My Cannon Greens community garden plot

Eep. It has been a month since I have posted.

Lots has happened in the garden, not the least of which is that I have acquired a second garden plot, right next to my first one. See, there are deadlines for these plots and if gardeners don't have their plots weeded/planted out by X date then they are forfeit and become MINE. I had weeded my neighboring plot and around it in hopes that it might become mine and then it did, on Thursday, so that night I dug it up and amended the soil with manure, planted everything out on Saturday, and on Sunday we built a structure to hold up the peas and tomatoes. Below are photos of this evolution.

 April 24. I wanted that plot on the left.

 While weeding that plot on the left I discovered some volunteer lettuces and onions, which I transplanted to my bed since they were unclaimed.

 Mulched around my entire bed.

The garden ran out of wood chips soon after this, and since we get them for free from the City, we have to wait until their next pass through our way.

Oh look I have weeded that plot. It's like it wants to be mine.

May 8. Things are growing. The weather turned very cold after this, near freezing and everyone was worried.

 May 13. This is a pet project of mine, to clear the weeds along the fence line, hoard cardboard and put it down, get some composted manure and topsoil on here and then plant sunflowers. I started a week ago and had some help from gardening friends who also want to see the garden become beautiful.

 On Thursday May 15 at 12:32pm, I received the email that said I was the proud new owner of plot 33! I wasted no time and got it all amended that night.

 On Saturday morning (May 17) I had planned to spend about five hours at the garden getting stuff done. My new gardening buddy Jasmine took this photo of me before I started planning out all my starts. The weather had finally warmed up and everyone was planting out their tomatoes and peppers, so I filled my new bed with 34 tomato plants - some that I had grown from seed, some that were donated to our garden after Wasatch Community Garden's annual plant sale the weekend before.

 The irrigation line on my new bed was twisted, but it was later corrected. The white bits are just chunks of ice that I emptied from my cooler just as I was leaving the garden.

 There is a string of pea starts along the left side, then a string of peppers and other sundry plants, tomatoes mostly in the middle, then salad greens on the right side.

 The Sunflower Strip is coming along. Emily and Alfred helped cart the manure!

 Ever since getting interested in permaculture, I have wanted to create an herb spiral. I laid down a bunch of logs in a spot where I think the spiral should go, to get a sense of a good location.

Meanwhile,

 I had drawn up a schematic of the kind of trellis I wanted for my garden, since I have peas and tomatoes that will need to climb. Dan helped me with the design, we took some measurements, bought supplies, and set to work making a modular portable trellis that could double as a hoop house in the winter, and that we can take with us one day when we move to a place where I can have my own land.

 Dan took a stop-motion video of us constructing it, but this is the bones of the structure. It still needs a cross bar along the top but as the plants grow, I'll be stringing up jute twine and it will be a green tunnel. I'm pretty excited.

The view of the garden from where I park my truck. I can't wait to see it in full green! 

Grad School Interview

Just a few minutes ago I was informed that I have an interview with the graduate committee at the University of Utah to discuss my prospects/plans for grad school. I applied for the MS non-thesis option, as I was advised to by one of the professors I have met here. But in my letter I indicated that I would be willing to consider pursuing a PhD if I could convince someone to support my topic. It's a controversial topic that very few people are talking about, and that is, something like: environmental sustainability in health care/informatics or applying permaculture design to healthcare informatics design.

I'm not off my rocker, but these are things I am passionate about so I thought I would bring it to the table and see what happens. My interview date has been set for February 7th, so that means I have three weeks to put together a coherent pitch about why this is a topic worth studying.

I'm still working out how I would even go about studying such a thing, but certainly an audit of some kind would be in order. I have been working this out in my Morning Pages these last few days and it's going to be time soon to do some mind-mapping. Both of these topics are very broad and require a lot of information, so I have brought home some books from the library, will read them and take copious notes, and of course see what turns up in a web search about this topic (not very much that I have seen).

It may be that I will need to start a separate blog for this, should I get the green light on it. This is all contingent on funding, too, not only do I have to convince a professor who will be my supervisor that I am not crazy and that this is a topic worth pursuing, I will also have to convince the people with money to award me grants to study and that I am a good investment.

