Guest entry: Twinkletoes...or learning to coexist with our (stinky) suburban neighbors

(Ok, this is not really food or plants, but I'm an animal lover, too...)

So we have a guest in our yard this year...we call him (maybe her?) "Twinkletoes". We noticed one day that something had eaten one of the ladies' eggs, and the ladies were not roosting where they were supposed to - they would hunker down over behind the raspberries and stay out at night. So the second or third night of this, the Campesino tried to shoo the ladies home. Juliet, our alpha-hen, stopped at the coop door and looked, and looked...and wouldn't go in. So Campesino opens the coop door, and from across the yard I hear, "Woah! OK ladies - you sleep wherever you want!"

Twinkletoes, in case you hadn't guessed, is our nocturnal black-and-white friend...a skunk. Of course, our first instinct was call someone to trap it - get rid of it. I called the federal trapper for the county, and when I told him what part of town we lived in, his response was, "Ah, the skunk capitol of the county." Great. So he was too busy to come trap Twinkletoes and he didn't want to accidentally trap one of the neighbor cats that roam our yard, either. So Twinkletoes (and family...there are at least two others) stayed.

Since then I've read that if you trap and remove them, other skunks or urban wildlife like raccoons will move in to take their place. I'd much rather have skunks, who eat the occasional egg, than raccoons, who kill full-grown chickens for sport, so I'm hoping the skunks discourage the 'coons from returning later this year. The chickens started laying in the ivy along the back fence, so Twinkletoes doesn't find the eggs very often (then again, neither do we...the chickens are pretty good at hiding them.)

Anyway, that was a few weeks ago, so we've decided to try to learn to live with our musky little friends. They're actually quite cute (I'll try and snap a photo one of these nights) and beneficial. They eat all sorts of undesirable garden pests: beetles, aphids, lawn grubs, black widows, rats and mice, etc. and downed-fruit, but so far nothing on the vine or plant. As soon as it's dark (and sometimes not even dark) Twinkletoes is out roaming the lawn and garden, nose down, sniffing and hunting very determinedly. We find these funny little snout holes all over the garden, about 3-4" across and 1-2" deep, where the skunk found a good snack to dig up. But they seem to be much less destructive than chickens can be in the garden - no digging up plants [Well, minimal digging up of plants, but not as bad as chickens - Campesino], eating ripe veggies or excessive scratching, just very targeted snout-sized digging.

Campesino has had some accidental but fortunately not stinky encounters with Twinketoes and sons, just surprising them out in the garden. But, as is usually the case with animals, they seem more scared of us than we are of them. We watched Twinkletoes hunt in the lawn for a few minutes the other night. He moved very quickly while hunting and didn't see us for a while, but as soon as he did (he was getting a bit close for our comfort - within about 10 feet) he shot back into a bush. Skunks are good diggers but crummy climbers and have very short legs, so they don't walk or bound like squirrels or cats, they...well, "twinkle". Think classic Tom & Jerry cartoons - you know when one is sneaking up on the other, only paw-fingertips moving with the "tinkle tinkle tinkle" sound effect? Just like that. They almost seem to levitate and travel without moving.

So, we'll see how co-existing with Twinkletoes and family goes!

What hast thou to do with me, Jacob?

We planted a type of bean called Jacob's Cattle this year. That's them at the the top of the post. The bean is a beautiful purple and white speckled heirloom variety. I don't know what it tastes like yet, but it sure is pretty. There is also a kind of sheep called Jacob's Sheep.

