Unfinished

When I became a school administrator, one of the things I couldn't get used to was the fact that no job was ever finished. As a teacher I could feel a sense of accomplishment when a set of papers was marked, or I finished teaching a class. But as an administrator I was responsible for the professional development of my teachers, and the delivery of curriculum, and the establishment of good assessment practices - and when the heck are those things ever finished?

It's a good thing I had some practice with this before we moved to Mucky Boots, because "unfinished" pretty much describes my life. In fact, Kim and I are becoming experts at not quite finishing any job we begin.

Take the workshop for example. It started like this...

...and now it looks like this...

But do you see this?

That's right: we haven't installed the two motion-sensitive light fixtures. Yet.

And then there's the master bathroom. It started like this...

...and now it looks like this...

But take a good look at that last picture. Notice the missing window trim? And missing baseboard? And maybe you spotted that the towel rails aren't hung. Yet.

The wood shed is a thing of beauty since we enclosed it...

...but there are still tools that haven't been hung.

And some of the shrubs we bought a couple of weeks ago have been planted...

...but others haven't.

The new gutters got installed, and all the high-up trim painted...

...but the lower-down trim is still the old forest green.

The fire pit got mostly weeded...

...but then my back started to hurt and the rest didn't get finished.

The living room got its coat of paint and new baseboard...

... but if you were here you could bend a little closer and see that the nail holes haven't been filled.

There are good reasons for much of this. Too much of the same kind of work makes my arthritis flare, so I have to switch to something else, and then somehow I never get back to the job I started with. Or professionals come in to do part of a job, so we drop what we're working on and never pick it up again. Or good weather hits so we move to outside jobs. Or bad weather comes so we move back to inside jobs. Or once something is functional all those finishing touches seem not quite so important.

If I was smarter and wiser I would have something philosophical to say about the zen of unfinished work. But all I can say is it feels like we're living in a big pile of loose ends.

I think it's time to start tying some up.

Quinoa

One of my goals for the vegetable garden this year was to see how much protein I could grow - protein in the form of three kinds of shelling beans, and quinoa.

Here's the quinoa, hung under cover on the verandah to finish drying. It rained this weekend, and I was worried about the seed heads getting wet. So, even though the stalks and leaves were only half dry, I decided to go ahead and harvest on Friday. Now there are six big, gorgeous hanging bunches of quinoa, ranging in colour from pale yellow through dark golden to pink and red, adorning my view from the French doors out to the garden.

This was just an experiment, and all the way along 75% of my brain has been convinced it couldn't succeed. After all, quinoa is a grain native to the Andes. What business did I have trying to grow it? But germination was great and the plants stayed healthy and formed heavy, loaded seed heads. I still have to see how the whole threshing/winnowing process goes, but unless it's a disaster, I think quinoa will be a regular feature in my garden from now on.

Hard day, happy ending

Today we took the teenage cockerels to the slaughter house.

The big day was supposed to be next Tuesday, but the boys have becoming increasingly difficult to manage (Kim and I both sport wounds from a couple of particularly nasty young roosters) and increasingly hard on each other. That was to be expected. Dual-purpose heritage breeds take longer to put enough meat on their bones to make them good eating, but at the same time they are maturing sexually, which means more aggression. We bought ourselves extra time by giving them lots of room to range during the day, but even Kim's expert wrangling has been challenged to its limit. So yesterday, after a particularly tough battle with a particularly big and nasty cockerel, we called the slaughter house and pushed the date ahead to today. (That's him in the photo. He may be the meanest, most vicious rooster I have ever encountered, but he certainly knows how to pose for a photo.)

We started with 15 cockerels from the second batch of eggs we hatched. One was sold last week as a breeding rooster to a nearby farm. Kim needed to hang onto one Buff cockerel to replace Pee Wee, who was sold a few months ago when he started getting too aggressive with the hens. She also wanted to keep one Australorp cockerel, to expand her breeding options. That would leave us with three roosters in all, which we can easily manage given our two coops with multiple enclosures. But this all meant some tough decisions: which to keep and which to slaughter?

