Naturally raised, grass-fed free-range beef from Deck Family Farm, on a bed of our own kale, topped with homegrown tomato, homegrown onion, ketchup Teri made from last year's tomatoes, and a slice of our own goat cheese.

Breakfast today: fairy tale eggplant, kale, onion, bell pepper, yellow & red cherry tomatoes, squash flower, and sweet corn omelet (all veggies picked minutes before cooking, and of course using eggs and milk from our critters)

Did you make it this far? Good reader! You get CUTE GOATS!
 

Drama Queen is looking like a football – she's due to kid this next week!

Here in Western Oregon (temperate rainforest with brittle summers and 8-9 months of cool, rainy weather), the most respected gardening expert is probably Steve Soloman, founder of Territorial Seeds and author of the excellent books "Gardening When it Counts" and "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades."

I tend to follow his advice on most things, but he feels that raised-bed intensive gardening, lasagna/no till, and similar methods that leave mounds of material lying above the ground through the Winter are unsuitable for a climate that rarely gets cold enough to interrupt the life cycles of insects and fungi; piles of mulch can give them a place to pass the winter and get a big head start on the sort of fragile things we like to grow (ie, most domesticated plants.)

I have ignored this advice in parts of our garden for 4 years, and so far the non-tilled beds (I'll describe my method below) have had the lushest growth and heaviest production, with no more insect damage and much less powdery mildew damage than the in-ground ones. I think the elevation of the beds and the fact that there's no uncomposted garden refuse in or on them is responsible for the lack of powdery mildew – which seems unstoppable here; top-water a squash 3 or 4 times and its days are numbered.

 

Zucchini and delicata squash plants in raised bed
(haybales hidden by the lushness)

Here's how we got the big, lush plants pictured. Not exactly no-till, more like one-till and a little mixing. The items marked "optional" are things that I haven't done in every bed, but which I think helped.

Creating the beds:

• mark off a 2-4 foot wide rectangle (length is dictated by need, materials on hand, or time. width is determined by your height and flexibility – you want to never, ever step inside the beds, because that would compact the nice fluffy soil you're making)

• put down a couple of inches of finished compost and a couple of inches of straw, alfalfa stems, etc.

• put down some sand (optional – done because we have heavy clay soil)

• add any other amendments you want to use. layers of soil are good for texture and jump-starting the microbial life.

• mix the above ingredients together a bit with a spading fork (optional; you can lasagna it, but I find just dumping and mixing it easier than doing lots of thin layers)

• use spading fork to incorporate this mix into the top 12" of soil (optional, worms and things will do it eventually)

• surround the prepared area with old hay bales to make a rectangular bowl. Straw may last longer and be cheaper in some places, but contributes much less in the way of nutrients.

• in the fall, when the rains are beginning, fill the box made by the hay bales with a good balanced mix of compostables (we use pooped/peed goat bedding)

• mix the compostables with the spading fork on a schedule that lets the rain moisten the top layer (it's amazing how much water you can pour on a pile of hay without wetting it more than an inch or two deep!) You could also just add thin layers, waiting for each to moisten before adding the next.

• once it's moistened enough to compost nicely ("like a well wrung out sponge"), cover with something to keep it from getting too soggy (tarps, sheets of wood or metal, etc)

• check periodically throughout the winter to make sure moisture levels are good

• turn compost every few weeks (optional, depending on climate, materials, depth, etc)

• by spring, I have a nice fluffy, rich, well-drained bed with very few weed seeds

Maintenance:

• when finished harvesting from a bed or portion of a bed, remove all the stalks, leaves, etc. down to the soil level and send them to the compost. Make sure you have a really hot compost for these things!

