December 29, 2018 It rains here a lot.

It rains in western Oregon, and it rains a lot. Our efforts to work the land have been rained out for two weeks. And even though there are interior spaces to consider and build, these are not sufficient to take up the time available in our lives. So we hobby around a bit.

Ann's hobby is cooking and baking. So she has been busy learning to make breads while testing recipes she searches for in books, magazines, and on the Internet. We eat well at Creekside Farm. The chickens and dogs eat everything we don't.

My hobby is writing long fiction. I write all of the time, but put things on pages only occasionally. This hobby began when I had more time on my hands than things to employ them. The stories simply appear out of nowhere in my visual mind, but then it takes months and years to appear on the page. None of this is easily explained, which is good because it makes the inside of my brain fun even though it complicates things. I have been working to squeeze a new book into paper for the past few weeks and things are going surprisingly well. This may be the one book that actually works out as intended, only time will tell.

This morning I woke up to find the resolution to a few problems I created for myself in the book, one was a reason for the suicidal death of one of the main characters. For some reason the death had to be a beautiful death, so I spent five minutes looking around the Internet for inspiration and found a piece of Ballet which led into finding a poem, which led to another poem and some analytics. I don't do poetry, but a few have happened to me in the past and I appreciate the stuff.  I opened a blank page in my word processor to start taking notes and a poem fell onto the page unexpectedly. I sent it out to a poetry web site, but had to publish it here for copyrighting purposes.

The Dying Swan – © 2018 David Paul Drake

We all fight death,

its relentless behavior.

But witness change,

to all, in nature.

Dying swans catch, without assent.

To rail, to rant, warble, lament.

To no avail. Death won't repent.

All lives end, despite intent.

We say “Cry out!”

And “Fight!” with zeal.

Yet all still fail in their appeal.

None escape that which is real.

Strive and strafe, care, and carry.

Waste the time, or never tarry.

Marry and parent, extend your lives.

Pointless or fruitful, death still arrives.

December 13, 2018 Our Christmas Letter

Click on this picture to see it better.

You can see this better if you click on it

We packed our address book, so it is in storage and we have no idea where to send cards this year. Please write your address information in the contact box on the right of this and we'll get your card in the mail. Otherwise the only people receiving a card from us will be those who send one.

November 22,2018 Re-imagining Creekside Farm

The New Farm Plan
The little images are hints of the nature of each place.
Click on the picture for a larger version.

Thanksgiving is an everyday occurrence here, we seldom take any of this for granted. Our good fortune in the past few years has been notable. Many would never believe the place where we started from, or what we did to get to this point. All I can say on this is that we did start from nothing and have come this far with God' good graces.  And for that we are truly grateful.

The Farm was a dream at its onset. Once we found the property I imagined what we might eventually build there, then as more information came to the forefront I spent time re-imagining the plan to fit the new circumstances and conditions. Today I put some finishing touches on the new Farm Plan, the changes forced by having to re-locate the house in order to get a permit to build it. This plan takes all of our previous ideas into account, but changes all of dimensions from previous plans. If you are interested in looking at the old plans click here.

This new plan is merely a vision of perfection, not likely to ever be completely built. There will be many more re-visioning images as we go forward with building because things change and reality gets in the way of good imagining. I make these pictures so that I can keep the entire thing in my visual mind as I do everyday work. This past week, for example, I began to think about the Creekside Path (which follows Dairy Creek outside of the fence at the back of the property). So as we cut and burned the brush I began visualizing the different aspects of the proposed new path, because these aspects will become the backdrop for the gardens to eventually be found inside of the fence.

And then there is the County approvals needed to build the thing, which may or may not come (easy or at all). We will need a Type Four land use approval in order to fully realize the Farm plan as a public space. There will be three other land use approvals decided before we get the thing built and in use.

All this being said, we didn't remove much from the original plans, and the new things incorporated in the new plan are:

A Cherry tree lined path which runs from near the proposed Barn Store to the Northeast gate at the back of the Farm. It should make a very nice picture and add a substantial length of walking path. In designing this space I am trying to add a colonnade sort of thing. Something like the Colonnade images taken at the White House to add a sense of time and removed contemplation to the images taken there.

I moved the Yin Yang Pond to a new location due to a lack of a proper surrounding in the northwest corner gate. In the old place the pond would not have had a good backdrop, or provide a good backdrop for pictures taken there. But the pond might have a chance of making a good picture with the Cherry Tree Lane and Chinese Gazebo in the background. And since this is a semi-reflective pond, mirror images might be more interesting.

We had been toying with allowing each guest to have their own fire pit near their cabin, but this is a bit dangerous and would take a load of maintenance. So instead we thought of putting a centrally located fire pit in the midst of a communal gazebo where all guests might come and be together as they wish. I have an idea about surrounding the space with a curtain water feature, something of a rainy day during the hotter months with water falling gently on the landscape surrounding the Gazebo. But this space is intended to allow a gathering of people around a fire in the evening, something which people have been doing for the entire history of people.

As we build, we find new things to build or things which ought not be built. But each change is a refinement of a vision which, at its heart, is intended to bring things to people and ourselves.

Today it is three years since the very beginning of the Creekside Farm Project and only two years from beginning this written BLOG chronicle, so much has been accomplished. In this three years we have reclaimed the land from trash and wildness, planted food and flower crops, raised a flock of chickens and dozens of dogs for a profit, and begun actual building of what we hope will be something special. It seems a lot longer, but it has only been eight months since we began living on the Farm (full time) in our tiny home cabin, which doubled in size while we also added hundreds of feet of covered space for animals and work. Is seems incredible that we are only five months from the point of achieving the money to begin making the bigger dream a reality. Time means nothing once you reach fifty or so years old, days tend to flitter by unnoticed. So taking the time to reflect is important or we might miss all of the fun we are having.