Kim decided to keep a big, dopey Buff cockerel - formerly named Red Left because of his ankle tag, but now christened Gump. He's huge, calm and has already been integrated into his future flock of Buff pullets - he was so picked on by the aggressive Buff cockerels that Kim pulled him out of that group a while ago.

But which Australorp should we keep? The emotional favourite was Hector Junior, but the judging at the Cowichan Exhibition underlined the fact he has a wonky tail, which rules him out as a breeding candidate. So, given it looks like there are some better candidates in the younger batch, Kim decided not to keep any of the teenage Australorps.

And so this morning we got up with the sun, loaded thirteen cockerels into crates on the truck and made our third trip to the slaughter house. It felt a lot harder than even our first trip. While I filled out tags and tried to ignore the squawking of the chickens all around me, Kim talked with the folks who gathered around our crates, drawn by the size and all-round magnificence of the birds we had brought in. (Most of the chickens there were small, dirty, bedraggled meat birds crammed into crates - so hard to look at.)

And then a miracle happened.

Hector Junior found a new home.

One of the people Kim spoke to is a young farmer from Salt Spring Island who has a small flock of Australorp hens. He was amazed by our birds' size, and asked if we would be willing to sell him one. Would we?!! He didn't care about wonky tails - he wanted big size and a good temperament, because his chickens free range and he has small children.

So at the twelfth hour Hector Junior was snatched off Death Row. Tonight he'll go to sleep in his new home, a family farm on an idyllic Gulf Island, with his own flock and a happy life ahead of him.

We cried on the way home - with joy, for Hector Junior.

Man, this part of the whole chicken business is hard. Thank goodness for one small, happy ending.

Verdict

And here is . . . drumroll . . . the verdict.

Second Prize for the bumbleberry jam!

Second Prize for the gooseberry and lavender jelly/syrup/jelly!

Third Prize for the blueberry chutney!

I am chuffed. I am proud. I am . . . a jampion!

It gets better. On the chicken front, one of the Australorp cockerels (Hector Junior Junior, so named because he is a slightly smaller version of Hector Junior) won third in his category. The two Buff cockerels placed first and second in theirs, which is a good thing because they were the only two entrants.

But Hector! Our lovely boy Hector! He won his category, which may not be surprising because he was the only Australorp rooster entered. But he also went on to win the prize for the best rooster of any of the standard breeds (in other words, not a bantam). Here he is, with his fancy blue ribbon.

Kim has been down to check on her chickens at least once or twice a day since the fair began, and she reports that Hector is the object of many admiring comments from all the people who pass by. (Most commonly heard: "He's so big!"). But Hector, being Hector, has not let this acclaim go to his head. He's still our sweet, modest, calm lovely boy.

Way to go, Hector!

Fair

This is the weekend of the Cowichan Exhibition, and all of us here at Mucky Boots are pretty darn excited. Because after being enchanted by all things local and agricultural at last year's fair, this year we decided to pull up our farmer pants and participate.

Kim entered six chickens: Hector the Magnificent, three Black Australorp cockerels including Hector Junior, and two Buff Orpington cockerels. (She decided to leave the pullets at home to save our future egg-layers from what can be a stressful experience.) Here they are, when we dropped them off on Thursday night.

And I entered four preserves: blueberry chutney, in the fruit chutney class; the infamous gooseberry and lavender jelly that turned into a syrup and then back into a jelly, in the jelly-with-pectin class; bumbleberry jam (made with blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb) in the jam-with-pectin class; and peach and cranberry jam, in the jam-without-pectin class.

You're going to have to stay tuned for the results, because the judging hasn't finished yet. But we did go down this morning to check on the chickens and have a good look around before the crowds hit tonight. And I am even more charmed this year than last.

