yearofplenty

Millwood Farmers' Market Opening Day on Wednesday, 3-7pm

Wendell Berry, the Inhabit Conference, community gardens, and the kingdom of God

Last week I had the privilege of attending the Inhabit Conference, a collaboration between the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and the Parish Collective, a network of faith leaders equipping churches to live out the gospel in their neighborhoods. It was a wonderful collection of people seeking an alternative imagination for being the church in this modern, commodified, flattened cultural moment. In a fitting convergence of events, Wendell Berry gave the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on Monday. The Inhabit Conference and National Endowment for the Humanities lecture both expressed a prophetic call to reconnect with a sense of place and a responsibility to people.

The Chronicle in Higher Education had the following report on the Berry lecture:

Mr. Berry's speech was a discussion of affection and its power to bind people to community. It was also a meditation on place and those who "stick" to it—as caretakers and curators. "In affection we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy," Mr. Berry said.

The opposite of the "sticker"—in the words of Mr. Berry's mentor, the writer Wallace Stegner—is the "boomer," those who "pillage and run."

"That we live now in an economy that is not sustainable is not the fault only of a few mongers of power and heavy equipment. We all are implicated," Mr. Berry said. Our relationship to the land and to community is increasingly abstract and distanced.

"By economic proxies thoughtlessly given, by thoughtless consumption of goods ignorantly purchased, now we all are boomers....." 

The antidote, Mr. Berry said, is affection, connection, and a broader definition of education—to study and appreciate practical skills like the arts of "land use, life support, healing, housekeeping, homemaking."

Berry's comments echo much of what I heard at Inhabit. In the midst of the growing wreckage of "boomer" models of church in North America, people shared stories about what it looks like to be a "sticker" church that specializes in affection, connection, and homemaking. As someone who battles mightily with my boomer instincts in leading the church, the conference refreshed my vision for a different, stickier path of leadership.

Part of the gift of the conference was to help me see the blessing of the stories that have unfolded in our community over the last couple of years. (The test of a good church conference is whether you go home feeling envious of God at work in other people's stories or encouraged by God at work in your own stories. Inhabit provided me with the latter.) Many spoke of starting community gardens, so I thought I'd share part of our story here as an example of how community gardens can serve as a living alternative to the "pillage and run" pace of life.

The story of the garden goes back four decades to the start of an iconic neighborhood pumpkin patch on the shores of the Spokane river, located next to a major north-south thoroughfare in the Spokane valley. Generations of children grew up in our vicinity making a seasonal pilgrimage to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkin and pluck it from the vine. Not only that, they got to see the field plowed, the seeds planted, and the plants growing as their family station wagons drove by the site in the spring and summer. It was a community-sustained umbilical to the land and a constant connection to the rhythms of springtime and harvest that have been lost in most communities.

Ten years ago Spokane County set out to widen the Argonne bridge and the pumpkin patch was designated as the lay-down area for all the heavy equipment and machinery required for the year-long construction project. I was told that tractors came and shaved off the two feet of black humus that had accumulated from the years of growing pumpkins in order to level the land. After the construction was completed the land was left as a hard-packed abandoned lot that served as a turnaround area for school buses and a shortcut for people walking through the neighborhood. The land was so hard it took a pick-ax to loosen enough soil for a soil-test. 

Four years ago people in the church and in the neighborhood started a conversation about the potential of recovering the land and the story of the land by turning the site of the old pumpkin patch into a community garden. I had only known that plot of land as an abandoned lot and it was only after these conversations started that I learned its history. The loss of connection to the land is like that, we not only lose the use of the land we lose the stories that at one time gave life to the neighborhood.

We knew we couldn't do it on our own as a church so we reached out to the neighors and other community partners. The paper mill that owns the land agreed to let us use it and they even donated the water and facilitated the donation of lumber and compost through their connections. We enlisted neighbors, the school district, a local group home, scouts, local landscaping businesses as co-conspirators in reclaiming the land. We even had a bunch of guerilla gardeners from the Twitterverse that came to help us get started. We joined together and named it the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

The garden has become a gathering place for families and neighbors.

One of our goals with the garden is not only to let people have a plot to use for personal use, we wanted to bring back the pumpkin patch. So along with individual raised beds we have some area for row crops for Second Harvest and a place for pumpkins. Last summer we had a bounty crop of pumpkins and invited children from a local group home to come over and choose a pumpkin. The rule was that they had to pick a pumpkin that they would carry to the car. 

Some of them pushed the rule about carrying the pumpkin to the limit. 

Others tried to find the perfect pumpkin. It took this little girl 15 minutes wandering the patch to find just the right one.

