Free Food

Several weeks ago, I started a private Facebook group called Baeza Family Free Farmacy. I asked my Facebook friends to let me know if they'd like to be added to the group. Right now there are 40 members.The sole purpose of the group is to give away free, fresh food from my garden. I happen to think that's pretty cool.

Think of it as a free community library, food version. 

But not.

You don't have to leave something, to take something.

No fee or expectation.

Only a "take what you will use" rule.

Waste not, want not mentality.

I've always given away extra produce from the garden, and eggs from the hens. Let's face it, when you start keeping hens, you end up wanting more. You learn about different breeds, and add to your flock. Soon, you end up with tons of pets that just so happen to produce eggs.

A few times, when starting out, I let friends pay a couple of bucks for eggs. After all, I do have to pay to feed them. I did have to pay for the garden start-up, the cartons, etc.

But it just didn't feel right.

I wanted to do something good and something that just plain made sense.

Common sense was telling me, "if you KNOW that you aren't going to use it before it goes bad, WHY are you stockpiling it in your fridge for it to waste away?" 

"WHY do you have so many eggs that you've resorted to giant bowls of eggs in the fridge?"

Once you find yourself doing the water check for egg freshness, you know you have too many eggs. 

You know the trick, right? Fill up a bowl with water, and gently drop in your egg, if it floats, it's bad; stays at the bottom, it's fresh; has one end on the bottom and one end floating up, use it soon. 

Common sense said, give it away.

There is no reinvention of the wheel here, no grandiose ideas, only a small effort to not waste life-giving fresh food.

 Yes, I still have plenty for us to eat. 

And the chickens too.

The chickens keep me from being swallowed alive by cherry tomatoes that I didn't even plant.

I don't give away what I can reasonably use or have time to preserve. Seriously though, sometimes you just can't bear to can another batch of pickles. Sometimes the mere sight of a canning jar leaves you wincing in exhaustion.

The "rules" are simple: Only claim what you will actually eat, save your cartons and return them to me the next time you pick something up. It means that I'm not losing money constantly by ordering new cartons (or killing more trees). 

Now, when I know that I have extra, I post a quick photo in the group and the first person to claim it, picks it up that day. If they know they can't pick it up that day, they don't claim it. 

Simple.

Useful.

Mindful.

Maybe you'll think about starting a free food group in your community as well!

Garden Update 7/9/15

It's time for a garden update. I feel like I am way behind what I produced last year at this time, which is a bummer. Every gardener always measures their production against last year. Here's what's working hard and what's not...

View from the pathway.

 Last time my mom was here, she taught me how to trim roses. Until then, I was just letting them die and waiting until the petals fell off on their own. She told me to find a dead rose, then follow the stem backwards until you come to the first cluster of five leaves. Clip right before the cluster of five leaves, leaving that as the new end of that stem. I can't believe the new growth that has come on since she taught me to do that. Yesterday, I went out and pruned away dead roses, and also had plenty to clip some to enjoy in the house. Yes, please.

Red, orange, yellow, and purple blooms ready to go inside.

 My tomatoes are finally, FINALLY ripening. I can't believe it has taken this long. I don't think I'll ever start them from seeds again, or if I do, it will be a lot earlier. I ended up adding some big transplants from Lowe's through the spring because my seedlings were taking forever. The Black Prince variety is producing the most so far. I didn't even plant cherry tomatoes this year, and I've pulled what feels like a thousand volunteer plants that sprouted from last year's fallen tomatoes, yet here I am. Cherry tomato zombie apocalypse is upon us. 

 My Russian pickling cucumbers have been growing like crazy all season, which is great. Jars of pickles are lining my ever-shrinking pantry, even with all of the cukes I've given away. 

Green beans have been kind of a bust. This was my first time planting green beans. What I didn't know is that you need a lot of plants to ever have enough green beans to pick and eat at once. 

Serranos are so easy, they practically take care of themselves.

 My zucchini...sigh. From first glance, they look like they're doing well, but they're not. First they had an aphid problem, which I took care of organically. Now I believe they are suffering from blossom end rot. They start growing, and look great, then one day they start rotting on the plant, before they are big enough to pick. Such a bummer. Wasted space. Sad face.

