Wholesome Wednesdays: Hard Work

Hard labor is rare to find around our little urban homestead. That was not always the case, and i definitely miss it. Working with your hands, knees and back (carefully!) outside with the soil and sun is such an important part of our human relationship with the environment and too few people truly get to participate. Many people grow up thinking that food comes from the grocery store and beef is always packaged in plastic wrap. The hours it takes to cultivate, plant, harvest and prepare the produce in our markets is lost upon many existing in concrete cities and suburbs.

It took days to dig out the bermuda grass from our easement strip, and more hours and years to fill the space with tiny plants. Watching them grow into healthy, blooming shrubs makes it all worthwhile.

It brings me great joy to hear of news around the country of a re-surging in interest to 'go local' 'go green' and 'grow your own.' Backyard chickens, backyard goats, front yard veggie gardens: they're no longer just for the eccentric artist at the end of the lane (me!). They're also for young families, urban schools, even the tops of city skyscrapers. Getting dirt under your fingernails while planting carrot seeds makes those carrots even more delicious. Having a relationship with your hens makes their eggs that much more special. Spending all day Sunday building a coop or pen or raised bed makes dinner especially delicious, a bonus if you raised the food yourself.

It's not just the physical exhaustion and connection with the solid earth that is so rewarding, it's also the bond of kindred understanding that is built while working your land. The concept of ownership is really only true if you truly own your soil: respect it, work it responsibly and utilize the gifts it will provide to you. Ownership of the land is not a title or deed, it is a declaration of accountability. If you make time to work your land, work up a sweat or a chill, give your time to the cultivation of the soil and the life that inhabits it, you will be experiencing true ownership of your land. By watching the tiny tadpoles turn to fist sized toads over the course of the season, you have become more connected to your unique environment. You will be more careful when mowing because you'll want to spare any toad-lives you can, and you'll think twice before spraying a pesticide because you'll want to leave some bugs for the toads to eat. You'll also be developing strong muscles and a healthy mind.

Photo circa 2009: This is what happens when you garden at 3 pm in 90 degrees: sweat.

Hard work is not something to be afraid of or to shirk. Embrace its gifts to you and to your land. Your body will feel tired and satisfied and your mind will be invigorated as it strives to solve the problems that come up throughout the day. Hard work connects us to the land, and it connects us to ourselves. It feels good to know what your body and mind are capable of, as well as to know our own limits and respect them.

Off i go to the gym and then a 6 hour shift decorating cakes. Hard work is also necessary to get a pay check now and then (much to many of our chagrins, i'm sure) and can get in the way of the hard work i'd personally rather be doing in my garden. Tomorrow it's back to trying to piece together a motley irrigation system. But until then, back to work!

This post is part of the Simple Lives Thursday blog hop.

It Happened. It Froze.

8:30 am. Right now i'm seriously wishing these darned trees had lost all their darned leaves and would let the morning sun shine through to resuscitate the frozen babies in my vegetable garden. Everything is frozen.
The peppers in their securely covered patch with lamp seem to be okay ... but not thrilled. Their onions cohabitants look stunned, and the garlics in the bed nearby look positively displeased with life.

The main vegetable patch under its tent city construction? I peer under the sheets and see a sorry sorry sight. A touch to a baby spinach leaf reveals stiff rigor mortis of plant body.  I have never tried to garden in an actual winter before, so this state of frozen garden inhabitants is quite unsettling, frustrating, and fear inducing. Will I fail in my winter crop as well as my summer? Will my hard work and love be repaid with dead plants, stunted and non-producing? Was i fooling myself thinking that "cool weather plants" really didn't mind getting a touch of a freeze?  This will be a learning experience for me - hopefully we'll get something to eat this winter (since i missed all my tomatoes this summer on a wedding vacation) and not just a whole lot of chicken snacks and compost.
Sigh.
9:30 am Hurry up, sun! The babies want to feel your warm embrace. If only the garden were on the other side of the house..... but then it would only get am sun, and that is insufficient.
 I'm noticing that i piled some leaves here and there as mulch. I was afraid to smother the plants underneath so i mushed them around exposing the tops of the lettuces etc to the air- but i think i should have just covered it all with leaves and maybe spared the plants underneath them. This freeze just caught me unprepared.

Have to keep reminding myself: gardening is learning. you do not know everything. you will make mistakes and kill plants occasionally.... i just wish they weren't plants i was counting on for food!
I live in zone 8 and have plans on moving to a northern version of zone 8 (yamhill valley in oregon). This is the first year i have seen a hard enough freeze to fill a bucket with more than an inch of ice.

9:45 am. Need to walk to the gym now, cooolld walk.... but i'm feeling hopeful. I pulled back a little bit of tent city to let the sunshine in, will leave the rest covered and light on peppers until i get back from yoga.... it looks like the peas are becoming happily pliable again, the little kales seem unphased, the broccolis thawing out.

12:30. Hope is in sight! I've pulled back some of the sheets and uncovered the peppers and turned their light off. Peppers have just a bit of frost bite on their edges, not bad. All the winter crops in the main garden seem to have sproinged back to life, great. Eggplants have bit the dust, but that was to be expected.

Looks like I may not be a failure after all.

So far so good!

What zone do you live and garden in?
What do you do as a gardener in winter time? When do you call it quits? What precautions do you take before freezes? What crops do you expect to survive and produce throughout the winter in your area?