Thanks to a work party last Sunday, the backyard fence is up – just needs gates and a few finishing touches – but now we don’t need to worry about letting 80 out and her wandering around the neighborhood. We can let her out and go back to caring for baby when the time comes.

Other list entries are coming into focus and feeling critical but only on a personal level. I am supposed to have some new work in a show at the end of this month. The only problem is that I have not yet created that work. But the fliers are printed and my name is sitting right there. Time to figure it out…

What struck me about the photos was the contexts – holidays, birthday parties, vacation trips – as well as the quality. Most were shot with a Kodak Instamatic with 126 cartridge film. The photos were printed square with rounded corners. The exposure was mostly decent.

To be clear, we are talking about a plastic box with one fixed plastic lens, one aperture and one shutter speed.

The photos are, in general, what I would show someone who asked me for what I would define as a “snapshot”. A snapshot is not necessarily beautiful as a single piece, but some certainly can be.

For the most part the snapshot is a record of Kristin at age four in front of the Christmas tree or me standing near Niagara Falls. The images are usually something that, when you see it, starts a flood of “remember whens” and “I still have that shirt!” comments.

Like I said, they are not necessarily aesthetically pleasing or ready for enlarging and framing, but they are mentally amazing in that they contain your history in visual form. They fill in the gaps of memory and help give structure to the self buried beneath years of labor, school work and the everyday.

I think the snapshot went dormant awhile back as an anthropological and archeological phenomenon. Cell phone cameras have the capacity to revive that. I hear people disparage Instagram and Hipstamatic all the time. Sure, people are trying to create masterpieces every time they tilt the lens or add one more filter. But for the most part they are creating a visual document of the moment, something that can be riffled through at some point in the future and looked at with revived feelings. Each instant photograph is important to someone. I don’t care who and I don’t care why.

If we try and shoot the greatest, most emotional photograph of all time, every time, we will get frustrated and fail to get even the basic vibe of a snapshot. And that shot is sometimes all we really needed to capture; it will tell the story for decades.

I moved away from the cold of New York a long time ago. I did so for quite a few reasons – I hate winter jackets, brown slush and people complaining about the weather. Oh, and those same people complaining about how high the tax rates are in New York. “Yes, I get it. No, it isn’t fair at all. Could you pass the gallon of ranch dressing?”

In Western New York, I would never dream of seeing a honey bee out and about on a January day. The best flower a bee could hope for at that time of year would be on the wallpaper of the downstairs bathroom, with that strong smell of “flowers” coming from a recent blast of air freshener.

But I was happy to see that someone in our neighborhood keeps bees and that there was enough pollen available already to fill their legs.

Ever since taking classes in Wilmington on beekeeping I have been interested in pursuing it as a hobby. However, the more I have thought about it the less interest I have had in harvesting honey and using the bees as a food source. They have enough to deal with without someone like me coming and disturbing their work. But thanks to Sam at Anarchy Apiaries I discovered a more basic way of keeping bees, a way that lets the bees do their work, swarm if they want to, build comb at the size they feel is most efficient. The bees can live as pollinators not as a honey bank.

I don’t know a whole lot of anything about planting trees, but Kristin has some experience. I just had to follow her lead. When she said dig, I dug.

Our combined experience is not enough to make a detailed step by step instructional, but I can hit the basics.

The idea is to dig a hole that will easily accommodate the roots of the tree. The common rule is to dig the hole twice as big as the root ball. If there is no defined root ball (as in the case of our fig tree) you will have to just make a guess of it.

When finished, the side of the hole should be straight down and those same sides of the hole should be aerated with a pickaxe or a sharp stick. Leave a mound of soil at the bottom of the hole in the center in order to help hold up the tree while the soil is filled back in.

Place the tree is the hole and gradually fill in the soil. Hold the tree straight while another person does the filling. Once filled in, create a small dike around the tree to hold water. If the tree needs support, this is the time to tie it up.

Water once a week or as often as you think about it until the tree is established.

We knew we were pregnant while still living at circle acres but kept it to ourselves as the animosity boiled and the search for a new home commenced. We found a much-too-big house, but the size of the lot was too much to pass up. We are still getting used to the house, to the hot showers, to the kitchen with its awesome 1950s General Electric double oven. We seem to plan the garden area endlessly with the realization that we really do not have anything holding us back or pushing us forward. We can move at a pace that suits our days, our nights, our dinner bells.

The garlic bed went in late. We planted a much smaller bed this year as we are still trying to eat through last year’s pile. After giving a bunch away as seed and for eating, we are still loaded down with it.

We put in our first trees – a couple of fig trees started as cuttings a few years ago and a dwarf apple given to us by Kate and Keith from Bountiful Backyards.

Bountiful Backyards are starting an urban farm in East Durham. They have a Kickstarter campaign going at the moment to raise the cash necessary to make the farm a reality.