 My onions are doing well, I have just been picking one as needed, and leave the rest in to keep growing until they get really large. Also, the basil is doing awesome.

Volunteer cherry tomatoes.

 This is my first year growing eggplant. A friend had some extra plants in the spring and she gave them to me, so I decided to give it a go. I love how pretty they are when they grow.

I still have small amounts of kale growing, and behind this trellis is a fig tree with several figs on it. There you have it. I'm off to can some more pickles, or get overtaken by the zombie cherry tomatoes, whichever happens first.

A Return to Writing

I'll be honest. I don't really know what my return to blogging looks like. I don't know who will read it. I don't know who will care. I'm going to treat it as a journal instead of a how-to. Let's be real, there are enough people writing how-to's. Nothing wrong with that. I love them and they keep us inspired. I've just felt a pull in my heart moving away from that for myself. That explains why my blog posts are few and far between.

Lately, for some reason, writing or blogging keeps coming up. Appearing and reappearing. The stringing together of words on a page is so appealing. For now, I'm going to dip my toes back in the water gently. Test the waters and find my stride.

Currently, we are on our summer break. I plan on starting school mid-July. When your husband has no days off in the summer because his business is air conditioning (on the sun...we live on the sun, we just call it central California), you may as well get a jump start on school. You're not going anywhere. 

The most exciting news of all is that after 15 years of living in California and my entire family living in Ohio, my mama is moving here in the end of July! Her house is in escrow! I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that I'll be able to call her and see her in the same day! 

Wanna come over? Yes. 

Meet for lunch? Yes.

Come for family dinner? Yes.

Birthday parties? Yes.

Come help in my garden? Yes.

Teach my kids how to sew? Yes.

Need help in your garden? Yes.

Family vacations? Yes.

Babysitter? Yes.

Weekend at grandma's? YES.

You get it. I'm excited! Here's what you need to know about the new house...

 A LARGE workshop that matches the house, and is (hello!!) turquoise! Yes, you don't have to wonder, I'm jealous.

It also already has a garden. You can't tell in this photo, but you walk through an adorable white arch and gate to get to the garden, and there is a fountain directly to the left of this picture (out of view).

Here she is fishing on Memorial Day. She was out here to buy her house. My dad has been gone four years. I'm looking forward to adding some richness to her day to day life. Also, on her last trip, she taught me the proper way to prune rose bushes, and now mine look AMAZING! So much new growth! See? You need your mama in the same town to teach you things!

Here's a quick run-down of what else has been keeping me busy lately. The garden is calling my name before it gets hot.

 We harvested our first ever frame of honey from our Operation Pollination hives.One hive in particular is THRIVING.

 Our very own allergy buster, from our very own pollen. Also, delicious!

 We check on the bees about once a month, sometimes more if we think we have an issue.

I've started a private Facebook group for giving away my extra organic eggs and garden surplus. When your little farm produces more than you can eat while it's still fresh, but not enough to sell, it just makes sense to hand it off to someone else. I have them save their cartons and return them (because, hello cute labels!) and then I refill them and hand them off again. Be a good neighbor when you can, the world will suck less.

Upcycled Greenhouse From Old Windows and Doors.

I don't even know where to begin, my excitement over this project is out of control. Winter has had me itching for spring planting. The days of picking vegetables in the winter are few and far between, at least in my first little winter garden. I ordered my seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, and I'm counting down to when it's warm enough to start my seeds!

 I needed a "greenhouse" of sorts, and there was pretty much nothing that was going to stop my determination. 

Husband at work?

Oh well. 

Drill batteries dead? 

Charge those suckers up.

 Case in point, the photo above, that I thought to stop and snap while the battery was charging on the saw. This door has been in our storage trailer for years. It's solid wood, and I knew I'd use it someday for something. I decided the height I wanted, and the angle for the top, and cut my two side pieces out of this door. 

