Planting Onions

I went to Renfrow Hardware in Matthews this past weekend with the goal of finding a Christmas present for my parents ... in particular, a 5 gal automatic chicken feeder for their 25 new Rhode Island Red hens. I found one. I bought it.

I also found onions. Last year I planted quite a few varieties in the spring and envisioned a bounty of plump, pungent bulbs, but what I ended up with were golf ball sized disappointments. I spoke with one of the gentlemen at Renfrow and he told me to plant in the fall for large onions and to plant them high in a mound and to let the winter rain wash the dirt away from the developing bulbs. He also suggested manually clearing dirt off of the bulbs in early spring, keeping them only half buried.

I raked up six 'speed bumps' and planted 8 yellow Granex hybrids per row for a total of 48. I didn't apply mulch under/over the plants as I did with the garlic, but I did fill the trenches between the rows with mower-shredded leaf mulch. If I don't watch out all of my space is going to be occupied by alliums. I should be able to harvest in May however, which would free up the space for other pursuits.

Pecan Wealth

Our tiny .24 acre urban lot enjoys the summer shade of no less than four pecan trees (and one ginormous poplar) which means that roughly every two years late fall brings a deadly hail of tree nuts and hours of stooping, plastic bag in hand, to gather as much as I can ahead of the squirrels. I have a strange compulsion to pick up every single nut I see, as if somehow I'll be held accountable for those that are left. After a few evenings of shelling, however, the compulsion is gone and I have no qualms about tossing the lot into the trash. It's no wonder that pecans are as much as $8/lb and the grocery.

My shelling technique is rather basic. I do have a lever-action cracker given to me by my dad (or maybe I just took it) that makes for easier work than hand-held jobber that is only good for inducing hand cramps in less than sixty seconds, but it too leaves quite a bit to be desired. In my quest to find a better method I ran across Southern Nut'n Tree and I now understand the elevated price of shelled pecans. Yes, there are methods that are easier on the hands, but good golly, look at the prices on that equipment! Hardly any item under $5k and many over $10k. Granted these are geared to commercial operations, but I guess that means I'm stuck with hours of fun sitting on the floor, working the lever and dodging the occasional shrapnel from exploding pecans.

Wish me luck!

Garlic's in the ground

I got around to putting in ~40 cloves of garlic this past weekend. Twelve are German Hardneck Rocambole and the rest are S&H Silverskin, all from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I like the taste of the hardneck varieties better, but I want to try a little of everything before I settle. When I planted garlic a couple years ago they had quite a bit of top growth before spring due to a very mild winter and I think the bulb size suffered as a result. Let's hope we actually have a winter this year.

I didn't do anything special with the planting (though I did scour the net for potential tips and tricks). They are on ~6 inch centers, about 1.5" deep and covered with a few inches of leaf mulch.

The Deliberate Agrarian has quite a bit on info on planting/growing/processing garlic ... good read, but I don't see myself going that big anytime soon (though I could dig up the front yard ...?).

Michael Pollen for Ag Secretary

Yesterday, via Kottke, I read an article in the NY Times by Michael Pollen directed at our current presidential candidates. The jist is that our food system is broken and one of you has the chance to begin fixing it. Change will be opposed, but this can easily be presented as a win for multiple (quite varied) interest groups: granola-eating, liberal hippies would support it, evangelical homeschoolers would support it and big gov't/business-hating libertarians would support it.

Today I discover (also via Kottke) that one of the candidates actually read Pollen's piece ... and that gives me hope.

Genesis

I heard The Beginning Farmer on Weekend America last weekend, and after checking out his blog (I'm midway through 2007 working forward) I decided to re-enter blogging (for the 4th time, maybe ... ). This time however, I have focus. I want to share my experiences as I struggle to 'get back to the land' ... not that I was ever really on the land to begin with, but I've always had that desire to be more self-sufficient and to live more in harmony with our natural surroundings. I think my parents had the same urgings, and from what I can gather, they actually farmed for a while (until they got hungry and had to thumb through Stalking the Wild Asparagus to identify their next meal).

My mother often says of my father (and I think he'd agree) that he was/is a jack of all trades and a master of none and I was always proud of that, b/c I could see and admire his knack for doing just about anything. I grew up reading his copies of Roy Underhill's Woodwright Shop books and 'helping' him as he pursued his many hobbies. He would disappear into the shed after dinner and emerge much later, covered in sawdust and carrying the beginnings of a sketch - planning some better way to do what he had just attempted.

From an early age my parents hauled us off to flea markets looking for some elusive hand tool, though I don't remember purchasing much beyond the fried pork rinds, fresh from the big black kettle full of snapping hot oil. Both of them love to go 'antiquing' and I developed and patience and later a love for perusing other people's cast off junk, old or not. While in more natural settings my mother would pull grape vines for wreath making from the trees while my father sawed up dead and downed oak and hickory for the season's two cords of firewood from the nearby Holly Springs National Forest. We traveled for blacksmithing conferences and even to the 1984 World's Fair to watch my father exhibit white oak basket weaving under the Mississippi state banner. We didn't grow up 'country' but I've had the opportunity to shape cherry red iron, to rive shingles, to stoke a coal fire, to weave a wreath, to sit on a shave horse, to shell peas, to hang a tree, to carve spoons from downed street trees, to ... enjoy working with my hands, however successful or unsuccessful I was, and to see life as an opportunity for learning and living.

This is beginning to sound like a biography for my father, but I think the memories hint and something else ... I want my family to have those experiences, and more. I want to use this medium to expand on what I learn and perhaps gain some feedback and insight from those more experienced and pragmatic.