Creating the Life that Nurtures ---------------- Thoughts on Gardening and Teaching

Contents: see newer posts and older posts at the bottom of the screen

2012-01-10T18:10:00.000-08:00

Community Growing
A Dream that Healed the Earth
Beauty in the Garden
Certainties
Gardening in the Summer of 2011
A Personal Garden Vision
Gardening for a Purpose
Garden Observations are a Bonus
Gardening with Natural Principles
Community Growing
Hidden Places for Growing
Still Learning as Always
Connecting Gardeners, Community, and Opportunity

Community Growing
Today I showed Aranis how to sow seeds of fava beans for a crop that provides beans while enriching the soil with nitrogen and other nutrients. She also added some flower seeds for beauty and grass for additional organic material to work into the soil in the spring. These seeds are planted at her home. She also has kitchen scraps mixed with soil and weeds breaking down into compost in a five gallon bucket. Growing crops for soil-enrichment and using kitchen waste to make compost are two ways to improve soil.

A Dream that Healed the Earth

2011-11-16T21:07:00.000-08:00

This past Wednesday morning, I had a dream that young people had an app on their phones that allowed them to pool information about the health of the Earth from anywhere on the Earth. The information on this phone app was updated and edited much the same way as Wikapedia from reports sent by locals as well as travelers. Information gained from precise measurement and chemical analysis by independent observers was most valued. The information was put on a map of the Earth using symbols.

The information allowed the rating of farms, forests, fields, deserts, factories, and cities with a map symbol ranging from green for a sustainable area to red for severely damaged area with toxins that take years to break down. A yellow symbol is an area in the process of becoming sustainable. An orange symbol means an area needs to change practices immediately so restoration can take place. The goal is a sustainable Earth. “A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.” Quoted from Lester Brown of Earth Policy Institute. This definition of sustainability is the criterion for the rating of the areas of the Earth.

People used the information on this app when making choices about what products to purchase, what cases to bring to the attention of the government, which lawmakers to reelect, which multinational companies to hold accountable, etc. The Earth healed. This was my dream.

When actions are known because of transparency, persons or corporations committing unsustainable actions can be held responsible. As people’s actions all over the Earth are known and correct stewardship is demanded by masses of informed people, the Earth will heal.

Beauty in the Garden

2011-11-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

What is it that inspires me to go into the garden on a foggy November Sunday morning? The beauty. The dew collects on the Asparagus ferns giving them a silvery sheen. Brilliant pink roses announce their charm. The wild Baccharis pilularis or Coyote Bush covered in white fluffy bloom with its sweet scent will always remind me of fall. If you grow up in California and play outdoors in the hills as I did, you become familiar with this scent. These plants grow in the open grassy spaces between the Oaks. I have cut them for display in the house where their fluff falls on the table below.
The vegetable plants show their exuberance as they push up through the soil; fava and bell bean seeds, garlic, red onions, and also the flowering bulbs that promise color in winter. They express beauty in the patterns which their unfoldment follows. The bulbs are straight up and the winter beans slightly nodding with their leaves poised to lift and spread.
Always the surprise and wonder draw me. There will be some discovery today. Perhaps it will be new blossoms of sea-blue winter iris or a hummingbird at the pineapple sage. The wonder that I am part of this life is more that my mind can comprehend but my heart has always known. I share this life with the plants and animals I see around me and the microscopic life in the soil. Sometimes I see a favorite animal like a toad. I am at home.

Today's wonders were the last gifts of the season: a bucket of tomatoes in red, orange, yellow and green; a few last zinnias and chrysanthemums, and a couple of red kuri winter squash. This was probably the last time till next year that I will bring these treasures into the house. Soon the tender summer plants will turn to mush when they freeze. Then the onions, garlic, green manure legumes, chard, cole crops, and orange calendula flowers will have the garden to themselves. As I picked the last pear tomatoes, I was sad and appreciative. We have eaten some wonderful fresh salsas, salads, and tomato sauces, and the vibrant colors of the tomatoes have brightened our kitchen counter since July. I discovered that I will miss them like friends who move away for part of the year.

Certainties, October 2011

2011-10-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

I am comforted by certainties in a time of little sensible political action amid world-wide environmental degradation and a poor economy. Some of the few things I can count on are the golden light of fall, acorns falling with the brown oak leaves, and the emerging green grass transforming the dry faded golden hills.
Another certainty is the funny things that kittens do. There is one kitten by my side as I write. Actually she is now moving under my journal, on me, next to me, oops!–over my journal. Now she is high on the book shelf after some tiny flying insect or spider that I can’t see. Now two of the smaller stuffed animals are falling on me from the shelf above the bed where I am sitting as the kitten explores.
When this active kitten first arrived, she seemed uninterested in people. We have recently adopted her along with her four-month old sister and their mother. During her first few days with us, she and the others stayed close to the bathroom where I had their beds and food. By the second week, they were joining us in the living room. The others were interested in being petted and purred vigorously when they were handled and came to sit with us on the sofas. It crossed my mind that the most active one needed more petting so she would become more social. I soon noticed that when she got around to being with her people she was most attentive–purring, laying nearby, stretching out on her side in front of me, moving under foot, or snuggling with me depending if I was lying down or walking. I realized that she is just a very busy cat and socializes when she gets around to it.
She is a cat after all, and does things her way. No extra petting needed. Weeks later, she is near me when I lay on the sofa in the evening. She even watched a documentary about dogs with me one night. I could tell she was watching because her head moved slightly as she tracked the motion on the screen. She got up and left a few times but went right back to her position facing the television each time.
My husband has named her Rudy. She is the smallest. The mom, he named, Claire. The sister kitten he named Theo or Thea. All names are from the Cosby Show. Sometimes my husband calls the mom Mrs. Huxtable. I can be certain that Rudy will have a busy day today.

Gardening with Nature’s Principles during October in California
A big change happens in California after the first inches of rain fall in October. The grass seed and other wild-plant seeds sprout and grow. Growth is fast in the soil that is still holding warmth from the summer sun. Soon green is visible after the long summer drought. The plants that grew with the last rainy season have withered and dried. In wild places, the dry plants are thick and some are tall. There the green is barely visible two weeks after the first rains . Where last season’s golden brown dry plants have been mowed or eaten by grazing animals, the bright green velvet coat of plants already shows its vibrancy. Perennial plants like the roadside fennel begin to grow from the base of the old dry stalks.
In my garden, I cut down the finished perennial plants and compost them. No one does that to the plants like roadside fennel. By late spring, their old dry stalks are concealed by the new growth if they haven’t blown down during winter storms.

This October, I copied nature and sowed my winter green manure crops in between the finishing tomato, squash, and corn plants. I can remove the tomatoes, squash and corn plants after the last harvest, while letting the seeds get a good start in the warm soil. My time is limited as I teach full-time so I dug compost into beds only when essential for a particular crops like onions, garlic, and cabbage. I didn’t dig or weed to sow the green manure. I just tossed the bell beans and mixed cover-crop seed in between the finishing crops and scratched them into the soil with a hand tool. These beds will get a good dressing of compost later when this green manure crop is double-dug for the next planting in the spring or dug even earlier for lettuce and spinach which will be protected under row-cover or glass.
This green manure sowing was very easy and took about ten minutes. I could have been watching baseball on TV and done the sowing during the commercials if the Giants were in the World Series.

The garlic is up and growing along with the cabbages planted in August.
This year I am planting Chinese Garlic. I recently read Chester Aaron’s book called "Garlic is Life". I was so inspired to try other varieties of garlic that I found this more spicy Chinese variety at Imwalle’s Gardens in Santa Rosa. We tasted some of it before planting to determine that it really had a noticeably different taste from the California Garlic commonly sold in the grocery stores, and it does seem a little spicier.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Garlic is Life for its beautiful descriptions of living in Western Sonoma County. As I had also lived in the Occidental area, I loved having Chester’s words bring back my connection to this land of tall firs and grassy hills. His writing also tells of his gardening and how that connects him to warm memories of his parents. If you love gardening, this is a good read.

Gardening in the Summer of 2011

2011-08-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

A Personal Garden Vision
My garden is designed to grow food for my husband, myself, friends, and family as well as for beautiful views of flowers from our windows and cut flowers to put in the house. The total effect is patterns of leaf and flower in a range of vibrant colors with the movement of birds, insects, and wind while the constantly changing angle of the sun strikes the leaves and blossoms. Pairs of goldfinches visit the sunflowers chirping all the while. Hummingbirds visit blossoms. Woodpeckers work in the surrounding Oakwoodlands. Scents fill the air.

Included among the vegetables and fruits are plants that increase the well being of the garden. These plants provide food and shelter for a variety of insects. This insures a balanced insect population that eats only tiny bits of the veggies and roses---not enough to be a bother. The plants that increase the well being of the garden include the honey scented alyssum which attracts an insect that preys on aphids, the tall airy Verbena bonarensis with its small flat flower clusters which make perfect landing pads for a variety of insects, the wonderful monarda that attracts humming birds, and the healall that bees love. There are also scented beautiful plants like lemon balm, caledula, marigold, feverfew, lavender, and rue that are essential to a healthy plant community. Some of these probably contribute by repelling harmful insects with their strong smells. In fact, the one potato plant in the new orchard garden with no insect nibbles is the one with a little feverfew plant that volunteered right next to it. Being newly established, this garden does not yet have a variety of established beneficial plants like feverfew to keep the insect population balanced. Here most potato and early bean plants were nibbled..

Being a teacher gave me the summer to correct and refine my garden infrastructure and practices. For example, I built compost bins that will better hold moisture in our dry summers, and the new orchard garden is terraced, has double-dug beds, and is layered with mulch. The materials that I used in these projects were left over from home improvement projects. I have completed gardening projects that will keep myself and the plants thriving as I go back to teaching for the school year. I recycled materials that would have otherwise been landfill.

