Good morning
I have been experiencing something of a small crisis lately in trying to think about graduating and what to do next. I am telling myself that I don’t have to figure it all out yet, but that doesn’t do much to soothe my anxiety. I have 3 months left now until graduation; I finish at the end of the winter quarter, the odd month of March, when the gardening season is just about to start and the heat is still a few months off.
If you’ve followed the blog for awhile, then surely you’ve noticed my posts are dwindling and my energy for it has been lost. I keep thinking that as soon as one thing or another gets straightened out, then I will come back to the blog and it will be better than ever. Yet, I haven’t done it.
I’m not going to shut down the blog, but I am going on an extended break, and I will be re-evaluating the whole thing again sometime in March. I’m sure I won’t stop writing, but I may find a different format, or a new blog that isn’t quite as personal, and just leave this one here as a historical artifact.
Whatever happens, I will be sure to follow up before I discontinue blogging here entirely. Thanks for understanding.
Into the Dark
I took Callum out in the field in his wagon just as the sun was going down. It was cold this evening, so we were both wrapped in blankets. He wanted to see the monster trees.
The monster trees are the old pines that died in 2006. Some have fallen, others stand there like tall ghosts.
We visited the pine trees and started heading back up the hill. When we reached the gate between our field and the back field, Callum said “I want to see troll man.”
The troll tree is another tree– a squat live oak that sits up on a mound of velvety green moss and shade grasses. It’s a fat tree, maybe 200 years old, with wily limbs that twist out to form the massive canopy. Just below it is a dark hole that disappears into nowhere. That’s where the troll lives.
It was already dusk, with a faint, glancing light glowing across the golden field. It would be dark by the time we made it back to the tree, but I turned around anyway.
I hauled him across the field in the wagon, through the stiff grass. As we rounded the corner by the pocket of trees, the light all but disappeared. I pulled him up to the entrance– an arch in the branches that led into the dark room created by the canopy. We stepped into the dark, under the branches and into the strange, cold, dark but comforting shelter they created.
We could only see the faint gray silhouette, and Callum said “we need a flashlight.”
He’s a bold little child. This was his first time out in the dark, away from houses and people. We were out in the woods at night, and he was okay with that.
This is a great way to celebrate the new season– quiet, and reverent.
I love this.
In the path of fire
I mentioned in my last post that building in floodplains creates the greatest obvious risks for those living in the state of Louisiana. Since Katrina, nearly everyone who isn’t politically opposed to recognizing the risks of such activities is well aware that most of the settled land of New Orleans and, increasingly, in northshore communities are in floodplains. It’s not unique to New Orleans, either. I grew up in what was once a brackish tidal marsh in Virginia. (but flood management seemed much more efficient). The city of Boston is stretched out across the soft, sand-filled marshes and bays that surrounded the original colony– do you know what happens to the wetland fill in a serious earthquake? Think quicksand. (Check out Anne Spirn’s “The Granite Garden” for a fascinating introduction to building with the landscape in mind).
In Louisiana, it’s not only water that is after us, but fire. There haven’t been any catastrophic wildfires in recent years in Louisiana, so there are probably few people who recognize the threat. This past summer we did get a small glimpse of how unprepared we are for a major wildlfire in this area with the burning of Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge east of New Orleans. The smoke was wretched and made its way across the lake as far as Hammond and Baton Rouge. Several thousand acres burned, and the fire seemed to finally go out following the heavy rains that came with Tropical Storm Lee. These marsh fires are uniquely intense, because of the accumulated organic material that is typically saturated with water– the stuff burns like… well, like peat.
This has been happening in a lot of places recently. On the east coast of Virginia, where I grew up, wildlfires seem to be an annual event in recent years. These fires are largely contained in the swamps and marshes, but what threat do they pose to uplands? Certainly folks out west from Texas to Oregon know about the threat of raging wildfires, it’s a regular element in the landscape.
Let me repeat that: fire is a regular element in the landscape.
Fire suppression is a big topic in natural resource courses. Since the arrival of Europeans in the US, fire exclusion from ecosystems has changed the composition of the forests from coast to coast. A few of the effects of this include dense woody undergrowth, hardwoods moving into piney landscapes, loss of plant diversity and more intense fires. With widespread droughts throughout the southeastern US, the region seems increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic fires.
