Compost and Crazy-Making February-ness

It’s February, which means that serious gardeners all throughout the northern hemisphere are beginning to freak out.

Okay, there are, like, five of you who are calm, cool, and collected.. but the rest of us are going crazy trying to find our seed packets (which freezer did I put them in...??), scrape together enough starting medium to get our brassicas going (I swear I had one more bag in the old tub in the greenhouse..??), and kicking ourselves for not starting our alliums last month (AGAIN??). Seeding trays are coming out of storage, heat mats are being tested after long months of loneliness in the back of some closet, and some man-person somewhere is being informed that he has to invent and then build a way for his wife plant all of her seeds in perfect rows in her raised beds. Oh yeah, and the raised beds need to be re-done! 

Compost suppliers are getting frantic phone calls over a product they don’t have in stock yet, and homesteader videos on YouTube are starting to see an uptick in views on 5-year-old videos the content creators have re-done 3 times already. 

There’s always something. Something you forgot or something you couldn’t afford back when it was on sale at the end of the season, that you desperately need NOW! 

Okay, maybe it’s just me. 

Or maybe it’s not... 

Every year I tell myself I’m going to this better next year, or, I’ll get this, this and this done over the winter. And every year I fall I either fall sort or just plain forget what it was I was going to do until its time to utilize it. 

Like compost. I have a lot of “pets” that I keep over-winter. You know the kind. Farm animals that normal people process before the snow hits the ground so they don’t have to truck in extra food for them. I, myself, have a pig, a goat, seven chickens, a turkey tom, five ducks, 3 beehives, and barn owl named Cougar. Okay, the barn owl is actually a wild animal, but I leave straw and water out for him in the attic of the workshop, which he seems to appreciate. 

Having so many.. pets... I find myself with lots of manure to work with. I always compost it, but it almost always ends up being a cold compost pile in the winter. In past years that was fine, but this year we’re expanding the annuals garden by 300%. So, I had intended to suck it up and do the work to hot compost it this winter... and totally failed. I have only one 1-cubic-meter pile going in a hot pile and another half a ton sitting in a pile in the back-40 collecting snow. 

In my defense, the backhoe broke down, so I didn’t have the mechanical help to make it easy. But I have 2 strong helpers and a collection of shovels and forks, so really there was no excuse. 

Except that I’m lazy. And it was cold. I spent the winter transplanting trees and digging up old busted water lines. The last thing I wanted to do on my days off was turn ten piles of compost by hand. 

So, now I get to go in search of the bulk compost that doesn’t exist in stores yet. My custom dirt providers won’t have it in until mid-March. so I have to get the allium and early spring beds amended with bagged stuff from the stores. Oh, and I have to suck it up and get shoveling. 

Just as soon as I figure out which freezer I put the garlic chives in.. 

~Candes

5 Foods With More Calcium Than Milk

We all know we need calcium for the development and maintenance of strong bones, teeth, nerves, and muscle, but we don't always get enough in our diets. Whether you are allergic to dairy, lactose intolerant, or just plain don't like milk you're probably concerned about whether or not you are getting enough calcium in your diet.
Here are 5 whole foods that are surprisingly high in calcium. We'll compare them to a 1 cup (8 fluid ounces) serving of whole milk, which has 276mg of calcium, to see where they stand.

Almonds

According the the USDA one cup of whole almonds contains approximately 378mg of calcium. Compared that to the 276mg of calcium in the same measure of whole milk, and we see a startling difference.

Of course, eating an entire cup of whole almonds is another story. But, for those who like to snack on nuts, making almonds an essential part of your mix will help to greatly increase your calcium intake. Other ways to get large amounts of almonds into your diet is almond butter, sliced almonds in salads, roasts, and casseroles, or in cookies.

Collard Greens

Cooked or raw, collard greens are excellent source of calcium. What makes the biggest difference in their calcium content is whether or not they were frozen for packaging. Collard that was frozen hours after picking has 357mg of calcium per cup, compared to 266mg per cup when bought raw in the produce section of your store. If you want to add the greens to a soup or stew it's recommended that you buy them frozen. Either way, collard greens give milk a run for it's money when it comes to calcium content.

Rhubarb

Who would have imagined that rhubarb pie would be so good for you? Frozen rhubarb, drained and cooked in sugar, has 348mg of calcium per cup. I'm sure you can try preparing it with an alternative sweetener if you don't want to deal with all that sugar. Either way, this adds a sweet treat to the list of calcium rich foods.

Spinach

Like collard greens buying it frozen or picking it fresh from your own garden makes a big difference. But, unlike collard, so does cooking it. Raw spinach doesn't offer as much elemental calcium as cooked spinach does. The reason for this is oxalate, which binds to calcium and prevents it from being absorbed by the body. Cooking it breaks these binds and allows the extremely high amount of calcium in spinach to be properly digested. One cup of frozen, then cooked spinach contains 291mg of calcium per cup. Raw it only contains 30mg.

Leavening Agents

That's right, baking powder is an amazing source of calcium. If you ever look on the package of 'self-rising' flour, corn meal, or other similar products you'll notice that they are very high in calcium. This is because they have baking powder, double acting agents, or straight phosphates in them, which are very high in calcium. 339mg per teaspoon, to be exact, which comes out to 16,272mg per cup! Take that milk!

Of course, drinking milk is much easier than eating an entire cup of baking soda. But if you consider the average recipe for baking soda biscuits, which normally call for 4 teaspoons of baking soda, then divide the dough by 15 (normal amount of biscuits made from one batch), that comes out to just over 90mg of calcium per biscuit. Not bad when you're looking for ways to get more calcium in your diet without giving up the foods you love.

Sesame Seeds

In my house whole sesame seeds are the beauty queen of non-dairy foods that are high in calcium. At 1404mg of calcium per cup they make it easy to get extra calcium into my children's diets. Toasted and sprinkled on salads, added to soups, and even in cookies, it is a very versatile food.

Other Foods High In Calcium

There are a lot of other foods that are high in calcium, though maybe not as much as milk. They include broccoli, kale (seaweeds), brussel sprouts, beans (white, baked, blackeyed, etc), tofu, bok choy, peas, and okra. Likewise, sardines and salmon, canned with the bone, are extremely high in calcium.

If you're on a dairy-free diet, or just have a hard time getting your kids to drink milk or eat cheese, these are all great foods to help you overcome any potential dietary calcium deficiency.