Gardening for a Purpose
This is the summer when my gardening became part of my life in a unified way. Just as I create an interweaving of plants that do well together, my garden integrates all parts of my life. I no longer leave unfinished tasks undone. For example, vines are tied up before they sprawl over other plants blocking sunlight. There are no neglected tangles of weeds and vines taking extra time to correct. I am planting a year-round garden so seeds are sown most months. I do not just sow a summer garden, water it, harvest it, and wait till the next season. I found that there is always something to harvest. For example, greens can be harvested when small or when mature. If I harvest them when small, I am giving nearby plants more room to mature. This worked well with the cabbage which I am still harvesting. My cooking is inspired by fresh vibrant produce coming from the garden.

Gardening gives me hope. I know I can grow food and increase beauty by growing plants in harmony with nature. I am inspired by the natural processes that I work with and ever changing life-cycles of the plants in my care. I sense that our lives and the life around us are like small concentric rings connected to larger ones expanding and blending. Sometimes these rings also blend from the past into the future.

As a child, I felt nurture in the homes and gardens of my great aunts and my grandmother Florence. Their homes were clean and orderly and their gardens and farms were lovely. I knew that I wanted this nurture in my life. I wanted to be able to create this nurture for myself and my own family. These women were my models for how I wanted to be. Now I can see that I have this nurture in my family relationships, my garden and my home. It feels good.

“I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them, and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere they are visible yet everywhere occult.” Liberty Hyde Bailey

Garden Observations are a Bonus
This summer was different as I paid more attention to what the plants needed since I was more attentive. After the summer plants were in the ground, I made compost and turned soil, all the while paying attention to the needs of the plants as they grew. I planned a year-round garden, so by July, I was starting plants for winter. I often hand watered the vegetable beds. “The foot steps of the gardener is the best fertilizer,” is a quote from the ancient Chinese farmers. It is so true as being in the garden allows me to see what is needed. While watering I sometimes pull a weed, notice a squash that needs to be picked, train a pumpkin vine to stay inside the protective wire deer fencing, and see what tomatoes need more staking. I don’t think that I spent more time in the garden this summer but my time was spent in better ways. I was able to do small tasks like getting out weeds before they got to be big and competed with the vegetables for food, sunlight, and water. Enjoyment of a well growing garden was my reward as I spent time on priorities that insured healthy plants. I was able to learn to prioritize tasks by what was most needed by the plants.

There were also other bonuses to hand watering besides the fact that the sprinklers don’t water the garden edges well. Once while I was hand watering at dusk, I noticed a turkey high up on an oak tree branch and wondered why her wing was out from her body in an unusual position. I paid attention to moving the gentle rain of water onto the soil between the zucchini and cabbage. The next time I looked up, the turkey had flown down the hill leaving behind five little ones on the branch about 30 feet up in the tree. I was amazed that these little ones had flown so high up to roost in the tree. I watched as one by one the little ones flew down to their mom to find another safe place to spend the night. I was sorry that my watering had disturbed them but glad to have seen how a momma turkey keeps her babies protected at night when the predators are most active.

Gardening with Natural Principles
My understanding of many natural principles increased. For example, plants want to make a protective cover over the soil. I plant seedlings close enough so that the mature plants cover the soil. I use mulch to cover bare spots. This cover protects the soil, keeps moisture from evaporating, and keeps weeds from sprouting. The mulch also provides food for the earthworms to mix into the soil. I also let dandelions and small grasses grow in paths, giving me fresh greens for the chickens. Another path had healall growing in it. In the summer the blossoming stems get about a foot high so I hoed out a narrow five inch pathway. I found that the bees loved this stand of blossoms. I walk through this narrow pathway slowly so I don’t hurt or disturb the bees while they work. I have not been stung, and I go through this area daily. I encouraged pursulane to grow between the corn plants which improves the corn. The plants are protecting the soil in many places in my garden.

Plants place their vitality for growing into tiny seeds which the gardener brings to life. I found this principle of nature a joy to work with. From big nasturtium seeds to tiny viola seeds, baby plants began their life under my care. Some volunteered like the violas and columbine in the soil under the parent plants. These I carefully moved to bigger quarters in nice pots of freshly mixed soil. The results have been a nearly constant parade of sprouts becoming beds of vegetables or decorative plants. Friends have benefitted from my extra plants.

I benefitted from the extra seedlings of a new friend. I partnered with Diane who had not grown much outdoors but grew indoor gloxinias from dust-like seed. Last spring Diane had extras of these baby plants which mature into tender house plants with flowers up to four inches across. As I type this, sitting next to me are several of these plants, one with a luscious wide-opened white bloom with red dots in a beautiful scalloped pattern of denser dots near the petal’s edge and another with intense purple blooms that look ruffled. Another gloxinia that has finished blooming was a deep red. It is in the greenhouse as it goes dormant to sprout again later from a tuber of stored energy. These wonderful plants have the added bonus of being perennial.

“Feed the soil, the soil feeds the plants, and the plants feed you.” This is a quote from my friend Pat who gardened for a year learning from Alan Chadwick, the gardener who introduced French Intensive/ Biodynamic Gardening to North America. Last year my summer and winter squash plants were small and produced little. They were growing in a new garden with very poor soil. In fact, a soil test revealed that my garden soil tested low in nitrogen and potash and medium in phosphorus. This planting area had only been gardened for a few years with my chicken manure compost added in only the last two years when I started raising chickens. My improved compost was added in the spring, and this year I noticed that my squash plants look healthy and vigorous. It takes years to build good soil with compost, and I needed more soil nutrients than I had been applying. I have continued adding purchased compost as a mulch throughout the summer, and these large squash plants are continuing to thrive.

Community Growing
My friend, Diane, and I gardened together every week this summer. Diane helped me prepare plum grafts and shell bell beans. I helped her double dig her first bed in the back yard. She gave homes to some of my extra plants like tomatoes and rosemary as we landscaped her wild front yard. I learned how to follow another person’s garden vision as I paid close attention to her garden plans.

My friend had not imagined she could turn her soil into planting beds. After observing me double digging the soil, she plans to get a fork for herself.

We were both very proud of our results. Her front yard shows off some of her favorite lilies and morning glory vines as well as existing shrubs and new tomato plants. Her back yard has its first planting bed. I have three fig tree starts from under her fig tree in my greenhouse and we await the results of the plum grafts which will be evident next spring. We were both pleased and got compliments on her front yard from a homeless man who often walks by her house.

Community growing was definitely a success for us and we have more gardening planned when our work schedules allow. Of course we will keep each other informed of the growth of our plants and the ripening of the figs.

Hidden Places for Growing
The path by the raspberries filled with the low growing mint ground cover, healall, is like a bee sanctuary. It is wonderful how many things you can grow in a path when you get over the idea of all paths needing to be free of plants. A sign saying "Walk slowly, bee sanctuary" would be nice if anyone used that path besides me.

The chickens are always interested in my activities when I come outside. They watch me from the edge of their pen. They are only distracted from me if I give them some greens or grasses to scratch through. I give them grasses from spring weed-eating done to minimize fire hazards. Any unwanted plant material pulled or trimmed from the vegetable and flower beds are theirs except for woody twigs and rose prunings which go to the garbage company for shredding and composting. I have a little pen within their enclosure that I sometimes use as a place to sow peas and vetch for the chickens to eat. They finish with that in a day. I am glad there are dandelions, burr clover, and grasses growing in the nearby paths to supply them with fresh greens. This also increases the vitamin content of their eggs besides keeping the chickens happily occupied.

Matching companion plants in beds together gives extra crops. There are carrots in between the tomato plants and carrots planted with green onions.

Starting the next crop among the finishing crop worked with a pea bed becoming a tomato bed. There is a bed of peas that had four tomato plants started in between them in May. Now the peas are decomposing under the mulch around the four foot tall tomato plants.

Several beds of potatoes are still growing. Adding layers of mulch to the beds probably encouraged the plants to continue growing. Most potato plants are still green and have not bloomed so the next crops for the cool season are in pots in the greenhouse waiting for the potatoes to finish. The greenhouse with pots is another hidden place for growing as growing in pots keep the beds available for large maturing plants. The potted plants will be ready when the mature plants are harvested. A continuous supply of food comes from beds in continuous production.

Invasive Plants as Healers
I have a patch of ground were the soil was once covered with chaparral. We cleared this area to protect our property from wildfire moving up the hill to our house. The slope faces south west receiving the hottest part of the sunlight. Over the years that we have lived here, star thistle has started growing here. This plant is considered an invasive problematic nonnative. I have tried over the years to pull it all out each summer, and the next summer it is still growing in the same place. This summer I read the book, Invasive Plant Medicine, The Ecological Benefits and Healing Abilities of Invasives which gave me an understanding of the job invasive plants do to remediate problem soils so I didn’t pull out the star thistle. I went to see how this area looked this summer and noticed there was only one star thistle plant and a whole patch of native bunch grasses perfectly arranged as if they had been planted with equal spacing between each one. Did the long strong roots of the star thistles make it possible for these plants to get their roots into this dense soil? Did I pull last year’s star thistle out before they made seeds and there were no seeds left in the soil from previous years? Has the star thistle finished its work so the native grasses can grow? I wonder what will grow there next year. I am going to continue to leave this place alone.

These quotes were taken from the book, Invasive Plant Medicine.
A quote from the great plantsman, Liberty Hyde Bailey. “All living beings have the right to engage in the struggle for existence.”
Many believe that invasive plants harm native plants. Here is a quote from Vermeij. “The evidence so far points to the conclusion that invaders often cause extinction on oceanic islands and in lakes, but rarely in the sea or on large land masses.”
A quote from Masanobu Fukuoka. “The living and holistic biosystem that is nature cannot be dissected or resolved into its parts. Once broken down, it dies. Or rather, those who break off a piece of nature lay hold of something that is dead, and unaware that what they are examining is no longer what they think it to be, claim to understand nature... Because [man] starts off with misconceptions about nature and takes the wrong approach to understanding it, regardless of how rational his thinking, everything winds up all wrong.”