It was a wonderfully redemptive moment to see kids once again walking on this land with anticipation in their eyes and joy in their hearts about finding a pumpkin to call their own.

I imagine that when these children now drive by the pumpkin patch they remember the fruit of the land, they remember the richness of the soil, they remember the rhythms of the seasons, and the joy of the harvest. To use Berry's words they have a new sense of affection, for a land that sustains them and a community that is committed to a place, which serves as a tangible sign that they are part of a community that is committed to them. 

Along with this I think they have a better sense of God's redeeming work in the world and we in the church who have been involved with the garden have a better sense of this work as well. We better understand that the kingdom of God is not some abstract notion, it's like a community garden -- putting down roots in a place, redeeming abandoned places, and renewing affectionate relationships.

Thanks to those at the Seattle School and the Parish Collective for putting on the Inhabit Conference. It helped remind me of the God who is at work in our neighborhood.

My Take on Ethics of Eating - More grace needed in current food debates

Last week I was a panelist on an Ethics of Eating event at Sante' restaurant in downtown Spokane and today's edition of the Spokesman Review has an article on what transpired. The in-person event, pictured above, was organized in response to a heated virtual debate on Facebook over the fact that Sante' serves foie gras. You can look on the Sante' Facebook page for a run down of the debate. Local TV news even did a story on it. Here's one of the critical comments posted on Faceboook:

You will never have our business/patronage because I now know you serve foie gras. And we will never recommend your restaurant to local friends or out of town guests. In fact, we will tell them about your inhumane offerings and I'm sure they will decide the same, as our friends are all animal caring people. In your quest to serve haute' cuisine and be a Cosmo restaurant, you have shown us that you have made unethical choices to seek your customers. With many other dining options, our money will be spent elsewhere. Shame on you for putting money above the suffering of ducks and geese.

I personally really enjoyed the event, especially hearing from Jeremy and other leaders in the Spokane sustainable food community. There were not any strident critics in the audience but there were some good questions from vegans about the justification for killing animals when other alternatives are available. I explained that I find those arguments a lot more compelling than I used to, although I am not yet convinced. I appreciated that the audience expressed a genuine desire to learn about food systems and the my fellow panelists responded with a gracious desire to inform and inspire people to learn more. I guess the big surprise was that the in-person event was such a pleasant dialogue compared to the rancor and bitterness of the online lobbing of accusatory grenades. The online ethical debate around food has taken on an almost religious character, with the puritans on one side and hedonists on the other.

This is one of the reasons I have been compelled to explore actual religious traditions around food. I have suspected that the religious-like debate around food systems might actually have something to learn from actual religious food practices. We've spent the last four months following kosher food laws and Orthodox fasting rules. We celebrated the end of the Orthodox Lenten fast last Saturday with the midnight Pascha service at Holy Trinity Orthodox church. 

I plan on writing extensively about what we have been learning but there is one aspect of the Pascha service that I found especially helpful for current debates around food. In the Orthodox church the fasting rules for Lent are very strict. On most days there is no meat, no dairy, no oil, no fish, no eggs, and no alcohol. On days where there is an evening celebration of the eucharist the strict rule is that you abstain from all food and drink until receiving the communion elements at the evening service. We followed these rules closely but there is a wide range of observance in the Orthodox church, with many loosely observing the rules and many not observing them at all. One of the ethical questions around these food rules in the Orthodox church is how to deal with the diversity of practice given an ethical ideal. This is the same question that faces locavores, slow-food advocates, vegan evangelists and the rest. 

At the Pascha service I learned how they deal with this diversity of practice as they prepare to gather around tables and celebrate the Paschal feast. Their approach is summed up in their reading of the famous sermon from St. John Crysostom which opens with these words:

If any be a devout lover of God,
  let him partake with gladness from this fair and radiant feast.
If any be a faithful servant,
  let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord.
If any have wearied himself with fasting,
  let him now enjoy his reward.
If any have laboured from the first hour,
  let him receive today his rightful due.
If any have come after the third,
  let him celebrate the feast with thankfulness.
If any have come after the sixth,
  let him not be in doubt, for he will suffer no loss.
If any have delayed until the ninth,
  let him not hesitate but draw near.
If any have arrived only at the eleventh,
  let him not be afraid because he comes so late.

For the Master is generous and accepts the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him who comes at the eleventh hour
  in the same was as him who has laboured from the first.
He accepts the deed, and commends the intention.

Enter then, all of you, into the joy of our Lord.
First and last, receive alike your reward.
Rich and poor, dance together.
You who fasted and you who have not fasted, rejoice together.
The table is fully laden: let all enjoy it.
The calf is fatted: let none go away hungry.

