are idiots everywhere, I know. I wasn't surprised. I did shake my head, however, at what appeared to be a sincere comment: "I hope they got all the chickens out safely." Clearly, this reader is totally disconnected with the way in which poultry and eggs are raised today.
    You all know where I'm going with this, so I will preface this by being the first to admit that I am not a vegetarian or vegan, not all of my food is certified organic/humane/cruelty free/etc., and I personally don't have THE solution on how to feed the world using only humane, sustainable methods. My chickens are not pets and I have no desire to carry them around and stroke them like a puppy. When they get old and stop laying, I may not keep them around. Just last week, I wondered if I was going to have to "cull" (kill) one of my hens because she was sick, rather than contaminate the entire henhouse or use antibiotics to treat her. I believe, at least until I get better information, that sometimes it is necessary to kill a bird rather than compromise the whole flock. Someday soon, I will share my story of treating a hen for bumblefoot last summer. She survived, but I can understand why farmers are not always able to treat individual hens.
     My criticism is with the processes involved in factory farming, techniques that are both horrifying and arguably counterproductive, compromising the health of the hens and the eggs.  In 2001, the Washington Post conducted an investigation into the ISE facility here in Cecil County and found thousands of chickens crowded into cages, missing feathers, caught in the cage wire unable to access food. Hens in battery cages suffer severe stress and often must be debeaked to prevent them from pecking each other. Disease thrives in crowded conditions, so the birds must be administered antibiotics and are exposed to pesticides. While the industry "recommends" each hen be allowed about 8x9 inches of space, some groups allege that hens are given as little as 6x6 inches of space. Twenty-five percent of the hens die during their 18-month lifespan, and there are no regulations about how the survivors are killed at the end of this time. Studies have shown that raising chickens in battery cages increases the risk of Salmonella infection in the hens and  their eggs.

Photo by CA4A.org from TEACHKIND.org

        At the time of the Post investigation, a company representative said, "We use normal industry practices." Undoubtedly, this is true. While animal cruelty is against the law, exemption is made for “customary and normal … agricultural husbandry practices." Standards we might consider cruel are rarely prosecuted. The egg industry argues that battery cages are healthier for chickens and eggs, because the birds are protected from germs and from eating their own droppings. If the chickens were not healthy, they argue, they would not be productive. Techniques for maintaining productivity include providing artificial light and forced molting, not to mention more than a century of breeding. What are the reasonable limits when it comes to enhancing productivity? The answer likely is different for each food consumer.
    There is no substitute for raising an animal--or growing a crop for that matter--to help you understand the challenges of farming. I try to follow the standards for Organic Poultry Production outlined by the National Sustainable Agriculture Information service. I've had to make a few compromises. Organic chicken feed is not readily available, so I use a vegetarian feed with no antibiotics or other chemicals added. Many organic farmers aim for 1.5 square feet of space per bird, not including outdoor "free range" access. Simple observation has taught me, and poultry experts agree, that when chickens are crowded they will lay fewer eggs--and extreme cases experience much higher mortality. Confined to their small yard during bad weather or when we are away, there is a noticeable drop off in the number of eggs. The coop smells worse, the buildup of droppings is harder to maintain and the chickens basically look miserable. I can't imagine them spending their whole lives that way.
   Years ago, I toured some broiler industry facilities from hatchery to processing plant. That is definitely a story for another blog, but I can tell you that I was impressed as well as concerned. I am not here to tell anyone what to do or what kind of eggs to buy, but the general public's growing disconnect with how our food is grown and processed is disturbing to me. When I talk about slaughtering a few of my chickens or how my local beef is processed, some people stop me by saying, "I don't want to know, I just want to eat it." Until we all demand to know just what goes into our food, and how the animals we eat are raised, industrial, "factory" farms will go on doing whatever they are allowed to do to boost productivity. As consumers, we are partly to blame. We choose to support these practices with our money.
    Switzerland has banned battery cages since 1992. The European Union has outlawed the use of battery cages after 2012. In the United States, California was the first state to outlaw battery cages; the law will not take effect until 2015. Several food chains have pledged to use "cage free" eggs. There are no other laws in the works. Is this good enough for you?

