Life on Earth

I love to learn and read, but this means that sometimes I get presented, in a short period of time, with an odd assortment grab-bag of facts which come together into a synthesis of perspective I might not otherwise have had. I recently watched the National Geographic Channel's series on the continent of North America, and along with a few other factoids I came across, it got me thinking about things.

Facts:

1. Dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years. That's 165 million years of generations upon generations of creatures, being born, eating, growing, living, giving birth to the next generation, and dying. They did this over a timespan long enough for entire landforms and continents to change. Enough time for the species themselves to evolve, along with the habitats they spent their lives in.

2. Humanoid creatures have roamed the earth for approximately two and a half (2.5) million years, or just a little over one percent of the time the dinosaurs were the main characters in the saga of Mother Earth. (And, of course, not at the same time.)

3. A climate accord was signed in Paris last week, which may or may not have any teeth to it, and may or may not do any good in reducing greenhouse gasses.

4. The "back to the land" and urban homesteading movement appears to have peaked in popularity in this country, along with all the associated activities related to it. People will still find and learn how to do those activities, but the "trend" has hit its peak and is on the downslope, losing traction as the mainstream economy has gained it back from the Crash of '08.

5. Human beings are still killing each other. Some of the killing is (in the killers' minds) purposeful, and some is completely random -- innocent people chosen to bear the brunt of someone's rage and anger.

Here's my takeaway idea from all these snippets of information:  We are, for all the damage we've done and all the magnificence we've built, still very much the new kids on the block as far as Life on Earth has developed. Great hierarchies of ecosystems, plants and animals existed before us for a hundred times longer than we have survived, thus far. 

Earth and some of its many and varied inhabitants will survive whatever we do to the planet. Oh, sure, we will certainly change the players though our actions, but we will not, no matter how terrible we are, extinguish all life on earth. 

The homo sapiens and polar bear and butterfly may all go the way of the pterodactyl and brontosaurus, but long after the tectonic plate which the coastline of Los Angeles sits on has shifted north to being next to San Francisco, something will still be roaming around or at least growing on this planet. Evolution will still continue over time. And the earth itself will still move under the feet of whatever's living here.

But might we be one of the lucky species to survive? Might my genes live on in my descendants for another 160 million years?  Perhaps -- but I would guess not. As a species, we can't seem to recognize the importance of solving long-term problems (at least not enough to override short-term convenience). Plus, too many of our ilk have murderous impulses they are unable to control and if that doesn't kill us entirely, it will certainly knock down our numbers at some point. 

But if any interstellar travelers from the Oort Cloud are watching us, it's no surprise they haven't made contact...we're newborn babies, in terms of geologic time. We've barely shown up on the radar screen of legitimate life, and seem hell-bent on destroying each other to a point where our odds of survival may be so low no one's taking any notice of us. Why should they?

If you are part of the homesteading movement, or attempt in any way to live lightly on the earth we all share, your actions are important on a moral level but will ultimately have very little actual impact on whatever it is that's going on on this earth. So the decline of the homesteading movement really won't change anything. Nor will your actions. If you choose to live a certain way, it should be done with the knowledge that you're primarily doing it to live according to a moral cause you find noble and the right thing to do, or for some other reason. But you're not going to change much.

And that is OK, because no one who is here -- not the cockroach, not the meercat, and not the whale, will probably still be around for the same amount of time it took the dinosaurs to die off. And that thought is either comforting or depressing. It's the former to me. The continents shift and the species change, but to Mother Earth, for better or worse, we are temporary dwellers on her surface. 

So do what you feel morally compelled to do, yes, but don't spend a lot of time worrying about the planet or what happened in Paris last week, or whether or not the next generation knows how to grow food. On the grand and geologic time clock which this planet marks her hours on, we've only been here a second or two. 

And she will survive and move on, into the future, from whatever our angry little bi-pedaled, opposable-thumbed species does to it. That is a certainty.

Star Wars revisited, the cradle of mankind and the importance of potatoes

I got my tickets to the premiere of "Star Wars" this morning. I actually got a little teary when I saw the third trailer, which went online last night.

Why "Star Wars?" 

It's the movie that made me an astrophysics major for three years of college (I later switched to journalism). It's the reason I love astronomy. It's why I wanted to become an astronaut. It's why I worked in a public observatory for eight years, and why I worked a a research assistant on a couple of NASA projects during college. It's why I own a telescope even now, and sit outside observing the heavens and watching meteor showers from our back yard.

It was "Star Wars" that pulled me from nights dancing at disco clubs to nights sitting in cold observatory domes comparing still images of the sky and taking notes. To say it took my life in a 180-degree course change is accurate. It changed my goals, the things I wanted to learn about, and how I saw the world. Suddenly the Disco Queen became a Science Nerd. It happens.