Still Learning as Always
I am a teacher by profession and have found that teaching and learning are the same thing. I am curious about many things and want to share that with youth. I find that I am still learning about gardening constantly even though I have gardened since I was a child. Pairing up to work with a less experienced gardener gave me much to learn. It wasn’t so much that she learned from me but rather that we both learned different things from sharing gardening.

The wonderful thing about this is that each new season becomes a new chance to learn. My winter study of new garden practices and seed catalogues is always an exciting time of year for me. During this period, I am like a kid in a candy store as I envision next year’s garden. I often need to adjust my exuberant plans so they fit the space that I have.

Connecting Gardeners, Community, and Opportunity
Building a humane world where food is produced locally and sustainablly will heal ourselves and our planet. Currently about 75% of greenhouse gases come from food production and distribution worldwide. More land that is stewarded locally and sustainablly will allow gardeners and community to work together toward a humane world.

Imagine if the unused land between a suburban fence and a city street, the front yards currently growing only a monoculture of mowed grass, the forgotten easements, and unused back yards were beautiful kaleidoscopes of texture, color and form devoted to fresh local food. Children would view the wonder of the life in these places and be learning to appreciate and protect it. People would have more fresh nutritious food. People would work together to create something that would be a source of pride and kinship.

I have friends with a nonprofit organization who would be happy to sponsor food growing. Their website is Communityconnexions.org. I and other friends with gardening experience ranging from setting up community gardens to farming biodynamically would be happy to share our experience. I can be reached at marlenahirsch@yahoo.com. In my area of Sonoma County, California, there is igrowsonoma.org and the School Garden Network's group emails with helpful info for food growing. These are just a few of the many groups devoted to promoting local sustainable food growing.

Community Growing; food, flowers and friends

2011-06-05T05:28:00.000-07:00

Community Growing ---May 2011
Mission Statement: To help people grow fresh food for healthier daily living using natural sustainable principles.

Walking outside to my garden is stepping into a world of surprise and wonder. Each day brings provides new observations. As I learn from my observations, my garden flourishes. I would like to connect with others who want to enjoy gardening.
When I bring food in to my kitchen from the plants growing outside, cooking is more fun. Often the smells and tastes are heightened as the food is so fresh and vibrant.
Plants want to grow. On a recent trip to North Carolina, I saw a tomato plant that was growing behind a restaurant next to the corner of the building near the sidewalk and the rock paved alley. No one had planted this or was caring for it, and yet it was as big or bigger than the tomatoes in my garden. As a gardener, I am attempting to organize the growing.
Besides college classes, my horticultural background includes working under the tutelage of Alan Chadwick at UCSC in the late 60s who brought the French Intensive/ Biodynamic gardening method used by the Parisian market gardeners to North America. I have taught gardening to children of all ages as well as to adults. My quest to learn and teach about growing plants continues.

You do not need to leave nearby to be part of Community Growing.
We can work together by meeting at a garden site or by email: marlenahirsch@yahoo.com

Chickens; Feathers and Fun

2011-02-20T11:44:00.000-08:00

Feathers and Fun
Humane Chicken Keeping
Observations of Adding New Chicks to an Adult Silkie Flock
by
Marlena Hirsch

I added chickens to my garden in early January of 2008 to provide eggs and manure. The first birds were three silkie hens and a silkie rooster. This is a very docile breed with good mothering abilities.
I had carefully designed a 3X6 foot chicken house on wheels with an attachable day run to move around in the vegetable garden. This arrangement is sometimes called a chicken tiller, because chickens scratch up the ground while eating bugs and seeds incorporating their manure into the soil.

Jan. 28, 2008
Lily, my daughter, and I named the four adult silkies; a brown hen, Henrietta; a grey pair, Mr. Puff and Mrs. Puff; and a black hen, Penny. They are very fluffy with feathers that don't have barbs so the strands don't lock together. They can’t fly and usually roost in a pile on the floor of their house.
They stood their ground to Morty, the killer cat,, who tried stalking them. The rooster sounded the alarm and raised up as tall as possible while walking toward Morty. Morty stopped stalking, relaxed, and eventually lost interest in the chickens after they stood up to her.
They are learning to come into their house at night. The first two nights I had to shove them in. I only had to shove one in last night. It was pouring rain. I would think they would all go in our of the rain.
I must give the rooster credit for watching out for his group. He was very insistent that one of the hens go in the other night just as it was getting dark. He kept going back and forth from the yard to the house as this one brown hen would not come in for the night. His herding style is a peck on the head which wasn’t very convincing to the hen.
They are very managable. I can easily pick one up to hold it. That is handy when children come to visit.
I am very excited about this project. My independent study student has a pair also. She plans to go with me to get a chick or two. Since I would like egg production on a regular basis, I will need another breed of chicken. Silkie do not lay regularly and often want to sit on their eggs to hatch them.
To allow unfamiliar chicks to integrate with an existing flock, I did careful observations to make sure that the chicks would be safe and warm. I did not know how this would work as I had not heard of anyone doing this, but I did not want to raise chicks without the care and/or example of adult chickens. I volunteered for many years doing rehabilitation for native birds. I was well aware that all of our care was for nothing if the rehabilitated wild bird didn’t know how to live in the wild when it was released. The best releases were the amazing situations when a parent in the wild would adopt an orphaned baby. This was done with baby owls when someone knew a tree climber and the location of the nest of the same owl species. Although chickens don’t need to live in the wild, I want them to live as chickens do with humane conditions for all of the flock

These are my observations of adding new chicks to an adult silkie flock.
Feb. 12, 2008
I bought two week old pullets, an americana and a brown leghorn, for egg production. In broad daylight, I put the baby chicks in with my four adult silkies. I watched carefully. The grey silkie hen pecked a baby chick and then the grey rooster tried to peck a baby chick. That was enough for me. I took the baby chicks out of the adult’s enclosure. I took out the calmest brown hen who had not tried to peck, and put the two babies and the brown hen together in a large cat carrier. Again, I watched carefully. The hen was calm. Within a half an hour, a baby chick was climbing on her back.
The next morning, they were sleeping under her. I gave them their own 10 feet by two feet run attached to the cat carrier to forage in among the plants and grasses. They went in the cat carrier at night to be safe from foxes and coyotes. Their little noises the chicks made and the answers the hen made were so cute. This constant dialogue told me that they were contented.
The brown hen raised these babies, keeping them warm at night and foraging with them in their mini-run attached to the cat carrier during the day away from the other adults.
When the babies were almost grown (4 months old), I decided to move them in with the others as the black hen was brooding eggs and needed their enclosure that could hold babies safely. I put the babies and the brown hen in with the grey pair of silkies. The hen pecked at an almost grown baby. The brown hen who was by now the smallest of all of these birds, raised herself up to her fullest height, got eyeball to eyeball with the offending hen and stared her down. That was the end of the pecking.
One of the purposes of integrating new chicks directly into an existing flock is to prevent them growing up under lights missing out on the freedom to learn to forage with the older chickens. Chicks that are raised win incubators without the protection of an adult chicken are usually introduced to other adult chickens when they are grown enough to protect themselves from any attacks. Chickens are careful to maintain their territory and an unfamiliar chicken is sometimes seen as an intruder and attacked, a habit probably designed to foster dispersal over territories large enough to support healthy living. I have heard of overly zealous chickens pecking unfamiliar chicks to death. I was very pleased to see this flock getting along well.
The two chicks, hatched in an incubator in January, had grown up and were now a part of the whole group. The Astrolorpe had turned out to be a rooster that crowed earlier and louder that the silkie rooster. I took him to our local feed store to sell to someone who neeeds a rooster.
May 9, 2008
The black silkie hen started to sit on her eggs in the back of the chicken house. I realized that baby chicks were so small that they could get out under the day run so I built a four foot cube covered in hardware cloth with a hinged door for her and her nest. I moved the nest with the mom sitting securely on the eggs during the move. Now the hen would have a safe place for her babies.
After three weeks of dedicated brooding, the black silkie hen’s eggs hatched. The first one hatched on May 9th. By the next morning, there were five babies under the mom. I loved listening to her soft calls and their responding peeps. She began teaching them to forage. Within a week she was tearing up all of the dead plants and compost that I put in the bottom of her cage. I wanted them to have more room to forage so built a wire enclosure that connected to their open cage door. At night I closed them in their cube with the strong hardware cloth.
On the morning of June 5th, I woke to the unceasing squawking or alarm call of the mother hen. I walked out of my bedroom to see what was happening. There was a fox about eight inches from the secure hardware cloth enclosure that held the hen and chicks. Reggie, our cat, was about ten inches from the fox. It was as if Reggie was saying, “This is my territory. What are you doing here?”
That night I put out dry dog food for the fox with the idea that the fox would be less interested in eating chickens. This month is probably a stressful time for the fox as it may be a mother who must find enough food for herself and her young.
I kept the chickens locked up in their secure night houses during the day and intended to do so until the fox issue was resolved. I hoped the fox would lose interest in the chickens after eating the dog food.

