How I stayed sane in week of pouring rain…

Posted on Apr 28, 2011

Playing with plants on the light table!

Getting these little guys ready to go in individual paper pots…

And visualizing the future beets and basil and more in this tray above.

Meanwhile, these guys above just need some warm weather and a garden bed that isn’t ‘too wet to plough!’ ( I love that expression even though we do essentially no-till after first breaking ground….but do use a tiller to break ground in order to avoid broken legs and knees!) Am running out of shelf space…send blue skies!

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends —you can subscribe by Email here.  You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

Update 5/2/2011: Here are pictures over at FayettevilleFlyer.com that show what was going on in town during this time…from the city update and from community photos.  (There are some good things about living on a rocky hill!) My thoughts go out to who dealt with floods in Arkansas that week, and to those in Alabama and other parts of the South dealing with mass tornado destruction last week. To donate to help with tornado and storm relief, go towww.redcross.org or text the word “REDCROSS” to 90999 to make a $10 donation.

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Rain, Rain go away…

Posted on Apr 27, 2011

Rain doesn’t show up so well in photos. But let me tell you we’ve had rain, and more rain, and thunderstoms, flash floods, hail, and a couple tornados thrown in for good measure. Can frogs and locusts be far behind? In the past week, we’ve had nearly four times the usual rainfall for the entire month of April! There have been several weather-related tragedies in Arkansas. The weather alarm radio goes off all the time with repeated flood warnings and you know many people are suffering both personal and property loss.  It’s depressing after a while. Even the tanagers begin to look a little soggy:

Here’s hoping the weather improves soon and the waterlogged veggies manage to survive…

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends —you can subscribe by Email here.  You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. (We’ll start book giveaways when we reach 250 “likes.” Hint, hint.) Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

Update 5/2/2011: Here are pictures over at FayettevilleFlyer.com that show what was going on in town during this time…from the city update and from community photos.  (There are some good things about living on a rocky hill!) My thoughts go out to who dealt with floods in Arkansas that week, and to those in Alabama and other parts of the South dealing with mass tornado destruction last week. To donate to help with tornado and storm relief, go to www.redcross.org or text the word “REDCROSS” to 90999 to make a $10 donation.

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Wednesday’s Walkabout (a day late): Spring Veggie Patch

Posted on Apr 21, 2011

Spring garden is going strong at Larrapin thanks to the wonderful light table! I’ve been able to start with seedling vs seeds and the immediate gratification factor has been exquisite. The pics above are a row by row walkabout a couple of days ago. (If you are reading on email and the pics don’t show up, click to the actual post here to see them…)

Starting with the top left and moving across is the most recently dug bed with little rock piles still nearby. Don’t be fooled, those handfuls represent about the third rock-clearing sweep. At least rocks don’t grow back right away….  Anyway there are potatoes under the soil in the trench, planted quite late…like, um, a few days ago vs the traditional St. Patrick’s day planting. The next two beds are peas, kale, broccoli and collards—yum. I’m crazy for cole crops, as you’ll soon be able to tell.  In the top-middle pic there is the happy accident of using large tomato cages turned on their sides as a makeshift pea trellis. Will use this again.

Second row, starting on the left: garlic!! I love garlic. Why did I plant so little last fall? What was I thinking? Note to self, plant about 3X that much this fall!  Middle pic: not done. Those beds have to be rearranged to run in wide rows so the irrigation t-tape will work. Oh, I love t-tape and it saves SO much time come summer, not to mention water and the plants just love it. Well, heck, spring too since there hasn’t been much rain. That’s a huge pluffy bed of chickweed going to seed in back. Don’t laugh, I love chickweed and make wonderful salve from it. It’s actually kind of rare on our rocky terrain so collect the seeds and plant little beds of it wherever there’s enough soil to support it. Also a great salad green, though I’ve never tried it. Finally, more cole crops. You can see the t-tape down in this bed..

Third row, starting on the left: Spinach and onions (red and texas super sweet). That’s my very favorite spinach “Monstreaux de Viroflay,” a heritage variety from Baker Creek that I LOVE since we can’t grow any faint-hearted spinach around here during Spring planting. The leaves of this will get as big as your head and it’s vigorous. Love it. Middle pic: that enormous green mass is what will happen if you don’t cut down your cover crop of Austrian Winter peas in time! But will make compost when I clear it and meanwhile it’s provided chicken greens for weeks now. Lastly, that bare looking row has cilantro, parsley, beets and other stuff. The blank spots are from the banty hen flying over the fence and eating the chard, which apparently was her favorite and she clearly doesn’t care for cilantro. Wing feathers clipped: check.

