deer

So today I look out the floor-to-ceiling window on the north side of the living room and there is a doe looking at me. Apparently, while I was at market on Wednesday, there were deer looking in the same window at my mother and daughter. There's nothing quite like a two year-old telling you about deer looking in the window. It immediately turned into "reindeer!"

Anyway, today there were five deer instead of the three that were hanging around on Wednesday. They are not at all shy, and are difficult to frighten away. They were chewing on the juniper shrubs in front of the house (the first photo was taken from out the front door, the second through the kitchen window), since there are no longer birdfeeders for them to pillage. I love to watch the three different kinds of woodpeckers, the cardinals, Carolina wrens, chickadees, and other little no-name, Pennsylvania Winter birds. My daughter and I would sit in front of the window and watch the birds and squirrels, sometimes even rabbits, for many minutes at a time (that's nearly eternity for a toddler). It was like Bird TV, it was great. I am actually really, really pissed off that the only thing I can do, without buying 12-foot shepherd's poles and hanging feeders by way of a ladder in two feet of snow, is to take the feeders down for the year. I understand that the deer are hungry. Fine. I understand that human development has taken deer habitat, and therefore food supply, away. Fine. I still don't want them in my yard.
I didn't need a fence in my garden last year. I had a fence that was 2 feet high around it, which was silly because it didn't really deter anything other than children (ok, maybe not that silly, then). Now this year, I have planned numerous unfenced beds with some berry-yielding plants in them. . . deer bait. Damn.
Last year I spread dehydrated coyote urine on the places that deer entered and left the yard, and it kept them away. I can only hope that this year, once the snow melts and food is available again, some wild critter pee will do the trick.

Riverview Dairy in the News

Here's a great little article and a photo of Sam Byler from Riverview Dairy, one of the members in the co-op I work for. Read it here

then & now

This is what the yard and garden looked like when I was a kid. That's me and my Dad, doing who-knows-what exactly. These days, the driveway is smaller and the shed and outhouse are no more. The garden that was beside the driveway (our current garden is smaller, fenced, and in another part of the yard) is a grassy lawn with a fire pit in the middle. This summer, that will change. I plan to till it into 3' rows and leave enough space in between for our chicken tractor to get through (I think we've settled on the Cluck Truck model. . . that's another story).


This wintry scene is the ol' homestead a few weeks ago. It's hard to visualize patches of sunflowers and buckwheat, peppers and turtle beans, when there's so much frozen everything around, but I know the grass is under there somewhere. Much of it has melted off today since it was nearly 40 degrees F today and I saw that the lilies are starting to poke through the soil. This thaw may put a damper on my planned first-time snowshoeing excursion this week, but overall it is, of course, a very good change indeed.

Welcome!

Hello, hello! Anyone who had been following my last blog (Octavia's Beads) knows that what I am truly interested in is self-sufficiency. I want to grow as much of the food my family eats as possible. I want to know how to spin yarn, process chickens, make soap, and grind wheat. I work for a small (less than 20 members) farmers' co-operative in Western Pennsylvania, and this summer I will be managing the co-op's CSA for the first time. It's amulti-farm CSA, obviously, and I'm looking forward to balancing supply, demand, and desirability of produce for all of our members. I'm not a member of the co-op yet, but I will join this upcoming membership year (May 2010) as a grower under the name Finian Valley Farm, named for my daughter.
What I am working with is this: an acre of land, about 2/3 of which is usable. The rest is under water or a driveway. We have old maple and oak trees throughout the property, and there is a sharp drop with Slippery Rock Creek at the bottom on the west side of the property. The house is on the north edge, and in the most obvious spot for a large garden, water tends to pool in the spring. Strangely, though, our basement has never flooded. Never.
In the upcoming days and weeks, I will be updating this blog to give it a more interesting look, adding some photos and links, and sharing some of my exciting plans for raising my first flock of laying hens (arriving next month) and for expanding my growing space. I'm interested in permaculture and SPIN farming, and maintaining high standards for people- and planet-friendliness. Thanks for reading, and there's much more to follow soon!