The end of the cold frame.

So, my cold frame has yielded another tidbit of information. I planted 3 different types of spinach last fall. Monnopa seems to be the winning variety from the trial. While the other two were equally tasty, and equally hardy, the Gigantic and Bloomsdale are bolting and the Monnopa is still putting out leaves. That is good to know. You can see the 3 rows in the picture, Monnopa is the one on the left.

Sadly, the cold frame must be dismantled in the next week and moved to our new house. The lettuce I planted will not have time to mature. I might try and transplant some of the larger sprouts into containers, but I can't imagine it will be very successful. *sigh* Sad, I do love my lettuce. But, I guess I'll just have to try for a crop this fall.

All in all, it was an interesting trial. I got a bunch of spinach out of it, and some good information.



The rest of the container garden is planted and ready to move to the new house. Hopefully there's room for them all. :-D
I ended up with lots of herbs, a pepper plant, an eggplant, a tomato, a broccoli, a pot of peas and a pot with radishes and leaf lettuce.

How my garden grows

So, a quick rundown on my garden spaces this year so y'all out there in cyberspace can keep current, plus, it'll help me organize my thoughts.

I no longer have my massive farm house garden. What I'm working with this year is more of a disjointed affair. I have 3 plots, 8'x16'each, at the community gardens in Des Moines. Two of those are in the Downtown community garden, and one is in the Franklin st community garden. The rest of my gardening will be in the container garden I built up last fall. Total, I'm working with 450 sq feet of ground space and a dozen or so decent sized containers.

The 2 plots at the Downtown garden will be the farthest away from my house. So, those two plots will be vines and beans. One plot will be nothing but squash hills, and cucumber hills. My reasoning is I can't possibly container garden those, and they don't require a lot of daily maintenance. The second plot will be bush beans. Bush beans because they don't require trellising, and they tend to put on beans in waves, which means I won't have to be out there every day picking beans. The other influencing factor is those plots aren't done yet. The city is behind on construction. So, I can't put in anything that needs to be planted early.

The plot at the Franklin Garden will be more diverse, but since it will be closer to our house, I should be able to keep up with it. I have garlic and onions planted in it already. I also seeded carrots and kohlrabi over the weekend; about 6 square feet of each. I have room for a few broccolis and a couple tomatoes and that's it.

Lettuces and herbs are in containers. Peas have been planted in a container, and I have a trellis ready for them to climb. I'm trying my hand at vertical potato planting with a container I built myself. I have a strawberry pot with strawberry starts in it. I want to try an eggplant in a container, and maybe a determinate tomato plant. If I have a pot left I might try a cabbage or a bell pepper.


Aaand, just to make it all really confusing, I'm also dealing with veggies for the CSA with Becky up in Boone. This undertaking is an hour away from my house in Des Moines. But, basically we are trying to start up a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)farm. The CSA is called Open Source Organics and we tilled our first 2 beds this spring. The beds are 3'x 100'. CSA means that people buy "shares" of the harvest before the season starts and then the farmer distributes the vegetable harvest weekly over the course of the growing season. This year we are not a true CSA as we are offloading all our veggies through a middleman company.

So, that's what I'm working with this year. As always, there are a few experiments and some standard garden fare and the chaos known as life thrown in just to make things interesting. I'll post the interesting stuff here. I'm thinking I won't keep track of my harvests by weight this year. With a new baby I just figure the chances of keeping up on the weigh ins is practically zero. :-) What weights I did get recorded would be only partial representations of actual harvest and pretty much worthless. So, no boring posts full of numbers this summer. :-) I'll probably do weigh ins again in the future, they are just too useful not to, but it will be a couple of years I think.

Hmm... did I ever add up all my total harvest weights and come up with a total for the year?

A birth story

It's been awhile since my last post. Things have been a little busy. :-) Our son arrived in the wee hours of the morning March 31st, 1:06am to be precise. He's sleeping right now, and I wanted to take a moment to write.

