Saying goodbye, slowly

When I went to work Monday morning we had an "announcement", the plant would be closing by June 2010 or sooner if market conditions demand.

Well! Ok! What next?

It has been a week in shock, we don't believe there is anything we can do to change the decision that has been made, given the statements made by President Obama about the need for a "quick and surgical" bankruptcy. Quick does not mean going back to revisit already-made decisions.

So, it is to be a professionally-done wind-down. No tears, just make sure that things are properly closed up and turned off and sent out and documented and accounted for.

I am just a little too young to retire. I don't know what will be next in my professional career - but I know it won't be here. So, this will be the last year, at least for a while, for the Bellville Farmer's market and the Alta Greenhouse farmer's market.

My peach tree, planted the year my husband and I were married from a seedling started by my former neighbor, will not bear fruit this year because of the below-zero temps last winter. Had this not been the case, this might have been the year that it finally bore fruit.

It reminds me of the three apple trees I planted at my last house - I had Liberty, Enterprise, and Jonafree - three varieties advertised to be resistant to rusts, etc. I got married when they were just starting to bear, and sold my house. The trees did not move with me. It was hard to leave them behind.

On the one hand, I am excited about new career possibilities and opportunities. On the other, I am very sad to be leaving behind my garden, my trees, and especially making my family more distant, geographically. My oldest daughter is expecting my third grandson this month, and I will just be getting to know him when moving...


I spent some cathartic time hoeing weeds in the garden tonight.

Mulch!

My wonderful husband borrowed a dump truck and we now have 4 yards of hardwood mulch in the driveway waiting to be applied, mostly to the flower beds and around trees. He is such a doll! Tomorrow is another gardening day!

I have noticed that my arthritis doesn't bother me while I am in the garden, only after I leave. Is this a sign from above that I should stay in the garden longer?

Never done in the garden

DH and I got our farming done this week while on vacation at the farm. We planted 2 long, long rows of pumpkins. This year I planted jack-o-lantern size, not pie pumpkin size. I also planted some of the "white" pumpkins. Next to the pumpkins are 8 rows of green and purple snap bush beans, since we had so much good luck with them last year. Planted 2 rows of Indian corn and way across the field he planted 10 rows of popcorn. I planted a row or two of lettuce in the shade, and planted about 10 tomatoes and 8 pepper plants, as well as a packet of cilantro seeds.

We still have sweet corn to plant there, but didn't have a separate patch plowed up for it, and since the Indian corn and the popcorn are in this patch, can't plant sweet corn near it without losing the sweetness of the sweet corn due to cross-pollination.

Spent the entire day outside yesterday back in Ohio potting up flowers for the patio and for the cemetery. (I missed Memorial day deadline this year, but at least I finally got it done. )

I put lilyturf in the pots instead of the standard spike. Lilyturf is usually used for a ground cover, which must mean it spreads. It flowers in the late summer. I put in the usual geraniums, and a few snapdragons. Snapdragons were my grandpa's favorite flower. I also added some cute little dahlias to some of the pots, some salvia, some nicotiniana, and some coleus. I used a variegated ivy in a few pots for a trailer.

After I finished with the pots and at the cemetary, I started weeding the vegetable garden here. I NEED SOME MULCH!! The hairy galinsogas are sprouting, and I am seeing creeping Charlie creeping in. I cut some rhubarb to use the huge leaves as much in the lettuce. I spent a few hours hoeing, then planted some herbs.

I bought a new book on companion planting, Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham, at Schuler bookstore in Grand Rapids, and read through it on the ride back from Michigan. She suggests "mixing it up" and intensively planting in the garden, mixing herbs, flowers and vegetables all throughout the garden to provide a "living mulch", shading out the weeds, and to provide flowering plants to attract beneficial insects.

So, yesterday I planted nasturtium seeds next to the cucumbers (they're up!) and fennel near the zucchini, and thyme in the cabbage. Luckily, I already had chives planted, and volunteer dill is sprouting among the lettuce. I won't tear it out. We'll see how it all works together.

Today I finally filled up my hummingbird feeder. I've been noticing the little birds flitting around for a week or so, but I know with all the flowers in bloom right now and the neighbor's feeders, they're not really going hungry. I just like to entice them out to my back patio so that I can enjoy their beautiful colors. Notice the red "dam" on my feeder - it is the best $3.00 I ever spent. It is just a piece of plastic, which I fill with water. This keeps the ants from getting to the hummingbird feeder, they would have to cross the open water, where they would drown. Before I installed this the mess from the ants made it a yucky job to clean and fill the feeder.

