What Did We Do On a Friday?

We picked up our Bike Friday Tandems and went for a cruise. To the local chocolate factory, of course! We actually picked them up on Wednesday, and have been biking all over the place since then. The kids love them, and I'm so much happier with them safely tucked behind us, it extends our range to streets that I wouldn't go on if they were on their own bikes, and extends our distance and shortens our time to get there as well!

Now, the only major question is: is it more fun to bike with my kids on a tandem, or with my husband?? We dropped the kids off at their robotics camp this morning, then put the seat up on one of the tandems and took off together on our "bicycle built for two". They say that riding a tandem will either make or break a marriage, but we have already flown an airplane together (and he is a notorious backseat driver, er, pilot) so I figured we would be okay. It was fun, crazy, and a little scary. From the back, I can't see much, and have to rely on what it feels like he's about to do (turn, stop, coast). From the front, I have to keep the balance, which is a lot harder with him on the back than with one of the kids! You have to stop and start, lean, coast, and pedal together, and we were both laughing our heads off just trying to get the thing started. What fun.

On My Bookshelf

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth

Someone recommended this excellent book to me and it is totally chock full of information you need to get started with seed saving. I have to admit it is pretty overwhelming, when you start thinking about isolating various crops from cross-pollination (especially since many of our neighbors have vegetable gardens) and all the different techniques you need for different vegetables. I got the book out from the library, but I can already tell I'll need to buy it to use as a more or less constant reference. I'm saving seeds this year from a few easy plants - melons, pumpkins, edameme, and I'll try the harder stuff as we go.

When Bad Things Happen to Good Chickens

This weekend a dog in the neighborhood killed three of our beloved chickens. On our property, right in front of the kids, with me trying to get the dog away and frantically calling for the owners to come get the dog. I can still hear my daughter's voice in my head "Mommy, he's killing Goldie! Mommmmmmyyyyyy!!!!" and like those awful slow-motion dreams, not being able to get there in time to stop this dog. We buried them with a small ceremony on Saturday night, but the sadness won't leave for awhile.

When we got chickens, it was for the purpose of laying eggs - a sort of a utilitarian feature. I was unprepared for how endearing these creatures could be, how they would each have their own personality and quirks, how they would follow me around while gardening, with their soft little "bwaaaks" and squawks, looking for the bugs and worms I turned up. And so I was unprepared for the amount of grief that their demise has brought.

Goldie was our first egg-layer. For reasons unknown, she picked the side-vent of our house as a likely nesting box and laid her first few eggs in there. Afterwards, she would walk around the yard, loudly and proudly proclaiming her accomplishment. It was so fun for the kids to find those first few eggs.

Boudicca the Fierce was the leader of the whole chicken tribe, top of the pecking order (and the most likely to peck at me when she was a little chick). She was fiesty and funny.

And our beloved Dingbat, who was originally named Aphrodite, but renamed when her vision problems caused her to miss the door to the pen and run into the wire on many occasions. She also had a gimpy toe, that probably went along with her poor vision, but she had a very sweet temperament, and was the only chicken to take our new babies under her wing this year and shepherd them around the yard.

These three sweet being brought smiles and their funny silly chicken antics into our lives and we will miss them terribly. I know that out there in the big world people are having much worse days than this. I know people in many places would give their eyeteeth to have a day where only chickens die (or even be happy, because then they would have a decent meal), but for us, we've lost some beloved pets and we are grieving "just for chickens".

RIP Goldie, Boudicca the Fierce, and Dingbat.

Nothing Like Scarcity



We camped in the desert for 6 days this week. There's nothing like having no water around for miles and miles to really make you appreciate the stuff. To savor every drop. To be completely and totally aware of how you use it. I think here in the reasonably rainy PacNW, we forget what a precious commodity water really is. Especially the clean, drinkable stuff. When you're out there in the dust zone, straining off your cooking water into another pot so you can re-use it to wash dishes, and emptying the water from your cooler into your dog's bowl, it becomes much more apparent.