Interesting to note, they have two options for those pursuing a PhD: you can either write the book-style dissertation or you can write three publication-ready articles to be submitted to academic journals. I think I will have a hard time deciding which to select. I think the exercise of writing a dissertation would be a good one, but, as I didn't get any experience with writing papers during my Master's, I think this will be an excellent skill to hone as a student. 

Meanwhile, I will take myself to the weekly research seminars up at the U (an eleven-minute train ride) and slowly get to know people.The presentation today was amazing, it was a video of a presentation at a health symposium presented last year where the keynote speaker discussed the economics of health care. If you ever get a chance to hear James E Orlikoff speak, I highly recommend it.

making time for you

I have spent the better part of the last five years with having all kinds of time to do whatever I wanted, as long as I hit a few deadlines or showed up to a thing every now and then. Now that I am working and managing a night club, I am finding myself with not very much time on my hands these days to knit or get out into the garden.

That makes me a little sad.

However, I am really learning a lot about booking bands, ordering beer and wine, creating a drink menu with spirits, what it takes to run a bar and be a real bartender (something that was on my bucket list), manage staff, interface with other people in the community, promote events, participate in social media (I had to return to facebook), learn North Carolina liquor laws, deal with difficult customers, happily interact with nice customers, while cooperating with all the other people I work with in order to get my stuff done. In short, I am working my ass off these days and I am really learning a lot.

I thought I would have more time to write once we got past the BBQ Festival on the Neuse a few weeks ago, but that hasn't been the case. I'm amazed I get any laundry done but thank the heavens we bought me a front-loading washing machine a few weeks ago, as well as a clothes drying rack, so I am managing to stay on top of it.

Things are really happening in Kinston, and I am excited to be a part of it. Just before the festival was the opening of a new Asian restaurant called Ginger 108. They are in a sense part of of the Mother Earth family (or really the larger food and beverage community in downtown Kinston) and we have had the opportunity to go and sample menu selections they are considering, which is really fun. Of course Dan and I have lived in Asia and are from the Asian part of Canada (Vancouver/Victoria), so we have a good sense of what those flavors should be.

Another thing that happened recently is the opening of The Overland Gallery. (note: neither of these places has websites yet or I would link to them). Cynthia and Michael Dunn have renovated an historic building in downtown Kinston (which, incidentally, is not even two blocks from our house) and have thrown their doors open wide for artists and patrons to come and enjoy art that is produced locally. Recently they announced a call for submissions called the 4x4(x4) for anyone and everyone to make a tiny piece of art for display in August. The idea is to make art accessible to everyone and I think it's great. I went into the Gallery yesterday and Cynthia (who loves to brag about Dan) asked if we would be submitting. Of course! I said, but we don't know yet what to make. Dan can do any number of mediums (metal, wood, pen/ink, textile, clay, glass, or whatever he can get his hands on, really) and mine will very likely be textile. Cynthia gave me two 4x4 inch panels as a guide or the base for the submission. My mind has been chewing on this challenge since yesterday and I already have two ideas - one flat piece and one 3D (4x4x4). You'll see in August what I end up making!

Last week I attended a function called From Our Farm to Your Table, at which there were a number of people from the community who had tables with information and samples, and one of the farmers gave a talk about the importance of creating local food systems. Coming from a permaculture perspective, naturally I support this movement and I am excited that it is happening here and that I get to be a part of it. First I spoke to the lady at the Farmer's Market table. I am not a vendor (yet) but I would like to get involved, so she invited me to a function sometime in June. Kinston's farmer's market runs year round on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and they are looking to start occupying an indoor space in the winter. One of Kinston's two health food stores had a table there, and she is a fervent supporter of local farmers, even offers a CSA through her store.

Vivian from Chef and the Farmer was there with her sous chef. They were serving a spicy beef sampling on lettuce leaves with some fresh herbs, that alone made it worth the trip for me. So good. We talked about things I might be able to grow for her, as Vivian's mandate is to support local farmers and I want to be a local farmer. I am also hoping to collect their fruit and vegetable scraps for my compost bin; we'll have a conversation later in the month.