June 6, 2008
I felt sorry for the adult chickens confined to the safety of their 3 by 7 foot house for the day as well as for the night. I decided to let them out for a few hours during the day. After dinner, I was involved in writing a tribute for a fellow animal lover who had recently passed away. I forgot that I had let the chickens out.
The next day, I discovered feathers from the brown leghorn alongside of the chicken house. The story of what happened was evident. The house was unlocked. The brown leghorn had gotten out of the day pen as evidenced by chicken fecal matter on the roof of the house. She was probably sleeping outside of the house when the fox came by. Her death would have been avoided if I had locked them in the house that evening.
June 9, and 10, 2008
I built a large chicken day pen (14 feet square) and rolled the chicken house inside. I also attached the 4 foot cube house that housed the momma hen and five chicks to this new day pen. The bigger new pen has chicken wire buried about six inches on the bottom and a roof of chicken wire. I lay boards around the outside of the buried wire with large rocks and stakes holding the boards in place. Few predators would want to dig that much to get to the chickens.
I opened the door to the cube and to the moveable chicken house to let them all out together for the first time in this new pen. The mother was fiercely protective if another adult even looked at her chicks the wrong way. After one or two half hearted pecks at the little ones by the other adult chickens, they got the idea that the little ones were off limits.
I had now been successful getting a hen to adopt week old baby chicks, introducing her with her half grown chicks, and introducing a mother with her four week old babies to the group. I had none that were good egg layers. I was feeling confident that I could avoid raising hatchery chicks under lights. I had recently visited a neighbor who had raised hatchery chicks with a light in the safety of a small cage placed near the others. These chickens were now full grown and afraid to come out of their cage and join the others. It was sad to watch how one would look out at the big yard where the others roamed and start to put a foot out but then freeze and go no farther. We watched for about an hour and these two young adult chickens would not step through their open door into the freedom of the big enclosure.
June 11, 2008
I purchased two about three week old pullets at Western Farm Center, a Wellsummer (a breed from the town of Wellsum in Holland) and a Golden Sex Link. They were not frightened of my hands and could be picked up without loud protesting squawks. I brought these two new chicks home. Neither the brown silkie hen who had adopted chicks before or the black hen with the chicks the same age was interested in adopting these chicks. I tried putting the brown hen in the cat carrier with the new ones like I had in February. She pecked at the new ones. She didn’t do that in February. I tried putting the grey hen in the cat carrier with the new chicks. She pecked at them.
I left the chicks with the group in the large yard and watched. It reached over 90 degrees so I wasn’t concerned about keeping them warm. When the chicks got too near an adult, they got pecked but not hard except for one peck when the rooster actually lifted the littlest chick off the ground. This pecking subsided as the rooster realized that they were not a threat. The chicks knew where their food and water was located. They stayed together and avoided getting pecked.
When the mom took her five chicks to sleep in the nest box in the house at dusk, I put the new chicks under her and watched. If one new chick poked her head out, the momma hen would peck at her. The new chicks were fine if they stayed under a wing, warm and out of sight. It was getting dark. I knew the momma hen would not be able to see these chicks at night, and they would be safe and warm under her. Most birds, except vultures, have a poorly developed sense of smell so I knew that the sight of the new babies bothered the hen.
June 12, 2008
I helped the new chicks out of the house in the morning after the rooster had inspected. The rooster pecks at any bird that goes out into the yard before he has inspected everything. He does not like any hen going out before he does. I think it is his safety inspection. When he is finished, he is very peaceful.
The new chicks kept to themselves but near the others at times. I even saw them bounding across the yard as chicks this age are just learning to enjoy running and flapping their wirngs.
At night, they went into the house themselves staying in a huddle near the entrance. I tucked them under the momma hen and watched. They were fine if they kept out of sight. It was getting dark to help them be out of sight.
June 13, 2008
When I opened the door, the new chicks stayed in the house and peeped plaintively. The rooster looked in at them, then they came out by themselves. They roamed all over the yard, but stayed near each other. They also favored places where they could take cover if an adult came near. For example, if they were eating when an adult came to eat, they got a little peck and ducked behind the feeder.
They were exuberant in their exploration of the outdoors, the first in their lives, having been raised in a hatchery. They practiced fluttering their wings as they bounded around in bursts. They forage.
At dusk they went into the house themselves. This time the new chicks were in a nest by themselves with the brown hen perched in the entrance to the nest box. I was concerned that they needed more warmth, so I put them under the mother hen with the other babies.
June 14, 2008
The new chicks came out of the house themselves. The rooster pecked once as he was still doing his initial morning safety inspection. He does not like any other birds to go into the yard until his inspection is completed but most of his flock doesn’t wait for him.
I made a warm box shelter with a light for heat in the yard. The chicks can use it when they want to on their first foggy day since they arrived.
I watched. They were interested in food after leaving the house first thing in the morning. After a while, I put them in the shelter so they could feel the warmth of the light. The other chicks went under their mom for a few minutes after eating. The new chicks also wanted warmth, and they stayed under the light. Soon they were running around. I turned the light off when the sun came through the fog.
The new chicks seem comfortable in the yard as they roamed all over, sometimes by themselves even joining the other chicks at times. They seem to take cover to rest from their foraging rather than for protection. In only four days, the new 2 to 3 week old chicks are acclimated to a new outdoor pen and nine other chickens both adults and chicks their own age. The only thing they needed my help with was settling down in a warm place for the night.
At 8:10 p.m., a new chick began crying loudly. The other chicks were in the house for the night with their mom. The grey adult silkie pair where the only other adults still out. At about 8:30 p.m., the new chicks went in the house. Tonight I planned not to intervene but let the new chicks settle for the night themselves. I had put the new chicks under the mom with the other chicks each night. These last few days, the adults had given up roosting on the perches, a habit learned from the brown leghorn and astrolorpe, and were once again sleeping on the floor of the house. If the new chicks joined them, they would be warm. Since the process of the adults settling into their position for the night took about 20-30 minutes, I wanted to leave them alone before checking to make sure they new chicks would be warm for the night. At 9:45 p.m., I went to the chicken house and peeked in to the sound of the peeping of contented chicks. All of the chicks were under the momma including the new chicks. They had braved her occasional peek and joined the other five chicks already under the warmth of her sheltering feathers.
The three adults were crowding into a small nest box with the rooster partly on the outside of the box. I wanted them to leave the nest box clean for laying eggs and sleep in a larger box with litter and slats for perches in the back of the house, so at 9:00 p.m. as the darkness and fog thickened, I moved the adults gently into the large box. The chicks were almost quiet. Only one or two made a soft peeping noise.
June 15, 2008
At about 6:30 a.m., the new chicks bounced down the steps of their house out into the new foggy day with the others. I watched as all of the chicks, fed from the feeder with the chick mash. Other feeders had organic laying pellets which were too big for the babies. They fed together; the new chicks integrated with the others. The mother hen joined and pecked one new chick so the two new chicks left to watch from a safe distance.
On a cool morning like this one, the five chicks took refuge under their mom to warm up after initial feeding, drinking and other early morning chicken activities. The new chicks took refuge under the lamp in their box.
This is only the second day with this box with two entrances, litter on the floor and warmth from the lamp. The first day, I showed them the box by placing them gently inside. Today they went to it themselves.
A note about their demeanor on this morning- These two new chicks are not bothered much by being picked up. They cry out initially in alarm but settle down quickly. On their first morning before I put the box with heat out for them, I picked them up, put them in my lap under my t-shirt for warmth. They stayed for about 10 or 15 minutes while I made some notes while observing the others. They were quiet and didn’t try to escape or cry.
By 8:45 a.m. The new chicks went under the light in their box by themselves on this cool morning.
June 15, 2008, evening
The whole group was all settled for the evening when I checked at 9:00. The new chicks were under the grey hen in the second nest box from the front. The momma and five chicks were in the first next box. The brown hen was on the edge of the large roosting box with the rooster on a roost above her. Perfect
I wonder what the momma and five chicks will do when they outgrow their nest box. They will figure this out peacefully if the behaviors I am observing are any indication.

June 16, 2008 morning
I didn’t hear the rooster crow so I went to let the chickens our later; it was 7 a.m. They were waiting inside. All were off their perchies except the brown hen. The two new chicks were together by the feeder.
I opened the door. The rooster was out first for his inspection of the yard. I noticed no pecking except the rooster towards me. I was a stranger in his territory during his safety inspection. I brushed him away when he pecked me. He doesn’t peck hard.
It was cool outside. After returning with some food for the chickens, I noticed that the new chicks had gone under the light.
June 16, evening
One new chick was in a nest box alone and one was under the momma. I put the one alone with the others for warmth. The new chicks have become fairly independent, but I checked carefully to see that they got warmth at night and turn the light on during cool mornings.
June 17, 2008
At 6:30 a.m., I opened the door to the chicken house. The rooster was out first. He didn’t peck me while I stood near their house. All came out with him except the brown hen and two new chicks. After about a minute or two, the new chicks came out and headed straight into the box with the light bulb for heat. It was another foggy morning.
In the evening (9:15 p.m.), I went to lock the chickens in their house. All the chicks were under the momma in the first next box. The other adults were on the roosts so the new chicks didn’t have a choice of who to get under or next to.
June 18, 2008, 6:20 a.m.
Before letting the chickens out, I looked in and noticed the new chicks had found a place in the back away from the momma hen who was still on the nest with her babies under her. The rooster came out first. The new chicks last. The younger new chick headed right to the heat of the light.
evening
The new chicks slept by themselves with the brown hen roosting nearby. It was 96 degrees during the day and still warm so I left them as they were.
June 19. 2008, morning
When I peeked in the house, the new chicks were perched on the roost with the brown hen between them. They all came out by themselves. The smallest new chick went under the light for 5 seconds and was off again running around.
June 21, 2008. evening
The two new chicks have gone to roost under the wings of the brown hen. Now I believe her unwillingness to accept these babies and her staying alone in the house for most of each day was due to her loneliness after losing the last of the babies that see adopted in the winter to the fox. Perhaps now that she has begun to shelter the two new chicks, she will stay with them in the yard during the day.
June 22, 2008, morning
The new chicks are eating in the house with the brown hen. They stayed near the house or in the house for parts of the day. It seems as if the brown hen and new chicks are forming a bond.
The grey hen has laid three eggs in the cat carrier.
In the evening, the new chicks slept near the brown hen.
June 24, 2008
The new chicks slept near the rooster. I spent time observing through out the day. The new chicks are fully integrated into this group with no pecking except the occasional random peck that happens when one is too near a chicken who is eating.
June 26
The new chicks were asleep under the rooster.
June 27, 2008
All weekend, I noticed that the brown hen is spending time outside. I even photographed her at the nest in the cat carrier arranging nest material with the two new chicks. This is a big change for her as she had been spending most of her time in the chicken house. She is spending time with the others now. The new chicks are a part of this entire group. They were adopted by the whole group.