When it comes to sharing in the abundant feast of lamb that follows the Paschal service they make no distinction between those who come first and those who come last, those who fasted strictly and those who didn't fast at all. (See Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard for the theological background to this.) My orthodox friends model this approach throughout Lent by not talking openly about their individual fasting practices so as to avoid pride and the divisions that it cultivates. In the midst of the most strict food rules I've ever encountered they somehow manage to offer grace instead of judgment. 

The fullness of the gospel expressed in the invitation to the table at the Paschal service can't be reduced to a simple lesson, but it does offer a provocative vision of what it looks like for a community to gather around food practices, which might be helpful for food activists filled with religious zeal for their cause:

Instead of identifying all the people (or chefs) that they'll never share a meal with, how about a grace-filled invitation to gather around the feast table, seeking community and relationships, knowing that these relationships are the foundation for more ethical practice.

Instead of exalting the puritans and hurling accusations at the unfaithful, how about an acknowledgement that we are all sinners caught up in a fallen food system. 

Instead of prideful proclamations of approved practices, how about a humble stance that lifts up ideals but avoids creating a culinary class system. 

I'm glad for the face-to-face gathering at Sante' last week. It felt like a generous invitation to gather around the table in the diversity of our practices to learn and grow together. I look forward to more such conversations.

Gardening Advice - crop rotation, companion planting, and other planning tips

One important consideration for planning your garden is rotating crops to manage soil fertility and control insects and disease. For example tomato, potato, eggplant varieties should not be planted in the same place from one year to the next because they are all in the nightshade plant family. Plants in the same family are all susceptible to the same kinds of insects and diseases. Remnants of these insects and diseases are left over in the vicinity of last year's crop. If you move the crops around it keeps the insects and disease from building up year after year.

Rotation is also important for maintaining healthy soil. You want to follow heavy to medium feeders that draw a lot of nutrients from the soil (tomatoes, corn, cabbage, peppers) with either light feeders (carrots, beets, onions) or heavy givers (beans, peas) that actually will fix nitrogen in the soil and enrich it. I like the methodology explained here that recommends a rotation of heavy feeders followed with heavy givers which are then followed by light feeders. I also like the chart above from Better Hens and Gardens that explains the sometimes confusing logic of crop rotatio in an easy-to-understand infographic. 

Another key consideration in plotting out your garden plan is to consider what plants make good companions and like to be together and which plants are arch enemies and will fight each other all summer resulting in reduced yields.

You can go here for a run down on plants that are beneficial and antagonistic. I get kind of overwhelmed by all the information and different criteria for planting, so I have developed Craig's anecdotal, simplified companion planting plan.

Basil & Tomatoes: My first recommendation is interplant your tomatoes with basil, lots of basil. We discovered this two year's ago. We always had trouble with our basil going to seed because of the intense heat of summer, but when we interplanted them with the tomatoes the large tomato plants shaded the basil just enough to keep them in check. We had wonderful basil all summer and the tomatoes seem to really like it too.

Nasturtiums and Marigolds all around: These are my go to plants to intersperse in the veggie garden. Marigolds are legendary among organic gardeners for helping with aphids although there is some debate on this topic. One farmer friend told me about the summer he found the aphids actually feasting on the marigolds. Some people say ants will one day rule the world, I say aphids will offer stiff competition.

Plant a rainforest of peppers: Peppers are one of my most challenging crops to grow. They love the heat of summer but they also seem to like humidity which we don't have in Spokane. Planting them close together is the best trick I've learned to keep them happy.

Enlist volunteers: I have companion plants that I put in the garden every year and then I have volunteers that come back every year from previous crops. I thin them out or move them around, depending on the layout. These are known as self-seeding plants, meaning they do all the hard work of planting on their own. Some of my self-seeding companions are borage, calendula, dill, and purple coneflower. Some plants like mint are too good at self-seeding and could be considered invasive. Raspberry plants are also notorious for spreading via underground shoots. 

One last consideration for your garden plan, make sure to plant you're tall shade producing plants on the north side of your plot so they don't block the sun from your shorter plants. Lettuce on the other hand is good to plant in the semi shade of sunflowers to keep it from going to seed too quickly.

 

Spring has arrived in Spokane - No mushrooms yet, plenty of wildflowers

Spring has arrived early in Spokane this year. I found the Grasswidow wildflowers pictured above at Riverside State Park yesterday. I have yet to spot a morel mushroom. The abundant rainfall this spring bodes well for a banner year of wild mushrooms.