Here are two recipes to help get you started:

Collard Greens Soup with Chicken
Serves 5

4 lbs chicken (your choice)
1 large yellow or red bell pepper, cut into 1 inch strips
3 cloves garlic, minced or mashed
1 cup diced white or yellow onion
1 cup salted sliced almonds
3 extra large mushrooms, cut into eighths (1/8)
8 brussel sprouts, halved
1/2 pound broccoli crowns, with stems removed
1 firmly packed cup thinly sliced ribbons of collard greens
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
8 cups chicken or vegetable broth
salt to taste (optional)

Pre-heat pressure cooker on medium heat. Add in olive oil, followed quickly by belle pepper, garlic, onions, and almonds. Cook until onions are clear, stirring frequently. Add remaining ingredients. Stir or press down with spoon to ensure all ingredients are mixed and wetted.

Place and lock lid on pressure cooker. Turn heat up to high until cooker achieves a proper pressure lock according to manufacturer's instructions. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for for 20 minutes.

Quick Sesame-Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup whole toasted sesame seeds
1 cup sugar
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients in large bowl, until crumbly dough is formed. Using dinner spoon, form dough into 1-inch balls and place on parchment covered cookie sheet. Press down with fork, making a criss-cross hatch.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, let cool on cookie sheet before removing to plate or cookie jar. Makes 24 cookies.

Autumn's Promise

Autumn sweeps in to take Summer's place.

And here she comes in all of her royal adornments! Autumn dresses herself in crimson and gold. She wears just enough green to show tasteful contrast. The jewels she wears are the diamonds God hung in heavens above her with splashes of rubies scattered at her feet.

Mere blues transform into azure in her presence even as still waters transform into ice.

The majesty of Autumn is different from that of her sisters. Where Spring brings new life, Autumn makes way for it. Where Summer brings the vibrancy of fast growth, Autumn brings relief and slower paces. Where Winter brings sleep and deep rest, Autumn brings a gathering of hearts before that sleep.

The promise of of Autumn is hot cocoa and warm pies, friends lingering over a steaming cup of coffee or spiced cider. It is the promise of a cuddle, a hug, or snuggly wrap. It's a warm fire set in the hearth.

Autumn's promise is an end to Summer's blistering heat and cool evenings that herald the carving of pumpkins and the baking of sweets. It's the return of pancake breakfasts and hot biscuits straight from the oven. It's cloves and cinnamon, apples and caramel.

Autumn's promise is the sweet smell of evergreens carried on the wind as it mingles with the aroma of a roast in the oven drifting from an open window.

Autumn's promise is ever-changing, ever-growing, yet evergreen. She comes every year and lets her sisters follow. She is the perfect sister, the perfect companion.

She is the perfect mother as she tucks the world in for it's long winter's nap.

Lower Savanna Project

So, we’ve been talking about this thing called The Lower Savanna Project wherever we go, all over town and on the Internet, for the last 6 months or so. But, we haven’t explained exactly what it is. Here it is folks...

Wolf Gardens has partnered with two local charities to help feed people. We’ll grow the crops, and they’ll distribute the abundance.

See, it works like this: I have these permaculture, homesteading, and general gardening students who need projects to work on. I also have a few acres of land that needs attention in order to serve as demonstrations for future students. The charities need suppliers to help feed people. Basically, I have a farm that grows food, but I don’t want to get into distribution right now. They have food distribution programs, but their current suppliers are drying up for various reasons. So, I’ll grow it and they’ll sell it or give it away.

Now, it’s actually a little more complicated than that, but before you can understand the details you need to know  a little about these charities. They are both programs that we, as both a family and a business, feel very passionate about.

Valley NAZ $10 Food Box Program

The Valley Community Church of the Nazarene here in Chino Valley has been running an affordable foods program for a few years now. The flagship of this program is simple: pay $10 and get a box containing $30 or more worth of fresh foods. No canned goods, few processed foods, mostly fresh vegetables and a little bit of meat.

YCA Food For Veterans and Children

The Yavapai County Angels are a group of volunteers who work secure the needs of vets and families with children who are in desperate need. In these parts they are best known for their Adopt-A-Vet programs over major holidays, like Christmas and Easter. But the group, which I am a member of, does a lot more than just the adoption programs. We run drives for the specific needs of various individuals and families for things like firewood, clothing, and yes, food. Our other charity partner, Valley NAZ, has even partnered with us to get food boxes and such to some of our recipients in the most need.

So, these two highly deserving charities have already been working together to what they can for people in the area.

The problem, now that we come to it, is that the main supplier for the $10 Food Box program is drying up. It is a central food bank distribution center down south that has been relying on... wait for it... WalMart for the food it distributes to various food banks and programs all over Arizona.

You see the problem with this? It’s right there in that one word: WalMart.

Over the last year problems have been creeping into the supplier. First it was certain months there would be no food, or not enough. Then the quality of the food they got started going down hill. This last fall and winter has been horrendous. They’ve had no food for their food banks at all.

I started talking to Valley NAZ last year, in order to try and cover those “certain months” they expected not to have enough food to fill their boxes. The deal was for two months. I would help supply crops for the two months they expected not to have any food. The idea was that between Wolf Gardens and a few other farmers and gardeners in the area we could get the boxes filled and get everyone fed.

Then the quality of the food coming up from the distribution center started dropping, and we hit on the idea of growing for them on a more permanent basis. Just enough to compensate for the stuff that might have to be rejected. They knew the center was doing it’s best, and that it was not their fault.

But, then the bottom fell out and the food stopped coming up here altogether.

So, now we’re in overdrive. The church is most likely going to have to suspend their affordable food program until it can be revamped to run in a more independent way. This also affects the YCA program that several vets and low-income children have come to depend on, since Valley NAZ was supplying YCA with a little food every month free of charge.

Now we can get into the details of the Lower Savanna Project!

The southern end of the Lower Savanna on oddly foggy morning in 2014. We had already begun stacking slash there to break down for the anticipated food forest. 

Here at Wolf Gardens we have this 1-acre front yard that is the bottom of a bowl, where every nutrient on the front half of the hill has a tendency to eventually find it’s way to. We call it the Lower Savanna. There is very little planted in this area right now, just some grapes, lilacs, and a few trees of various types. Nothing terribly productive at the moment. But, that is about to change.

We plant to plant a food forest here. We plan to turn the Lower Savanna into the Lower Jungle over the next 5 years. The problem, as it sits now, is that this area was over-cultivated (to no good end) before I took over the farm. There are lots of nutrients in the Lower Savanna, but very little carbon, and soil biota is all wrong.

This, however, can be fixed by taking advantage of this El Nino year (and the subsequent following wet year) by planting in a carefully managed maincrop, aka: an annual food garden.

A maincrop, planted in polyculture, rotated properly, done in a chop-n-drop no dig style, can fix all of the problems with the Lower Savanna that is currently keeping productive trees from taking and growing.

Epic pile of herbivore poo, the first of many, donated by a local micro-ranch for the Lower Savanna Project.

