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DINKS on the Farm

December 2007

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Monday, December 3, 2007 – Lockdown on the homestead

Holy criminy. I’ve been inside for three days now, with the occasional excursion to feed/water the bunnies, an early morning attempt to catch the bus, and twice I’ve dug trenches around my uninsured home so I don’t get flooded out.

It blizzarded this weekend, and we hoped the forecast (warmer temperatures) would mean the end of our worries Monday. No luck: the snow is slush, and our front yard has become a lake. I tried to get to work this morning, but Daisy the truck was stuck in the carport, the roads were unplowed, and the buses weren’t running. All for the best, because I’ve been battling the elements, trying to keep the water out of my home all day. There was some water by our baseboards by the couch, so that’s not good. And the dining room window dripped a little, when it was really bad outside. Snow, rain and wind — we’ve had weather warnings for everything in the past few days. I’m so bored. I have lots of food, the electricity’s working again, etc. but I can’t seem to settle down. I’ve been watching Eminem interviews on You Tube — that’s how bad it’s become. Hopefully things will be civilized again tomorrow, and I can get to work!

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Sunday, December 16, 2007 – Anyone smell bleach?

We’re shocking our well.

For those of you still in the city, that means we dumped a litre of Javex bleach into our well and run the taps in our house until everything smells like bleach. It involves not using our water for at least 24 hours, which is rather inconvenient, unless you don’t really like showering and brushing your teeth (so we’re fine). We are doing this because our water test came back with a coliiform count of 700-something, and it’s supposed to be zero. “Coliform” is apparently dead & rotting plant matter, and as a result the water smells like minestrone soup when it’s been sitting in the hot water tank. We were lazy and drank bottled water for almost 2 months, but I’m starting to smell minestrone EVERYWHERE, from my clothes to my hair, so it’s time to get this thing done. I really really hope shocking the well works. I hope we’ve done it right, because if I smell soup in the shower again this week we’ll have to shock it again next weekend, and that means another 24 hours of no running water. And if that still doesn’t work, there’s the scary and expensive possibility that we might need a fancy water filter. But our neighbours all have perfect water, and there are rumours of an aquifer under our neighbourhood, so I expect it’s just our water lines that are contaminated. Fingers crossed.

In other news: the bunnies are fine. They love having all that straw to burrow in. I gave them apple chunks with their pellets, hay and oats this morning, and that was a big hit. Every morning they attack me (well, they rub up against my hand) as I try to fill their food dish, as if they haven’t eaten in months. Makes me feel like I’ve been neglectful, but I’m actually overfeeding them these days, since it’s the winter and they need the extra pudge.

And . . . it’s almost Christmas!!!! Christmas is the only thing I like about winter. My home is currently adorned with the following:

  • a pre-lit, plastic Christmas tree, with primary-coloured bells as decorations and some ornaments that I’ve accumulated since birth and last month.
  • LED energy-efficient, flickering lights that look like mini-Christmas trees, from my mom in my family’s Christmas parcel (there’s a button I can push to change the flickering — very fun).
  • paper snowflakes that I make every year, but this year everyone keeps commenting on them — apparently I’m very good at making paper snowflakes. Perhaps they’ll sell at the farmer’s market 🙂
  • a ball of fake mistletoe (actually a staple decoration in every place Brock and I have lived so far).
  • the Christmas card we received, from Domino’s Pizza.
  • a vase full of rosehips and anonymous white berries that I dried for garlands, then ended up sticking in a vase with a red candle (don’t worry, I don’t plan to light it).
  • Christmas presents from my family under the tree. (I already unwrapped the Butterripple cream liquor, which is the best alcoholic beverage ever produced and is, strangely, only available at the gov’t liquor store in Kimberley, BC.)
  • a pre-lit, plain wreath on our front door.

It all looks quite nice and Christmassy.