Here's a favorite quote from Wendell Berry on the joy of wildflowers:

One early morning last spring, I came and found the woods floor strewn with bluebells. In the cool sunlight and the lacy shadows of the spring woods the blueness of those flowers, their elegant shape, their delicate fresh scent kept me standing and looking. I found a delight in them that I cannot describe and that I will never forget. Though I had been familiar for years with most of the spring woods flowers, I had never seen these and had not known they were here. Looking at them, I felt a strange loss and sorrow that I had never seen them before. But I was also exultant that I saw them now - that they were here.

For me, in the thought of them will always be the sense of the joyful surprise with which I found them - the sense that came suddenly to me then that the world is blessed beyond my understanding, more abundantly than I will ever know. What lives are still ahead of me here to be discovered and exulted in, tomorrow, or in twenty years? What wonder will be found here on the morning after my death? Though as a man I inherit great evils and the possibility of great loss and suffering, I know that my life is blessed and graced by the yearly flowering of the bluebells. How perfect they are! In their presence I am humble and joyful. If I were given all the learning and all the methods of my race I could not make one of them, or even imagine one. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. It is the privilege and the labor of the apprentice of creation to come with his imagination into the unimaginable, and with his speech into the unspeakable.   

Art of the Commonplace

I find it helpful to think of myself as an "apprentice of creation" and I'm excited that the creation is awakening from its winter slumber.

This little guy was excited too yesterday.

Gardening Advice - Should I plant seeds or starts in the garden?

 

When I installed a greenhouse five years ago, for the first time I had to ability to start a large number of plants early. I was so excited I started everything early in the greenhouse with the idea that it is always best to get a head start on the natural limits of cold weather and soil temperature. I've learned that this isn't true for every plant in the garden. Even if you don't have a greenhouse you will soon be faced with store shelves and farmers' market tables loaded with lush green plant starts that are hard to resist. The immediate satisfaction of a real plant is certainly more fun to buy than a pack of seeds but like most things in life, delayed gratification is one of the key lessons of gardening.

 

There are a couple things that are helpful to know when buying plant starts. Biggers is not always better. There is not a big advantage to buying a two-foot-tall tomato plant that is already flowering vs. the less expensive eight-inch start. In my experience the smaller plant usually catches up to the big one when they are planted in the garden and they end up bearing the same amount of fruit with similar timing. The problem with the large plants that sometimes already have tomatoes on them is that once they are out of the climate-controlled environment of the greenhouse and in the cool soil of early summer they slow down and their growth stalls out. When the temperatures heat up they get going again but by that time the other smaller plant has caught up with the bigger plant and it's a wash.

 

Another good example of this is pumpkin plants. I have always worked with the assumption that the best way to grow giant pumpkins is to start the seeds really early. It made intuitive sense to me that the earlier I started the seeds the bigger the pumpkins will get, but it turns out this isn't true. I spoke with the winner of the giant pumpkin contest at last summer's Spokane County Fair and asked him about his timing for starting seeds. He explained that he starts the seeds at the beginning of April and plants them in the garden at the beginning of May under plastic. I don't know the science behind it but in retrospect I understand why this works. I've learned that once squash plants start growing they like to keep growing and don't respond well to having their growth disrupted by transplanting or the shock of moving from the friendly confines of the greenhouse as a large plant to outside in the garden. When I have started squash plants really early and planted them as large plants they tend to sit in the garden for a long time without growing. When the plants are smaller they tend to make that transition more smoothly. 

 

One other consideration when buying plant starts is the issue of sustainability. Bigger plants means that more energy has gone into defying the local climate. In the past I've noticed that Home Depot is packed with plants from Texas. Smaller plants grown locally are generally more sustainable. Farmers' Markets are the best place to buy starts. The big plants are also expensive to buy.

While you don't necessarily need giant plants to grow a successful harvest of vegetables there are certain plants that are best planted in the garden as small plants instead of seeds.

I recommend buying and growing plant starts for:

 

Tomatoes

Peppers

Eggplant

Tomatillos

Winter Squash (pumpkins, butternut, spaghetti,etc.)

Summer Squash (zucchini, scallop, crookneck)

Cucumbers

Onions

Basil

Cabbage/Kohl Rabi/Kale

Broccoli 

Marigolds (these are great companion plants for a vegetable garden and I always start some early but also direct seed them)

 

Summer squash, like zucchini, and cucumbers can be successfully planted as seeds but I have problems with birds that love to nip at the young plants. They leave the bigger ones alone so, if I have time, I plant these as starts. If I don't get around to starting them early I plant the seeds in the garden but plant twice as many seeds as I need, anticipating that the birds will kill many of them. The one advantage of starting squash plants from seed in the garden is that they don't like to have their roots disturbed so this method avoids the shock of transplanting them. Take note that it's beneficial to loosen the roots of most transplants before putting them in the garden, but squash plants are the big exception to the rule. I always plant winter squash as plants because they usually take around 100 days to mature and I like to get a little head start.