One of the online forums I frequent has a tradition of sharing birth stories. I read dozens of them in my last trimester, stories ranging from at-home births in bathtubs to emergency cesareans and everything in between. I believe these stories work to counter the over played Hollywood drama of birth, you know the story; the woman suddenly goes into full blown labor, usually someplace inconvenient, and she proceeds rapidly, and loudly, to some crisis point where the good doctor steps in and saves mother and baby. Of course, baby is usually a 10lbs one month old, and doesn't even resemble a newborn, but I digress. I don't know about you, but when I found myself pregnant, that was pretty much the only birth story I knew. That and my own story, but I didn't know much more than I was born C-section and I had seen a couple of pictures once. I think we do our society a disservice by perpetuating that particular story. Women need to hear more about the reality of birth, in all it's nuances and personal differences. They need to hear less of the Hollywood version. To that end, I would like to submit my own story to the dialogue, in the hopes that it gets shared and maybe helps further women's knowledge.

--Rowen Donald Erwin--
I think my husband and I were pregnant at our handfasting. Probably only a week or so pregnant, but I really do think Rowen was there.
The next 9 months proceeded fairly normally as these things go. I thought I had a stomach flu until I found out that morning sickness can last all day. :-) The first 3 months were pretty much spent in a constant state of nausea. I was still dancing though, salsa and belly dance a couple of times a week. I danced all the way through this pregnancy, although the frequency decreased a lot in the third trimester. My feet swelled, so I couldn't fit into any of my dance shoes. By the time I went into labor, my tennis shoes barely fit, I had to leave them unlaced. But, baby was healthy, and I was healthy, so I'm not complaining.



I had a few Braxton-Hicks in the last trimester. Nothing major, never lasting more than 10 minutes. When I woke up on Sunday the 29th with crampy pains, I knew it was something different. After getting out of bed at 8, I lost my plug. At first I thought it was my water breaking, but after careful consultation with the women in my life, we came to the conclusion that it was just my plug. I was having contractions all morning, about every 15 minutes or so, but they were very light. Dave and I packed our hospital bag and alerted my friend Becky. (Becky graciously accepted the position of labor coach, and I really couldn't have done it without her.) Seeing as how things were still pretty light we decided to go to the natural living expo that was at the convention center a few blocks from our hospital. We went and walked around for an hour or so, but the contractions remained light, I could talk through them and they were still every 15 minutes or so. We met Becky for some lunch. A couple of hours later, we decided nothing was happening very fast, so Becky went back home, Dave and I did the same and we settled in for the evening. Contractions continued, that evening they started increasing in frequency. I tried to go to bed around 11, but couldn't sleep, so I camped on the couch and timed contractions every hour or so. I got to 30 second contractions 5 minutes apart, but around 4am I finally fell asleep. I only slept a few hours, but when I woke Monday, the contractions had eased back to every 10 minutes. Dave felt we were too far along for him to go to work, so he stayed home. That ended up being the right decision. Around 11 we were getting bundled up to go for a walk around the neighborhood (to help labor progress) and I felt something pop. It was a very weird feeling, almost like a joint cracking, but in a place I knew I had no joints to pop. Almost immediately I felt my waters and I knew what had happened. Within the next 15 minutes my contractions increased duration and frequency noticeably. We timed them and realized we were at 1 minute long every 4 minutes.
We called Becky and told her we were headed to the hospital. If I was doing things over, at this point I would have insisted on getting lunch before going to the hospital. Oh well. We got there, got checked in and got stuck in a triage room to establish where labor was and get my vitals recorded. I was having to breathe through the contractions at this point and I was not surprised when the nurse confirmed that my waters had broken and we were not going home. We told her we were trying for a natural birth and she was very supportive, telling us she had helped a woman on her last shift deliver without meds. She got us settled in a room and brought us a birthing ball. Shortly after that Becky got to the hospital and joined us. From that point until dinner, we started to get down to business. My blood pressure and temperature both rose a little bit. Rowen sailed through all the contractions without any problems. To combat the temperature and the high blood pressure I drank lots of water. I walked around the room a little bit and sat on the birthing ball as much as I could. Dave and Becky each got dinner, by that point I was NOT interested in food, really I wasn't even interested in them leaving me to get food for themselves, but they needed their energy. :-D At 7 we lost our first nurse, she was replaced by the next shift, which was a little annoying because the new shift had to redo all the vitals tests. Contractions were fierce at this point, and I was having to rely on my support team more and more. I had read Ina May Gaskin's "Guide to Childbirth" and I really connected to her birthing techniques. It was no surprise to me when I moaned my way through the contractions. I rocked on the birthing ball and used low tones to help keep all my muscles relaxed. Deep breaths at the beginning of the contraction helped me hook the low tones into the relaxation I was aiming for. I instinctively found the pitch and volume level that worked for the pain level I was feeling with each contraction. Looking back on it, it was pretty cool, but at the time it was just intense. By 11 I was at 7cm, I pretty much thought I wouldn't make it at this point. I think I asked for drugs around this time and my lovely team talked me out of it, or just ignored me, it's all kinda fuzzy. By midnight I was nearing the end of my strength, contractions were coming hard and heavy and I was told that my half of the maternity wing could all hear me. :-D Around this point I vaguely noticed that the nurses weren't leaving anymore, they were sitting in the room next to me, watching moniters and quietly lending their support, allowing me and my team to do what we needed. They became very helpful when I entered transition a few minutes later and started throwing up. I didn't realize what was happening at the time, I just remember being very upset that I had to deal with *this* too. Time got even more fuzzy from this point on. I know the Dr came in and was scheduled to check me around 12:30. She said I only had a little lip left and she thought I could push through it. Now, Becky had to help me understand what was going on, I was still focusing my way through contractions and I didn't realize that we had gotten to the pushing part. I remember being surprised, "He's coming now?" Hahaha I guess pushing lasted for close to 20 minutes.. maybe 30, but it only felt like 5 minutes. Pushing was much better than the contractions. I finally felt like I was able to *do* something to help Rowen arrive, as opposed to riding along and trying to relax. I remember tryong to push him out slowly in the hopes that I would stretch easier. I didn't really feel it when I tore pushing his head out, it was only a small tear though. His shoulders rotating their way out felt *really* cool. Then, to my amazement he was out and on my stomach.

