Bye Bye Camper, Hello... Tent?

June 6, 2008 - So today we had a bit of a change of plans. This camper here has officially failed us.

We were diligently working on getting it cleaned out this morning when we discovered that the mold problems are just a little bit beyond fixing. We could spend a great deal of time and energy trying to get this thing habitable, and then there would still be the possibility of me not being able to get through one night without an allergy fit. So what did we do? We sat down for a good old brainstorming session. We got a nice list of about 20 ideas (some crazy, some not). Then we reviewed them and settled on a tent as our best option. Although we have some options of other places to stay, we really would prefer to be on our land. We did some research and found we could buy a really good sized 2-room tent for around $100. We'll rent a port-a-potty, which we really were going to need there anyway during construction, and we'll shower at random places (in fact YOU yourself may be lucky enough to find us using your shower!). We'll put a mattress in the tent and it'll seem like we're in a regular house. I know that to some it will seem like a completely crazy idea - but Joe and I are a little bit crazy - remember? Plus it'll be a great story.

But there's a lot of other things going on to tell about too -

First of all, we decided to begin having weekly meetings to discuss our task list. We really were just getting too overwhelmed with so much going on at once, and it's easy to feel like EVERYTHING has to get done, which is never possible. So now we come up with our priorities for a given week together and can then help each other stay on task when we get side tracked by the bazillion other things that we run into along the way. This week's priorities were to figure out the camper (check), build a safer coop for the chickens (in process), get the house finally ready for our demo permit (tomorrow), weed the gardens, stake the tomatoes, finish planting herbs, and work on our house plans.

Joe spent the afternoon thinking up some ideas on the improved chicken coop design, and of course, played with his friends at the same time -

I got the weeding done - here's the freshly weeded row of swiss chard -

And here's a beet plant. As I was weeding these, I did a little thinning (they say to thin them to 4"). All the poor guys who got cut from the program made it into our salad this evening. Yum. To anyone who eats their beets and tosses the greens - you're crazy. Beet greens are a delicious treat.

The romaine lettuce doesn't need weeding, as these pine needles are doing the job for us. Plus, notice how healthy they are looking? We seem to have solved our slug problem by putting little plastic rings around the base of each plant.

I had already weeded the brocolli earlier in the week. I had noticed that the stalks were getting very tall and didn't seem very well supported on their tiny little stems. So I went through and earthed up the stems to better hold the weight of the tops, and at the same time dug in a little organic compost, since some of the plants are still kind of small and I think a little hungry.

As I was doing my weeding tour of the garden I noticed this - a flower on the zucchini! I totally wasn't expecting that so soon, how exciting!

Next, I had to finish planting the rest of the herbs that I bought a few weeks ago - cilantro, dill, rosemary, and mint. Here's the completed herb garden -

Now all that's left in pots are some basil plants that I started late -

And a few plants that my sister is supposed to put in the ground over at her house. Look at the size of this tomato plant - we grew that!

Here's our newly staked tomatoes - Joe found these stakes in the garage, and we put them up one evening this week. And here's me, standing in front of all our gardens. We stood there for a little while today, just taking it in. It's so beautiful what we've done so far. And we're barely even harvesting yet! It's just so incredibly satisfying to look out at these garden beds and see the plants we started from seed in February and March doing so well.

Oh, I also wanted to tell you how we used our farmers market produce this week. I made a leek and green garlic risotto which was totally amazing. I had never cooked with green garlic and it has a really great taste, slightly different than mature garlic. The oyster mushrooms we just cooked up on the stove with some onions and flavored them with cumin. And then I also made a spinach salad with fresh mozzarella from the market and a locally grown hydroponic tomato with oil and balsamic vinegar on top. Tonight we just had spaghetti, but I tossed in some cooked radish greens from the garden, and we had a salad from the leaf lettuce thinnings I pulled today -

So that's all I have for tonight. I'm going to go spend my final few waking moments reading up on compost so that I can think about setting up a new system tomorrow. And I'm going to thoroughly enjoy these last moments of cool breeze blowing through the window, as it will be up into the 90's tomorrow and the next few days. Ugh. Glad we got the gardening stuff done today.