Tag: spring

Categories
Environment Living in Society Sustainability

Spring Hope

Embers

It’s been a struggle to get a grip on the presidency of Donald Trump. There’s nothing he’s done to give us hope.

Just give me a handle — anything to grasp onto as normal! Nothing.

Like many who care about the environment, nuclear abolition, and the commons, there seems little hope of advancing a positive agenda during the first term of the 45th president. What some settle on is giving up on 45 doing anything positive, resisting his degradation of our previous work, and working toward the 2020 presidential election and a Democratic president. In other words, create a political climate more receptive to our initiatives.

“I think we have to use the coming four years to create an understanding in the general public and amongst (sic) the security community that we need a fundamental change in nuclear weapons policy,” Ira Helfand, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, wrote yesterday in an email. “Our goal should be that the new administration that takes office in January 2021 is fully committed to this change in policy, and staffed with people who share this vision.”

I respect Helfand’s sense of urgency to use the time we have to accomplish something. At the same time we can’t afford to shelve our priorities until the political climate is more likely to support them. What’s right is right and our work on the environment, nuclear abolition, and the commons must continue even if the odds are against us. There may never be a political climate receptive to the change we seek.

It’s time to turn the page on our reactions to Trump and do what’s right. For me that means joining together with others to work on preserving an environment where humanity can live out its next era in dignity and relative peace. That’s something to grasp onto.

If the evolution of homo sapiens is to eventually become extinct, there is little we can do about that. Whether it is the return of the Imam Mahdi before the end of the world, or the second coming of Christ, we can’t place all our hopes on a life after this one. We live here and now and must act to mitigate the damage we humans have wrought on the planet.

Earth is our only home and we must make the best of what we inherited.

All around us Spring is regenerating the biosphere as it has done for millennia. To be a part of that, especially with others, can only bring us good. Even if the political climate runs against our common sense, hope remains.

This spring we must re-dedicate ourselves to that hope.

Categories
Writing

First Share

New Seedling Cart with a Pallet from the Farm

After work at the home, farm and auto supply store I drove to the farm and picked up the first spring share. In it were spinach, baby kale, Bok Choy, Choi Sum, broccoli raab, rhubarb, oregano and garlic chives.

Already my mind is swirling with cooking ideas.

I’ll prepare a breakfast omelet using greens seasoned with oregano and garlic chives. Most of the oregano will be dried and flaked for cooking. Garlic chives will be processed with cream cheese for a sandwich spread. In the mix is rhubarb jam, spinach casserole, and sautéed greens. There will be lots of cooking with this week’s abundance.

It’s the next stop on along the annual circle of local food.

While at the farm I sorted through a stack of pallets used to deliver straw and hay and found two to bring home. I made a wheeled cart for summer crop seedlings finishing before the big May planting. The other will be used to organize the garage until Memorial Day. I’ve requested May 6 – 14 off work at the store to get planting done.

For the moment, life is about the weather — seeing how it unfolds and checking my weather app for forecast updates. It is also about forgetting the fray of politics for a while to become a practitioner of something useful — not only in Iowa but globally.

Categories
Environment

Erasing the White Board

To-do List
To-do List

Snow fell in darkness leaving a thin blanket of white.

The pin oak tree began shedding last year’s foliage indicating warm weather activated new leaf buds and pushed out the old.

Seems weird to rake leaves in February. More to the point, it’s not normal.

In a couple of hours I return for a fifth season at Local Harvest CSA. The main spring task is soil blocking 72 and 120 cell trays for seed starting in the germination house. Part of my arrangement is keeping some of my own seedlings there. When I’m finished with the farm’s trays, I’ll make one 72 and one 120 tray for myself and seed them with kale, celery and basil. I’m hopeful they will do better than in the south-facing window in our bedroom. Getting my hands dirty with soil is a great way to get ready for spring, three weeks away by the calendar.

Other chores on my white board include doing taxes, computer file backup, cleaning the car, preparing the garden for spring and Belgian lettuce planting this week (traditionally March 2). I made extra servings of spaghetti with tomato sauce for lunches and want to make a batch of taco filling for breakfast on work days at the home, farm and auto supply store. There’s also more writing projects.

During a Climate Reality Project conference call on Thursday, a friend from Waterloo and I decided to work on a project with other friends from Waterloo-Cedar Falls. I’ve done two presentations there and look forward to more meaningful work. We’re planning luncheon, maybe next weekend.

This last lap in the workingman’s race looks to be action packed with local food, environmental and cash producing projects coming into focus.

Night’s snowfall melting in the sun makes way for budding plants in a grey and brown landscape. It is almost time to wipe the whiteboard clean and begin anew.

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary

Cemeteries and Decorations

Flags at Oakland Cemetery
Flags at Oakland Cemetery

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP, Iowa — A couple of years ago the Solon American Legion moved their annual Memorial Day commemoration from Oakland Cemetery to the new service memorial at American Legion Field.

As remaining World War II veterans depart on their long journey after this life, the new field is level, lessening the possibility of a fall for increasingly fragile nonagenarians.