Perhaps it's even why I love this piece of land I live on, always conscious that it's just a speck on a little, blue planet, hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour. The fact that it's my home planet means something to me, probably because in "Star Wars," the characters seemed to think the planet you came from was important -- no matter where you traveled throughout the galaxy, it was the place you were from.

But while this planet has been humanity's cradle, no one should remain in the cradle forever. Those other planets are out there, beckoning us through the night sky. Part of the reason "Star Wars" was important was that it made the stars above us inviting, accessible and exciting. Unlike previous movies like "2001 -- A Space Odyssey," space was not cold and forbidding. Instead it brimmed forth with possibilities of life, of stories and of adventure. When I'm out amidst the night sky, I don't feel like I'm alone in the dark -- I'm among friends: bright Sirius, Mighty Orion, and the misty Milky Way running through everything.

But although "Star Wars" inspired my life, it's true that I never became an astronaut. Instead, I worked  in public relations in the aerospace industry, then taught science, then did some newspaper writing and now, a bit of farming. 

But you know, Matt Damon is now growing potatoes on Mars, so perhaps farming is still a valuable skill set if we ever do get to the stars. I know I won't. I'm too old now. But you can bet come December 17, I will be seated front and center at the movie theater with a big tub of popcorn and a heart laden with emotion.

Because "Star Wars" made me who I am. And maybe it will inspire the next generation to get out into that vast, warm, friendly universe and have some new adventures. I hope so, anyway. I just hope they remember, those new steely-eyed star sojourners, how important it is to know how to grow potatoes, wherever you are.

After the harvest and the Shemittah year

Today, under a brilliant blue sky and cool temperatures, we pulled the last of the tomato plants out, disengaged the old cucumber vines and even managed to find a few stray onions buried underground, in perfect eating condition. It's a little bit early to clean out the garden here, but with the El Nino bringing more humidity, more warmth and therefore more insect pressure, I thought it was wise to plow it all down and throw some chicken manure on top of it all before leaving it for winter, a gift to the earthworms and other bugs who live under the soil.

I also decided that I'm going to practice my own modified version of what's called the Shemitttah year in the Torah. It's an agricultural mandate to let the land rest in the seventh year of production. As it's stated in the Book of Leviticus,

"God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, telling him to speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land must be given a rest period, a sabbath to God. For six years you may plant your fields, prune your vineyards, and harvest your crops, but the seventh year is a sabbath of sabbaths for the land."

I've expounded on the virtues of the idea of Sabbath -- for both religious and secular reasons -- on this blog before, and I'm sure you realize (if you've been reading this blog awhile) we've technically only been on this land for three summers. It's not a Shemittah year in any way....except of course, for the farmer. That would be me.  I have been growing a good portion of our food since around 2008, when I planted our first raised beds in our garden back at the old house. And I've been canning our produce each fall and winter since that time as well. 

I'm actually overdue for a good Shemittah by a couple of years now.

 During that time, a lot has changed, including me working more outside the home during summer and fall, (prime growing and canning time, but also busy season at the winery) and our kids going off to college, changing our food storage needs considerably. This last summer was crazy, trying to keep up the garden and my job, and I still have 40 pounds of tomatoes in the freezer to can as proof of that. I'll get to it before the end of the year, hopefully once the summer is gone for good and a boiling water-bath canner heating up the kitchen is seen as a friend, not an enemy.

And so my version of this Shemittah year will mean leaning out from the vegetable garden from this fall to next, and reassessing exactly what our needs are now that we have only two of us at home on a regular basis, and now that we also live in a place where we eat elsewhere a fair portion of the time. 

Normally right now, for instance, I'd be planting my carrot crop in earnest. But as of this writing, I still have a freezer full of carrots from last year which we haven't even started eating yet. So clearly I don't need carrots. Carrots in 2016 will be a Shemittah crop for us, then. I won't be growing them.

I will be growing a little lettuce and some onions, both super easy crops to maintain (meaning zero maintenance). I will be pruning and caring for our berry vines, our grapes and our fruit trees in spring because they need it, and if we get an abundant harvest I will gladly take it, because we got almost nothing last year (guess the berries took their own Shemittah year in 2015). Come spring, I will be planting something in the raised beds as well, it just won't be nearly to the extent I have in years past. I may have one raised bed's worth of produce. Probably an eggplant or two, one squash, three tomatoes....you get the picture. Farming Light. 

