La Belle's Hobby Farm: The Art and Agony of Waiting

Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout.

~ Morihei Ueshiba

T

he most difficult part of being a gardener is the waiting.  You plant, you weed, you mulch, you water, you weed, and you wait.

I hate waiting.

Every evening, when I water my garden, I give an encouraging pep talk to my plants, coo to the two rabbits that have moved in to the meadow next door [which means soon there will be a passle of them!], and peek into the pot that holds my sage seeds.  Nothing.

As a GenXer, I'm softer then past generations: expecting everything to upload, download, convert, revert, turn on, turn off, in under a millisecond. But living at that speed isn’t real.  It isn’t sustainable. It isn’t healthy ~ either for us or the earth.

And certainly not for the garden.

To produce the miracle and magic of good fruit takes time.  The roots need to sink deep, grow strong, find their anchor.  The routine of watering, weeding and mulching can seem boring at times,  a waste of time, money, and effort, when you don’t see results right away.  But stop the routine and you reap nothing but withered stems and sterility.

Yes, it is difficult waiting in the garden.  But there is so much to learn here in the shade and the sun and rain and the drought.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

What are you waiting for?

La Belle's Hobby Farm: The Tommy Toes Are In!!

Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it. 
~ Author Unknown

I

should write a book about my hobby farm experience.  I would call it: “How NOT to Hobby Farm” and it would be the Dave Barry version of gardening. My landscape dude did not come as planned on Saturday.  The carburetor on his rototiller was leaking.

I didn’t even know rototillers had carburetors! 

Nor did I know that landscape dudes don’t check their equipment until the day they are supposed to be working; no, make that the hour they were supposed to be already unloading said rototiller and munching up my soil.

Roar.

That roar is understated.  I was not understated when I called up Landscape Dude #2 with the sexy Australian accent (what? I failed to mention that before. My bad.  Yes, very sexy accent.) I practically cried on the phone.

I think I scared him.  He didn’t even return my call.  No sexy Aussie to till my land.

Sigh.



In their real bed at last!!

Meanwhile, in tiny nursery beds, my tommy toes were wilting.  So against all conventional  wisdom and my own better judgment, I dumped out three bags of organic mushroom compost and planted the majority of them in the old flower bed, behind the basil plants (which as still going strong!), and in front of the mulberry weed.  This little patch has very rich soil and gets sun, but not eight hours of it, and it’s in part shade, thanks to said mulberry weed. 
  
At least they are in the ground, and not lost to the tiny plastic bins that were quickly becoming their caskets.

All I can do now is water them in the morning and in the evening and pray to St. Isidore, the patron of farmers, for a harvest.

This coming weekend, I look for a spot for the cucs and the watermelon.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Want to take bets on whether these guys make it through the Virginia summer and actually produce tomatoes?

New Series and a Poll

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. 

~ E.L. Doctorow

I

t has been seven months since I moved back to the family homestead.  It has been an interesting journey so far and it isn’t over yet!  I have been jotting down notes, thoughts, rants, and raves since September, but I haven’t shared them yet.

Part of the reason is that I am still processing things.  But life is about processing ~ it doesn’t end until our life does.  Sometimes part of processing is sharing that process itself with others, receiving encouragement and respectful and loving criticism, and giving encouragement and hope to another’s journey.

The other reason is I haven’t been sure where the proper forum for sharing those thoughts and lessons learned is.  This blog is mainly about art and culture, which can cover a broad number of topics ~ fine art, performing art, food, manners, poetry, etc. 



Spring has Sprung! Lilacs in my backyard - photo by Mikaela D.

But sharing my experiences in choosing to move back with the family and the trials and joys that go with that choice, as well as trying to realize my dream of starting an organic and sustainable hobby farm ~ is that an art?  It could certainly fit in with the discussion of culture. I know several bloggers whose passions led them to create different blogs: Joanna over at The Art of Everyday Wonder, for instance, has a couple of blogs that cover related but different subjects.

Now, I don’t write just for the heck of it.  Ok, maybe I do ~  I can’t not write.  However, I don’t share my writing just for the heck of it.  You, dear readers, are the reason I post.  And since I can’t decide, and this journey is too crazy and fun not to share, I’m going to leave it up to you!  On the right, you will see that I created a poll.  It will be open until April, Friday the 13th [mwhahahaha!] 

Vote early and vote often!  And get your dead relatives and friends to vote too!

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Heritage Turkeys: A Breed to be Thankful For

Cooking is one of the oldest arts and one which has rendered us the most important service in civic life.
~ Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

‘Tis the season for eating. Starting with today’s groaning buffet table ~ loaded with a perfectly basted turkey, butter and cream mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, bacon-sauteed green beans and pumpkin pie ~ there is something about this time of year that makes even this serious foodie extra gleeful.

And this in spite of developing an intolerance for dairy products of any kind! But just because I can’t eat it, doesn’t mean I no longer cook it. After all, a real chef does not live to cook just for herself ~ although I confess there have been times I have bought and prepared and eaten in luscious solitude some delectable items that most of my friends would not have appreciated fully.

Generally speaking, however, this time of year is about practicing the culinary arts in order to feed others. Honestly, I can’t get that excited over a melt-in-your-mouth tenderloin unless someone else is there to eat and moan over it with me. Good eating is a lot like love or sex ~ meant to be shared with someone in order to reach maximum pleasure and emotional health and growth. Doing either alone is just. . .well, sad.

So what did you serve today? Turkey? Ham? Roast goose? A Filipino friend of mine and his family had salmon for their Thanksgiving dinner. My family usually has both a turkey and a ham. As a foodie who is also into sustainable and organic living, I constantly research and read up on sustainable agriculture and what products to avoid in the supermarket when I can’t buy from local farms. This year, I found out some horrific facts about turkeys. And although you have already bought yours and are busy consuming it, I hope that you might think twice before cooking a turkey for Christmas.

Have you heard of Heritage Turkeys? Aha! Didn’t think so. Neither had I ~ until I read an article in the Boston Herald online. It profiled a couple of Heritage Turkey farmers in the northeast and provided some interesting and horrifying facts about the turkeys that will be gracing the majority of American tables today.

“The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, an organization devoted to preserving historic breeds of farm animals, defines a heritage turkey as one that grows slower, lives longer and — perhaps most importantly — can mate on its own without human intervention, something the mass-produced turkey can no longer do.”

Wait. Did you just say that the turkey we are eating today can’t mate on its own anymore? That’s right. Since the 1960s, the Broad Breasted White turkey has been genetically engineered to produce large amounts of white meat in a short amount of time: Broad Breasted Whites mature in half the time of Heritage breeds. And since they are mass-produced, most aren’t organic or free range. Well, how could they be ~ they can no longer run or fly, much less mate!

Forgive me, I have a great respect for science, but not when it plays with my food. An animal whose very genetic make-up has been messed around with so that it is essentially trapped in its own body and can’t even reproduce on its own is just plain wrong, not to mention unpalatable. Fortunately, a stalwart minority of turkey breeders were rescued from the Matrix and are now working hard to bring back the Heritage breeds: Narragansett, Bourbon Red and the Standard Bronze to name a few. Because of them, these breeds are experiencing resurgence.

But the real test is in the eating. I for one will be ordering a heritage turkey for my 2011 Thanksgiving feast and I hope you will too. Visit Heritage Turkey Foundation, Heritage Food USA and the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy for more information.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oremus pro invicem,
~ Mikaela