Adventures in Chickens

The downside of raising chickens

My kids started calling me chicken-killer after my third flock of chickens was decimated by raccoons. Alas the raccoons were steadfast in their determination to eat my chickens, while I wavered in my attentiveness to their protection.
The raccoons included my hens on their nightly rounds of future meals to terrorize. I'd wake up late at night to the sounds of my hens squawking in desperation. Ten minutes later my neighbors hens would go off like a snooze alarm. The raccoons were creatures of habit – following the same routine every night – always checking out the plumpness of my hens first, my neighbors second.
My job was straight forward - shut the door every night, shortly after sunset.
I lost Henrietta the night I had friends over for dinner. The time I went to the movies without coming home first, the raccoons nailed Charlotte and either Agnes or Desdemona (I could never really tell the two apart.)
I'd wake up to the blood-curdling screams of my dying hens. I'd race out, half-dressed to the hen house. Only to find blood stains and scattered feathers. If I was quick, I might arrive on the scene soon enough to chase the raccoon away from the carcass of a hen he was dragging away.
One or two at a time, my chickens fell to raccoons - whenever I broke my habit of closing them in for the night.
If I kept my hens caged all of the time I wouldn't have this problem. While caged hens lay tasty eggs, all of their weirdness comes out when hens are constantly kept in close quarters. Chickens have a much pleasanter personality when they are allowed to roam free, as nature intended.

Fluffy
I first discovered the charm and beauty of uncaged chickens when I met Fluffy (obviously not named by me). Fluffy was the last of her flock. She belonged next door with my ex, but for some reason that I could never fully fathom, my ex had uncaged her chickens.
I became deeply perturbed when her hens violated the boundaries I had carefully negotiated with my ex. Her unilateral decision to let her chickens roam free became a bone of contention between us.
My secret method for living in close proximity to my ex involves a certain amount niceness (but not too nice), and a certain amount of acting like a jerk (but not to jerky) to remind her how lucky she is to live without me.
I had legitimate complaints. Her feral flock had killed some my prized transplants, shit in my greenhouse and were mocking me behind my back every chance they got.
Late one night I was awaken by a brief but intense ruckus right outside of my house. A desperate squawk was cut short mid-screech. I raced outside in my pj's only to find a few feathers drifting in the breeze, and an impossible quiet. Unlike raccoons who make a bloody mess of their kills coyotes have the decency to make a clean quick kill.
Problem solved. Or so I thought. Until two days later when Fluffy came out of hiding. She had been the smallest, most bossed-around hen of her flock. At an early age they had voted her 'least likely to succeed.' and set out to make sure it happened. But Fluffy had the last laugh when she was the one to survive, and outlive them all.
Blessed with a small memory and perky disposition, Fluffy swiftly recovered from the tragic loss of her fellow flock-mates, and began her new life as a flock-less chicken. Much to my dismay she decided that my house was the safest place to hang out.
It was the hottest part of the summer. My house was a work in progress, and tended to overheat unless I kept my front door wide open. At the time I was working and recreating long hours, and was more or less camping out in my house - which was rustic but cozy.
My house had once been a garage with an attached chicken coop. Perhaps Fluffy sensed the ghosts of chickens past. I can't think of any other reason why Fluffy preferred my house to my ex's, unless the foraging was better.
I chased Fluffy out, and continued bothering my ex, but nothing changed. Not that I disliked Fluffy, I just liked her better outside.
In the end I opted for detente. I wasn't around enough to defend my property and Fluffy's small-brained persistence was more than I could handle. It was easier to clean the occasional droppings, and gather the eggs that Fluffy conveniently laid behind my couch..
My ex never took my complaints about Fluffy seriously, but still I kept up my fight for justice. While I never quit complaining, I was actually growing rather fond of Fluffy. My kids were gone. I lived alone without a girlfriend, a cat or a dog. Fluffy filled an emptiness in my life, without making too many demands.
Whenever I came home she would run out to greet me. It was just like Lassie except I only had one chicken and no dog. Fluffy was affectionate in her own limited way – without the crotch-sniffing and drooling of a dog, or the clawing, clinging of a cat. She didn't need to be reassured or pet all of the time. In fact she didn't like to be touched at all. Just like me she wanted company without being touched – the perfect companion at the time.
A peaceful coexistence prevailed until one night when I cam home late, plopped into bed and discovered a gooey mess of chicken droppings on my pillow. Occasional droppings on my floor was one thing, but a plop on my pillow was totally disrespectful. Friend or no friend, I decided that Fluffy and I were incompatible as roommates.
The next morning I fixed my windows so I could ventilate my house without leaving my front door open. It was something I had been meaning to do for years but had never got around to. It took over ten minutes, ten minutes

I shut my door on Fluffy. She spent the next week running round and round my house looking for another way in. Now and then she would climb onto my picnic table and fling herself against my window for hours and hours.
All to no end. My mind was made up. I'm especially good at setting boundaries once they've been crossed.
Fluffy moved into my tool shed. I kept the door open so a pair of swallows could nest in the rafters. (Open doors is a recurring theme in all my relations with chickens.) She made quite a mess, but I still felt bad about kicking her out of my house. So I let the mess slide.
Four months later Fluffy was brutally murdered in broad daylight by a friend's dog. I was at home while this silent killer did the dirty deed. She died in my arms. Chickens have a strong will to live and Fluffy took a long time to die.