• spread a few inches of finished compost, and 6"-24" of good compostables, and lightly mix (or not) with the fluffy soil

• control moisture level through the rainy season with covers

• a few weeks before planting, gently mix the new compost with the older stuff beneath it (if you haven't been turning the whole thing periodically)

• put in only plants whose family has not occupied that bed for at least a year or two. Longer rotations are even safer

• eventually, the bales will break down into some nice compost. rake that into the bed and stir it in, and put a new bale down to hold the bed together

It's not as complicated as I probably made it look there. Here's the Cliff Notes version:

• lay hay bales to surround a rectangular area 2-4 feet wide

• dump in a bunch of crap (literal or otherwise)

• get it moist

• cover it

• uncover and give a stir a few weeks before planting

• repeat add-crap-and-stir at the end of each growing season

• rotate crops by family or pathogen/insect vulnerability

Caveat: this rich, fluffy stuff drains and evaporates moisture faster than our clay soil during our 2-3 dry months. It helps to plant close enough that there's a good solid canopy shielding the soil from the sunlight, but these beds still need more frequent watering.

Figuring out how closely to space your seeds/starts can be tough, because things can get HUGE in these beds. Right now, we have a brandywine tomato plant at the end of one that's about 6 feet tall, 5 feet in diameter, and very lush:
 

If I had used the "normal" spacing for that tomato plant, it would be the sort of hopeless tangle that our cherry tomatoes have beome in similarly rich soil.

These fluffy beds are especially good for potatoes and other things that struggle to grow in hard soil. There's a new one waiting for November's garlic planting, and we may try putting in some root veggies to overwinter, though it's late for that.

Here's a bed of canteloupe, delicata, and corn planted more conventionally, at ground level but with a LOT of compost mixed in:
 

It's about as lush as the raised bed, but took several times as much effort, and is suffering a bit from the powdery mildew.

This Hopi red dye amaranth was grown in similar conditions. It doesn't actually tell you a darn thing about the techniques I'm using, but it's too beautiful to leave out:
 

Well, cute goats we've got:

…but the news these days is mostly happening in the garden.

(There will be more cute goats later, promise)

Spring dragged on cool and rainy until well into June this year. Some plants loved it, and some plants not so much ("Tomatoes looks great for early July! Too bad it's mid-August.")

Cabbage has been one of the happy ones:

Peas did great too – grew up over the top of the trellises, produced nicely, and helped keep us too busy to take photos of 'em. With the difficulty of picking each pod at the perfect moment and then processing them all, one by one each plant matures a hidden pod or two and starts dying down.

In the past few years, we didn't shell and save so many peas, instead eating most of them fresh when they were half grown. Sweet and delicious, pod and all. The plants kept producing until we got tired of picking peas, and I suspect that we had a much better labor-to-nutrients ratio that way.

We've dabbled in small corn plots a couple of times, in heavy clay soil with fish juice fertilizer, with unimpressive results. This year we're trying two plots that have copious amounts of composted goat stuff worked in a foot and a half deep. This one is popcorn (name escapes me, probably heirloom):

This one is a hybrid production variety of sweet corn. Not what I'd usually grow, but someone offered me a tray of 100 five-inch-long starts and I'm sure looking forward to seeing how fast it can get from the stalk to the grill to the butter.

Both of those corn plots, assuming Summer doesn't completely fizzle out early, should provide a few nice baskets of food, but we're still getting a feel for growing grains so we've been doing small plots.

One of the grains that sounds less labor-intensive to harvest and process is amaranth, which bears its 'fruit' in big clusters, so we've planted a little experimental stand of Hopi Red Dye amaranth with tobacco bookends. It looks pretty happy:

Our buckwheat patch is somewhat smaller – one plant at the moment. I like it as a cover crop, so I've grown quite a bit of it, but I've never allowed it to grow over a foot or so before scything and composting it. This one volunteered at the end of a row…it's a bit over five feet tall now:

AND it's making little buckwheats!

These Calypso dry beans should produce medium-sized "yin yang" patterned beans:

Their flowers and tiny beans-to-be:

Another new one for us is sweet potatoes. This is two plants that have grown slowly but steadily for several months now without covering much area…I'll be so happy if these work at all!

Some plants we're feeling pretty competent with now, so we plant something approaching the amount we expect we can use. In the case of zucchini this means two bushes, but we've got four of them out there.

