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.