Rebranding

Hiya folks. If any of you are still with me, you've noticed I've been away for a while. I could say that life got busy, I was working full time, pregnant, and then a mommy, the whole usual story. It would all be true, but not the true reason I left.

I felt like a bit of a fraud.

I felt like I had no new, meaningful things to talk about. The byline suggesting I was working on acquiring a farm. Lets face it, if I win the lotto tomorrow it's first on my hit list, but otherwise it's gonna be decades at least. I wasn't doing much in the way of using my homesteading skills where I was. I was living way north and nowhere permanent to do anything meaningful, I abandoned 2 sets of gardens, and a beautiful compost bin before getting anything to show for either investment of time, effort and money. Food made me ill, I really didn't want to talk about that. So I left.

Now I'm back. Both on the blog, and back in the city. I've been up to all kinds of good things that I keep thinking would be fun to blog about, and thought it was about time I made a come back, rather than just sighing whimsically while taking pictures of "boot sauce" that will never see the light of day outside of my own camera.

 Cathartica farm sounded misleading. I don't have a farm. And there are no Cathartica or Buckthorn trees growing here, so it was just kinda silly. So, Cu Dona Valley.

Cu Dona is gaelic, it means bad dog. She isn't really a bad dog, but she does have moments of naughtiness. Usually it means I've failed her, she needs more exercise than she's gotten and turned her sharp little mind and boundless energy to other pursuits. I call her my cu dona lovingly. The "valley" part is a bit of self deprecating humour. Through years of neglect, when all the neighbours were studiously adding fill and topsoil to their yards and building them up with soil retaining grasses, the lot at this poor house was growing a smattering of scraggly weeds and gradually becoming the low point in the neighbourhood. It floods in the spring, or really, any good rain. We're working on it.

So, we're in an elderly house in disrepair with a shabby, ill kempt yard, and trying to turn it into something beautiful. Already we've done much cosmetically (painted the kitchen cabinets and given them new hardware, painted.... well, every wall in the house, replaced some of the flooring, totally redone the bathroom, added new window dressings etc) in the house, taken out some old and dangerous trees that were damaged by the ice storms last winter (the sawdust helped sop up some of the lake, and the grass seemed to like to grow in it? Which I wouldn't have guessed, but am happy about). We've temporarily mended the fence and will replace it next year. Built two whole new walls for the leaning, leaky, garage and put a new roof on it. Should be sound and tight through the winter. We've built 3 raised garden beds that are 3x10, and a compost bin, and I've planted red currant, blueberry and rhubarb plants. This year I harvested roughly 50 lbs of produce from my garden. Not a bad start, but not great either. As I sit here shivering and listening to the wind howl through the place, I mentally note that windows and doors are up next on the to-do list.

I could say more, but its late and, well, I'm a mommy now, and Connor likes to wake up at the crack of dawn, so I better shuffle myself off to bed.

If you've stuck with me from Cathartica Farm, bless you, and if you're new to Cu Dona Valley, welcome and I hope I write some stuff that makes you think. I promise not to sound as preachy as those last few posts. Yikes, I blame pregnancy. It's weird man.

Gardens!!

So one of the days last week that I was at work and my wonderful hubby had some time on his hands, he built me these!!

It's not going to be a whole terrible lot of space, but each box is 3x6, and that adds up to a lot more garden than I had last year! As of today, both beds are covered in a thick mulch of dead grass I spent the last couple weeks raking up out of the lawn. I'll add any fall leaves that accumulate over the next month or so, and then staple some burlap over the frames to hold it all in place and keep it from blowing away. Then come spring, it should be broken down enough to turn into the earth and make for good planting, and help add some air space into our densely packed, clay-ish soil. This is the plan anyways, we shall see. 

Coming up soon- compost bin. We figured the best we could do is just go ahead and try it. If the bears bother it and it becomes a liability, well then so be it, but in the mean time we're gonna give it a go. 

Folks, This Ain't Normal!