There's a whole world under the zuke/delicata canopy:

Tomatoes do fine here, though it's sad in the Fall because they're quite willing to keep producing right up until the first frost strikes them down. Here's a beautiful Brandywine, the meaty heirloom variety we like for its hardiness, flavor, and texture:

We usually try to stick to heirloom varieties that we can propagate ourselves in subsequent years, but the hybrid cherry tomatoes are kind of irresistible, and produce an amazing amount of sweet little globes in a few square feet:

Black oil sunflower seeds are a big staple food for our chickens and goats, and they produce multiple flower heads…I think I counted 9 or 10 on this stalk:

Fairy tale (miniature) eggplant, more of a late-summer treat than practical food source, but WHAT a treat they are on the grill with olive oil on top and applewood smoking them from below!

This Summer's "Perennial plant that the chickens have failed to destroy despite their tireless efforts to dig it up" award goes to the horseradish:

Calendula growing among the cherry tomatoes:

and finally, as promised, here's Drama Queen, who is full of little baby goats (due in about three weeks)

I had a great time during my whirlwind trip (from a suburb of Detroit to the Upper Peninsula to the northwestern Lower Peninsula and back to Detroit), but today I got to snuggle chickens (well, only the couple who will let me snuggle them), kiss goat noses, bury my face in cat belly fur, and be kissed by a dog whose little stump of a tail was wagging so hard that his entire body wiggled.

I arrived home last night at around 11 pm (that's 2 am in the time zone that my body had finally adjusted to), ate the delicious dinner that Peter had prepared, and tumbled into bed at midnight. A short while later we were both awakened to the sounds of the cat chasing something and the dog barking madly.

Just as I was contemplating looking to see whether the cat was after a mouse or only a moth (we – and the cat – sleep on a mattress on the floor of our loft; any prey larger than a moth would need to be dealt with), I felt something scurry across my (naked) chest.

It was far lighter than than the cat would have been.

I sat straight up in bed and said, "I think a rat just ran across my chest!"

Peter grabbed a flashlight and shined it toward the sounds of pouncing. It took a minute to figure out what we were seeing: on the floor at the foot of our mattress was an upside down bat.

Anu was pouncing on it and it was making weird little noises. Somehow it was able to right itself and fly away to hang near the ceiling on the other side of the room.

Peter then had to climb the ladder, maneuver the bat into a box, and take it outside to let it go. I got to sit in bed and hold the cat, and watch the whole thing through my haze.

The little guy was pretty cute, and made all sorts of ferocious bat noises at us. I wish one of us would have thought to take a picture, but at that point I think we both only wanted to get back to sleep.

That was definitely a first – we've never had one in the house before. We're guessing he came in through the attic. I'm sure he was just as stunned at finding himself trapped inside of a house as we were at his presence. Anu gets props for being such a good huntress, though we'd really like to keep the bats around and would prefer that she stick to the occasional mouse or rat.

It sure is good to be home.

(No, that's not sarcasm – I love all of the random encounters we get to experience out here!)

Daks and Drama Queen ponder the changes in their relationship*

Daks and I just had a wonderful weekend attending a stock dog training clinic run by Brian Abingdon, a breeder and trainer of prize-winning Border Collies. Daks' exact ancestry is a matter of speculation, but eveyone agrees that he is mostly Red Heeler, also known as Australian Cattle Dog.

This breed is famous for their intelligence, endurance, and ankle-biting – and Daks is no exception. The phrase you'll hear about them most often is "they NEED a job to do." Without a few hours of active outside time every day they turn into fanged tornadoes.

Daks was the only mutt in the class, and I know almost nothing about all this stuff, but everyone was extremely friendly and encouraging, sharing helpful tips and stories, and I'm already looking forward to attending the next clinic in August.

We all pulled up folding chairs with a view of a 70' square arena, and Brian brought each dog/person pair in separately for 10-15 minute sessions of 1-on-1 training with three extremely patient goats. The advanced dogs were quite inspiring to watch, and every moment was absolutely packed with things to learn about how herding dogs work.

