It’s a beautiful autumn day today. The temps are in the 70’s with a slight breeze and it feels delicious to be outdoors! We have been working around the farm today doing the daily chores of seed picking, greenhouse and garden watering, feeding the birds, taking the wash down from the clothesline – you know how it goes on a lazy Saturday. There are things that must be done, but the pace in which you do those things is your own for a change. Life is pretty good.
In my last post I said this week would be my two for one blog posting week, and so it shall be, but since I wrote that last post I’ve realized that I have a lot of thoughts to share. Some are important and some probably not so much, except maybe to me, but I’m in the mood to share my thoughts, so pour yourself a cup of tea and let’s have a blog visit.
I want to tell you a bit more about the Aunt Molly Ground Cherries, which are keeping my attention a lot these days. This is my plant (this is 1 plant) in a large clay pot. Last year I planted this variety in my food garden in the soil and it thrived, but it was hard to harvest because when ground cherries are perfectly ripe they fall off the plant. In other words you don’t pick them off the plant’s stems like other fruit, instead you pick the fruits off the ground when they become ripe enough to fall off the plant. So, in the garden they fell onto the soil beneath my very large prolific plant and I was left to rummage around beneath the foliage to find the ground cherries. It took a fair bit of time to harvest the fruits in this way and I can’t say it was a lot of fun. This spring I decided to grow my plant in a large pot and my intention was to take it out to the back yard and set the pot on the sidewalk beneath my clothesline, but I never got the pot moved outdoors. Instead it stayed on a bench in the Plant Barn greenhouse, where it also has thrived, but our greenhouse benches are made with pallets, so there are slots in the benches. When the ground cherries were ripe they fell off the plant, as usual, and landed underneath the bench. Again, not a lot of fun to harvest since I had to reach and crawl under the bench to pick them up off the fabric weed barrier floor. Ok, plan 3…I turned upside down another large pot and used it as a pedestal for the Aunt Molly ground cherry plant’s pot and bingo! This was the perfect plan. As you can see in my photo when the ground cherries ripen and fall they land on the ground under the plant, but since the plant’s pot is raised up off the ground on the upturned pot by about 1.5 feet or so, I can easily scoop up the ripe ground cherries, put them in a bowl and they are ready to start eating.
This idea came from an article in a magazine called Growing for Market. The article was about a market farmer who grew ground cherries for their local farmers market, but they also didn’t enjoy the harvesting process and it took too much time when they were hurrying to get ready to go to the market with their produce. They came up with a plan to plant the ground cherry plants on a hilled row that was covered with weed barrier. When the ground cherries would get ripe they would fall off the plant onto the hilled row of weed barrier fabric and then roll down the little slop into the aisle between the planted rows. It was easy for the farmer’s family to come along the aisle and just scoop up the fruits from on top of the weed barrier and off they would go to the weekly farmers market, where people quickly bought up all the ground cherries because they are so tasty to eat. And have I mentioned that kids love to eat these! They are like candy drops to kids and a whole lot better than real candy drops would be.
Next spring when you are ready to plant your Aunt Molly’s ground cherries, this will give you an optional way to grow them rather than growing them in a traditional garden row.
We produce a bit of organic waste in our greenhouses in the course of growing so many varieties of potted plants. Years ago we gave up composting this old potting soil and plant trimmings because we weren’t very good at keeping the compost piles turned and actively working. In part that is because it was always a pretty large pile and we don’t own a tractor with a way to assist in turning the piles. We would have to do it the old-fashioned way with pitch forks and shovels and hence it often just got put off or didn’t happen in a timely way. We needed a better plan. We bought a handmade trailer, which I call the chicken trailer and Chris sometimes calls the wiggle wagon because it is such a goofy trailer and it used to wiggle a lot when we pulled it behind the truck. It doesn’t wiggle anymore thanks to Jake and Lizz welding a re-enforcement brace to the trailer’s hitching tongue. So, I digress…
Below is the chicken trailer getting ready to be dumped at any number of friends gardens, often where chickens live. This is a great solution for us, because we don’t have to turn a massive compost pile regularly. I do have a tumbling compost barrel in my personal food garden for kitchen and garden trimmings and that compost gets used in my food garden whenever it is ready. The chicken trailer goes to a friend’s garden and if there are chickens at that garden, the chickens pillage through the trailer’s organic waste and as they do they add their own manure to the mix. Then our friends recycle the soil into their own gardens as nutrient-rich organic matter. It’s a win win for all of us. Thanks to all the chicken trailer recipients: Carol, Wendy and Russ, James, Dwayne, Biggi, Christopher and Beki.
