A Walk by the Creek

Yesterday afternoon in returning coolness I decided to walk to the blooming tamarisk along Vale Gulch westward, and saw several wonders.  There are 3 or 4 six-inch fish in the pool under the highway bridge....they must have come from some dam overflow upstream, since this creek dries up completely in the summer.  And.....a first sighting of something I've only read about.....a horsehair worm!!...a thing like a long very thin snake a foot long, eyeless as far as I could tell, writhing and contorting.  It was not slimy or soft, but firm, almost hard in texture.  (These things, amazingly, live most of their lives as parasites inside of crickets and other large insects, and crawl out of them into water, where they breed....another of the more gruesomely creative niches for life devised by nature!) 
          Beyond the tamarisk (which had all flower parts in sets of four and not five...a diagnostic among them....Tamarix parviflora....another of those infamous invasive exotics about which much debate rages.  I for one wish there were some on our property...if for nothing else than to burn and feed to goats!) I went on along the creek, with the tall cliff opposite.  I got the sense that nobody had been there in a long time, even though I've seen the neighbors' dogs over there from time to time.  Such amazing rocks in the creek bed!  I filled my pockets, and stacked up several more too large to get without a bucket to fetch later.  So many are metamorphic of a sort....one kind of rock cracked-sometimes in multiple directions- and then inlaid with a contrasting mineral...often white quartz.  On a few of them the matrix rock is broken into chunks, offset from their original location, and the gaps infiltrated with quartz.  In one, the whole had softened and the cracks had warped and curved.  What unimaginable torments in the bowels of the earth took place to form these?  Fracturing, then having molten quartz poured through, later fracturing again at another angle, or else shattering altogether and hardening again.  Then again, the whole being heated to softening and then warping, twisting, folding....  Last of all, eroding into fragments and being polished smooth for how many millennia in this small creek, which only flows in the winter and only really rocks a few times a year? 
         The cliff is opposite me, and I saw a huge owl fly in and perch on a branch near the top.  I could see where the layered clay had caved and fallen from time to time, and more pieces cracked and overhung and ready to fall.  Fifty feet or more from the top, I see roots hanging out.  The vastness and depth of time, the awe of the Earth impressed me as it hasn't in a while, busy with my subsistence.  Animal tracks in the sandbars: canids, coons, maybe possums or skunks, turkeys, smaller things.  Strange clouds slide across the sun.

Real Life is Calling

I know I've been a bad blogger...
Between the real-world calls of fixing up the farm, cooking, cleaning, not feeling well, and visiting family and trying HARD to stay OFF the computer (because certain [anti]social media sites can eat your entire day if you let it), the LAST thing I've wanted to do is blog.
But I'm still going to keep up with posting photos on our flickr site and mostly let those tell the stories...
Real Life is far more rewarding and comes with less EMF's than the virtual world-what can I say.

Hans Christian Anderson said "Just living is not enough,...one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.”
He never said anything about Facebook!

And I'll leave you with my other fav. quote, from Shakespeare, " And this our life exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.I would not change it."


PS, I just posted some photos from the past several months-link is on the right side-bar, lower right. Here's a sneak peek.

fruit tree spots....

Hopefully this will be the last major basic fruit and nut planting of my life. Hopefully I will find my way up and out of transition and start-up mode, and settle in to deeper works and longer lessons. But we have a bunch of fruit trees on order for January, and I've been busy the last weeks getting the designated sites ready.

Preliminary observations (especially, soil jar tests and seeing how slowly water drains into test holes) have shown me that most of our soil is a tight, compacted, and poorly draining clay. NOT the best soil for most fruit trees....mostly due to the danger of their becoming too soggy in winter and spring. (For me, it's a matter of faith. I think I can count on one hand the times it's rained here since June, but people reassure me it's coming. And I've also lived my whole life in rainier climates than this....it's a bit of a stretch to imagine anything getting too soggy with only twenty inches a year!) So this means raised sites...mounds or better yet, edged and raised beds. I started to do this with the citrus, avocado, and olives set a couple of months ago (being evergreens, I surmise that it doesn't matter much when they are planted as long as they can be watered, and since everything must be watered anyway, why not snap up the deals on the varieties I want when I see them. But deciduous trees are best planted when leafless...thus the big January planting)

