Sorry it's taken me a little while to post again! Things have gotten busy around here! A very quick update on my life for the past few weeks: Last week, we did tons of planting!  We got summer squash, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and watermelons in the ground. We also hilled potatoes. That means we piled a bunch of dirt on top of the potatoes with hoes, like this:

The reason we hill potatoes is because they like to grow in dark places. If you continue to pile dirt on top of them, they will continue producing more potatoes under the dirt you've just piled. It's pretty cool!

I also got to shoot a bow last week! Walker and Cameron each have a bow and arrows, and they taught Jessica and I how to shoot. It was really nice of them to do that, and it was a lot of fun! We all shot at a target for a little while, and my Girl Scout skills came in handy! This past weekend was also the TLA fundraiser.  It was a potluck dinner/dance/silent auction/gathering of wonderful people. There was a lovely band playing, Franklin called the square dance, and a fun time was had by all!  It was held at the historic Sherill's Inn, which used to be used by stagecoaches and cattle drivers as a pit-stop in the 19th Century.  It is a beautiful structure, with fantastic gardens surrounding it.  I hope to go there again and wander around. I could easily spend a few hours there.

This week, we've been finishing up a lot of planting at the garden-preparing the last of the beds and then getting food into them.  Yesterday, it was raining in the morning, so we went to the North Carolina Arboretum.  It reminded me a lot of Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh- there were lots of plants spread out through several different garden areas. They had an exhibit of "wicked" plants.  The exhibit talked about plants that could make people sick, or were associated with very negative things, historically.  It was incredibly informative and interactive. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I worked at someone's house in the afternoon, helping them weed their yard.  I hope to return to do some more yard work for them; they are a very sweet couple!  It wasn't raining in the afternoon, so after the yard work, I returned to the garden to help Jessica and Susan continue planting. We planted okra, more squash, more tomatoes, eggplant, and basil. It made for a long day, but I am really happy we were able to get things into the ground.

Today we walked around the garden to assess what would need to be done.  We do this to prioritize the work in the garden, and probably to keep us all sane and on the same page about the work that needs to be done.  It was very helpful to talk about the pros and cons of starting with this or that; it got us all thinking about what our individual priorities might be for the garden.  I decided to thin out the beets. Usually, when we plant, we put in more seeds than there is actually space for. The idea behind this is to increase the number of seeds that will potentially germinate. That way, if some of the seeds don't germinate, we don't have huge gaps where there could be food growing, and we don't have to deal with transplanting to fill those gaps. So this is what a bed would typically look like that hadn't been thinned:

They look a little smushed, right? Well, we took out lots of plants so the remaining ones would be about three inches apart. This is what the end result should be:

They look a lot happier, not having to compete for space and sunlight. And we get some really tender, yummy beet greens to eat!

Just make sure you wash them really well; they like to hold on to all the dirt they were just in!  Emily (one of the town interns) and I also thinned some carrots:

I didn't get through the whole bed, but it was time for lunch! Susan and I ate lunch, and then she dropped me off at the library so I could find some children's books. We are starting the "Sprouts" program this week, which is a program for kids to come to the garden and explore for about an hour each Friday morning.  I am very excited about it! I got three books from the library, so I'll have to decide which one will work best! And now we are back at the house, relaxing until work night tonight. Jessica is making dessert; I'm pretty excited about it.

Happy Wednesday!

Finally, Friday, May 25th. Today we did a lot of planting!  We had a good bit of catching up to do, because of the rain and the subsequent setback on Wednesday's volunteer night.  Emily (our newest summer intern) and I planted some green beans, summer squash, and okra.  I can't wait for the okra to come in!  We planted some ruby okra, which looks like this:

So pretty!  We also planted some sweet potato slips, much to my dismay.  I'm not a huge fan of sweet potatoes. But Susan has convinced me that they are easy to take care of and that they will make a beautiful addition to the garden.  I'll just have to trust her on that one. Here's what the slips look like:

After the sweet potatoes, we transplanted some more squash into a few of the beds, and then we were good to go!  We came back home and got some lunch. I wanted to take a 20min nap after dinner, and BOOM, I was out for two hours. I guess I was a lot more tired than I realized.  It made for a very quick Friday.

Tomorrow, I am headed to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park with Rachel! She has an internship there this summer, so I will hopefully be able to get out there to see her and explore the park. I am very excited to do some camping and adventuring!