Dave got to cut the cord. I pushed out the placenta and got stitched up before I finally let the nurses have Rowen to weigh and measure. I got to see the placenta before they took it away for disposal. That was pretty cool, but maybe I'm just weird like that.
Rowen's time of birth was recorded as 1:06am on 3-31-09.
He was weighed in at 8lbs, 7.8oz.

We made it through 41 hours of labor with no drugs and no complications. Breast feeding is going well and he's already getting bigger. He's up to 10lbs 7oz as of Tuesday. :-)

Water update for Riot

I have a small bit of success to report on the water usage from last month. We were down 100CF to a total of 500CF for the month. I put a timer down near the shower to remind me when my 7 minutes are up, and I tried to skip a shower or two a week.

Our water usage is still not anywhere near the 10% goal, our 500CF a month puts us at 40% of the American average. Still, progress is a good thing.

Planting season + Banking woes = ??

It's getting close to planting season here in the midwest. I'm a little fearful about what the last of the snow melt will bring for American farmers.
Like most current business models, they rely heavily on loans to produce their yearly crops. These mostly happen at planting time, they need loans for seed since they can't save their own, and they need loans for herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers since the soil can no longer support healthy crops. None of these items are getting cheaper, and most farmers just don't have the capital to cover them in the spring.

What's going to happen when they go to get their annual loans and the bank they've used for years is no longer extending credit? Or is extending less credit? Or the bank is gone? A small toy store may be able to skate through a credit disruption and come out just fine when the government TARP money trickles in, but farmers have a much more defined schedule. Waiting around a month or two for government bailout money is not going to be an option.