November 1, 2018 A Necessary Update.

Life goes on apace at Creekside Farm. So much is happening, most of it too small to write about, most of it is fairly meaningless in terms of the bigger picture. But I have been remiss in keeping our history up to date. So here's what has happened since the Summer Supper Party in late August.

The biggest thing is that we finally got all of the readily available trash removed from the place.  But so much has happened, is happening, will happen.

Jack helped me build it.

We got the new septic system installed. It was a big project which might have needed an article of its own, but didn't because it really wasn't very interesting. A lot of digging, a bunch of laying things into trenches, and then a lot of burying. It is enough to say that we got the thing in, saved a ton of money doing ourselves, got it approved by the County, and this past week hooked the tiny home cabin into it so that we are better off right now than we were.

As soon as we got approval to apply for the septic permit we hired Erik the Architect, along with Trena the Intern, to design our new farmhouse. Up to this point the only thing we knew for certain was that my dream of putting the house at the northwest corner of the property had to be changed so that we got a quick land use decision. Putting the house in the corner would have added at least six months to the project and we wanted to get building. I had already done a preliminary plan for the house (and thought myself pretty clever for nearly a year), then these two clever people got hold of it and changed most parts for the better.  We're quite happy about the new design and should get actual plans this month at some point. From there it goes to the engineer, then to the building permit people, then maybe we can build. Since we are doing most of the building ourselves we expect to move in by next November, but we've said this same thing before.

The early version of their design work.

I added in some details.
You can click on this for a bigger picture.

MacGreggor's Garden produced (2) pretty well this summer, but not enough to build the produce stand this year. Next year in Jerusalem, as they say. This morning we began pulling everything that won't Winter over out in the garden. It will look better to see rotting mud than to see rotting plants, and our compost pile looks quite happy.

The chickens (2) have been selling about twenty dozen eggs a month for the past two months. Not much of an income, but we got some business done this year and so we can claim victory even if it is something a bit more hollow than we had planned. Winter is coming and so we expect less of them as the weather turns colder.  They will process the compost pile all Winter for use in planting  in the Spring.  This morning I ordered cartons and labels for future egg sales. Not that I needed to, but it will feel more like a business effort.

Our hounds are doing very well, but we had to put Henri Hudson down in early September. He had taken a turn for the violent crazy and killed a few chickens . . . He's been planted behind the new home site along with our LizziBeth, who was his girl and who went into the ground before him  We did get a new girl puppy, named Grizelda Laffee Taffee, in September and she is both growing well and a double handful of fun. Since we are not going to do any breeding until the new kennel is up and running there is no puppy business. But we are probably looking for another female in the Spring so that she can start growing old enough to put to work.

I am working on a new design layout for the Farm and Gardens since the old one had the house in the wrong place, also since we have some experience which can be put into the plan, and since we already change the plan by putting some stuff into the ground to propagate more plants for the gardens.

The Party Tent, now workshop.

A few weeks back I converted the Summer Supper Party tent into workshop and covered it for the winter's rain. It will be a great place from which we can stage the house building, but the dogs love it to play in when it is rainy out and the chickens like to stay in there for keeping out of the rain too.

As for the rest of it . . . The rains started last week and the lack of old growth weeds makes the place really a big mud pit that one must keep out of, for the most part. We will do what we can through  the Winter and try to keep up the momentum we believe has finally begun to grow faster, but the Farm has its own plans, and its own schedule. There seems no way to rush anything. The Dream of Creekside Farm is still in place and working (for the most part), though changed by time and the needs of Creekside Farm and Washington County.

October 6, 2018 A day of days

Today is something of a milestone. 

This is what we started with.

After we decided to engage in the Creekside Farm project, it took nearly a year (and many months of work) to clear the Farm off enough to see the ground, the edges, and get the larger things broken down into what might be called "trash" properly. Before that we couldn't begin to remove the stuff  with any efficiency at all. There was a double wide mobile home that had burned down, an RV motor home that was more than just a wreck, a shipping container full of paper and other waste, and everywhere you went on the property you found some new pile of miscellaneous debris.

After we emptied the container.

There was trash everywhere.

In the first year we spent quite a bit of time simply trying to get some idea of the size of the problem. 

Eventually we got the bulk of the debris pushed into one large pile.
The pile was about eighty feet long, twelve feet deep, and eight feet high.

We had a four yard dumpster dropped early on, but the scale of the work required something more massive. The real clean-up started in May of 2016 when we had two gigantic dumpster boxes dropped on what became the driveway and loaded them up for three days. After the sixty yards of debris was removed, the remaining pile (only forty feet long, ten deep, and six high) simply had to wait for time and money to present themselves. The time came when we moved to the Farm and got settled in. The money came when we sold our house in town.

Since then we have done so much at Creekside Farm, not the least of which was having a four yard dumpster brought nearly every week - filling it - and getting another. Each week we chipped away at the pile.

Today we got the last of the "one large pile" cleared away. 

There are no pictures to show you how we feel about today. We have been working toward this for so very long and all anyone would notice by looking is that there is no giant pile of trash sitting in the middle of the place. Today we have the place torn apart as we put together the new septic system and prepare to build our farm house. There are also a few very large burn piles sitting around waiting for a match. So anyone driving by the first time might only see the mess we have created. But the septic ditches will be filled in this week, the burn piles lit next weekend. Once these are done all anyone will see it a Farm. And it only took three years of blood, sweat, tears, and cash.