It's time for this farmer to take a break and have her Sabbath from the vegetable garden. Time for the land to exhale and rest, too. And in another three years, it may be time for a true Shemittah year where both the land and I take a good rest, but this time it's not so much for the land itself as much as the farmer. 

There will still be plenty of homesteading stuff (and blogging) going on around here -- soap making, cooking from scratch, eating abundantly from the over-storage we've managed to accumulate in the last few years, and finding new ways to continue turning our space from a zone of consumption into a zone of production. 

But everything needs a rest; even God rested on the "7th Day."  I am looking forward to my 2016 "Petite Shemittah," a sabbath for this farmer but not a dogmatic one as much as an acknowledgment that everything, including ourselves, needs a rest sometimes. 

No princesses here

Disney Princesses. Just shoot me now.

If you want to separate the princesses from the Cinderellas, or the girls from the women, the homestead is an excellent place to do it. For some reason, this week has had me thinking a lot about the women's liberation movement and whether or not it is DOA -- Dead On Arrival -- due to the persistence of princesses in our world.

This last week featured a lot of princesses in my life.  I have a friend whose 4 year-old daughter is positively obsessed with being a princess in every way (and she is encouraged by mom, believe me). I had a coworker give me a scene-by-scene description of the movie "Frozen," (featuring princesses, once again) because I asked him what it was about.  

And I saw Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams' video for their "Blurred Lines"song.

You are probably asking 1) how the video, which features three naked women fawning over and being fawned over by Williams and Thicke, is about princesses, and 2) how in the hell all this relates to homesteading.

Just stay with me.

It all ties in, you see, because the idea behind the women's liberation movement is the concept of not being a princess -- not waiting and hoping your prince will notice you and deem you worthy to be with him.  Both the women's liberation and the homesteading movements are, believe it or not, about BEING CINDERELLA (not the princess, but the girl in dirty clothes tending the coal fire) and becoming empowered to be self-sufficient and using your skills to support yourself and/or care for your family.

Could you shoot me again, if you haven't already?

Cinderella was a homesteader, even though her sisters were wanna-be princesses -- the same kind that are in the "Blurred Lines" video -- pouting, strutting, preening, all in the hopes of being noticed by some important guy (except of course, that Cindi's sisters were allowed to have clothes). Cinderella was the one who made everything happen.  She was the one who kept the fire going, cooked dinner, cleaned up and probably took care of the vegetable garden and bartering for goods in the town square.

In short, Cinderella rocked.  Until she became a princess, of course, at which point I'm sure her days were filled with pedicures, pretty dresses and parties.  Or naked music videos. Who knows? 

When the women's liberation movement began in earnest, we were all pretty committed about the idea of not being princesses -- not waiting around for Prince Charming to complete us and take us off to his castle, where we'd be waited on hand and foot forever.  We wanted to do things ourselves. We toted the 5-gallon water bottle to the water cooler in the office ourselves, instead of asking one of the guys to do it for us.  We fixed our own plumbing.  We opened our own doors, unless we were carrying something heavy.

And when the back-to-the-land movement hit full stride, we got out there and planted, weeded and harvested along with the guys. (Plus then spent days in the kitchen preserving it all --usually sans guys.)

So you would think that this next generation of women would be even more bad-ass than we were.  But many, many aren't. Instead, they are shedding their clothes in music videos, hoping to be noticed by the Important Pop Stars.  Or they are living on their own, but they are crying crisis and drama at every turn, hoping someone will rescue them financially or in other ways.  Or they are teaching their daughters to dress in pink and never get dirty. It makes me angry, because all women -- especially those that will come after us -- pay the price when this becomes acceptable. We are not taken as seriously, not paid as well, and not respected as we should be.

And you can't blame an old crone like me for wondering what in the hell happened. Was being a princess just easier?  Is being a drama queen more profitable than pulling your own freight? 

Real woman, real work. A No-Princess Zone.

It's OK for any woman (or any man for that matter) to want to feel beautiful or glamorous sometimes.  And it's OK to sometimes accept that we may not be able to do some of the heavy lifting our male counterparts do. But maybe Cinderella would be wise to re-evaluate putting on that glass slipper because, let's face it, it's damn hard to work in the garden or the kitchen or be an asphalt laborer, a doctor, or anything else that makes a difference in the world  wearing that kind of footwear.

If before I reach Great Age, I could see a world with more empowered, active Cinderelles and less princesses, it would make me so happy.  Can we all just be the bad-ass women we are capable of, instead of drama-seeking, strutting, pink princesses? Please?

Brackets

So with the days of full spring upon us, it's gotten quite busy around here recently. The spate of 80 degree temperatures has meant that I need to be watering more.  I have snow pea and spinach seedlings starting. And before long, I will be sprouting tomato, pumpkin, squash and cucumber seeds to go into the ground in another month or so.

