If you give a girl a crowbar...

I'm starting work on our front room / former nighttime kitty jail / future crafty room of awesome. Much of the work has been really boring...cleaning, organizing, floor scrubbing.

But today, I started attacking with a crowbar! There is a bookshelf in our living room that was previously a door between the living room and the front room. We're reopening it!

The first step is to attack it with a crowbar. Bill hopes we're going to find some buried gold. So far, I've found a mirror.

I hope to report more exciting finds soon.

Frosty!

The 90% first frost date in our area is early October. But, of course, this is an exceptional year and our first frost was on September 22.

We have gobs of green tomatoes and lots of Thai hot peppers that aren't ripe yet, so we covered most of important stuff in plastic.

Bill also built me a cold frame for the top of a couple of raised beds. I started broccoli and beets in here a few weeks ago and recently added some lettuce and radishes. We'll see how it works! Hopefully we'll have some homegrown lettuce for tacos throughout the winter.

New blog...philosphy and stuff

This blog, with its knitting and chickens, doesn't really feel like a place when I can write paragraphs at a time on philosophical issues or share nuanced or not completely formed opinions about...stuff. Whenever I do, I feel guilty. I imagine you all coming here looking for Sugar Pie and finding a rant about eggs.

So, today I give you some knitting and chickens and a link to a new blog. JoAnna's Walden (I'm not entirely sure about the title, but it's the URL now, so we're going to have to get used to it together). Right now, you'll find summaries of the prologue of the book Collapse, which I am reading publicly as promised. I intend to update it at least weekly with similar posts, along with some ramblings about why Bill and I live the weirdo life that we do.

I might remind you on occasion that it exists, but will leave the soapbox over there.

Here, it will remain chickens and fiber. Promise.

Raindrops and Chickens

The rain droplets on our locust leaves this morning inspired me to dig out the macro and telephoto lenses we have for our camera. Please to enjoy some country life up close...

Elvis has been enjoying the grass seed this morning.

My head exploded

Warning - this post is overtly political...something I don't typically do here, but I am feeling a particularly overwhelming rage at the moment and want to speak up.

When we moved to DC in 2002, I went as a believer in the system. I moved there to "change the world, man," and thought the political process was the way do to it. Five years working with advocacy organizations changed my mind and I left DC thinking most people involved with the national system were worthless and just playing a game to amuse themselves and gain individual power.

As a result, I haven't voted for a major party candidate for a national office in many years. I have consistently made use of the write-in option - even when I knew my vote could actually count. Both Virginia and Indiana have been battleground states in years that I've lived in them and cast votes for Gandalf and The Doctor. I believed that the "lesser of two evils" was still evil and I didn't want to endorse it.

In two sentences, Mitt Romney guaranteed my vote this year for Barack Obama. Sorry, Atticus Finch, you don't get my vote this time.

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. MY promise...is to help you and your family.

This sentiment is so blatantly stupid, I can't even stand it. When I heard Romney utter it, I couldn't do anything but scream. Loudly. For two full minutes. I believe I now understand how people feel when they say their heads have exploded. 

And he said it in a year when vast sections of the midwest are experiencing record drought, costing states, farmers AND FAMILIES billions of dollars.

To not understand that environmental issues are economic issues displays a serious, willful misunderstanding of how life works.

I know that drought is not always caused by climate change. I know that the dust bowls of nearly 100 years ago can't be blamed on our current use of oil. Sometimes drought is just a naturally occuring event that is not influenced by human action. And, THIS is exactly why we should be addressing environmental concerns within our control. There are going to be times that Mother Nature screws us over. We can recover and thrive in those years if we aren't screwing ourselves over in all the other years.

I've been meaning to reread Jared Diamond's Collapse and Romney's ignorance (and the ignorance of the people who would believe him) has prompted me to do it publicly. For the next few weeks, I'll share summaries of the chapters as I read them. Despite its title, Collapse is a very hopeful book. Jared Diamond - winner of a MacArthur genius award - describes why advanced societies have failed throughout history (spoiler alert: it's usually an environmental reason) and how we can learn from them to avoid their fates. He also shares examples of how good environmental policy enhances economic conditions and the health and stability of "you and your family."

Environmental issues have nothing - NOTHING - to do with saving whales and pandas. It's about saving people. It always has been.

Billbasco Sauce

We have a bunch of cayenne peppers turing red in the garden, so Bill picked them and made tabasco...I mean Billbasco sauce.

The process went like this: chop 10-12 peppers, sprinkle with salt, heat in vinegar, blend. The end. 

In prudent kitchens, the blending would have been done in a blender. A covered blender. 

We don't have one of those. We have a stick blender, so all the aerosoled bits of burning hot pepper escaped into our kitchen. Bill made Billbasco sauce...and pepper spray.

I will recreate the scene for you.

Setting: old house. Late afternoon. Bill is in the kitchen over a steaming pot. JoAnna is in the next room over - the living room. An open doorway separates them. 

Bill: cough hack cough cough Arrrg! hack

JoAnna: Are you ok?

Bill: Don't come in here.

JoAnna: Do you need help?

Bill: cough gag Don't cough cough come in here!

The resulting sauce is actually quite mild. 

Growin' growin' growin'

"Halloo!" say the chickens.

Would you like a tour of our garden? And by "our" we mean the garden that the humans so evilly will not let us get into?

This is the area from a previous post that was weed free. It is no longer as such. The bean teepees are just starting to produce fruit now that it is cooler. 

The winter squash are coming along. Butternut:

Sweet Lightning pumpkin. They are individual serving pumpkins. About 3-5 inches.

We've got 7-8 cantaloupe nearly ripe. This is the sweet passion variety and legend says if you eat them in the field in moonlight, much passion ensues.

Our sweet corn is taller than the weeds:

Some Thai hot peppers. This plant is so tall it reaches my mid-thigh. The little peppers will turn red and Bill has designs on stringing them up and drying them for winter stir-fry.

The fall beds have been planted. Lettuce, spinach, beets, and fall radishes, which can apparently be stored.

A pumpkin turning orange!

These are gold peppers. None have turned gold yet, and they start to rot when they touch the ground. We picked 15 or so and made tamale stuffed peppers with local pork.

The tomato zone... please notice the drip irrigation line. It took me a full week to install it throughout the garden and as soon as I was done, it rained. It's been raining about every 3 days since then.

The tomatoes have cracked under the pressure. I'll be making some tomato basil jam with them tomorrow.

This was Sunday morning's harvest. The beans have been dillied. The cantaloupe will be eaten tomorrow (Bill says the internet says to let them sit for three days after picking). The jalapenos will be stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. That's right.

We have a million jalapenos. This is one branch of one plant. We have 6 jalapeno plants. !!!! We've got some pickling and want to leave a bunch to turn red, but we've been eating a lot of spicy meals lately.

Shelly says, "that's enough. Time for a nap." Bye!