My new blog is at fruitsofourneighbors.com

A couple months ago, I made an agreement with the owner of the empty lot across the street from my house to garden on it. Since then, I've rototilled a number of times, amended with 10 yards of horse manure, created beds, wood chipped the walkways, started work on a retaining wall in the front, and planted peas and onions. As soon as the weather clears up a bit more, I'll be planting the earliest spring greens and some potatoes.

The new garden is called the Fruits of our Neighbors Market Garden and this year, I'm running a 6-member CSA (community supported agriculture) program on it. I have all my shares sold, and have a waiting list already. I'm going to be using my old side yard for some experimental varieties (like cantaloupes and rutabagas and fall peas) and some kitchen garden things like herbs.

So this blog will continue to get infrequent updates, but I'm blogging a lot, and with a passion over on my new blog, http://www.fruitsofourneighbors.com/.

Why I drink hard cider

This past fall I made about 40 gallons of hard cider (some of which is still fermenting an arms-reach from the keyboard here). I got most of the apples from Bybee-Howell park on Sauvie Island, and the rest from trees in the neighborhood. While taking bike trips during the summer, I would notice an apple tree in someone's yard and leave them a note which I kept in my bike saddlebags, asking if they wouldn't mind having me pick some apples in exchange for tossing all the windfallen fruit into their compost. So in harvesting the apples, it was all pretty locally-based. Pressing and fermenting was all done at home, and I bottled into reused champagne bottles collected on recycling days.



At the time, I was mostly just interested in free alcohol, and was excited about the DIY nature of the whole process. But tonight I read an email from Stephen Hayes, a craft cidermaker in England with whom we share a mailing list, ukcider@googlegroups. This is what he had to say:

There are strong environmental reasons why proper, locally produced, cider should be consumed in preference to beer. A very good reason I occasionally bang on about is the low energy costs of producing cider as opposed to beer. Beer is made from malted barley via a complicated process which consumes a lot of energy. When the malt itself is made into beer (and I home brew from basic ingredients so I know first hand) the malt is soaked in hot water at around 65C for 2 hours, then the liquid (called wort) is run off and boiled with hops for 90 minutes. Even with heat exchangers to reclaim some of the energy for the next brew, it is obvious that this process requires significant energy inputs and produces significant carbon dioxide from burning of gas, wood etc.

Grape wine has a similar carbon cost of production to cider, but is almost all imported to England from afar-therefore a carbon cost to move it from France, Australia etc to here.

Cider is of course produced from apples, which grow on trees, which are a carbon fixing permaculture crop as well as stabilising soil and being beautiful. Cider apples grow very well indeed in England, and parts of Wales and Scotland (no quarrels about this please!) and the fruit can be crushed, pressed and fermented with very little input of energy. I have not the time and energy to do a precise calculation (someone should though) but just looking at the processes involved, including transport, it is clear that locally produced cider has a much smaller carbon footprint that beer or imported wine. Spirits use even more carbon via distillation.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

This blog will remain on life-support

The months pass, and I don't post anything.

Since my last summary post, I've killed one chicken, installed hydronic radiant floor heating in the whole house, re-plumbed the whole house, planted for (and eating from) a winter hardy harvest, done more foundation work, pressed and bottled about 35 gallons of hard cider, and not missed a weekly potluck. So much blog content, so little blogging.

For this coming season, I'll be gardening on a 5000 square foot lot across the street:



I'm excited, poring over seed catalogs, working on succession planting schedules, devising market/CSA plans, figuring out if I can run a feeder pig on it. So much thinking, so little desire to blog it. Maybe later.

Long time, no posts

The summer has been in full swing, the garden in full production, Sarah started work, I've officially switched to part-time work, I've got 4 gallons of cider fermenting (with another 60+ pounds of apples waiting), we picked 52 pounds of blueberries a couple weeks ago, all our hvac ducting and the furnace is ripped out and sitting in the driveway, the potlucks have been going strong, our architect has started doing preliminary drawings, and a lot of other cool things have been going on. Here are a few pictures:

Wayne and I doubled-up the floor joists in the kitchen from 24" OC 2x8s to 12" OC 2x8s. After all that work, it didn't end up fixing much of the flex. After I nail the floor to the new joists and add blocking, it should help. This is all in preparation of a new hydronic radiant floor system I'm putting in this month.