It was a great journey, in many ways. And coming back, I have a new appreciation for the ease at which I can turn on a faucet and get beautiful clear water to fill my glass.

The New Family Vehicle

After a couple of years of deliberation, we finally ordered our new family tandem bicycles today. So far, the Burley Piccolo (tag-a-long) has been suiting us fairly well. I started off cycling with both kids in the Burley trailer, then moved M. to the tag-a-long while A. was still small enough to be in the trailer. When she turned 5, she moved up to the tag-a-long, which meant that M. had to ride his own bike. That works well for the many streets in town that are bike-friendly and relatively traffic free, but it limits us when we want to go somewhere that has more cars or I feel is too dangerous for him to navigate. On a street with lots of traffic and a narrow bike lane, one swerve on his part could be disastrous. The tandem will free us up to go longer distances, faster, and also to go on streets where I feel more comfortable being in control of the whole bike and both kids. So we'll hook the tag-a-long to the back of the tandem and off we'll go! For days when DH is around, we can take both tandems.

Here's the Bike Friday folding tandem I'll be using with the kids!

New Garden Pics


All the raised beds are in, and things are growing really well. We've gotten a good number of snap peas, and planted more lettuce than we could eat. I haven't bought anything green from the store in weeks! The squirrels have taken all the strawberries (they'll be moved up to planters on the deck). Here's a couple pics of our new garden space. This one is taken from the top deck, looking down into the back.

This is the "shade garden", mostly perennial shade lovers, and I've added in some blueberries and huckleberries into this area:

A Little Bit of Anything Adds Up

I watered my garden yesterday with 10 gallons of water that would've gone down the drain. I've always dreamed of having some sort of graywater recovery system, but retrofitting one into this house would be a major and expensive project. So I decided to do something small to recover just some of the graywater - put a five gallon bucket in our shower, and whenever we turn on the shower to warm it up (which takes awhile on the second floor because the water heater is in the basement), the cold water that's running can go into the bucket. It's a shame to waste all of that clean water just because it's not warm!

After a couple of weeks of trying it, I'll say that the bucket system is working really well. Best of all, when you start looking at saving one little wasteful bit, it really opens your eyes to all the other bits that you're also throwing away. Now when I drain my cooler after camping, I drain it into a bucket. If I don't want to use it right then, I can just pour it into our rain barrel. And when I shower, I'm more cognizant of the amount of water that's being wasted, so I only turn the water on halfway - it still feels like a full shower, but it's using half as much water!

Sometimes it feels overwhelming to think about all of the things we'd like to change to become more sustainable. Making just one small change is easy though, and so many other changes can flow naturally from that. I recently read some wise words: "Walk in the direction you want to be going." It sounds so simple and it's really true. You don't have to get there today, but if you put one foot on the path, you're headed there eventually.

Bambi Vs. Godzilla

I don't know if you've seen this short film, Bambi Vs. Godzilla, made in 1969. You can view it here. It's very simple: Bambi is in the forest, looking around at the beautiful meadows and butterflies and such, and then Godzilla's foot comes down and stomps him flat. I just went to a memorial service (celebration of life) for a friend who was out bicycling in the beautiful meadows and was hit by a logging truck. Kind of like Godzilla's foot, out of nowhere. She was a really, truly amazing person. It's times like this when I wish I hadn't seen so many episodes of Six Feet Under, because it somehow allows a window into seeing the grim reality of death and what it all really means to the corporeal body. I've been torn this week with so many conflicting emotions - sadness of course, and a feeling of tragedy, a life cut way too short - especially such a dynamic life, the memories of the person, the spirit, the life of such a person, the ugly reality of such a death, the fear that you don't always express but is still there when you spend thousands of miles a year on a bicycle, among large multi-ton objects moving twice as fast as you, the feeling that you shouldn't have to feel such a fear, that you just want to enjoy the beautiful feeling of freedom that riding a bicycle can be.