September 21, 2018 Wormfest at Creekside Farm

Never let it be said that our chickens are poorly fed.
Today I tilled two new gardens and the hens had a worm feast.

We have happy, fat, hens.

Normally we give them what everyone else gives their chickens: Layena Pellets from Purina. The pellets have a higher than average percentage of calcium and are not medicated, so the eggs are good and the shells are hard. But they can go through about fifty pounds of the stuff in a week, so we augment the pellets with copious amounts of whole grains we got from a client who had about 3200 pounds of defunct survival food stored in his attic. Mostly wheat (3 varieties),  but there are oats, barley, and corn too. We mix one scoop of grain into their pellets. But they eat quite well here besides.

The vegetables from MacGreggor's Garden, that don't come up to snuff aesthetically, go into the chicken run for nearly instant disposal. If  tomato has a defect, and plenty of them do, then the chickens get a feast. About every three day or so I put five pounds of tomatoes out but they also get beans that grow too large, monster cucumbers, failed melons, and the kitchen scraps from cooking. 

Needles to say, they a free roaming, so there aren't very many bugs on the ground. They chase around all day, browsing bugs and seeds from all around the Farm. Nearly omnivorous, I even seen them eating a dove that didn't pay attention and they occasionally find a vole, or a mole, poking his head up  and chase each other around trying to steal it away for themselves. 

Many of the more mature hens have taken to following me
around whenever I am on the tractor.
They seem to know that I bring good things to the surface.

As Fall comes in and Winter approaches, our chickens are going in very healthy, fat, and happy.

September 17, 2018 Homegrown Harvest Part 2

The nightshade family of plants includes tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and (surprisingly) Potatoes. We put in five varieties of Tomato, four of peppers, tomatillos and ground cherries, as well as the root crops written up previously.

• The tomatoes did well, and are still doing well. We had a hard time controlling the heat in the greenhouse, but eventually got some 50% shade cloth to cover it so things started growing and producing. The plants in the greenhouse produced very well, and still are, but next year we'll plant them quite a bit differently. Tomato cages made us prune them too much, keeping the yields artificially low. The flavors of the four different varieties came through very well. The few we planted outside did very little production, they seem to like it hot. We feed the dumpy ones to the chickens, keeping only the perfect fruit for ourselves. We would have sold them, but we didn't open the fruit stand this year, so most of the good stuff was given to people as gifts. Ann just loves being able to go pick a fresh tomato from the plant and prepare it immediately.
• We put tomatillos and peppers between the tomatoes and so these got over-crowded. The tomatillos never did anything worthy of eating, but instead gave us marble sized fruit. It had a good flavor, but wasn't a real tomatillo. The Ground Cherries (something like a tomatillo) were also disappointing. We'll try again next year. 
• Our peppers did well outside of the greenhouse, they are coming in this month and we have a ton of them. The greenhouse peppers did some, but were probably too hot and so did not meet our expectations. We also put in "cool" jalapenos which have no heat to them, but haven't found a use for these yet. Ann makes wonderful chili rellenos of the Poblano peppers, superior salsa from the jalapenos. The cool jalapenos are for experimenting.

We grew a lot more than I'll speak of here in this post. Strawberries did well, if only for propagating new plants for next year's success. We'll move them in the Winter to another temporary, but much better, home. But we hope to get them into a vertical garden next year at some point.

The Marijuana crop is as simple as falling from a log, if you get the right seeds. We got the right seeds and so Pot is always a good, easy, crop to grow. We'll harvest it in late October on the eve of the first large rain event and give most of it away to friends and family because these plants put out.

But there were other crops worthy of talking about too:

• Cucumbers produced only enough to eat ourselves or serve to the chickens when they inevitably grew larger than they should have. We did two varieties, a pickler, and a slicer. We will put them in heavier once we open the produce stand.
• The cantaloupe melons did nothing and probably needed better sun. 
• We did eat some nice Sugar Baby watermelons and so will put them in heavy next year. 
• We also did quite well with pumpkins too (even though we don't want to do these as a cash crop). We have Jack-o-lanterns galore.
• Pole peas did enough to tell me how many to put in next year, and how to do it. Peas are not a favorite crop and take a lot of work to prepare, but they will work in the produce stand, if only for show.
• Bush beans produced very well too. These will be given a larger grow next year. I found that sorting them into visually  similar classes made preparation better. The big ones would be for canning, but I doubt we'll can them. The slender ones are spectacular for poaching and quick frying them in bacon fat afterwards. Yummy.

All in all the garden experiment gave me local clues as to how to proceed, and reading gave me ideas for improving the crop next year. I can't wait, so we're working on finding a winter crop to put it and planning the gardens for next year while waiting on paperwork to build our farm house.

September 2, 2018 Homegrown Root Harvest

We started collecting the harvest of root vegetables this past week. Truth be told, we had more ambition than results.

Our onion crop went in late. Purple, white, and yellow onions went in in mostly unprepared soil, fifty at a time. So it was these first planted onions we took. In the end we got a one year's supply of all three, in various sizes, mostly perfect for a small household. We'll use most of the smaller onions for seed next spring. I replanted a bed of onions for winter harvest, but the results will be experimental.  Hiede Hay (Ann) made some wonderful Pico de gallo with our Jalapeno peppers, SanMaranzano tomatoes, and the white onions. Absolutely wonderful on chips or in eggs. The purple onions were lightly spicy on hamburgers a few night's back too.

We got our potatoes in late too and only took about 120 pounds out of the ground as the result. I tried planting them in raised rows, which was an unnecessary step and probably reduced our yields. But there is enough for eating all through them winter and spring, leaving enough seed to increase the planting next Spring. We had three varieties in the ground this year and it seems a good mix.

