Jeeze, Louise! I finally had 5 minutes to look back on Tifftown and see that she's been sorely neglected since 1 April. Well, that's the trouble with Tifftown. When stuff is happening, there is no time to write about it. When there is nothing notable going on, there's plenty of time to write about that!
So, I found a draft of my writing about the visit to Blue Sky Ranch back during Spring Break. I decided to publish it without pictures just for the sake of getting up there. Maybe with all my good intentions, I'll go back at some point and throw some pix up there.
In the meantime, I find myself a day shy of Rex's 11th birthday and all our well laid plans for the weekend thrown up for grabs and changed.
We've had a spate of very interesting weather here. It's been mostly sunny during the days and relatively cool, like 60's and 70's. Then come the evenings with flashes of lightening and dumps of rain. This all started last Sunday. Monday night the flickers of lightening came along with the rain and then a torrential hail storm. It was pretty amazing and dramatic. It was some time after 9pm (when the kids were supposed to be in bed) when Rex and Valerie came out to watch the sheets of flickering water and balls of ice blast the trees/yard/house. Rex looked at that and said, "This is not good for Tava's flowers." His friend's parents own
California Organic Flowers. And I was picturing their beautiful flower farm being beaten down. Then I also reflected on
GRUB, our vegetable CSA farm where I've been volunteering on Tuesdays. I wondered what was happening out there?
Well, true to what we expected, flowers and veggies were decimated by the violent storm. And I was covered with mud from head to toe after just a few hours of working at GRUB. It was hard to walk on the fields, I would slide through the rows afraid of falling on top of the surviving crops. They lost, by their estimates, a couple thousand dollars worth of lettuce and starts that had just been planted out. It really set them back some weeks on the growing. And the work in the mud was not as easy as it is in the dirt. If I had any deluded ambitions about how easy it would be to farm my own food, I was beginning to grasp with the reality of nature coming in and undoing hard work.
Here's a picture of Lee at the GRUB CSA Farm.
Speaking of ambitions to have a mini-farm ... I'll confess to compulsively following
Food & Water Watch and
Organic Consumers Association and seeing one too many documentaries about the concept of
Peak Oil. That said, Michael and I have discussed for a long time the idea of being a little more self sufficient with regard to growing our own food. At our house here we have a beautiful yard, we're able to bike to town, we have a small garden, a few chickens and lovely shade trees. That said, because of our shade trees, my garden is not really producing like I wish it would and we can never have solar. Also, because of our suburban location, we could never have more than a few chickens.
"Give me land, lot's of land under starry skies above ... don't fence me in!" (I love that song). I have had a dream of having at least an acre lot with a small house (not a giant farm house or mansion) where I could have an orchard, garden and keep animals. I like the layout below. They say this can be done on 1/10 of an acre. I say they are optimistic. I'm going to layout my yard something like this but use more space and also not do raised beds, initially.
Anyhow, we found the place! It is on the north end of town (so, riding bikes into town is going to be long hot ride if it ever comes to that ... but, by car it is a short trip down Hwy 99. And we've only added two miles to our commute to the kids' school. So, we're not that far out). It is what I like to call a blank slate. There isn't any landscaping or shade trees or anything really. But the bones are all there exactly the way I want it ... my own well and pump, a house prime for solar panels on the roof (great southern exposure) and zoned for animals! And because there isn't any landscaping, I can take the whole north end of the yard and put in an orchard of dwarf fruit trees and let the chickens, turkeys and geese mow and fertilize. The mid section of the yard will be perfect for a garden ... a BIG garden! Maybe my food club friends will want to help plant and harvest and can out there? There is already an office space for Michael that is twice the size of his office now. And there is one fruitless mulberry tree in the back corner of the lot that is perfect for shading the poultry or for kids to climb.
I have to say, it needs some work. But if it passes inspections, we should be in there this summer! And within a couple of years we will be a working mini farm!!! I plan to put in fruit trees, berry bushes, grapes, herbs, veggies ... a real edible landscape. Other people around us have horses and stuff too. So, as long as we don't get any animals that are too annoying or stinky, we should be in good shape!
So, this house is bank owned at the moment and we've been going back and forth with them for about a week. We've also been planning for Rex's birthday. So, we've been busy (of course). Rex had plans to have friends come over Saturday morning and Michael was going to take them to
Waterworks Park in Redding for the day followed by a sleepover.
Friday morning we got the call that we and the bank had an agreement on the house. While we were out celebrating and looking at new appliances we also got a call from the school about another lice outbreak. Are you kidding me? Well, only one member of the family has it. But still, I'm giving everyone the toxic shampoo treatment and taking hours of each day to pick nits and boil laundry. Needless to say, we've had to postpone Rex's party and cancel the sleepover portion. The good news is that it was going to be cold and cloudy at the water park this week. But it's supposed to be sunny and beautiful next week.
In other news the girls have an orchestra rehearsal Sunday followed by a piano recital for Valerie Sunday night and then a family celebration for Rex's birthday at Neni's house Monday. It will all be good. Sure we had one (literally) lousy day this week. But, next week we'll have no lice or nits, we'll open escrow and Rex will have a party at the water park. The girls and I will go camping with food club and I'll continue my fantasies of being a farmer.
Of course, I have to confess that as I walked through the FFA and 4-H areas of the Silver Dollar Fair last night, it would be really difficult for me to raise animals for meat. I just wanted to feed them all and hug them and pet them. Maybe I'll have to barter eggs and fruit for meat or something? Or, well, I don't know. Maybe I'll have to join 4-H and toughen up and learn some lessons from those farm kids.