Woodsmen

     Saturdays in the spring and fall during my childhood were frequently spent in the woods, helping my parents and brother cut firewood. Dad had permission from the landowner to cut fallen hardwoods from the thicket of vines and briars that are the hallmark of Delmarva pine forests. This wasn't always the case. Ecological history tells us that the forests along the Atlantic coast once boasted old-growth trees so large that they shaded out most undergrowth. A man could ride through the woods at a full gallop.
    In the corner of these woods was a vaguely beaten trail that ran from the farm road behind the line of houses in the town of Church Creek, to Brannock's Neck Road about a quarter of a mile away, which then ran down to the water. Legend says that in colonial days, some gentleman met his demise there while on a late night ride. Dorchester County folklore keeper Tom Flowers--the "Old Honker"--first introduced me to the story of the "Ghost of Tick's Path." I can no longer remember the details of the story, but with a thrilling sense of dread and delight, I used to imagine I could hear the hooves of Tick's horse as I pushed the wheelbarrow full of logs along the path in the woods.
   The scents and sounds of those days in the woods still captivate me, from the sputtering buzz of the chainsaw and the oily smoke coming from its motor, to the musty, earthy smell of the leaves and the tentative twittering of the startled birds. When Dad cut off the chainsaw, the quiet dropped like a blanket except for the sound of the wind rocking the tops of the tall pines and the crunching of the leaves beneath our feet. I did my share of the work, but I am eight years younger than my brother and had the luxury of sensing it all.
   We continue to burn wood as our primary heat, and so spend our fair share of Saturdays cutting wood. Sadly, we usually do not cut in the woods. A neighbor or family member often has a tree that has fallen, and we are more than happy to clean it up and take the wood. We have spent the last 15 years slowing taking down the gum and "trash" trees in the hedgerow along our property, making way for pin oaks. It remains a family affair.
   My brother, who doesn't have a woodstove, often 'invites' us down to cut wood and performs more than a fair share of the labor. A good deal for us, but what's in it for him? I suspect he too has fond memories of weekends in the woods, and a love of being outdoors working. So it was that I found myself down in Dorchester County this weekend, trying to cut up the remnants of a 170 year old cherry tree on the waterfront property belonging to my brother Jim's friend. The base of the tree was probably six-feet in diameter, but hollow in the center. It had come down last year, fortunately missing the house. A giant hornet's nest was inside, but winter took care of that.
   We had cut and split the two-foot pieces of log last month, but Jim and my husband seemed determined to tackle the trunk, cutting through half of the massive base and then splitting it off with wedges. It seemed like a difficult way to get firewood, but I suspect it presented a bit of a manly challenge. As always, everyone had a job. I do not use the chainsaw--sharp moving tools and I have a bad history--but I haul and stack and do whatever else is needed. I do like to split nice dry wood, but this cherry was so old and tough, it almost seemed petrified. It was futile to try to split it without a wedge, although my 72-year old mother insisted on trying and so I felt compelled to attempt a few also.

   It was a strange day. A sudden burst of rain forced us to quit an hour after arriving. We loaded up some unsplit logs and retreated back to my parents' house. An hour later, it cleared and we returned to try chiseling off some more of the giant log. The sky grew dark over the river again and I looked over at my son, my husband, my brother and my father: my son fearlessly handling a maul; my husband on top of the trunk, silhouetted against the swirling gray clouds; my brother wielding a chainsaw; my father standing alongside the tree. The four most important men in my life. Woodsmen. It was an unexpected moment and I realized that what moved me was not nature. Cutting firewood may seem like an odd family tradition, but it is ours.

Dead Wood

   I was a writer before I was a historian. For as long as I can remember my head has been filled with stories. At first, the stories were about others, about Laura Ingalls and Mary Lennox and Jo March. Growing up in a county where my mother's family had settled in the 1650s, in a town where the church had my ancestors names embossed in the stained glass, in a house built by my great-grandfather where the floor boards bore worm holes from being carried aboard his schooner, I was also surrounded by stories--and by history.

