Greenstorm's Journal

And it rained hard, thunder and lightning and power flickering and so so so much water that my little pond refilled and is trickling a stream through the spring streambed. Flats of plants filled up with water. The ducks are playing everywhere. Over an inch of water came down, I think.

I was having dinner with a coworker and his wife, which was a good time. I brought sausages and he cooked them in an amazing little brazier thing made by lodge cast-iron; I really want one of those now. Everything tastes better cooked over a fire and in good company.

This morning I went out into the garden before work to see how it felt about the rain. Mostly it felt happy; the favas have their first flower, the corn is settled in and I suspect prepping to shoot up several inches, the tomatoes are rooted in and happily greening and ramifying, the squash is throwing up its 4th and sometimes 5th leaves (it was planted with 1-2 true leaves last week), the beans are something between unfurling and popping up out of the ground, there are heart-shaped brassica seedleaves everywhere. It's good.

The tomatoes are going to be very difficult to navigate by August. I planted them in fairly tight (2' centers in a grid) blocks for better cross-pollination, and I'm leaving the weeds come right up to the edge of the block. I want pollinators, especially little pollinators, to feel comfortable. I planted pretty late so the plants won't get huge, but it's still going to be quite a carpet of plants and need careful stepping and a little judicious pruning. Note I don't stake anything.

Open oak party dent corn is just leaping upwards. It's a 10' tall corn, I didn't notice that when I ordered the seed, so it's very different from the majority of my small, northern-adapted flints. Very interested to see what it does.

I have not yet stepped out onto my deck to see how my potted tomatoes are doing.

Somewhere today I need to make some time to excavate my kitchen; I'm hosting cookie-baking tomorrow apparently.

It's nice to have some social stuff manifest. I'm trying to hold space for myself and not bite off too much humaning at once and so far that doesn't feel onerous.

Feb 15 - March 1: plant peppers indoors
April 1st: plant tomatoes and true potato seed indoors
April 1: plant cabbage and brussels sprouts indoors
April 15: if ground is thawed, plant barley, peas, chard
April 15: plant dahlias indoors
April 20: plant corn indoors?
May 1st: plant squash and melons indoors
May 1st: plant wheat outdoors
May 10: greens like lettuce, brassicas planted direct outdoors
May 12: plant out potatoes
May 15: cabbage and brussels sprouts transplants outdoors
May 15: start to harvest stinging nettles
May 15: plant turnips and beets
May 20-June 1: plant cold-hardy corn outdoors
May 25: plant tomatoes outdoors
May 26: plant carrots
June 1: plant corn transplants outdoors
June 1: plant peppers outdoors
June 1: plant squash outdoors
June 10: spruce tips approximate
June 15: start to harvest lamb's quarters
June 25: rose petals approximate
July 6: plant turnips and beets
July 10: plant kimchi cabbage and diakon (daylength sensitive plants)
July 30: harvest tomatoes for early seed
Aug 15: harvest tomatoes for mid-season seed
Aug 15-30: plant overwintering rye and barley and favas
Aug 25: harvest dry peas
Aug 15-30: harvest small grains
Aug 30: Last tomato seed harvest
Sept 1-20: harvest dry corn and dry beans
Sept 10: direct seed tomatoes, brassicas, outdoors for direct-seeding experiment.
Sept 12: harvest potatoes
Oct 1: cabbage and turnip/radish harvest for pickling/sauerkraut/kimchi
Nov-February: thresh small grains, shell corn and dry beans/peas. Put out to freeze on a cold night to kill bugs.


*add raspberries, saskatoons, and haskaps to harvest times

Alright. So it's my job as a land steward to create a system that fits into the larger ecosystem. Sometimes that's fun and easy. Sometimes it's challenging. With the crows, obviously, it's challenging.