The annual event seems better attended since moving to town.

The township trustees consider the condition of the cemetery before Memorial Day and the legion adorns its roadway with full-sized American flags with the names of local veterans on each flag post. We want the cemetery to present well regardless of where the event is held. After inspections, we decided it looked good for the holiday, although the trash barrels needed emptying.

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day in 1868 — a remembrance established by the Grand Army of the Republic to recognize union soldier deaths while defending against the rebellion. Confederate women had begun decorating graves during the earliest years of the long war that took 620,000 lives. It was traditional to visit the family cemetery and enjoy a picnic lunch and family reunion near remains of the departed. It took an act of Congress (the National Holiday Act of 1971) to sort out differences and competing claims of the remembrance. In many places traditions have vanished as family cemeteries gave way to cremation and burial in larger, public and commercial places of rest.

Just as grilling at home or at a park supplanted picnics near the deceased, and Memorial Day gets confused with Veterans Day, not many here think about what divided the North and South in the 1860s. Neither is there common cause in the deaths perpetrated by our modern national militarism. Our constant state of warfare has become a part of background noise many people try to ignore.

My ancestors and shirt tail relatives in Virginia fought on both sides of the Civil War and those roots provided me a form of ethnic identity — an indigenous culture shared by a localized clan of kinfolk. I’m not sure such culture is even possible today.

As for this Memorial Day, I’ll be working a shift at the home, farm and auto supply store and unable to attend the commemoration.

Memorial Day will start the summer vacation season, like it does for most Americans, and be a chance to relax after getting the garden planted. The bloody wars our country has fought and continues fighting will seem distant for a while… almost an abstraction. I’m not alone in that. Even drone pilots can go home after a shift to spend time with their families.

Memorial Day is part of a procession of life events that helps things seem stable and predictable. We want that as politicians and corporate news media slam us with bad news and frightening potentialities every time we tune in on a device. The idea that the dead don’t move unless someone made a mistake, and that grave decorations aren’t intended to be permanent provides comfort.

On the way to my shift I’ll stop briefly at the cemetery and pay my respects to neighbors killed in action, most of whom I didn’t know. Such deaths seem tragic and complex — clouded in a present that assigns new values to them. I’ll stand in silence on the hill among old oak trees considering the meaning of honor and valor and why it’s still important. I hope that’s decoration enough.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden Fences

Spring Lettuce
Spring Lettuce

Here’s what is surprising. The vegetables outside the garden fences are mostly untouched by rabbits, deer and other critters. Some behind fences are getting nibbled.

Who knew I could leave lettuce, turnips, carrots, radishes, spinach and other plants unfenced and the animals would stay away. Maybe I’m just lucky… or maybe someone knows an answer.

Next garden workday I’ll harvest and see how it goes the rest of the season.

Categories
Home Life

Punk Spring Day

Spring Lettuce
Spring Lettuce

A persistent cough prevented me from working at the warehouse Friday and Saturday. My schedule included preparing and serving food, and it would have been bad to go in sick. Instead I felt like crap at home and tried to focus enough to get a few things done, including writing an article for the newspaper, interviewing someone at the Iowa City Farmers Market and planting radishes and green beans in the garden.

Thrill is gone for me at the farmers market. I did not go one time last year and yesterday bought a bag of lettuce for $3 and that’s it. The market has become more of a flea market with crafty stuff, prepared food and vegetables imported from outside the county. It may be a seasonal alternative to the grocery store for city dwellers but unless my garden goes big and there is excess to sell, I have little reason to return.

Speaking of thrill is gone, I was saddened to hear musician B.B. King is in hospice care at his Las Vegas home.

Garden
Garden

Apple blossoms peaked and their petals are falling into a snowy carpet over the grass. Because it has been warm, calm and sunny for much of the week, I am hopeful the pollination was thorough.

Hardening indoor seedlings began yesterday when I put the first batch for planting in the outdoor sun most of the afternoon. Broccoli will be first to plant, followed by basil, celery and three kinds of kale. The next wave will be tomatoes, followed by peppers.

Two neighborhood kids and their puppy invaded my garage space yesterday. The puppy got loose and decided to see what I was doing. Right behind him a young brother and sister crawled down the retaining wall and chased him behind the table saw without regard to anything else. She collared him and took him home. While they accomplished their mission, my take away was that part of youth involves less awareness of the broad context of our actions. That may be okay for children, but not for adults.

Life has gotten busier. Not too busy to take in the scent of lilac and apple blossoms, touch the soil with bare hands and interact with children, but busy enough.

Categories
Work Life

Spring Rush to Memorial Day

Garden View of Lake Macbride
Garden View of Lake Macbride

April has gotten very busy. There are dozens of tasks to do at home and farm work has kept me busier while my warehouse work and newspaper writing continue at the same level. It seems impossible that I had eight jobs at one point last year. Working three jobs fills the time if it doesn’t produce enough money to get ahead.