 

Plants that are best planted as seeds in the garden:

 

Cilantro

Dill

Parsley

Corn (don't bother growing in a backyard garden)

Beans

Peas

Bunching Onions

Carrots, Beets, Parsnips, and other roots crops

Lettuce & other greens

Chard

Cucumbers (if birds aren't an issue)

Sunflowers (I start these a couple weeks early but it's not really necessary)

Potatoes (buy seed potatoes and plant directly in the garden)

 

I know I'm forgetting some so let me know if you've got a question about a plant not mentioned.

Backyard Chicken Coop Construction and Design Details

It was three years ago that I was stumped trying to figure out a simple backyard-chicken-coop design. The plans in the books I found were either not detailed enough or too elaborate for a construction novice like myself. So I set out to design and build a coop on my own and in one of the great surprised of my life it turned out well. It even won a design contest over at the backyard chicken web site. Below are all the design and construction details. Now is a great time to get started with a flock of backyard chickens.

Above is the finished coop. Below is the description of how I got there.

1. Google Sketchup

I started by researching the different coops on this site and came up with a rough idea of what I wanted. My goal was to make a coop for five chickens with a minimum of 4 feet per bird inside the coop and 10 sq ft per bird in the run. Google Sketchup is a free download and with a little bit of a learning curve I came up with the concept below. When it came time to put it together I realized some of the obvious design errors, but it at least got me started. Go here for the full three dimensional sketchup I made pictured below. Just make sure you recognize that it is not a ready to build design. It is a detailed conceptual design that is quite a bit different from what we ended up with. The measurements are available if you upload the coop and use the measurement tool. When we set out to frame the walls I printed up four different perspectives on the coop and wrote in the measurements as a guide. Worked out great.

2. The Foundation is made of treated 4x4's. The dimensions of the foundation are 12ftx5ft. 12 feet is a standard lumber size and helps the rest of the framing come out nicely in 2 foot increments. We connected with foundation lumber with metal corner brackets on the inside of each corner and flat metal L brackets on the bottom. We leveled the existing ground which is already pretty sandy and compacted it. We decided not to use hardware cloth as a barrier on the bottom of the of the run floor. I like the idea of the chickens being able to scratch around and dig into the dirt floor without running into metal. For predator protection we placed large rocks around most of the outside of the foundation beams. I didn't realize how much the chickens would dig around the foundation and so I retrofitted the inside with smaller rocks around the inside of the foundation beams to keep them from messing up the level foundation. We're in a suburb without intense predator issues. It's hard to imagine a weasel hanging out anywhere nearby. Hopefully I won't have to update this with a tragic tale of chicken coop carnage.

 

 3. Framing

The frame is made of 2x4's with 12 foot headers and footers on the long edge. The short sides were framed to fit between the long walls. I used 4x4's for the corners of the indoor coop. I initially thought this was unnecessary but now that it is put together I'm glad for the extra two inches to hang the floor joists and beef it up. The long walls have a 2x4 every two feet on center except for the door, which is framed to size moving the 2x4 that is closest to the edge toward the end wall. I had the door ahead of time and simply placed it in the space to size the opening. Same thing with the window on the end - simply placed it in the middle of the cross beam and framed around it. I had an 8 inch elevation from front to back over 5 feet of distance. If I did it over I would probably add and inch or two to give the roof a little more slope. We used a framing nail gun and were able to put the pieces together in a little over an hour.

 4. Roof

The roof is made of three OSB boards set on standard length 8ft 2x4's attached every 2ft on center. Again, it was nice not having the cut the 2x4's or boards. I also chose not to notch the rafters where they meet the headers. It seems unnecessary with with metal brackets and they set on their just fine. I used two different kinds of metal brackets to attach the roof joists.(See below)

 

It took a little work to get everything square up there. It wasn't perfect but I kept reminding myself that it was a chicken coop. We topped the wood with paper, asphalt shingles and flashing. It was a lot of weight but was cheaper than some of the panel roofing material. If I could have afforded it I would have gone with 8 foot sheets of metal roofing material that would have fit nicely on the two foot spaced joists. The paper and shingles were free so that won out.  

5. Coop Floor

 
I used simple joist hangers to create the floor. I wasn't sure how high to make it and decided on 2 ft up from the bottom footer. I'm happy with the height.