Fourth row, far left: new strawberry bed, all June-bearers so we can net them while the berries are green…otherwise the squirrels eat them green. In the middle, the old Ozark-beauty strawberry row, which I’ll be pulling out after they bear (which they will if I go out and put the net down!). They are ever-bearers which means they keep putting out berries a little at a time, which doesn’t work if you have to net them for squirrels! So I’ve switched to June-bearers which come off in one big burst. I refuse to grow more strawberries for the squirrels than we already have…  Lastly, the ‘bad’ row. Plants don’t like this row, haven’t figured out exactly why. Will probably just cover-crop it for the season (with bee forage of course) and see if it gets better…  As you see, the garden overall is not mulched yet, and it needs to be. See: to-do list.

Bottom row left: this is one way to kill bermuda grass: weighted tarps for many weeks. This is actually a wide path (made necessary by a tree stump) right beside the new asparagus bed. Asparagus hates weeds, hence grass killing in progress. Will mulch this in a few weeks with wet cardboard covered with straw.  Boards are nice way to walk over the tarp without disturbing the snakes beneath. (Just kidding, kind of!) Next is the new Asparagus bed in it’s second spring. Asparagus key: Year one-take none. Year two-take a few (but I don’t). Year three: W00-Hee!!  Made that last one up, but you get the point. If you can be disciplined those first two years, you’ll be rewarded with really strong plants that third year. We’ve eaten Asparagus all month from the three-year old bed (not shown here) and it’s nearly time to let it grow and recover too. MMMMMMM, it’s been delicious!

And finally, last pic on the bottom right — blackberries!  They have been covered with blooms and I’m nearly drooling at the thought of berries to come. The bees have been all over them too. Thanks for taking a walkabout in the veggie patch!  What’s going on in your garden about now??

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends…like this one on Why Eat Local Food? Don’t miss any posts— subscribe by Email here.   You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden.  Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

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Lord-willin’ and the Queen don’t fly…

Posted on Apr 16, 2011

If you were raised in the South, you’ve heard the expression ‘Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.’  (Pronounced: lordwillinanthecreekdonrise.)  Usually it’s used just after a statement of something you plan to do, kind of a disclaimer, a humble acknowledgement that there are many things that might happen between now and then, things over which we have no control…

For example, when you have a brand new hive of bees over which you are deliriously happy and on day-four you watch helplessly as they  swirl away in a big bee-tornado off into the tall forest full of hollow trees that must be more inviting than the lovely little home you so carefully prepared. Humbling indeed. Hence the new variation of the old expression: Lord willin’ and the QUEEN DONT FLY!!

“Absconding” is the beekeeping term for when you install a new package of bees into a hive and they, well, decide otherwise. I found this out after obsessively reading for hours on what could have happened or what I could have done wrong. Absconded. (Visions of wearing the Scarlet “A”  of  Shame to the next beekeepers meeting did flash through my mind…)  It was a rough day all around, even after I found out that sometimes bees just do this. “It happens,” say the bee discussion boards. “It happens,” say the experienced beekeepers, adding a shrug. It happens most often when installing ‘package’ bees in brand new equipment that lack the honeycomb and brood that tether bees to a homeplace. Some sources say there’s a one in four chance of absconding in a brand new package-bee installation.

Sometimes the swarm lands nearby in a low tree and you can fetch them back. Sometimes they leave again. “It happens.” Mine just went once, but with a sense of purpose and no hope of retrieval from the forest. Worse yet, this late in the season and with an ongoing ‘bee shortage’ it seemed unlikely I’d find more bees this year in the short Spring window for starting a new hive. It was a sad day. Those happen too.

But you know how difficult events sometimes bring their own gifts with them. One huge gift on that sad day was my wonderful bee mentor dropped what she was doing and drove right over in hopes of locating the swarm. I’d never been so happy to see a green truck pull in the driveway. Her kind presence and determination to get me more bees this year is something I’ll never forget! Thank you so much Charity!