So, we are dedicating the entire project to the benefit and use of our charity partners. My students and I will grow the food, and they will distribute it. Moreover, we’re setting up a scholarship program for recipients of the YCA program, and bringing in the volunteers from the Valley NAZ program in order to train them up, all bright and shiny, so they can grow their own food, and maybe help supply the network.

There are also a few other food ministries and gardeners in the area that have signed on to help supply said network, thus broadening and stabilizing our ability to both feed people and educate people on how to feed themselves.

So, there you have it folks, The Lower Savanna Project. To find out  more or keep up to date on what's going on follow us on Facebook.

~Candes

5 Gardening/Farming Terms I Get Asked About.. A LOT!

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about basic gardening and farming terminology that were, once a upon a time, considered common knowledge. But, like most things that were considered common knowledge “once upon a time” they weren’t written down commonly, and so the meaning is lost to the average modern person. Now, most people ask the question (what does this mean -or- what does that mean) and stop themselves, assuming that this is the kind of information I charge for. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Information like basic terminology is something I think should be given away for free. I actually believe that this is the very kind of thing that should be taught in public primary schools so that all children grow up with a basic understanding of how to grow their own food. Or, at least, what goes into growing it.

Now, I’m not going to go into too much detail in my explanations of each term. That would make this post entirely too long and mind-numbing. Besides, each term deserves it’s own day in the sun, and can be expounded upon in future posts that focus on just them.

Anyway, here is a list of the 5 most common terms I get questioned about:

1. Kitchen Garden: Sometimes called a Truck Garden; a kitchen garden is a garden that serves the kitchen(s) of the site it’s grown on.  Think of it as the farmer’s personal garden where he/she grows their own veggies for their own use. This is also usually very close to the house, where the cook can just step out and pick a tomato or a sprig of herbs as they’re cooking. If your mother or grandmother had some tomato plants and a couple of salad greens growing just outside their kitchen door, that was a kitchen garden.

But, kitchen gardens can also be very large. My own kitchen garden is 1/8 acre, and that’s just for the veggies and annuals. I grow most of my herbs and perennials in another garden, that’s also close to the house. I have friend who runs a local food ministry farm who grew up with a 5-acre kitchen garden.

2. Main Crop (Maincrop): A maincrop is where you grow the produce you intend to sell or trade. Again, a maincrop can be anywhere between a small garden to many acres. In modern society we’re used to thinking of this in terms of fields. Acres upon acres of monocropped corn, wheat, tomatoes, or what have you. But, this is a relatively new way of doing things, just since the invention of the industrial tractor. For thousands of years before that maincrop fields were smaller, easier to work by hand, and more diverse. The practice of polycrops was not uncommon.

3. Polycrop: Poly, meaning many, crop, meaning.. well, crops. Manycrop. A polycrop is several different kinds of plants, or guilds, being grown together. Your average kitchen garden is grown in this manner. The more common term for it is “companion planting.” Plants are grown together with other types of plants that make for good companions. Space isn’t wasted in a polycrop, and the guilds (collection of plants that grow well together) are made up of plants that each offer some benefit or another to each of the other plants in it’s guild. For instance, tomatoes and basil are commonly grown together because they are chemically compatible and offer benefits to each other. A more famous guild is the “3 Sisters” guild: corn, pole beans, and winter squash.

4. Crop Rotation: Crop rotation means just that. We rotate our crops every year. If one guild is planted in one bed one year, then another guild will be planted in that bed the following year. The planning for crop rotation is more complex than that, but that’s basic gist.

5. Sacrificial Plants/Crops: Sometimes called by other names like Trap Plants, Windwalls, Barrier/Anchor Plants, and Cover Crops.

• Trap Plants are plants that are planted in order to lure bugs away from other plants that you want to protect. It’s not uncommon to plant a few isolated soft-bodied summer squash on the edge of a pumpkin patch in order to draw bugs away from the pumpkins. Squash bugs love pumpkins, but can’t resist a nice tender yellowneck squash if it’s available. So, the sacrificial yellowneck is planted as a trap plant to protect the pumpkins.
• 
  
• Windwalls are tall plants, such as corn, pole beans on a trellis, grapes, etc which can be grown to form a living wall that protects other plants from wind damage. Windwalls are to wind what a gabion is to water. They slow and calm the wind coming through the area. Not to be confused with a Wind Break, which is usually tall trees or bushes planted very close together in an effort to stop wind almost entirely. Windwalls are typically temporary living structures designed to live for no more than 10 years, while a Wind Break is designed to be far more permanent, living 50+ years, sometimes hundreds. 
• 
  
• Barrier/Anchor Plants are plants that either form a barrier between two zones in order to divide them, or create an anchor point that brings two zones together. These are usually multi-purpose plants that not only provide a physical or visual barrier or anchor between two different areas, but may also offer the area biochemical advantages to the soil, structural advantages, or offer specific properties for attracting beneficial bugs (like bees), or repelling unwanted bugs (like cucumber beetles). Barrier/Anchor Plants can also be used as a kind of cover crop to suppress weeds. 
• 
  
• Cover crops have many advantages for everyone from the small-at-home-gardener to the large industrial farm. The most common cover crop is the legume (beans, peas, etc), which infuses the area with beneficial bacteria that converts the nitrogen in the atmosphere into usable nitrogen in the soil. This process is called “nitrogen fixing”. But, cover crops do more than just fix the soil’s chemical structure, they also aerate the ground with their roots, hold the topsoil together during rains and winds, and protect the topsoil from too much sun exposure. In dryland areas, such as mine, they also act as living mulch to help the ground retain moisture and stay cool.  

 
So, there you have it. The brief definitions of the most common gardening/farming terms I’m questioned about. I hope that helps some of you out there in cyberland. Please feel free to leave questions in the comments section.

What Permie Farmers Do In Winter

The number one question I get asked in the winter is "What do you do in the winter? How do you keep yourself busy.. when you're not planning gardens, that is?" This is usually followed by a quip or comment that I must have a lot of time on my hands.

Here's the deal, Folks. Running a farm, especially a permaculture farm, is not a "summers only" job. It is a 24/7/365 job.

Winter is when the large heavy work gets done. Engineering, building, earthworks, etc. There are a lot of things that have to get accomplished when there aren't any plants in the ground or torrential rains flooding down from the sky. No, it's not fun trying dig in frozen ground, but it's really bad idea to dig during the summer monsoons. Your work washes away even as you're doing it.

Winters are spent with CADD programs active, because, for me, planning a garden is not as simple as doodling out a map of where I want this or that to go. I plant in guilds, on slopes, among trees and established perennials. My plans don't cover the next season's plantings; they cover the next 3-5 seasons plantings with active notations for 5, 10, or even 15 years down the road. The scope of some projects can cover up to 100 years, and I have to know what I'm doing each step of the way, and make sure everyone ELSE knows what I'm doing. After all, I don't expect to actually be here in 100 years to explain to my grandkids why I did this or that and why it matters to them now. There has to be an in-depth record.