Here's a first brainstorming run:

Like with coyotes, crows are smart and it makes sense to cultivate a resident population that has behaviours that help me and that don't harm. My friend T had a raven issue (apparently where they are ravens are territorial, here I get a ton of them) and they killed the problem ravens, then had a pair of ravens move in that didn't do those behavioural issues. Having crows here does keep ravens away, which helps for not having farrowing pigs eaten but causes obvious crop problems.

So categorically, options seem to be trying to keep all ravens away through killing them or scaring them (this seems unlikely to work long-term since if I kill them more will move in, and scare-based stuff tends to loose effectiveness over time unless I get a bird-chasing dog or something); training them not to go after my corn; or making my corn inaccessible somehow. A fourth option, giving them something else nicer to eat, isn't a real option because of how population dynamics works: they'll just keep multiplying until they can eat both my garden and my offered decoy food.

I suspect what works will be a combination of these things. I definitely prefer less infrastructure and inputs, and will be working towards breeding corns that the crows tend not to bother (taste? strong roots before a shoot comes up so they can't be pulled? who knows what the plants will figure out) but I need enough seed for heavy selection to make this work.

Right now cost is a bigger issue for me than amount of input, I think. I also like to reduce plastic use, especially short-lifespan plastics.

Killing/Scaring

Killing the current set *might* cause a different set to move in that doesn't have the learning that pulling up corn is fun.

Keeping the pig and bird food extremely tightly controlled so they can't eat any of it ever might help keep the population low and the level of interest in my garden commensurately low. This would involve a bunch of infrastructure: each field would need an enclosed pig feeding structure (or maybe only in winter and early spring, since that's when I'd expect the most starvation to occur). Birds are easier to make an enclosed feed structure for but harder to exclude crows from that structure since they are also birds. There is almost always some kind of food the birds get at when I do grocery pickup at the store, grocery pickup might be a casualty of this or I'd need additional indoor shed space to store the food plus the garbage it makes.

Scaring crows involves movement, noise, and things that look like predators. A dog that chases crows would be great, though keeping it out of the garden would be important and I have trouble imagining how to keep it hostile towards them instead of acclimatizing over time. It's possible that a radio and some gunshot noises or something that sounds like people and bangs, if deployed only during the seeding window, would help keep them away for a season or two before they figured it out. It might be a helpful layer of control but certainly not dependable.

Almost everyone recommends killing one and hanging it up to scare them, or getting "halloween crows" to hang up, whatever those are.

Training

Maybe it makes more sense to call this "convincing" the crows.

If there's something that makes the corn taste bad maybe the birds would stay away from it. Since I do a pre-soak anyhow it wouldn't be difficult to soak it in something. I see there is a commercial repellant called "avipel" that I would need to look into.

The crows aren't eating the kernels at this point, but it's possible that if I low-level poisoned some and set them out (think stomachache, not death) then the crows would leave the corn alone in future, or maybe if I set some out each year before seeding. That has some drawbacks: dose so as not to kill anything is important, I'm neither looking to kill them nor to get bad stuff into the food chain, I'm not sure what would produce that effect, if the poisoning agent had a scent maybe the crows would just not eat whatever smelled like that.

I have limited water pressure and power up there, but there are motion-activated squirting devices that are supposed to also deter deer etc. I'm not sure how well they work, or whether the crows could outsmart them, and they're not cheap, but I've been considering them for a couple years now.

Maybe running an electric fence wire right over the row of corn might shock them if they couldn't avoid touching it when they pulled the corn up? Not sure how well grounded crows are and this would take infrastructure.

Removing Access

Floating row cover is working best for me this year, but it's a consumable plastic item (lasts a couple years) that also costs money. It does make the corn grow faster and protect from frost. They do seem to try pulling the corn up when it comes off but there must be a size where they give up on that. I have 5' wide strips right now, square blankets that would cover most of my garden at once would make it easier to keep bird out from the edges. This costs money.

Piles of twiggy branches may help keep the crows from getting at the beds, or if they can make their way into the twigs (they do move through trees no problem, after all) it can keep them from flying away quickly so maybe they will feel unsafe/I'll be able to get one with a pellet rifle and then they'll feel unsafe.