Farm work has been planting, planting and more planting—in the field, in seed trays, in the high tunnel. Yesterday was lettuce greens and broccoli. The day before onions and soil blocking. Today, I will seed some trays before cleaning up to head to the warehouse.

The challenge is to find time for our own garden. When I receive next week’s work schedule a priority will be setting aside a home work day.

A livestock farmer spent yesterday preparing his fields to plant corn. His planter is maintained and ready. Another spread fertilizer, complaining of a sore throat because he had the tractor window open.

Everyone’s busy with spring. That includes me. The garden needs planting before Memorial Day. It’s five weeks away, but it seems like tomorrow.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Spring Work Day

Early Lettuce Patch
Early Lettuce Patch

After delays, the early lettuce is planted in two places. I raked a small patch of ground and broadcast four varieties with maturity days of from 45 to 50, and finished it with broadcast turnip seeds. If all goes well there should be lettuce by May and early turnip greens for stock.

I also tried something new.

Open Compost Pile
Open Compost Pile

With three barrels of composted horse manure from a friend, I cleared out the branches and covered the surface of my open air compost heap with the organic matter. Then I broadcast some Nevada 56 days to maturity lettuce on top, along with the remains of 2013 French Breakfast Radish seeds. Assuming this goes as planned, there should be radishes by April 10, and lettuce afterward. I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I’m not ready to turn the compost and spread it on the garden, so let’s see if I can get some production beforehand.

Compost Bin with Manure
Compost Bin with Manure

The rest of the compost—mostly dropped by horses the last couple of days—has been placed either inside or beside the kitchen compost bin and is already at work. As more kitchen scraps are added, I’ll use the manure to cover them.

Today was my first work day, and while I got some things done, I’m not in the groove yet. The productivity index is low. But like with everything just beginning, exercising diligence will get me into a groove before long. Maybe by the time the radishes are ready.

Categories
Home Life

Cusp of Spring

Bird Seed
Bird Seed

The garage retained enough heat to make predawn work tolerable. The ambient temperature is 31 degrees, climbing to around 45 by the time I leave for the warehouse. There is much to get done before starting the car.

Over winter tools get piled on the workbench instead of being put away. Perhaps it is too cold to be mucking about behind the table saw, wheelbarrow full of walnut firewood, and wagon full of junk. This morning everything is put away where it belongs, clearing a new space for new work.

Tomato Seeds
Tomato Seeds

Yesterday was tedious work of trying to understand our health insurance plan. Phone calls to the hospital and insurance company yielded partial understanding at best—at least enough to understand how our doctors applied charges. It is distasteful work, but the specialists to whom I spoke were cordial and professional enough and I made progress. Would that I never had to go to a doctor, not even for routine checkups.

And today is a day of hope for making a difference in life. Now that the tools are put away, it’s time to get them out again and make something of this brief interval between sleep and departure.

Tools
Tools

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Belgian Lettuce and Garden Update

Garden
Garden

Today is the day to plant Belgian lettuce according to my late maternal grandmother. Not a specific variety, any lettuce seed will do. March 2 planting makes it “Belgian” in a way someone who grew up in a Minnesota-Polish farming community would understand.

It’s not happening this year, as the ground is frozen and covered with snow like last year. I’m not ready to give up on tradition, but this year’s weather is forcing my hand. As soon as the ground can be worked, lettuce seeds will be broadcast belatedly.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac indicates the average growing season in this area is 163 days, with an average last spring frost date of April 25. I’m calling bullshit on that right now and planning this year’s indoor planting to coincide with a last frost day of May 15. God willing and the creek don’t rise, some seeds will be planted in trays this week, with seedlings ready to go into the ground in May.

Starbor hybrid kale seeds arrived by U.S. postal service on Friday. The back order was finally filled, so this season there will be three kinds of kale, including the Blue Curled Scotch and Scarlet varieties already on hand. If everything proceeds as expected, there will be plenty of kale.

Seed-wise, I’m ready to plant the garden as soon as conditions permit.

The apple trees produced an abundance of new growth last growing season. While temperatures are below zero is the time to get out and prune new growth and make shaping decisions. That work is planned for this week.

Heavy snows took a toll on our lilac bushes, and I’ve not been to the back of the lot to check that clump. They are maturing, and may be due for a radical cutting back to enable new growth. Some research is needed, but the one next to our front door shaped up nicely when I cut the old branches away. These were planted from rootstock when we arrived in Big Grove, so it’s hard to see them mature, even if it’s a part of nature.

No deal is finalized with the CSA this spring, although the farmer may not know what she wants yet. There is an opportunity for some spring work until her supervisor arrives in May. If that doesn’t materialize, the time will be spent improving our garden—which is definitely needed.

The pantry is being worked down, but plenty of tomatoes, soup stock, apple sauce and apple butter remain on the shelves. Jars of canned dill pickles, hot sauce, salsa and Serrano peppers remain. There are even a few jars of kale soup starter on the shelves. Enough to tide us over until the first harvest.

Absent Belgian lettuce, there is hope for an abundant gardening season.