Thursday, May 24:
Today, we got right into the garden! We transplanted some of the peppers we received from the church yesterday. Here is the process we used: First, we pulled string from one end of the bed to the other, to make a line which would indicate where a row of peppers would go.  Second, we marked where each plant should go along that line.  We use baking flour to do this-it's easy to see and doesn't harm the beds. Thirdly, we dug holes where we had marked, filled with a little compost, and planted the peppers! Here's what the little cuties looked like:

When you transplant, you generally want to do it at night. This way, the plants can establish themselves without the heat of the day braeing on their little plant bodies.  It's hard enough that they were moved; we want to make their transition as smooth as possible.We don't know what these peppers will turn out to be, but I'm not that concerned.  I pretty much love any kind of pepper (excluding the particularly spicy varieties).

After doing some transplanting and planning for the next few days of planting, we went to the Welcome Table: as always, it was a really enjoyable experience. After lunch, we had a group to prepare for at the garden.  There was a group of Kellog Fellows coming in to do a tour of TLA and Hickory Nut Gap as part of a conference week focused on local agriculture and foods. We weren't really sure what to expect, but the group was so wonderful! Rose, one of the women there, had a daughter who was really interested in Warren Wilson.  She saw my WWC hoodie and we got to talking about it.  Hopefully I will be able to see her and her daughter Natalie when they come to visit at the end of the summer!

We stopped by Cameron and Walker's house right after work. It was Cameron's birthday today! She and Walker both have been so friendly and welcoming; I couldn't thank them enough for that. Cameron and Walker are leaving for the weekend, so we will have a potluck on Monday to celebrate Cameron's day of birth.  

The final portion of my evening was spent with Jay, one of my longest friends at Wilson. We went to Highland Brewing Company to say goodbye before they move back to Denver. It was quite an adventurous Thursday!

Posts from this week:

Wednesday, May 23rd:
Rain!  That was the theme of the day. We woke up this morning and all had the same thought: planting in the beds probably won't happen if the soil soaked up all this rain. We ran some errands in the morning.  We picked up some pepper plants from a church in Asheville.  They've got a really beautiful garden in the front of the church. It's the main thing you see from the road as you're approaching.  They were doing some harvesting in the garden and a man picked some broccoli for us to try.  It was amaazing! So crisp! So peppery! So delicious.  I gotta start growing some of that.  They were also harvesting cauliflower and swiss chard. I learned the name of an interesting-looking cabbage today:

Meet savoy cabbage.  It's got a bubbly texture, similar to lacinato kale (also known as dinosaur kale), which looks like this:

Unfortunately, I haven't tasted either of these foods, so I am not able to tell you much in the flavor department.

Due to the rain, we were unable to have our Wednesday night work-night in the garden. Instead, we we invited volunteers to watch the movie "Fresh"

It was a really great documentary about the changes that are taking place within the food movement now, and highlighted changes that have taken place over the past twenty or thirty years.  the main focus of the movie was a look at factory farming and more sustainable agricultural projects.  The movie featured some big names in the food movement, including:

• Joel Salatin: a Virginian farmer who advocates for a more simplified, sustainable food production method that emulates the ecological systems in nature. He pasture-raises cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and more on his farm, rotating the animals in a way that stimulates the growth of his fields and promotes the health of his animals. 
• Michael Pollen: Author whose books highlight connections between American agriculture and culture.
• Will Allen: founder of Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, MN. Growing Power is dedicated to teaching residents of Milwaukee how to grow their own food by emulating ecological systems in nature within condensed spaces.

I felt like the movie would make a good introduction to the food movement for someone who was unfamiliar with what was going on.  It was interesting, informational, thought-provoking, and entertaining.

We woke up with a bit of bad news.  When Jessica woke up to let the chickens out, she found one of the hens lying on the floor of the coop.  She had died the night before.  This particular hen had gone broody a few weeks ago.  That means that she kicks into mamma-mode.  She stops egg production and all she wants to do is sit on her eggs, to prepare them to hatch.  The thing is, there aren't any fertilized eggs, so she's essentially just sitting, waiting for nothing in particular. 

 Sometimes hens just become broody; there's nothing anyone can do about it; and very little will change her mind. She only gets up for a quick drink of water, a snack, and a bathroom break, and then she's back on task. Unfortunately, the hen that went broody here forgot about the first two things on this list of activities.  She wasn't eating or drinking very much water. It ultimately led to her demise. Now we're down to five, but this means we might be able to get more chicks from a friend. These would be chicks in their teenage-years. I hope they aren't as angsty and hormonal as human teens!