Netting over the field would also help with harvest time, since I suspect I'll have an even bigger battle there even if I bag each corn ear. This would involve a lot of posts for infrastructure, and I think there are some downsides for small birds (they can get caught in the mesh?). Posts are something like $15-20 apiece right now, this isn't a cheap option.

Polytunnels, either high or low tunnels, with either mesh or actual poly on them: these are expensive, they'd mess with my breeding a little bit (if I used poly they'd be warmer so I'd get better crops), they'd need irrigation inside. On the other hand they'd do the job, they could function as barriers to cross-pollination so I could control that better, high tunnels might be good overwinter spaces, I could grow way more stuff, they're generally great. These would also need irrigation if they have poly on them.

Hilling, which I did this year, involves pulling soil up against the stem once the corn is a couple inches tall. If only the leaves are sticking out, the birds can't grab the base of the stem to strategically pull out the roots and the plant is less likely to be injured, plus they just don't seem to go after them as much once hilled. This is cheap, a little labour intensive, and only works once the corn is a couple inches tall so it needs to be got to that point to start (maybe through row cover or a bad smell/taste).

Deep planting is what I tried doing this year, putting the seed in deep and tromping the soil down around it fairly firmly so it's not easy to grab the seedling and pull up the root but instead the top just breaks off. The crows wait until rain/watering when the soil is soft to pull, but it seems to still help and allows for some regrowth at least.

Mulch isn't precisely a barrier, but I tried putting fresh green mulch down in the hopes the crows would have trouble seeing the new sprouts to pull. Because they slowly walk across the field from one end to the other this didn't help much; they're not just flying over and spotting things that way. Also I know the infrared on dying plants (like ones cut for mulch) is much different than on healthy ones and I'm not sure how crows' vision is.

It's possible a deep straw mulch would be helpful at obscuring the seedlings until they were too big to pull. It would soften the ground, making it easier to pull. On the other hand it would add organic matter and retain moisture so it would be good for the plants, and big bales of straw are relatively cheap, though they're labour-intensive and need to be bought the fall before.

Someone mentioned that they plant into their weeds, making a little 8" wide opening and putting in several kernels of seed, then only weeding the rest of the weeds when the corn is a foot high or so.

I've noticed that two plants growing close together are less likely to be pulled up than plants evenly spaced. Maybe put 2-3 kernels together per foot, instead of spacing 4-6" in the row?

The crows didn't really touch my Saskatoon White. I wonder if that was a fluke or if it means I should just grow more Saskatoon White?

Dents are coming up: open oak party, early riser, and oaxacan green. They're coming up more unevenly, I'm not sure if it's a quality of the seed (viability or genetics!) or because they're in heavier, clumpier soil which is both harder to get the furrows even and introduces more variability in each individual plant's journey to break the surface. I went to look because I got spooked by the crows making food-calls in that field but so far it seems to be ok.

I do love the corn names.

Soon the flours should be up. We have a good slow rain today. Tomatoes are starting to root in.

In a couple hours I go pick up Tucker for solstice.

It may be ok.

Outside is calling me really hard right now. There's a perfect wind, the lake right outside my office window is full of little wavelets, the sky is true sky blue with just enough fluffy white clouds to add interest, every leaf is just out with that new-leaf bright green and no silvering from pest damage or yellowing from drought yet. Half the dandelions are in seed and half are still invitingly yellow, just asking to be made into fritters.

I need to sleep out there, I think. You'd think 7 acres would be a lot but my forested parts are right up against the highway and everything else is visible to a neighbour. I'm working on planting myself barriers but I need to clear, then plant, then everything needs to grow.