• Going into the year we were thinking that our favorite potato was going to be the German Butterball. Light yellow flesh (not as yellow as a Yukon Gold, but similar) with a semi-russeted skin that brings some earthiness into the flavor. We tried it in the garden at the old house last year and found it made a great baker or fry. We had a hard time finding seed potatoes this year but got enough to propagate seed for next year's planting, and eat about three gallons this winter.
• The break-out new favorite turned out to be the Kennebec. Super thin-skinned and nearly white flesh. This one makes a masher with flavor that holds up very well against gravy. It does very well in stew, if cooked separately and added at the end. The starch probably breaks down too easily for longer cooking, but the Kennebec  had a great "high end" restaurant appearance and flavor. We got about five gallons for eating and a whole lot of seeds this year. Yummy!
• Once our long time favorite, we also put in the Red Pontiac (now replaced by the more potatoes a-la-mode (above)). We will use the mostly for boiling and cooking with meat,s since it holds up well when being a bit over-cooked. The flavor is not as strong as with the other varieties we tried, but the Pontiac does very well in stew and is extra creamy if served on the side with fish or fowl and is also very nice to look at. We got five gallons from our planting this year and will have plenty of seeds for next year's crop.

None of the radishes or carrots we planted never did much, but we'll have to solve this riddle next year. We did get about three "French Breakfast" Radishes this year (out of two hundred attempts). They had a nice light flavor and tubular appearance which makes it worth pursuing next year. The carrot thing was just disappointing. We'll get them next year.

We'll eat very well this winter and be ready for a proper planting schedule next year.

August 28, 2018 Random Thoughts: Permitted Uses

Dealing with Washington County is a process of confusion, delay, and confounding of plans. The employees at the County are always cheerful, always helpful, but at the same time they are slaves to the process and can't do very much for you. They answer specific questions specifically, but general questions are impossible for them to handle. I have been trying to get some sort of traction on the building permits thing, but the whole process is Byzantine, to say the least.

To build a house is simple. To get permission to build a house is not. The cost of permit applications is relatively low, but the number of permits is relatively high. Electrical, Plumbing, Septic, and building permits are all required. Land use actions, site evaluations, and the people required to provide data used for these decisions are expensive, time consuming, and hard to find.

I have had one County person out to authorize the repair of my septic system. He was very helpful, but the resulting letter needed for me to get a repair permit is weeks in coming, so the septic system permit awaits a letter.

I have a temporary electrical service permit which allows electricity to our tiny home cabin. I never got a permit for the cabin since I think of it as a type of RV and I figured I'd be building once I got the money to do so. Since the County probably won't agree with my living in the house this will eventually give us trouble. The eventual nature of the trouble means that beginning to build, sooner rather than later, might keep our plans in place. But this doesn't seem to be happening so our plans might be rendered moot by the law.

The hang up is in getting surveys and plans, as well as in getting through the County process.

We are allowed to build a house, this is certain; but when we will be allowed is not certain at all, at this point in time. The process is something akin to the bank loan process where it seems that need  complicates things. In a bank loan: the requirement is that you really don't need the money. In a legal house building process: the requirement seems to be that you already have a legal house. Right now I have an illegal house, so the project may have an expiration date which is fast approaching.

Today I looked at rental housing in the area, just in case I have to close up our tiny home until we can build a house to live in. We might be able to buy a legally built trailer to live in while we build, but the County isn't saying anything at this point so all is uncertain.

Yet more delay and expense on the road to building the plan we all agree ought to be built.

August 26, 2018 The Aftermath

Yesterday was far too busy to take pictures, way too busy to write anything down.

The Summer Supper Party was a complete success, with a few provisions. These come first:
I am sorry that I didn't have time to invite all of those people that I would have invited, had there been time. A few special people, family and friends, didn't get their invitation because there wasn't enough time to go out and deliver them in person. My own Mother wanted to come, but there wasn't any way to do it. I am deeply sorry that these important people didn't get to be here. They missed out on a good thing and I owe them one (at least one). But the good thing is the thing, so here is the story.

To begin:
We spent weeks planning this. Weeks were spent building the place to have it. Weeks of hard work went into preparing the place and the plan. . . And, yesterday, it all came together in a spectacular way.

We woke up early to begin cooking all of the food we had spent the previous three days collecting. The amount of food was something of a surprise to us and cooking for this many people in our tiny home kitchen was a challenge all on its own. The number of people we would have to feed was something of a mystery until the Friday, when the RSVPs finally began to roll in.

On Tuesday the number of people committed to coming was twelve. This would have been a disappointing number, but we would have taken it and moved on. . . By Thursday the number had hit a very respectable twenty-six committed to attend. . .  We expected about twenty percent more would simply show up un-announced, and that would have been something near forty (so I went out to rent tables and chairs on Friday). . . On Friday the number of people committed to come to our first Summer Supper had grown a bit. In the end we had over fifty people. We had enough chairs, tables, and space for all of them. But they were coming to be fed, so this was a big thing.

Ann and I spent the entire day cooking, chopping, and otherwise preparing for fifty people. Our plan was to err on the side of generosity, but not knowing exactly how to feed such a large group was a constant worry.

The menu was to serve a Comprise salad, with tomatoes, basil, spinach,olive oil and feta cheese; backed up by shrimp and Chicken skewers, with bread; a dessert of strawberry shortcake, blackberry cobble, and apple crisp; backed up by lemonade, iced tea, beer, and pop. Enough food to feed an army is was what we built on our six foot tiny home counter. How to move the food around took a long time to figure out. And in the end we over-served everyone we could.