So that is where 2012 drops us off – new place, new friends, baby on the way. I hope you all stick around because this already branched blog is about to do some more branching. Keep an eye out for Quitter #7, new photo projects and my first real documentary films!

The new thing is using lard in pie crust. The easiest way to make pie crust with lard is to use a food processor. Yeah, I didn’t really believe it would work either, but now I would not make a pie crust without one.

1. Step one is to find a food processor. We found ours at a thrift store in Siler City (along with a book on theoretical physics and eight rolls of expired 35mm film).

Actually step one is to put a little jar of water in the freezer, about ten tablespoons worth.

2. For a two crust pie (top and bottom crust) add 2-1/2 cups of flour.

3. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt.

4. Add 10 tablespoons of lard and 10 tablespoons of butter. You can try all lard if you want.

5. Add a few tablespoon of the water from step one. Use the pulse button on the food processor a few times.

6. Add a tablespoon at a time until the dough is wet enough to just stick together. Should be between 5 and 10 tablespoons total.

7. Smash the dough together then split in half. Flatten the dough and wrap in plastic. Place is the fridge for at least an hour before using or put the dough in the freezer for later use.

8. Use in your favorite pie recipe.

You might recall this year’s garlic harvest, back before the move to the city, and how much we were able to grow. We are still sitting on a mound of bulbs and giving it away by the bag full. Before giving any away we were careful to sort out several pounds of seed garlic.

We actually started the basis for the garlic bed a few months ago, putting the full force of seven chickens to work and getting the grass nibbled down and depositing a nice layer of manure. Add to that a nice layer of leaves to keep the soil moist for digging, measure and mark the bed, and we are ready for the heavy lifting.

The bed prep was pretty standard – broadfork the row, put down a layer of leaves and compost, add a sprinkle of worm castings then dig out the pathways. The soil from the pathways gets thrown up on top of the leaf layer.

That soil is chopped up finely with the leaves and the compost and the worm castings. Rake that out flat, add another layer of leaves and you are ready to plant.

We are fortunate to have an abundance of leaves. When I saw people raking up their leaves in the neighborhood, I sent a message to the neighborhood asking for their leaves. I set up a corral by our driveway so folks could just bring over their bags and bins and such and just dump everything into a big pile.

But let me back up a second… When we moved here, there were three giant waste receptacles waiting for us. One blue for recycling, one green for trash and one brown for “yard waste”. We immediately knew that we would never set that last one out by the road just for the simple fact that our yard does not generate waste. We also knew that we would be out seeking other people’s yard waste bins and dumping the contents into our yard.

The concept is baffling – putting your leaves and sticks and grass clippings in this bin and having the city haul it away to who knows where. The only waste in this scenario is this bin and its associations. With all the front yard gardens in this neighborhood, surely we could keep at least some of our beautiful little nuggets of carbon snuggled within the same yards?

Well, we have this bin. May as well use it, right? It is a perfect little urban wheelbarrow (even though we already have a wheelbarrow). But this one is upright, has a lid, let’s you throw the leaves and grass together to get some nice heating up and breaking down going on before applying to garden beds as mulch.

And you can store this mulch and basically let it compost until you need it again.

Fast forward through a few months (and a move to the city), and we were ready to harvest our “baby” ginger.

The ginger we harvested was not mature enough to have the usual golden thick outer skin. The skin was white and pink, the flesh not too stringy.

As per usual, Kristin did the hard work while I took the pictures. After harvesting, she washed every piece.

Many of the original seed pieces remained intact. We are going to try to overwinter the pieces indoors and see if they will re-sprout in the Spring.

Kristin has been making Chai with the ginger. Some of it will go into the freezer. I hope to start fermenting some for a soda bug.

In other baby news, Kristin and I are expecting our first little cricket this coming April. We are doing a home birth; I expect that parts of the process will end up on this blog so keep an eye out.

(My first course was a weekend spent learning alternative print processes – cyanotype and van dyke – with Leah Sobsey.)

For the Intro class when had to do a short presentation, up to five minutes on a documentary idea. It could be any form, and I chose to make a short film. I filmed the Crop Mob in Carrboro, read the New Blood for the Old Body essay into a narration track, strummed on the banjo to make a 30 second loop and came out with this -

Crop Mob is primarily a group of young, landless, and wannabe farmers who come together to work and build an interconnected agrarian community. Crop Mob is also a group of experienced farmers and gardeners sharing knowledge with their peers and the next generation of agrarians. The Crop Mob is open to all regardless of experience, background or age as it is intended to be a community effort.

Pretty straight forward and to the point – peppers, pepper tasters, the end.  Since then the pepper festival has grown and evolved. The same can be said about my life in photography.