I spent most of my time in the big hall housing the Domestic Science and Hobbies & Crafts divisions. And I became convinced of the genius of the organizers: if there are so many categories that practically anyone can find a niche to fit into, everyone will go home happy. It reminds me of the birthday party hat-decorating contests my parents would organize when I was a kid. There would be a prize for the hat with the most bows, and the most colourful hat, and the hat best exemplifying the party theme, and so on - the big idea being to send everyone home with a prize.

At the Cowichan Exhibition there are prizes for the best decorated cookies (the photo at the top), the best decorated cake (this won Second Prize and was way better than the First prize winner) . . .

. . . the best decorated cake made by a kid (that's the Kinsol Trestle, a local and recently restored historic train trestle) . . .

. . . as well as prizes for the best choux pastry, the best shortbread, the best squares made with cereal, the best cinnamon buns, the best apple pie and my favourite: the best selection of three dainties of any kind displayed on a doily. In all there are fifty-five different classes that have to do with baking. And then there's jams and jellies, and pickles, and tomato sauce, and mincemeat, and canned salmon. And that's just in the Domestic Science division.

In the Hobbies & Crafts division there are prizes for the best model made from scratch, the best model made from a kit, the best submission in the "Bathroom Boutique" category (that would be toilet roll cover, plunger disguiser, towel holder and so on), the best craft article made with a rooster theme, the best ornamental bird house, the best piece of hair jewelry, the best decorated egg, the best doorstop, the best item made with potpourri, the best decorated lampshade, the best item constructed from duct tape (this apron won Second prize) . . .

You get the idea. One hundred and four classes in all, and this division doesn't even include needlework, spinning and weaving, photography, painting, flower arranging, and wine making.

But even better still: if you find yourself with no creative talent of any kind, don't despair. You too, can join in the fun and maybe even be a winner in this class.

That's my kind of fair. But I've noticed there's one significant omission.

There's no hat-decorating.

Saddle

What an adorable little garment! What a sweet little . . . apron? It looks like an apron, but it's not big enough for a human. It's more the size of a . . . chicken.

I can see this is going to take some explaining.

Meet Broken Feathers.

Broken Feathers is one of our original Buff Orpington pullets, raised from a day-old chick. From her earliest days as an egg-laying hen she has been the favourite (amorously speaking) of first Pee-Wee and then Hector. As a result, the feathers on her back have been gradually broken and worn away, so that now she is practically naked.

Naturally Kim started to worry, especially since the rooster spurs that caused the problem in the first place have started to scratch Broken Feather's bare skin. Miriam, her sewing machine, and this pattern to the rescue.

So no, it's not an apron - it's a saddle! And just in case you are tempted to put this in the same category as those ridiculous outfits people buy for their purse-sized dogs, please remember it has a purpose and a function.

I think the denim blue nicely sets off Broken Feather's pink comb and wattles, but Broken Feathers herself isn't quite sure what to make of it.

Carrot love

As my grandmother said when I came out to her, love is a gift wherever you find it. Even in the carrot patch.

Tomato accounting

I canned my second batch of tomato sauce today, and I have to say there were a few moments during the three hours of chopping, mashing, boiling, sieving, filling and processing (not to mention the washing, drying and wiping every tomato-spattered surface in sight that followed) that I wondered if it was all worth it.

Don't get me wrong. I love home grown tomatoes right off the vine, still warm from the sun, sliced and piled on a toasted gluten-free bagel slathered with tzatziki - yum, yum and more yum. But canning tomato sauce is pretty labour intensive, as these things go. Roughly chop the tomatoes, mash them to release the juices, bring to a quick boil, add the onions, garlic and seasonings, reduce to a slower boil for about two hours, stirring regularly to make sure it doesn't scorch. Then when the sauce has reduced to half its volume(or, as happened today, you just get tired of stirring and stirring), run it all through a food mill to remove all the skins and seeds. Then back into the pot for a return to the boil. Meanwhile, wash the jars and bring to a boil in a canner. Remove jars from the canner. Fill jars. Wipe rims. Put on lids and rings. Back into the canner for 35 minutes of a rolling boil. Remove and listen for the magical music of lids pinging as they seal. Look down and remember that white t-shirts and tomato canning don't mix.