I built a greenhouse frame and covered it with shade cloth.
Then lit it with 1100 twinkle lights.
The sun never came, but a light rain did.
No-one were hurt by it.

Guest began arriving at two P.M. instead of the appointed hour (at four). This was a good thing since I needed help finishing the preparations in the outdoor serving area I had built for the occasion. They helped me secure the table cloths and bring things out from the house. The bulk of the crowd came around four o'clock and simply greeting them all, while trying to have conversations with those recently arrived, was a challenge. Before five everyone had come and we began the final push to bringing out the food. Since the drinks were all in place before the people started coming, the crowd milled around while waiting for dinner to show up. Needless to say, Ann and I were quite busy showing people around and trying to keep people from becoming bored. Supper began at around  five thirty. Ann enlisted some help to bring it all out, while I began finishing our pre-cooked meat skewers on a charcoal grill.

By the time I finished cooking, most everyone had eaten their fill. (In fact: Ann and I didn't eat much at all because there wasn't time, and the food had mostly run out. We ate egg salad sandwiches around nine and never got a spoonful of the desserts.)

People began abandoning the party as a gentle rain started at six-thirty. A few had left prior to this, owing to family obligations and the like, but by seven-thirty almost everyone had left. We sat around talking with a few guests until nine o'clock. For us this was a complete success. Again with a few provisions.

• One of our desserts had taken a tumble as Ann went to check on it. The Blackberry Cobbler spilled over the front of the oven and this will have to be taken apart to get the thing clean.
• We bought entirely too much beer. This will have to be used up prior to the New Year.
• We will have to find some way to get rid of the extra food.
• And there is the problem of cleaning up, though this isn't the biggest problem since the place isn't that messed up.

In the end we are very happy about the whole thing and plan on doing it again next year. For the people who came we are very grateful. To the people we missed we are very sorry. For the people who brought gifts we are thankful. For the time we spent in doing this we are glad.

And very glad to be done with the whole thing.

---

Someone took a few pictures:

August 24, 2018 The Stage is Set

The Tent is built. 

The lights are on.

The food is bought.

The guests invited. 

The stage is set for our first Summer Supper Party.

 

 

The view from Sell Road.

August 21, 2018 On the Right Track

This morning shows us that some of what we're doing makes sense.

• The peppers are popping. We have both mild and hot Jalapeno, and the Poblanos were delicious as chili rellenos.  
• Tomatoes look good. We are picking yellow pears, San Maranzanos (roma), Super Bush, and a good canning tomato. 
• Cucumbers abound, both slicing and pickling. 
• A few Zucchini show up now and then. 
• Bush beans are becoming a nice harvest. 
• Pole Peas are ripe and sweet. 
• And the Strawberries are out of season but still producing.

The experiment is becoming a success,
though not yet in quantities worthy of a produce stand.
Perhaps later in the year.

August 9, 2018 Random thoughts: A Typical Farm Day

There is a great deal of things to do at the Farm every day. So many, in truth, that there is literally no way to get to ten percent of the chores available each and every day. And this might sound daunting. But today was a typical day:

• Wake up at five thirty and lay around having coffee in bed until six or so.
• Because you have no alarm clock but do have roosters
• Lay in bed for a few minutes and enjoy the morning coffee without television news, staring out the window as the sun comes into the upper branches, and listen to the animals as they wake up to start their day.
• Get up and eat breakfast (enough to get you to eleven thirty). 
• We don't worry about the calories, there will not be enough to cover the number burned at work.
• This is when you plan the day. (The plan that will eventually fail.)
• Feed all of the animals.
• Walk through the Garden weeding, and stomping on anything that looks wrong.
• Allowing enough time to love each and every plant.
• Allow enough time to recognize how absolutely lovely it is to work in the dirt at eight in the morning.
• Pick anything that looks ripe and eat some of it right then and there.
• Weed as many garden rows as possible until about ten o'clock.
• You will never get done with the job of weeding.
• Begin the first list project. 
• We keep un-prioritized lists of thing we want to get done. Each thing is a part of the bigger picture. Some things are simply trying to keep things from back-sliding, such as tractor weeding large areas. Others are part of some future goal, like getting parts for a new fence or greenhouse, or building a fence or greenhouse.
• Finish the first list project at about eleven-thirty and then it is lunch time.
• Have a nice lunch, eat something grown and picked today.
• Do some part of the second list project. (Yesterday it was ripping out most of the weeds along the front fence of the Farm using the Tractor while Heide Hay cut berries off of the fence. 
• She ate a whole lot of fresh blackberries as she went along. 
• Today it was to begin cleaning up all of the debris piles I made yesterday ripping out the weeds all along the front fence of the Farm.
• Finish this list item before three, because it is going to get radically hotter at three and only a fool is out under the sun after that.
• Do something off of the household maintenance list: groceries, car maintenance, etc . . .).
• Drinks on the Veranda at about five.
• At about six have supper.
• As the sun finally begins to calm down, do something for our selves or for the animals. 
• Yesterday we washed all of the dogs. 
• Today we set up a new pool for our own use in the late Summer.
• At eight, begin bathing for bed.
• At eight thirty go to bed happy to have had such a lovely day, doing what we want to do, where we want to do it.

If you do the entire day with Zen-like attitude, knowing that nothing is ever started or finished, knowing that nothing you do will make any future difference (so you might as well be happy right now); knowing that there are a great many people in the world who would trade their entire lives for the chance to do what we are doing every day (and are too afraid to let go of the safety they think they have in their jobs or retirement accounts), and being grateful for all of it; then you have done something right, if not well, if not to completion, and done no wrong.