Vivian's sister Leraine owns Queen Street Deli, she too had a table there with some offerings of her shop. The staff at Queen Street are very familiar with everyone from the brewery, as we all go there at least once a week for lunch. It's to the point where, yesterday, when I ordered a sandwich for Dan (who wasn't with me), they knew he wanted his sandwich on pumpernickel and that he wanted potato salad on the side. I'm hoping to talk to them at some point about getting their coffee grounds for my compost.

Next to Leraine was Warren, the only vegetable farmer there. He recognized me from The Red Room (and this is happening more and more, gotta love small towns). I purchased from him some baby bok choi, kale, new potatoes and some broccolini. There was also a meat farmer and a poultry farmer. It struck me odd that out of the three farmers, that there was only one produce guy. There is room for growth, room for me to become a food producer and I bet I could find customers for my produce within 1000 yards of where I live.

This got me pretty excited. Now that my compost is going, I'm going to need sources of biomass to keep it going. I got my hair cut at Salon Steven last week and asked Kari if they would be okay if I took their hair trimmings for my compost pile. She said she would ask, and I think that would be a cool thing. Turns out there are slugs in North Carolina and hair makes a pretty good mulch around lettuces against slugs.

I have been invited to join both the Historic District Commission and the Mitchelltown Preservation Society. Unfortunately I am not eligible to vote in Lenoir County (or at all yet, not until I get citizenship) so I don't think I would be allowed to join the HDC, but the MPS is still an option. The neighborhood we live in is Mitchelltown, so I have a vested interest in keeping up with the Society.

I'll work tonight and tomorrow night at The Red Room, and then after closing Saturday night (Sunday morning) Dan and I will drive to Washington, DC, to visit an aunt he has not seen in more than ten years and whom I have never met. Dan has business in Philadelphia on Monday, we'll return on Tuesday. It will be quick trip but it will be nice to get out of town, do something different, meet more of Dan's family, and see more of the US! (Yes, we have someone looking after Sam).

So on the whole I will say that I am very busy these days, forced to be organized (which I enjoy), and while I don't get to spend much time with knitting or gardening at the moment, at some point the dust from the whirlwind will settle, I'll hit my stride and relax into a routine. It's good, I am happy.

hours in the day

We need more of them. Or fewer things to do. I don't know, but I can tell you that I have been very busy as I have now flung myself into working.

I received a letter from my friend in Metchosin, British Columbia, the other day, and it reminded me that I have not written since I had the choice of jobs in front of me. I have since chosen, and I am now running the night club, called The Red Room. It's really a lot of fun when it's open and I am learning the names of many locals. I also feel a lot more secure with a bit of footing now, so I really feel like I can put down roots, figuratively and literally.

Sam, happily rolling around on the back porch as I'm working outside in the yard. 

 Here I have planted a line of sunflowers, arugula, and flax. The following day I planted another line next to it, of more sunflowers interspersed with radishes. This isn't the actual garden, but we haven't had time to build my raised beds and I needed to plant something.

This is along the west side of the house, so it is a bit sheltered from the wind but only gets sun in the second half of the day.

Every day I can I go out for an hour or two in the morning and do some work. Sometimes it is digging and planting - I don't know anything about the fertility of this soil, but it's mostly sand and floods when it rains heavily, so I know I have work to do on the soil building front. Luckily, that is underway!

Last week a lot of good things came into our life. On Monday we drove out to Beaufort, which is about an hour and twenty minutes away on North Carolina's coast and bought a planer/jointer, a router table and a wet/dry grinder/sharpener from someone on Craigslist. These are tools that Dan has always wanted and finally has them now, so he can start building furniture for our house, we can build our fence, we can build anything we want!

The next day I think it was, this lovely package stuffed full of yarn arrived from Ursa, who sent this to me as a birthday gift. Her generosity with yarn abounds with me and I am so tickled to be able to add to my stash! I haven't made plans for any of it yet, but it includes the likes of Indigo Moon, Madeline Tosh (I have never knit with MadTosh before!), Sanguine Gryphon (which has since split into two companies) and a few I hadn't heard of. I am also thrilled to have two skeins from Ursa's former company, Gaia's Colours, of the Pales sock yarn. I have knit three garments with this yarn and let me tell you - it holds up! Thanks Ursa!