Caged hens
Caged chickens never live a full life. They miss the chance to do most of the little things that chickens naturally do. They have this cute way of wagging their tail feathers when they have found an especially promising place to scratch. They will be scratching contentedly half the day when all of the sudden they will take off running in search of a better place to forage.
As scavengers chickens play two important role in the farm ecosystem: they reduce insect populations, and they increase farm productivity by converting animal and garden wastes into eggs and meat. Caging chickens takes them out of the farm ecosystem, eliminates the advantages of animal that feeds themselves, and generates more flies on the farm. In a perfect lose/lose situation, both the health of the chickens and the farms suffer.
Chickens kept in cages are no healthier than office workers cooped up in tiny cubicles, or school kids kept in crowded classrooms for the better part of a day.

Killing chickens, kids watching

Kids love chickens. If given the chance. At the Saratoga Community Garden we kept animals for school kids to visit. Once I was leading a group of preschoolers and their mothers (each preschooler came with a mother). The mothers lagged behind in a cluster of conversation while the kids and I walked ahead into a stall where some of the garden apprentices were killing chickens.
The kids were awe struck. They stood in rapt silence, fascinated by the swift journey from animal to meat, the insides of chickens, the holiness of death.
The reverent mood was shattered when the mothers arrived. "Eeeeeeewwwee! Disgusting!" Their childish moans and groans disrupted the solemn moment, and they quickly herded their children away from the scene of the slaughter - afraid to look at where their food comes from.
We suffer from a mass psychosis: we eat more meat than ever, yet we are unwilling to face the consequences of our actions. We shelter our children from real death yet, expose them to sanitized, televised death all the time.
When we witness the sacrifice of the animals (and plants) we eat - that is the real Grace before meals.

Rapist roosters

Temple Grandin in her fantastic book Animals in Translation tells a chilling chicken story about rapist roosters. The story begins when Temple finds a dead hen at a chicken farm. "She was all cut up, and her body was fresh. I was horrified." What was even more startling was the reaction of the chicken farmer.
He told me the rooster did it: the rooster killed the hen. He acted like that was a perfectly normal thing for a rooster to do. He wasn't happy that his rooster was killing hens; he just thought that's the way it was.
The farmer took it for granted that roosters occasionally killed hens, that his rooster's behavior was normal, the loss of a certain percentage of his hens was a part of the cost of doing business. Half of his roosters were hen-killers. His experience wasn't uncommon, the farmer knew of other chicken growers with the same problem.
Three generations ago, this farmer would have been considered a lunatic for his delusion. Everybody and their brother knew that roosters didn't make a habit of killing hens. Anyone who has studied natural selection would know that a species who's males are killing half of the females is doomed to extinction. This farmer's complete ignorance of chicken behavior is astounding. Our mass amnesia is appalling.

For centuries we co-evolved with chickens. In two generations, chickens have disappeared from our lives; the average citizens knows next to nothing about chicken behavior - a recipe for abuse and disaster.
Rapist roosters were a by-product of chicken breeding programs that focused exclusively on single traits rather than the whole animal, on meeting market demands rather than healthy chickens.
Time is money, chicken growers wanted faster growing hens. Breeders responded, but achieved mixed results.
Like every single-trait breeding program, this one had some unintended consequences although they weren't as severe as the rapist roosters. Mainly the faster growing chickens tended to have weaker legs and hearts. the weaker hearts meant a higher rate of flip-over disease which is a nice way of saying that the chickens hearts gave out. Heart disease in chickens got the name flip-over disease because that's what it looks like. When a chicken has heart failure it suddenly flips over and dies.
The next trait chicken breeders sought was larger breasts. Chicken-eaters wanted more white meat, less dark.
That program was successful, too; they got chicken with bigger breasts. This time they got a lot more problems ... the chickens grew so big that their legs couldn't handle their weight. Many chickens were so lame they couldn't walk to the feeder, and some of their legs were deformed and bent, with fluid-filled swellings.
The chickens were probably in constant pain . One study found that the lame chickens would choose to eat bad-tasting feed laced with painkillers over normal tasting feed, which is good evidence that the chickens were suffering.
Lastly the breeders bred for strength and vitality. They created a working chicken that was fast-growing, large breasted and strong enough to thrive. Since the chicken handlers had little or no experience in normal chicken behavior, they overlooked a drastic change in behavior of their roosters. Chicken farmers adapted to the rapist rooster phenomenon with no questions asked.
Normal roosters do a little courtship dance before mating. The hen obliges by crouching down and assuming the position. In the rapist roosters, this little courtship ritual had been deleted by breeders who weren't paying attention to how their breeding programs effected the behavior of their chickens. The changes happened gradually and everyone just got used to them.
When the hens failed to assume the position, the frustrated roosters raped and mutilated them.

Taking care for animals used to be called animal husbandry. The thought of a marriage between a farmer and his animals comes hard to us. We understand that farm animals certainly take as much time and energy as a typical wife. You might as well be married, if you have to devote that much time. We've also heard of such perversions as interspecies sex (but probably not with chickens). What is difficult for us to fathom is a loving relationship with an animal that we intend to eat.
We divide animals into wild animals we fear or admire, pets we love or abuse, and animals we eat.
We can supposedly opt out of the eater/eaten relationship with animals by becoming a vegan, but there are no working models of self sufficient organic agriculture that do not involve raising animals for their manures. Meat is a natural by product of raising animals.. A strictly vegan agriculture in temperate climates would be both inefficient and expensive. This in no way meant to undermine an individual's choice not to eat animals, nor is it meant to justify the wanton consumption of animals and animal byproducts.