In Louisiana, upland fires are normal in pine savannahs, and would occur on a frequency of every 1-5 years depending on the topography of the landscape (and in some cases, on human introduction: many native people use fire to control the landscape and some mainstream ecologists are adopting this practice). Hardwood areas may burn every 25-50 years in Louisiana. I am not sure about the frequency of marsh fires, but like other ecosystems, fire in the marsh can be restorative. Regular fires prevent debris from accumulating, and thus reduce the likelihood of high-intensity fires.
Fire exclusion removes this important element from the landscape– and for good reason, because we don’t want our houses to catch on fire, right?
The result is that in wet years where vegetation is limited mostly by light availability, forests grow dense with shrubs, vines and saplings. Trees grow close together. In drought years, drought stress may kill the plants that are not able to compete well for water. These diebacks leave behind the dead, woody trees and plants that stop pumping water through their trunks. After one season or less these dead trees become the perfect fuel– dry fire wood. All it takes is dry weather (in some cases, wet weather won’t stop it) and ignition, and then you’ve got a wildfire.
Most of the forests on the outskirts of my town are densely packed either by design or through neglect. The heat generated by a high intensity fire can be enough to combust vegetation nearby without direct connection through sparks and ash, so a path of fuel does not necessarily have to link two nearby forests (or a forest and a nearby home). These higher intensity fires are called crown fires in a forestry setting, and these are the fires that kill healthy trees and are deadly threats to people.
I don’t know what the likelihood is that this kind of fire will happen in Louisiana, but when I look around at my forest and the rural forests around me, I suspect there’s enough fuel here to sustain a destructive fire.
So, reflecting on my last post, is moving to the uplands necessarily going to get you out of danger? Of course not. If you’re on the same planet as I am, then you’re probably going to have plenty of things to worry about. The key is to understand the minor processes that shape the landscape around you, and then to understand the major disturbances that occur with less frequency and for which most communities are dangerously unprepared. Open discussion and education about impending disasters isn’t going to prevent them, but I tend to hold faith in the idea that smarter design of homes and landscapes can help avoid widespread loss (at least of life) without contributing to the intensity looming disasters.
What is a flood control or fire control plan that minimizes nuisance floods and fires but increases the risk posed from major floods or fires? It’s a failure.
We need new designs. Some of the best (and only) recommendations I have seen for dealing with fire have come from the permaculture visionary Bill Mollison. He recommends succulent plants on the periphery of the house, and lots of thick wet mulch. But isn’t mulch perfect for conveying a fire? In some cases it is, but mulches like pine bark are actually heat insulators (that’s why the pine trees use it) and can buffer the energy brought in by fire. Other mulches that are saturated with water can divert energy by vaporizing the water (an energy intensive process), and thus dissipate some of the ignition energy contained in the fire. In a bad situation, this probably won’t save you but it could help. Fire breaks and fire walls may be a solution, but can widespread use of these techniques protect whole communities?
Truth is, I don’t know how many existing designs are available for fire-prone communities, but it’s never too early to start preparing. The best solution may be to bring back the regular, low intensity fires that have been used to manage landscapes for thousands of years. Not saying you should go set your subdivision on fire, because you shouldn’t, but bringing fire back into the forests in a safe way (with professional help) can reduce fire intensity and reduce forest density– leading to less death and stress in the fores during droughts, and reduced fuel accumulation.
Now you’re on your own. Good luck!
The Basin
- Ponchartrain Basin
The Lake Ponchartrain Basin has gotten some national attention lately, mostly for the handful of disasters over the past decade that have enlightened people to the problems along Louisiana’s coastline. Coastlines around the world are becoming increasingly fragile and dangerous places to live, with sea level rise already overcoming islands in the Pacific and predicted to move up to 3 feet in elevation inland over the next 89 years. 3 feet in some places may not mean much, where rocky coastlines are typical, but for low flat marshes like much of the eastern US, and for small islands, 3 feet of elevated sea levels can inundate millions of acres of land. People don’t like to talk about climate change much, and seemingly would rather debate over who is responsible for it (nature or man?) instead of looking at the facts and thinking about how to adapt. In many soft alluvial coastlines, again, like coasts along the eastern US, coastal erosion and subsidence will just add to the losses over the next century. Of course we are responsible for much of it, but now most of these losses are already promising to be a part of our future.