Mendy was so kind and supportive throughout all my distress and dismay, an award may be warranted. Being a poet, she added at one point it was worth the price of a package of bees just to actually witness a swarm —an awe inspiring sight! It is, after all, what bees do to make create more bee colonies in the Spring, adds the poet. It’s much more enjoyable, I observed, if those aren’t YOUR bees swarming away!  Later, there was her short summary Facebook post of the events of the day:  “Queen leaves. Seeks better disco?”  I laughed, and that was a good sign.

Then there was knowing we’d contributed roughly 10,000 pollinators to our ecosystem since swarms usually travel less than a mile to locate a new home… And that did help me to feel better. I hope my errant colony found a wonderful, spacious hollow tree and are setting up housekeeping right now. I send them fondest wishes and luck since I couldn’t help but fall in love with every fuzzy golden one of them in the brief days they were here. Every one was magic and their absence was palpable here at Larrapin.

Days passed and another good thing happened. The local swarmcatcher of the beekeepers association told me he’d call me if they caught a wild swarm. Jim’s the person who gets the call if a beeswarm shows up on someone’s front porch, the playground,  etc and someone calls the police or animal control or the fire department. Jim shows up both to save the day for the folks scared of the bees and to save the bees from any harm. If the swarm is caught, some lucky new beekeeper is going to get THE telephone call…THE call that has been the reason the new beekeeper has kept the cellphone at his or her side for days or weeks…

I got THE call on Wednesday: a small swarm in a lanky tree overhanging a patio. My lucky day. With the help of Jim, the homeowner, several ladders, a prop, good luck and a long bee-catching pole, the swarm was placed in my hive.

There are no guarantees at all. Will they stay? No one can say. Will they thrive? Will this current cold weather snap and harsh wind harm their homemaking? Will the colony grow to a size they can survive winter? No one can say. Jim did say that if they flew away to call him and he’d catch me another swarm. Charity has offered all assistance needed. Another friend’s Grandpa may have bees to sell soon too. Beekeepers are a good bunch. And I find I’m willing to pursue every angle, because it’s been a long time since I felt as enthralled by an endeavor as since picking up that first book on beekeeping last fall. I love everything about it and the more I know the more I love it all.  I’m determined to learn this amazing art, and that includes the challenging parts and the humbling parts too. It all feels worth it just to experience such amazement.

So for the second time in as many weeks, Larrapin has bees—lord willin’ and the Queen don’t fly.

Above are some pics from my first bee day with my mentor Charity at an early spring hive inspection with her own mentor beekeeper. Enjoy!

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends…like this one on Why Eat Local Food? Don’t miss any posts— subscribe by Email here.   You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden.  Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

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Wednesday’s Nearly Wordless: Chicken Garden Art

Posted on Apr 13, 2011

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Ahhh, Spring.

Posted on Apr 9, 2011

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Spring: beauty everywhere..and a wood duck

Posted on Apr 6, 2011

There is so much beauty popping up everywhere—singing, flying, blooming, buzzing, growing—that it’s hard to keep up with all of it! And of course I can’t, but it sure is fun trying.  As Emily Dickinson puts it, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Beauty also shows up in unlikely places, the scum pond, as we affectionately call it, for example. On the property next door there is a shallow cow pond. It’s not remarkable at first glance. In the summer, thanks to the cows and sunshine, it has a brilliant green scum on top that sticks to the cows as they cool off. When they emerge from the pond, they are covered with green confetti. A lovely sycamore that stood with feet in the pond was badly broken in the ice storm a couple years back and looks the worse for wear.

Yet the pond is such a treasure. Iridescent dragonflies emerge in shimmering colors. I watched our resident pair of hawks mate (!) in the broken sycamore just recently. In the early spring, we wait for the chorus of peepers to begin the singing season, later deeper voiced frogs take over for summer. (You can listen to a springtime chorus of peepers I recorded at the bottom of this post. If you are reading this by email, you may need to go to the actual post to play it.)

Then last week on a cold, rainy day I looked out from my home office window and saw a small duck on the pond. I dashed inside for binoculars and camera.

