1. Opossums can kill chickens, in fact, they disembowel them
2. Matt can kill opossums
3. Raccoons decapitate chickens
4. Weasels leave the chickens they kill mostly in tact
5. Plants don’t do well when it’s really hot for a long time (Whitney)
6. Plants need water, like, regularly (Kristin)
7. Plants require, typically, about 1 inch of rain a week (Caleb)
8. Excess heat really affects crop production (Matt)
9. Peas are usually easy to grow because they fix their own nitrogen even in poor soil, and they are not particularly stricken by pests (Caleb)
10. Peas are hard to grow (Kristin)
11. Sometimes you do everything right and it all goes wrong; sometimes you do everything wrong and it turns out well
12. Cedar trees should not be planted next to apple trees
13. There is a reason why insecticides are so popular
14. The leaves of all nightshade plants (i.e. tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, etc.) are poisonous
15. Blackberry bushes have wicked thorns (Kristin)
16. Picking wild blackberries can hurt; best to wear long sleeves and jeans (Matt)
17. There’s an actual part of a chicken called a “tender”
18. Virginia is too far south to grow Honeycrisp apples
19. One can eat weeds like parslane and lamb’s quarter, and lamb’s quarter leaves contain a complete protein
20. It is unusual to find cantalopes or yams in the U.S.; the actual vegetable names are “muskmelon” and “sweet potato”
21. Tomatoes should be stored upside down to discourage squishing
22. Tomatoes should be harvested at the first blush of color to prevent cracking or insect damage
23. Tomato plants won’t produce new tomatoes above 85 degrees
24. Raw milk doesn’t “go bad” as much as it “sours”
25. Cinnamon is tree bark
26. There is no one pumpkin species
27. Hens begin laying at about 18 to 22 weeks of age
28. Cows can swim
29. Pineapple grows on the ground
30. Vine bores are terrible pests
31. Many trees show stress from lack of water through their top-most leaves
32. Tent moths are nasty creatures
33. Healthy chickens will harass wounded chickens to no end; pecking orders are real
34. It’s easy to forget what the garden looked like 3 weeks ago
35. It’s important not to water too frequently or roots will not extend deep enough in the soil to weather droughts
36. One person cannot eat enough tomatoes to keep up with several tomato plants
37. The colors of the harvest in July are the most gorgeous
38. Parsley has a flavor, and isn’t just a decorative garnish
39. (Matt)I need to be held accountable for harvesting, or I’ll forget to do it
40. A walk through the garden every day is a good idea
41. Orchards graft many of their apple trees to roots of different types
42. You can tell if an orchard uses herbicides if there aren’t many weeds around the base of the trees
43. Virginia soil is good for grape and wine production, but we have too many insects to do it without lots of pesticides
44. Thomas Jefferson could not have managed his economically-failing farm and maintained time to tinker if he hadn’t kept slaves
45. Raccoons are strong. They will destroy your chicken coop if you’re not careful
46. Chickens need calcium or their egg shells become soft
47. When potato plants die, it’s time to harvest them, unless you want them to cure in the ground
48. Green onions are just young onions
49. Eating well takes time. Appreciating good food takes even longer.
50. Compost content needs to be balanced
51. You can peel tomatoes easily by first boiling them for a minute, then dropping them in cold water
52. Chickens are far more docile when it is dark outside than when it is light
53. Planting just few vegetables in your yard can be really easy
54. I’d rather pull weeds than pick green beans (Matt)
55. Rotating types of crops between plots and beds can reduce the risk for invasive pests
56. Don’t delay fixing problems in your garden
57. Eggplants are best mixed with other things to be used as a flavor accent
58. Walking outside to grab a vegetable off of a plant or clipping herbs for immediate preparation is wonderfully pleasurable
59. How to shoot a rifle, use a pole saw, chop wood, drive an ATV, transplant plants, compost, operate a generator, trap groundhogs
60. Ticks need to be embedded 24–36 hours before they can transmit Lymes Disease (as Caleb learned the hard way)
61. Groundhogs can climb short fences — really well
62. Regular watering is best done in the early morning.  If you water in the afternoon it evaporates too quickly.  If you water at night, it can encourage fungal diseases in plants.
63. I’m terrible cutting wood with a saw (Matt)
64. Chopping wood with an axe is therapeutic
65. What skinks, mud daubers, and turkey vultures are
66. What a hummingbird looks like in “person”
67. Large planting pots can store more water than smaller ones
68. How to identify acorn, spaghetti, patty pan, and summer squash
69. I don’t find mustard greens particularly palatable (Matt & Whitney)
70. Sweet corn needs a lot of water
71. What asparagus looks like after it shoots
72. How broccoli heads form from the plant
73. Indoor vegetable plantings need to be very close to a light source or they’ll become weak and leggy
74. How to identify poison ivy
75. How to shell pecans after they fall off the tree
76. Pine burns quickly and makes excellent kindling
77. Eating the autumn harvest is the best
78. Deer can jump at least a 10-foot-fence
79. Chestnuts come inside prickly balls
80. Black walnuts are not as good as English walnuts.  Plus, they kinda smell.
81. Persimmons should be picked after the first frost
82. Kumquats are the northern-most growing citrus fruit
83. Trees need to be watered, especially young ones
84. Animals don’t like to eat plants in the allium family (i.e. onions, shallots, garlic, etc).  Thus, they can be planted outside of garden fences.
85. Worms are good for a garden.  Slugs are bad for a garden.
86. Putting egg shells in your compost will keep slugs out of your garden.