A few days after that, Dan went to an auction at a local woodworking yard where they were selling everything and concentrating their operations in Greenville or Goldsboro. That afternoon we went with the truck and the van to pick up an entire rack of weird pieces of all sorts of lumber, four work tables, a number of step stools, a weird throne/chair made of 2x4s, and a "mulch display". I should have taken a photo of the latter. It looked great - it's two smallish tables that were full of "mulch" - but in my mind mulch is something that is biodegradable and that adds fertility to the soil. In this display were shredded rubber tires, painted three shades of brown. We were absolutely puzzled by this. Do people use painted shredded rubber tires as mulch? Or was this just meant to look like real mulch? We haven't decided what to do with it. Obviously we aren't going to use it in our yard, it simply will not go with permaculture. Should we try to sell it on Craigslist?

 On Sunday with a bunch of pallets that Dan and brought over from the brewery and with our newly acquired scrap lumber, Dan and I put together my long-longed-for three-bin compost system. It's not quite finished but it is at least usable.

 We found a bunch of wire mesh laying around the yard, just the perfect amount!

 My Sweety rests.

 This is the meadowland/backyard of the house next door to us. It is vacant at the moment, but a friend of ours is about to move into it and he has no interest in gardening. If we are allowed to have chickens, that would be a most excellent place for them.

 This is the view from the compost bin. The big tree in the almost middle is a beautiful lodgepole pine. Behind and to the right is a magnolia. Lots of space to figure out what to do with. We are thinking about putting berry bushes around the perimeter of the pine tree, maybe next spring.

 We have a pond! When we moved in, it was a really big pile of debris, old lumber full of nails, and a massive heap of leaves, branches and twigs. We started clearing things away last week to see what was under and how far it goes. I was delighted to discover...

 Actual finished compost. This biomass had been here so long in the perfect condition that it has now turned into black gold! I am so pleased - I can't wait to excavate it and use it to inoculate my new compost piles as well as on top of my raised beds when we get them in.

Sam is enjoying being an outside kitty, although she is really becoming a neighborhood menace with all the feral cats around who are not used to an aggressive female.

 Today Dan brought me over a bin of spent grain from the brewery, which I am excited to finally have for my compost piles!

 I started by laying down piles of cardboard, and put the grain right on top of the two on the left. I had already started a compost pile yesterday with the contents of the pond, so I'm just going to keep building these up.

And this is now as it sits, with a layer of leaves and twigs on top. I'll try to do another layer in each stall tonight (once it cools down, it's now too hot to be working outside during the day, at least for this gal!) and hopefully one more before we leave for Hickory tomorrow. I'll be going with Dan and some of the brewery staff to the Hickory Hops festival this weekend but don't worry, Sam will be in good hands! 

Once I have these piles built to my satisfaction and once there is a lid and slats in the front to hold it all in, I'll ignore the thing for a week and then start turning. With these massive piles and the heat here it should only be a matter of weeks before I have excellent usable compost. Hopefully by then I will have raised beds, a compost sifter (for any large pieces that have not yet decomposed), and several yards of topsoil to put in my raised beds. It is warm enough now that I can have tomatoes and peppers outside and my little babies indoors are ready to be transplanted! 

I am, if you haven't noticed, really excited about composting, gardening, and permaculture. We have some great ideas of how we want to landscape and develop our yard, and even with this little chipping away at it an hour or two a day seems to make a difference. Working out in the yard has been a good way to meet neighbors who have lived here a long time - long enough to have seen fish in the pond more than a decade ago. As I write I am mindful of the bombing of the Boston Marathon, the ricin poisoned letters that were sent to government officials, the fertilizer plant explosion in Waco, Texas, and today I heard that Chicago has flooded and there are sinkholes swallowing people. It's been a hell of a week for America and I don't think it's a bad idea to get my food systems in place (for food security) while building community, just in case disaster strikes our area. If something should happen, I want to be in a position where I can help.

the next four and a half weeks

Happy New Year friends and readers!