www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/jacob/index.htm

What does this have to do with anything you may ask. A more appropriate question is who is Jacob? Jacob is a biblical trickster character who tricked his twin brother out of his birthright and blessing; and then managed to get rich off of his father-in-law. Not exactly a paragon of virtue, but he is one of the patriarchs of the Bible. In fact his twelve sons begat the twelve tribes of Israel. {insertion by way of request from the campesino's wife: if you actually want to know why it is called Jacobs Cattle bean go to Genesis 30} Again, you might ask: So? I am in fact a somewhat religious person, but regardless of the meaning I take from biblical stories, I believe that in order to really understand western literature (or something as random as why a bean is called what it is) the Bible is required reading. I took a course in college called "Reading the Bible as Literature" and frankly it opened my eyes. I had read the entire book several times already, but only as a religious text. Frankly, you can not read Shakespeare or any number of authors from Augustine (maybe not the best example) to Margaret Atwood, and really understand what they are talking about, without a basic knowledge of biblical stories. So, if I was going to suggest anything I would say read the Old Testament (you can probably exclude Numbers). The New Testament has all kinds of interesting stuff, but the Old Testament has the best stories. You can't beat Eglon getting struck down by a left-handed man in his "cool private chamber." A simple story like that leads one to ask "Why the big deal over the left-hand?" and "would the fat really swallow up a knife?" Or, is the take home lesson from the story for the modern reader "Don't be an evil oppressive king" or "Don't talk to left-handed strangers while sitting on The Pot." These may not be literary questions, but I have wondered about them for many years.

Also, if you are reading Psalms, Proverbs, or really any book you need to use the King James Version. Not the most accurate but it reads like literature. The other versions make it easy to read (i.e. boring). Well, that last is not entirely true, but if you are reading it for literature, it needs to read like literature.

"I thought this was a gardening blog" you might say. So I leave you with Isaiah 5:8 "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" So there you have it, a biblical injunction against hogging all the land. Not because you will hurt others, but because you will need friends and helpers. Gardening alone is peaceful (and enjoy it), but we are made to be in community. So, though I dream of moving off to 100 acres in the middle of nowhere I know that I will probably stay in the area I am. However, in the American Dream kids are supposed to be better off than their parents. So I am aiming for least ten acres anyways, because my dad has seven.

(I will try and get the guest blogger back, she is actually better at this stuff.)

-A Campesino

Guest blog entry: the beautiful Columbine

Keeping a garden sometimes takes more than one person...and sometimes so does keeping a blog! At the Campesino's request, I'll guest-blog on plants and food occasionally. The Campesino does most of the cultivation, but usually I'm the one who cooks things from the garden, and some of the plants we grow are because I chose the variety.

So, for my first contribution I'll extoll the virtues of a beautiful specimen from our garden, the Columbine (Aquilegia spp.), probably my favorite of the flowers we grow - it's fairly hardy, very unique looking, and comes in essentially all the colors of the rainbow. This State flower of Colorado has varieties native to many different parts of the northern hemisphere, including California. We have both the California native Columbine (A. formosa) and the European variety (A. vulgaris, shown here). Our Columbines started flowering by early March this year, but by now, the beginning June, the first set of blossoms are almost all spent. I dead-headed the plants this weekend and collected the seeds, and they may flower a second time this year by August or September. The flowers produce an amazing amount of seeds in five tubes of seeds per flower - like double-rowed pea pods. They look a little like star-anise pods, but the seeds are glossy black and tiny - around the size of the head of a plain, metal straight-pin (not the plastic-ended type). I took one flower apart to see how many seeds there were per flower - it had 112!! No wonder they survived as a wildflower in so many places.

In any case, they are a beautiful and easy-to-grow flower. We started all the European Columbines from seed, and in their 3rd year in the ground they're 10" tall, 18" wide hemispheres of leafy green with 2' flower spires. In our mild winter they die back to the ground but are only bare for a month or so before sending out new, somewhat maple-shaped leaves. The flower stalks are quite stiff - like wire or bamboo skewers - so even in the wild winds we've had this spring, where branches break and other wiftier flowers flop flat, these flowers never drooped a bit. They're best left outside - various parts of the plant are poisonous and they don't last too long as cut flowers - but when the plant is in full flower they're beautiful and last quite a while. In full bloom they remind me of a Roman Candle - my kind of fireworks: silent, don't reek of gunpowder, and bloom when it's not 100 degrees outside!