Next, I used an old french door (glass still in tact, holllllaaa!) as my front, and screwed them together with long wood screws. This seemed a heck of a lot easier than framing up the entire thing out of wood, then covering the front with individual wood slats. Plus, it's super cute and adds more sunlight! 

Next, I just measured, cut, and screwed in the four framing pieces you see around the top edges. This gave me something to rest and hinge the windows on.

I'm still debating on what to do on the inside, because I know the grass will grow. I am leaning toward pinning down thick black plastic, and topping with tiny gravel, like in our garden.

 All I had to buy were four hinges, a couple of hooks, and a small length of chain. 

The hooks are on the fence, and the chain loops are screwed to the center of each window. Simply lift the window, and hook the chain to the fence to work inside. Ahh! You can tell I'm super proud of this one! Now I have to figure out what to put on the walls of my house, where I removed those decorative windows. 

What Growing My Own Food Has Taught Me

I've had a sort of internal dialogue running through my head for weeks. Spring 2014 was our first real and successful garden. I never knew that planting it would lead to the discoveries we've made along the way. It is highly gratifying to go out in your backyard and see life occurring around you, see it repeat itself, and even for the most part care for itself.

 Where I grew tomato plants this summer, I now find myself pulling up baby tomato plants that have sprouted from the seeds of fallen tomatoes. All. by. themselves. This is not a what you should be eating blog post. Certainly I have a lot of opinions on mass-produced food, big farming, pesticides, GMOs, and processed food, but everyone has the right to eat whatever they want.

 I like to go out to the garden sometimes and just watch. For instance, just a few days ago those baby sugar snap peas were not there. There was only a small white flower. It just amazes me.

 I love watching the bees work in the garden. If you've never taken any interest in the importance of bees when it comes to food, you should! Bees are completely fascinating. God created them to know how to do every single thing they need to survive. Their queen dies? The worker bees MAKE a new one. We don't need to interfere. Unfortunately, we have interfered, and now colonies are collapsing. There is a lot to be said about bees, but instead of hearing it from me, I suggest you watch Vanishing of the Bees on Netflix. My husband and I are currently doing our research on organic beekeeping, and will be setting up our equipment this winter to begin beekeeping in the spring.

 I love the fact that there is no ingredient list here. If there was, it would say water, sunshine, and organic "soil". I put soil in quotes because I actually don't use soil for my beds. I follow the square foot gardening method, and it is a mixture of organic materials such as peat, vermiculite, earthworm castings, cow manure, chicken manure. There are no weed seeds in it, like there are in bagged soil. Any weeds I get in my boxes are only if they blow in with the wind.

 Chickens have been our newest adventure and have kept me on Google nonstop. Sure, I did a lot of research before we got our chickens so that I'd know what to expect. What I didn't know is that eggs are seasonal. Did you know that? There are all kinds of things you learn when you buy from a local farmers' market or produce your own. Suddenly you realize things just don't appear on a shelf or at your fingertips. Someone put in effort for that food to be on a shelf.

Chickens molt in the fall/winter. After a lot of reading, I found out that means they will lose some feathers (some more than others) and will slow or stop completely producing eggs. This is a time of renewal for their reproductive organs, and will keep the quality of the eggs strong when they begin again, or pick up production. We have four hens. Before we got chickens, I thought that meant we'd get four eggs a day. Wrong. We have never had more than two eggs in one day. Granted we bought them in the fall, not even knowing anything about molting season. There are things some people do, to try to amp up production during this time or kind of "trick the hens" into thinking there is more daylight than there actually is. We've decided to just let it happen naturally. If God designed them to operate this way, it's for a good reason. They don't live to serve us. I can tell you one other thing I've learned about natural (healthy diet, no antibiotics, no hormones) eggs- the shells are thicker, the yolks are so yellow that they almost look orange, and the yolks are THICK. They don't easily break or run like typical grocery store eggs.

Nature is more interesting than you might think! None of this stuff is new, but it's new to me. Do people think we're weird? Probably. Wasting our time? Probably. Do I care? Nope. Growing my own food has taught me that food is precious. It does not come easy. It does not come quickly. Used correctly, it has all kinds of power to nourish our bodies in the ways I believe God intended when He created it.