Of course, Lily lent a hand with this job. Only just yesterday, I discovered this little vitamin bottle full of wood shavings had tipped over in the living room. Alas.

Isn't she photogenic? This is our new bike, the Xtracycle. I reeeeeally like it, and so does Lily. We've carried SO MUCH STUFF on it already, and it's only like a week old today. I'm going to make her a little backrest with built-in seat belt, along with a little basket on her set of handlebars so she can snack while we're on the move. (Which is probably her favorite thing to do on the bike.)

Her favorite thing to do these days is gently follow the chickens around the yard, trying to catch one (or more):

She's really quite gentle, and the hens don't seem to bother much. In fact, I think they like it because they're getting easier to catch. That's an Ameraucana there - a super skittish hen, happily submitted. She's still better at catching them than me. It must be all the constant grass trimmings she feeds them through the fence.

I might not post any more frequently than I have been, but at least I'm telling the truth.

Driveway & fence

A couple months ago, I poured a new track on the driveway so we could actually park on concrete instead of dirt, which always was a horrendous mess during the wet winter months.

Now I'm done with a fence and gate in the new driveway. Well, I'm not totally done as I still need to finish laying the bricks and other filler stuff between the wheel tracks, but the fence is done. We have three kinds of pole beans growing on the mesh of the fence, and the second gate (not shown) is up, and pretty well color-matched with the re-used cedar fence boards shown.

The deck in use

IMG_7903
Originally uploaded by mcnattyp

A couple weeks ago, Sarah had a new-mother blessing ceremony on our new deck. That event was the impetus for completing the deck, the arbor and the new lawn. As you can see from the picture, everything looks pretty good! I still need to repaint the arbor and the deck railings. It never ends.

"You Walk Wrong" (Or, "Why I Go Barefoot")

Please note that this is not a diatribe about how great going barefoot is, nor is it a slight to those people who prefer shoes. I wish the best for everyone, no matter how you are shod.

When we lived in San Diego, I went barefoot a lot. First off, the weather was fantastic, so my feet never got cold. Secondly, I worked at home, and being something of a homebody, I didn't leave the house for days at a time. Consequently, I didn't wear shoes for days at a time.

Fast forward to the Portland life, and for the past few summers, I've gone barefoot as much as possible. I used to commute downtown on my bike and so while I wore clip-in bike shoes for the ride, I would go barefoot during the day in the office, and generally got by being barefoot for any errands I had to do while at work. During the winter months, I would only wear thick woolly socks at the office.

I'm back to working at home now, and I'm taking a cue from Lily, who simply doesn't like shoes. As soon as we're done with a trip some place, she takes her shoes off, no matter if it's winter or summer. I joke with her that she's wearing her "hobbit shoes" whenever she's barefoot.

And in a natural extension to the unschooling philosophy, I've been questioning the "norm" of wearing shoes at all. Lily frequently goes out on errands without wearing any shoes. No one has ever stopped me (or her) to ask us to put on our shoes. We do, however, wear shoes in restaurants and grocery stores because I know the proprietors can get fined should any customers be shoeless.

All this time, I had some nagging suspicion that going barefoot is "better", in the same way that eating organic foods is "better" and getting enough sleep is "better". I've just not been exposed to any one who espouses the better-ness of going barefoot.

So I've been going barefoot a lot this spring and summer. Much of my gardening has been barefoot (except when I'm digging and spading, for which I use my feet to push on shovels). All of my work days at home have been barefoot. I've always slept barefoot. And I'm finding myself going barefoot alongside Lily at various other times: On walks around the block, on errands and picking berries. When I'm not barefoot, I'm wearing flip-flops which let me go from barefoot to shod depending on the terrain.

I'm also a runner, and I came across a new shoe called the Nike Free, which is supposed to emulate barefoot running. Further Googling led me to this article from New York Magazine, titled "You Walk Wrong", which has pushed me over the top. I'm now striving to go barefoot.

Of course it helps that we're going to be installed a radiant floor heating system before this winter comes around :)