Today I spent the entire day down at the main garden. Truly a gift since that hasn’t happened since we first planted.

This is my Dad.  He is the Keeper of the Garden.  When I was a kid, Dad would come home from work, change out of his shirt and tie and head straight out into the garden.  I remember him begging us to help him pull weeds and haul water.  I hated it.  I didn’t care if the peas came directly out of the garden minutes before dinner.  To me, it just meant that I had to shell them… another chore.

It wasn’t until years later, living in Brooklyn and trying to feed my own child really good food, that I finally ‘got it’.  I wanted to make sure that our food wasn’t filled with toxins, and I missed the taste of a perfectly ripe, homegrown tomato.

So, I started a garden on my fire escape in Brooklyn.  First I started with herbs, then I moved on to tomato plants.  But growing a garden on a fire escape, while relatively pest free, still has it’s challenges.  The tomato plants started to perish, the bottom leaves were yellowing and getting spots.  I panicked and spent way too much time online researching tomato diseases.  I learned about the tobacco virus and late season blight and a host of others.  In the end, the answer was just that the confined space didn’t allow for good air circulation.  The plants, without the breathing room of wide open spaces, wilted and died.

I began to feel like those tomato plants.  There wasn’t enough breathing room for me in Brooklyn and I needed to grow things where there was… back home.  The very same place that I had felt was suffocating me over 10 years earlier, and left.  The next summer I started traveling upstate on the weekends just to care for a few tomato plants.  It wasn’t long before we were moving back home and building the farm.

My Dad had stopped gardening sometime around my teen years.  Life’s responsibilities began to push away the time and attention that he was able to give to his passion.  And, outside of my Dad, no one really cared about the gardens anymore.  It wasn’t long before the fields went fallow and the produce was all store bought.

Today I spent the day with my Dad.  We laughed while we watched my children spend the afternoon building a Fairy Mermaid Scarecrow with their aunt and cousin.  He proudly showed me the plastic bin of socks that he’d stolen out of Mom’s laundry room to use to tie up tomato plants. He gave me the tour through the plants pointing out the failures as well as the proud successes.  We came to the tomato plants, and there were the same yellowing spotted branches at the bottom that I had encountered on my fire escape.

“What do you think?,” he asks me, putting my authority above his own. ” I read about this tomato blight in the newspaper… but I don’t think that’s it.  I think it is just too wet, not enough sun and air circulation.”

“Yeah Dad.  I think you might be right.”

Thanks Dad.

UPDATE:

Despite the intense amounts of rain (yes, it is raining right now… again… ) the plants all seem to be doing well.  Everything should be about 50% bigger, but we’ll take what we can get.  Let’s just pray for a late frost at this point.

The ‘above ground pond’ is leaking.  Brian and I called an emergency Koi pond planning meeting.  This means that I go out and pull up a handful of fresh herbs from the garden and he mixes them into a cocktail.  We sip our creation and wait for inspiration.  Of course, it came… right between sips of our pineapple sage, spearmint vodka lemonade.  Thinking about taking the old water tanks in the basement and turning them into a pond/fountain.  Luckily it is raining again (Luckily? Did I just say that?) and the pond can’t possibly empty out faster than it is getting filled.  Hey look!  There’s that silver lining!

Finally, this is the last task that Dad and I did in the garden today:

Time to go make pickles!  Night!

Tags: above ground pond, blight, Brooklyn, Dad, Family, Farming, fire escape, Gardening, Koi, main garden, rain, tomato plants

Good morning.

Today is my birthday. My first birthday wish was to write a new farm blog.  Ok, second… good coffee was the first.

I just noticed that the plastic is still on the window of the chicken shack for insulation.  Normally this would have been removed to make sure that the shack didn’t get too warm and was well ventilated.  However, this really isn’t a concern this summer.  If anything it has kept the damp out.  As my 2 year old says way too often these days, “It’s raining?  AGAIN?”