Many things change on the farm in winter. Fences change locations. Live-stakes are propagated. Plants are divided. Ground is cleared. New swales are dug, and old swales refreshed. Runnels, ditches, and driveways are sculpted or resculpted. The carpentry shop is busy building things to be used in summer. The machine shop is busy fixing and/or servicing machinery. Tools are refurbished. Buildings are built. (Newbies to the neighborhood are often surprised to see barns and sheds going up in December and January, but cold weather is a much better time to build a barn than monsoon weather. Trust me.)

And, believe it or not, the winter crops have to be tended. Yes, I grow year-round. No, not with only the help of my greenhouse. I grow "snow plants", as in things that grow in frozen, snow-covered ground. LIke arugula, parsnips, garlic, winter breed onions, etc. And yes, there is still the greenhouse to take care of.

This year we are starting a new long-term project called the Lower Savanna. But, that's whole different blog post. In short, we're taking a mostly unused portion of land, a little over an acre, and beginning a large time-stacking project on it. For 3 years we will grow food crops for our church's affordable foods program. Then we'll be putting in pioneering trees and pants. Then begin staging in a food forest. The Lower Savanna will  act as a prototype demonstration plot that others in our area can learn from and on, then duplicate.

To sum it up, there is a lot to do in the winter. On top of this, there are those full-time jobs my husband an I have, as well as the holidays, and just trying to stay warm. 

It is, after all, winter. 

~Candes

How to Counter Top Compost

I've been making counter top compost for years. Since I cook almost everything from scratch I tend to use more of my food stuffs than other people, but I always have things that can be used to make compost. Coffee grounds, banana peels, the occasional pile of potato skins. These are all food waste that flowers, trees, and vegetable plants love.

Materials

There are counter top compost bins you can buy in high end kitchen and garden stores, but I've found the following tools work much better.

Large Steel Bowl
Old Food Processor, or Juicer (that's lost it's basket)
Sturdy bowl scraper
Bag of peat moss

Concept

The idea of counter top compost isn't to make super rich soil or basic fertilizer, like with regular compost. It's to make plant food that you can give to your plants and trees on a daily or weekly basis.

The point is to make a mild plant food that uses up at least the majority of the raw food waste that your kitchen produces in a day. There are certain things you don't want to add to counter top compost, like seeds. Things with seeds can be added to regular compost because it takes time to mature the compost, constantly turning it every day, so that the seed ends up wasting it's sprout before it takes root. The aborted sprouts then become nutrients for the soil.

With counter top compost, however, there is no daily turning to keep the seeds from successfully sprouting, so we don't add them.

Process

Keep the steel bowl in a well ventilated area that is easy to access. I keep mine on a small end table in the corner of my kitchen, and store it's food processor underneath.

As you go through your day toss in usable food waste, like used coffee grounds and tea leafs, potato skins, banana peels, wilted salad greens and other vegetables, used herb sprigs, etc. Every time you add something use the bowl scraper to mix it up.

At the end of the day, or if the bowl fills up, run the contents through the food processor, making a course mix. Toss in a handful or two of peat moss, and mix. The peat moss helps the counter top compost become adsorbent so that it doesn't dry into moisture-resistant clumps around your plants when the first hot, dry day comes up. In arid regions like here in Phoenix that is an extra special concern. Coffee grounds and tea leaves are fantastic for plants, but they can dry into lumps that shunt water away from the roots of you plants. The simple fix is to add a small amount of peat moss.

There will be things that work better when added after the grinding in the processor is done as well. Egg shells should be smashed up and added to the counter top compost post-processor. This allows the egg shells to act as organics that help funnel water through the plant food, keeping it moist as it feeds your plants. Hair should be added afterward, simply because it will clog up your processor if it's added before. Snip the hair into short lengths so that it mixes easy.

10 Great Things to Make Counter Top Compost Out Of

1. Coffee Grounds - nicely acidic, with a perfect base texture for solid plant food.

2. Tea Leafs - usually acidic, packed with antioxidants that will keep your plants healthy.

3. Banana Peels - Full of minerals and other elements that help flowers and fruits grow well.

4. Wilted Salad Greens - rich in heavy minerals that plants need lots of, but in a completely consumable form.

5. Potato Peels - one of the best, and well rounded food waste items for any form of compost.

6. Clean, Untreated Hair - human and pet hair is full of nitrogen that releases at the right speed to help plants grow strong roots.

7. Egg Shells - number one calcium supplement for plants that also acts as a great texturizer to help with water flow.

8. Used Herb Sprigs - even after they've been cooked herbs like rosemary, parsley, and sage are packed with vitamins that help plants grow strong stems.

9. Vegetable Trimmings - carrot tops, celery leafs, and other vegetable trimmings give plant food a well rounded nutrition content.

10. Flat Beer - Yes, beer that's gone flat and warm can be added to plant food for an extra punch of vitamins. The darker the beer, the better it is for plants.

What You Should Know About Oregano

The most common mistake people make when buying or growing fresh oregano to season things like pizza or red sauce is getting Italian oregano. Most people get it home, or into the kitchen, then find out that it doesn't taste quite right. In fact, Italian oregano tastes a lot more like mint. But, it says it's Italian oregano, so what went wrong?

The problem is that the taste we look for when we choose to use oregano is actually found in the Greek variety, not the Italian. In truth, Italian oregano isn't even Italian. It's native to North America, and is more closely related to peppermint and marjoram. Which is why it tastes like an extremely mild version of them. Which way the taste leans depends on the climate it's grown in. In more humid climates it will taste more like marjoram, and if grown in arid climates it will taste more like peppermint.

True Mediterranean cooking is done with Greek oregano, which has a very different, and far sharper flavor. Also in the mint family, it has a robust, peppery flavor which goes well with vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, and mushrooms, which is why it's used as a key spice for many Mediterranean recipes, which call for these ingredients. In America we most frequently use oregano in pizza. It's the second most important ingredient in the sauce, right behind tomatoes.

Over the centuries, Greek oregano has also been used medicinally for calming indigestion and treating coughs. When combined with other herbs, such as horehound and lemon grass it can be used as a tea to treat dry, scratchy throats and settle upset stomaches. There are a lot of health benefits in eating Greek oregano as well, since, like most herbs, it's packed with antioxidants.

So, what can you do with the minty Italian oregano? Believe it or not, it combines well with other 'desert' mints, such as spearmint and chocolate mint to flavor teas. It also pairs well with lemon grass, grape leafs, and raspberry leaves. For desserts Italian oregano can been used as a background flavor in heavy cream sauces that call for the zest of citruses such as lemon or lime.