Anyway, blah blah blah, boring scientific post...grow something pretty! (Just don't eat this one.)

- a Campesino's wife

The ladies - or why everbody needs chickens

This is an early photo of our first group of "ladies." You can't tell now, but the one we call Marilyn was really Marlon, and one of the silkies was Don Juan. We don't have any of our original chickens any more. We have lost 5 to raccoons, one became eggbound (a nasty business), and one became weakened by mites and quit eating. We caught on a little to late with the last two, or the causes of death were completely treatable. Less so with being eggbound.

However, chickens are not all death and sickness! They are also beautiful, clucking wonders who turn worms, grubs, insects, slugs, grass, and old vegetables into the most amazing eggs. The color and texture of a fresh free range egg beats anything you can by in a store. Chickens also love tofu, I am not sure there is anything they like better. But they are not vegetarians. As outlined above they will eat just about anything that runs, crawls, or squirms that is substantially smaller than themselves.

They are relatively quiet animals, more consistently noisy than some pets, but it is generally a soft clucking, with occasionally harsh "bocking." Unless of course you have a rooster. One of our chickens (Honker, a buff orpington) is fairly loud, but none of our neighbors have complained, and one has even inquired about getting chickens himself.

Hot

It is the first really hot day of summer. Over 100 degrees. So begins the long summer. So far we have planted garlic, onions, potatoes (at least 5 varieties), cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, corn, cilantro, parsley, chard, eggplant, assorted herbs, and assorted flowers. the only thing that is really producing right now are the strawberries. We have a ton of them, which is a good place to be. We just need to turn some into strawberry jam. We have already made some sorbet. I highly recommend grapefruit strawberry sorbet. It has just the right amount of tartness. If you want to see pictures of the garden, head on over to our flikr page. Here are the March blossoms:

http://flickr.com/photos/21575442@N03/sets/72157604094960695/

I need to get May up there, we have some great roses, poppies, foxglove, and penstemon.

This was our first couple of beds. They were double dug, and framed with found wood and bought fir. Found wood is ideal. I have used a mixture of pine, fir, found wood, and rounds of a tree that fell through our fence. The rounds are actually my favorite, it gives the beds a very natural look. I sifted the beds to remove the Bermuda grass, rocks, and random pieces of glass and children's toys. Bagged compost was added, as we had not been there long enough to make our own (though as you can see in the background I also added a three bin system for composting). The the paths that surround the beds are about 6 inches deep and filled with wood chips to keep the Bermuda from creeping right back into the beds. Wood chips can be free, an aborist will be happy to give them to you as they will have to pay to dispose of them otherwise. The paths also work as a long term composting system. The bottoms of the paths are now a fine, black compost in this area. Probably this fall I will clean them out and add the compost to the beds. The wood chips also hold moisture. This was our first crop, mostly tomatoes and squash.

And there was land

We acquired our place about three years ago now. The yard as you can see was bare, which was actually a major attraction. A lot of land in our area has major trees, which can obstruct ones gardening plans. The view is to the west northwest, so the yard gets a good deal of sun. It was just a matter of getting rid of some of the grass.

Just Starting Off

This blog was inspired by the writings of Sharon Astyk over at Casaubon's Book. I do not pretend to know all there is to know about gardening, but I thought I could share what I have learned over the past couple of years about raising vegetables and some laying hens in northern California. My wife and I live on about 1/3rd of an acre in a 1960's subdivision in the suburbs of Sacramento. We have damp winters (hopefully) and hot dry summers. My soil started off remarkably bad. Compacted clay, little apparent humus, and a clay hardpan a couple of feet down. Not ideal for commercial farming, but I am only growing for us now. I am going to start from the begining and work to where we are now over the next few weeks. If you stumble across this blog and have questions go ahead and ask them. If you have suggestions to improve my gardening go ahead and share them.

-Campesino