This turkey is grateful he didn't wind up on someone's Thanksgiving plate

I was reminded after Thanksgiving that I don’t think about and express gratitude often enough. Going around the table at supper and saying what you’re grateful for may be the traditional thing to do on Thanksgiving, but for me it’s distinctly an untraditional activity within the scope a whole year. Giving thanks is a radical departure from the negativity, cynicism, criticism, complaining, and entitlement which I regularly encounter and, I’m sorry to say, all too often take part in myself. I find it really easy to be ungrateful and hard to be grateful. Gratitude makes you vulnerable since to truly show your gratitude you have to reveal what you value, and when you show what you value, you show those who want to hurt you where to attack. Of course there exist things of which you should be ungrateful, but I spend a disproportional amount of energy on the things of which I’m ungrateful versus the things of which I should be grateful. Lest this post be all about how I’m ironically ungrateful for ungratefulness, I want to share some of the things that I’ve been grateful for in the past year.

I’m grateful for people: I’m grateful for the generosity of Kristin’s family, who are letting Kristin, Lucy, and I as well as two people who were strangers to them stay in their house for almost nothing. Not only are they letting us stay in their house, a special place for the Thomas/Vale family, but they often express excitement about us being here. We’ve also experienced generosity while being visitors for dinner at the Myers-Benner’s as well as at Molly and Linda’s, and Kristin, Lucy, and I were welcomed so quickly and fully into our church community here, that we still have trouble believing it. Furthermore, I’ve enjoyed the interest of the readers of this blog, even though blogs often get self-indulgent.

I’m grateful for time: One of the main reasons I wanted to do the “Thomas Farm Project” was to spend more time with Lucy and Kristin; I’ve been so glad to have the time to spend with them. I’m thankful for the time I’ve had to read. It’s been many years since I’ve been able to read so much for pleasure. I thoroughly appreciate the extra time we have to prepare and eat nutritious, flavorful meals. It’s been great to have the time, resources, and the right life stage to try new things–like working on a sustainable farm.

I’m grateful for…other things: It’s a great blessing to have space for a garden and chickens. I love being able to access plenty of fresh, local food but not having to depend upon it if it isn’t available. I’m happy that we can “re-gift” the Thomas/Vale generosity by having guests stay in the house’s extra rooms or hunt in the woods around the house.

We have such abundance: more comfort than we need, more time than we need, more space than we need, and more food than we need. What grace…and I’ve only been able to scratch the surface.

I chose these images, not just based on aesthetic appeal, but also because they capture some fine moments, and important events that marked the year (e.g., snowstorms).

Browse the photos at your leisure!

Matt and I left the farm for Thanksgiving and have been visiting our friend Kacey in Blacksburg. We had a non-traditional (not to be confused with un-American) vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner of Chili Con Tempeh, mashed potatoes, Brooklyn Brown Ale, and apple pie and ice cream. I guess considering the mashed potatoes and apple pie we only qualify as semi-traditional. We also had fresh French Walnut Bread that Kacey baked. I think that back at the farm the extended Thomas family enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey (not actually a farm turkey) and mincemeat pie with hard sauce!