The Garden as Teacher; Learning from Observations

2010-07-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

January
Febuary
March
April
April 29, 2010 The potatoes that we buried with sprouts about two to three inches long have not come up. There is no trace of them. They were in a bed where other potatoes with less developed sprouts have come up so we know that this soil has the right conditions for potatoes. I suspect that the delicate tissue of these long sprouts that grew in my dark kitchen cabinet in the warmth of the house rotted in the cool moist spring soil. Eventually the rotting spread to the actual potato.

May
May 5, 2010 Hand watering gives me time to observe my plants. It takes only about twenty minutes each day. I notice little things like a tomato branch that needs tuching into its support or weed seedlings that can be easily pulled while I am watering. I make mental notes that the mulch is a little thin on the peas and come back later with a bucket of half done compost.

June
June 12, 2010 Hand watering gives me time to notice when the lettuce is ready for harvest. None of the plants have started to make seed so the leaves have been mild and succulent.

July
July 27, 2010 In transplanting seedlings of winter crops like greens, and cabbage family plants, I was careful to plant the seedlings early before so they have plenty of room for their roots. I was careful to disturb the roots very little by planting in large tubs and lifting up the plants from underdeath. Large six-packs make it difficult for me to remove the seedling. I was also careful to plant the seedlings in the garden as deep as possible. Each little seedling was buried so that the base of the seed leaves were just barely above the soil. None have been eatten by slugs or snails. It has been foggy in the mornings which helps the seedlings transition from their pots. I didn't put up shade cloth until the third day as it has been so foggy. This probably caused the loss of a few broccoli seedlings on the first afternoon outside. Moving the plants gradually from the greenhouse to the outside might have helped.
My big lesson came from observing what happened to the sunflower seedlings which had stems 3 to 4 inches long. I buried these deeply, but some still had an inch of stem showing. The next day, two stems were nibbled probably by small slugs. This damage is significant on such a small plant. I thought about how a seedling that sprouts in the garden has no stem showing. I thought about the seedlings of sunflowers, squash, chard, and tomatoes. The seed leaves almost rest on the soil with the stem hidden. This is the model that I want to copy. Next time my seedlings will be buried right up to the bottom of their seed leaves.
August
September
October
November
December

On Good Nutrition

2010-06-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

June 21, 2010

Traditional Nutritional Wisdom

The human body is a complex wonderful organism that can often heal itself of injuries and conditions. Healing, like sustained well-being does require the body’s nutritional needs to be met consistently.

Nutrition varies among peoples living in different parts of the world. The Eskimos in the high Arctic live on sea animals they catch and caribou they hunt. The Masai of Africa live on products from the cattle they tend including blood. Chinese and Japanese people use rice, vegetables, and a little meat and fish. The Mediterranean people’s food consists of a variety of vegetables, pasta, fruits, meats, and fish including olive oil. These traditional diets promote health.

Western diet, typically containing processed grains, foods with added sugar and fats, and large servings of meat, is associated with high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Traditional diets that use plant and animal products from a natural and local sources do not cause the diseases becoming endemic in Western Civilization. When people from these groups begin to eat things like white flour and sugar, however, they begin to develop diseases associated with Western diet

Food Quality

Healthful foods do not have added ingredients like sugars, fats, preservatives, coloring, starches, selected vitamins, or hard-to-pronounce chemicals. Food producing animals, fowl, and plants live in conditions natural to them and are not given added antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, or inappropriate foods. The meat from pasture-raised grass-fed has a ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids that is correct for humans, whereas grain-fed cattle meat does not. Eggs from chickens having access to fresh vegetation and small animals like snails and insects have yolks with a higher vitamin content indicated by their brighter yellow color. The foods consumed by animals affect the quality of the food products they provide. The quality of animal products that we consume affects our health.

Biological knowledge tells us that we are connected to other living things by food chains which are parts of larger food webs. Traces of toxic chemicals that cannot be broken down and excreted by an organism move through a food chain, concentrating in the tissues of the animals consuming the most meat (the top predators). That happened when the pesticide DDT got into the food chain: The first sign we noted of this was that fish eating and water-bird eating birds like the pelicans and peregrine falcons had eggshells too thin to protect reproduction. As no young could be raised, the populations of these top predators declined rapidly. The peregrine falcons were put on the endangered species list, and concerned environmentalists began captive breeding programs to prevent their extinction. Food additives that cannot be broken down during digestion do not go away; they stay in living tissues engendering problems, including disease.

Organic foods not only are grown without pesticides but often have improved quality, especially if they are consumed while fresh. After a winter of imported, store lettuce, I cut the first of my organic spring lettuce and could actually smell the difference! I can often tell that organic produce has a slightly more concentrated flavor. When plants are grown organically without high-nitrogen fertilizers, their cells can be filled with more concentrated nutritive materials with lower water content.

Fully ripened fruit tastes better, and certain varieties taste great. These facts are often lost to many of the younger generations. Who has noticed the difference between a California dried apricot and any others? Those of us who became used to the fabulous rich treat of a Royal Blenheim apricot cooked or dried can attest to quality affecting taste! Other types of apricots are grown commercially because they ripen at the same time and are of similar size. The Blenheims may be partly green on one side and rosy on the other and come in different sizes. On the grocery shelf, they look odd to buyers expecting uniform fruits– a uniformity obtained at the cost of quality of flavor and, often, nutritional value as well. The fortunate tomato lover is familiar with the expected taste of vine-ripened tomatoes. Our local supermarkets advertise “vine-ripened tomatoes” year round including a bit of the stem for verisimilitude. I do not experience a real vine-ripened taste, however, until it is local tomato season. There is a big difference between an aromatic Meyer lemon and other lemons. I hope we discover more of these wonderful tastes lost to us through the elevation of appearance, quantity, and convenience over the actual purpose of food: to nurture not only the body but our pleasure in eating.

The Food Movement

There are many different movements under the umbrella of the food movement. According to Michael Pollan in an article entitled “The Food Movement Rising” in the New York Review of Books (June 10, 2010), these movements include school lunch reform; the campaign for animal rights and welfare; the campaign against genetically modified crops; the rise of organic and locally produced food; efforts to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes; “food sovereignty” ( the claimed "right" of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces); farm bill reform; food safety regulation; farmland preservation; promotion of urban agriculture; school gardens and cooking; farm worker rights; nutrition labeling; feedlot pollution; and the various efforts to regulate food ingredients and marketing in terms of indoctrinating younger generations.

Pollan goes on to say that the movement coalesces around the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is unsustainable both environmentally and economically. The current food system consumes about one-fifth of the total American use of fossil fuel: today’s farming relies on chemical fertilizer derived from petroleum, tractors for extensive plowing, and long-distance shipping of foods from grower to consumer. In contrast, organic farming actually sequesters large amounts of carbon in the soil by composting, giving the potential to help solve environmental problems, especially when long distance transport is diminished through local farmers serving consumers.

Today’s health care system is overwhelmed with chronic illnesses many of which are created by the Western diet of highly processed foods laden with added fats and sugars. It is estimated that three-quarters of US health care spending goes to treatment of chronic diseases, which are preventable and linked to diet.

There are people who think fast food works against family values and who regard the slow food movement as a way to bring back much more than good nutrition. Food and its preparation is a vehicle for enjoyment as well as a way to experience interaction within family and community. The process of cooking and eating together are foundations for a considerate society, as the kitchen may be the place where sharing, communication, consideration, collaboration, and creativity can be practiced. The new solution to the hurried and harried mother who turns to convenience food to feed her hungry family is to have everyone in the household participate in kitchen activities. This new solution involves the preparation of fresh vegetables, whole grains, meats raised in natural clean environments like grassy fields, and fish raised sustainably.

The food movement has the potential to affect our daily lives in positive ways while improving our health and the health of our environment. There are many opportunities for involvement depending on individual preferences. We all enjoy good food.

Books that may be of Interest
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver

Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore-Lappe

Food Rules, by Michael Pollan

Laurel’s Kitchen, by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

Garden Insect Life Seeks Harmony

2010-05-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

Our big lush stand of fava beans at our elementary school garden became a perfect example of the balance that plant and animal communities achieve when left to work their magic. In early spring, the tender fava bean tops became food for the aphids. The ants probably brought them as there were many ant colonies living in the loose soil in our wooden boxes which stayed well above the rainy season water level. I assume that the ants had sheltered the aphids in their nests and brought the ants to the bean plants to serve as their "cows". The ants don't have mothparts for sucking plant juices and depend on aphids for a nice sugary drink of plant juice.

Soon after the aphids began to multiply, the lady bug beetles appeared. By May, there were many lady bug larva and eggs as well as adult beetles. In fact, there is a whole colony of lady bugs at various life stages reproducing in this stand of fava beans.

We did not try to kill the aphids or wash them off with blasts of water. We just waited. Now their numbers are being brought into balance by a healthy population of lady bugs.

Many of our plantings include something for the insects; plants like alyssum, Verbena bonarensis, Matricaria, sunflowers, and salvias. We are planning a garden that supports a variety of life so our vegetables will be healthy.

Gardening Made Easy, Some Tips and Principles for gardens in the Santa Rosa area

2010-01-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

Draft - work in progress, 4-23-10

for gardens in the Santa Rosa area by Marlena Hirsch

Where to Plant
Most vegetables want a sunny site. Generally six hours a day is adequate. Some late afternoon shade is ok especially for leafy greens and plants in the cabbage family like broccoli. In fact, some gardeners put shade cloth over crops like lettuce when hot weather threatens. Arrange the plantings so that tall plants like mammoth sunflowers and pole beans are on the north side of the garden to prevent shading.