6. Coop Walls

 
I used the make it up as you go method of construction which worked for me. I remember reading someone saying they wished they had started with a set design as opposed to coming up with their own. I had the opposite experience, enjoying feeling my way through it. The two windows are set directly across from each other with the clamps on the outside.

Notice above I originally tried to hang the door with hinges that were long triangles on both sides of the hinge. The screws went into the 4x4 timbers with this so I have to remove them and use hinges with a short rectangle on one side and the triangle on the door.

Notice above that the door is just a piece of OSB with 1x4's and 1x2's as braces. We'll see how it holds up over time. I don't think door design and manufacturing is in my future.

 7. Other Details

We used OSB boards for the walls and floor and then used cheap cedar planks as the siding. We used a random piece of OSB board to determine the size of the door. In retrospect I would have made it a little taller for easier entry. The roost is just inside the door so that will be the major poop clean out. We used .5 inch hardware cloth attaching it with staples. THe hardware cloth was a lot of work to get it to the right size to fit the spaces. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for the end wall because the spaces were more than 24 inches. I found a roll that was 36 inches wide and used that for the end. I was glad for the two foot dimensions of most of the framing for fitting the sheets of hardware cloth. Hanging the coop door was a little tricky but finally figured out the long hinges with a rectangular end worked. At first I thought it would be rickety because of the lack of lateral braces so I added the three angled 1x3's which beefed it up and then when walled in the coop, it really firmed it up. It doesn't move at all now.

8. The Nest

 

I boxed in the nest off the main coop to make more room and set it off. I was originally going to slope the roof of the nest but it works better for the kids to open the door out instead of up at an angle. I haven't seen the chickens roosting on top of it yet but I'm guessing that's why a sloped roof is desirable. I read up on coop size and with five chickens decided to go with on spacious nest instead of multiple small nests. I've read so many people say the chickens lay their eggs in one nest anyway. This one is big enough for two to nest at the same time. I didn't raise it off the coop floor as many recommend but I like the way it fits nicely into the frame under the window.

9. The Floor Cover

When I told the girls we were going to paint the floor they kept on wondering why we were going to paint the dirt. It took them awhile to figure out I was talking about the coop floor. I painted the floor and bottom 4 inches of the walls with a good sealer/primer. I didn't paint the whole inside partially because I didn't want the extra thing to do but also because I like warm feel of the wood as opposed to the stark white. I have to believe those small chicken brains find it more soothing than the white. We'll see how messy it gets. I bought three large ceramic tiles from the used builder supply and placed those directly under the roost which seems to work real well. I love how the floor sweeps right the door with no lip or anything to get over. This will make clean up extra easy. For the run so far I'm just going with the sandy soil with some shavings over it to keep the dust down. I'm glad for the nice roof to keep the water out. We've had several very large rain storms and the coop and run stayed dry and odor free.

 
10. Ventilation

The roof brace pictured below at the back top of the coop naturally left a one to two inch gap that I mentally tranformed from shoddy construction into ventilation. The coop is right next to a large maple tree so it gets plenty of shade and never really heats up during the day. I'm sure our greater challenge is going to be to button it up for the winter and keep it warm enough for the chickens. I'll seal this up as much as I need to for the winter while at the same time making sure there is enough ventilation. 

 

11. Paint and Coating

 
We painted the coop with Barn Red cheap paint from the local farm supply outfit. I coated the exposed lumber with Thompson's water seal "natural cedar" coating. I wish I would have done this before attaching the hardware cloth but it worked out. The painting was a great thing for the kids to participate in and get some ownership of the coop. I put an extra roost on the inside of the run.

 12. Finishing Touches

 The last challenge was figuring out how to secure the coop door on the outside. I finally figured out how to use a gate closer latch by putting it on reverse so instead of the rod sticking out away from the door it was set back, which enabled it to reach back to where the clamp was set. See pic below.

And my favorite part of the coop is the sign the kids made featuring pictures of all the chickens and the names of the neighborhood folks connected to the coop. Spelling is courtesy of my daughter who consulted us on the spelling of "Paradise" but was sure she new how to spell "Chicken".

Things to Change or Add:

Overall I'm very pleased with the design. It seems to really confirm what people say about the number of chickens and the space recommended. Four feet per bird in the coop is absolutely about right. We could probably add one more. Given that we are already out of compliance with local zoning laws I think we'll stay at five or under. I bought the large metal containers for food and water and I can tell they will be well worth the cost over time. Low maintenance is going to be key for us. I've talked to a lot of people who had a coop for a year and got rid of them because of the upkeep. I feel like the integrated design we used it going to keep us going for the long haul.