In keeping with the theme of the season, I am very thankful that all four of our chickens are finally laying! That means we’ll have a lot of eggs that need eating in the next month so send us your egg recipes if you have any that you particularly like!

Since much of our farm drama this year has been chicken related it should come as no surprise that shortly before the last chicken started laying, we had another traumatic chicken episode. Last Sunday afternoon Caleb discovered that the top of the run had been removed from the coop and two of the chickens were missing. Our first fear was that a predator had pulled off the top and eaten the chickens. But it seemed odd since it was the middle of the day. So we started searching in the woods and Matt found one of the missing chickens (the Red Star) running around in the underbrush. You may remember that the Red Star was the sole survivor of the chicken attack in the middle of the summer so perhaps it is not surprising that she came through this adventure unscathed as well. At that point I had to leave for an orchestra concert so I wasn’t there to see Matt, Caleb and Lucy (strapped to Caleb’s chest in the front carrier) chase the remaining chicken around the garage and wood pile until they finally caught her. Now that we know some of the chickens are wishing for freedom, we’ll be a little more careful in attaching the top of the run so they can’t knock it off.

I hope you all had a happy holiday, full of delicious food. And if you want to mix things up next year you can try a new tradition – go around the table and have everyone say one thing they are not thankful for. It can be surprisingly therapeutic.

Frost has not stopped all garden activity

It’s been about a week since our first major frost of autumn, marking the end of most, but not all, activity in the garden.  The frost was pretty late, I think, even for as far south as we are—so we counted ourselves lucky.

The casualties of frost included heat-loving basil, tomatoes, corn, and peppers as well as green beans.  We had generously harvested these vegetables, seeing the writing on the wall, or, in this case, the writing on the National Weather Service’s webpage.  We even harvested most sizable green tomatoes.  We may make a dish out of the green tomatoes; if we don’t, then the tomatoes will eventually ripen by sharing ethylene gas with some apples in a sealed paper sack.  The tomatoes haven’t been particularly tasty and probably aren’t that nutritious, but they are ours; and what do you really expect in November?  Unfortunately, the corn didn’t quite make it to maturity before the frost.

Other crops are still going along OK with limited intervention including peas, broccoli, spinach, and clover.  It’s been nice to not have to worry too much about irrigation or weeding.  We’ve enjoyed some peas, but we’re still waiting on the broccoli and spinach.  We’ve had some issues with Imported Cabbage Worms and the broccoli, but a pair of hands and some hungry chickens have taken care of that, I think.  I like the idea of sweeping snow aside to cut some spinach (I’ve heard some varieties can survive to 0 degrees Fahrenheit), but I’m not getting my hopes up too high.  The clover is the cover crop we planted.  Hopefully it provides more cover before it dies off.

Some plants are still going with a little weather protection.  We’ve moved chives, parsley, lemon verbena, and mint indoors, and we’ve been covering some potted lettuce with a fancy-dancy trash bag on cold nights.  The efforts we’ve taken to protect some of our plants have made us even more appreciative of the work professional growers do to extend the season.  Vendors at the Charlottesville Farmer’s Market have warm-weather crops for a pretty large portion of the growing season.  We saw tomatoes and peppers this Saturday.

The hardiest of the plants are just starting to grow.  We recently planted some garlic as well as more spinach and chard.  I love that even when we’re not doing anything with the garden, there will still be plants just waiting for spring to perk up.

As of this posting, half of our chickens have yet to lay, so there are still new “harvests” on that front, despite the cool weather.

Even though folks typically see autumn as a time where everything is beginning to die, life is definitely still humming along.  There may even be some weeding in the cards next weekend.

P.S. The Unidentified Farming Objects in my previous post were a corn husker and a rock crusher, respectively. They both operate from an old tractor’s PTO.

A motley crew: Whitney, Kristin, Caleb, Ben, Steven, John

Last weekend, Whitney’s parents, Ben and Elaine, visited from Idaho. Their time with us was replete with apple picking at Carter Mountain Orchard, target practice in the woods, and a 10k for Whitney and Ben.