   My grandmother, Cleora, loved to tell stories that were more like snippets, enticing little facts about which she often neglected to provide details:
      "I broke your Pop Pop's ribs when we were horsing around."
     "My brothers once tied two cow's tails together."
     "A crab pinched my finger many years ago, that's why it doesn't bend."

   In 1985, when I was 15, the stories stopped. My grandmother was 85, and died of a massive heart attack. It came as a complete shock to me. As a small child, my substantial imagination led me to occasionally worry that something bad would happen to my parents, but I never, ever thought anything would happen to Mom Mom. I wrote my first "family story" the next year, a class assignment. It was called "Present Past." My  English teacher, John Wood, loved the title: "Get it," he said to the class, "the past is always present to the main character in the story."


   The past has always been present to me. About the same time I started writing in earnest, I became an avid genealogist and by extension, a student of local history. Names and dates were never enough  for me, however, and I was thirsty to know who these people were, these names on my family tree. Occupations, real estate, names of children, military service, much of this I could discover, but I longed for stories the documents did not reveal.

   So, I made them up. I took the anecdotes, the snippets, did some research (often not nearly enough), and imagined the lives of my family members. I did what every writer of historical fiction does (including James Michener, who I am certain based at least one of his Chesapeake characters on my Dorchester County ancestors) and populated my fiction with the people, places and events of real history. My senior English thesis in high school was a novel based on the Eastern Shore in the late 1700s; my history thesis was a history of Dorchester County during the American Revolution.

   Writing history, I learned, was easy. To write historical fiction well, was not. When I went to Washington College in Chestertown--the Eastern Shore writers' mecca--my split personality continued. My history teachers embraced my love of writing (as long as my facts were footnoted), but my creative writing teacher seemed to loathe my family stories.

   "You've got to get rid of the dead wood," he insisted. "Write about what you know."

   For my senior English project I wrote a novel (oh, and a history thesis analyzing the demise of the Federalist Party in Maryland). For a summer and a school year I retreated to my third floor fellowship room in the Victorian-style O'Neill Literary House and wrote about a young girl growing up on Maryland's Eastern Shore, struggling to exorcise the hold that small town traditions and secrets held over her, to escape her family history.

   Dead wood.

   I guess I didn't understand what he was saying. But that WAS what I knew, what I understood, what compelled me. I am still proud of my novel, the last fiction I ever wrote.

   As I see it now, it was half a novel. The novel of a 21 year old. Almost twenty years later, I can envision the second half of the novel, though it may never be written. The main character embraces the place that formed her, accepts the history that has created her, and finds a way to tell her own story. A story where the past is present.

   I remember the day that the resolution of the novel came to me. On a warm early summer day I was sitting in the shade with my nearly one year old son. It was a day just like one I describe at the beginning of my novel, a scene inspired by the idyllic description of Knoxville, Tennessee in James Agee's "A Death in the Family." It was also the day that I decided to put my full-time history career on hold in order to live my own family story.

I'm thinking of a day when I was five and I was swinging high in the tire swing that hung in the maple tree in my backyard as Daddy mowed the grass and Mother planted marigolds in the flower garden behind the house. I remember tilting my head back to see the deep, robin's egg expanse of the sky  through an olive-colored veil of leaves, then looking out beyond our yard at the sea of full-grown corn which spread to the line of pine trees in the distance. I breathed in the scents of cut grass, the dandelions I held in my lap, and the damp, raw smell of earth freshly uncovered in our neighbors' gardens. The hum of the lawnmower reverberated loudly in my ears while a chorus of sparrow chattered to each other above my head, the cicadas occasionally chiming in with their shrill, dried gourd rattle. Almost all afternoon I observed my world from that pleasant, breezy seat.

Meet My New Mini Tillers

I am a to-do list kind of person. I like checking things off, and have been known to write something down only to immediately check it off, just to feel a sense of accomplishment. Nothing makes me feel better than knowing something on my to-do list is getting done when I'm not even around. I'm not talking about a 'honey-do' list either. I'm talking about getting three loads of laundry hung on the line before you have to leave for the day, knowing they will be dry by the time you get home. I'm talking about perfectly timing the baking of bread, braising of a roast and boiling of potatoes so that everything is ready simultaneously.