A good permaculture in process feels to me like a kind of vortex which I get to participate in for a while. The task of the designer and installer is to orchestrate the resources at hand into a pattern focused toward the desired yields with minimum waste and maximum yield. Nothing ordinarily thought of as trash is to be disregarded without careful thought. So: Utility pole on our property has so many woodpecker holes we could see daylight through it.....a phone call leads to an inspection, and a hasty decision that yes, it did need immediate replacement. So when the crew shows up I tell them "You could just leave the old pole here...I'll find something to do with it." In Georgia and Oregon, sticks, logs and wood are everywhere. It seems like the main project of the ecosystem in those places is to produce wood. In Georgia I'd simply go cut a pine tree or ten down to get logs to make raised beds with. And when the logs went to compost, I'd put new ones down, if I thought the situation warranted it. But here in CA, every stick is precious. It's more like Bangladesh, where they burn cowpies for fuel! I'm not quite at that stage yet, but I can see it as an option for sure! So here is this utility pole...a huge resource, come at just the right time! ( Not that there wasn't a plan B. In my case the plan B would have been old roofing tin, folded in half and backed up to stout stakes, to hold the raised grade behind) So I made wooden wedges (blue oak is harder than Douglas fir!), then sawed the thing into eight foot sections and carefully split each in half lengthwise (effectively doubling the number of raised sites I could enclose with it) Then I laid them out in triangles at the sites of the most drainage-sensitive trees (the pistacio, pomegranate, apricot, and nectarine. The logs were staked back with aluminum scraps from an old TV antenna we took down. The persimmon, mulberry, and figs can apparently do with shallower mounds).

Then I remembered that the base of the pole had been treated with who knows what....perhaps a problem around food. I was encouraged by the pole's age and general state of decay. But in any case at the two sites enclosed by the base sections, I lined the inner surface with scraps of linoleum flooring which we'd torn up from some nasty kitchen and bathroom water leaks.....again...a use and a sequestration obtained from what might be thought of as "hopeless trash".

Then I became aware of the danger of gophers, and at the same time recalled some earlier observations that they tended to avoid burrowing around where humanure was buried, or, for that matter, around any manure. Stands to reason...I wouldn't want to burrow through it either. But in any case I made chicken-wire baskets to sink into each spot, to foil the gophers gnawing and disturbing the crucial trunk-base and main roots of each plant.

Next, the fill. Four five-gallon buckets of humanure were put to use, plus the last of the soil/charcoal from our predecessors' burn pile, and then I began digging out our future laundry greywater trench. (actually a fairly high-priority project, as we discovered our washing machine drains DIRECTLY into the gully which probably has flowing water at the height of the rains!) Thus the spots were all raised, the humanure safely and usefully sequestered, and most of the sites are now ready (except for the figs) I think our dog attempted to dig up the humanure at two of the sites....some of my coarse starthistle slash then came to the rescue.....a good dog, and perhaps pig, deterrent (there again, I wouldn't want to stick my nose into that stuff, so likely neither would they!)

All for the love and the dream of apricots and all their luscious kin!

Projects, Routine and Special Surprises

I know it's been a long time since I've blogged...we're still in what we call "Start up" mode, and although we are mostly "moved in" and things put away, there are still some projects left to do, like painting the hallway and the built in hutch (thingy) and of course planting around the house outside...

What gets me is when we first got here we pretty much just did projects from morning til night, and put away stuff...but NOW, add to that that we've been here long enough that there is routine cleaning to do-something that for the last 7 years I've only done in less than 200 sq. ft.

Now I have 1200 (weee!) and it ALL gets dirty! Dirt, yes, as in cat hair, DUST (it's dry, it's summer and it's DUSTY outside) plus spiders-MAN the spiders-and spider poo and dead bug carcasses that go with lots of spiders...not to mention the floors (oh don't get me started on the DAMN LAMINATE flooring) which needs mopping (not any more) and sweeping often... Alder is used to having A CAMP kitchen, as in outdoors-leave the crumbs and 47 different species will clean up after you...but not now...now we try to keep it clean to keep the mice and tiny sugar ants out...

So now I CLEAN a lot, AND still have projects

left to do, PLUS, oh, yeah, PERSONAL projects-like the half-finished baby sweaters that my two

great-nieces have already gotten too big for, and curtains (finished those for the guest room because the rubber backing is keeping out the boiling

afternoon sun) and a quilt for the guest-room, because I need more big blankets, and 80 million smaller sewing projects that I fancy myself

doing...someday! And yes, I have fantasies of turning my half of the barn (with it's dwindling supply of STUFF) into a dyeing and tee-shirt printing shop....yeah.

BUT, we have gotten a TON of things done-Alder's been outside almost constantly...

So here's a QUICK look, and a list that you can find photos of over at http://www.flickr.com/photos/udanfarm/collections/72157626991999288/

Right-Alder made me a peg/chalk board for my sewing room, to inspire me to create :)

Left, Alder's first olive brining experiment from gleaned olives.

Alder creating an orchard...