Bring back family chickens
We seem to be stuck in this agricultural model of concentrating chickens in ever greater numbers, and isolating ourselves farther and farther away from them. Out of sight, out of mind.
Our children grow up never hearing the excited clucking of a hen laying an egg, never gathering brightly-colored rooster feathers, or baskets of warm brown eggs. Yet one of the first things children learn is to identify farmyard animals, and the sounds they make.
We co-evolved with chickens for thousands of years. Why did we suddenly decide to end the relationship?
Twenty-five years ago there were chickens on Lawrence St. and goats in the Uptown district of Port Townsend. Let's bring back the family chickens.

winter wasteland

This winter has been hard on the garden, separating the sometimes winter vegetables from the dependables. I sure am glad we have supermarkets with lots of luke-fresh vegetables from California. I would be getting tired of chickweed by now.
Last summer's corn looks defeated - bedraggled and bent over at the knees. Skeltonized by the wind and cold, the edible chrysanthemum plants are falling over in slow motion. Our big hole aka Jumping Bear Trap turned into a well, filled with murky brown water.
The garden looks like a disaster, except for the Kale which is resplendent, cloaked in swirls of delicious blue-green and purple. I can't help myself, I love the garden even in decline. As a child I first fell in love with nature. Not the picture-perfect nature of the mountains or the seasides, but nature struggling in the sidewalk cracks or taking over vacant lots.

On my first visit to Buchart Gardens I was struck by how perverse it is, that we obsess so much over flowers-at-the peak-of-perfection. I saw masses plantings of blue lobelia, red petunias and orange marigolds perfectly spaced, well manicured and packed with blossoms. The overall effect was both stunning and startling. When you consider that flowers house the sex organs of plants and the primary purpose of their beauty is to entice sex partners - you might conclude, as I did that day in Buchart Gardens, that large masses of perfect flowers are a lot like Playboy Clubs.
Imagine dozens of tall Bambi-figured blonds, next to scores of petite pony-tailed Asian models, and for gender equity, two hundred over-sized African-American basket players. If you dressed them in suggestive little outfits, and lined them carefully in rows - you could make a Buchart Gardens out of people instead of flowers.
At Buchart Gardens all of the plants are kept at their peak. The kids are hidden out of site, in the nursery. The old, the misshapen, the misfits are all scrupulously culled and carted away to the compost pile. Because all of the imperfections are airbrushed out of the picture, Buchart Gardens lacks character. It feels like someone's twisted fantasy - nice for an afternoon of titillation, but not a garden to live or work in.

Sure the Grange Garden looks like a mess. Take a closer look and see tiny carpets of fine-foliaged grass with the electric chartreuse-colored leaves. Check out the worm tunnels that pockmark the garden beds. See the spiders lurking in the weeds and the Senecio (weed) already blooming. The outer leaves of the leeks look tattered, but they will clean up nicely for dinner. Welcome to the winter garden.

Stocking the Seed Bank

Making your Own Weeds

I'm concerned over the quality of weeds at the Grange Garden. Sure we have a nice assortment of the usual suspects: pasture grasses, lawn grasses, sorrel, hawkweed. ... but I've become spoiled by the chard, tah soi, calendulas, poppies, columbines and other goodies that come up in my garden at home. I'd like to improve the seed bank in our soil.

The soil seed bank includes all of the viable seeds stored in your soil. The prevailing notion for managing seeds in the soil is to empty the bank - don't let anything go to seed. When you think about it, emptying the seed bank is probably impossible. We have immense weed-free farms. By now we should be hearing about farms where the use of herbicides is falling because the seed bank is bottoming out.

The math confirms the near impossibility of maintaining an empty seed bank. Weeds produce so many seeds that you can prevent 99% of the weeds that germinate in your garden from going to seed and still not significantly reduce the seed bank in your garden.* Not to mention what the wind blows your way.

Experience shows the wisdom of making a serious effort to prevent weeds from going to seed. Most seeds germinate the first year after falling. Minimizing the short timers can reduce the biomass of weed seeds coming up in the garden. If this isn't true then farmers sure have been wasting a lot of effort.

In the spirit of improving the class of weeds we'll be hanging out with, we scatter cheap seeds and/or free seed throughout the garden, with abandon. We get some of our cheap seeds in the herb section of the Food Coop. It's a little known fact (in fact it's a bit of a trade secret and I hope you will keep this to yourself), but some of the seed-like herbs are in truth real seeds, and you can plant them in your own garden at a greatly reduced price.
In one of my landscapes we recently planted a Cilantro cover crop on a bank, five or six feet wide and over twenty feet long. For slightly more than the cost of a seed packet from your favorite seed company, we purchased a half a pound or a pound – whatever it was, it was enough seed to make a frighteningly thick stand of Cilantro. Not thick enough to lift the soil up when it germinated, but close.

The Cilantro so thickly because I underestimated the germination power of the seed. In the past I had lukewarm luck with sowing Cilantro seed from the Coop. I had been sowing it under less than ideal conditions when someone who was doing a good job planted it, it went nuts.
I'll eat a snail (cooked of course) if any weeds worth speaking come up through all of that Cilantro, in the recent future.

Good luck looking for Cilantro seed at the Coop. You won't find it. At least not under that name. Cilantro is two herbs in one, but only in the US. Everywhere else it is called Coriander. The leaves make a fine salad and salsa green, and the seeds make a piquant Asian/ Mexican spice.
Another fabulous cheap seed is Chamomile. My theory is that the ripest seed falls to the bottom of the jar where it forms a layer of detritus that is unsuitable for t4ea unless you use a coffee filter on it. To get to the seeds, you could find a gallon sized bag and carefully remove the ninety-eight percent of the contents that consists of intact flowers. Or you could buy all of the contents of the jar, and drink lots of Chamomile tea until you bottom out. Or you could turn the jar upside down and shake it until the seed rises to the top. Be sure to leave the lid on when you are doing this.