Ben and Elaine joined a long list of visitors we’ve had at the farm over the past 10 months. One of the benefits of the house at the farm is its ample space for guests. None of the four of us have recently lived in places that accommodated visitors from outside of town, so we knew that living at the Thomas Farm would provide opportunities for our friends and family to stop by and stay a while for a change. Therefore, it wouldn’t be particularly complete to reflect on our time here without commenting on our guests and how they’ve impacted our experience.

Carolyn and Mike, Kristin’s aunt and uncle, have spent several long weekends with us, and have been our most frequent visitors. (They really aren’t visitors per se, but it’s easiest for the sake of this article to characterize them that way). We’ve shared countless meals with them, worked with them, and had a lot of fun spending time with them. It’s safe to say that they have shaped our year more than anyone.

To give you a sense of our visitorship, I’ve assembled our cast of guests from the farm calendar in addition to Carolyn and Mike (pardon the error if I missed you): Callie (plus several friends), Ben, Angie, Darcy, John, Stuart, 2 Bluffton College students, Carl, Marilu, Sandy, Ed, Ann, Brian, Ashley, Mitchell, Kaitlyn, Jessica, Dick, Bonnie, Kacey, Charlottesville Symphony Orchestra viola section, Ben, Jillian, Molly, Linda, Sue, Sandy, Lindsay, Mike, Joni, Steve, Ben, Whitney, Jon, Karly (+ parents), AJ, Sophie, Steven, Isaac, Kerin, Emily, John, Lynne, Greg, Grace, Courtney, Jeremy, Lily, Janelle, Jason, Kali, Rachel, Ben, and Elaine. Yes — 3 Ben’s.

The sheer quantity of names in that list gives you a sense that things have been busy socially around the farm. As an introvert, I would sometimes find this environment a tad overwhelming, but on the whole, very positive. Guests often prompted us to do things around the farm and the surrounding area that I think we normally would have taken for granted — hiking in the woods, clearing trails, riding on the ATV, swimming, grilling, target practice, wine tasting, tours of local historical sites, day trips to nearby towns, clearing gutters, and so on.

If there’s one thing that united all of the visits we’ve had on the farm, it’s food. As we’ve mentioned in this blog, food has often been at the center of our activities as a household, and perhaps this is even more true when we had guests. I enjoyed being able to point to the salad on the table and say, “that’s Thomas Farm lettuce,” or, “those are our green beans.”

Enjoying the farm’s produce wouldn’t have been near as fun or perhaps satisfying if we weren’t able to share it with others. I have to say the same goes for our time on the farm as a whole. Sharing it with so many family and friends has gone a long way in making it special and memorable.

The way we’ve been handling meals on the farm this year is each couple has set nights for making dinner. Matt and I cook Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Kristin and Caleb cook Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We take turns on Sundays. Kristin has been graciously doing the grocery shopping this year which means produce from our CSA and the farmers market on Tuesday and everything else on Wednesday. So usually on Monday nights Matt and I sit down with some cookbooks and pick what we want to make for the week.

There is one cookbook we now use regularly that Caleb and Kristin introduced us to called Simply in Season. It is perfect for our food project because it divides recipes into spring, summer, autumn, and winter based on what ingredients the recipes include. Since we pick our meals before seeing what comes in each week’s CSA share and before we know what will be ready in our garden or at the farmer’s market it can be hard to know what recipes to choose. The categorization of these recipes makes it much easier to be confident that if I pick recipes from the autumn section this week most of the vegetables we need will be available locally.

I haven’t been brave enough to try some of the recipes yet like ‘Gingered Kale and Tofu’ or ‘Chard Utopia’. But so far everything we have tried from Simply in Season has been delicious and not too complicated to make. If ‘Zucchini Garden Chowder’ and ‘Red Lentil Coconut Curry’ sound delicious to you, I highly recommend Simply in Season.

Of course there are other cookbooks we’ve enjoyed this year. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has a lot of good recipes and a large section just for vegetables which I’ve found very helpful. The Joy of Cooking used to seem intimidating, but it’s great for reference and does include some recipes that don’t take all day to make (although you have to do a little searching to find them). And I continue to find online recipes sites helpful, especially when I can’t think of anything new to do with green beans or a butternut squash.