I was on that same road, not all that many hours before she was. Those logging trucks have passed me so many times. Maybe that logging truck. But it's not just that road, and it's not just that truck. Today, bicycling to her service, I had to change lanes in traffic and the guy behind me roared up on my rear wheel and honked. Never mind I legally can use a lane of traffic just like any other vehicle. Normally drivers here are quite used to bicycles and often very courteous. Maybe this guy just moved here from California, along with half our new population, I don't know. Before that, I biked with my kids to gymnastics, and had to negotiate a several-block stretch of busy road with no bike lanes. I hate that bit of road. I hate not knowing if some driver will come roaring too close to my kids. But what is the alternative? Live in fear? Only drive a car? As if people don't get killed in cars every day of the year? Have my kids grow up feeling entitled to drive big hulks of moving, resource-sucking metal because otherwise the other hulk-drivers might accidentally just kill them? God, I hate this feeling. I hate not having a good choice, only the ability to choose between bad ones. Drive the resource-sucking hulk, bike with my kids on dangerous road, tell my kids they can't go to gymnastics because the gym is on such a bad road. Where's the good choice?

I'm rambling, I know. I'm still in some shock that this person is gone. The service was amazing. Totally packed with people, showing the amazing depth and breadth of her influence on the many people in her life. People telling stories about her, about the incredible person that she was, all the dimensions of her life. I'm in shock at her death. I'm sad and scared and also full of the knowledge that this won't stop me from going out on the road either. I biked that road again yesterday, the one with the logging trucks - it's such a short stretch of road, but it connects so many of the local bike routes. To avoid it would be to cut out half the great local routes. My husband is out somewhere on his bike right now, coming home from work, 10 miles away. So if you're reading this and you're a hulk driver (as are many of us, even those of us who cycle as well) please take this moment to reflect that nothing is worth driving in a way that endangers the pedestrians and cyclists that share the roads with you. There's no appointment so important, no moment so big that you might miss that is worth someone's life. Please, drive safely out there.

When I Burn Gas, I'm Supporting the War (and Every Other American Policy I Disagree With)

It seems so simple, but it's so hard to wrap one's head around. Everything presented to us in the media is so separated - this event happens here, this policy happens there, the president does this, congress votes for that. It's difficult to see the direct result of any actions that we personally take.

But the realization has been dawning on me that every single action I take is tied to every action taken "out there" in the political world. The war wouldn't be happening if almost every American wasn't burning way too much gas (and not just in our cars, but with our lifestyles, the things we buy, what we eat, etc.) Going to peace rallies and writing our congressman is all well and good, but if we are going to effect any positive change whatsoever, it is imperative that we stop doing this now. More wars will have to be fought for oil if we continue to use it to fuel our existance. If I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice my kids to those future wars, then I can't, in good conscience, live a lifestyle that will require them to be fought.

So, for personal accountability, I've started keeping a mileage log. My immediate goal is to bring my gas-powered miles below my human powered miles, specifically my transportation miles (not my biking and running for exercise and fun miles). If you are interested in effecting real change in our world, in the policies of our nations and leaders, and in our future, I urge you to give this a try as well. Of course, there are more pieces to the pie than just this. Not buying unnecessary stuff, buying local food, etc. etc. But this is a good first step at personal accountability for what is going on "out there"

Mileage For the Week

Car, Gas: 43 miles, 2.2 gallons
Car, Gas, Carpooling: 21 miles, 1 gallon/2 families = .5 gallons
Car, Biodiesel: 41 miles, 1 gallon
Bike, with kids: 21
Bike, town, no kids: 11
Walking, with kids: 1.5

What's a Farm (urban or not) Without a Tire Swing?