Blue mistflower
The early fall is probably the best time to look for wildflowers. While wildflowers bloom many other times in the year, especially in the spring, the fall blooms seem to knock out spring blooms in both color and abundance. Fall flowers like goldenrod (Solidago spp.) and tickseed (Coreopsis spp.) add gorgeous yellow and orange tints to the landscape, those colors typically associated with fall.
A patch of blue mistflower
One of my favorite fall flowers is blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum), which decorates the shady northern edges of forests on my propertyand can occasionally be found in other shady and cool spots throughout the property. I noticed that this year’s blooms were at least twice as abundant as last year’s and according to wildflowers.org this can be a very proliferative and even weedy. Regardless, I think the color is absolutely stunning. Impossible to capture with a camera, the electric violet-blue is so intense that I have trouble focusing on the individual flowers in a big patch of blooms.
Blue mistflower is a good butterfly plant. It is a close relative of joe-pye weed (Eupatorium fistulosum), which is widely known for its attractiveness to monarch butterflies, sulfur butterflies and swallotails. Blue mistflower is apparently easy to propogate and can be added to the garden in areas designed to be neglected, where it should thrive. Some warn that it will take over, so if you plan to bring blue mistflower into your garden make sure you give it plenty of room or be ready to do the work to keep it under control.
It might be a good plant to move into the edges of an established perennial garden, where it will support pollinators and may attract other beneficial insects. Does anyone have experience with this plant in the garden? I may experiment with it myself now that I know of several large patches growing on the edges of my field.
Mulching throughout the year
I’ve often been much less concerned with getting good yields than with the overall process of creating a garden. This year I’m still trying to catch on to the idea of planting for continuous harvest, but this fall has been much better than the fall of previous years, in part thanks to a few simple recommendations from Anna Hess’s The Weekend Homesteader. I caught the August version and realized it was almost time to seed some of my fall plants, like turnip greens, kale and mustard. I have been harvesting turnip greens for a few weeks now and the deep green leaves seem to be exactly what I needed after having slipped into some bad eating habits.
The kale and bok choi are coming up slowly and a few patches of little seedlings were destroyed when the chickens got loose in the garden so as of now I don’t have any plants large enough to follow the turnips, but I am working on it.
Old tough bahia grass isn't as sweet for the cows, but it's perfect for the garden.
The other reason I think hay can make a great mulch is because cutting hay doesn’t leave the soil bare like straw harvesting usually does. When hay is cut off of the grass, the plant and its roots still remain alive on the surface of the soil. When straw is cut, fields are often clean cut or left with just a bit of stubble on the soil. The soil is then exposed to wind and rain and can erode and degrade over time before it is replanted. Over the long run this can deplete the soil nutrients and damage the soil structure. Of course, removing grass hay from the field also depletes the nutrients, but the soil is often left undisturbed, this is better in the long run, especially if there is a plan to recycle nutrients in the pastures. With no-till gardens that demand a lot of mulch, it is important to think about the ecosystem impacts of your soil amendments if they are coming off site. This has often been a criticism of the widely popular sphagnum moss, and the locally popular cypress mulch that are both unsustainable and promote destruction of natural areas.
Pasture and pine trees
I have my 2-acre pasture mowed only once a year, usually in early Fall. By this time the field is free of seeds and the fall weeds are cut down just before they flower– meaning no weed seeds either. I don’t even bother to have this hay baled, I can collect it directly from the field, as it tends to mat and makes itself easy to harvest.
The downside is that collecting hay in this way provides only a seasonal mulch. It’s excellent for my fall gardening, but not so good when the weeds are taking over and the sun is raging in mid-summer.
In my first year of gardening I had two huge piles of wood chips dumped in the yard from a tree trimming company. I used these liberally around the trees and the gardens until I finally ran out. I also used some grass clippings from a mulching lawn mower, but my mower quit working and this year we didn’t get any grass clippings until recently when we got a new mower as a gift from my father-in-law.
