Official NaBloPoMo Boycott

I didn’t post here during the month of November.  That was on purpose.

For the 2 years before this one I watched as blogs around the world participated in NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. I guess the idea is to post at least one entry every day in November. It gets you in the habit of daily blog posting, drives traffic to your site through cross-linking, and gets you entered to win prizes.

For the last 2 years I had a guilty knee-jerk reaction. “Yeah,” I said, “why don’t I post every day? I must be a really sucky blogger.” Then I felt like I wasn’t doing my job as a blogger very well. Last year I even considered giving NaBloPoMo a try for a year.

But by the beginning of November 2009 enough time had passed that instead of feeling guilty I was just determined. I won’t let some event, some group of folks, make me feel like I am doing something wrong. If I’m not in the mood to blog during November, I won’t. I need a rest from this garden (and I haven’t even finished cleaning it up yet!)  In fact, I pledge to purposefully NOT post anything this November.

And I didn’t.

If you participated in NaBloPoMo this November, last November, in ‘07, or all of the above…I truly hope that it made you feel better about the whole thing. I hope that making sure you had a post ready for every day didn’t stress you out or wear you thin during a busy month. I pray that it improved things for you. Because that seems to be the intent of the program.

For me, I did have a restful November. Now I’m ready to get back at it! I’ll be starting indoor winter lettuce and herbs within the next week or two.

Can I ever go back?

Today’s post is a piece written by Farmer’s Daughter, republished here with her permission.  I have been feeling exactly the same way for a couple years now.

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Farmer’s Daughter

Walking around the fair today, I was repeatedly reminded of my eco-conscience.

I drank bottled water and wished I had thought to bring my reusable stainless steel bottle.  I didn’t want to use the plastic, but it was hot and I was thirsty.  Plus I’m still trying to skip HFCS (that’s another story), so I didn’t want to get a soda in a paper cup.  I was happy at least that recycling was easy.

I spotted all the litter on the ground and wanted to pick it up (but of course I didn’t).  I wondered how much litter and trash would be generated by the end of the fair and where it would go.

I watched the tractor pull and thought about carbon emissions.  I thought about how much energy went into pulling that sled of weights back and forth.  But I was still proud of my brother for pulling about 8,000lbs with his tractor.

I pondered, while skipping the line to the ladies’ room and heading to the portapotty, which is better for the environment? The portapotty uses less water but more chemicals, so I couldn’t decide which was better, but there wasn’t a line there.  I worried about creating a super-bug as I used the hand sanitizer, but didn’t want to skip it either.

I browsed through dresses at a vendor’s tent and commented that they’re probably made in sweatshops.  How else could they be so cheap?

I watched the horse pull and felt bad for the jumpy horses, getting yelled at and slapped on the butt.  My dad has always said that competitive pulling is cruel to the horses and I would tend to agree, but I still like to watch for a little while and check out the pretty animals.

I saw a lot of parents smoking around their kids and wondered what they were thinking.  It’s not BPA people, it’s not debatable or new science.  Cigarettes kill.

I looked at agricultural exhibits, animals, food preservation, crafts, photography, and the baking competition.  This glimpse of a simpler way of life was juxtaposed with the midway’s spinning rides and shouting carnies.  I wish the midway wasn’t there, but felt a sadness knowing that most people wouldn’t go if there weren’t rides and cheap prizes to win.

When I got home, I couldn’t help but wonder if I could ever go back.  Go back to the way things used to be, when I could enjoy an event without the stream of eco-consciousness running through the back of my mind.  Although I didn’t make all of the best eco-choices while I was there, I was keenly aware of what I was choosing to do: throw out paper plates and napkins, recycle water bottles, and take breaths of second-hand smoke simply because I couldn’t get away from it.

I realize of course that I can never go back.  I can never un-learn what I know about the environment and how my everyday actions impact the earth.  With that knowledge comes a responsibility to act, to make good choices.  And I feel like I do make good choices most of the time, but I need to accept that I can’t choose the best option all of the time and I can’t be so hard on myself, or on others.