So, given that today is the day that I entered into the world, let’s celebrate the new loves that have entered into the farm!

Introducing Michael, Jermaine, Tito, Janet, Chocolate Pudding and… I Don’t Know!  The Accidental Farm Koi!

No, they don’t live in this bucket.  Actually, when I went to purchase Chocolate Pudding (who, incidentally isn’t a Koi but a Black Moor.  Terribly inconsiderate of me to mislabel like that.) and I Don’t Know, the people at PetSmart were grilling me about tank size.  Gotta love people that take their job seriously.
No, they live here:

Think the people at PetSmart would have believed me if I told them that the fish were going to live in an ‘above ground pond’?  This is Brian’s creation.  The “most redneck idea he’s ever had”, as quoted by him.  It started out as an experiment in catch water collection.  Now it is a budding farm enterprise, complete with Japanese livestock and water flora.  Oh, and did I mention that the 2X4s holding it together are buckling and the tarp is sweating through?  Hear that?  That’s the sound of the excavator coming down the driveway to dig the pond that we hadn’t anticipated. Sing it with me now!  A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T-A-LLLLLLLLL FARM!  Hey, at least there aren’t tiny Nigerian goats eating my gardens right now.

Seriously, I’m pretty excited about the pond.  It will be an extra source of water, perhaps we can figure out a way to raise Koi for sale and even figure out a way to produce an aquaculture system from it all.  Maybe hydroponic veggies?  I’m all for the funky, far out farm animals.  But they have to earn their keep.  No free rides here, Baby.

Next up: Ziggy The Wonder Dog!

Ziggy is the black lab on the right.  The grandpa on the left is my baby, Graham Guiness Cook.  In case you didn’t know this, he was named Graham because he’s “a cracker dog!”  Still chuckle over that one.  Graham is 9 years old and our first baby.  He is getting up there in age, kinda like his owners, and it was time to consider getting another friend for our farm.  Kills me even to type words that imply he will be gone some day.  Anyway, I did NOT want a puppy.  Especially since I’m potty training the 2 year old.  She gets priority.  So, when our friend Brian Daigle asked if we would take over the care of his dog… his already trained, leaving puppydom, loves children … dog then we could not say no.  Ziggy is really happy.  We’ve taken walks, he’s free range about the yard, has a new doggie best friend and kid cuddles… yeah, he’s happy. There really are no accidents.

Today, provided the weather is good, I need to get into the hive. I so love my bees.  I love beekeeping.  I love the community of it.  I love the beauty with which their cohesion and complimentary existence flows.  I love the smell of honey and warm wax that floats up out of the comb.  I love having to test the smoke against my bare wrist, just like sampling a baby bottle, to make sure that the smoke isn’t too hot for them. I even love seeing their tiny little faces all poking up and looking at me, which tells me they are getting pissed and I need to use a puff of smoke.  But I would be lying of I said that they didn’t scare me to death.

I hate being scared.  I hate feeling exposed and raw and vulnerable.  I know it challenges me and makes me a better person in the end.  I hate feeling lost and out of control.  And helpless.  I hate helpless.

As I was typing this, Merry has broken out into a rash and has a suspicious looking bite mark on her back. We will be visiting the pediatrician this morning.  This past week my sister was diagnosed with Lyme’s disease and has Bell’s Palsy as part of the fallout.

Beauty is buried within the moments of fear.  I believe it is up to us to dive into that fear and swim towards the beauty.  Doesn’t make the water any warmer though, does it?

For my birthday, I want you all to pray for the beauty.  That you celebrate the day and when the moments of fear fall upon you, you gather your strength, take a deep breath and swim towards the beauty.

While I was examining Merry’s rash and bite, for the first time, Merry used her potty. There are gleeful shouts as the girls race about the house celebrating her big girl status.  Time to go.  I must celebrate the beauty.

Tags: above ground pond, beauty, Bees, fear, goldfish, Graham, Koi, Ziggy