Future plans for mulch will probably include continued hay from the pasture, and hopefully soon we will be getting pine straw as our young pine trees start to mature. Pine straw is perfect for strawberries and tomatoes, as well as many orchard trees. Blackberries and dewberries are usually growing underneath pines in the wild, and when I have the mulch available I will probably start planting more blackberry cultivars to take advantage of this natural relationship. In the meantime, I may start seeking out pine straw for my gardens next spring when the hay starts to decompose, in order to get a head start on weed supression.
The emergence of a forest garden and other fall updates
Fall is my favorite time of year. I can clean up the garden beds and know that they’ll stay relatively neat until the spring. I can mow the lawn for the last few times and have short grass to walk on all winter. I can enjoy the shadows that begin to stretch across the yard as the sun moves south. For the first time in months I am happy to be outside, and I don’t feel like my head will explode from the heat. It’s a good feeling.
I have a few casual experiments in the garden this year. My Fall 2009 veggie garden is maturing into an herb and medicinal garden– mostly perennial, moderately weedy and decorated along the walkways with new fall annuals. In the background I’ve let golden rod grow wild for the pollinators who love to visit them every year. The cosmos have been popping up and blooming all over the garden since spring. A few other plants that did really well in this garden were the tabasco pepper and the vitex agnus-castus, which is a beneficial medicinal tree/shrub and also a popular ornamental in south Louisiana that is beloved by honey bees, bumblebees and bufferflies. Finally, the garlic chives were lovely for adding to salads, and in the late summer their beautiful white flowers lined the walkway.
Perennial Garden
I have been focusing on building the gardens up along my pathways instead of trying to garden in beds or blocks. From experience I know that the walkways get a lot more attention, and all summer I enjoyed a few basil leaves every time I walked from the front of the yard to the back. Now I have 4 week old turnips, two week old kale and another small bed of newly planted kale coming up to help define the garden’s edge. These antique bricks were collected from a big pile of bricks in the bamboo forest by the old farmhouse, and they’ve been helpful in marking the recently planted seed beds as my gardening migrates around the yard. 
I’ve been stacking plants into the perennial garden pretty intensely over the past two years. I know that I probably have too many things growing together, but I am counting on the density to keep out other weeds and block out some of the hot western sun from the lawn in the evening. I bought a new set of fruit and nut trees and shrubs to add to the garden, but regrettably I realize that I have to move outside of the garden where I’ve been spending most of my time and into a new space. I think that the garden area we started in spring 2010 is ready to begin its conversion to perennial, especially since I have no desire to maintain an annual garden on that site. My annual garden is moving to a new spot where I’ve already started red clover and rye grass to begin the transition from bahia grass to garden site. I am going to cut the cover crop and start laying down some heavy mulch in the spring, and then I will probably begin growing there next fall.
Creating a pathway.
On a personal note, my fall courses begin on Monday and I am most likely going to be spending my free time in the garden rather than writing about it. Graduation is just around the corner (March) and I’m delighted. I am not entirely sure where I’ll go next, but to have my undergraduate degree finally behind me will be a great feeling.
Growing Fungi
After constant rain during the winter of 2009, Seth and I found more fungi growing on the property than I would have ever imagined. Coincidentally, Seth was also studying Paul Stamet’s books on mushroom cultivation and in a frenzy of research and wandering around the property, we counted more than 30 types of fungi and later identified many of them and even cooked the oyster mushrooms and wood ear. They were tasty!
There are quite a few of edible mushrooms that grow here in Louisiana, including oyster mushrooms, wood ear and chantrelles. Turkey tails are prevalent and are widely regarded as a medicinal mushroom, and there are relatives of the well-known reishi mushrooms that may have similar medicinal properties.
The interesting thing about all of this is that the ill-regarded tallow tree is actually a good host for oyster mushrooms and wood ear, and possible some other types of fungi. That made me wonder how much tallow we actually have growing on our property that could be harvested for mushroom growing. I just finished a field study for my vegetation class to estimate that number.
Look at all those tallow sticks! These look a little skinny, but there sure are a lot of them.
What I looked about was tallow tree density in the forest, based on the assumption that just about all of the trees in the forested area are large enough to grow mushrooms. During my study, I found out that some of the trees are probably a little too skinny, but I did include those in my density calculations anyway. Why measure density? Since the trees are roughly the same size and age– all just about the perfect size to grow mushrooms– density would give me a number of actual logs I could expect to harvest from the forest and then inoculate.