Although the day started out pretty grim, it picked up quickly.  We headed to the garden to knock out some beds.  We double-dig the beds, which allows us to shape the raised beds and loosen up the soil so the next crop will be able to get its little roots started.  Basically, double-digging involves lifting the existing soil with a digging fork, which looks like this:

and then whacking the soil to break up all of the big chunks. It is a good exercise if you need to get out some aggression. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I really don't have much aggression to be taking out. So it was only good, old-fashioned elbow grease that I had to offer. Double-digging by hand is a lot more work, but it allows us to get a lot further down than if we used a machine or a different technique. The roots of some veggies can go pretty far down. Carrots, for example, have roots that can reach up to seven feet below the ground:

 So the further down we can loosen in the bed, the better. Today, we got to work right away on the beds to try and beat the rain. Jessica and I were tilthing the soil, composting, and skimming the pathways until about 2pm.  I gotta say, those forks aren't the lightest. I was not sad to say goodbye to tilthing for a few days.  

Once we got home from the garden, I had my mind set on the next task: it was my night to cook dinner. I've cooked myself plenty of meals over the course of my life.  Some were terrible, some were absolutely delicious, some were complete experiments. All of this was well and good, but I hadn't really cooked an entire meal for four people before, keeping in mind a vast array of eating styles (vegan, paleo, and omnivore).  I think I managed to pull it off.  I cooked some pork sausage with apples, onions, and rosemary, turnip greens with garlic and onion, green beans with cranberries and pecans, and some sweet potatoes.  I also made a mushroom, apple, and onion dish for Jessica, who doesn't eat meat. The only thing that didn't come out on time was the sweet potatoes. Overall, I think I did pretty darn well. I had never had turnip greens before. they grow on top of the turnip, and have leaves like this:

The leaves have little prickleys on them, so handle with care! They have a much stronger taste than I thought, but a little salt, pepper, and garlic, and they were tastin' good!

And now, after all of that food has settled in my belly, and all that hard work has settled in my bones, I am off to sleep. Good night!

Oops!  I thought I had finished this post yesterday, but discovered that I had not.  Here is yesterday's post:

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Today was a lazy day. A day of rest. The kind of day that where you have to rack your brain to think of something, anything to say in response to the question: "So what have you been up to today?".  Well, I ate breakfast, I read about some biodynamic gardening techniques, ....um, I identified exactly one caterpillar and one wildflower that I saw,....um...lunch was involved at some point...., and then I hung out with people and ate dinner.

Today is the kind of day I can describe in three words: (1)food (2)good people. Jessica, Walker (Susan and Franklin's son), Cameron (Walker's girlfriend), and I went to the release party of the new ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project) Guide. It was held at the Highland Brewing Company. There was music, and a food cart, and, of course, beer.  We all lucked out on the weather; it was clear, sunny weather. It felt like summer was underway. We hung out there for a while, soaking up the sunshine and the company.  I enjoyed watching people dance to the music. At the release party, a few of us decided to have potluck at Flying Cloud.  We all gathered ingredients, cooked food, and ate together.  It was lovely. 

I think we all need days like this every once-in-a-while.  They force us all to slow the pace, take a seat, and truly enjoy each other. 

This morning, Jessica and I went to the Spring Mountain Community Center to do a tabling event for TLA. We got to talk to some folks who had heard about the garden and commented on the good work that we were doing.  I haven't been a part of this garden for long, but it didn't take hardly any time to know how people feel about its presence in the community. Everyone I have talked to about the garden gives a glowing report of what this garden has done for those who benefit from its growth. We also got a lot of comments from food pantry clients about what they would like to see in the garden. I think it's empowering for them to have a direct input into what they will be receiving from the garden. Their input helps us immensely, too!  The garden was created so people could get food; it helps if we know what food those people will actually eat.  TLA's direct connection to the food pantry clients helps us to better serve them. 

It was lovely out today; the sun was shining, but it wasn't too hot.  After the tabling event (and a delicious spinach-salad and salmon lunch!), Jessica and I went for a hike. We started on a trail, but about halfway up the hill, we decided to get off the beaten path.  We walked all along the creek behind the house, and decided to do the same thing on the way back down.  It was an adventure!  I'd love to get back up there to explore a little more sometime.  We saw some downy rattlesnake plantain, which are a kind of orchid native to eastern North America.  They usually bloom from July to August.  Here's what they look like:

 I first learned about rattlesnake plantain in Southwest Oregon and Washington.  There, they look a little different.  The lines tend to be less spread apart, like this:

Rattlesnake plantain was used by American Indians to treat snakebites, burns, and other ailments.

Well, I'm off to eat dinner! Happy Saturday!