We planted some Dill and Caraway seed to see what happens.

Let some of your vegetables go to seed in your garden. Let most of your favorite plants go to seed, but be careful, a little seed can go a long way, as you may have already gathered from my experiment with the Cilantro. Exercise restraint and caution when introducing new weeds to your garden. Don't blame me if you introduce a monster nuisance into your garden – I warned
you.

* http://www.cropsci.uiuc.edu/classes/cpsc226/Lecture/seedbanks2/seedbanktext.cfm

Squirrel Tales

Squirrel Tales


The other day I ran into Joe at the food Coop. He explained how I had short-changed the truth in one of my previous journal entries. At first I was inclined to let sleeping dogs lie but Joe persuaded me otherwise. He very graciously told me a much more interesting story than the watered down and misleading version I had told.
Joe has always been a good teacher for me. He is an omnivore of conceptual thought and a connoisseur of knowledge (but not a Factinista). He's one of the people I run ideas by - to find out if they are sound. Often he sees connections that I have missed. He's better than a fact checker - he's a concept checker.
I make no apologies for mangling the truth. If you believe anything - all the way - on the first hearing, without digging deeper, then you deserve to be fooled. People will always tell you stuff they don't know. Usually they'll do it with a straight face and a degree or too.
Believer beware.

Squirrels, Mushrooms and Douglas Fir Roots.

Joe explains to me that the roots of Douglas Firs will naturally graft themselves together because they are they are genetically nearly identical, i.e. clones. When a Fir gets cut down it's root-mates will donate the juices to heal it. The living tissues grows from the outside of the stump over the top - providing a protective layer of living tissue.
It is one of the eighth wonders of a walk in the Northwest woods - to come upon one of these healed over stumps. I don't ever remember reading about this in a book and I came up empty handed after a few half-hearted attempts to find an Internet source, but local forest-lovers talk about it all the time.
“The part of the story that you probably don't know about is the connection between the Douglas Squirrels and the mycorhyzal fungi associated with Douglas Fir - it's a story that will make your hair stand on end.” Joe says.
He has my undivided attention, but not for long - a young and lovely friend shows up. Our squirrel/mushroom talk is temporarily on hold.

She wears big stylish, over-sized sunglasses and I have to ask her who she is. “I'm Sierra” she says, lifting her glasses and revealing a face that I recognize but can't quite place.“I've been down in Eugene for the last two years.” Sierra says. She's lost a little of that first flowering of youth and looks better for it. She talks about personal growth and radiates a quiet, down-to-earth joy without getting missionary about it.
I drift a little and miss some of the conversation, until I hear Sierra say: “... I finally figured out what my role is at the Festival. I'm a go between for these two women (Rose and Willow) who share the same space. I just listen to both, without taking sides.”
Sierra climbs up a notch in my esteem for her friendship with Rose.
“Rose is one of my best friends . So many of my friend have such a hard time with her. I know she can be difficult, but she's worth whatever effort it takes. For me Rose is a test. Anyone who is friends with Rose is a better person for it.” I say.
“It's one of the ways you can tell who's really part of the community.” Joe adds.
We all laugh.
Joe mentions another person who is an 'indicator person' - difficult for some to love. The person he mentions proves to be a perfect challenge for me. I can't help but laugh at myself, for the limits to my love and the absurd boundaries I create to protect myself, from this person who means me no harm. I explain this to Joe and Sierra.
“Yeah, but at least you recognize that it's not all her and that you have some responsibility for how you feel.” Joe consoles me.

This Time for Sure: Squirrels, Mushrooms and Douglas Fir Roots.

After Sierra leaves we grab a table in the deli and Joe begins to tell his story in earnest. To understand his story you have to know a little about mychorrizal mushrooms. Mushrooms live underground in the darkness of the soil but they bear their fruits above ground. We base our definitions and descriptions of fungi on the above ground parts. Out of sight, out of mind. This is the same as studying the apple, but forgetting about the tree. (unfortunately we do that too)
Welcome to the underground world of the mushroom. Fungi form networks or webs of minute tubes, spreading through the soil in three-dimensional tributaries. They play several crucial roles in the ecology of the soil. Above all they make connections - connections between the living and the dead, the world above and the world below. You can see this in their shape which resembles a nervous, circulatory or root system - systems designed for greater connectivity and exchange.
Joe comments: The trees work like a pump, their evapotranspiration - a major component of the trees' photosynthesis - is pulling water and nutrients through the fungal web. That is the core symbiosis. The horrible rotting smell that follows the clearcut of a mature forest is the fungal web - biomass approximately equal to the above ground biomass - suffocating, dying and eventually putrefying.
Fungi break down organic compounds in the soil which include dead and decaying materials, as well as, petroleum and petroleum by-products (pesticides). (It may seem weird to consider petroleum as an organic compound, until you remember that it comes from dead dinosaurs.) They also mine minerals from the soil.
Fungi form partnerships with plants, trading the bounties of the soil, for the riches of the sky world. They negotiate the difficult connection between the mysterious world of the soil and the creatures of light – most of whom could barely survive the darkness without their help.
In short they perform most of the tasks we usually associate with roots. Fungi that choose to partner with plants are described as mychorrizal. Check out Paul Stammets web site and books for more amazing mushroom lore.