If I had the time I probably would have prepped the foundation a little bit more with crushed gravel as the underlay but it seems to be fine. One thing I may have to retrofit is the size of the door for the chickens to get int he coop. It's plenty tall but only about 9 inches wide. We'll wait and see just how fat the chickens get.

I am glad I took about two months of cogitating on different designs by looking over the site here and getting some books. No one seemed to have the exact right ready-made design for us but with enough time to think it over we ended up with one that fit the bill. This was the coop that was the primary inspiration for ours.

I spent about a month cruising Craigslist hoping that we could find a used coop. I actually found the playground coop from this site for sale for $500 but it was too small for five chickens. I realized along the way that given the transfer of disease among chickens it's probably best to start from scratch. It was a ton of work but the process with the kids participation bodes well for their ownership of taking care of the chickens.

I wasn't great a keeping track of costs but I'm guessing we came out in the $700 range. Hardware cloth, lumber and windows made up about 75% of the cost. We saved a lot on the roof using scraps. I was surprised that buying a new door at Lowes for $20 and two windows for $120 was not much more expensive that buying used. I did my best to source used stuff at local building supply stores but didn't have much luck.

 

Gardening Advice - Given limited space, what vegetables do you recommend I plant?

Another common question I get is, given a limited amount of space, what vegetables do I recommend people plant. A lot of my answer depends on the climate that you're gardening in and the length of the growing season.

In places like Houston, where I lived for awhile, the high humidity and mild temps allow for early and plentiful harvests of short-season vegetables like green beans, peas, summer squash, beans, and all kinds of greens. The challenge comes with long-season vegetables that require more days with fruit on the vine to ripen. The high humidity and abundance of insects in the heat of summer will wreak so much havoc that I would shy away from pumpkins and tomatoes that take longer to mature and focus on varieties that ripen over a short period of time. 

In the Inland Northwest where I garden it's the late and early freezes that we have to work around. We have a relatively short growing season that starts on May 15 with the traditional last-freeze date and concludes on September 15 with the traditional first-freeze date. That being said, the hot weather required for tomatoes, peppers, and other hot-season vegetables usually doesn't kick in until mid June. Last year my cucumber starts sat in the ground without growing until the beginning of July because it was so cool. 

Because of our limitations I usually look for varieties that require less time to mature. Take note that many of the heirloom varieties that are so tasty, like Brandywine tomatoes that take 85-100 days to mature, often have longer days to harvest. Many of the hybrids, like Early Girl tomatoes that mature in as little as 50 days, were developed to accommodate shorter growing season. The down side is that some of the hybrids don't taste as good. Early Girl tomatoes are, in my opinion, one such variety. It's always a balancing act but make sure you have enough time to get to harvest. Most seed packs include a number for "days to harvest" or "days to maturity and most plant starts have an information tab that also has this information.

Another key consideration is the growth habit of the particular plant variety you're growing. Most vegetable plants come in bush/determinate or vining/indeterminate growth habits. Bush varieties are compact and will only grow to a certain height and width and will stop setting fruit after awhile whereas indeterminate plants will continue to extend new growth and continue setting new fruit until freezing weather sets in. Going vertical with vining plants can be a great way to make use of limited space and bush varieties of pumpkins and summer squash can also be a good option for limited space.

One of my rules for selecting plants is to choose varieties are different than what is usually available at the grocery store. Instead of Russett potatoes plant Yukon Gold or French Fingerlings. Instead of iceberg-type lettuce plant a Mesculun mix or Red-Speckled Leaf varieties. Instead of planting Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins plant Wyatt's Wonder, one of my favorites. Instead of the old standard Black Beauty zucchini plant the Armenian or Golden varieties, that are much tastier. A big part of the fun of growing your own food is to try new foods.

In a limited space I would recommend the following:

1. Green beans - Bush or vining are easy to grow and provide abundant food. Stagger several plantings every two weeks for continual harvest. The Royal Purple variety is a fun one to grow. I usually prefer bush varieties.

2. Zucchini - Zucchini gets a bad wrap. We've all heard the one about locking your doors during the summer so people don't unload their unwanted zucchini on you, but we always plant a lot and have never had too much. The trick is to harvest them when they are small and tender, about the size of a banana. Don't let them grow to the size of a small tank.

3. Peas - My favorite is snap peas and they are best grown on a trellis or tepee.

4. Carrots - They don't need much room. Wait to harvest until the first freeze hits and they will be sweet and crunchy.

5. Kohl Rabi - These don't require as much room as cabbage and are tasty when they are baseball size. They get woody when they get much larger than that. I prefer the white variety.