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 – Ode to Lettuce

Last night I prepped and ate the most amazing lettuce I have ever consumed. I’m not a lettuce conneiseur. I usually don’t care about lettuce, as long as I have it handy when I need it for my tacos. But I bought organic romaine hearts yesterday from Country Grocer (from California, unfortunately, not local), and they managed to impress me. Here’s a wee poem:

O! Lettuce
(organic, albeit not local)
you are crispy under my
knife
when I chop you up for tacos.
Not wilty.
Not mainstream, “I’m here but I’m not really trying” grocery store lettuce.
No — O! Lettuce
you fresh romaine hearts
I had to wrap the leftovers
properly, not leave them for the bunnies
because you’re so damn good.
Lettuce, please
inspire my garden to be like you
and I shall rule the organic veggie trade
on Vancouver Island.

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Thursday, December 20, 2007 – Buying seeds

Brock has tricked me into the gardening part of our farm venture, despite my natural aversion to dirt, cold, worms and getting dirty. He did this by saying:

BROCK: “Maybe you could be in charge of our experimental garden.”

Ooooooo . . . the chance to grow Freaky Plants! The chance to astonish our farm neighbours with Crazy Purple Peas and other nutty agricultural mutations! I was immediately sold. I started browsing seed catalogues and making a list of plants I’d like to grow: ginormous pumpkins, strawberry popcorn, blue carrots, green and orange striped tomatoes . . . The weirdest part of playing mad scientist with veggies is that the strangest creations (e.g. purple pea pods with neon green peas inside) are often the Heritage breeds. They were around back in the ol’ days, when my great-grandparents were starving on the Saskatchewan prairies. Long before genetic modification became cool and mainstream. To date, the largest, most freakishly ginormous breed of pumpkin I’ve managed to find via seed catalogue/website is the Atlantic Giant — which is NOT a hybrid. It’s the product of Darwinian plant evolution & selective breeding, not test tube chemistry. I’ve learned that carrots, back in the day, weren’t usually orange: they were red, purple, blue, white, yellow . . . but the Dutch (?) farmers liked orange carrots (it was a patriotic thing) so they bred the orange carrots. These days, the thought of a purple carrot is ridiculous. And prehaps the strangest thing is that, although I want to grow purple (aka heritage) carrots, the only non-orange carrots I can find are HYBRIDS.

Oh, the evil hybrid. I think of Frankenstein, but planty. How unnatural. Not to mention a waste of money, for people like us who want to be able to save seeds and encourage plants that do well in our particular climate/soil: if you plant seeds from a hybrid, they will probably revert back to one of the parent strains. Or not do anything. They’re disposable plants. That’s an oxymoron, and I find the concept abominable. (As in an abomination, not snow-monster-ish.)

One of the strangest things I’ve noticed about seed catalogues (especially Stokes, a very popular seed company that’s been around since 1881) is that they LOVE their hybrids. It’s a challenge to find seeds that aren’t hybrids in their catalogue. Like some little kid: “Look what I made!” They’re so proud to have created a new hybrid, and yet they don’t seem to question if they SHOULD or not. I find the whole thng, from perspective to product, repulsive.

I love planning my “experimental garden.” Assuming I manage to successfully grow one of my unusual-yet-natural veggies, I might manage to change how we perceive carrots here in the Cowichan Valley. Then Vancouver Island, then B.C., then Canada, then . . . . THE WORLD!!!

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Monday, December 30, 2007 – Happy last day of 2007!

I pruned our apple trees this weekend! First time pruning ever. Very exciting. A good excuse to climb a tree (which has become more terrifying than when I was younger, for some reason). It felt like I was giving the tree a haircut. After an hour or so of pruning, I stepped back to check that I hadn’t overstepped the “maximum one-third” rule: my clips had barely made a difference. Our trees are so overgrown . . . I’d love to come at them with a chainsaw and whack off the top third, just to ensure we’ll actually be able to reach the apples in the fall.

Heather invents “the layered look” at Makaria Farm.
DINKS on the Farm

November 2007

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Saturday morning, November 3, 2007 – Lazy Farmers

Last week we got our property re-appraised. This was a very stressful milestone for us: increasing the property’s value (by making it habitable) cost us a lot of cash, and we had bills to pay asap. We needed our property to be reappraised by a significant amount more than what the land itself was worth, in order to borrow more money from our credit union and pay off our debts.