Most plants have mychorrizal relationship with fungi. Take away the fungi and the plants usually perform poorly. Take away the organic matter and the fungi languish. Fungi are key players in one of the great cycles of life.
Of course there are countless other players, each with their own special role. One such character is the Douglas Squirrel who eats the mychorrizqal fungi for Douglas Firs. We tend to think of eating as an act of aggression, a one way ticket to oblivion for one of the partners in the process. When it is done properly, eating can also be a step in one of the great cycles of life. Not for the individual being eaten but for his species.
The Douglas Squirrel spreads the mychorrizal fungi associated with the Douglas Firs when they take a dump after eating the mushrooms. Their droppings contain a dose of mushroom spores, some fertilizer, a sprinkle of bacteria and all the good things needed for a new mushroom patch. Take away the Douglas Squirrel, and no new mychorrizal mushroom patches.

Joe comments: Paul Stamets made a fascinating connection for me at lecture he gave at the Fair year before last. He explained WHY he does not eat raw mushrooms anymore. They are totally armored on a protein level and are not bioavailable in any useful way. This protects them from parasites that would otherwise infest or ingest them. Which also allows them to pass through the G-I tract of the squirrel w/o becoming squirrel.
The scary part of the story involves Gray Squirrels, East Coast transplants who are displacing the Douglas Squirrels in the Northwest.
“The Gray Squirrels will have to learn how to plant the fungi. Otherwise the Douglas Firs are in trouble.” Joe says.
I can imagine a shrewd observer saying the something similar about the first white settlers “The Native Americans will have to teach them how to fish. Otherwise the salmon are in trouble.”

Some of the first Gray Squirrels to show up in Port Townsend, hung out at Chetzomoka Park. I remember asking Steve Cora if they planned on getting rid of them.
“We know they'll become a problem but we just can't bring ourselves to kill them.” he said.
When I was a kid I knew some older kids who could have have helped the Parks Department with their squirrels. One kid in particular liked to hunt squirrel even more than coon. He could spend hours talking about skinning and eating them. I know he did it to make me sick.
“There can't be enough meat in a squirrel to bother with.” I'd complain.
“You'd be surprised.” He'd say with the knowing smile of one who had killed.
I couldn't argue with that.
Even though I was used to eating cows and pigs and chickens, it bothered me that he ate squirrel. I laid awake at night thinking about how weird it would be to eat squirrel, and what a pervert he was, and how jealous I was that he had a gun and got to kill stuff, and I didn't.
In hindsight I realize that the suburban life-style of my family was displacing my squirrel-hunting friend and his family.

Recently I learned that the Douglas Squirrel mostly hangs around the same neck of the woods. The flying squirrels travel much farther and are more important for introducing the mushrooms to new places. My friend Greg who lives in Olympia worked on flying squirrel studies. He's not so worried about the Gray Squirrels.
“They mostly hang out where there are people. They can't survive in the forests.” He tells me.
I decide to quit worrying about the Gray Squirrels. This month I'm going to concentrate on worrying about global warming. Next month ...

we had an awesome time

We were mostly slackers today, so glad that school was over. Slackers are good for the environment - they conserve energy. How many slackers do you know who own a car?
You could say that we dedicated our day to studying the environmental impacts of goofing off.
Work is highly overrated. The world would be a better place if most people quit their jobs, cut back or at least took a vacation at home. Maybe we could finally get around to doing all of the things that really need to be done, like taking care of ourselves and each other.
Most of the working people I know are total stress monkeys, afraid that if they slow down the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.

Three kinds of clover are flowering in the garden: Dutch White in the remnants of un-mowed lawn, the Crimson clover that we sowed last Fall as a cover crop, and a single Red Clover by the garden gate. Later we can pick some Red Clover for tea,
The lawn grasses are flowering inside of Beanhenge, along with the dandelion-look-alike Hawkweed. The corn is up and half of the beans. The Squash have flower buds forming and we have one marble-sized tomato.
The blue/green leeks have gotten smaller, or so it seems. Already they are dwarfed by the beans which stand a head taller.
Neighbor pass by riding their bicycles or walking their dogs. Some stop to chat. We listen to the buzz in the power lines across the street.
Rebbecca who lives next door stops by to bring us gifts for the garden. She says she loves to watch the garden and the kids from her window - she spends a lot of time at home struggling with cancer.

The kids organize a bucket brigade to water the corn. Hopefully next week we will install the irrigation. We planted the corn in rows that gradually took on a greater curve with each new row. The corn is so tiny, it took us some time to find where the rows were when we weeded and mulched.
Farmers like long, straight, evenly spaced rows - so they will never get lost.
I heard somewhere that astronauts are trained and trained until everything becomes familiar, everything becomes routine. When they are in space, they are always kept busy , so they won't look out their window and see God, or freak out.
One astronaut did look out the window and he saw the whole world in a new way. I heard him speak years later, at some New Age-y conference out at Fort Worden.
The straight lines, the repetition, the routine - all of the order in our lives, keeps us from getting lost in the magic.
As someone who gets lost all too easily in the everyday magic of people, plants and places - I've learned the hard way that I cannot endure too much wonder, too much joy, too much of the everyday magic of life.
Awe is a great word for this feeling. My handy-dandy on line dictionary defines awe as: a mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might.
I was introduced to the word at /Our Lady of Good Counsel High School/ in 1967. The religious context of the word was that man could not look at the face of God because the experience would be too overwhelming for him.
My friend Jeff is deeply perturbed that such a powerful word (awesome) has been misappropriated by popular culture.
“There are simply no synonyms for the word in the entire English language.” He laments.
He refuses to believe that a young person could have the same awesome intensity of feeling for a pair of tennis shoes that past generations had for God or great works of art. I would disagree - young folks have a much larger capacity for wonder than we give them credit for. Who are we to say that it's not OK for them to squander it on a pair of tennis shoes or the person who's feet inhabit those tennis shoes?