If your Italian oregano tastes more like marjoram it can be used to substitute for it in recipes. Italian oregano has a far milder flavor, however, so one should double the amount called for when using it as a substitute.

Most prepackaged oregano that you find in stores, whether fresh or dried, is going to be Greek oregano, even if it's labeled "Italian". But, if you're planning on growing your own make sure the package says "Greek". Even then, sometimes it will be mislabeled. One sure fire way to know it's Greek is to get cuttings instead of seeds. Italian oregano reproduces via seeds, but not cuttings. Greek oregano reproduces both ways, but the seeds tend to be weak and are hard to propagate. Cuttings for Greek oregano tend to grow more easily.

So, next time you open up the oregano and find it tastes like mint, don't despair. You're not crazy. Just pop it into the tea kettle instead.

Let it rain!

Rain! We finally got rain... and hail. While the rest of the country was pretty much snowed in and frozen over, the American southwest has had an unusually warm, dry winter. While this is cause for happiness in suburbia, it’s reason for farmers to become concerned.

Last year’s drought was a nightmare. 2013 was a bad year for Arizona’s natural disaster crews. First, the drought dried everything out. Then lightening set everything on fire. And then the monsoons rolled in and flooded everything. All the burned areas and dead tundra became churning rivers of debris.

There was a lot of damage done last year, and only a hard, cold winter could make it right. But, we never got that winter. In fact, it was like winter never came. We saw a few freezes, and few light snows, but nothing remarkable. And they were broken up by exceptionally warm spells that tricked the trees and perennials into waking up just long enough to think it was safe. Then another 'cold snap’  would hit and make everything sick.

But now, we have rain and hail in the middle of Spring. This is a good thing. We desperately need the precipitation. As long as the hail doesn’t become dangerous (or snow) we’re good to go. A nice 3-day storm is just what we need to get everything kick-started on the farm and surrounding wild acreage.

A good greening will help the world from catching on fire again this year and hold the soil together when the much heavier monsoons do come in mid-late summer.

So, here’s to the rain and the hail. May it stick around for a few days and make our world brighter.

Tabletop Greenhouses: Burpee or Bust

Several people have asked me what I think of the little miniature seed starting greenhouses, AKA: tabletop greenhouse. My answer to this is simple: If it’s not a Burpee brand greenhouse it’s not worth it. Every other brand I’ve tried has been an exercise in frustration. The Burpee brand “Ultimate Growing System” on the hand, is fantastic. Here’s why...

Other brands don't work the way Burpee does.

Other brands, like Jiffy, don’t actually use a self-regulated watering system. They use a submersed irrigation system that inevitably doesn’t water your seedlings evenly or regularly. You have to keep refilling the tray, depending on where you live that could be several times a day. Here in Arizona, where it’s extremely arid, even in the colder northern regions, you have to hover over the trays to keep the water level right.

Also, when you do add water to these things, it trickles through channels, flooding some seedlings, and leaving others dry. I actually had to use a squeeze bottle to water these things when I tried them, just to get the irrigation even.

And then the seedlings sit in the excess and runoff from the watering, increasing the chances of drowning and root rot.

How Burpee tabletop greenhouses work:

The Burpee tabletop greenhouse, by comparison, uses an automatic, self-regulating watering system that takes advantage of the siphoning abilities of good seed starting mixes that are typically high in peat moss. In other words, they suck, but in a good way. The Burpee system pulls the moisture up from a mat that in turn pulls moisture up from the cistern, which is below the seeding trays. The seedlings never sit in pools of water, so the chance of them downing is completely eliminated, and the chance of root rot is reduced so much it seems like it’s eliminated.

With the Burpee system you only have to fill the cistern at most once a day, and vent the greenhouse every so often. There’s no hovering involved. Even when I lived in Phoenix I only had to top-off the water in the cistern once a day, usually in the mornings, and vent it once in the afternoon. Because the seeding trays are elevated, venting is as easy as taking the clear top off for 5-10 minutes and letting the plastics and little baby leafs dry out. As soon as the condensation is gone you pop the top back on and go about your merry business.

Also, with the Burpee system you can buy replacement parts, while the other brands tend to make you by whole new kits. This comes in handy if your cats discover the joys sucking on the thermal watering mat like mine did. And, because the Burpee greenhouse uses actual pot cells you can use your own seeding mix if you want.

One would say that the only drawback to the Burpee Ultimate growing system is it’s price. And once would be wrong. Yes, you can get a Jiffy greenhouse system for $5 on sale at WalMart, but this is an instance where you get what you pay for. Actually, it’s been my experience that this would be $5 wasted. The $20 you spend on a Burpee system will get you a few years and several hundred seedlings, while the other brands usually don’t give you anything more than a headache.

For tabletop greenhouses my recommendation is Burpee or bust.

Where have you gone, Reclaiming the Farm?

We haven’t posted in quite a while, and we apologize for that. It’s been a very busy winter, spring, and summer. Over the winter we were addressing one 'issue’ after another, just trying to keep up with the damage Mother Nature was doing to the house. The spring brought new issues, and we found ourselves working feverishly to save the orchard.

But, it was the summer that’s really had us doing back-flips. You see, in early summer, June 30th to be precise, the neighboring town of Yarnell burned to the ground.  The fire that consumed over a hundred homes in this tiny, picturesque community gained national attention. Not for the homes lost, but for the 19 local firefighters who died in the blaze. Yes, it’s that fire. The Yarnell Hill Fire, which killed 19 of the 20 elite firefighters from the Granite Mountain Hot Shots.

The world knows about our Hot Shots. But, the world turns a blind eye to the others that were devastated by that fire. The people who survived. The people who lost everything except their lives.

This area, Yavapai County, is a collection of small towns, all revolving around the larger not-quite-city-sized-town of Prescott. No one town can really survive on it’s own. We’re dependant on each other to fill in all the gaps and function as a larger community. So, when one of us is in trouble the others step up.

That’s exactly what Yavapai County, and the whole of Arizona, has been doing for Yarnell. Stepping up... or, at least doing our best. We here at Wolf Gardens are no exception.

Da Man hasn’t been working much for his employer due to normal off-season stuff, so he’s been home with Da Kids and the Hippylady for the most part. Mom, on the other hand, has been spending 50-60 hours a week at the Yarnell Relief Center, volunteering as the maintenance manager for the facility. She’s also been trying to get articles written for her various publishers in the mornings and evenings.

So, things are busy here. Da Man is running horde at Reclaiming the Farm, and Mom is dead tired, but getting lots of experience in doing all sorts of useful things. The entire family does what they can to help with the Yarnell Rising effort.

So, if we don’t post for a while, or seem to go off on tangents, please forgive us.

If you would like to find out more about Yarnell, or what you can do to help, please visit any and all of the links below.

Yarnell Fire Fund 
Items needed 
Volunteer
Facebook

A variety show will be held at the end of this month to help raise money to help rebuild the town. For more information download and print the image for this post.

Invasion of Alice and the Jabberwocky

We have 6 kids. Three of them live here on the farm with us. Only now it’s 4 kids, plus one. Last month, right before Thanksgiving, Da Man and I drove out to California to rescue our daughter “Alice” and bring her back to the farm. But, where Alice goes, so goes her fiance, “Jabberwocky”.

A little history here: I’ve known the Jabberwocky for longer than Alice has been alive. He is my baby cousin’s best friend, and has been since elementary school. My first memories of him are of him bouncing off my aunts kitchen walls talking non-stop, or rather, asking questions non-stop. He was one of the most curious kids I’ve ever met in my life. I imagine he must have found a few answers to life though, since now he’s actually rather quiet.

Or maybe he just used up all of his words before the age of 16 and doesn’t have any left.

Now, Alice is called Alice because she is also a very curious individual. One who is more than happy to volunteer to be the first down the rabbit hole in any given situation. If something needs to be tested in real life she’s usually the one with her hand in the air, or just already in motion to go do it. She also has an incredibly vivid sense of the absurd.

Alice and the Jabberwocky won’t be living here forever. They only plan to live here for about a year and half, just until the wedding. Then it’s off to northern California with them.

In the meantime Alice is the acting assistant manager of the farm in order to get hands-on training on farming and gardening, so she can start her own farm someday. She doesn’t want ours... it’s in the desert. Can’t really blame her. Jabberwocky is busy building his IT business online, which keeps him in the depths of his deep dark cave most of the time. He comes out for food once in a while, or to tutor Grossmond on astronomy (a bonding point between them).

So, there it is. You now know who Alice and the Jabberwocky are when they come up in posts.

The Names of Things

When talking to some friends recently it came up in the conversation that we have "fancy names" for each part of the property. Some parts, like the Lower Savanna, are large and can be measured in percentages of an acre. One, the Back 40, is measured in multiples of acres. Others are smaller, like the Whimsy Garden, which can be measured in square feet. But it occurred to me that I've never actually listed down the names in the ledger or on the property maps. I am correct this oversight this week.

Since we changed the names of a few this past year I thought I would go ahead and list them here, including what they used to be (for those in know).

• The Lower Savanna (formerly the Front Yard)
• The Upper Savanna (formerly part of the Front Yard and part of Green Acres)
• The Chino Valley Yacht Club 
• The Orchard (now smaller than it was)
• The Whimsy Garden (formerly the Climbing Tree Garden)
• The Arizona Garden (formerly The Wind Break)
• The Runway (separates the Orchard from the Arizona Garden)
• The South Field (formerly Mom's Garden)
• Stone Yard and Wood Yard (formerly the Asparagus Patch)
• The Party Pit (formerly "That place were we stack wood for the woodstove; where the old barbecue is."
• The Oasis (smaller than it was)
• Fantasia (formerly the eastern part of the Oasis)
• McGuiverland (formerly the Junk Yard)
• Cane Forrest
• Lake Swampy (dry now... we just don't have a new name for it yet)
• Pet Cemetery
• The Old Chicken Coop (soon to become Snoopyville)
• The Back 40

We'll be putting up signposts this Spring, and I'll share pictures of those when that happens. We've also changed the name of the property itself to Wolf Gardens... previously no actual name on file with the farms and ranches registry.

No More Hippies Jumping on the Bed

In early June Hippylady fell down and broke her shoulder. She didn’t just fall down, she fell off her bed, hit her chest of drawers, and then hit the floor. The incident, that would have caused a lesser person to shatter their shoulder, cased a little teeny, tiny fracture in the end of her upper humerus bone. Hippylady is made of sturdy stuff. It sounds like she almost got away scott-free, right? No such luck.

According to three doctors it was in one of the worst possible places to break a bone, especially a large bone like the humerus. She was sent home, but only after they trussed her up in a mobile traction do-dad called an 'immobilization wrap’ and taught me how to manipulate it and deal with it. The idea was that she was not move her shoulder at all. The slightest movement could cause the shoulder blade to knock into the break and make humerus bone come completely apart. The resulting emergency surgery would lay her up not for months, but for years.

This is something we want to avoid at all costs, and so far things are going as well as can be expected. She frustrated; she’s in pain; but she’s behaving... for the most part. I take her to see the specialist in a few days and we’ll see if she can shed the Dreaded Wrap. But, even if she can, she’ll only move on to stage 2 of her treatment, which will be restricted movement and the beginnings of many months of physical therapy. She still won’t be able to travel, or even go on a normal day-long shopping trip to restock supplies.

Right now she’s looking forward to just being able to tag along to go to the local grocery store for half an hour.

And yes, she was officially ordered by her GP, “No more hippies jumping on the bed.”

Educational Gardening: Healthy Kids Grow

Someone asked me recently what we intend to do with our farm once it’s up and running. The answer is simple, yet complicated. We intend to follow in the footsteps of our friends at Healthy Kids Grow over in Lee, Illinois. Manager, Deborah Lundin Baconnier, has set aside a 100-year-old farm to show kids and adults that having access to fresh fruits and vegetables doesn’t have to cost a fortune. She intends to do this through classes, workshops, and working models of gardens all taking place place on her farm.

While we’re still at least a year away from fundraising here at Reclaiming The Farm, Healthy Kids Grow is doing it now. They’re gearing up to open in time for the 2013 summer season but they need help. There’s a 100-year-old hog shed that needs to be turned into a large greenhouse for year-round growing and classes, as well as many other things that will make their dream a reality.

What they intend to teach:

• Gardening 101 - Learning how to grow and produce fruits and vegetables
• Plant Identification - You would be surprised how many people don't know that carrots grow in the ground or peas grow in a pod.
• Canning and Preserving - Learn how to make your harvest last the whole year
• Cooking with Vegetables
• Raw Foods and Smoothies - Even kids that don't like their veggies will find a way to love them with these smoothies.
• Composting - Learning to turn your trash into your fertilizer
• Weeds - Not all weeds are bad and many actually provide valuable nutrition
• Raising Chickens - Everything to chicken identification to feed and care
• City Farming - This class will take everything they learn on the farm and modify it to work in a small city yard using creative gardening containers.
• Recycled Gardening - Using recycled containers to create imaginative gardens

These goals are very similar to our own. Like us, Deborah and her family want to host school field trips, offer educational resources, and provide working examples of gardens to meet any budget or space.

You can learn more about Healthy Kids Grow and make a donation at http://www.indiegogo.com/HealthyKidsGrow. And keep checking back here for updates on how they’re doing!