For this year’s festival, the big attraction for me was all the kids playing with the giant bubble wands. I shot this event with my Nikon D300. This was the last fest for that camera; I sold it last week. I used an ultrawide lens for the most part, which demands that you get close. So I got close and then got closer. I wiped bubble spatter off the lens more than a dozen times. All worth it though -

In doing some research I found that the two nights were probably different predators. The first chicken I found had its abdomen chewed open and all the entrails were gone.  Looking into the aspects of the kill, it looks to be the work of a possum – “One or two birds killed; mauled, abdomen eaten.” The body was right by the fence. Curiously, the next day’s egg was not eaten and remained intact in  the body.

Last night we woke up to the hens going on and on with a sustained amount of squawking. I wasn’t much interested in going out there since they sqwauk every damn night, but something seemed a bit different this time. Kristin was also persistent. I tried to get 80 to help me out, but she was too busy sleeping on the couch. When I got out to the coop, part of the door covering was ripped. The chickens were huddled in a corner of the coop, off the roosts. A quick count showed one was missing.

There was no sign of the body, a small clump of feathers right by the door, and part of the fence was down. Again, going to the Internet – “One or more birds dead / missing; no more than one removed; pile of feathers” – it appears to be the work of a fox.

While our coop is not pretty enough to be on the Durham tour of chicken homes, Kristin is reinforcing the door today and hopefully making the coop a decent and dependable fortress. There is no doubt that these critters will come back.

Now, freshened from rest and with plenty of built up demand to participate, the plan is to complete four mobs in two months with two of the mobs organized as “mini-mobs” with several nearby locations getting mobbed simultaneously.

In August we returned to Spence’s Farm to do some of the tasks that we do best – pull weeds, make large piles of compost disappear and lay down mulch.

This past Sunday we split up to hit three location in Durham. The Interfaith Food Shuttle’s urban farm plus the home gardens of several long time mob participants.

Kristin and I attended the mob at Steph and Steven’s house, turning a lot full of English ivy and wire-grass into several nicely cleaned up and mulched garden areas.

I am excited to see many, many first time crop mob participants. Ever expanding and pushing the model forward, I am still in awe at how it all continues to come together and function so well.

I happen to be the happy owner of about twenty five quarts of rendered pork lard. I threw last year’s lot of hog fat in with Bobby at Okfuskee Farm in order to get to the minimum amount that the slaughterhouse would render. As a result, the package label has Okfuskee Farm on it. No matter – it is all good stuff.

Surprisingly, I haven’t made biscuits in the past. Most of the recipes I found called for shortening, margarine or vegetable oil. I wasn’t sure if lard would bake any differently.

1. Add one half cup of lard to two cups of flour, one tablespoon of sugar, one teaspoon of salt and three teaspoons of baking powder.

2. Mix the lard into the flour with a wire whisk until the dough gets crumbly.

3. Stir in 3/4 cup of milk and stir until the dough starts to stick together. But don’t stir too much!

4. Scoop the dough out onto a floured surface and knead lightly up to ten times.

5. Pat the dough down and roll out the a 1/2 inch thickness.

6. Cut the biscuit rounds with a floured metal measuring cup, an inverted glass or just make them with your hands.

7. Put the dough on an ungreased baking pan or cookie sheet.

8. Bake for ten minutes at 450 degrees.

9. Tell Kristin that they are ready!

furniture has no say in life
it was made to be used by people
how many times have you felt like a bookcase
sitting in a living room gathering dust
full of thoughts already written?

Fugazi, “Furniture“

I know that I am not meant to dwell, hoping that the memories are malleable to a point of bittersweet returns. There is no nostalgia for a lost sense of direction, no yearning for a hungry presence among deeply broken individuals. I am intuitive enough to understand a person’s trajectory towards the bottom, introspective enough to see ruins standing tall on the backs of my retinas. I have participated fully in this setback, probably put myself out there too far, now getting ready to do it again in new circumstances with new people within new geography.

I have learned that there is really no other way to go about it – embracing this life of layers we breathe like so much old skin – than just getting right the fuck on with things, albeit with a bit more resilience, learning how to fill out an outline like it is second grade all over again.

We pulled up a few green garlic here and there, took off the scapes, mulched and weeded, but for the most part we left the garlic bed alone.

After watching the leaves die back and change from green to brown, we decided that it was time for the harvest.

We had incorporated leaves and manure into the bed in early October. Our normally dense clay soil was a bit looser at harvest time. The leaf mold and soil fell off the roots fairly easily.

Between the two of us it didn’t take long at all to pull everything up and load the cart.

The longest process was tying up the bunches and hanging them from the barn rafters to dry.

We’ll dry the garlic for a few weeks, trim the stems and roots off then sort through to select the best seed for next year. The rest we’ll eat.

Most of the very ripe (and tastiest) will go to the birds in the next few days, but human hands will grab the ones in reach.