One more day of vacation, then it's back to work.

Not done yet

OK , still not done. This morning I was in the garden by 6:00 am; and planted four varieties of squash, green zucchini, gold zucchini, delicata squash, and another zucchini.

I got four rows of sweet corn planted, but didn't get the cucumber trellis built.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Kent City, got to get the cucumbers planted in the a.m.

Church is at DH's Catholic mass tomorow at 7:00 which means breakfast in Crestline.

One of the things I love about living in this area is that the waitress at the restaurant where we have breakfast on alternate Sundays was in my high school Spanish class. I've known her about forever. The restaurant has a picture of my father's football team hanging on the wall. When we come in, she brings over coffee, orange juice, tomato juice, and chocolate milk before we even order. She always greets us by name. My uncle always sits at the next table, sometimes my cousin is also there.. It seems like home.

The owner of the local garden center was in my high school class, and one of my "circle". I didn't realize this until recently when I presented as a vendor at the "herb day" and found out that he had married the daughter of the greenhouse owner (who was his high school sweetheart - I knew her, but didn't know her parents owned the garden center).

It is so comforting to feel part of the local community. I've been divorced from some of this for a long time - when my kids left the local school system to move to Michigan it seemed like tearing up roots -- we were transplanted and suffered "transplant shock" just as you would if torn away from your roots. Surprisingly, when we moved back home, we weren't welcomed back, but almost treated as strangers again...another transplant shock.

Oh well.

Another thing I love about living here is the ability to attend country auctions on almost any day of the week. Tonight, after my daughter's graduation ceremony, we attended the Saturday night auction outside of Johnsville. We picked up the proceeds of my MIL's auction, and I spent $20 and got lots of "stuff"-- One way to be green and recycle is to buy "gently used" at the auction. We also bought local farm-fresh eggs and Amish home-churned butter...

Tomorrow's another day

Needless to say, I was overambitious this morning. I did plant two rows of beans, a row of peppers, and two rows of mixed broccoli, cauliflower, chinese cabbage, and kale. I filled in some baby lettuce plants between the ones that are about 4 inches high, and hoed out around the lettuce plants. Noticed a lot of the bane of my garden, hairy galinsoga (see 2006 post from July 11 - right now they are tiny, but in July......)

I picked up a lot of rocks and put them in a bucket. Where do they come from? I swear I got all the rocks out last year! I sprayed Roundup all around the outside of the garden where the deer fence meets the yard - I'm not pulling grass out by hand, and it's too close to the fence to be able to mow it.

I tilled the area for the sweet corn, then went to get my seed and found that I had neglected to order sweet corn! I had Indian corn and popcorn, but no sweet corn. So ran back to the local greenhouse to get some corn seed. I bought 1/2 pound of Illini X-tra sweet for the farm at Kent City, and a couple of early varieties for here. Probably you are supposed to separate them by more than 4 feet, but oh well....

By this time I was starting to run on empty, but DH, bless his heart, had fixed the chipper we bought from a friend of his last week and was running it on the branches that were in the compost pile. I helped for about an hour then I hit the wall. Came in to take a shower, cook dinner, and have a glass of wine... I am definitely winding down.

Tomorrow morning I will go out and plant corn, zucchini, and cucumbers - before 11:00! So that we can get ready for graduation.

Heading out to the garden

I picked lettuce leaves for our salad last night for dinner. So wonderful to have FRESH food available.

You can almost see the row of lettuce plants across my garden through the deer fence I installed last weekend. If this doesn't keep them out, I am going to give up gardening!


Last night my daughter and grandson helped me plant a row of beets and put a few tomatoes in the ground. Today I plan to plant some beans from seed, some cabbage plants I picked up at the nursery, and another row of lettuce from the flat in my driveway. I'm going to try and get the zucchini, cucumbers and corn planted today too. I've got a flat of tiny marigold plants to put around the edges to keep out six-footed pests, too. If there's time left over I will put in the flat of impatiens I picked up last night on the way home from work.

Hopefully I won't be too wiped out to attend my daughter's college graduation ceremony tomorrow!

I love being in the garden in the morning. The irises have started blooming, they are so beautiful in the early morning sunshine!

Buy American

American automakers are producers just like American farmers. Gross National Product depends on production. We need manufacturers just like we need farmers.

Moved plants back inside

DH has started up the woodburning fireplace insert again, since the temperature is hovering around 50 degrees. We are down to less than 1/2 a cord of firewood so will have to go and cut some more soon.