Brock guessed that the new pumphouse, well pump, septic system, mini-garden, fill, electric lines and 576 sq. ft. market/house would be worth about $30,000 (he’s a pessimist). I guessed $50,000 but hoped for $75,000. Actual worth? All our hard work this summer/fall, our 24/7 days of stress and physical exhaustion and expense, increased the value of our property by $100,000. Holy gees. We almost died when Banker Nils told us.

What this means is that not only can we pay off all our debts/bills earned over the summer, but we can also (ohmigod) buy a tractor. Perhaps that seems like an odd “ohmigod” sort of purchase, but the fact is that a tractor is NECESSARY if our farm is going to be anything more than 10 acres of weedy dirt. We could rent/hire someone to do the work for us, but that’d be unnecessarily expensive. And, as farmers, our tractor is a write-off. Who’d have guessed that the first two vehicles I’d ever own would be a Dodge Dakota farm truck and a tractor? I’ve come a long way from my dream of a 1984 yellow Volvo station wagon with neon green plaid interior.

Anyhoo, now that we’re financially okay, our frantic to-do list has become more casual. We’re doing small projects, like installing the bathroom mirror and shelves in the kitchen. We’ve invited our friends Kyle and Chrissy over for dinner tonight. Brock’s gone back to reading his 1970s “classics” and I’m enjoying my day job more. It helps that it’s almost winter and we can’t spend every waking minute in the garden, and that the days are so short. We’ll have the winter to charge ourselves, order seeds, design our gardens and figure out our plans for the growing season. I can learn to make cheese, pickle/can veggies, bake bread, and all the other things I want to learn for next year. We can visit some neighbouring farms and see how they operate. And . . . we can browse tractors!!!

In other news, I built Peter his Winter Villa. He’s SO happy. It took me an entire weekend and almost $200 in supplies, which even I acknowledge is a little excessive for a rabbit. Regardless. It’s 32 sq. ft (4ft by 8ft), with a sloped roof that I SHINGLED, and three very large, chicken-wired windows. I filled it with a bale of straw (for warmth) and a huge stack of alfalfa hay (to eat), Peter’s favourite toys, water bottles, his food dish, and I bring him fresh veggies from his cilantro & carrot garden daily. He’s only about 10-15 ft from our kitchen window, so I can check on him when I eat dinner, and he’s just a quick walk away.

A deer checks out Peter’s custom-built rabbit hutch.

The best part is that he’s going speed dating tomorrow. The one thing lacking from his bunny heaven is a friend — I can tell he’s lonely and bored. He spends a fair amount of time staring out his window, watching us coming & going. He needs someone to cuddle and play with for the winter. So we’re going to the SPCA, and Peter will have a few hours to meet a variety of female (spayed!) rabbits, and we will hopefully bring one home with us. I’m a little nervous, because Peter’s never been a very rabbit-social creature. He prefers to snuggle with my feet, or stuffed animals. But I think he’s matured enough to potentially bond with another rabbit. I’ll at least give him the chance to try!

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Wednesday night, November 14, 2007 – It’s too cold outside to be farming

Tomorrow I’m taking Delilah to the vet to get spayed.

After we adopted Delilah (nee Honey) from the Victoria SPCA on November 4, she’s been busy making Peter fall in love with her. To record for posterity, here is the tale of their first date:

One relatively sunny November Saturday, Peter the Rabbit went speed dating. His first encounter was with a rather large bun named Sally, who was well-known to staff for her docile temperment. She sniffed Peter, Peter sniffed back, and soon they were fighting, claws and everything. No one was harmed, but I feared Quinn’s prediction (Peter, doomed to bunny bachelorhood) was correct. Then we tried Sally’s sister, who was known to be feisty-er. That didn’t work either.

Then they brought in Honey, a six month old brown Holland lop that looks EXACTLY like Caramel, and made me feel guilty. I hoped Peter wouldn’t like her. But she went straight to him, licked his nose, climbed onto his head and started humping his face. Peter was so shocked / in love he didn’t even bite her. Honey continued humping and grooming him, and even climbed into Peter’s litter box (aka Safety Zone) to cuddle with him, and he didn’t mind at all. I was astonished. We took Honey home, and on the drive I named her Delilah, for taming my wild bachelor rabbit.