What's cooking?

check here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/udanfarm/collections/72157626991999288/

Isabel winnowing acorns...

So that's what we've been up to...that and not much else, oh, except I go play auntie to my two great nieces :)

We make jokes about the day when we finally get "DONE" with all our projects!

And yes, I'm promising Alder to stay PUT here for good!

Oh, and the surprise???

Water leak in the bathroom that crept under the wall and soaked into the laminate flooring (BAD choice for a bathroom!), under the old linoleum and into the sub-flooring in two rooms... so now we have to re-do bathroom flooring! WEEE. (Not.)

not georgia any more!

A strong steady wind came up this morning and went on all day. I was wondering why I felt so tense and stressed this morning, then it dawned on me: in Georgia, to have a wind this strong for so long in hot weather means something very very bad is coming....a hurricane or tropical storm, or maybe a wicked bad cold front with tornadoes and hail.....But Isabel reassured me, here, it means nothing much at all....maybe, just maybe it means the first hint of fall coming on! So I went on, preparing the grapefruit spot, and picking up windthrown pears (possibly mature enough to cold-store and ripen!) and the early, buggy acorns to smash and dry for chicken feed.....

World of Wonders

Azurite and cavensite crystals found in a new age crystal shop in Mount Shasta the other day. A crystal healers' website tells me that crystals are a physical reminder that miracles happen. As extremely unlikely events, the statement is true. Cavensite was not even discovered till 1970, and is found in only about four places on earth, so far known. A calcium vanadium silicate incorporating water (a hydrate), it is needles of intense turquoise blue...little starbursts of them. Wow.

Miracles happen. Beauty happens. The world goes on, in spite of our meddling. Maybe it will be OK. Even if we stay on grid power till the farm in Georgia sells and we can set up solar and wind. Even if we have to buy firewood and food and whatever till then. Planet Earth has been through worse. Asteroid impacts, runaway climate changes....

Night after night I see the many stars, the great spangled strip of the Milky Way across the sky. Twice now I've walked out with the star book and the red headlamp and traced the Great Square and down the leg of Andromeda and seen that small smudge of glow there, like a detached blob of Milky Way: the Andromeda galaxy...the most distant thing visible to the naked eye. Between here and there, all I can see, how many living worlds are there? How many beautiful and unknown crystals, how many living things that glow, how many consciousnesses and cultures? In my own lifetime, people have gone into space, gone to the moon, sent probes throughout the solar system. New wonders they have found...sulfur volcanoes on Io, methane lakes on Titan, the ice world of Europa.

A bookstore can be a depressing place to me sometimes. I will never know all the wonders that are known, not in space, nor even on earth. At various temperatures and pressures, ice and other substances crystallize in different patterns. There are droplets of colored oil in the retinal cells of birds. Mary Kingsley saw balls of violet light over Lake Ncovi (in Gabon, West Africa), and I have no reason to doubt her. I myself have seen bead lightning, frost flowers, and felt the heat of aroid blossoms. There are fireflies in multiple colors, and staghorn ferns, and skunk cabbages, and cavensite. Cavensite existed in 1965, before anyone knew about it.

Taking Root....

Progress toward chickens the last two days. How many times have I moved and set up my tried and true critter-proof chicken pen.....all around Udan, then to Gainesville FL, Asheville NC....(and back to Udan both times) and finally here. It's a huge dumpstered fishing net...heavy black nylon. You put up poles (or whack off saplings if they grow conveniently enough, as in GA), put jars or cans over the ends, and throw the net over the top. Weight and stake down all around the edges, tarp over one end for the rain, a trashcan on its side for a nest box, a couple of sticks stuck through the net for roosts, and electric fence all the way around on at night. The only thing that often got in was a snake, after the eggs.

Now in this small, largely clear site.....still, I find resources to put to use for this set-up. The poles are parts of an old TV antenna that I took down. Smaller pieces made ground stakes to guy them to....with electric cord from the many strings of Christmas lights left festooned all over trees and fences around here. (I'm thinking of saving a number of these intact, if they run....they are a handy way to add heat to semi-tender trees like citrus on the coldest nights!)

The net is weighted down around the edges with two of the heavy old well pipes left lying by the well when the pump was changed by the last people, and a few old fence posts from the back corner, slowly composting in the grass. Interestingly, I think they may be made of redwood (which grows not far away....over the other side of the hills I can see in the west....maybe fifty miles as the crow flies...but it would take three or four hours to drive there).

So some of it came with me, and some was scrounged on site. Like an introduced exotic, my permaculture system strikes roots into a new place.....

Meanwhile, acacia, mimosa, and tagasaste seeds are sprouting!