As I write to you from the house of my in-laws in Victoria, I can finally look on this new year with optimism and hope. I will be flying to Montreal on January 23rd for my visa interview with the US Consulate on January 24th, in which I present all of the documents on paper that they have already received electronically, save for the medical report. On Friday January 18th, I have an appointment with one of two immigration doctors in Canada for which I have to travel to Surrey and where I will have my lungs X-rayed, blood taken, and a physical exam completed.

In the week following my visa interview, Dan will come and, as we expect I will have my visa sent by courier by the 29th or 30th, we will be able to leave soon after that. The plan at the moment is to take the ferry from here in Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington, but given the nature of our trip we may be obliged to go to the Peace Arch instead. Not only will have a visa, but we will also be importing my truck as well as bringing in a feline, so at some point soon I will need to take Sam to a vet to get documents saying she is healthy and fine. I already have the documents for the truck.

I don't know when it will start to feel real, because it is still feeling like I'm reading a book about someone else's life. I go about my day with a sort of a routine, but now that I have an end in sight, I really do have to set to work with packing up my things, deciding what I will wear to Vancouver for the doctor appointment and what to wear to Montreal (where they have below freezing temperatures). What will I wear for our road trip, the 3,200 mile trek to the other side of the continent? I'll want to be comfortable and warm.

My step-father-in-law and I still have work to do in the basement, which we would be hard at except for the round of viruses that has swept through the house. Our resident grad student (my sister-in-law) finished her semester, having pushed hard for thirteen weeks, and the moment she had a chance to relax, BAM, she was hit with a cold. Eventually we all got it, except for the visiting grad student (brother-in-law), who seems to be saving himself for the trip back to get sick. At any rate, this means that the pouring of concrete in the basement will have to wait a little longer.

It occurred to me about six weeks ago that I am in a place where I can go see movies in the theater - my life over the past several years has put me in places where movie theaters were not nearby or easy to get to, so I have been taking advantage of proximity. I first saw Lincoln, which was great. Then I saw Anna Karenina, and despite having Keira Knightley in it, was also good. Then came Flight, which was not so much about airlines as it was about hardcore alcoholism. Then Cloud Atlas, I couldn't really tell you what it was about but it left me wondering about the textiles they were wearing in the last stage of history as they were beautiful and interesting. When my 17-year-old theater-buff niece was here over the holidays, she and I saw Les Miserables, also great and now I know why everyone is talking about Anne Hathaway's solo. Last night I saw Life of Pi - not really high on my list because I couldn't really get into the book but they did a great job of the film. It made me want to come home and hug my cat. This afternoon I saw The Hobbit - on which I have heard mixed reviews from both people who have and have not seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I just told someone on Twitter that while I liked the costuming and set design, I didn't find the story as compelling as LOTR. Maybe it's because I'm just not that into dwarves? Holy crap! That's seven movies in the past six weeks! I've found a great movie buddy in Dan's friend from childhood who lives in Victoria and, like me, prefers to sit in the very back row in the theater. We're going again next week, but haven't decided what to see yet.

Dan has sent me a number of photos, videos and floor plans for the house we are going to be moving into in Kinston. It's in a neighborhood that is being rejuvenated and turned into an arts community, and I am really excited to move in, get settled, decorate how we like and get cracking in the garden. The house sits on .41acre, which will give me LOTS of room to grow food. My three objectives for 2013: install a herb spiral, plant a bed of greens (even if it's in a temporary location), and plant some perennial flowers, especially roses. I have been steeping my brain in permaculture these past few weeks and months, so because there is such a heavy emphasis on design, I can't go too crazy on digging and installing things right away. The first step is to "observe and interact" - see where the winds come from, where the water goes, how much sunlight falls in each place on the property, and what our heating and cooling needs are. I'm reading Gaia's Garden at the moment which happens to be a textbook for an NC State University course on permaculture, available through iTunes University. How convenient that this professor lives in Raleigh - I could meet him and pick his brain!