Last weekend, to celebrate new ducklings and to celebrate having someone to share food with, I brought out a duck. Normally that's 5 days of food: a seared breast two days in a row, then legs and picked-off bits and gorgeous crackling skin two days in a row, then soup one day. Because I shared it's 4 days: I get to go home to duck cracklins and stinging nettles creamed in duck fat, then figure out which direction I want to take the soup tomorrow (pho flavourings, maybe? With starch noodles?). It makes such a difference to me having someone appreciative to share with, not an anonymous person to sell to but just a place where bounty can flow over and be enjoyed.

It's turning into summer. The seeds are in the ground. We need rain, and I should run irrigation. Things will grow without me for a bit. The time for heavy work turns into the time to relax, observe, and enjoy; the time for giving labour to the soil turns into the time to receive my body back bite by bite.

I've been wearing my ring, scythe and wheat, ebb and flow. It's been so hard to ride everything that's been happening with any sort of grace. Today I remember that the wheel will turn anyhow, it will turn and turn and turn and there will always be change. When I lose my grace, when I get thrown off and need to climb back on, there's always another turn ahead to handle more smoothly. Acceptance is not an end state; it's a practice.

I am going to make a gross generalization here but: the propagules from original American crops (potatoes, in the case of potatoes; seeds from sunflowers, squash, corn, and beans) are enormous and easy to handle, and they don't require a very finely prepared seedbed. Seeds from the old world crops tend to be smaller and fiddly, even the grains like rye but also crops like turnips and cabbages.

In turn this means that American crops would be easier to mindfully place, since it's easier to place those larger seeds on the landscape one-by-one instead of scatter them or pour them into a row. It might also lead to less thinning? Which maybe affects which part of the lifecycle selection occurs in? And then the seeds are more noticable when they emerge. I'm not sure, but intuitively it seems like they should be easier to plant into an already vegetated landscape with larger seeds, since they can hold more energy and thus get themselves up into competition better.

I realize modern crops don't always compete well with weeds, but still, the potential is there.

This morning on the gardening chat we were talking about how to keep crows from eating the seedlings of corn and beans. Someone said they planted their corn into tiny cleared patches, maybe 8"x8", six or eight seeds at a time, and then only weeded the rest of the patch when the corn plants were pretty tall. He said this tended to keep them from being eaten, and then when he weeded them they looked spindly for a day or two but just leapt into growing.

I had already been marvelling at how American crops have so many seeds where the seeds themselves are just such gorgeous objects: corn and beans are more beautiful than many human-made art objects at that scale. Er, hm, this implies that domestication isn't a form of making, but anyhow. That beauty was selected for, it isn't an accident.

But in my case the whole experience with these American crops is so lovely: I get to handle beautiful seeds, I don't need to worry about the soil being tilled into flour because the seeds are big enough to navigate bigger clumps of dirt, I can see where I'm putting the seeds in the furrow for spacing. The seeds can be buried more deeply so birds can't immediately eat them, because they're so big. Granted, their size also makes them a snack for the bigger birds, but I am sure the little songbirds would be happy to eat smaller seeds too, so.

And I think some of this might translate into a totally different planting experience altogether: more gardening than farming, less tilling and more careful placement. Milpa gardening bears that out somewhat.

My thoughts on this are obviously pretty unformed still but it's all very interesting. It's also not true across the board, as my carefully transplanted tomatoes will show. But. It's just easier to have a relationship with those big North American crops.

I've been looking backwards a lot lately. It's funny, I have almost never spent a ton of time reading back through old journals, but this last few weeks I seem to have been doing a lot. In some ways I'm the only person who can give myself good advice, though that was back at the breakup with Angus where we had just started, then had this breakup, then decided the breakup sucked and we'd just change our relationship to suit ourselves instead.

So much looking back and I'm searching maybe for a sense of perspective on my life. I've gone from one extreme to another, from no space for my hobbies and no privacy or ownership over space around me but a ton of people around who loved me all the time to, well, the opposite. It's almost like going back further, into my early-mid teens where I lived out in the middle of nowhere and connected to people only via the internet, but I had 5 acres to play on.