Anyhoo. Delilah’s getting spayed tomorrow, which will likely be a great relief to Peter. I tried to keep them separate for the first few days on the farm – Peter in his Villa, Delilah in Peter’s old cage in the pumphouse – but they both looked so lonely and bored that Delilah moved into the Villa within 48 hours. (I’m such a pussy.) Since then, they seem to have negotiated some compromise between Delilah’s hormones and Peter’s introverted nature. They spend a lot of time cuddling (aka Delilah sits on Peter and licks his forehead). And they’ve even built a burrow in their straw together.

I’m a little worried that the surgery tomorrow will be bad for Delilah. I had a bunny die after being spayed (because she was a MALE), and I don’t trust vets anymore when it comes to bunnies. But this is a new vet, and they told me NOT to starve Delilah pre-surgery, due to rabbit sensitivity, so at least they understand that part of rabbit nature. We shall see.

In other news, it’s cold and rainy and windy and dark here all the time. It sucks. It’s sort of okay to be stuck inside all evening, since we’re both still pretty exhausted after the stress & exertion of the summer, but we’re also so eager to start on the farm — the planting, building a greenhouse, making the property look decent, finishing the house/market — that it’s frustrating. Brock’s reading some book called “You Can Farm” and I’ve started a personal almanac. We’re investigating organic certification, contemplating marketing strategies, and not washing our dishes.

Hey, interesting (and smelly) epiphany: a two person family produces a lot of organic compost in a week! We’ve been saving our egg shells, tea bags, lettuce cores, rotten tomatoes, etc. in a big Tupperware container, and boy, that container fills up REALLY fast. It also gets smelly. I want to start a worm composting thingy, so I can feed all that stuff to them and they’ll turn it into black gold (that’s farmer talk for good dirt).

Here’s an interesting exchange Brock and I had the other day, after he read about growing grain crops:

BROCK: We can grow oats! We could eat our own oatmeal!
HEATHER: Ew. I hate oatmeal.
BROCK: Me too.

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Friday, November 30, 2007 – Everybody’s working for the weekend

Delilah survived her surgery 🙂 We kept her inside with us for a few days, but she got antsy and Peter was staring at me when I went to feed him so I put them back together in the Villa. All is well, except that their water bottle freezes every night and I have to empty it out and refill with warm water every morning. Next winter, they’re spending it inside my writing studio.

Meanwhile, it has begun. We started this year as McDonald’s-craving, Starbucks-card-holding urbanites, and now we’re organic-farming hippies. I thought we were holding out quite well, despite the 10 acres of chemical-free farmland: Brock still drinks Coke. I had an A&W Mozza burger and fries for lunch this week, AND LOVED IT. Then Brock decided we was off tea.

“But tea’s healthy for you!” I said, “except for the caffeine, I mean.”

For Brock, drinking tea is an excuse to consume liquid sugar. The man adds a minimum of 4 heaping teaspoons of sugar.

“I’m getting fat again,” he said.

Then we had chicken for dinner. Frozen Costco chicken boobs, “seasoned” with something: the cheapest way to add poultry protein to your diet. I cooked an extra breast for Brock’s lunch the next day. Later that evening, Brock put his plate by the sink: a steak knife was sticking out of the chicken. Red spaghetti sauce and all.

“I think I’m done eating factory chicken,” he said.

So now we’ve started this slippery slope, and what with the organic farm we own there’s no going back. I bought organic Christmas oranges the other day. They were the same price as the normal ones, and they looked okay, so I bought them, despite feeling like some LuluLemon-loving Vancouver vegan. And they tasted 1,000,000 times better than the non-organic oranges we’d had the week before. Maybe because it was later in the season? I don’t know.

People have always assumed I recycle. It pisses me off. And now I don’t know what will happen, if I buy into this “eat organic!” fad. I’ll become predictable. I’ll become my stereotype.

But real food really does taste better than the mainstream factory shit.

Hey, and think of this: when I buy peanut butter, I don’t buy the cheaper, inferior stuff. I know it will disappoint me. Ditto for ketchup: it’s Heinz all the way, despite the 200% higher cost. So why not be picky with my veggies/meat too? Why is okay to prefer the brand-named processed products over the no-names, and pay the higher expense, but not to choose the (sometimes) more expensive staples over the inferior ones?