We dig ourselves into a hole

Last week I forgot to tell you about the worms we found. I've been too distracted making future plans and not quite as down to earth as I would like to be. Worms are a good sign. Worms in the begining promise a healthy soil that has a capacity for holding moisture without becoming water-logged. Our local soils tend to be either or. Either they leak like a sieve or they turn into a swamp. It appears that we have found a happy middle at the Grange.

But appearances are often deceptive, and I've been fooled by first soil impressions more times than I care to admit. Soils that feel friable in the spring can turn rock hard in the summer. Soils sometimes change dramatically over short distances. Builders do the craziest things like dumping hardpan on top of perfectly good soil. The possiblities are endless and it pays to withhold judgement until we've had a choice to poke around a little more.
We haven't penetrated the soil all that deeply yet. The decent soil might have been hauled in - it might only be a few inches deep.

So far all of our efforts have had a destructive impact on the soil. We stripped away the the lawn (skin), pulverized the top few inches of topsoil with a rototiller and left the soil exposed to sun and wind. This wouldn't matter if we were dealing with an an inert medium - we could pour some chemical soup on the mess we've made, and all would be well. But in truth, a greater biomass of creatures live in the darkness of the soil than on the surface. Clearcutting, bull-dozing and rototilling are just as damaging to life in the soil as they are to the forest.

As creatures of light we avoid the dark world of the soil until we die. Most of us have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. For us, the concept of so much life in the soil is weird and hard to grasp and we're not so willing to take our turn as food for the creatures that haunt the darkness of the soil. We seal our bodies in fancy boxes or burn them - any thing to avoid our turn to be eaten.
In our lives we eat our way through acres of wheat and corn, flocks of chickens, jungles of chocolate and bannanas, herds of cows, wallows of pigs, the blood and sweat of the sugar cane harvest ... and we plunder the ancient burial sites of dinosaurs to fuel the trucks and ships that ferry our food from far away, and when we're done eating we chop down acres of forests to wipe ourselves.
Our kills come wrapped in plastic, far from the scene of the slaughter, without feathers or fur, squeeks or squeals. Our hands are clean - our ignorance is bliss.

It takes a few turns around the seasons, working in the garden, to learn how to appreciate and cooperate with the life in the soil. We start by digging a hole for a soil profile. What we see is a thin crust of dusty, dried-out dirt mulching the surface. Underneath we find a foot and half or more of nice soil before we hit a layer where the soil becomes hard and gray. Gray soil signifies oxygen-starved or anerobic conditions.
Iron in the soil shows up as a rusty red/brown color when oxygen is available. In oxygen deprived conditions iron tints the soil in shades of blue and gray. The bluer the color, the less oxygen in the soil.
The compacted layer was formed by mile high ice during a period of global cooling. While eighteen inches of workable soil would be considered pretty shallow in many agricultural areas, we are fortunate that the compacted layer is so deep. Sometimes, in our area, it sits right at the top and makes life miserable until it is enriched with gobs of organic matter.

Last week we found earthworms, this week we found the fruits of their labor - crumb structure. Crumb structure is something that you don't see all that often around here. When you do, it hardly ever survives a few passes with a rototiller. Soil with crumb structure is held together by humus (composted organic matter) and earth worm droppings. There is a sponginess to the soil and it breaks apart in discrete chunks or crumbs.
Crumb structure is one of the hardest to come by attributes of an ideal soil. It greatly enhances the fertility of the soil by creating larger pores. Pore space is where the magic of life happens in the soil . It's the space between the mineral particles of the soil. In a typical soil the pore space amounts to about half of the total volume.
That's right. While the dirt we stand on, feels all too solid, half of it is made up of air and water.
Soil with crumb structure has more opportunities for the living half of the equation. Larger pores provide convenient routes for roots and water to penetrate the soil. They create larger reservoirs for storing water and air. They also enhance the accesibility of soil nutrients. Crumb structure is one of the qualities of an ideal soil that is hardest to get if your are not gifted with it upfront.

Our soil profile hole came in handy when we were looking for a diversion. This was a younger group of kids with a shorter attention span, less endurance and prone to outbreaks of chaos when they got bored or tired. I noticed that some of the older kids have an interest in adults but this younger group of high-schoolers is mostly peer-oriented.
Already several girls were barefoot (our first barefoot kids in the garden). Cecilia sat dangling her toes in the cool moist earth at the bottom of the hole. When she stood up, a mischiveous kid tossed some soil into the hole ontop of her feet. When she laughed other kids joined in and planted Cecilia.
Cecilia didn't stay planted for long, so we re-dug our hole. It was much easier going the second time around. We were left with a perfectly good hole without a purpose. The first thing that came to mind was a trap. We gathered sticks from the nearby forest and made a flimsy structure that we covered with straw. When we finished mulching the rest of the squash patch - you really couldn't tell where our trap was - it was a job well done.
At the end of the day I insisted that we have a discussion about the wisdom of leaving such a well hidden trap behind when we left. In our free-wheeling, far ranging conversation we explored many options, ranging from: we should have dug it deeper if we wanted to catch anything, to: we'll probably end up maiming our prey rather than catching it.
After much discussion we decided not to capture or maim people in our trap. (This decision was far from unanimous) One good option was to put a sign up. that people could read but deer couldn't. Possible signs included: 'Watch Your Step', 'Trap Ahead' or 'Enter at Your Own Risk'
A little later someone brought up the story of the deer that a careless hunter had maimed, and how hot and bothered eveyone got over it. We decided to consider digging the hole deeper next week to avoid the pitfalls of alienating deer-lovers.
In the meantime we did our civic duty and disassembled the trap so that it would be easy for people to spot.