Organic tomato sauce costs $5-6 a jar at our local store. Today's efforts started with ten pounds of tomatoes and resulted in six 500 ml jars. If I factor in the time spent growing the tomatoes in the first place, and the cost of the seeds, the fish fertilizer, the canning supplies, and the electricity to keep those pots bubbling for three hours (but not the cost of a new t-shirt) is that minimum wage? Barely. But I think that's the wrong kind of accounting to do. I think you have to factor in the sense of security that comes from knowing how to do this, and the satisfaction of providing for your family, and the peace and contentment that rises from an apron (okay, today I forgot the apron), a wooden spoon and a bubbling pot on the stove, and the feeling of a cycle come to completion I get when I look at the finished jars on the shelf and think of the tiny tomato seeds I planted in April, and the soil I patted around the stems as I transplanted the seedlings into the greenhouse beds, and the hours and hours of sunny warmth they basked in. I'm okay with minimum wage, if it comes with all of that.

On another tomato related topic, I have finally organized myself to save tomato seeds for next year. Not for every kind I grew - some were busts, but four were standouts. Granadero, an indeterminate (climbing) plum tomato that produced an enormous quantity of gorgeous, flavourful fruit. Black Krim, an heirloom variety with a quirky shape and a beautiful dark colour. New Girl, which beat out my previous favourite Early Girl for a reliable early producer. And Orange Blossom, a mild, colourful orange mid-sized tomato.

Here's how you save tomato seeds: squeeze out the seeds into a small dish. Mix in a bit of water. Put them in a warm spot, like a verandah railing. Watch them ferment over the next few days and wonder if you've done something wrong. (You haven't. The fermenting is getting rid of the coating on the seeds that would make it impossible for them to germinate). Stir occasionally. When they have done their thing rinse them and leave them to dry out on a paper towel, then put away until spring.

Our first summer at Mucky Boots I tried saving seeds, but forgot them on the railing and by the time I remembered they were past saving. The second summer I forgot completely. This year I am determined that come next April, the tomato seeds I'll be starting will be my own.

Rain and sorrow

According to our local weather station, the last time we had any appreciable rain was June 2, when 6.3 mm fell from the sky. That's about a quarter of an inch for those of you who still think that way. Bottom line: it has been dry, dry, dry. That sums up Southern Vancouver Island weather right there: first it is wet, wet, wet and then it is dry, dry, dry.

Finally, today it is raining. The forecast has been predicting it for a few days - at first it said rain Monday and Tuesday but now it's saying rain today only. Even a little is a welcome relief. When I was at the grocery store yesterday the chatter in the line-up was about the impending precipitation, spoken in a way that reminded me of children on Christmas Eve - all happy anticipation. I don't think anyone will be feeling that way come November when we're back to the wet, wet, wet, but for now a lot of people in my neighbourhood are looking happily out their rain-streaked windows.

On a completely different and uncharacteristically political note, we are so sad to hear that Jack Layton died today. For those of you reading from other parts of the world, he was the leader of the federal New Democratic Party who led his party to their best showing ever in the election in the spring, forming the official opposition for the first time. In the best tradition of the New Democrats, he was a person of integrity, honour, vision and action, with deeply held views on social justice. I remember him from my days living in Toronto, when he was the city councillor who came out to Gay Pride Marches in the days before they became a tourist attraction, when such an appearance usually meant political suicide. He wasn't gay himself - he was just deeply, deeply committed to creating a fairer and more just world. I am sad for his family and for the loss of the difference he would have continued to make to our country.