My hard-working husband took a break from hauling gravel and putting in garden beds to throw one of my old climbing ropes around this old tire that M. and a friend dragged out of the river last year. It took them about an hour to unstick it from the lovely muck it was embedded in, and figure out a way to carry it between the two of them (which involved using a long stick that they each carried an end of). They arrived back at our picnic spot covered in mucky goo, holding the tire between them on the stick like a muddy caricature of the hunters of yore, and insisting that we had to bring it home to use as a tire swing. Being as I am not as attached to the interior of my car as some might be, we found a way to wrap it in bags and newspaper and bring it along. It has sat in the garage ever since, my son resisting fiercely any attempt by my husband to recycle it, sure it would find it's place as our tire swing eventually. Now the day has come, the underbrush is sufficiently cleared out to have a good swinging spot, and you can see the happy expression on the tenacious tire hunter.

Chick Butts

How could I forget about the chick butts (and do you think I'll get lots of Google hits with a post title like that)? We just got our new baby chickens this weekend, and since we haven't had babies in a year, we had to go buy some starter feed, drag out the heat lamp, and of course I had to resume my role as the checker of the chick butts. Baby chicks are occasionally prone to a condition known as "pasting up" in professional poultry circles, which I won't go into great detail about except to note that I have to check and make sure they don't get chick poo on their back ends which can cause them no end of intestinal problems.

Of course, the chicks do not like this little exercise, and if last year is any indication the chicks will bond to everyone in the family but me. For months to come, even after they've outgrown the tendency to paste up, they will see me coming and take off: "Oh no! It's that crazy lady who wipes our butts!" Run!" This makes me the second least likely person to be able to catch a chicken if it accidentally gets somewhere it's not supposed to be. My daughter, who likes to pick up the chickens and carry them around singing to them, can catch any of them with ease. My son, who has a natural affinity for animals is pretty good at it too. My husband trying to catch a chicken is an act worthy of a vaudeville stage, however, and we have all gotten a few good belly laughs at his expense. Cheap entertainment here on the Blue Skies Farm, almost as good as a greased pig :) Now that I am the person who regularly takes out the kitchen scraps to the chickens, all I have to do is walk outside with a tupperware container in my hand and they will all follow me like the poultry pied piper. Apparently, the memories of the days when I was the tender of chicken butts has finally faded, as it hopefully will for today's chicks.

The Elephant in the Room

Today we drove the car to A's dance performance, which was in a biking-inhospitable corner of the sprawl end of town. We haven't driven since Tuesday. The less we drive, the more I notice driving. When we drive all the time, it takes on the feeling of normality, an everyday activity. It's only when I divorce myself from it that I can see it for the abnormality that it is - a blip on the spectrum of human existance, a time when humanity briefly lit the oil candle whose flame burnt fast and furious.

As soon as you start seeing the elephant in the living room, it's there staring you in the face everywhere. It's the guy with the leaf blower at the park, spewing the 2-stroke engine's lovely combination of burning oil and gas, it's the tense faces of the motorists who edge into the crosswalk while you're still in it, trying to shave a few seconds off of wherever they're in a hurry to get to, it's the half-empty buses going by, and the one person in almost every car on the road, and it's in the mirror the next time you pick up your car keys.

We don't want to see that elephant. We are spending so much energy right now not seeing the elephant, it's almost ludicrous. I posted an article from Rolling Stone about The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler's term for the post-peak-oil catastrophe we are facing on a bulletin board that I frequent. No one has yet commented on it, or maybe even read it. Meanwhile, Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise, the Duke Lacrosse team, and Denise Richards' divorce from Charlie Sheen have all gotten commentary. Katie Holmes has more in common with ancient Roman gladiators than she will ever guess: a useful diversion from an unpleasant reality.

It's damn hard to look that elephant in the face. I think I'm going to go tune up my bicycle.