Nikabrik getting into
the spirit of it

Despite the relaxed, friendly atmosphere, I was nervous bringing Daks into the arena for his first session. Would he completely ignore me? Nope! Maul a goat? Nope! Stop to poop in the middle of it with everyone watching? Oh yes indeed.

The first task with a complete beginner is to get the dog "hooked in" – ie, get him interested in playing with the stock and activate his herding (really hunting) instinct.

Unfortunately, Daks has had a year and a half of us chiding him for chasing goats, so he was a bit inhibited, but with encouragement you could see the instinct kick in as he began to race around, nudging goats with his shoulder and moving a reluctant buckling around by the extremely effective method of dropping his head and pushing on his nutsack(!)

Australian Cattle Dog
from the film "Mad Max"

The training method is very different from what I'm used to.  When teaching a dog to sit, or come, or give paw, you can show him what you want him to do and reward him with a treat when he gets it. With the stock dog training, it's their natural inclinations that get them moving, and early training seems to be largely a matter of giving the command for whatever he's already doing (assuming it's something desirable!), eventually building up an association in his mind between the sound and the action.

That may sound like a very slow process, but after a total of less than an hour in the arena, Daks began to understand "go get the goats" and even "bring me the goats." The whole way of working with the dog was wonderfully intuitive and made it seem as if he was starting to read my mind. I would recommend this training (and this trainer) to anyone with a herding dog – even if you don't have livestock and just want to learn how to work with their particular traits.

Obligatory cute photo of Koko!

One caveat: I was repeatedly warned that once these dogs have the instinct activated, small animals like chickens are at greater risk of becoming dog snacks. Daks is so far fine, still gentle and protective with the chickens, but we'll be keeping a closer eye on him for a while…

* This is actually an old photo I recycled for this post, but it seemed very fitting; Drama Queen is a tough girl and Daks is still very reluctant to try anything on her.

We're growing red Brandywine tomatoes again this year since we've had such good luck with them in the past. They are indeterminate* plants, which means that they have a vine-like growth habit and appreciate a good trellis or stake. Tired of messing with stakes and strings, I'm trying to weave these through a cattle panel for support:

These Pontiac Red potatoes are about five weeks old, and we've just put up a chicken-wire fence to help contain the mound we'll be building up over them:

Turnips, turnips, so delicious and easy to grow in our climate:

The cold frame is still booming and hasn't been covered in a month or more. The tall plant is an overwintered celery. The kale, turnips, and beets were started around January.

Tiny, tiny little apples are forming by the millions:

Tobacco took forever to sprout, then was very slow for a few weeks, but now it's exploding, and I think I'm going to have to give a bunch of starts away or just toss some in unworked soil and see what happens

Cabbages are loving the long, gentle transition from winter to summer:

No idea what this one is…it's in a patch that I occasionally hurl some cheap, outdated flower seeds into and otherwise leave alone:

* Another important feature of indeterminate tomato plants is that they bear fruit over a long period of time rather than all at once. Many people who do canning prefer determinate plants, which bear most of their fruit in one flush, but we find it easier to can frequent smaller batches.

I found out earlier today that on the evening of February 13 of this year, a bomb went off in my beloved German Bakery in Koregaon Park, Pune, India. A quick google search found reports of 17 people dead, and more than 50 people injured. The place was a home away from home for visiting foreigners, and a popular meeting place. I've spent a lot of time in there, drinking chai and conversing with friends and strangers alike.

My head reels, and my heart hurts, at this news.

(The photo is from my last visit to Pune, in December of 2005.)

Aberdeen has built-in pacifiers – yes, her kids both suck on her wattles when they aren't nursing. Her wattles are almost always wet.

And these tiny vultures (AKA four-week-old chicks) will soon be on their own in this big, bad world. Mama Leo is getting ready to stop mothering, probably within the next week. How do we know? The biggest tell-tale sign is that she is once again letting at least one rooster (or roosters?) mount her. She'll likely start laying again any day now, and stop mothering her babes a few days after that. This is our second batch of chicks hatched this year (out of three, so far).

Aberdeen's babies at two days old and already bouncy: