Fruity Fun



Almond in bloom

Clearly the new year’s resolution to blog more often is going swimmingly...

So instead of agonizing over where to start I thought I would just hop right into the middle and work my way out. We’ve done a lot around the house in the year and a half since we bought it. Today, inspired by a post on Northwest Edible Life, I’m going to share with you what we are doing in the way of fruit production.

Bri and I both love fruit and eat a lot of it, if left to our own devices, so establishing fruit was (is!) important to both of us in our efforts in  building our suburban homestead.  Most types of fruit take several years to come into full production, so we want to get them established as soon as practical. Our goal is to be 90% fruit self-sufficient in about 5 years.

After much discussion and graphing, we decided to make the front yard into the main "orchard". Because we wanted to get at least some fruit started as soon as possible we made this decision early on. The front yard is 40’x60’ plus there is what we refer to as the “yardette” directly in front of the house with the walkway to the front door, a little grass, and bushes that were in when we purchased the house.

The Front Yard - a.k.a. The Orchard

When we purchased the house nearly the entire front was given to grass. We wanted it gone, but were unwilling to use chemicals so this is what we did:

We laid out our plan.

Bri drew the graph and I filled in the trees.

In the 40'x60' space we have 27 trees with one remaining empty spot slotted for a quince when I find one.

(Yes, this is to scale. Yes, the trees are in a nearly palindromic layout. Yes, we are both mildly OCD...)

Then we used wooden stakes to lay out the plan.

 This was mostly for me, as I don't conceptualize well. This also garnered a lot questions from neighbors!

 

On to actually getting it done! First we tilled the entire front grass area.

We watered the whole mess then tarped the entire lawn.

 This know as "soil solarizing", although we didn't do it exactly as a lot of sites direct.

This won us even more strange looks and questions.

Four weeks later we removed the tarps and tilled again.



Planting day! June 2010.



 Trees in and irrigation run.



10 months later and the trees are bigger and starting to bloom! Sadly, that is not grass, just mowed weeds :)

One of the spots has an experimental 2-in-1 planting of pluots.  We have one almond tree and the rest are fruit: three peaches, two plums, two nectarines, two apricots, two cherries, four apples, three avocados, two figs, a persimmon, asian pear, pomegranate, and loquat. Our front yard project for this spring is to replace the couple of trees that didn't make it, bury the irrigation lines, retill the rows and seed it with a mixture of orchard grass, clover, and dandelion.

The Back Yard

When we bought the house there were two established citrus trees in the back yard, so we decided to keep the theme and put all our citrus in the back. We ripped pretty much all of the plants the previous owners had and put in 9 more citrus and a bay tree.


These four are in pots on the patio:

Bay Tree



Kaffir Lime



Kumquat



Satsuma Tangerine

This tree was an extra "mystery" tree that was double labeled as a tangerine and a grapefruit. I stuck it in a pot and hoped it was a tangerine. I got my wish!

The remainder of the citrus are in ground:

Lemon

This was established when we got here. It was a surprise, I didn't realize it was a fruit tree when we were purchasing the house.

I also thought it was a lime tree until about a month ago, but we don't need to talk about that.

Satsuma Tangerine

Honey Tangerine

It's smaller and more balanced now, we removed the tall scions that you see here.

Blood Orange

Meyer Lemon



Navel Orange



This is the other tree that was established when we moved in. It's in the critter area, the enclosure to the right is the poultry run.



Tangelo



Rio Red Grapefruit

Since the tree I thought was a lime is really a lemon we still need a lime tree. Also, we'd like a valencia orange; they flower at a different time of year from the navel, so between the two we'd have oranges nearly year-round. We just have to find room for them.

A couple weeks after the trees were put in our neighbor told us about some enormous pine trees the city was taking down a few blocks south of us. We asked the tree trimmers if we could have some of the chipped trees for mulch. They said yes:

Truck full of pine mulch.



And on our driveway.
(The neighbors love us...)



All the trees got a wheelbarrow full around their base, a couple of neighbors took some, and the rest was spread around the citrus tree, rose bushes, and paths between the garden beds. It has been so great as a weed suppressant, moisture conservation cover, and soil amendment. There is beautiful fungi structure developing where the much comes in contact with the ground! All for FREE, because we asked!

Looking Forward



Two blueberries in the "yardette".

We are interplanting the blueberries with the rose bushes we are keeping from those that were here when we purchased the house. 

Blueberry bushes in pots.



There are four more blueberries in pots on the driveway waiting to go in the ground as soon as the rain lets up.



Strawberries

These are going in the planter under the citrus in the back. I'll be ordering more crowns this week.

Strawberry Flower!

Boysenberries, raspberries, and perhaps blackberries will go up the fence along the driveway - we are already referring to it as "the berry patch". There is a substantial hedge between the orchard and our neighbor's property; we've talked to them about ripping that out and putting in elderberries or grapes. I would really like rubarb, but that will be an experimental crop since it really needs a good long freeze to do well, and we don't have that kind of climate.



Back Patio.

Our back patio cover is the open, slatted kind so the plan is to put grapes and/or kiwi's at each post and trellis them up so that they hang thorough and are supported by the patio cover. This picture was taken at the time we did our home inspection. The established lemon tree is just out of the picture to the rear right of the photo. All the other vegetation you see in the rear along the wall has been ripped out and that is where the tangerines, blood orange and meyer lemon trees were planted, and where the strawberries will go. That gawd-awful fountain will eventually be removed and we will build our wood-fired oven in that place.



Baby blueberries

There is little more satisfying than watching all our hard work bear fruit, so to speak.

What are you working on to make household and community more sustainable and self-sufficient in the long term?

2010 in Pictures and Words

 2010 was a roller coaster of a year.

- B and I barely made it.

- I withdrew from my Ph.D. program. I realized that original research is not my passion, and that is what a Ph.D. program is designed to create - a researcher. One who happens to teach, yes, but a researcher first.

- I went back to work full time (praise Jesus that I was able to move from part-time to full-time very quickly after leaving school).

- We turned the front yard in to the Orchard, with the addition of 27 fruit trees. Another 10 were planted in the backyard.

- We put in 13 raised garden beds.

 Mid-build.

 And a couple months later with some late summer crops.

- We got chickens.

 We ended up with 5 hens and 2 roosters, unknown breed(s).

- And then ducks.

 5 Khaki Campbell hens.

- We had a poultry run built.

Pre-paint. 

- And learned to slaughter chickens.

 We can't have roosters and knew this would be the outcome if any of the chicks were males. We named them Dinner and Supper.

- We took several trips, including one to Hawaii with my family.

- Where we got engaged.

- We adopted a puppy.

 Everyone, meet Guinness.

- We lost all 5 chicken hens and 4 of the 5 duck hens to raccoons in what has been dubbed The Great Massacre of 2010.

- We learned emergency poultry care in a hurry. 

 Meet Lucky, our surviving duck. She likes baths.

- We reinforced the poultry run. We now have the Fort Knox of poultry housing.

- We got 2 Rhode Island Reds who had just started laying to restart our flock and keep Lucky company.

- We took up beekeeping.

Checking the hives. 

Filtering raw local honey from a cut-out.

- I stepped up my canning. 

 Jelly from 30 pounds of wine grapes given to us by a friend when we cut a hive out at her house.

- I started learning to ferment.

 Three types of sauerkraut.



 Our first batch of mead, made with a new friend who is experienced in homebrewing. It'll be a 8 - 12 months before it's ready. 

- I continued to cook a lot and develop recipes.

Enchilada Casserole 

- I discovered homemade butterscotch.

 This is a problem.

- With a lot of hard work, tears, talking, stubbornness, and grace B and I got to a place far better than we've ever been.

We are looking forward to 2011 being a lot better than 2010.

I will elaborate on all these in future posts, as one of my main goals for the year is to get back to blogging consistently. I have missed it and look forward to getting back in the habit.

Happy New Year!

Getting Back in the Groove: The Weekly Menu

In an effort to get back to both blogging and menu planning, I give you our menu for next week. I need to be using my pantry items more consistently and I find menu planning to be essential in meeting that goal. Actually, for this menu I will only need cabbage (in season, and on sale!) and we'll need to restock the green smoothie ingredients mid-week, but other than that I have everything I need. I started my second quarter this past week, so a menu will definitely be helpful managing my time, since I have a boatload of reading to do. Speaking of which, I need to get back to it!

Merry Christmas

I apologize for the lack of posting, it has been a rough month for me. Plus I've been fighting with Blogger about including and formatting pictures in my posts. I'm sure it is mostly my ineptness with this new-fangled technology :o)  but it is frustrating nonetheless.

I wish you all very happy, healthy, and safe holidays, we'll catch up soon.

Giving Thanks

So what are you making on this day of thangsgiving? I am making what I made last year. My mouth is watering already for the green beans...

Drooling concluded, moving on. If you should find yourself with leftover squash, may I suggest this? I was craving a creamy squash soup, but not the curry that typically flavors such things. This hit the spot. It's also a great way to use up extra squash (the butternut that I had from the farmer's market was huge). The only note is that if your squash is already cooked it should not be too heavily sweetened or seasoned. The seasonings in this are very much dependent on the squash you use and your own taste, so the quantities should be viewed more like guidelines.

Autumnal Squash Soup

Serves 2-4, depending on how thick you make it and if you are serving it with anything else.

2.5 cups steamed and mashed squash (mine was homemade and therefore a looser consistency; you can use canned, just add about 1 cup of water to a 15 oz can of packed squash)

2-4 tbsp cream, half and half, nut cream,or milk of choice

1-3 tbsp dark agave

~ 1/2 tsp rubbed sage (use less if using ground)

~ 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

~ 1/3 tsp ground ginger

fresh ground black pepper

salt, to taste

1 can or 1 1/2 cups mild white beans, rinsed and drained (optional)

water, broth, or additional milk/cream sufficient to achieve desired consistency

Place everything in your blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Heat over medium-low until bubbling gently. Cook, stirring frequently, 2 minutes and then taste and adjust seasoning and thickness as needed.

Serve hot.

Local Deliciousness

Along with my soup (which was made with local butternut squash) I had this yummy (mostly) local salad: lettuce (CSA), pear (CSA), toasted pecans (gifted by a friend who's father-in-law brought them from TX where he had shelled them himself!), goat cheese, and honey mustard vinaigrette (with local honey).


I am winding up the last 2 weeks of my first quarter of my Ph.D. program. That combined with the work on our house has made for a busy and challenging last couple of months, hence the lack of activity here. But I do have a few things I'm working on and I look forward to more doing more regular posting. I'll have some house updates as well as a few recipes. 


Also, a small note - I'm sorry I had to add word verification to commenting but I was getting a lot of spam comments. I'm hoping this will take care of that and I can remove it shortly.


In other news I have taken Crunchy Chicken's challenge:



I know it's getting later in the season, but I hope you will consider making at least some of your holiday handmade, or planning ahead to do so next year. We've been doing more and more of this the last couple years and we find that everyone seems to really enjoy the gifts. And we enjoy giving them because we feel like they actually come from us and are within our means (which makes the whole season so much less stressful!). It's a win-win all around.  


I hope you have a very joyful Thanksgiving.

A Reccomendation, a Discussion, and a Change

First thing first. If you have not yet seen Food, Inc. go. If you balk at paying $15 for a movie (and really, who doesn't?) plan on hosting a viewing party the minute it comes out on video. Those of you who are dyed-in-the-faux-wool vegans may argue that the film does not encourage people to go outright vegan and is therefore not helpful. However, the film talks about more than just animal agriculture, it is a larger discussion on our whole food system.