I conducted a random sample (complicated a bit by the dense brush) and determined that there are about 2000 trees per hectare, or almost 800 per acre in our 4-acre woodland (not including the fencelines and “tallow tree circles” throughout the property.) That’s a lot of mushroom logs. The benefit of tallows over other potential wood types is that they are quick to regenerate, easy to cut down and carry even with only one person, they are about the perfect size at 10-15 years or even sooner, and there’s very little guilt about removing them because I was going to do it anyway.
Now that I know roughly how many trees we have in that spot, I can take a look at the potential mushroom harvests using just a percentage of the tallow forest every year to cultivate mushrooms. The figures get a little complicated, so more on that later. However, the prices for oyster mushrooms seem promising especially if we could manage to sell them when they’re fresh.
Don’t have abundant invasive trees? Your heap of used baby diapers is also a superb mushroom substrate. Don’t have a baby? Ask your neighbor, or your local landfill. I’m sure you can get your hands on mountains of diapers. Happy growing!
Back in the garden
I was back in the garden again today getting ready for the fall. I’m kind of jumping the gun right now and getting into season. We probably won’t get good cool weather until mid-October, but the months seem to swing by so fast these days. The hens have been out foraging for the past few days, but I will probably pen them up so I can plant fall greens and herbs.
We’re getting a few bales of hay dropped off by my neighbor this weekend and I am going to lay mulch everywhere I possibly can. I’ve been taking rotted hay from the goat yard and laying it down to make paths through our yard. Well-defined paths seem critical in shaping the garden. The rotted hay would be good for the garden, too, but I was a little bit worried about all of the grass seeds going into the garden. At this point, I am less worried about that because I plan to continue mulching heavily to keep the weeds down. I really need to get tougher on the weeds. We’ve developed a few more weed problems since we’ve been using the cow manure that comes with bermuda grass mixed in. The grass is the biggest problem in getting the garden bed ready right now, but they hay should only have bahia seed and as much as I hate bahia, it seems easier to pull up, especially when rooted in mulch.
Cotton (dehiscent) fruit. It will dry up and crack upen, and out comes the cotton-- a pretty deep green color.
I am definitely a fall and winter gardener. I notice myself getting overwhelmed around June and I just don’t have the will to battle the garden weeds. This year we’ve been short on mulch, but the mulch always seems to come available by fall. I have a row of cotton that I planted and some of the earlier fruits have already ripened. They are pretty little things. That’s the only reason I grew them. I would have to grow so much more to have enough to make yarn or anything.
Overall, things are looking very nice and it was a great day in the garden. The little guy was out there with me the whole time helping to plant and pull up weeds. When I pull back some of the wild growth, I can start to see the garden taking shape again and the vision comes back. Sometimes things get crazy, but the design is starting to emerge. I like it.
Pulled out a line of bahia and threw turnips seeds in amongst the bricks for cover cropping ( bricks are a chicken barrier).
A blessed woman
I haven’t written much recently because my mind is in complete chaos and my “p” key isn’t working (I copy and paste) but I still insist on using my old black macbook that I bought used 4 years ago. I am determined to use it until the very end.
Since that day about 4 months ago that I decided to start doing something with my life other than sitting around feeling half-assed about myself, I’ve been locked into a pretty intense and constant progression into the future. Big visions. I have a strong-willed supervisor at work who has been an excellent mentor. I have a handful of fantastic teachers at Oregon State University who have trained themselves well in delivering online education, and I’ve found myself surrounded by an incredible group of local folks who just want to make things better for our community. It’s hard to fall away from this kind of forward momentum in a time so critical to the region (southeast Louisiana) and the nation as a whole. But, sometimes I need to write, so here I am.
I started writing two years ago with something in mind, though it has changed so much since then. While wild grasses and weeds grow up in my yard, and my two-year old smears jelly and crackers all over the couch, I have to stop and ask myself– “Where did I think I was going?”
I don’t know.
The few things that hold me back everyday are the thoughts that:
1) I could be the perfect parent. I’ll be straightforward and say I look to Christianity for this solution. Christianity is my base and I have no reason to stray from it, for it has become me through and through. But, there are some strong and convincing arguments for strict Christianity that just lies guilt atop of guilt, and makes me feel like a messy house and a barefooted child are all things that bring shame in rearing children. My Appalachian roots tell me otherwise. I practice soft christianity. Really soft and really progressive. I just expect that Christ would have wanted this, or he would not have given his word to the people of today who are confined to the culture they’ve grown up within. Being soft in a world that respects things strict and organized, it makes me paranoid but I have to get over it.