Please direct all your comments to the original post written by Farmer’s Daughter.

Whatever happened to the pole bean teepee?

Whatever happened to the pole bean teepee, you ask?

The pole bean teepee did not “fill out” the way I had hoped it would. In hindsight, I would say that I was too rushed to put it up and I didn’t prepare the seed bed well enough.  I did nothing more than strip off a 4 inch wide swath of sod, place seeds in the trench and then cover them with bagged compost. The grass and weeds were the victors of this fight for life.  Some beans grew, but they definitely did not thrive.

I think I’ll try it again next year.  Help me remember.

Cabbage is almost ready

My cabbages are growing in the sunniest part of my backyard garden area.  For me, this is the west edge.  Even there, they don’t see their first DIRECT sunlight of the day until almost noon.

Feed me

Feed me!

I'm not eatin' that, it has a stinger!

Maybe it’s just me, but the plants remind me of the Audrey II.

I’m looking forward to my first amateur attempt at making fermented sauerkraut soon!

Saving Lettuce Seeds

Normally you want to pick all of your lettuce either before it gets bitter from days that are too warm or before it sends up a seed stalk (bolting). To save lettuce seeds, you need to let the plant grow flowers.

The lettuce has bolted

Lettuce flowers

Partially dry group of lettuce flowers.

I cut the whole head of flowers off the lettuce when some of the seeds began to drop onto the ground and took it inside. I let it dry out  a bit more in a paper bag.

Find a dry flower

Break open the dry lettuce flower

Here are your seeds!

Lettuce Seeds

More lettuce than your family could eat.

One bolted lettuce plant could easily yield enough lettuce seeds for your whole next year.

Tomato Sun Scald

Sun scalded tomatoes

When I finally got around to trellising my community garden tomato plants, they were a huge tangled mess.  I pruned back many of them quite a bit just so I could see what I was doing to get them strung up off the ground.

Sunburn!

Unfortunately, many tomatoes that had been shaded up to that point were suddenly exposed to 3 or 4 days of bright, direct sunlight with unseasonably warm 95 degree days.

With no leaves to shade them, the green tomatoes got burnt.  Scalded by the sun!

Though these might rot before getting ripe, I am going to try to see if they might mature on their own.  Even if they are half-rotten, I should still be able to save some good seeds for next year from inside the other half.

Japanese Beetles Attack!

(I do realize that this is probably the crappiest picture online that purports to show Japanese Beetles. Again, it was taken with my cell phone.)

My community garden’s sweet corn is completely infested with these largish beetles.  The beetles are covering the corn’s tassels and feeding on the pollen.  When that’s gone, they’ll apparently begin eating the silk and quite possibly interfere with proper pollination.

Plus, it’s disgusting to have dozens and dozens of big beetles on my corn.  I guess I’m going to get a container of soapy water and knock as many as I can off into their deathtrap tomorrow at lunch.  Wish me luck!

Community Garden Plot

I haven’t shown you my community garden plot because I never remember to bring the camera.  So here are some blurry cell phone pictures.

Community Garden Plot 10 x 30 feet

At the front right corner is an improvised trellis trying to support 9 tomato plants and already sagging in the middle.

The rest of the space contains alternating hills of either corn and pole beans together, or a vining plant such as a squash, cucumber or watermelon.  This is my three sisters garden.  It’s a very fun experiment and I think it’s going to work out.

More pics:

Double? Triple? Sextuple tomato blossom.

Multiple tomato flower blossom

When your tomato plants grow these massive conjoined flowers, and when those flowers get properly pollinated, you will grow a huge bumpy conjoined tomato.  I have these flowers on my Beefmaster plants right now.  I’ll update with pictures if I get tomatoes from these monster blossoms.

Siamese tomato blossom. Yeah, I know, that term is no longer P.C.

Tomato Trellises 2009

Trellises, two or three weeks ago

 

I built these interesting, semi-obelisk tomato trellises this year to try to give the tomato plants more head room at the top versus last year’s teepee design.  I’ll probably change them next year to give them a slightly wider footprint.

Tomato Trellis, this week