Where did winter go?  I don't know, but I do know we see a lot less of her these days, while my friends in the midwest and east can't seem to get free of her icy grip.

But anyway, all this busy-ness has led me to appreciate the few unbracketed days I have.  What are those, you ask?  (It's nothing to do with basketball's March Madness brackets). For me, it works like this: Anytime I have a commitment of some sort I must keep on any given day, it creates a little bracket within that day.  For instance, it can be for something fun: if we're meeting for lunch at noon, I probably bracket a little time in the morning to get ready, time to drive into town, and a couple of hours for us to chat and eat our lunch.  For my work days, if I have a meeting at the winery at 10 a.m.,  I bracket that time out and don't schedule anything else until whenever I estimate the meeting will be over. So anything extra I'd like to do needs to get fit into the time on either side of whatever's bracketed for that day.

No space in between the brackets.

But I think the key to sanity in this modern world of ours is to have at least one or two unbracketed days a week, to do with as you please.  It doesn't necessarily mean a non-work day (although it can and sometimes should be) but it does mean that you are free to schedule your day as you please, with no hard-standing commitments you have to work around.  

I think everyone needs to have the basic right to not have to be anywhere for 24 hours or so, on a regular basis.  In this culture of ours, we love to fill up our downtime -- not just with things we have got to do, like get our teeth cleaned and show up in pick-up lane at our kids school at 3 p.m., but we also love our voluntary activities -- sporting events and concerts, clubs and groups, classes at the gym, etc.  And there is nothing worse than looking at your calendar and finding days upon days upon days which all have something (and sometimes many things) written in the box under each date.  

The opposite problem. Sometimes I fear retirement because of this.

When things gets bad enough, even the things we signed up for and thought would be fun, like a concert or neighborhood party, can begin to feel like one more thing you have to show up for. But a life with no brackets is not good either, because those brackets also  frame another wall -- one around our free time, and free time never feels better than when it comes between two busy times.

Sometimes I feel like a tightrope walker, attempting to stay in the middle lane between too busy and too aimless (mostly trending towards the former but slowing down more as I age).  So I keep an eye on my brackets but even more, and on the spaces in between them.

Inside the brackets, produce and work. Outside the brackets, I stand, I rest, and I breathe. And I set my sights on the next bracket, and get ready.

Wire cages and tales of caution

Fruit Guantanamo

A couple of years ago, when we put in our 30 berry plants and 15 fruit trees, we decided to construct chicken-wire cages to go into the ground around the plants to protect the roots from gophers.  It made planting a lot more difficult (especially making sure the dirt was packed firmly with no air pockets as we filled in our holes) but seemed a prudent insurance policy against vermin.

One of our original raspberry cuttings never sprouted, so last year I pulled it out (along with its wire cage) and re-planted the hole with a new raspberry bush -- no wire cage this time.  Since gophers had left all the plants alone for a year, I figured we'd been too paranoid about the whole wire cages thing.

And then two days ago I spotted gopher mounds in the pasture.  All the plants were fine -- except -- you guessed it, that one raspberry bush which did not have a cage around it.  It was dead and withered. When I dug about a foot away from it, I clearly found the underground gopher hole that had allowed the little critter to tunnel in and eat the root system of the bush -- enough to kill it from the ground up.

This is a common theme of farming, where you begin cautiously, have success, and let down your guard a little, or sometimes a lot.  It happens with livestock, it happens with canning, and it happens with vegetable growing.  Oh, you're supposed to rotate your crops every year?  But you've grown tomatoes in the same spot for three years with no problems!  So you plant in the same spot, one more year, and find you're devastated with soil-borne disease this time around.  Sterilizing the Mason jars before canning?  Well, you used to, but over the years you kind of stopped doing it....and then one of your jars pops open in your pantry because it's become so ripe with bacteria it de-pressurizes itself.

It's an almost-guaranteed human behavior.  We get away with letting our guard down until one day, it finally catches up with us. 

The best farmers only have to learn the hard lessons once, or not at all.  The truly excellent ones can learn from others' bad and good experiences without having to experience things for themselves.  You know, kind of like the hot stove analogy.  They see someone else get burned and don't touch the thing.

Terrible farmers have to learn their lessons again and again as each season presents its classic difficulties:  the fox in the henhouse, the grubs in the planter beds, or the gophers in the raspberries.  It's Groundhog Day, and sometimes with actual groundhogs. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.  But perhaps another definition is when you tamper with proven success by slacking off and expecting all will be well.