2) I could be the perfect homesteader. I have seen some very driven folks cross their T’s and dot their I’s in the world of “homesteading,” and they have my respect, but when a woman is a wife and a student and a mother and a land steward, sometimes the wilt on the pumpkin vines this one year just doesn’t mean that much. Sometimes rotten tomatoes are awesome for their rottennesss. Sometimes the wild plants that thrive through the drought, without meticulous care and watering, are those that garner respect. And so life moves on.
3) That I could have the perfect body. Oh. My. Goodness. If you think I’m not susceptible to this lie, I am. Sometimes I just want to be fit and sexy. Sometimes I have been fit and sexy (I think). Sometimes I’m just not. When they went from saying thin is about beauty to thin is about health, I’ve totally fallen for it. But if thin= stress= psychosis then it just ain’t worth it. Eat the food your people eat. Do what you can to improve the quality of your food and then be done with it. Work in the garden or take a walk, but don’t kill yourself to look like someone else. Every single day, this is what I should be telling myself. I definitely grew up an American girl, looking to get ahead. That means a lot of unfortunate things today. Yet, somewhere inside I know that no matter the size or shape or elasticity of my body, I am a valuable human.
4) I am the perfect student. When I started smoking pot at the age of 15 it was because I didn’t care about the nonsense of school. It was not the pot that led to the uncaring, rather the uncaring that was amplified by pot.
But things changed between me and school and I learned that I could use school to prove myself. Regardless of whatever else I did in life, I could do well in school. I smoked until I was 20-something. I don’t remember quitting. I don’t care when I quit. It wasn’t an epic moment in my life, just a necessary step forward. I’ve been a fantastic student with and without marijuana, and school is something of an obsession now. It is because I care. I love to learn things. I respect the people who care to share their knowledge. I respect people who care to listen to others. We all have something worthwhile to say. Then so be it. I don’t have to be the perfect student, as long as you know that I am listening, and then I am willing to share.
5) I can be the perfect daughter/wife/sister/neice/granddaughter. For everyone who thinks and hopes so, I love you dearly. My daddy was everything to me when I was a little girl. I stayed up late at night, after he left my family, worrying whether he was okay. I was afraid he would die, or that something else would happen to him. I thought that the things he was doing were wrong, and that drinking would destroy his health, and that smoking pot would destroy him. He is still here. He lived with me for seven months at this fantasy place I call “The Wild Homestead” and everything about that experience was difficult, and troubled, and reminiscent of past guilt and failures. When we fought in the driveway over his rights and mine, as human beings, as poor human beings without knowledge of the future, we found a troubled and conflicted understanding of each other. I grew up without a father, I told him. I did, and I hoped that somehow we could correct that, but it was already there… Already who I was. He grew up in a world so different from my own. A sore spot in his life was my entire beginning.
My uncle Barry passed away last week. I have waited quietly, in near silence, hoping to learn what I felt about it. It is not easy to know at first. My uncle Barry, as my sweet daddy proclaimed “was like a twin to [him].” They were twins. They were. My daddy and Barry were the same from the dark color of their skin, to the blue in their eyes, to the rich Appalachian accent dancing on their words. My daddy and my Uncle Barry were the same: in their work, in their passion, in the way they dealt with conflict. Fighting. Good ol’ Appalachian brawls, and sore words until the end. Both hardened men, but good people.
I don’t know how the rest of the family feels from this loss. I can’t know how my dad feels about losing his little brother. Who will ever know? It hurts so much to think that each person dies alone, and each survivor lives in their own way in response… communication is never really there between the survivors because everything is just out of reach of the words. We can just remember together.
All of these things weigh on me, and as a budding “professional” of some sort or another, I just can’t help but wonder how I really feel about life. At 24, I simply don’t know. A handful of circumstances and a pocketful of words.
How hard it is to wrap this up. I want to do it the way I was taught in school. A formal conclusion, but it is nowhere to be found. I can only say that I am working, and that I am aching.
That’s just who I am.