First ever sighting of a wood duck at Larrapin Garden. What a beauty he was! The sighting was more delightful because we’d seen our very first wood duck ever — a female standing in a tree— just the week before on a vacation to Crowley’s Ridge, Arkansas. And here was another one, this time the beautifully colored male.  He stayed and dined on something in the water for a few hours, then flew on to wherever he was headed. What a great day.  Here’s to beauty everywhere.

If you enjoy wildlife in the garden, I heartily recommend one of my favorite blogs, Beautiful Wildlife Gardens for inspiration and ideas. And please listen to the spring concert in the audio in the podcast player below, courtesy of spring peepers at Larrapin, and a few thoughts thrown in by yours truly. It’s about a minute and half long…just click the arrow to play. Enjoy!

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends —you can subscribe by Email here.  You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

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Been (Bee) Crazy!

Posted on Apr 4, 2011

First let me give you some good garden advice I did not follow: carefully plan your vacations to NOT fall in major planting times, no matter how tempting the vacation! OK, I couldn’t do it either, but have been paying the price for a couple of weeks. The week before vacation I was running around like crazy trying to get all the little cool-crop seedlings (broccoli, kale, cabbage, winter lettuce, beets, cilantro, parsley, etc)  I’d grown with the light table or purchased at Chicken Holler into the ground. This was a gamble since if it didn’t rain, they’d die tragically in the field… But I got lucky on that one and it rained a lot. Which was not so lucky for the vacation part of the story…but  we had a good time and lots of good food and great company, regardless… My wonderful neighbor Hershel looked after the seedlings to tiny to plant and they came through beautifully. (Thanks Hershel!)

Since I’ve returned from vacation, I’ve been trying to catch back up with life, all while preparing for the new bees! After taking the January bee class series, finding a mentor (Thanks Charity!!)  and ordering the amazing array of stuff and gadgets required for a brand new hive, the occupants arrived on Saturday! Driving home with 10K bees in a flimsy box (and a half-dozen or so clingers-on clutching the outside of the cage and taking occasional confused flights) in one small Corolla was a lively experience, but I loved it. I’ve loved every single thing about this bee adventure and I can’t wait to tell you more, much more!  But for today, given that I’m still behind at everything, I’ll just leave you with this brief note and a few pics of the girls. More to come soon…

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends unless I’ve been on vacation or I’m transfixed watching bee TV!  Don’t miss any post though—you can subscribe by Email here.  You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

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Why Local Food in Fayetteville?

Posted on Mar 16, 2011

I’ve  been getting ready for the Dig In! Filmfest this Saturday. Thought I’d share what I wrote for the program-handout. And if you are in NWA, join us on Saturday! You can find out details at this link. So here goes:

Why Local Food in Fayetteville?

Everyone eats. The goal of this filmfest is to inspire you to choose local and organic foods by showing how much this choice matters and how enjoyable going local can be.

In a nutshell, every dollar we move to local, naturally grown food actively supports:

community connections

local economy and jobs,

cleaner watersheds

protection of birds

bees and wildlife biodiversity

clearer air

food security

food safety

better nutrition and health

better tasting food

time with family and friends

small family farms,

ethically-raised farm animals

living topsoil

sustainability

conservation

fair trade

fair treatment of workers

Shall I go on? Many of these benefits apply to organic food grown non-locally also.

On the other hand, every dollar we spend in the agribusiness/big-box/industrial model actively supports a system responsible for:

1/3 of worldwide manmade carbon emissions

injustice to workers

inhumane treatment of animals

pollution of water, air, soil (and humans) with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides

massive and irresponsible fossil fuel use for transport, fertilizers, and chemicals

widespread deforestation

topsoil erosion

dead zones in oceans

aquifer depletion

enormous monocultures

GMOs

antibiotic resistance

increased obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers etc…. Shall I go on?

To say that moving food dollars to local and organic food is win-win, is a giant understatement. Yet many overlook the powerful and political action that buying local can be. Local food is meaningful action towards sustainability and ethics. And it just so happens to enrich communities, human connections, and happens to be tasty and enjoyable.

Buying from locally-owned, independent businesses has an important ‘multiplier’ effect for a community. For example, research shows one hundred dollars spent at a local independent bookstore will create $45 for the local economy. Spend the same hundred at a chain store and only $13 remains in this community.

One study showed that if Seattle area residents put just 20% of their food budgets into local food, it would inject a billion dollars a year into their economy. In NWA, our 20% could make an impact of well over a hundred-million dollars a year to our economy.