A typical day at the Farm is not typical in a manner that most people will understand. Each day brings now challenges, new things to do, new risks and new rewards. A typical day is distinctly a-typical in the conventional sense of the word. But this is what we try to do every day. We keep the vision of the future in front of us, love the moment we are living right now, and accept whatever come of it gladly. Tomorrow will take care of itself, just as it has always done.

Few people get to say things like this, most never even try because they are too busy believing some lie that some other person has told them. Almost all are putting off the momentary happiness of the right now for the long termed happiness of the some day, when there will be time to be happy.

August 2, 2018 We Bought a Flock

We got an opportunity to buy a 21 bird Orpinton flock from the Hsu (pronounced shu) family farm, so now we have 32 hens and two large roosters. Five of the hens are Rhode Island Reds, the balance is all the larger Orpingtons.

Chicken politics: They stick together by order of age and rank.
There is definitely a "pecking order".

The big coop, built in May, holds thirty birds.
We now have thirty-two.
But eight of them are still living in the broody coop.

With this amount of hens we now have about a dozen free range / organically grown eggs per day. This is enough to sell, but not enough to be profitable. The egg business is not intended to be profitable. Much as with many of our crops it is intended only to break even and pay for itself in free food and for free factors for other things made with eggs. Self sufficiency is not only about profit, it is about non-dependency.

Eventually these hens will provide offspring to replace the birds which age out and become meat for the table. We expect that the hens will last about a year or so before failing to produce enough eggs to earn their place in the coop; but we have no mechanism in place to track them at present, so all are safe for now.

We have had three fights for dominance so far. Two were between Rhoda, our Rhode Island Red, and one of the new older hens. The other was between Goldie, our Wyandote hen and another of the new girls. The third was a classic "cock fight" between the two Orpington roosters (Biff Buff, and Rodger: the new guy). I think Rodger won, but it is hard to tell. Ms. Hsu worried that the roosters might try to kill each other, and this might happen (only time will tell). But I have seen flocks with more than one rooster, so we hold out hope for an amenable settlement between the two roosters. The real problem of two roosters is that the hens take a bit of hard treatment as the roosters try to mate with as many as they can.

For now we just hope that they are all happy little egg layers.

Pleas RSVP if you can come. Click here for the RSVP thing.

July 27, 2018 The Farm is Beginning to Feed People!

We have been eating produce from MacGreggors Market Garden ,and giving produce away to friends and co-workers, for about a month. The idea is to open a produce stand outside our front gate and sell our stuff out there.  Our hope is that we'll get this step done in August.

The plate is fourteen inches.

This morning is something of a proof of the concept. A bit of proof that we are on the right track.

 I pulled a bunch of Romaine Lettuce out, along with some pickling Cucumbers and about a pint of Strawberries. Not a huge harvest considering what must be produced to sell produce. And before people start appreciating the stuff, the quality must go up too. 

But the above is certainly enough to make us happy about a good one-day picking.

July 25, 2018 Sprinklers!

There is always more work to do here than there is time, and more plans than we can possibly work on as well. But little things get done every day and big things almost weekly. Our house in town took all of the available time for quite a while. But once we got the house sold (we closed yesterday) the problem became getting the house building ball rolling. That being done, it was time to start laying out the Farm. This week the farm plan said it was time to install an automatic irrigation system for MacGreggor's Garden.

The irrigation system wasn't expensive but there were a great many parts to it. The biggest factor in all of this was the planning. I wanted a design didn't use the ground poorly, didn't block tools and feet, and didn't add a bunch of stuff to get in the way. On top of all this the thing needed to water the plants quickly and without my having to add much labor to it. It took two very hot days to build, but eventually I figured it all out.

The system wraps around the outside of the Garden but dips under ground for about six feet so that I can drive the tractor into the Garden if needed. I split the system into four parts to spread the load on the well out. Each zone waters about a quarter of the garden, three of the zones are outside, one in the greenhouse. I put the four parts on four electric valves operated by an electronic timer. The timer allows quite a bit of flexibility in watering very early in the morning, or when I am not here to water the plants.

Now I can work the garden real early in the morning (where I had been spending about an hour and a half moving the watering hoses and sprinklers to the plants). This will shave about two hours off of my morning routine and allow for the next big thing to happen.

No telling what the next big thing will be.  But things are definitely happening at Creekside Farm.

July 19, 2018 Trash Update

A few weeks ago I ranted about the trash on Creekside Farm. I suppose the it was all part of my process... Anyway, we have (perhaps) found a semi-efficient solution. I built a sifting machine that makes quick work of removing the millions of small pieces of stuff littering nearly every inch of the Farm.

The shear size of the problem  required something to make cleaning it up more efficient. We had been clearing an area by first picking up the big stuff, then raking the smaller stuff up, and then picking out the miniature stuff by hand. Every shovel load of ground contains glass, plastic, textiles, wood, plant materials, and stones. This stuff roughly takes up half the volume of the load, the other half is just plain old dirt.

Some of the places are merely horrible.
A large area is really horrifying.
And a few are much worse than this.

This sifter is in two parts. The first is a screen on a frame which can be handled by two people. We put the unsifted stuff in and agitate it. Anything under one-half inch, like sand or dirt, falls through to the ground when you shake the sifter hard enough. What remains gets dumped.  The other half of the sifter is a table-like apparatus to make the job easier. The sifter sits in the top of the table and can be agitated back and forth on bearings.