Next spring we will be expanding our berry bushes and you can bet there will be wire cages around everything -- maybe double wire cages, and perhaps even sentries with shotguns in perimeter towers.  (OK probably not that last one.) 

The point is, while I can't always help when mistakes get made, I sure as hell can make sure they don't happen twice.

Rainy Day Tasks

After the storm.

We got a good soaking of rain this last week -- four days of it -- and we're now in the post-rain fog that always seems to come up until the ground dries out a bit.  Right now it's too wet to dig in the ground, so I am left with attending to other tasks.

But as astronomers have books for cloudy nights, surely farmers have tasks for rainy days.

I'm lucky that since spring is here, it's a great time to start this summer's seedlings.  Today I will begin with some spinach and lettuce, and move on to tomatoes later this week. I love to freeze spinach for casseroles, dips and lasagnas, and since last year's crop was destroyed by roly polys and I had to use wild mustard greens in spinach's place, this year I'm determined to get a good, healthy crop into the ground. Which probably means putting them in as transplants, when they're too large for the roly polys to destroy.

 Since I'm going to adhere to the local admonition not to plant my transplanted tomatoes before Mother's Day, my Mortgage Lifters and Brandywines will, likewise, have plenty of time to sprout and get sturdy between now and then in the protected comfort of our solarium.

I can't believe I just said, "in my solarium."  We didn't put it in, people.  It was the lady before us.  And what she used as a lounge area/art studio, we use to store Mason jars, dry fruits and grow seedlings.  Guess we've hillbillied it up a bit, but sometimes usefulness trumps aesthetics.

And as if the news couldn't get any brighter, Wednesday is when Farm Supply gets in a new batch of Bared Rock and Americauna chicks, so we' should be positively springing forth with new life by week's end.

It's funny, no matter how long and how hot summer is, once February is done, I feel done with winter and ready for the inevitable punishment summer usually turns out to be.  I'm sure many of you with harsher winters feel the same way.  I will certainly not turn down any rain we can get at this point, but fast-moving, water-dumping spring rains, not freezing winter storms is what I'm hoping for.

Carrot Glut

So we are getting ready to harvest carrots and I only have one problem...I don't need any.  Because this winter has been so unseasonably warm, we didn't make our usual complement of stews, lasagnas and other hearty dishes.  We've been much more about salads than stews these last couple of months.  So the upshot is that I still have several pounds of Spring 2013 carrots left in the freezer.

So what to do with this year's crop ... 

Carrot cake? (Yum!)

Carrot wine? (Like we need more wine in the house at this point?)

Sauteed carrots (every night until July, at the earliest.)

Find unlocked employee car doors at the winery and slip bunches of carrots onto the passenger seats (I have actually done this with squash during summer.)

I don't know.  The other issue is that because it didn't get very cold, the carrots are not as sweet as they normally are.  Probably not noticeable to anyone but me, but I can tell.

Along with the years when something you really wanted to grow does not, there are the opposite years, when something grows so abundantly, or that your previous years' stores last long enough that it turns out you don't need it after all.  All part of the gamble I guess, when Mother Nature is your business partner.

Hen Slow-Down

Our three hens are now almost two years old, and I am noticing a definite slow-down in egg production from last year, which becomes apparent every time the weather turns cold again. 

 Last month, with daytime temperatures hovering in the 70's and the nights down into the 30's, egg production began picking back up again, after a lull in our very chilly December. Last month, I was getting at least one egg a day, sometimes two.  And that was a good thing, because I used a lot of eggs over the holidays and was able to build a little reserve of a dozen or so back up, there whenever I needed some.

But since our weekend storm, we've had freezing temperatures at night once again, and the days have only gotten into the 50's.  And the girls know it.  At this rate I will get only three or four eggs a week, which is barely enough to keep the kitchen stocked.  My reserves are used up again. It seems like as fast as those eggs get layed, I'm using them in recipes.

The solution is, obviously, a couple more fluffy balls of cuteness once Chick Days starts in earnest at the farm supply stores around town.  I'm thinking right now I want one Plymouth Barred Rock and one Auracauna. And maybe one more to be determined.

It will be nice to hear the peeping of little cheepers again....or is that the cheeping of little peepers? 

Either way, fluffy explosions of cuteness very soon, with colorful eggs to follow.

From Where I Am

Once you begin homesteading, it's easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of your tasks that you forget just how cool it is to be doing what you're doing.  This morning I was down the hill pulling up some old onions to add to a stew I am making for tonight's dinner, and I realized just how far this life is from the one I lived in my 20's and 30's. 

So I'll say this to you.  If you're homesteading in any way whatsoever -- canning, growing, off-the-grid, or just the regular customer of a good farmer's market -- take a moment today and look back on how far you've come since you began doing whatever it is you are doing now, homestead-wise.  And do something nice for yourself. You deserve it.