This was our first week without the support of Sebastian. It was his birthday and he called in sick. Sick on your birthday?
Fortunately a dynamic trio of girls showed up to fill his shoes. What an awesome display of girl power. I'm talking about Kia, Justine and Rene. They totally saved the day with their experience and spirited efforts. I was plagued with low energy and ready for lunch by ten. We were hampered by a shortage of tools. Yet nothing could stop these girls in their determination to do a good job while having a good time.
Once I got them started these young women kicked into geer and took the lead and I had a chance to rest on my laurels a bit, to make some notes for the garden journal. At lunch I had time to explore the fallen blossoms underneath our Madone shade tree. (Madrones are always dropping something interesting, be it bark, berries, leaves or blossoms). The blossoms have tiny holes at both ends and fused petals. They looked just like tiny paper lanterns.
Last week Justin made a cool art sculpture that included Madrone blossom strung on a blade of grass.

I even got a chance to paint one of the bean poles. With a bit of breathing room, I was one happier camper today

The bean pole painting provided a good alternative to digging and mulching. Kia took the lead. She set things up and got the other kids started. I won't spoil the the surprise but you should stop by to check out our fabulous bean poles for our monumental project - BEANHENGE!
Enter the garden at your own risk and watch your step!
The painting quickly got out of hand. In their enthusiasm the kids painted the lawn, flip flops, shoes, each other, as well as the poles. They probably had a better time than they should have. My biggest fear was that a kid would sit on the spot where someone had kicked the bucket over - they were so focused on their art, that this was a distinct possibility.
I intervened and spread the poles out to diffuse the potential for kids painting each other - accidentally. This didn't stop one girl from painting a flower on her cheek and her left foot a lurid shade of green.
Later on I saw one girl washing her jacket. I didn't ask questions. These are some spirited kids. I sure hope I'm exaggerating.
By the way my bean pole was nick-named the rainbow pole by the other painters, and it got a few favorable reviews.

One thing that I learned is that there are always a few kids who take a while to warm up to the garden. It takes them a spell to find their bodies. At first they stand around on the edges shirking their duties. I've noticed that given enough time and the offer of a challenging job, they will often meet that challenge with a strenuous effort. They just need time to discover themselves.
Just like I found myself when I rolled into the Saratoga Community Gardens thirty years ago - one weary and lost soul.

You wouldn't believe how quickly things could change. It all started in the morning when Sebastian told me that he doesn't want to commit to the garden for the summer. Plan # 86 was falling apart, right before my very eyes and I was left staring at another failed project. That's why I've mostly been a do-it-myself kind of guy. Usually if it's something that I don't want to do, no one wants to do it.
I was sorely tempted to resort to the leadership practices that I learned when I was not much older than him, working deadened jobs, like dishwashing, burgers and lawn mowing. Shame is the first weapon in that arsenal and guilt is the second. It's strange but after all these years I still struggle to resist the urge to use these highly effective tools - despite all the damage I've seen and felt.
When I let Sebastian go with my blessings - the blessings bounce back on me and I'm happy and already busy on Plan # 87.

The Community Garden has been pretty much business as usual. First I tried to dump the garden on Tinker. I wasn't the only one. Tinker's was everyone's first choice. Unfortunately she had a mind of her own and I have firsthand experience of the consequences of messing with Tinker when her mind's made up.
I have a feeling Tinker will be coming by the Garden this summer. More about that later.

I have this sinking feeling that I'm going to end up managing the garden myself this summer.

In the meantime we dig a main path for the garden that circles around our grassy meadow with a rock cairn in the middle of our garden. We dig the earth and shape a bed encircling our centerpiece. We decided to not to make a bean teepee because it would be too much work to find long enough poles. We decide to plant Beanhenge instead. Beanhenge will be a circular line of bean poles enclosing our grassy nook where we will hold secret garden meetings and hide when we don't feel like working.

We worked like dogs. Our tongues were dragging on the ground. At lunch we decided that we deserved a break today and that we would visit Corona Farm. Bob and Sharon were glad to see us and Bob put the kids to work right away. I know it sounds crazy to go somewhere for rest and relaxation and let them put you to work. But the gardens at Corona was so beautiful compared to the deathscape at the Grange and the work was much easier than the earthwork we did all morning long.

Deathscape sounds harsh but it's an apt description. Most our work so far involves killing the lawn that occupied this space before we got here. Gardening requires much more death and destruction than most people imagine. That's why the gardens of the faint of heart always look like such a mess.
Like my friend Matty always says: "I'm a gardener - I kill plants for a living." It's true. For every plant planted, dozens, if not hundreds are killed. There is no end to the killing in a garden. You only have to look at the nearest vacant lot to see how far what we prefer is from what nature intends.