Preparing the Soil
A raised bed originally referred to the way loose freshly dug and forked soil is higher that the surrounding soil. In fact, there were no redwood boards holding soil when the French Intensive/Bio-dynamic method was introduced to North America by Alan Chadwick in the late 60s on the UCSC campus. Some gardens with steep slopes do need boards to hold soil.
Clay soils like adobe are actually very fertile and hold water for a long time, but when wet, they are like glue and when dry, they are like cement. They can be worked for about two weeks in the spring and possibly in between rainy spells in the winter. The only way to tell when this kind of soil is ready to work is to try to break it up with a fork or a shovel. If the soil comes apart, it is ready to work. Adding a two inch layer of organic matter like compost provides plant nutrients and improves soil making it easier to work in the future.

Watering
To illustrate a very important principle of water behavior, let’s consider container plants. Sometimes as a container plant is being watered the water is running out the bottom. This occurs when the soil has become completely dry. This dry soil will need to sit in a saucer of water and slowly re-hydrate. The amount of hours needed for the soil to reabsorb water will depend on the amount of soil.
Water is attracted to itself at a molecular level. You can slightly overfill a glass and see a layer of water above the top of the glass. The surface film of the water holds this water together. This is part of the chemistry of water that allows water striders to walk on water and cooling water vapor to form drops. There are weak positive charges on the two hydrogen atoms and weak negative charges on the oxygen atom in a water molecule. The positive charge always wants to be near a negative charge.
Understanding this principle can spare a person from feeling like their black thumb killed a potted plant. It is likely that the plant dried completely, and water ran right through the pot and not a bit went into the soil.
Dry soil can act as a barrier to water. Sometimes drops or small spoon fulls of water will sit on top of soil at first. If the soil has some moisture in it already, the water goes right into the soil. Sprinkling the ground in the summer can cause puddling on the top and no water to the roots. It is a good idea to use a shovel and check to see how deep the water is penetrating.
Water Conservation
Because of dry soils ability to make a moisture barrier, it can be used as a mulch over moist soil. In my description of “Mike’s Method for Starting Large Seeds” in “Seed Starting”, dry soil is used this way. When I was a child in Watsonville, California, apple farmers used dust mulches to hold in the soil moisture. The soil would be worked with fine harrows after initial plowing with discs. The result was a fine dust. This was done early in the spring after the rains stopped. The timing was important as you wanted to trap the moisture in the soil soon, but you didn’t want a late rain to crust the soil after it had been worked to a fine consistency. In later years, farmers used irrigation in summer, and dust mulching was forgotten.
You can read about dry farming in Steve Solomon’s book, Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway. This is available on his web site, www.soilandhealth.org.
Steve kept his soil hoed so it was always loose. He lived in Oregon at the time where his garden received no summer rain. He watered with drip systems from a five gallon bucket that had a hole near the bottom so the water slowly dripped out without wetting a large area of soil. In my Sonoma County, California area, I hear that nearer to the ocean where it is not as hot people dry-farm tomatoes. I am anxious to try this on some good clay soil that holds moisture better than my gritty mountain soil that seems to have once been a stream bed.
Spacing the plants you are growing so they form a canopy and covering soil with mulch helps to conserve moisture. Mulch can be leaves or partly finished compost. Anything with larger air spaces than your soil can be used as a mulch, even soil worked so it very loose and fluffy can be a mulch. Mulch also helps to control weeds.
Watering in Specific Situations
During hot spells, water cool season plants like lettuce, other greens, cabbage family plants, and peas twice a day. Clay soils made of small particles, can be watered deeply once a week. Sandy or gritty soils, made of larger particles, need to be watered at least every other day.

Seed Starting
In general, seeds are buried about twice the diameter of the seed.
Plan your seed starting so that warm season plants like tomatoes, beans, squash, peppers and melons are outside after May first. Peas and potatoes are planted outside around March 15th. Lettuce and other greens can be sown every month. A cover of glass or row cover cloth will protect them from hard frosts from about December through late February or March.
Mike’s Method for Large Seeds
Mike Rossi worked for Imwalle’s Gardens years ago and taught me this easy method.
Make a depression. Water the bottom of the depression. Place the seeds on the wet ground. Cover with loose soil that wasn’t watered. Do not water until the seeds come up. The loose soil acts as a mulch and keeps the wet layer from drying. If you water, the top of the soil becomes crusted and can prevent seeds from coming through.
Carrots
These small seeds can need three weeks to sprout. It can be difficult to keep the seeds constantly moist for this long. The bed can be covered with a burlap bag that helps hold the moisture in. They can also be sprouted on a moist paper towel on a plate with a plastic cover. Once sprouted, they can be spread on the soil and raked gently into the soil or covered with soil. Try to sprinkle the seeds over the soil so that they are not too close together as carrots need about two to three inches between plants.
Lettuce
Most lettuce seeds require light to sprout so don’t cover them. Once this seed becomes warm on a hot day, it may need to spend a couple of weeks in the refrigerator before it will sprout again.

Living with Small Plant Eaters
Most insects and other small invertebrates do not eat enough to do much damage when an ecosystem is in balance. For example, one year I didn’t have time to spray the aphids off the new rose buds with a blast of water. Their numbers increased dramatically. Soldier beetles came and ate them before I got a chance to spray with water. This balanced ecosystem worked beautifully.
A snail bite of a seedling can kill it. At night with a flashlight, you can find and remove or crush snails easily. This is when they are out of hiding and active. A few nights of this will make a big difference. Ivy and boards are favorite hiding places. Remove boards when possible.

Spacing
In general, the more space the roots have, the more water they can seek out. If you are short of water, give your plants more space.
When a seed first sprouts, it is very vulnerable. A day of hot 100 degree weather can dry the seedling if it is not watered. A snail can take a bite and finish off the sprout. For these reasons, plant 5 or 6 seeds to get one squash plant. These are large plants spaced at least 3 feet apart. After the squash seedlings have their first true leaves, you can leave the strongest two. Extra plants can be given away or moved to another spot if you can move them carefully without disturbing the ones that you want to keep. Leave just one plant, only when it is very strong.
Remember that one seed can mature into a full grown plant is if has the space. Picture the size of the plant and allow enough room for it to grow. The seed package will give you the spacing distance. Thinned plants of greens are good to eat.

Giving Back to The Soil
Vegetable waste from the kitchen, leaves, and grass clippings are potential fertilizer for your plants. Letting this matter decompose in a pile of 2-3 inch alternating layers of dry and green plant material with soil every two layers is how to build a compost pile. The alternating layers are important. Have you ever stepped on a pile of decomposing grass clippings? It is disgusting slime caused by anaerobic decomposition which means rotting without air. This is preventable by mixing larger dry stems, leaves and soil with grass clippings as this mix allows air to get into the pile. The soil provides the bacteria, fungi and other decomposers.
The whole pile needs to stay moist but not wet. A plastic sheet helps hold in the moisture during the summer.
Any size compost pile is good. Once a compost pile reaches the size of a three foot cube, it will generate heat. The heat helps kill weed seeds and disease causing agents. This might be very important if you were composting a manure from a mammal that might contain eggs from an internal parasite that can use humans as a host. In that case, a large pile that could reach high temperatures would be important.
Compost piles tend to be hot on the inside about 6 inches deep. Often the outsides of a pile do not compost as quickly as the warm moist material on the inside. To get uniform composting, compost piles can be turn and mixed. They can also be covered with soil or a combination of soil and grass then covered with plastic in the summer. I don’t turn my piles so I remove the material that has not decayed from the top of the pile and put it in a new pile. The well composted material is usually just under that layer.
Sometimes I have broken open a compost piles that had dried out in the middle and stayed that way. Just like watering soil, once compost is bone dry, it will take a soaking to rehydrate it. This dry material won’t be finished.
Compost is finished when it looks like soil. This takes about 2-6 months depending on the outside temperature, size of the material, and moisture content of the pile. Oak leaves and other thick leaves take two years to compost. They need a separate pile.
Rotating Plants
Replant a bed with plants from a different plant family as similar plants need the same nutrients. Tomatoes and potatoes are in the same family.
You can also alternate with a winter cover crop of vetch, mustard, peas, bell beans, and/or clover. Many of the plants just mentioned are from the legume family, as these plants produce nitrogen in their roots with the help of special bacteria. Other plants are not able to do this and need nitrogen. These legumes give up their nitrogen when they decay. A cover crop of legumes does not need to be composted. It can be buried in the soil before replanting along with any green grass growing with it. Low growing white clover can be grown in the paths.

Harmonious Plantings
Certain flowers, like alyssum, attract insects that keep aphids and other pests from causing damage. A lettuce farm in Watsonville has a row of the honey scented alyssum for every five rows of lettuce. The small florets of Queen Anne’s Lace, Bishops Flower, Verbena bonarensis, and dill attract tiny wasps that prey on leaf eating caterpillars. By encouraging a variety of plants, flowers and aromatic herbs, balanced insect life is maintained.
This type of gardening is beautiful and over time, can be relatively pest free. Remember that a few small pests do not eat much. An application of a toxic pesticide disrupts this balance.

For further knowledge, I recommend John Jeavon’s book, How to Grow More Vegetables. John has diagrams that show how to double dig a bed and layer a compost pile.

Taking a Larger View of Education that Encircles both Alice Waters and Student Success

2010-01-15T22:31:00.000-08:00

January 2010
I think Caitlin Flanagan's Atlantic Monthly criticism of student gardening is a limited view from a journalist who taught for ten years. In my 26 years of teaching, I have had unique teaching experiences teaching a variety of subjects to grades k-12 including disadvantaged students. I have found that children learn by doing and are inspired by nature’s beauty through gardening which makes their academic subjects come alive.

Caitlin Flanagan’s quote from Theodore Sizer about illiterate 14 year olds needing “...intensive, focused attention.” is well taken. Schools like the Knowledge is Power Program, KIPP, have success with low scoring students by giving intensive basic education that includes before and after school hours of instruction beginning at 5th grade to prepare these students for high school success. These student’s test scores rise with this intensive instruction and study.