That's right, because in case you've forgotten amidst the busyness of your day-to-day life, homesteading is one of the nicest things you can do for the planet.  When what you eat, wear, or burn for fuel has to travel less miles to reach you, you're making a huge difference in the health of Planet Earth.  When you're conscious of what goes into your soil, your animals and your water, you are not only helping your community stay healthy, you are also helping yourselves.

Appreciate yourself, because so often with humans, what was once the thrill of a new lifestyle grows routine, often to a point where we don't fully appreciate how much we've changed from who we were before.  People who are new to an activity often approach it with an almost religious fervor.  They do things consciously, reverently.  But then the routine and inevitable boredom sets in, and they move on to the next shiny, trendy thing.  Their gardens grow fallow, their animals become barnyard pets instead of useful manure-makers (for the defunct garden), and when the next flight of fancy calls, these people go following after it, never to be seen again.

It's sad that if we just stay committed to something -- a garden, a skill, even a marriage -- long enough to become competent, far too often we simply begin to take it for granted.  Of course the morning begins with letting the chickens out to range and waking our husband up so he can get to the ranch on time.  Of course we're going to go down to the lower pasture to harvest some stray onions for our stew. Yawn. No biggie.

But no -- it really is a big thing. So just for today, pat yourself on the back for whatever it is you're doing.  Because, most assuredly, if you've stayed the course, it's a far cry from whatever you were doing ___ years ago, when you lived largely ignorant of this way of life.

Just for today, celebrate those chickens, that herb garden, your friends at the farmer's market or those onions down in the field.  They are proof that you're the real deal.  You're in it for the long haul, and your skill set is increasing, as is your knowledge and your commitment.

As the Aussies say, good on ya, mate.

Food desert

"Food Desert"

It looks as if our nation has lost its collective mind.  Check out this snippet from a San Joaquin Valley, CA newspaper article today. Keep in mind that Stratford is in the sunny, temperate heart of California's agricultural belt, which grows approximately half of the produce the United States consumes:

STRATFORD — What if you had to pay about $30 a month just to be able to go grocery shopping?

For Stratford resident Christina Johnson, this is the everyday life. With no grocery stores in the community and only one convenience store, Johnson and many others in Stratford must travel 10 miles or more to Lemoore or Hanford in order to buy fresh produce.

“The travel doesn’t bother me, but I do have to spend extra money on gas,” she said. “I go shopping at Save Mart in Hanford twice a week, so it can really add up.”

Johnson said she tries to make the most of her visits, doing other errands to make each trip more worthwhile. However, she said she counts herself as one of the lucky residents of Stratford because she has a car.

“It’s a big task for people here that don’t work and don’t have a vehicle,” she said. “They either have to get rides from someone or ride the bus, which would be a hassle.”

Stratford is just one of hundreds of communities across the country to be considered a “food desert,” areas that offer limited access to supermarkets. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 2.2 percent of U.S. households are more than a mile from a grocery store.

No food here!

Isn't one of the lovely advantages of living in a rural area that you can actually grow your own produce?  Most of the time, within unincorporated county islands, the rules for farming and animal-keeping are looser than they are in the city, meaning you could also keep a few chickens and maybe even a milk goat, too.  

None here either.

A hundred years ago, a much larger percentage of our population lived more than a mile from the local grocery store.  They bought their staples there and grew their fresh produce at home.  Nowadays, living more than a mile from a grocery store means you are techinically in a "food desert," because we've literally forgotten how to feed ourselves in any way other than harvesting items off a shelf in an air-conditioned food warehouse with muzak playing in the background.

So many wanna-be homesteaders (and please know I use the term "wanna-be" in the most positive way in this case) living in the cities loathe the fact that they don't have yards where they can grow food, but here you have people with not only yards, but possibly even an acre or ten outside their back door who are starving to death because they can't get to the supermarket.

Something's wrong here, people.

Eureka!  Found the food!

Farming and the Family Tree

My city born-and-bred mother has finally accepted that I am a farmer, at home with rural life and "living in the sticks" as she so fondly calls where we reside.  She no longer tells me how unevolved it is to have your own well, or have a propane tank instead of natural gas, or a primitive septic system (her words, not mine).  If you think her acceptance is something to take lightly, it's not.  She has fought with me over who I was from the day I said my first word, which was not "mama" or "dada."  It was "trees."

This girl who loved trees was brought up in an urban landscape, obviously mailed to the wrong address in a joke only God Himself probably understood.  But after 30 years of wandering around an urban desert, I finally found myself living in a rural environment, and a huge part of me realized I had indeed come home to a place I belonged.