Just call me Laura

When I was a girl I loved - I mean really loved - the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I don't have a lot of memories of my childhood, but one that stands out clearly is the day my parents brought home a Little House boxed set for me. I had been a fervent fan for at least a year before that, and had read every one of those books. But to own them all - I can't articulate how rich that made me feel.

I still have those books - me, the one who ruthlessly pares down my belongings every time I move, and who has moved twenty-two times since then, between four different provinces. The box is long gone, and the books are more than a little worse for wear, but I know exactly where they are on the shelf. Those books will be with me forever.

My nine-year old imagination was dominated by those books. I played Little House on the Prairie and made pioneer dresses for my dolls. I had a rag rug in my bedroom, and a washstand, and I dreamed of the day I would have a basin and pitcher to go with them.

I was captivated by the self-sufficiency of Laura's family. Her ma made soap and cheese and bread and sewed clothes. Her pa grew wheat and chopped firewood and built houses from logs and sod. That wasn't all of the attraction for me - I knew all about the magic of homemade music at night by the fire - after all, I learned all fifty-seven verses of "The Fox Went Out One Chilly Night" at my own father's knee as he strummed a guitar in front of a campfire. I knew about the sense of safety and security that came from being with all my family under one roof - in my case it was the canvas roof of a tent when we went camping. But the resourcefulness, the ability to make things instead of buying them - those were awe-inspiring to a nine-year-old and still are forty years later.

So maybe I've been channeling my inner Laura these last couple of weeks. When I look on the porch there are onions and garlic I grew and harvested drying in the summer heat. In the cold cellar are the first of the potatoes, still dusted with dirt and wrapped up in paper bags. On the shelves in the storage room are jars of pickled beets, Victorian barbeque sauce made with rhubarb, blueberry and rhubarb chutneys, gooseberry and lavender jellies, bumbleberry, blueberry and rhubarb jams. Curing on the table in the dining room are my first two batches of handmade soap, and the third, made this morning, is cooling in the milk cartons I used as molds. The first round of tomato sauce is processing in the canner as I write, and in the crock on the counter is my inaugural attempt at sauerkraut, tasting wonderful but still needing a bit more mellowing.

There are good, practical reasons to do all of this. But somehow food security issues and reducing footprints and food budgets don't explain all the deep pleasure I get from growing and canning and making.

I think, when it comes down to it, I have Laura to thank.

Treasures in the garden

On the radio this morning I was listening to a gardening expert trying to deal with the collective angst of southern Vancouver Island gardeners over the dry, lackluster states of their gardens.

Count me in. I'm missing the dewy, lush freshness of the late spring and early summer. The heat is nice, but we haven't had any rain in a month, and I refuse to water the perennial beds any more than is necessary to keep plants alive. Which means the garden is a place of tough, stringy, crisp-around-the-edges survivors these days.

But August is also the month a few flowers finally come into their own. The pots and pots of echinacea I started from seed last year are flowering with slightly goofy purple abundance, and the lilies that are scattered in ones and twos throughout the perennial beds are finally unfolding.

The double bee balm is earning its name, with two tiers of petals. . .

. . . and the sadly neglected roses that I do nothing to except hack back every year are looking beautiful enough to make me reconsider my gardening priorities.

In the vegetable garden some stray onions I swear I didn't plant are flowering, along with the hollyhocks I started last year.

The globe thistles are turning from silvery green to purple, and then erupting in tiny petals which the bees just love. Me, too. There's something about these prickly, quirky plants I find really endearing. Maybe it's because they make me think of a plant Dr. Seuss would think up. Maybe it's because as someone who has spent my life perfecting niceness, I am fascinated by something that is so defiantly prickly. Or maybe it's sheer gratitude: the thriving communities of globe thistles growing in even the driest, scrubbiest looking perennial beds go a long way to help me preserve a few shreds of self-respect as a gardener this time of year.

But the best treasure in the garden? That's easy. My mom and dad, come from Calgary for lunch.