This is the book I was reading this week, and it was incredible. I had heard of Joel Salatin, I had a rough idea of what he does even. Better grass makes better animals, so feed your grass, and then feed grass to your herbivores. That's really all I know. I'd heard a couple of the catch phrases he often uses, like salad bar beef, and pigerator pork, but I didn't really know what was behind these little slogans. What made these food animals so special? I didn't really know, but I thought it was about time I found out.

I loved this book. I thought I was pretty hip to a lot of the issues he would be talking about in his book. How cheap commodity corn and soy are the ruination of our food system, and how we look for increasingly bizarre ways to process and recombine these products into different "food items" to keep feeding the coffers, so we can keep subsidizing cheap commodity corn. How local food is important. Yeah yeah, I got it, I read the 100 mile diet (another great read, fyi). I was wrong. Yes, I have been introduced to a lot of these topics, but I've been introduced to them largely as a consumer. It was really interesting to hear about them from the other side of the fence, the farmer's side. Sure, we the eaters say rah rah, give us local food, grr to the industrial system, why is everyone so lazy, why don't more people provide food on a more reasonable scale near where we all live? It made me think to hear about it from the other side. How fear, and paranoia and a lot of mutual stroke jobs go into creating systems that require close monitoring to keep us "safe" and governmental agencies that institute prohibitive and expensive policies for regulating food that the little guys can't afford to comply with. And since it's illegal not to, they either cave to the pressure, build the infrastructure and turn into an industrial food monoculture like everyone else, or get out of dodge and leave the farm. It's not sloth, it's fear.

And the way that polyface farm is run is innovative, yet ancient. Uses new technology and old, old ideas of normal. The basic premise of the farm is to mimic natural patterns as closely as possible to express the natural behaviours of each part of the food chain, and ensure the greatest health of each element of each species through what they all offer to each other. Cows move about in mob grazing pens that stimulate maximum healthy growth of the grass, weeds and herbs (the "salad bar") and restart the carbon sequestration cycle with each pass. Chickens follow the cows, scratching apart the cow pats to keep down on parasite and insect infestation by eating the larvae growing in the poop. This gives the chickens a protein rich diet that helps them to thrive. In the winter, those cows need to be kept in a barn, but they're kept on deep bedding that gets layered on throughout the winter. It stays smelling great, and then in the spring when the cows go out to pasture, the pigs are introduced who hungrily go after fermenting corn in the bedding. This turns it, aerating it (hence, pigerator) and helping it break down into compost, that goes back out to fertilize the market garden and pastures. This is a vast simplification of the vast  network of interconnected, looping synergies and symbiotic relationships that makes up polyface farms, but know that I will forever rethink my definition of "proper farming". If you want to know more about his farm (and you should!) please pick up this book, or one of his others, such as "holy cows, hog heaven", or "Everything I want to do is Illegal". I'm waiting on the former right now, should be here from chapters.ca by Tuesday, but in that sad lull I feel between books, that feels like forever.

It was a lot of book to wrap the noodle around. I love reading books like this, and like the omnivore's dilemma (which does actually talk about Joel and Polyface farms now that I think about it...) and the 100 mile diet, but they take some time to process. To really let the message sink in. To take the facts and figures and give them the time to penetrate my reality (because lets face it, numbers are prone to roll off me like water off a duck's back). I find myself reading chunks, starting to go cross eyed (not quite literally) and then needing to take a break to process and turn over what I've learned before I'm ready to take in another chunk. Much like trying to digest real, nutrient dense food rather than cheese doodles. This isn't a fluffy beach read. But it's a read that matters.

Crazy Weather...