6. Cucumbers - These can be grown on a trellis but, in my experience, are best grown on the ground where they have some room to roam. There are some bush varieties that work well too. Marketmores are good keepers but have thick skin. We grew a long skinny Chinese variety last summer that was awesome. I avoid pickling cucumbers because their window of opportunity to harvest before they turn into mini watermelons is too tight for my lazy harvesting habits.

7. Winter Squash (if you have room) - I love winter squash so I always make room for these. My favorites are Spaghetti Squash and Butternut. They also come in bush varieties.

8. Greens - Fill in the gaps of the garden with different greens. We love spinach, kale, and Mesculin Mix lettuce. 

9. Tomatoes - If you've only got room for one or two tomato plants I recommend Sun Gold cherry tomatoes. They are the best tasting, off-the-vine tomatoes I've ever had. Their small size means that short seasons won't be a problem and they will keep producing and growing until frost sets in. They need some room to spread out because they are an indeterminate variety.

Those are my recommendations and I would set the priority based on what you like to eat. I guess I should also fess up that you need some substantial space to do all of the above which leads me to another conversation I'd love to have about why you should make more room to grow vegetables. Maybe that can be the next post in this series. 

(The picture is from the Smithsonian collection of vintage seed packs and seed catalogs.)

Gardening Advice - How to turn your lawn into a vegetable garden

I'm getting a lot of calls and emails for gardening advice these days, especially from people turning a portion of their lawn into a raised-bed vegetable garden. Please send me pictures of your conversion projects so I can share them here on the blog.

At the end of Year of Plenty there are a series of appendices with practical advice on gardening, backyard chickens, and food preservation. Here's an excerpt from the book that offers my advice on turning a lawn into a vegetable garden. 

There are two ways to replace a lawn with garden plots:

1) Raised Beds: You can use raised beds constructed of two-by- eight douglas-fir lumber. Don’t use treated wood. You’ll likely get a good dose of arsenic and other nasty chemical with any vegetables you grow in a treated-wood raised bed. The ideal garden bed is about four feet wide by eight-to-ten feet long. You can assemble beds using 2.5 inch outdoor wood screws to connect the corners or use a four-by-four on the inside of each corner and secure the two-by-eights with nails or screws in the four-by-four. Build the beds, and place them directly over the lawn with landscape cloth covering the bottom of the bed where the grass is growing. Fill the bed with gardening soil and start gardening. At the end of the first growing season, use a pitchfork to loosen the soil and poke lots of holes in the fabric, which will make openings for future plant roots to go deep into the soil—don’t do that the first year or grass will grow up through the fabric. The book, All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew is a helpful resource for making the most of this kind of gardening.

2) Removing Sod and Creating Rows: The other strategy is to use a sod cutter to remove the grass. After removing the sod and stacking it somewhere to be used as compost for later, add composted manure to the soil and mix it together using a rototiller.

I recommend using a no-till method of gardening (after getting your garden bed finished) with designated gardening rows with permanent pathways. The theory is that you never step on the garden beds and stay on the path. The path gets packed down and the soil beds don’t which means you won’t have to rototill every year. That’s not just a nice break for you, it’s actually better for the garden. The mechanical vibrations from regular rototilling create a hardpan under the top six inches of tilled soil, which means roots can’t grow very deep, which in turn leads to a reduced yield. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Ed Smith is a good resource for understanding this method of gardening.

My friends and neighbors Bob and Bonnie Gregson, authors of the book, Rebirth of the Small Family Farm, helped complete my education on the art of no-till gardening. They recommend the technique of using a pitchfork. Here’s how it works: to prepare your garden beds for a new season, cover them with compost, then poke the soil repeatedly with the pitchfork moving it gently back and forth with each penetration of the soil. This helps in a couple of ways: the new compost falls into the holes, helping the compost get into the soil, and it aerates the soil. It does all of this without destroying the delicate ecosystem of worms and worm holes. The worms have been working all winter and it’s a shame to ruin all their hard work.

If you choose this method of gardening, I recommend covering the pathways with layers of nonglossy newspaper, covered by a generous layer of straw. This will limit the battle against weeds to the actual garden beds. Over time, the newspaper and straw will compost into the soil. Be careful not to use hay, which is full of seeds. Bark and pine straw are also not recommended because they take longer to compost.

Here's what our conversion of lawn into labyrinth looked like back in 2008.

Palouse Falls is Beautiful

Yesterday afternoon we went to Palouse Falls for the first time and it was a sight to behold.

Go here for more pictures from yesterday.