Even in those old writings I could plot you my hormonal cycle based on how I feel about things. The cycle seems to be exacerbated by a lack of touch and closeness maybe? But also by a lack of stability or certainty.

Just now, though, I'm appreciating sitting here with my nail-holed foot up on the couch. I got three hours of corn planting and tilling in this morning, if I can do another three today I suppose that's ok? I was hoping for more, but that was before I had a hole in my foot.

Gardening is one thing but making lunch really hurt. I got through it. I had a nice doctored ramen with egg and cabbage and I'm drinking my favourite wine and talking to Josh about corn shellers. He's telling me that the Lehman one catches the cob at the end of its run by magic, which appears to be true in videos of its use. Hopefully someone I know will find one for me at a thrift store in those piles of unknown cast iron objects, I bet there's one in Clinton.

Now I can nap and go back into the garden with my foot hopefully a tiny bit healed up and listen to the truly wonderful Future Ecologies podcast while planting and anticipate Tucker's arrival in not so long at all: less than two weeks.

Plus, imagine, if this all works out I'll be able to add corncakes or Jonnycakes or tortillas to my food rotation.

Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse.

One month till solstice. The cool overcast with daily twenty minutes of hail and cool wet breezes drifting into slight warmth of sunshine has given way to the big sun. The big sun lives everywhere, all the time, and except in stone-walled basements lined with blackout cloth it is inescapable. Up in the morning, out into the garden at seven, and the big sun is high already and working to warm the day into real heat. I come in by ten-thirty with a sunburn on my cheeks despite long sleeves and hat and sunglasses. Up late the sun is wildly energetic; at dinnertime Tucker calls from the dark of Virginia and says, "the sun's still up there, isn't it?" and indeed it is, it's only starting to consider leaving its flamboyant afternoon party to even glance at the horizon. At ten it is dark, mostly, with lingering blue along the horizon, but that won't last long. There have been summers I've not seen dark for months. Staying up on solstice the sun does go below the horizon but the horizon nver surrenders its light; deep twilight is as far as it gets.

One month till solstice and my favas, soaked, are in the ground late. One tiller on the way from the factory and the other in the shop, both unexpected delays, and my favas were soaked so there was no putting them back for next year. I took the mattock and fork to the upper field and put them in, roughly 12 x 14, packed much tighter than I was expecting because I was trying to minimize the labour. No barley went in the mix, though I will definitely put in alyssum and calendula or borage up there. This was half what I grew last year, the mix of Lofthouse and Russian Black, and half new genes: Ianto's return, Aprovecho select, sweet Loraine, sunshine coast, Montana Rainbow, Frog Island, Can Dou, perhaps some others I'm not bringing to mind. My saved seeds germinated well. The soil was unexpectedly sandy up there, probably from the old riding ring, with random rocks of all sizes. We will see how they do.

One month till solstice and I have a weekend to myself, staying up till midnight making meatloaf and then out at seven to plant seeds and back in before noon. Now I'm sorting my corns in preparation for planting, like any autistic person with their collection, and thinking about both how happy that makes me and how much I really do hide these behaviours. The distinction between things no one else talks about because no one else does them, and things no one else talks about because we all do them but they're private, that's the space where neurodivergence hides.

One month till solstice and I am hiding from the sun in my also-sunny livingroom like a bowlfull of light and writing until the still aggressively sunny evening.

I took an ibuprofen before bed. That was smart.