I also have a stack of visiting to do before my final weeks here. There are some people that I didn't get to visit with over the holiday season because of all the chaos, and a few people I just haven't seen in a while. This could well be my last round of visiting though - I still have a mountain of packing to do and other immigration-related details to attend to. I don't know how much time I will have to blog in the coming weeks before I go - though I will do my best to at least post updates about my situation. Even though my immigration was approved in May 2011, there still exists a slight possibility that the people at the consulate in Montreal could deny me, as could the border agents. I won't be settled until I am across the border with a stamp in my passport, and then after we arrive in Kinston having made the journey in the dead of winter. It's been quite a journey, these past 19 months, but you will never hear me say my life is dull!

I hope you all had a happy holiday season and I look forward to connecting with you in the years to come!

On the Hundred Mile Diet

Sometimes on Twitter you can run into a conversation between other people partway, and because it's public, it's possible to weigh in on the matter at hand. Someone I follow was having a conversation with someone about shopping at Wal-Mart, but I didn't see that, and the other person said something about how farming practices on Vancouver Island make the 100-mile diet unlikely (I can't remember her words exactly).

Now this is someone who I once followed on Twitter, and who once presented a workshop I attended. On seeing that her values are not in line with my own, I stopped following her, but I can see (based on the Wal-Mart conversation when I went back to look at it) that she is someone who is fully in the fold of our modern consumerist society and doesn't really get the whole local food thing.

I tread carefully here, because while I'm on a soapbox, I also don't want to be too critical. My friend's part about Wal-Mart was that if you have to use it, it's a good thing that it's there, but we do have a choice. And despite that the ultra-low wages of Wal-Mart employees have been in the news lately, and that outrageous statistic that something like more than half their employees are on food stamps, I would argue that there is a portion of Wal-Mart customers whose attitude is of "I don't care about them, I have to feed my kids".

But the equation is not that simple. Everything we do is a choice. We weigh our choices as a consumer based on our values. What is important to you? There was another study arguing recently that organic food is not significantly more nutritious than conventionally grown food. To base ones choices on whether to buy organic on this single point alone, I think, misses the point entirely. Conventionally grown food uses all kinds of herbicides, pesticides, hormones and all manner of chemical to force food to grow in a sterile environment. I would bet money that if the farmers in the prairies stopped using chemical on their fields, the incidence of asthma in those provinces would be reduced by half. Another point: tons of fossil fuels are used so that we can have Peruvian asparagus in November, and tropical fruits year-round. I went to a grocery store in Cobble Hill earlier this year, passed a handful of cattle farms on the way to the grocery store and they had no local beef, only beef imported from Australia. How does this make any sense?

So I decided not to engage in conversation with this woman on Twitter. I didn't feel like I had the energy to have that conversation and I didn't think it was worth my time to educate her. People don't like being preached to. I don't even know what she meant by "farming practices" on Vancouver Island, but goodness, it sounded like she wanted bananas to grow on the Saannich Peninsula. I commented about the farming practices she referred to, saying that it's not just farming practices, but the kind of diet we have gotten used to. Her reply: "I agree. I prefer fresh out-of-season veggies to preserved local most of the time". GACK!! I was not supporting her in the argument! I dropped the conversation at that point.

I have, since late summer, been reading a number of books about growing food, food preservation, self-sufficiency, permaculture, self-reliance, and more or less being prepared for the decline of our current way of life. Between climate change, energy decline (as in the decline in the extraction of fossil fuel resources from the earth), and the current economic situation in the world (which I believe will never "recover" as the economists would have it), I think it is important, for me at least, to prepare for a life of not finding things at the grocery store, or not being able to afford what is offered there.

Our modern way of life is not sustainable. It's only in the last century that we have even been able to get out-of-season veggies in the grocery store whenever we want them. That is only made possible by cheap fossil fuels. The point I was trying to make to this woman is that the 100-mile diet is possible on Vancouver Island, we just have to change the way we eat, which includes putting food by and eating from the pantry. This doesn't mean we can or even should grow it all ourselves - but I do feel that building relationships in our communities where we can trade or barter our goods and services for things we can't produce ourselves will become an increasingly important aspect of our lives.

//end rant

(So much for not being critical. Just before I wrote this post, one of the bloggers I read posted this about the price of food in the store and being able to grow it yourself. Have a look!)