As for us, our goals include a community composting project, workshops and working models on water conservation, small farm start-up, working models of urban and suburban gardening ideas, accessible gardening solutions, and more. We’re still working on our business outline and deciding what’s feasible and what’s not for our region. But, we promise to keep you all in the loop.

In the meantime, check out Healthy Kids Grow and get involved. It will be well worth your time!

Saving Seeds 101

For the past few weeks we’ve been harvesting seeds to use to plant more plants. This is an essential skill for all heirloom farmers and organic gardeners to develop, especially with the GMO market constantly encroaching on our daily lives. The only way to know you’re getting organic food is to grow it yourself, and sometimes you can’t tell even then. But, whether you’re trying stay organic, or just want to preserve and/or develop your own strains of specific plants, learning to harvest seeds is important.

There is no one hard and true set of rules for harvesting and saving seeds, as every genus is different, though there are some basic guidelines the beginner should keep in  mind.

Storage
The first thing you want to make sure you have is the right storage facility for the seeds you’ll be saving. If you don’t have it then there is no point in saving the seeds, as they’ll go bad before you use them next season. Most seeds require a cool, dry place with good ventilation, such as a paper bag kept in the pantry. But, some ‘seeds’ require refrigeration. These are usually bulbs, and not actually seeds.

Containers
Paper bags, clean pill bottles, etc can be used as containers for seeds, but be sure you have the right container for the seeds you’re storing, and that the saved seeds have been properly prepared for storage first. Paper bags are used because the last thing you want in your seed container is moisture. Seeds contain moisture, even when they feel dry. This moisture escapes and can get trapped in the container if the container doesn’t ‘breathe’. The seeds then rot or simply don’t set.

Setting
Before saved seeds are stored they need to be ‘set’. This means they need to be cleaned and dehydrated. The manner of cleaning depends on the kind of seed you’re saving. For instance, arugula seeds are in the bean classification, so they should be removed from their husks before storing. Grass seeds, on the other hand, are in the wheat classification, so they don’t need be removed from the husk until planting time. Both, however, need to be dried adequately before storage. In arid climates like we have here at Reclaiming The Farm, we simply leave the seeds out in the kitchen, either by hanging them from their stocks, or by spreading them out on trays. But, in a humid climate you may need to use a dehydrator that has a zero heat setting. Do not, ever, use the heat setting, as this will cook the seeds and render them useless for planting.

Collection
How you collect your seeds depends on what classification they fall into. The three most common classifications are: bean (pods), wheat (shafts), and herb (bolts).

• Bean - beans, or pods, appear after the flower of the plant has died. The typical harvesting method is to cut the stem the pods are on and allow them to dry for a few days, either on a tray or in an open bag. When the pods are dry and brittle place in a paper bag, close it and shake vigorously. The pods will fall off the stems and fall apart, revealing the seeds. They can then be cleaned. 
• Wheat - Clip stems near the base and collect into bundles. Tie each bundle with a rubber band and hang to dry. Rubber bands are recommended since the stem bundle will reduce in size as it loses moisture during the drying process and the rubber band will constrict along with it, keeping any shafts from falling out. Another way to do this is to put your bundles into a paper bag to catch any shafts or seeds that fall out, hanging the whole thing from the bag, not the bundles. 
• Herbs - Herb seeds are typically extremely small and easy to miss. Some, such as coriander (cilantro seeds) are large and easy to collect (treat like pods), but in general, herb seeds are barely even visible as individuals. Collect by cutting the mature bolt (seed flower) off the stem and place in paper bag. Leave open and allow to dry for several days. Then close and shake gently. Unlike bean pods, herb bolts produce seeds that are lighter than their stems and husk, so tossing them in a gentle wind is not a good idea. After shaking the bag, carefully remove the stems and husk by hand, then place remaining small particles in a bowl to finish drying and sorting. 

Tips For Storage

• Paper Bag - Even though a paper bag breathes, moisture can still get trapped between the seeds. Every so often, shake the bag then open it for an hour or two to let leftover moisture escape. 
• Pill Bottle - As with a paper bag, shake and open every so often. If you think this isn’t enough, put ripped up pieces of clean paper towel or cotton into the top to draw moisture away from the seeds. Change the paper towel or cotton regularly.
• Envelope - Good for storing a small amount of seeds from a single plant. Treat like paper bags. 
• Darkness - Finding a dark place is important since sunlight is one of the three main things seeds need to grow (sunlight, moisture, and heat). But, it’s not as important as keeping the moisture and heat away. If you have to choose between ‘dry’ and ‘dark’ choose ‘dry’ every time. Wheat class seeds can even be kept in direct sunlight most of the time, while bean class seeds cannot. 

To help give a better idea of how to go about collecting and storing seeds we’ll write other posts that go into more depth about specific seeds we’re saving, and the step-by-step processes we’re using.

Absent Friends

Today is Memorial Day, and people all across America will be firing up their barbecues and getting their grill on. Someone, a visitor to our nation, once asked we why we 'celebrate' on this day. He pointed out that it might be better, and more appropriately spent, as a day of mourning, spent in somber reflection. It was my honor to educate him...

Memorial Day is the day in which we, as a people, remember and pay respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedom and our liberties. Among these liberties is the right to peaceful assembly. Peaceful does not mean 'silent'. It means 'without violence or intentional harm'. We have the right to come together and celebrate anything we want. This is one of the liberties these men and women traded their lives for.  It seems disrespectful to us not to use that very liberty in their honor on this day that we have set aside for them.

It may seem crass or callous to some; to those who do not understand. But these people, these fallen heroes gave their lives so that we would continue to have the right to do as we wish, to spend our time with who we wish, how we wish.

To those who are younger who think this liberty is a given, that we are not in danger of loosing it, I say this... there was a time, not so long ago, when the loss of this liberty was a very real danger. This danger existed within my lifetime, and I remember it very clearly. It was before your time. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Before the fall of The Wall. It was a time when the more oppressive elements of communism threatened our shores, and consumed many nations. A time when many people throughout the world did not have the right to assemble in any number for any reason that was not approved by their State. They did not have the right to come together for a good cause, much less for the sake of food, fun, and sun.

This is what our fallen heroes, our absent friends gave their lives for.

Freedom from oppression.
Freedom to assemble.
Freedom from undo persecution.
Freedom of choice.
Freedom to defend ourselves.
Freedom to worship as see fit.
Freedom of speech.

In other words, their lives bought us (and many others) the right to party our asses off any time we want for any reason we want.

Today we choose to party in their honor. And if you have a problem with that, thanks to them, you're free to  leave.

Freedom does not come free.

To everyone else, don't forget to set a place for those we honor today, and lift your glasses for absent friends and those who died to give these rights us.