I made the whole thing wide enough to load using the three cubic foot loader bucket on our mighty little tractor. I also made it so that the tractor can carry it around. We have to split the bucket loads into three or four smaller bites, but it gets the job done quickly and leaves only the smallest of debris. Last night we used it for the first time and got about two hundred square feet cleared in less than two hours. We sifted out about a yard and a half of debris, leaving about the same volume in a pile on the ground below.

After sifting we have almost nothing left to clean up.
Very small pieces of trash remain after sifting so
this dirt will have to be used for hole filler.
(We won't use it for planing.)

July 19, 2018 Garden Update

MacGreggor's Garden is starting to show a great deal of progress. In fact, the whole Farm is beginning to show progress. We aren't ready to open the Produce Stand yet, but we will have enough in early August.

The new patch is in the upper left corner (being watered).

We're eating lettuce and strawberries regularly now that the rodents have gone away (for the most part). The greenhouse tomatoes are beginning to ripen and we should see some red very soon. Potatoes, onions, and garlic are very happy. Beans, peas, peppers and tomatillos are coming along nicely. Melons, pumpkins, and our magic plants are all doing well. The garden is nearly a sea of green flowery happiness. So it's time to expand.

This morning I tilled another large area of the West Meadow to begin planting flowers and decorative stuff. The new garden plot is only about half as large as the vegetable garden. There aren't enough hours in the day for much more as we get ready to build the Farmhouse.

More to come on this later.

This is the Strawberry patch.
The Marigolds and Nasturtiums keep the bugs out.

July 7th, 2018 Progress Report on the New House

We sold our old house in North Plains so quickly that we had no real plan to put the new house on the Farm. We had sketches, ideas, and some knowledge about what it would take; but we had no permits, surveys, contractors, or the other people needed to do these things. All we had was the house we had picked out and put a deposit on about a week ago and a dream of having enough money to make the thing happen without incurring debt. But we sold fast, and we sold right, so the money thing ought to work out pretty well providing that the unknown stuff doesn't add up too high. Last Sunday I resolved to get the permits on Tuesday, needless to say it, but that didn't work out as simply as planned. But progress was made.

Tuesday morning I rolled out of the house at eleven, having done Farm chores, meals, and drew up a preliminary site plan on my computer (so that I would not look like a new guy). Arriving at the planning office I got loads of help, but I had to go back after lunch to talk the the guy making  the decisions. But this guy was okay, once we got together after lunch. He gave me a preliminary nod, which is not the same as a preliminary permit. He said it would be no problem so long as we got a survey showing that we are not below the Base Flood Elevation of 225.3 feet above sea level.  We were also going to need the Septic system checked out. So I rented an excavator to arrive on Thursday.

The Fourth of July celebration at Creekside Farm was only spectacular in that we did nothing at all.

Thursday the tractor came at ten A.M. and I launched into finding the lost location of the septic tank, figuring that, from there, I could get a clue about the other parts of the system, so that they could be checked. It took five hours, and I dug up a whole lot of things that looked septical, but were not, and which then had to be re-buried. Eventually I found it, but the tank wasn't in very good shape. A steel tank (we had hoped for concrete) that was a bit out of shape with a really bent lid. The drain field, which carries the black water out to drain off, was probably going to have to be replaced as well because the pipe they used turn very brittle.

After finding the tank, I used the remaining tractor rental time  to tear apart the last of our really big last huge trash piles (for sorting and disposal). And they I started digging out stumps and knocking down trees until it was too dark to see.

We re-buried everything but the tank and the Farm is generally none the worse for the wear. It will be no fun in the sun to sort through all the trash I casually tossed around with the excavator, but we'll sort that out this month and get it hauled away.  Trash is an issue always on Creekside Farm, but we're more interested in building the house than of the ubiquitous and ever present trash. What we need it contractors.

The problem of finding a survey guy and a septic take guy are that people are very much in demand in this area. Today we got a visit from the septic guy who said $12K minimum for a new system. So I called another guy and he comes Monday afternoon . . . It looks like I'll have to do a ton of trench digging to put the new septic system in or repair the old one.

Contractors of all sorts are busy enough that they might not answer the phone on the first or second try. We eventually got calls from a surveyor yesterday, and also one from a septic guy. Things will be looking good once we have both of these things set up, and the electrical plan comes through from PGE. Soon we will have our permit!

The house will take about four months to complete at the house factory, another few weeks to set-up on the Farm. So in between these things we will need to bury the electrical stuff on the electrical plan. We will also need to bury the water pipes, move the water system, get hold of the propane guy, and pour a really large slab of concrete for the house to sit on. Nothing to it.

If all goes well we will be warm in our new Farm home by December this year.

July 4th, 2018 Strawberry Fields Forever

Yesterday we found one perfect strawberry out in MacGreggors Garden. It was large, nearly ripe, and the only berry we have had (so far) worthy of its name.

 So we ate it.

We have been trying to raise strawberries, like the one we ate, for a few years. So far having little success. In truth, the berries we put in at the old house went wild and did better than any intentional action we took.

Strawberries were always a part of the plan to get people to come to the Farm. But we are doing all of this without any real experience, so we have to do much of it by trial and error.  When we began thinking seriously about raising Strawberries, we bought one-hundred plants in four varieties.

Each of the many dozens of type of Strawberry plant has its own characteristics. Some varieties are "everbearing" and should produce the whole warm season, some only produce seasonally.  Some are red throughout, some have white centers. Some plants make little berries, some make them as big as your fist. We chose our plants by reading up on them and deciding which might do well.

Our failed experiment.

I am a big fan of vertical farming for berries, but this can be tricky since there isn't many examples of the practice to follow along behind. We made special planters for the four hundred plants we bought and put them out into the garden. The idea was to turn the barrels slightly every day and distribute the sunshine evenly and our hope was to build rows of these. But the barrels turned out to be a buster. We got half a pie out of them before giving up. The barrels didn't seem to let the plants behave as they should, heat built up and the plants struggled.