Thursday was hot. I didn't check the weather network, so I don't know how hot, I just know that I couldn't find anything to wear that fit my growing bump, and was loose enough and light enough to keep me cool. The kind of day you drink gallons of water and just feel wilted. We went to bed with all the windows open and just a sheet. A cold front moved in over night, and I woke up shivering hard. Despite bundling up, I had a hard time getting warm all day. By last night, the temperature had gone down to almost zero! Now, it's back up in the low teens, and raining. Neither of these extremes is particularly uncomfortable really, but when it yo-yo's like that it seems harder to acclimatize to. Hard to choose what to wear for the day. I love when the temperature slowly creeps down, and you can feel fall slowly encircle us with her fingers. This is like being plucked out of bed in the middle of a nice dream, then dropped on your head!

Real Food, Real Wastes.

If you eat a lot of processed, pre-packaged foods, not only do you feel crappy, but with the packaging, and the production processes, you pretty much are left feeling like you raped the Earth (or at least, I am). But if you make a lot of whole, real foods from scratch, you end up with a lot of totally different kinds of waste, and again, at least where I currently live, you're left feeling like you raped the Earth. 

I've always lived in a town with a municipal compost program in place. At the very least since I was old enough to be concerned, and conscious of the problems. It just goes into the nifty little bin they provide, and I mean everything, butter, cheese, meats, all kinds of food waste, gets dumped into a bigger bin when it's full, and carted off on garbage day. Then once or twice a summer, they dump a big pile of black gold in the centre of town during the farmers market, and you show up with buckets, barrows or pick up trucks to cart off what you need or want for your garden. Beautiful. 

No such program exists here. In fact, this town doesn't even recycle. All waste is garbage waste, it goes in a black bag at the curb and gets carted off to goodness knows where, to sit and putrefy, and stink in its little black prison for lengths of time unknown. Even things that would naturally decompose can't do so trapped in the little black wrappers of doom. This bothers me.

Back in the spring, I acquired a double handful of red wrigglers, and set them up in a bin full of paper shreddings with a bowl full of kitchen scraps and thought gee whiz isn't this something! I'm keeping this paper, AND this food waste out of the landfill. I was quite pleased with myself, and I suppose in the end, any little bit makes a difference. The problem is the scale. At the rate my worms consume things, I was only able to put one small bowl (pictured above) of kitchen waste in each week. And I was warned not to add anything greasy, or any meat or dairy products. If you're the kind of person with an active lifestyle, who eats out a lot, who's main contributions to the compost pile are coffee grinds and paper towels, this might work out for you. It wasn't a scale that was compatible with our volume of kitchen waste. Each week, I could easily fill that bowl at least thrice with vegetable stems, ends and peelings, fruit stems, seeds, cores and skins, and the occasional piece of produce that ripens too fast or we open to find rotten on the inside. We try to avoid this, but where we live, the moment food hits the back room of our grocery store, it's already, at the very least, 5 days from harvest. Things like bananas are picked green to give them a longer shelf life, potatoes, carrots, squash and apples store pretty well, but tomatoes, berries, peaches, spinach and some other more delicate produce just don't keep very long. So we have some spoilage. Add to this a filter full of coffee grounds at least once a day (it's our vice, don't judge), some tea bags, and soft paper products (paper towels, facial tissues... I personally think in most cases a dish cloth, tea towel or hanky can serve, but hubby likes the paper towel), and you're looking at a significant amount of food waste. Not to mention the things our worms just can't handle. What about that paper towel I used to grease my baking dish? How about bones, and meat? what about the mouldy bits that form sometimes on our cheese and need to be trimmed away? I'm a little unclear about bread. We're not great at eating up the crusty ends, especially if they're sliced too thinly, so can those go to the worms or not?

I hoped that as my little colony got established it would grow and allow for greater volumes of foods to be stashed away in there, but this hasn't seemed to be the case. They aren't eating appreciably more than they were back in the spring. I would need three or four colonies that size, just to handle the waste from my own kitchen. I just don't have that kind of indoor space! 