And, that's just the problem facing farmers this spring. There's a much larger gorilla in the living room, it's being talked about in the Peak Oil community, but mostly being ignored by mainstream America. The recent release of the 2007 Ag Census shows only about two percent of the U.S. population is part of a farm family, and the average age of principal operators of farms is nearing 60 years. Take a second and absorb those numbers. Only 2% of our citizens are involved in one of the more important systems for continued life. And the AVERAGE age is 60. If you'll remember your math lessons, that means roughly half of the farmers are OVER 60. The Census reports that the farmers aged 25 or younger decreased by 30% from 2002. I see these numbers and I think to myself that we are failing to replace our aging farmers. This failure is going to become apparent very soon, and I think it won't be pretty.

Kunstler, admittedly one of the more "Doomer" voices had an eloquent take on this problem.

The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of people have less money than they expected they would have a year ago. This is bad enough, given our habits and practices of modern life. But what happens when farming collapses? The prospect for that is closer than most of us might realize. The way we produce our food has been organized at a scale that has ruinous consequences, not least its addiction to capital. Now that banking is in collapse, capital will be extremely scarce. Nobody in the cities reads farm news, or listens to farm reports on the radio. Guess what, though: we are entering the planting season. It will be interesting to learn how many farmers "out there" in the Cheez Doodle belt are not able to secure loans for this year's crop.
My guess is that the disorder in agriculture will be pretty severe this year, especially since some of the world's most productive places -- California, northern China, Argentina, the Australian grain belt -- are caught in extremes of drought on top of capital shortages. If the US government is going to try to make remedial policy for anything, it better start with agriculture, to promote local, smaller-scaled farming using methods that are much less dependent on oil byproducts and capital injections.
This will, of course, require a re-allocation of lands suitable for growing food. Our real estate market mechanisms could conceivably enable this to happen, but not without a coherent consensus that it is imperative to do so. If agri-business as currently practiced doesn't founder on capital shortages, it will surely collapse on disruptions in the oil markets. President Obama at least made a start in the right direction by proposing to eliminate further subsidies to farmers above the $250,000 level. But the situation is really more acute. Surely the US Department of Agriculture already knows about it, but the public may not be interested until the shelves in the Piggly-Wiggly are bare -- and then, of course, they'll go apeshit.

Mmmm I Heart Spinach

I ate my first spinach out of my cold frame tonight. It's been ready for awhile, a couple of weeks at least, I just kept forgetting to go out and grab a handful when I was making salads. :-D Well, today I remembered, and it's super tasty! I can't think of a better way to celebrate the beginning of spring.
I spent the morning cleaning up the container garden, pulling out old annuals, getting soil into the empty pots and giving perennials some compost top dressing. I also moved the perennials that overwintered in the basement back out to the driveway. It's supposed to rain for the next couple of days, I'm hoping it gets my lettuce seeds sprouted and perks up the basement plants, they were getting kinda sad in the basement.
It's looking like I'll have a pretty cool container garden this year. I think I'll have green beans, peas, lettuce/spinach, eggplant, tomato, rhubarb and herbs in containers. The rhubarb and chives and green sage and russian sage are already up.

It's looking like my onion sets will be here in Mid-April. I'll have to get them in the ground a few weeks after our little one joins us.

Equinox Potato action!

I've got seed potatoes sprouting! I have 2 varieties, Yukon Gold and Desiree. They will be on the window sill for about 2 weeks, and then I will cut them into slips and put them in my fancy little vertical potato plot.
Of course, we won't mention that in 2 weeks I could be giving birth, or recovering from said birth. But, somehow I'll get potato slips into dirt. Eventually. I'm sure.

It's nice to have things planted and sprouting and growing. The spinach out of my cold frame is tasty, and I've got the other half of the frame seeded with lettuces. Tomatoes are in the basement, hopefully germinating. :-D Yay spring!

This weekend, tonight really, is spring equinox. Which means? Come on, think hard, all the way back to Jr High science.... :-) After tonight the days are increasingly longer than the nights! Dave and I aren't planning anything too exciting for this time of fertility. Mostly due to our own fertility. I'm too big for exciting. :-D (If you've ever wondered what bunnies and eggs have to do with Easter, look up some of the pagan celebrations surrounding Ostera. ) But, I might plant a few seeds or take a long walk. We'll see.

Happy Equinox everyone. If you have some dirt, put some seeds in it this weekend! (nothing frost tender though) ;-)