And whenever the chicken trailer is making a voyage to a garden, this is the back seat driver. ⇓
Many of us keep bird baths to provide our wild bird friends with a fresh drink or a place to take a refreshing bath, but other creatures use those birdbaths too. Below some honey bees were getting a drink. The deer, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, butterflies and other pollinators and of course Shrek all drink from our birdbaths here.
I have some exciting news to share. My newest book, Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine, has just won the 2017 Thomas DeBaggio Book Award! I’m so honored and thrilled about this! It is such an amazing honor to receive this award and my heart and spirit are filled with deep gratitude. Writing Cattail Moonshine & Milkweed Medicine was all about sharing insights and stories of the great many ways plants and people have been in relationship, and how dependent our lives are on the benefits we gain from plants. The plants I wrote about in this book are old frirends of mine and have been a part of my daily life since I was a little girl. My hope is that others will enjoy reading about these plants and learning their stories, and perhaps these readers will even be a little bit surprised at just how many ways plants fill all of our lives.
I’m waiting now to receive the gold seals for this award that I can place on the book covers when I sell copies of my book. My publisher, Storey Publishing, will also be placing seals on the books as they fill orders for my book. Once the seals arrive to me, I’ll take a photo and post it on this blog so that I can share this really wonderful event in my life.
On this past Wednesday, we had another greenhouse skin replacement event. It was time to recover the basil house, so we rounded up a total of 7 people to help and off we went to accomplish this daunting task. This greenhouse is 30 foot wide and 100 feet long, so it’s not a small building and when you’re talking about huge sheets (2 of them to be exact) of plastic that can be carried off on the slightest breeze, well…it’s kind of a big deal.
Above we are removing the old top layer and then the bottom layer of plastic.
Then it’s on with the first layer. Dave and several of us are holding it in place while Lizz and Chris (below) tie tennis balls and ropes to the second layer so that it can be pulled over top of the bottom layer.
After both layers are pulled onto the building and everything is adjusted to be in the proper position, then we all are stationed around the building holding the plastic securely in place while Chris begins to attach the plastic to the building via wiggle wires and tracks.
This is Beki’s approach to holding onto her corner of the plastic. She was pretty safe doing this because by this time both end walls had been secured into the tracks with wiggle wire, and she was just holding the bottom of the plastic in place until Chris got to her spot with more wiggle wires to secure the bottom wall edge.
The Basil House looks great now and this greenhouse is all inflated and doing a grand job of housing our plants. We have three other greenhouses to replace the plastic on this fall, but the basil house was the most difficult and biggest greenhouse to do, so it’s done now and we are breathing a little easier.
I’ve talked about this before, but I like to mention it every now and then. It’s one of those things I enjoy, but also feel is a very tiny thing many of us can do to help use a bit less energy and simplify our lives a tiny step. How many of you hang your wash out on a clothes line to dry after you launder it? In my mind there are few things nicer then the smell of clean clothes and linens that have hung in the fresh air to dry. They feel crisp on your skin, they smell great and guess what…if you dry your clothes on a clothesline for a year’s time you will have saved around $150.00 in energy costs you would have spent to dry those same loads of laundry in a dryer appliance.
When I save that money using my clothes line, I can use it instead to pay for my entire year’s subscription to the newspaper or it will pay for a 1/4 of the year’s cell phone bills, or we could just use it to have a special wedding anniversary event. I’m sure a great many of you are saying, well, that isn’t a lot of money to save, but imagine if thousands or millions of us adopted the clothes line to dry our wash! Then your $150.00 is multiplied into a great deal of money, but more important a great deal of energy savings!! Sun and breeze energy to dry the wash is free of charge and leaves behind nothing harmful to contribute to climate change. Indeed it helps towards the solutions to climate change. It’s a collective effort and believe me it adds up.