A Sunny Reprieve

After all those days of rain, we are into a sunny stretch and getting things done. Four blueberry bushes and three huckleberries are now a part of our permanent landscape. The vertical frames for the garden boxes are done, and just in time since the peas are sprouting like mad (11 days of rain followed by warm weather will do that). We just found out that we are getting two baby chicks from a neighbor whose school class hatched some, but they couldn't keep them. Yay! Two new little peepers. We weren't planning on having chicks this year, so we'll have to scramble a bit for accomodations and see if I can remember how to do this baby chicken thing. We muddled through it last year by the seat of our pants, so I'm sure we'll do fine.

In my head these days, I'm prioritizing the projects that we would like to do and the items we'd like to get over the next few years: Rainwater catchment, building our own wind generator (more for a fun project than in any serious energy-producing capability, but who knows), buying two tandem bicycles for more long range cycling with the kids, building a grape arbor and a kiwi arbor, putting in three fruit trees, clearing all the horrible, invasive ivy out of our woods (lucky for me, with my horrible poison oak symptoms, DH gets that job), clearing the site for the picnic area and the fire pit (I think Friday night summertime campfires with friends sounds like fun, and we've got a lot of scrap wood we need to get rid of that won't fit in our fireplace). It's a lot, and we'll tackle it bit by bit. Whatever the future holds, it can't hurt us to become more self-sufficient and energy-independent.

Heading in the Right Direction

Sometimes the whole environmental catastrophe, peak oil, war, disaster thing just gets to be too much to think about. I can only read or think about it in little bits before my brain feels like it is going to explode or I will descend into a dark depression or something. What works for me is just to find new ways to take steps in the right direction. Today it is planting blueberries. In our ongoing mission to landscape our yard (and thus not to have to weed the vast bark acres), last year I planted rhododendrons, hydrangeas, and azaleas. This year I am planting blueberries and huckleberries. I've determined that most of my landscaping from now on will be food producing. The front yard will still have to be decorative-only because the deer eat anything and everything out there (they even climbed onto our front deck to eat DH's peppers last summer). But the back yard is going to be fruit and veggie heaven.

Last week, DH built our new garden boxes:

Our land is so sloped that this will be the best way to actually be able to grow anything on it. We've been reading Square Foot Gardening, and decided that it's the way to go for us. So we each have a box, kids included, and this will be a year to try it out and start down the path of growing our own food. You can also see our portable guinea pig pen on the lawn (they make great organic lawn mowers) and part of our chicken fencing below.

It's the End of the World As We Know It, and I Feel Fine

Yes, I've probably been reading too many books like The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight and The Long Emergency. I don't buy everything the doom-n-gloomers are predicting, but I buy enough of it to know I want to be moving in a different direction than over the cliff with the rest of the people in this crazy contraption we call our society.

It's not just these two books, or others like them, either. Maybe the journey started a decade ago, when my husband and I read Your Money or Your Life, joined a Voluntary Simplicity discussion group, and decided to change our priorities in life. Most likely, it started even earlier, with my punk rock years of revolt and rebellion, learning to take everything society handed me as truth and turn it on its head, examine it, and decide what I really thought about it. Even before that, I probably have my crazy (I say that in an affectionately good way) family to thank. My co-op shopping, tofu-serving, ERA-shirt-wearing, democrat-voting mom, and my strong-willed, independent-minded, build-his-own-Ham-radio Republican dad.

Whatever it was, the handwriting on the wall about our way of life is getting larger and bolder by the day, and our family has been on a path to become part of the solution for some time, but that path is looking more important as that handwriting gets easier to read. All of our priorities are being re-evaluated from this angle, from whether to plant more azaleas or landscape with food-producing shrubbery like blueberries, whether to invest money in a good tandem bicycle, learning how to raise chickens, turning our sloped lot into a series of raised garden beds, and building community with neighbors and friends. The decisions we make in our every day life matter more than they might've ever mattered in the history of humankind. I think about them every day, and now I get to write about them too. So welcome to the Blue Skies Urban Farm Blog.