The short season is basically defined by the birds’ activity and not so much about how many we pick for our pies and our freezers.

Voting continues through July 1st. You only have to confirm your email vote once. After that you can vote daily, which would be awesome!

This image is one that I shot at an early Crop Mob at Okfuskee Farm in Silk Hope, NC.

We planted the garlic in November of last year, some six or so pounds of it, enough to get almost to the end of the row. After a couple of mulchings, the garlic is beautiful. And scaping. In order to promote the growth of the underground bulb, the scapes are removed. Scapes can be used in cooking for their light garlic flavor or fermented. We picked all the scapes and handed them over to Adah for fermenting, but not before Kristin grabbed a handful to throw in with some beet greens she was cooking.

Basically all you have to do is pull on the scape to remove it from the plant. Most just break off where they emerge from the stalk. Others come all the way out leaving you with a nice piece of tender goodness.

The harvest went quickly, the two of us filling a five gallon bucket in about ten minutes.

After the scape harvest, it was on to planting ginger. In early March I went to a ginger workshop put on by East Branch Ginger and Debbie Roos of the Chatham County Cooperative Extension. At the end of the workshop everyone received a few pounds of seed ginger. After pre-sprouting the ginger behind our woodstove and in the greenhouse, it was finally ready to plant. The pre-sprouting gives the ginger a head start.

In order to control fertility (ginger is a heavy feeder) and water, we are growing the ginger in our old chicken feed bags from Reedy Fork Farm. The bags provide great drainage as well as easy hilling. Ginger is hilled three times – once when the base of the shoots turns from bright white to bright pink, a second time four to six weeks later and a third time four to six weeks after that.

Our soil mix consists of Sunshine potting mix, feathermeal, leaf mold, worm castings and mycorhizzal granules. We get the potting mix and feathermeal from Chatham Farm and Home Supply. They have bulk feathermeal from North Carolina sources, making it cheaper and more local for us. The fungus comes from Mushroom Mountain in South Carolina and the worm castings come from Carolina Worm Castings who make their compost in the building next door to ECO.

We hope to harvest eight to sixteen pounds of ginger this fall. This is a big experiment, but I can easily see myself getting sucked into this big time.

In the above photo you can see Jerry on his tractor discing in some overwintered red clover. It was starting to go to seed, the bees were finished with it and it was time to incorporate the organic matter.

The manure came from an auction stockyard to the west of Siler City. Apparently there are livestock auctions there frequently with all flavors of beasts present. The manure was a mixture of pig, goat, horse and cow as well as plastic bottles, beer caps and empty match packets. Kind of like the leaves we get from the Siler City street cleaners but with more of an ammonia bite to it.

Hopefully this round of planting is able to sprout and grow. Adah and Kat are putting row cover over the seeds and installing some scarecrows. I guess we’ll know in a week or two whether those two methods get the seeds through the first phase and into the next battle – deer.

I am the first to admit that I am sometimes very cranky to deal with especially if I get woken up. A few weeks ago, Brother was analyzing his bowling ball fetish at 11:30 at night. The backstory is that Gray found a blue bowling ball in the dumpster, brought it home and gave it a roll across the grass. Brother immediately took a fancy to it and began making a very strange sort of noise that no one had heard him make before. The strange thing is that he does not make the noise with any other type of ball or stick or animal. Only the bowling ball provokes this response.

So back to a few weeks ago. The sound of Brother’s yipping echoed through the trees, through the grass and through the tarp that covers the area behind my pillow. I calmly put on my head lamp and rubber boots, walked down the path and past the trampoline where Gray and Adah were giggling, found Brother’s glowing eyes and squeals of joy, took his bowling ball from him, threw it into a ditch full of water and quietly went back to bed.

Now the bowling ball lives in the ditch full of water, waiting for the summer drought. Brother also awaits the return of the romance.

We Who Are Not As Others (or The Untitled)

So yeah, Quitter #6 is ready to go. As usual, the cost is $2 or whatever. An additional 80 cents covers the postage and PayPal fees. Here is a taste -

I distinctly remember second grade. It was somewhat of a turning point in my life, as much of a turning point as you can get when half your life is measured in years instead of decades.  That year I got my first and only pair of cowboy boots, a sharp toed brown and gold stitched outfit with heels and zero traction.  That year I also shoplifted a candy bar from a nearby gas station, smoked my first few puffs of a cigarette and, most importantly, got into my first real fist fight with someone who wasn’t my brother.

A work party in late January helped us remove the roofing from the back addition, which included the old bathroom. After that it was primarily a Kristin and Trace demolition team. Two and half months in – with help from Julia, Kathryn, Joe, Matthew and Ben and Kathleen – we have almost finished with that demolition.

From here it is on to site work, engineering plans, strawbale selection, milling cypress, outlining workshops and lining up volunteers and apprentices all while figuring out how to pay for it all.