I would like us to move our lens back to include a larger view beyond test scores. Then concern for basic literacy and connecting suburban-urban students to the Earth’s processes can be seen as part of the same picture. Look at this purpose of real education: to enlarge the view of a young person with the wonders of living on Earth thus creating a balanced educational experience. We may fail to fully do justice to this venture, but our youth deserve our best attempt to aim for this lofty goal. Yes, rising test scores are great, but we also want to educate students who know how to think for themselves, make connections, and find satisfaction. Growing and eating food involves core experiences that touch all subjects. I’ve seen students become eager to write about their experiences in gardens and the outdoors. Gardening and cooking lessons connect to ancient and far away cultures when new plants like quinoa and bok choy are eaten. These are just a few examples of the wealth that well-taught gardening brings to education.

If you understand there are limits to a suburban-urban lifestyle, it is easy to appreciate why suburban-urban youth possibly raised with hand sanitizer and astro-turf playing fields need gardening to understand their whole environment. The garden shows the role of earthworms and related animals. Hopefully they will grow up and understand things like why killing all soil life with Methyl Bromide before planting strawberries is inhumane. They won't even need to learn that this fumigation method adds to greenhouse gases to understand the harm it does. They will protect our Earth. Meanwhile a rural student in an emerging nation who receives a balanced education will have extra time studying computer use and internet research along with math and reading. Those are subjects they need to balance their exposure to the world and have the skills to improve their living conditions.

Education needs to offer what is needed within its cultural context. Currently our suburban-urban culture needs Alice Water's vision. I have seen the excitement that observing nature brings to student writing. I see gardening as a way to bring science and other subjects to life while awakening students' curiosity. When young students combine a broad exposure at a young age with good basic education, they bring a strong foundation to junior and senior high school.

Currently we are at a crucial point as a people living on Earth. Do we learn to cherish and protect our home? Do we learn to live sustainably and protect our Earth that provides so generously for us? How can we appreciate something if we can't relish its beauty and bounty? Exposing students to Earth's beauty and bounty is what well-taught gardening classes do. They provide an outdoor learning lab while enriching us with beauty. There are countless examples of food webs among insects and other invertebrates in the garden that provide living lessons on ecosystems. Eating what you grow is also fun especially when students prepare their own food. What is enjoyable is most memorable. Imagine if you build and grow this garden yourself by your own hands. That is truly empowering. Experience that is personally relevant can be gained from gardening.

Many students cram for test and forget the material soon after. Living experiences last a lifetime. The understanding gained from this experience helps students to think for themselves and become problem solvers. Ask anyone who has completed grad school what is needed for these advanced studies. I asked my daughter and her husband who have a Ph.D. in music history and a masters in geology respectively what is needed for success in grad school. My daughter explained that when she was in grad school, fellow students couldn’t decide on their thesises and often took incompletes on their course work. She always had her project in mind and completed work on schedule. She said that she was used to designing and doing her own projects as she had gone to a Montessori elementary school where she could pursue her own interests. She included artwork and poetry with her reports, something she had to unlearn in regular high school. In grad school, she was once again expected to design her own thesis and research to support it. She was only too happy to return to the way she learns best, an approach all to familiar from her youth. It is interesting that Alice Waters began her professional life as a Montessori teacher. The principles of her edible school yard reflect Montessori’s tenant of helping children to do things for themselves. Maria Montessori was an engineer, doctor, and keen observer of how children learn. Using her broad education, she integrated subject matter so that the big ideas were easily grasped even by young children. My son-in-law answered my question by explaining that graduate schools in the sciences had difficulty finding students who could formulate a question and design a project that answered it. He also found that grad students were often lost when asked to design a masters thesis for themselves. Students who can formulate questions and propose answers do well in grad school. If we want to not just get students into college but create thinkers and doers, students need a variety of educational activities.

Perhaps Alice Waters did not take a hit in the Atlantic Monthly article, but the article got us dialoguing about education. We certainly need to prioritize schooling in these times of budget cuts. Perhaps we can learn from looking at what transforms youth by watching what experiences energize their studies. Lets hope for a new era where every child leads. We can give our youth leadership ability when they can help create their world. Learning by doing through gardening and learning basic skills both have their place in our schools and enhance each other when well taught.

The Localization of Agriculture by Lester Brown

2009-12-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

Lester Brown is an authority on global land use as it relates to the health of the planet. He knows about solving global warming in a timely manner. I offer his essay on local food production as this is something that most of us can do. I find growing food easy and would be happy to offer more information to any who request info on how to get started. I recently heard of neighbors who planted sun loving vegetables in a yard with sun and greens in a shadier yard. Fruit trees were in another yard. All neighbors involved in sharing this project reaped the harvests. I hope that they also had the satisfaction that working together on a common goal can bring. If you are interested in growing food in your neighborhood, the best book that I know is How to Grow More Vegetables on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons.

The Localization of Agriculture

http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2009/pb4ch09_ss5

Lester R. Brown

In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and farmers’ markets.

With the fast-growing local foods movement, diets are becoming more locally shaped and more seasonal. In a typical supermarket in an industrial country today it is often difficult to tell what season it is because the store tries to make everything available on a year-round basis. As oil prices rise, this will become less common. In essence, a reduction in the use of oil to transport food over long distances—whether by plane, truck, or ship—will also localize the food economy.

This trend toward localization is reflected in the recent rise in the number of farms in the United States, which may be the reversal of a century-long trend of farm consolidation. Between the agricultural census of 2002 and that of 2007, the number of farms in the United States increased by 4 percent to roughly 2.2 million. The new farms were mostly small, many of them operated by women, whose numbers in farming jumped from 238,000 in 2002 to 306,000 in 2007, a rise of nearly 30 percent.

Many of the new farms cater to local markets. Some produce fresh fruits and vegetables exclusively for farmers’ markets or for their own roadside stands. Others produce specialized products, such as the goat farms that produce milk, cheese, and meat or the farms that grow flowers or wood for fireplaces. Others specialize in organic food. The number of organic farms in the United States jumped from 12,000 in 2002 to 18,200 in 2007, increasing by half in five years.

Gardening was given a big boost in the spring of 2009 when U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama worked with children from a local school to dig up a piece of lawn by the White House to start a vegetable garden. There was a precedent. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a White House victory garden during World War II. Her initiative encouraged millions of victory gardens that eventually grew 40 percent of the nation’s fresh produce.

Although it was much easier to expand home gardening during World War II, when the United States was largely a rural society, there is still a huge gardening potential—given that the grass lawns surrounding U.S. residences collectively cover some 18 million acres. Converting even a small share of this to fresh vegetables and fruit trees could make an important contribution to improving nutrition.

Many cities and small towns in the United States and England are creating community gardens that can be used by those who would otherwise not have access to land for gardening. Providing space for community gardens is seen by many local governments as an essential service, like providing playgrounds for children or tennis courts and other sport facilities.

Many market outlets are opening up for local produce. Perhaps the best known of these are the farmers’ markets where local farmers bring their produce for sale. In the United States, the number of these markets increased from 1,755 in 1994 to more than 4,700 in mid-2009, nearly tripling over 15 years. Farmers’ markets reestablish personal ties between producers and consumers that do not exist in the impersonal confines of the supermarket. Many farmers’ markets also now take food stamps, giving low-income consumers access to fresh produce that they might not otherwise be able to afford. With so many trends now boosting interest in these markets, their numbers may grow even faster in the future.

In school gardens, children learn how food is produced, a skill often lacking in urban settings, and they may get their first taste of freshly picked peas or vine-ripened tomatoes. School gardens also provide fresh produce for school lunches. California, a leader in this area, has 6,000 school gardens.

Many schools and universities are now making a point of buying local food because it is fresher, tastier, and more nutritious and it fits into new campus greening programs. Some universities compost kitchen and cafeteria food waste and make the compost available to the farmers who supply them with fresh produce.

Supermarkets are increasingly contracting with local farmers during the season when locally grown produce is available. Upscale restaurants emphasize locally grown food on their menus. In some cases, year-round food markets are evolving that market just locally produced foods, including not only fruit and vegetables but also meat, milk, cheese, eggs, and other farm products.

Food from more distant locations boosts carbon emissions while losing flavor and nutrition. A survey of food consumed in Iowa showed conventional produce traveled on average 1,500 miles, not including food imported from other countries. In contrast, locally grown produce traveled on average 56 miles—a huge difference in fuel investment. And a study in Ontario, Canada, found that 58 imported foods traveled an average of 2,800 miles. Simply put, consumers are worried about food security in a long-distance food economy. This trend has led to a new term: locavore, complementing the better known terms herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore.

Concerns about the climate effects of consuming food transported from distant locations has also led Tesco, the leading U.K. supermarket chain, to label products with their carbon footprint—indicating the greenhouse gas contribution of food items from the farm to supermarket shelf. Sweden is a recent pioneer in labeling food with its carbon footprint along with nutritional facts.

As agriculture localizes, livestock production will likely start to shift away from mega-sized cattle, hog, and poultry feeding operations. The shift from factory farm production of milk, meat, and eggs by returning to mixed crop-livestock operations facilitates nutrient recycling as local farmers return livestock manure to the land. The combination of high prices of natural gas, which is used to make nitrogen fertilizer, and of phosphate, as reserves are depleted, suggests a much greater future emphasis on nutrient recycling—an area where small farmers producing for local markets have a distinct advantage over massive feeding operations.

In combination with moving down the food chain to eat fewer livestock products, reducing the food miles in our diets can dramatically reduce energy use in the food economy. And as world food insecurity mounts, more and more people will be looking to produce some of their own food in backyards, in front yards, on rooftops, in community gardens, and elsewhere, further contributing to the localization of agriculture.

# # #

Adapted from Chapter 9, “Feeding Eight Billion People Well,” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4

Youth Gardening as a Lifetime Change-Agent

2009-10-05T13:20:00.000-07:00

Experience with gardening, even observing other students carrying out gardening activities, has the potential of introducing lifelong changes in thinking, health, responsibility, appreciation, environmental concern, enjoyment, family nutrition, practical planning, and many other factors too often lacking in traditional educational systems. Classes focused on gardening can raise a student’s interest in other subjects by connecting math, science, reading, and so on with ongoing projects and thus introducing personal purpose and interdisciplinary understanding into schooling. A gardening class can present vocational guidance: one student may establish a business of providing window boxes beautifying homes and later become a landscape architect; another may begin with a new appreciation of growing things and develop a passionate interest in becoming a farmer; others may be visited with diverse ambitions—because gardening includes many diverse activities and arenas of study, many directions for new interests to blossom along with the flowers and squash.