Now it's sunny (it was supposed to be rainy) and I've trundled a bunch of plants outside and checked on the stock and lard. Breakfast is probably in order (lard + flour, maybe pancakes?) and then I can do some things if I like:

I can go get my tiller from the co-op one town over (2 hours)

I can take my gutpile to the dump (it opens in 40 minutes, the longer I leave this one the worse it will be)

I can plant some barley and peas with or without the tiller

I can make a pig house

I can firm up the pig fence in back

I can price out fenceposts for the fence addition in back (and wire)

I can plant some haskaps

I can prep the pawpaw and apple seeds to start

I can sort through my seeds and finish making piles for this year at Threshold, this year at Sayward, and the freezer

I can start my autism assessment

I can can some lard and stock

I can can some pork carnitas

I can make soap

I can go to the grocery store and get oranges for the carnitas, or I could try them with lime

I can grind some pork and make hamburgers or meatloaf

I can tidy the house and sweep the floors

I can haul some boxes out to the storage container

I can cut up some more dog meat

I could hypothetically clear my deck off

Spring/summer plant:

Pickling cucumbers

Fava beans

Snap peas

Soup peas
-Bouchard dwarf, grown out 2021

Tomatoes (promiscuous, all mix, breeders, solanum peruvianum)

Peppers (hot grex & sweet grex maybe?)

Corn
-Gaspe wide pool
*Atomic orange 2 sources (Julia and Baker Creek)
*Montana morado Siskyou
*New York Red flint Great Lakes Staple Seeds
*Homestead yellow flint Great Lakes Staple Seeds
*Saskatchewan Rainbow flint Heritage Harvest
*Cascade Ruby Gold flint (2020) Adaptive Seeds
*Saskatchewan White Flint Adaptive Seeds
*Assiniboine Flint Heritage Harvest Seeds
*Floriani red flint Annapolis and Great Lakes Staple Seeds
*Oaxacan green dent Yonder Hill
-Early riser yellow dent Yonder Hill
*Harmony Grain mixed Experimental Farm Network
-Double Red Sweet
-Blue Jade Sweet
*TNC f1 wax corn agro haitai
*Astronomy Domine Sweet
-Magic manna flour & starburst manna flour (grown here)
*Painted mountain flour Sweet Rock farm

*pollen parent for detasseled gaspe mothers


Lettuce

Chicories
-trieste sweet
-variegata di castelfranco
-diva
-pancalieri a costa bianca
-cardonella barese
-bitter is better mix (adaptive)

Leaf & stem brassicas

Squash grex (maxima winter bred into gold nugget)
-Sweet mama William Dam
-Sundream Bee & Bird
-Boston Marrow Heritage Harvest
-Mandan Banquet Heritage Harvest
-Sweet Meat Heritage Harvest
-Blue Kuri Adaptive
-Little gem red kuri
-Lower salmon river Annapolis
-Buttercup Denali
-Silver Belle
-Lofthouse Buttercup Experimental Farm Network
-Latah Snake River
-Sweet Meat Annapolis
-Potimarron Adaptive
-Blue Hubbard Heritage Harvest
-Arikara Heritage Harvest
-Burgess Buttercup Heritage Harvest
-Desert Spirit Experimental Farm Network
-Nanticoke Experimental Farm Network
-Lofthouse Maxima Julia
-Hokkaido
-Pueblo Highlands Experimental Farm Network
-Warted Hybrid Veseys
-Winter sweet Veseys
-Wild bunch mix Veseys
-Bitterroot buttercup Uprising via Anna
-Plus pkt each Saved Red Kuri (Threshold), saved buttercup (Threshold), Gold Nugget (Heritage Harvest), North Georgia Candy Roaaster


Squash grex (pepo)
-algonquin pumpkin Heritage Harvest
-Thelma Sanders sweet potato secret Seed Cartel
-Mandan Heritage Harvest
-Gill's Golden Pippin Adaptive
-Candystick Delicata Experimental Farm Network
-Celebration Veseys
-Heart of Gold Veseys
-Table Sugar Veseys

Zucchini

Glutinous barley

Wheat

Beans (dry, runner, and snap)

Sweet physalis (amarylla tomatillo? Upright ground cherry?)

Potatoes? (need to obtain seed potatoes since I sent mine down south)

Heading cabbage? (hopefully not too late)

Turnips

Beets

Carrots

Parsnips


Later:

Napa cabbage

Winter radishes