I may have realized it, but my mother did not.  Declaring it was only a matter of time before I returned to "civilization," she started a waiting game until the day I would come to my senses, pack it all back up, and rent a nice, sensible apartment near fashionable restaurants, galleries and museums somewhere back in the city.

It never happened. But I think she's finally stopped waiting, thanks to my family tree.

You see, doing my family tree has led to many discoveries, one of which is the fact that I come from generations upon generations of rural farmers.  My genetic haplogroup is known as the haplogroup that introduced agricultural practices to Europe 13,000 years ago.  There are farming genes a lot closer, too -- in 3 out of 4 grandparents' backgrounds.  The fourth side were city dwellers in London for possibly, the last 1,000 years or so -- even back to when it was called "Londinium," and was a Roman outpost...all the way up to the present day.  She still lives there, in the heart of all that hustle and bustle, quite happily, as her mother's ancestors did.

Clearly, mum got a majority of her genes from the urban-leaning 1/4 of the gene pool.  I got the other 3/4ths .  The country chromosomes, if you will.

I'm not sure if ancestry can explain everything, but I do believe our genes move us towards what's familiar and what has worked for us, on a biological level.  When I make dandelion wine, grow carrots or gather wild mustard greens, I can almost feel a resonance deep within, something in my very genes, that says I'm where I need to be and what I need to be doing.  I often wonder if reincarnation memories, where we believe we've lived before, are just our genes whispering something familiar to us, acting like a memory when actually it's only a genetic memory, an echo of those who came before us and who live on, genetically, in our DNA.

Feels like home.

When I hear certain music, eat traditional foods, or sit by a fire making homemade blankets, I feel as if I'm doing things I've done before.  And indeed, my genes have.  The city genes are something I just didn't get in the game of chance inheritance plays in making us who we are.  

Feels like Hell.

But I'm thankful that getting our DNA and family trees done has made my mother more aware of the fact that we can still be family and be quite different, both at the same time. She seems proud to know that even though I didn't inherit the city affinity she has, I did inherit tendencies and traits from the rural chromosomes I carry -- the ancient farmers, doing what they've done for thousands of years.

That, and looking up at the trees as a babe in arms and wanting to call them by name.

On Schedule

The lettuce, carrots, onions and a lone, volunteer cabbage are all doing well after last night's 14 degree low.  The cold snap should break this week and our nights will be back to normal, which is in the low 30's.  

Looks like there will be salads for Christmas dinner after all.

Note the bird netting over the lettuce.  I've had huge problems with them eating it this year.

Carrots coming along nicely!

Baby onions and one cabbage.  I will plant a lot more onions in January.

Brrr!

O.K.,  O.K.  I'm sure you get it by now.  I am obsessed with the weather.  I once even started a novel where the character who saved the day was going to be an elderly man in a rest home whose main pleasure in life was watching The Weather Channel and checking regional radar every 10 minutes.   They say every author puts a bit of themselves into each character they create, so there you are. Here is what we will have in store for us tomorrow:

This may not be cold for many northern places in the United States. But honestly, 16 degrees is cold for this part of Coastal California.  Our homes are not even designed for weather this cold. I already know our water will freeze at the well pump, so am planning on taking my shower and getting my water poured for my morning coffee tonight.  It won't last forever, but it will be a cold day in hell (colder than this) before the weather stops me from having my morning Joe even if it is Decaffienated-Joe.  A warm drink in the morning is still the best way to start any day.

At the winery where I work, it's ding-dang cold, too. Customers blow into the tasting room with the chill winds, in all bundled up, eschewing the outdoor views from the patio (despite the awesome scenery) in favor of a warm place inside at the bar.

The vines are asleep; the cold will not hurt or affect them in any way, and all the fruit was harvested long ago.  The smell of fermenting grapes, the fruit flies, and the excitement of bottles being put up or shipped out all went away, along with fall's leaves and balmy breezes.   Now we do everything at a slower pace.  We visit with customers longer, pause to take in the late afternoon sky as we polish glassware behind the bar, and talk of holiday plans.

I love working in a tasting room at this time of year, as I get to spend more time leisurely getting to know our customers, organizing and re-stocking wines and other goodies, and enjoying (literally) the fruits of our labor.  It's a time when I truly take stock and feel lucky to get paid for the work I do, because many days, it feels like pure pleasure.

Around the homestead, it's all about keeping warm in the hours I'm home, with less to do outdoors than usual.  I have a decent, carrot and onion crop in the ground right now, but only the lettuces need to be covered. So I just keep things watered, thaw the poultry's water each morning, and make sure everyone has what they need to keep warm, including us.  Last spring's carrots, peas and the pig we butchered go into hot soups and stews to warm us from the inside out.  