When this year ends I’m going to really miss the community of cooking and eating we’ve developed at the farm. I think it will be harder for me to continue prioritizing meals when we’re not living here anymore. It makes it easier to be motivated to cook when it’s for a bigger group and it’s really nice to have someone else make dinner for you every other night. But I hope that the habits we’ve formed this year at the farm will stay with us so that on the nights when I think ‘let’s order a pizza’ I’ll also remember that Black Bean and Rice Skillet is pretty delicious and I can make it in about 30 minutes – almost as long as it would take the pizza to arrive

While Caleb and I were back in Minneapolis last weekend, at a high school friend of mine’s wedding, Lena disappeared.  Poor Matt and Whitney turned the house upside down looking for her, not wanting to be the cat sitters who lost the cat.  They called us to let us know, but both Caleb and I figured she would return by the end of the night.  When she hadn’t come back by the time we arrived back in VA, nearly 4 days later, we were worried.  She’s never run away.  For a while we were worried that she had gotten stuck in the HVAC system, since the HVAC guy had come the day she disappeared.  But when we realized our whole heating system would smell like cat pee if that were true, we gave up on that idea.

That began the search.  I called local shelters to ask if she had been brought in, no luck.  I called the microchip company to see if anyone had called her her number, no luck.  Caleb and I made signs, laminated them and hung them all over our small town.  That was actually a funny experience, because I had just started writing for the local paper and they printed a picture of our family with a small story that explained who I was.  As we hung the signs several people said, “Aren’t you the new reporter?  Too bad you lost your cat.”

6 days pass.  We get several calls and tips, and we follow up on each one of them.  One man showed us a cat who he had named “little butt” that was not Lena.  Another woman swore Lena was living in a drain pipe near her house but loved catnip and was afraid of humans.  If you have ever met Lena, you know that’s not her.  A third call said she was under a bridge clear on the other side of the county – unlikely since she’s afraid of water and she would have had to cross a river.

Caleb kept saying horrible things like, “She probably got eaten by a hawk.”  And, “Farm cats aren’t meant to live long.”  We were prepared for the worst, but secretly hoping for the best.

Then, on Friday night at 7 p.m., right after dinner was served, we got a call from a house in a nearby subdivision saying that they thought they had our cat and that she had wandered right up to their door and meowed to be let in that evening.  My hope sprang anew.  This was promising.  Caleb was still ready to go and see another cat that wasn’t ours.  When we drive to the house, we realize from looking at our GPS that it is just a stone’s throw away from our farm.  The family opened the door and sure enough – it was her!  Same small body, crazy eye whiskers, and friendly personality.

I drove home giddy and cooing to Lena as if she were my new born baby.  I was so happy to have her home.  We came home and Matt, Whitney and my Aunt Carolyn and Mike (who were visiting) celebrated with us.  Lena and I spent the rest of the evening cuddling on the couch.  We’re so happy to have her back.  It felt like we had lost one of “us”.

The Ameraucana's first blue egg (click to view larger)

This afternoon, I was pleased to discover that our Ameraucana chicken laid her first egg, and as expected, it’s blue!

As you may recall, in posts dating back to July (Chicken Drama I and II), we’ve been having trouble creating harmony between our only surviving chicken from the original three, Marcia, and our three newest chickens (the kids). After a few days of the four of them living together, it became clear that the Ameraucana (the grey one) was receiving the brunt of Marcia’s negative attention. Even after we separated Marcia from the other three, the Ameraucana’s younger “siblings” continued to pester her; as a result, we separated her from Marcia and the younger two for almost a month.

Hence, we’ve been worried that all of this drama would delay the start of her laying. By my calculations, she is about 20 weeks old. Those of you more knowledgeable than I can tell me if that’s about the right time for her to begin laying.

In my most recent post, I noted that we had each tried to predict the date on which the first of our youngest three chickens would lay. Today, Oct. 9th, is closest* to Caleb’s prediction of Oct. 10. Congratulations, Caleb! You won…um…we never settled on a prize. Perhaps you can eat the first egg!

—m

*If we were playing by “The Price is Right” rules, Whitney would be victorious with her guess of Oct. 3.