I had temporarily moved my tomato and pepper seedlings outside this weekend when the temperature was up to 80 - had to move them back in. I took a tip from my podiatrist and put some plastic film over the light fixture on the plant stand to keep the warm air around the plants. The thermometer is reading 70 degrees so hopefully they are happy in there.

Progress report on the beans - Four sixpacks - black has 5 sprouts, white has 4, the pinto one has 3, and the brown one has 2! 14 out of 24 is approximately a 60 percent germination rate, I'll give the brown ones a few more days, maybe they're just slow.

No link between NAIS and Influenza A(N1H1)

Thank goodness! See the post on the USDA web site where the Secretary of Agriculture makes it clear that "swine flu" virus is not transmitted by contact with swine, the virus is not food-borne and you cannot get the virus by eating infected meat. HERE is another link with similar statements on the APHIS web site.

Deer Fence

I worked until dark putting up 8 ft. t-post fence posts and the deer fence I ordered from A.M. Leonard. It got dark before I was finished. Some of the fence posts aren't tall enough.

I wonder if I will have captured a deer in the morning - jumped in and can't get out? I don't know what to do with it if that happens....

Drove over to Unger Farms and took pictures. See them at the Crawford County Master Gardener's blog at crawford-mg.blogspot.com .

Comments on NAIS???/

I received an email post from OEFFA (Ohio Ecological Food and Farmer's Association) that AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK SEEKS DIALOGUE WITH PRODUCERS AND STAKEHOLDERS ON NATIONAL ANIMAL IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM - further information would be posted on this USDA APHIS web site .

I haven't seen any further posts - but what I have seen are multiple reports about swine flu on the news this week. Just google "Swine flu" and sort the news articles by date for the most recent information - or look at this article from Associated Content. (Who are they associated with? I wonder)

Geez, am I getting to be really paranoid? How coincidental is the timing of these two events?

Giving up on mother-in-law's tomato seeds

I have given up on germinating my mother-in-law's tomato seeds (see March 29 post). So far they've been sitting around in the 72-cell flat doing nothing, and they've had almost a month to do SOMETHING. I'm going to re-use the flat for something else.

Saving bean seeds

Last year we planted several varieties of bush beans at the farm - wax, green, and purple varieties. We mixed them all together in the row, and we had VERY LITTLE insect damage. Later I read that the bean beetles do not like the purple varieties of the bean. This was the best crop of ANYTHING we've had - four long rows of beans yielded more beans than we wanted to pick by hand, for sure! We planted the week of Memorial Day. We picked at least 5 bushels while we were there for the family reunion in early August- gave some away, froze some, etc. but they evidently continued to bear. When I returned later in the year I found bean pods on the vines that had dried up and turned black. I harvested them too, putting them in an open plastic bag (to reduce chance of mildew) still in the shell, and keeping them in an unheated attached garage all winter.

Last weekend I shelled those beans and sorted them by color - brown, black, white, and pinto.

I am currently running a germination test to see if they are worth planting. So far I have 4 of 6 sprouted of the black (upper right in photo), 3 sprouted of the white (upper left in photo), and 1 showing promise in the brown beans (lower right). So far no pinto beans have sprouted. We're enjoying an 80+ degree day today here in North Central Ohio, so I've got them outside. I'll keep you posted!

Vanilla- vanillin

I have been studying vanilla. Did you know that vanilla beans come from a member of the orchid family? or that they only have beans if the flowers are either hand-pollinated or pollinated by a specific bee that lives only in Mexico? Or that vanillin is a natural flavoring derived from spruce trees?

Vanillin is more "hardy" in baking than pure vanilla, it stands up to higher temperatures. Some vanilla flavorings are a blend of natural vanilla and vanillin.

Other vanilla flavorings are synthetically produced, they are useful when a pure white color is desired in the finished product, as in a wedding cake.

I will be developing more information about vanilla in the near future.

Esther Ritter 1910-2009

I wrote about my grandma, Esther Mae Klahn Ritter, on this blog about a year ago. This morning she quietly passed on to be with her Lord and Creator. She had several hospitalizations this year and was struggling quite a bit lately. At 98 years old she was a shining example for all of us of how to live a loving, humble life. I love you, Grandma!

Propagation mat

The flats in the attached, unheated garage are cold... I ordered a propagation mat, which arrived today. I am anxious to see if it improves germination. I have two flats under lights, one is on the mat, the other is not. I am wondering if I should have ordered two or whether I need to switch off the flats every other day....