I've been looking at composting, but everyone I've talked to discourages it due to the problems with nuisance bears in the area. Now, these bears, for a very brief period in spring and fall (when they're thin and hungry, and when they're trying to avoid being thin and hungry next year) will pillage the garbage bins with great delight. Now lets not forget, everything goes into these garbages. They reek to high heaven, and if I can smell it at the curb from my front door, you can bet the bears can smell it for miles around. I haven't heard of there being problems with bears preying upon bird feeders, or getting into storage sheds for pet food, or really being destructive towards anything except the smelly, ripe, garbage boxes. 

Surely, if I make sure to pad all food wastes with ample carbonaceous material (dead grass, dead leaves, paper, cardboard, sawdust, straw etc) and bury them properly into the pile, the stink shouldn't be that attractive? Especially if I'm still not adding the meats and animal products that they would find especially attractive? What if I refrained from adding the attractive food (like fruit for example) during the lean times, and stuck to just junk mail, paper towel and coffee grounds while the bears are prowling and hungry? Surely they wouldn't be interested in the pile then? We're putting a fire pit in the back yard. Wouldn't adding the wood ash help keep the smell down too? I could release my worms into said compost pile, letting them help break things down faster, and add all kinds of beneficial micronutrients to the compost coming back out. Because lets face it, in my new one bedroom tiny home, I don't have room for even the current worm colony inside of the building, and they won't survive a Moosonee winter in a rubbermaid tote. 

It's all food for thought I suppose, but like farmers who have "manure problems" (hello!? This is garden gold! The key to sustainable land usage! Not a problem!), I can't help but feel like I'm squandering resources, and creating bigger problems every time I put my food wastes out in the trash. I'll keep doing my research, but I can't help but think that a few laying hens would make short work of nearly all the kitchen wastes I could throw at them. I suppose then I'd have bigger problems with keeping predators from eating my chickens!

Good luck to all JBAS applicants!

Well, it's 2013's hiring season for the James Bay Ambulance Service (JBAS), most of you (maybe all of you?) will be done your testing by now. For those of your who made it through, I can't wait to meet you all and get to know you over the next couple of months. If you need anyone to show you around, or just a friendly face in this cold northern town, just drop me a line and we'll get together. 

If you didn't make it through this time take heart. There's always next time, and maybe now you've got a better idea of the things you need to brush up on. You'll get there one of these days. Whether it's here or another service, you'll make it through. 

Moccasins

I was saying to Andrew that I'd really like to get a good pair of moccasins before this winter. My feet are always cold, and with a "when in rome" mentality, I think it would be neat to have a pair of moccasins while living in the far north, just a hearty stone's throw from a reserve. But a pair of hand crafted moccasins around here runs somewhere between $80 and $120. I understand why, and I don't begrudge them for charging that for something so tough to sew and expensive in materials. Right now though, I feel like that's money I could be putting to better uses. Then I started really thinking about it. I've got a chunk of chocolate brown suede that was given to me by a friend sitting around gathering dust, and I even have a nice, dark rabbit pelt that I could use to trim a pair of moccs... hmmm...

 I drew the template for the moccasins from an online guideline. I wish I had left an even larger margin around the edges of my foot than it called for though, then the slippers would have taller sides on them. As it is, they'll be very low. Oh well.

 This is what that same template looks like cut out in the suede.

 Here I've sewn up the toe puckers and heel cup. All that's left to do is add the uppers (called vamps) that I want to do some beadwork on first, and then the rabbit trim around the edges. Or maybe I'll just add a cuff of the same suede to add a bit of height to the sides, and save the rabbit for another pair. I do have enough suede for another two or three pairs. I might put a liner fabric in them, or I might not. Haven't decided yet.

And this is a close up of the stitching along the heel cup. Pretty happy with how they're turning out so far!! Stitching suede by hand though is no easy task. It's not bad through just one layer, but with a heavy needle, and doubled, thick thread, it's a bit of a bugger to muscle through two layers. I've been wearing my leather gardening gloves to help me grip the needle and help protect my sensitive finger tips. Really not a project for the faint of heart, or upper body strength! Any leather stitching I've done in the past has been through pre punched holes, but the suede really didn't seem thick enough to warrant it. Now I'm not so sure!