Now I realize that not everyone is into hanging their laundry out to dry. There are people who cannot accomplish this task even if they did choose to do so. I think here is a place for the dryer appliance in our world…indeed Chris and I have a dryer, all be it a very old one, and we occasionally use it when we are in a big time crunch and need dry clothes very fast, but for most of us a clothes line approach is a realistic option for most of the time, and maybe it’s worth some serious consideration.
I’ll put my soap box away now.
I’ve also been thinking about what it is to live in an old farm-house. We live in one and it has a lot of “character” believe me. Our house was not the priority when we bought this land to have our farm. We needed a place that had really good soil, good irrigation water, and that we could afford. We needed a house that was livable, but beyond that we weren’t too fussy. We ended up with a good piece of land with good soil and water, in a great location to grow plants, in a wonderful community to live in. Our old farm-house was very livable, but let me tell you it has had a hugely long list of challenges.
We’ve lived here almost 22 years and over those years we’ve slowly fixed all the dangerous things about our house. The electrical and plumbing works had to be totally redone. The wood stove, we learned after the fact, had an open flue in the attic and we are thankful we didn’t burn ourselves to the ground in that first winter we lived here. The wood stove and chimney have all been replaced. These are just a few of the major things that needed fixing in the early years. Three years ago we repaired the outside of our house, which was the biggest project we’ve had to do so far, and it included putting up insulation, replacing all the windows and stuccoing the outside. Below is our house before that work and then afterwards. We are now in love with our little southwestern looking casita. Best yet, it is now in good repair besides looking good on the outside.
We’ve about fixed all the necessary fixes, and someday we hope to do more of the inside cosmetic fixes, but this is an old farm-house and despite the worn out linoleum and goofy kitchen cabinets, it is our homeplace and we really like it here. Our house is comfortable and it suits us and our dog and cats. When company comes they tell us they feel comfortable here, so that makes us smile. Our house has too much dust on things in the busy season and there is rarely a day that there isn’t dirt getting tracked inside as we go about our day of farm chores. That’s what brooms are for right?! Our house isn’t fancy and it sure won’t win any awards, but it is “home”.
Just think about your home for a minute. Maybe you also live in an old farm-house or some kind of fixer upper. Maybe you have a home where everything is tidy and beautiful. It really doesn’t make that much difference what kind of house you live in if it feels like a “home” and is comfortable and a place that makes you happy and feels like a sacred space for you and your family and for friends to visit.
Right now there are so many people without a home. Some of them have lost their home to wildfire or hurricane or tornado events. Some have lost their homes due to a financial or life-changing event. Some have no home through their own doing, but most who are without a home have that loss due to some kind of event that they couldn’t help. I’ve been thinking about all this a lot with so much going on in our world these days. It makes me appreciate our old farm-house that I live in all the more!
Finally, our friend Panayoti Kelaides also has a blog that is fantastic, so I wanted to tell you about it and hope you will explore it soon. It’s called PrairieBreak. Here is the link Prairiebreak
Panayoti is an amazing gardener and world plant explorer. He’s the Senior Curator and the Director of Outreach for Denver Botanic Gardens too. We’ve known him for more than 34 years and we love him dearly. If you want to get a serious garden fix, then visit his blog often. You’ll see gardens locally and from different places around the world. Right now he is in Sweden and his newest post is about his trip there. Check it out!
As I close this very long post, I’m sure your cup of tea is long gone by now, so this is the last thing to tell you about. The Autumn is when the tarantulas migrate here in southern Colorado. They are harmless even though they look intimidating and scary. Don’t be fooled! They are just out walking around in their world looking for a mate, so please…if you see one crossing the road as your driving along, please do not run over it. They won’t cause you any harm.
Anyway, remember Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web – right! Well, when you see a spider, that is good luck, so surely a spider as big as a tarantula means mega good luck, aye.
Until next time. With Green Thoughts, Tammi
On August 19th I will be speaking at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington D.C. This is a Ariel photo of the gardens and below is the listing from their website about my presentation. Here is the link to their website 