Ideas for raised beds and accessible gardening plots

Here on the farm we’re working on our handicap accessibility this Spring. Regular fields are impossible for Her Majesty to get into, and I’m certainly not getting any younger. While we do plan to spend the next year bringing the ‘good’ field up to speed we’re also looking at ways to transfer quite a bit of our growing power into raised beds and smaller, more accessible gardening plots.

I spent the morning out planting parsnips and tomatoes into a small bed I put in several days ago. This is the second bed of this kind that we’ve put in so far. They are small enough to reach across, or at least to the center of without much effort, and are surrounded by blocks of broken concrete that was salvaged from an old building several years ago. The blocks not only frame off the area, but add a stable place to sit or brace ourselves when working the plot.

These particular beds are in-ground, meaning we dug up the ground, and back-filled it with real garden soil and appropriate augmentations like peat moss and fertilizer. In-ground beds are good for plants that will end up getting big, like these Burpee Big Boy tomatoes. But, we also plan to do some raised beds as well. These will also be framed in broken concrete, though we plan to re-mill the blocks a bit to make them fit together better when stacked.

Side Note: You can see the Cane Forest in the background of this picture, and that we've used some of the cane as the initial stakes for the baby tomato plants. This cane is another thing we have an abundance of that we plan to utilize. Ever time Hippylady and I go a garden center and see the bamboo shafts for sale for up to $5 each we laugh our tooshes off!  

There are a lot of other ideas for building these kinds of beds. My friend, Jaipi, a sister writer, recently pushed a great article on what she’s doing in her own garden called Cheap alternatives for raised bed gardens. I really like her table garden idea, especially for smaller plants that don’t need as much soil depth, like salad greens and herbs.

Another idea, that Hippylady came up with, is to use old refrigerators by taking the doors off, and gutting the interiors, then putting them on their backs. The outside can be painted or framed in for decoration, and the refrigerator boxes offer insulation to keep the soil a stable temperature. That last is important here in the desert where temperatures can fluctuate between -10 in the Winter and +110 in the Summer.

Other cheap ideas for raised and/or accessible garden beds are:

• Old tires, stacked or by themselves
• Wooden milk crates
• Pallets
• Dresser drawers
• Opaque storage tubs
• Old hats (I’ve seen it!)
• Reclaimed bricks
• Salvage lumber
• Small boat hulls (we plan to do this)

Basically, if it holds soil, can have drainage installed, protects the roots against sunlight, and can be made safe from toxins that might have been used in it’s construction  it can be used. Some things works better than others, obviously. A cardboard box, for instance, can be used, but it wouldn’t last for very long. On the other hand, it will break down and became compost relatively quickly, enabling you to transfer it to a bed, container and all, at a later date.

Supermoon

Supermoon looking at Grossmond.

Grossmond looking at Supermoon.

In German the words "gross mond" mean "grand moon", more commonly used to mean "full moon".
In this case it refers to twins separated at specie.  

When Fire Thorns Attack

Yesterday the girls and I went out and attacked the overgrown and previously neglected Fire Thorn hedge. It attacked back!

We didn’t expect it to be easy. We did expect to get scratches, and took precautions. Long sleeves, long pants, hats and neck coverings, and even face shields. Everyone wore thick gloves with rubber palms, shoes that covered our ankles, the whole nine yards. We were covered head to toe, and used long handled tools as much as possible  in dealing with the debris.

But, these things have something more than a life of their own.  Fire Thorns, also known as Pyracantha, seem to actively fight back. They have brains.

I always thought they got their name from the bright red and orange berries they grow in mass quantities, as well as the fact they have larger and more densely packed thorns than monster Grandfather Roses. I knew that some people claimed they were poisonous, but that modern science says they are not. I found out the hard way that they got their name for what their thorns scratches to do to people with arthritis.

Pyracantha don’t have poison in their thorns; not in the traditional sense. What they have is a ‘hyper allergen’ that only a few people are sensitive to. If you’re allergic to Pyracantha and you get stuck with the thorns you will end up feeling pain in your joints for a few days. This pain can range from a very mild stiffness to sever, agnizing pain accompanied by visible swelling. What it does is begin an autoimmune reaction that lasts for a few days. This reaction attacks the joints, but doesn’t usually cause any permanent damage.

Unless you already have arthritis. Especially if that form of arthritis is already caused by an autoimmune problem, such as RA (rheumatoid arthritis). And yes, that’s means me.

I’m in the very early stages of RA. So far it only effects a few joints, and even then it’s very mild. When it flares it really hurts, but modern science is a wonderful thing and we now know how to slow the progression of RA to a barely noticeable crawl if it’s caught early. Mine was caught early.

Despite the amount of gear I wore I still got a few scratches. If I hand't worn protective clothing things would have been much worse. One, in particular, on my left knee ended up being a bit deeper than the rest. It hurt, but I didn’t think anything of it. Scratches are scratches and, as farm manager, I get them all the time from hundreds of different kinds of plants. I’ve never had a negative reaction to a scratch, even when raked horribly by overgrown blackberry bushes that gave everyone else shingles.

The Fire Thorn, on the other hand, I am now afraid of. Very, very afraid. My left knees feels like it’s in a constant state of explosive expansion, my right hand is so stiff I can’t grip anything with it, and my upper back refuses to bend. These are all joints that I have RA in. Every other joint in my body simply feels like they’re on fire, but at least I can use them. I spoke with my rheumatologist on the phone and he said to take it easy, but don’t become stagnant. Don’t give my joints a chance to completely freeze up. Take my anti inflammatory meds, stay hydrated, and make sure to get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour, and let him know how I’m doing tomorrow. Basically, take two Aspirin and call him in the morning.

It's important to note that permanent damage is extremely rare and usually only happens to people who are already suffering from advanced RA or some form of advanced active brittle bone degeneration. In other words, people who aren’t capable of wielding an 18-volt reciprocating saw with one hand to knock down a 12ft tall hedge in the first place. And since that’s exactly what I was doing when I got scratched my doctor chuckled and told me not to worry too much about it. The only time I should start worrying is if the industrial strength anti inflammatory meds he keeps me in stock of stops working to reduce the swelling.

Since I can’t move much today I plan to do get a lot of writing accomplished. I was considering moving the tomato seedlings into their own 4-inch pots today, but then I remembered that involves bending over to fill the pots with soil, shuffling around the greenhouse, and doing other little things my body won’t currently let me do. And those seedlings can stay where they are for at least another week (or more) anyway.

So, while I have lots of publishers I can be catching up with, I might go ahead and get up a few posts for Reclaiming The Farm today. There are lots of things I’ve been meaning to talk about, but haven’t had the time and brainpower simultaneously to do so. Maybe this is the universe’s way of saying “sit down and write!”.