Chicken-keeping has not been this kind of job. After a week or two of freedom in my back yard, the chickens began roaming over to the neighbors yard to scratch in her flower beds, looking for hidden bugs. This is not too much of a problem in February, but once the spring bulbs began to emerge I knew my neighbor would be out clearing her beds and wouldn't appreciate stepping in chicken poop. So I invested in 200 more feet of fence and decided to enclose a fair portion of the "back forty" as pasture. The added benefit was that it would reduce how much grass we have to mow all summer long. Within a week, the chickens had turned that 250 square feet of emerging weeds into a mud pit.

So back they went into the small chicken yard and I didn't let them out for nearly week. In protest, they flew up at the fence and rushed the door whenever I walked by as if trying to escape. They also began pecking and eating their own eggs. Chicken cannibalism. Nice. I get the picture. Let us out or the little one gets it.

Back I went to good old Tractor Supply, this time in search of some "step-in" fence posts and heavy-duty plastic fence. I had experimented with putting up some temporary pasture last summer, and knew I needed more fence and an easier way of moving the fence to new areas of grass. But since there was still no grass growing in the yard, I stretched the fence from the coop, around my vegetable garden and back again. The garden was mostly bare, but there were some weeds, broccoli stalks from last year, and plenty of leaves that had blown in.

Pretty soon, I started to appreciate how powerfully those chickens can scratch. Within a day, they were down to bare ground in spots, searching out seeds and sprouts and hopefully some grubs. In softer areas, they dug 5 or 6 inch holes and nested there in the afternoons.

I caught one hen throwing up so much loose dirt that it rained over her and she shook it off with delight, almost like a dog. Chickens use dust baths to keep off pests, but this looked like pure fun to me.

After two weeks they have begun to break down the tough oak leaves--I sprinkled some cracked corn in the thickest areas to encourage them to scratch around. The places I plan to plant potatoes, peas, lettuce and spinach in the next few weeks are outside the fence, and it won't be time to plant anything else until almost May. By then, I'm hoping there will be plenty of grass growing.




So meet my new mini tillers. They work all by themselves while I'm doing something else.

New Year's Resolutions

Yes, I know it's March. Yes, New Year's day came and went two and a half months ago. But yesterday was the first day of spring, and to me that is when the new year truly begins. It's about the time when--if you're going to have a garden all--you better have at least thought about it.

I am a pathological planner. I have a garden calendar I developed that tells me exactly when I need to start my peppers inside, when it is best to plant the first lettuce in the cold frame and when the first tomatoes can be safely transplanted. I print it out each year and check off when I complete each task. I can tell you that I was three weeks late starting my pepper seeds and equally as late in planting lettuce outside.

I am a pathetic perfectionist. I could not find the right organic seed starting mix when it came time to seed the peppers.

I had not found the time to build a small raised bed in the hoop house, so I held off seeding the lettuce. And I was so busy with other spring cleanup tasks this weekend, that I did not have time to apply a load of mushroom soil to the potato row and so I certainly couldn't get them in the ground until that was done.

I am a person who procrastinates. A gardener has nothing but time in the winter. Time to peruse the seed catalogs and dream. Time to make lists of what to grow. Time to place where each crop will grow in the garden. All of this could be done in January in front of a warm fire, cup of cocoa in hand. Yet, there I was last week, sketching out where to plant everything--you have to have proper crop rotation, of course--knowing that the seeds would arrive the next day. The poor tomato seeds still sit on my kitchen counter waiting to be planted and the seed starting soil has dried out in the pots. Today, I will do it. Really.

My compulsion to plan and my desire for perfection has most definitely led me to procrastinate when it comes to my blog. Even now, as I struggle to find the right "p"s to complete my alliterations, my brain is screaming "just write something!" I want each blog to have a theme, to instruct, to be properly illustrated--a feature article ready for submission. No wonder I postpone!

So my resolution for the New Gardening Year is to let go of some measure of perfectionism and try to write something at least once a week. Sometimes you've just got to get it in the ground.