Eventually we had to give up on the idea and the plants were left to fend for themselves until we planned our permanent move to the Farm about a year ago. Since then our Strawberry plants have had a rough year.

• They were removed from our garden barrels and put into one gallon pots where they struggled without being tended, fed, or otherwise noticed very much.
• Then we moved the pots into the greenhouse (once it was finished) and took them out of the pots where they lay stacked tightly in low planting flats, waiting over two months for planting.
• We moved them from the flats into the Garden a bit late in the planting season and into brand new soils which were not quite ripe for planting.
• And, once in the garden, they were viciously attacked by gophers and moles which ate their roots and knocked them out of the soil. We replanted some of them three and four times.
• All the while our dogs ran through the garden and some were torn from the ground and had to be replanted.

Our plants are beginning to produce,
but we have no idea about plant variety.

Once they were relieved of all this adversity, the soil cooled down by time so that they could grow, they have begun to thrive. Most plants have become these wonderfully bushy things with shiny leaves and many runner babies. It is from this that our first strawberry came. We just wish we knew what sort of plant it came from.

When we bought the starts a few years ago, we had each plant location carefully mapped to see which variety would do the best in the barrels we had built for them. But as time went along, and we moved the plants out of the barrels, we got them pretty jumbled and lost track of which plant belonged to each variety, so we really don't know which plant is of what variety. It could be that keeping the varieties separated won't have any down-side. It could be that the Farm dictates what happens there and, no matter how carefully we plan, things will always get jumbled.

Each and every strawberry variety is good enough for people, but this lack of knowing might become a problem when we eventually build the permanent strawberry fields in the East Meadow. For now we will simply accept what comes of the field we have. And so far only one berry has shown up. But it was a good one and others just might show up.

We are planning to build a "vertical" Strawberry field.

One type of vertical Strawberry farm.

This is where the we put the plant rows into stacking planters. The idea is to allow people to pick the rows without having to get down on the ground or spend time bending over.  There are many types of vertical Strawberry farms. Some are pyramids, some are stacked pots, some are hydroponic, most are in commercial greenhouses. The design we want to try is a large hanging planter set-up with its own built-in greenhouse cover so that the plants are protected in Winter. These are placed into rows and look like they would be nice to stroll through. I'll build one of these in the next few months to see how it works.

No matter how, what, or when, we will take what we are given. The one berry was delicious.

June 27, 2018 Trash, Trash, and more Trash

Just one shining example of trash.
Once the vegetation is cleared
this is what remained.

When we found what came to be the Farm, the place was a real mess. There was (literally) many tons of trash on the property.

We scraped and we cleaned up trash, loaded trash into many sizes of dumpsters, and spent every available dime we had to get rid of the stuff. But just as soon as one pile cleared up, another took its place.

The people who had owned the property had piled the stuff up, accumulated it, collected it, and even threw some of it over the back fence. It seems that they did this since the seventies, operating a business which created trash that they didn't really think about as it collected in the corners.

De-trashing is a process.
It takes time and money.

But the previous owners were not the only trashy types. The woman we bought the property from was a hoarder who, following on her divorce, had her hoard loaded into a shipping container and moved onto the property as well. The container probably never had anything of value in it when it was moved, but twelve years on what was left in the container was entirely trashy stuff. The container was opened up and the stuff spilled out, or was carried, until it covered a large area at the center of the property.

This was AFTER we cleaned it up quite a bit.

But wait! There's more!

After the gates were breached, following the abandonment of the property by all concerned, some of the locals began bringing their trash to the property to avoid dumping fees. They brought couches, tires, and old Christmas lights to the place and added as much as time allowed. We even found a new pile of debris unloaded on the place after we began cleaning it up.

It is needless to continue to write about it, you might get the idea.

---

Enter the Smith's (us). With dreams of farm based weddings, foody experiences, and maybe some light antiquing. . . .

We bought the place cheap, knowing that it would take months of time and money we did not have to clean the place up. We bought in and began work. Eventually we got the place to resemble an open field (of sorts).  This brings me to my point: The place itself seems to generate trash all on its own!

It might sound strange, but once any area is completely cleared of trash, down to brown dirt, without a speck of debris, weeds, or trash, anywhere to be found . . . Within a week the Farm has somehow brought more trash to the surface of the otherwise clean dirt. And this is weird.

One expects weeds popping up everywhere (and they do (repeatedly)) but it is completely unexpected to walk a path through what ought to be clean dirt . . . Only to find a saw blade, a table spoon, and unlimited amounts of broken glass, wire, and bits of plastic strewn across everywhere.  That is what is happening every day on our little Creekside Farm.

Even in McGreggor's Market Garden, land which has been tilled deeply, raked to a fine powder, re-tilled, and then planted, continues to vomit to the surface myriad sorts of trashy stuff. It creeps up out of the soil, falls from the trees, and then lays hauntingly under the leaves of potatoes or squash plants. I even find trashy things in the Greenhouse dirt, for which there is no accounting since I bought the dirt somewhere else. Surprisingly the only place I don't find trash is in Gopher mounds. (But don't lets move into that horrible area of conversation.)

It is possible that this may go on for years, but we have years to clean things up and are resolved to win over the trashy past of Creekside Farm.  We are always thinking about some means of sifting the dirt more efficiently. Searching for a tool we might make or buy that will sort the trash from the soils. Our hope is that, someday, we might walk a clean Farm that stays that way. But until we find, or fight the trash out of the place, we must continue the work.