Eating healthful foods is essential to well-being; reducing childhood obesity is a critical issue; children no longer grow up learning at home how to prepare well balanced meals or even knowing how to select wholesome food in markets. Schools need to take more responsibility for this kind of education, because students aren’t getting it elsewhere, and this is not just a literacy project or a test to be passed: This is learning not only how to live in health but also how to parent the next generation, so we don’t continue to have students who think milk is produced in the back room at the supermarket, and continue to be indifferent to what is available in school cafeterias and vending machines, and remain indifferent to what goes on in school as long as it doesn’t cost too much and the kids pass tests. Today’s students are tomorrow’s parents and tax-payers; who’s going to correct the schools if they don’t? Textbooks and lessons have but a shadow of the power for change that personal experience offers. Students are excited by the act of growing edibles; preparing food they have raised is practiced as a life-changing part of this study. Even students who never plant another seed may well eat differently, and grow up to feed their families differently, because of the experience of learning to appreciate vegetables as good eating.

Growing food locally reduces the need for shipping foods long distances. This reduces our carbon footprint, giving students a way to contribute to this otherwise remote endeavor. Our educational systems need to be inculcating these crucial matters into their students’ experiences and training; this is the time to influence them in terms of caring about their home planet and the ongoing life of our species.

Growing food organically teaches sound gardening and farming principles such as recycling nutrients back to the soil by composting; growing many different, correctly selected crops together to achieve and sustain a balanced ecosystem; and respect for other life forms, including the life in the soil. Many such students will go on to nurture gardens, even if very small ones, as a way of living. Those who do not will recognize the importance of organic growth principles and thus be well informed about selecting and purchasing food, an approach to personal and family nutrition that may well become a change-agent in improving national health.

Students who relate to soil and seeds, and watch growth, develop an appreciation of natural beauty. They learn that they can enhance their environment with flowering plants; they grasp the value of protecting our environment; they grow up to contribute to civic beauty.

We are planting seeds for the future of our students and the health of our planet. Our students experience the joy and wonder of the natural world. This kindles curiosity which leads students to want to learn more about what they have seen. Student enthusiasm from direct experience with the Earth comes back to the classroom in the form of curiosity about what was observed in the garden. For some students experiencing the success of gardening changes how students see themselves. This can be life changing as students see themselves as capable and industrious. The proof is right in front of them at their school campus in all of its beautiful blooming glory.

Trust and Listening Are Needed for Learning

2009-09-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

by Marlena Hirsch January 2010
I work for the Home and Hospital Program of Santa Rosa City Schools. We teach students who can’t attend schools due to illness and a variety of other reasons. I believe one of the unspoken reasons some of our students end up on this program is that they have given up. They are discouraged. The following is a description of the early stages of working with a discouraged teenager.

One of my students had a tough exterior. When I first met her, she acted like people on the Jerry Springer show who loudly display their disputes as if they are proud of making a spectacle. She was so far behind that she wanted to take the high school equivalency test. Yet on two practice tests, she got 12% correct. I spoke to her about why she was in this situation hoping we could gain insight on how to correct what had gone on before. Why hadn't she learned this material? Did she have trouble focusing? Were there distractions in her life? Had she ever been comfortable with school? Assuming that I was putting her down, she became angry. When I was talking to her, she talked over me so that she couldn’t hear me. I informed her that when she does that I can't teach her. She continued becoming more angry and saying she wanted her other teacher from last year. I told her that her previous teacher doesn't teach high school equivalency test preparation. I prepared to leave. She left the house. As her mom and I were talking in the front yard, her mom began to cry. She told me she had tried everything and didn't know what to do. Her daughter returned at that moment and saw her mother crying. I was hoping this would have some calming effect showing the daughter that her mom cares. Hoping she would listen to me, I again began to talk. This time I got right to the point. I told her I was angry that our education system was failing students like her and that the high school drop-out rate was over a third in her neighborhood. Beautiful young people like her were not being served, and I wanted to try to correct this.
She decided to try again. The next day she tried another grammar placement test in the front of a grammar book with the same dismal results. We worked on the first lesson. When I talked to her about how she learns, she bit her tongue and listened. She was not happy about it, but she listened. At the end of the hour, I asked her what she learned and she said she had learned to listen. It is from the solid foundation of trust and listening that learning takes place.
Two months later, we enjoy our lessons together. She wrote an essay about learning from her mistakes. I told her, “ I see learning from mistakes as a hallmark of maturity.” Getting to this point was a gradual process of building trust and learning to enjoy working together.

In Celebration of Eugene

2009-09-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

I sometimes visit Lewis Opportunity School, a small alternative secondary school in Santa Rosa, to bring plants, encouragement, and garden ideas. The teacher, his students and I work to beautify a school of run-down portable buildings, asphalt and cyclone fences. It is September, and school has started but something feels very different when I walk onto campus. Something is missing. Eugene is gone. He was the one who greeted me and made me feel that he knew I was part of a special mission to transform the world, one garden and one student at a time. He died during the summer.

I didn't know Eugene well, yet I felt our spirits were delighted by the same things. Eugene noticed which plants were starting to bloom. He knew which students were responding to the plants and which ones cared enough to work to help them grow. He would have been thrilled to see the sprays of yellow daisies on the towering Jerusalem Artichoke plants in the parking-lot planting area, to see the harvest from the potato patch, to see that the newly planted nectarine tree had made in through the dry California summer, and to see how much the grape vines had grown during their first summer.

When I arrived on campus with arms full of plants, Eugene's smile welcomed me. He loved it when I emerged from the bathroom in gardening clothes, my teaching outfit left behind, my mud caked worn-out running shoes on my feet. Now I could do magic. Eugene likened my transformation to what superman did when he donned his cape.
He knew my gardening clothes revealed my true identity.

Transforming the campus by getting the students to create beauty with plants was making a difference in student lives, if not now then years later. They were producing food with their own efforts. The seeds were being planted for a better world. "You can do this yourselves. It's easy." This was the message given by the act of gardening here. Eugene celebrated this vision, and he communicated this with his beaming smile and words of cheer.

I am including the anonymously written poem as a tribute to Eugene and to all who work to create a more peaceful humane world.

A SPIRITUAL CONSPIRACY

On the surface of the world right now there is

war and violence and things seem dark.

But calmly and quietly, at the same time,

something else is happening underground

An inner revolution is taking place

and certain individuals are being called to a higher light.

It is a silent revolution.

From the inside out. From the ground up.

This is a Global operation.

A Spiritual Conspiracy.

There are sleeper cells in every nation on the planet.

You won't see us on the TV.

You won't read about us in the newspaper

You won't hear about us on the radio

We don't seek any glory

We don't wear any uniform

We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles

Most of us work anonymously

We are quietly working behind the scenes

in every country and culture of the world

Cities big and small, mountains and valleys,

in farms and villages, tribes and remote islands

You could pass by one of us on the street

and not even notice

We go undercover

We remain behind the scenes

It is of no concern to us who takes the final credit

But simply that the work gets done

Occasionally we spot each other in the street

We give a quiet nod and continue on our way

During the day many of us pretend we have normal jobs

But behind the false storefront at night

is where the real work takes a place

Some call us the Conscious Army

We are slowly creating a new world

with the power of our minds and hearts

We follow, with passion and joy

Our orders come from the Central Spiritual Intelligence

We are dropping soft, secret love bombs when no one is looking

Poems ~ Hugs ~ Music ~ Photography ~ Movies ~ Kind words ~

Smiles ~ Meditation and prayer ~ Dance ~ Social activism ~ Websites

Blogs ~ Random acts of kindness...

We each express ourselves in our own unique ways

with our own unique gifts and talents

Be the change you want to see in the world

That is the motto that fills our hearts

We know it is the only way real transformation takes place

We know that quietly and humbly we have the

power of all the oceans combined

Our work is slow and meticulous

Like the formation of mountains

Nurturing Relationships

2009-08-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

Some relations with family or friends are nurturing. These are the relationships that sustain me. It may be a special relationship that helps me see the truth and appreciate beauty. For example, a coworker and I related like this today. At lunch we talked about our love for and experiences with horses, an animal that I have always considered beautiful. Other parts of our conversation were an attempt to see the truth of situations that we find ourselves in, by sharing insights and impressions. I was glad to take time in my day to spend with this friend.

I am reminded how important my nurturing relationships are with my family and friends by the
passing of one of my true and inspiring friends. First, I will clarify my use of the term nurturing relationships: what is a nurturing relationship? Nurture comes from the same root word as nutrition. Nurturing helps support or sustain. It also can cause growth. A nurturing relationship is one that makes us feel supported and helps us grow to be better people.

Relationships with my immediate family are so deep and special that I cannot even begin to put them into words. These are the people who will persistently tell me the truth about myself that I may not want to hear, and they will tell it again patiently or impatiently until I hear. They care enough to do that. They know that I want to grow as a person and trust that I will be open to the truth.

For example, my son once told me how to be a better listener with specific things to do to listen better and participate more responsibly in conversation. I understood how useful his suggestions were and even took notes at the time. He followed up with coaching in our later conversations. Truth be told, he was probably at his wits’ end with my interruptions and thinking I knew what was being said without really listening. When I was a child, what passed for communication between my mother and me was to talk at each other so I had a lot to learn.

I am happy to be learning to take my time and really hear what is being said. Listening is such a nice way to appreciate another person. I can show someone that they are worth while to me. This may seem like a small thing to do, but in slowing down, I am noticing that the quality of my day is made up of hundreds of small things.