Planting time

Yesterday I planted 5 flats, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce.
The tomatoes and peppers were from Johnny's selected Seeds and were some new varieties I have not tried before. I've still got a lot of seeds left to go.

A few days ago I planted some tomato seeds I found in an envelope in my mother-in-law's house. The envelope was marked simply "TOMATOES" so I have no idea what variety - my husband claims they are big boy. I think that's because those are his favorites. Since they're a couple of years old I'm not sure what kind of germination I will get. I'm also planning on planting a few six-packs of tomato seeds I kept from my successful crop of tomatoes a few years ago, I have quite a few left. Mostly they are from the "bloody butcher" tomatoes but since I didn't isolate them from the other tomatoes I planted, who knows what the genetics might be now?

Some of the seeds I planted yesterday were from the seed exchange my Master Gardener's group did in February.

It is hailing! right now. Pea-sized balls of hail. At least it's not snowing. I'm going to curl up with my A.M. Leonard catalog and order some propagation mats and a soil testing tool.

I saved hollyhock seeds and marigold seeds from my flowers last year, I have thousands of seeds. I plan to seed a couple of flats of each and take them to my daughter's apartment building and see if I can give any plants away.

Today is DH's birthday. I'm making a pot roast and a cherry pie. I can't tell you how long it's been since I baked a cake, nobody eats cake around here anymore! Not even birthday cake.

House Bill 875

If you are interested in sustainable food production, please educate yourself about House Bill 875. See http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875 for the full text.

'To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes. 'Bill # H.R.875

This affects you if you are a Food Production facility (defined as follows)

(14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.

I don't see anything in the bill about the size of the farm, or the market it serves. Does this mean an end to farmer's markets?

Perhaps the level of reporting required will be no more onerous than that which is currently required for organic food production, but it does seem to favor the larger producer as opposed to a smaller one.

Foremost Soil Scientist to Speak

Dr. Rattan LalProfessor of Soil ScienceSchool of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State UniversityCollege of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Science Dr. Rattan Lal will speak on Wednesday, March 25th at 7 p.m. in Kottman Hall 103. His topic is principles of soil management. Dr. Lal is a world-renowned expert on sustainable management of soil and natural resources, food security, and climate change. His research interests include:
Restoration and rehabilitation of degraded soils including minelands, soil resilience, water quality, soil structure and compaction
Conservation tillage
Agroforestry
Natural resources management with emphasis on food security and environmental quality
Agricultural development in the Third World We’re extending an invitation to attend to all interested Ohio Master Gardeners. For more information, e-mail skurdal.1@osu.edu

Elderly relatives

One country tradition I remember well from my childhood is having neighbors that look in on each other, and in typical small-town fashion, knowing almost everything there is to know about everyone else on the "block" or in the square-miles-wide local farm community. As a teenager I thought this was stifling, but now in my mature old age I see the wisdom of this tradition.

In our fast-paced, high-tech virtual world it seems that we don't have as much time for just sitting down and chatting with each other as we did back then (gosh, folks, I'm only talking 40 years ago!)

These last two weeks my father has been in the hospital fighting for his life with so many problems it was fortunate the doctors knew where to begin. He thought he had a minor infection and fever, went to the emergency room, and had a heart attack there. The initial diagnosis that got him admitted to intensive care was pneumonia, which turned into sepsis. Treatment with strong new antibiotics cleared up the infection, but he didn't improve. After almost 10 days in the hospital intensive care unit they finally realized it was an uncommon reaction to a drug he was taking for his heart arrythmia and had been taking for almost a year.

My dad had been following up with his family physician, but had decided to change from the cardiologist he had been seeing an hour away, to a more local cardiologist. Except he hadn't visited the local cardiologist yet. We are still trying to understand how the information got lost in the shuffle - that patients on this drug, Amiodarone, are supposed to be monitored by both a cardiologist and a pulmonologist. As it states on the link, "since many patients taking amiodarone have a history of heart problems, their symptons are easy to mistake for heart disease (or sometimes, the effects of aging).

This is not the only drug he is taking that has a list of side effects a mile long. At my last visit I noticed how "puffy" he was, but he had a scheduled visit to the family doctor the next day, so I wasn't too concerned. Next thing I knew he was on his way to the hospital in the ambulance.

Please look in on your elderly neighbors. If you don't know who they are, get to know them. Take them a casserole sometime if you have too much (but remember that many elderly are on restricted diets or are diabetic.) Don't be afraid to be nosy.