After much thought and research and discussion have reached something like homeostasis in my views on diet as it relates to my health, the environment, and ethics. I may lose some readers for saying this, but it is more important to me that I be sincere and forthright than to appease others. I am not opposed to responsible, sustainable animal agriculture. I am well aware of the arguments that there is no such thing. I disagree; people and animals have co-habitated and co-depended on one another for thousands of years. Our eco-systems are dependent on both fauna and flora inputs to be healthy. I am not under any illusions that will cease to be the case. I am adamantly opposed to industrial animal agriculture and I know that as a nation we eat entirely too many animal products. I believe that a plant-based diet, meaning consisting primarily of plants, is most definitely the healthiest, and most sustainable, way to eat. However, I don't think that advocating a vegan diet as the only option is the most efficacious way to encourage people to improve their health and that of the planet.

I aim to never stop learning, I am always reading, researching, browsing. At this point I find myself most in line with Michael Pollan's position of "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." And more importantly with the position that we should endeavor not to eat that which our great-great grandmothers would not recognize as food (I'm perfectly willing to pretend that my great-great grandmother was quite the world traveler and ate foods from all cultures). That means that processed foods are out, including vegan processed foods. I think whole soy products in moderation are a perfectly healthful part of a varied diet. However the pervasiveness of soy derivatives (and corn derivatives for that matter) in our food supply concerns me. If your primary or sole motivation for being vegan is animal rights then I understand that veganism is essentially your only philosophical option. However, from the standpoint of health and environmental concerns I don't see a great deal of difference between eating fractionated "food like substances" (especially from GMO crops), vegan or otherwise, and eating conventionally raised animal products. They are both hard on our bodies, the environment, and the people involved in producing them.

This small but significant shift in my perspective has led me to reconsider my blog title. Firstly, I don't want to misrepresent the vegan community. Much of what I do eat is and will continue to be vegan, however I do incorporate some dairy and eggs into my diet. That combined with the broader focus I have take to include my path to simple, greener living has led to the choice to change my blog title (the actual web address will remain the same). I hope you find it informative and encouraging.

Goings On

A photo journal of my little neck of suburbia over the last few weeks.

Nearly open sunflower in my mom's garden.

My first time growing okra. I was blown away by how lovely the flowers are. This is a Red Burgundy Okra from Seed Savers Exchange.

A summer supper: CSA coleslaw (cabbage, turnips, carrots) and homemade chili covered baked potato (with homegrown tomatoes).

Biscotti for a crowd. Recipe needs a some work, but is very delicious, it just wasn't dry enough.

The original baseboards at our new house. You can see the paint build up on the bottom. The original paint was oil based and there are at least two layers on top of that. Unfortunately, they were not properly primed before being painted over with a latex paint and as a result are peeling in some areas. Which means we have to replace them if we want our paint job to be durable.

There's a toe-kick piece at the bottom that we had to remove first. You can clearly see the paint layers here. As you can also see, they put in the baseboards and then painted. That order is backwards and is resulting in more work for us.

Here is the wall with the baseboards completely removed. The other issue we have found are that they did not smooth the plaster below the old baseboards. The new ones we are putting on are about 1/4 inch shorter, so we are having to improvise. Also, since they painted the baseboards in place and didn't tape off very well, there is a paint line on the floor around the perimeter of the whole room that I have the privilege of scraping off with a putty knife and some solvent. Fun.

When we closed a couple weeks ago I was so excited to discovered a volunteer watermelon plant! At the time I didn't see any fruit on it. Well this past weekend I discovered a couple. No idea how we missed them. Here's the little one.

And here's the big one! I've never grown watermelon before and I've no idea what kind this is, so I'm not sure when to harvest it, but since we've yet to have a really good watermelon this season I'm salivating already! The vine is really healthy and spread out, with lots of flowers, so I'm hoping we get a few more fruit off of it.