Wine and veggies are alike, in that they are little tastes of spring and summer weather, keeping us warm throughout the long winter's nights.  So have some hearty stew, have some wine, and look out the windows and dream of whatever makes you feel a little warmer.  It's cold out there.

Doing what you have to do?

This morning it is a brisk 17 degrees outside.  Everything that hadn't died already (and is supposed to be dead this time of year) will be dead when I walk outside today.  The remaining eggplants, basil,  a lone tomato, along with the bouganvilla on the side of the house, will have all died down to the ground.  The bouganvilla will come back in spring, but the aforementioned summer food crops are gone for good.

Inside, the pellet stove is humming away, keeping the common rooms warm and cheery.  It's a rural fantasy if you look at the surface....in a few minutes I will don flannel-lined denim overalls and start to clean up the things around the property that didn't survive.  It looks bucolic and seasonal and, friends, it feels that way, too.  And if you looked no further, you'd think we were a pioneer family, living the simple life and loving it.

But if you read this blog, you know there's more to my life than this. And lately it's been bothering me (once again) that others who blog on the so-called "country life" are misleading good-hearted people who read their posts and think, "well, I can quit my job and do that!"

You see, I was at work yesterday, at a job I love. Big Ag, my husband, works long hours on a corporate farm about an hour east of here.  That's how we afford to the fix fences and well pumps, add raised vegetable beds to this property, and rent heavy equipment when we need to dig post holes or re-landscape the front lawn with native plants instead of grass.  

And for some reason, this morning I've been thinking of two other blogs I read fairly often, where good, old-fashioned "country living" is elevated to almost a religious pitch, but where the necessary realities of having cold, hard cash are downplayed -- unless you want to donate some, that is.

One blog site is in the midst of a legal battle because, for the last few years, they have been trying to trademark the term "urban homestead," and shut down all other websites that use the term without giving them credit.  If they successfully trademark the term, anyone using it will have to pay them or at least get permission to use it (and I'm sure the idea that Home Depot will want to market "urban homestead" products has them seeing dollar signs everywhere).  But, hey, they are just simple folks, right?  They're more concerned with baking bread and growin' food than entering in protracted legal battles to own a term that's been in use since the turn of the century before this, right?  Well apparently not.

The other blog is a blog that once inspired me, with a blogger who wrote about growing vegetables and leading a vegetarian lifestyle, playing fiddle, owning rabbits and a goat and working a job in town to keep the bills paid. Then she quit her job and....life went off the rails.  Read the blog now and it's become a celtic fantasy world, filled with descriptions of how wonderful it is to ride horseback in a kilt, speak Gaelic to people and animals, hunt, butcher animals, do archery, falconry and role-playing games, with nary a mention of real farming, except for a few chickens and sheep that seem to be kept around for no real purpose.  None of which will pay the bills or have any real basis in reality at all.  

I'm a believer that you do create your own reality, but only to a point.  When the lawyers come demanding their invoice gets paid, or when the truck that takes you to the celtic fantasy reenactments gets repossessed, life gets real very fast.  And if you don't have any kind of REAL job, you just might lose the whole kit and kaboodle.  Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday.

Most "farmers" work at other jobs to keep their dream in the black.  Both my husband and I have jobs off the property, which help fund our adventure.  To tell you otherwise would be misleading, and potentially costly for anyone who wants to do what we're doing now.

Farms take funding, and few survive without extra income coming in.  So as they say in show business, "don't quit your day job, kid."  Because while an actor or actress might eventually make millions and win an Oscar, farmers rarely come into that kind of fortune, even by using their talents. At the most, they support themselves by selling what they grow.  We don't even do that; we do put a substantial dent in our grocery budget by growing our food and making most of what we use, but we could never live off what we do here.  To think otherwise would be to engage in magical thinking.

Yet, the latest thing in the blog world is to putter along on your property, and if you get in trouble financially, just ask your readers to support you (literally).  But to ask for money when you're not out there doing anything to bring in a regular income to help yourself survive is, well, the exact opposite of keeping your life simple.  It's becoming beholden to an "audience" and constantly having to come up with new things to keep them entertained and engaged.  That is not farming.  That is public relations and marketing.

And it's not the simple life, not by a long shot. Our life may involve having to drive down the hill and go to work a few days a week, but those every-other-Wednesday paychecks DO help keep our life simple, by keeping this farm running and keeping us in the black.  To imply otherwise would be to insult your intelligence and our work ethic.  

Here's to keeping it real, folks.