You can come at it from the angle of a foodie, a chef, a social-justice advocate, a mayor, nature lover, chaplain, a child nutrition expert, a survivalist, local jobs enthusiast, environmental activist, a health nut, an economist, a poet, a carbon footprint counter, liberal, conservative, or a community builder, etc. and from every angle, going local makes sense.

Yes, prices for local and organic food are often higher than the artificially low prices at big box stores. Those low prices are subsidized by injustice. Start where you can but don’t feel guilty if you go slow. Let what you love lead you.  Focus in on what you can do.

I invite you to see just how many of your food dollars you can move into the local economy.  Could you commit even 10%  or 20% of the money you already spend to local and organic endeavors?  Remember the multiplier effect, every bit matters. You may find it’s so rewarding that you challenge yourself to see just how local you can go. Prepare for enjoyment. I invite you to experience how empowering, enlivening and delicious digging into home can be.   —Leigh Wilkerson

FILMS TODAY:

10 a.m. Homegrown Revolution (short)

In the midst of densely urban downtown Pasadena, radical change is taking root. For over twenty years, one family has been transforming their home into an urban homestead. They harvest three tons of organic food annually from their 1/10 acre garden, while incorporating back-to-basics practices, solar energy and biodiesel.

10:30 a.m. Fresh

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet. http://www.freshthemovie.com/

12 noon The Economics of Happiness

The Economics of Happiness offers not only a big-picture analysis of globalization, but a powerful message of hope for the future. The thinkers and activists we interviewed for the film come from every continent…Their message is unambiguous: in order to respect and revitalize diversity, both cultural and biological, we need to localize economic activity. They argue that a systemic shift – away from globalizing economic activity and towards the local — allows us to reduce our ecological footprint while increasing human well-being. When people start connecting the dots between climate change, global economic instability and their own personal suffering – stress, loneliness, depression – there is the potential for a movement that will truly change the world.

http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

1:00 pm  Brown-bag lunch discussion. Bring your lunch and join in a discussion of the films and how we can help to develop local food systems.

2:00 p.m. Dirt

DIRT! the Movie–narrated by Jaime Lee Curtis–brings to life the environmental, economic, social and political impact that the soil has. It shares the stories of experts from all over the world who study and are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil. http://www.dirtthemovie.org/

4:00 p.m. What’s Organic About Organic?

With charm and humanity… examines how organic farming has evolved from a grassroots movement into a multi-billion dollar international industry. Through the stories of farmers who steward land from Harlem to the foothills of the Rockies, from upstate New York to Florida, the film reveals what’s at stake in creating and maintaining meaningful standards for organic production to protect citizen interests, to heal the environment, and to maintain the livelihoods of family farmers. http://whatsorganicmovie.com/

5:30 p.m. Ingredients

At the focal point of the food  movement, and of this film, are the farmers and chefs who are creating a truly sustainable food system. Their collaborative work has resulted in great tasting food and an explosion of consumer awareness about the benefits of eating local. http://www.ingredientsfilm.com/

7:00 p.m. Homegrown Revolution (repeats)

7:30 p.m. The Economics of Happiness (repeats)

9:00 p.m. What’s Organic About Organic? (repeats)

For location, see www.OzarksAlive.org

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Wednesday of Few Words…

Posted on Mar 9, 2011

It’s been a busy week! The homemade seed-starting shelf has been well used, plus a few brave sugar-snap pea, spinach and kale seedlings are already out in the garden. The cute baby kale and collards above are just waiting to get a bit bigger and for it to stop raining long enough to get them in the ground. Strawberries went into the ‘row of shame’ this week, more about that later…

I previewed a lovely, lovely movie for Dig In! Fayetteville’s 1st Food & Farming Filmfest coming up on Saturday, March 19th. “Ingredients” is a celebration of fresh, local, organic food and the creative farmers and chefs who bring it to us in the most delicious fashion! I made the mistake of watching the film on an empty stomach and had a lot of trouble with drooling and stomach growling! It’s really inspiring and beautiful on many levels… Highly recommend! And I love envisioning how supporting our local farmers and restaurants who make the extra effort to use local products will create an even more vibrant foodie community in Fayetteville! You can check out the preview here:

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here.  You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

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