Part of the appeal of the garden for some of these kids/young men is the destructive nature of the work. There is nothing like hard physical work, for working out frustrations. Nothing like pitting your body against the forces of nature. Whether the urge to dominate nature and each other is a primeval instinct in adolescent males, or it's an outcome of the industrial revolution - it is a force to be reckoned with and harnessed.
Death was recurring theme in our day. At Corona one of the cats caught a vole and we spent more time than we probably should have watching the cat entertain itself with the struggles of its prey. Hanako, who grows great salad greens at Corona, pointed out that the cat was probably showing off for us. It was a chilling thought that we might be prolonging the vole's suffering by the mere act of watching.
I think there might be a physics principle that describes how the act of watching can change events but I'm uncertain about that.
In any case our potential role in prolonging the suffering of the vole did little to discourage us from further watching. The cat put on an awesome show while the vole on the other hand was rather weak in his or her role. A good time was had all, with the possible exception of the mole. (he was so far gone, he may have been beyond suffering.) Most important of all we learned a lesson - although I would hesitate to say exactly what that lesson was and I have some lingering doubts over whether the lesson learned outweighed the crass entertainment of the event.

I had another motive for going to Corona Farm; I wanted to talk to Bob and Sharon about their daughter Justine working at the garden for one day a week during the summer. Without Sebastian there probably wouldn't be a garden this summer. I desperately needed to beef up the labor force which was now down to zero.
Justine was an important element of Plan # 87. Not only is she an excellent worker with a happy attitude - she's friends with Kia and Rene.
Taken together these three girls represent a certain critical mass of teenage coolness and energy. Their precense will most likely encourage other kids to show up. It appears that the energy crisis in the garden is taken care of - if this deal holds.

I made promises left and right to put together Plan # 87. I promised Sharon and Bob that we would send some of the Grange Garden crew over to Corona to make up for the work that Justine will miss. This was a no-brainer. With the Jefferson Community school program we can use a place to send some kids when we are too hopelessly outnumbered in the garden or we need a change of pace and/or place. Corona is perfect and has much to offer that the Grange Garden lacks right now - like plants.

I promised the girls that they would have fun. Another no-brainer. They are good friends and will have a good time even if they have to work some. We're already talking about bringing speakers to hook up to an Ipod.

Kia is a welcome addition to the project. She's Tinker's daughter which more or less insures that Tinker will show up that now and then. Some Tinker energy in the garden is no small gift to the project. Although Kia is not my daughter, she's part of my family and I love her as if she was.
This is how small towns and villages work. Our obligations are to family and friends. Making it work for everyone becomes second nature. A chance meeting on the street can become part of a garden project.
There are other kids who are interested as well. If you asked me right now I'd say the prognosis for the summer garden is excellent. Who knows what I would say tomorrow? If this deal goes down, I'm fresh out of plans for this summer.

By the way we could use a lap top and wireless connection at the Grange.

The one missing ingredient in the garden project is cash. The best things in life are free, but I'm not. My retirement plan is more or less bop 'til you drop. The most painless plan that I could come up with is summer school. Teachers I've talked with, assure me that parents are always looking for good summer things for thier kids to do. The high school kids could help with younger kids.
At the Saratoga Community Garden I learned the value of school programs for both cash flow and community outreach. With the young adults we already have lined up for the summer I know that we could set up an excellent program. Julie Marston has offered to help us. The pieces are falling in place. I just have to make sure that it would be ok with everyone before I add it to my list of alternative plans.
If you have a better idea for fund raising or know why this idea would not work please let me know.

I ran into Erica Delma today. She talked about the play ground project. Check it out at www.dreamcityplaygrounds.org More to the point she expressed an interest in bringing her pre-schoolers to the Grange Garden. I figure that we could use her pre-schoolers as test kids to see if we can deal with kids of such a tender age. In my experience pre-schoolers in the garden present special challenges but the rewards are great.
One instance of pre-schoolers in the garden comes to mind right away. It was at the Saratoga Community Garden. Each child came with a mother. The mothers were mostly interested in each other and had lagged behind their children, deep in conversation.
The kids were touring the animal portion of the program, when they showed up ahead of thier mothers, at a stall where several garden apprentices were killing chickens. (death is a recurring theme in this message)
The kids were awestruck. The death of the chickens captured thier complete attention. They wwatched quietly with respect for the solemnity of the act. The fullness of thier focus and the depth of their silence still moves me to this day.
The mood was broken as soon as the mother caught up. They broke out in cacophony of 'yucks' and other sounds denoting gross and disgusting. Now most of those women were probably chicken-eaters but, unlike their kids, they didn't want to see where food comes from and where it goes - where we all go someday.

Sometimes it seems like we are destroying ourselves with the blinders that we put on to separate ourselves from the unintended consequences of our actions. In the Absence of the Sacred Jerry Mander argues that our blinders, our separation from nature is becoming so complete that, from a distance, it looks as if we are colonizing planet earth in preparation for traveling to other planets.
People are giving up on the planet right and left. Many fundamentalist Christians are biding their time, waiting for the second coming while many environmentalists live in fear of the destruction of the earth's ecosystems. Chose your own scenario of doom and destruction or chose life.

That's what cool about kids. Until we teach them otherwise, they are open to the world. When we quit learning from our kids, no matter how small they are, we're in trouble. The younger the kids the greater the sense of wonder they bring to a garden and the more magic happens. Kids can be our best teachers and the garden is a great place for them to open their eyes.

At the end of the day I said goodby to this group of students. In the last hout we finally got around to the opening lecture that explains some important details - like the purpose of the garden project. This group was so gung-ho for the physical experience of the garden, the weather was so lovely and the garden was in such great need - that we almost never got around to the lecture part of the experience.

This was such a wonderful group of kids. As I drove away at the end of the day, tiny puddles of moisture gathered in the corners of my eyes. Must have been my allergies. There will always be this little emptiness in the garden now that they are gone or at least until next Monday when the next group shows up.