TKG Sunday - A Personal Letter to Everyone

'A personal letter to everyone' is an oxymoron if ever there was one. I can't be anything but personal. And you, my dear reader, are not everyone. You are not just anyone.

Things are going to change. Like seasons. Like tides.

Everything, including any given project at any given time, is prone to change. We evolve. We adapt. Transform. Hide. Modify. I am organic, like water, shifting shape to fit the contours of the moment. Continuity is not my thing; I lean into change, embracing its uncertainty. Life, after all, is a fluid journey, where the path is ever-changing and the moment of our destination is an unknown.

Every social media manual insists that readers crave continuity, a steady, unchanging stream of familiarity. But you, dear reader, you are different. You are wind people, bending and dancing, embracing the unpredictable currents of life. You are the ones who lean on the door jamb and peer into a stormy night counting seconds between the roar of thunder and the strike of lightning. We let our grip on the book of rules loosen, welcoming the unknown and allowing change to shape us, and shape us again. Embracing the jagged light.

So. (Taking a break from the news for a bit) Here come the changes to this publication. After a week of thinking and drinking tea contemplatively I have decided to rest the daily TKG Take Ten videos for a while. The videos are making me anxious and hurried and I don’t do anxious and hurried. If and when, because it will be when, something interesting happens I sure will be videoing. And publishing them. But they will be shorter. More intimate. Easier for me to manage. I am not a videographer. Stills are my forte.

• So TKG Take Ten is shelved

• We experimented with hand held video ‘walking and talking’ the other day and you all loved that so I will do that again.

• We are keeping the TKG Sustainable Sunday Newsletter and keeping the farm update. It makes sense.

• The stories will come when they come.

• The Kitchen’s Garden Farm Blog remains the same.

I want to create a space for you to visit that has value. That sparks conversation. That keeps us safe so we can lean into the wind. Knowing you have back up - right here.

Farmy Round Up

Cows and Calves.

The calves have gotten over their eye troubles and once again the herd is back together.

It is very sweet how The Aunties mind the babies. Everyone laying together under the trees. For those of you who don't know, the blankets hanging from the trees serve as cow fly relief. The cows move back and forth, drifting their sides against the fabric to rid themselves of the persistent flies. It's simple. Almost poetic. Relief, swaying in the breeze.

And eminently sustainable.

Jude and FreeBee the big rescue hogs

These two are very settled. And are stars of the farmy when I take visitors down the back to visit them.

Jude sits on command but Freebee ignores my commands with delightful impunity. He gets his treats anyway.

Tima and WaiWai

Tima and Wai are smaller than the big pigs down the back and neither of them root so they are allowed to free range.

For Wai that means lumbering back to bed after breakfast while Tima follows everyone about until chores are finished and then lowers her round body into the shade. Every time a person passes her she grunts. The sound moving her whole belly. “ I see you. Do you see me.” she rumbles. “I see you.” I say, as I pass.

The Charlottes

As friendly and easy going as ever the Charlottes continue to grow.

One of the new restaurants that we have found gives us buckets of old rolls and hash browns and fries. You can imagine how excited the pigs are about those. Bread and deep fried taties are the very best for fattening an animal up! (Humans take note).

In the early evening, the light golden and low, the little white freckly pigs can be seen racing around their two small fields, chasing each other, darting under trees, through the weeds, splashing through their wallow. As fast as they can go. A race track. Pigs in fast cars. They skid to a halt, tumbling over each other in collisions. Squeaking. Pile ups. They lay flat. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, they leap up and take off again. Through the weeds and gone.

The Chooks

The layer chicks are a mixture of Cuckoo Marans and Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpington, and a white group (maybe California whites) plus one chick who is an escape artist with dusky grey and white markings and she could be any number of breeds. We will have to wait for grown up feathers. .

They have been transferred to the big chook house. They will stay in here in this big hen house for thirty days until they are ‘homed’. and have learnt to roost at night. Chickens always go back to the same roosts in the evenings. But this takes training. The old chickens will teach them. They need to return to the chook house each evening so I can lock them away from predators. And of course gather their eggs.

Do you see the metal in the back walk? Jude put his head through that wall to say hello the other day. Just stuck his nose down and lifted off a panel. Sigh. R and I made a temporary repair. We are going to have to remake the whole back wall from the outside too. Old buildings cannot stand up to these huge animals.

The Turkeys

The turkeys are growing very slowly.

And until they are big enough to wander alone they will remain in their house. They will not ‘home’ and are likely to roost wherever they end their day. Probably in trees. They do not herd like ducks. We will see. They will be excellent insect catchers when they are finally released. There is not one fly in their house.

The Ducklings

The ducklings and I have established a great system. They wander about all day, swimming, eating greens and hunting for bugs under the trees and in the evening I shut them into their little house for safety.

They come immediately when called. The flock tightly and are easy to herd. The white ducks are huge but being so young they still do not have full wings yet. Quacker has not bonded with them but sleeps close to their house at night and is always at their door to say good morning when they are let out.

The Kitchens Garden

I am picking tomatoes and courgettes, herbs and assorted greens. The pumpkins are flowering and the sweetcorn is tasseling.

Like tomatoes, sweetcorn is self pollinating and we already have a number of corn cobs set.

Sweetcorn and strawberries are the most heavily sprayed (herbicide and fungicide) crops in the US. So be careful.

The Organic Fields

Weeds in these big fields are always a concern. So we weed between the rows for as long as we can. In a conventional farm this is done with chemicals and the impact on our health and the health of the soil is dreadful. And in the last few seasons conventional farmers have seen an increase in round up resistant weeds. To combat this they have lobbied and received permission to dump even stronger doses of chemical onto food crops.

We are chemical free (organic) and use old fashioned methods but with new fangled machinery. Our fields have been weeded mechanically three times with a unit called the tickler. It tickles across the top of the soil between the rows knocking back weed seedlings. Similar to a person with a hoe. School kids used to do this. They called it walking the rows. And by all reports this was how they earned their summer spending money.

The corn is high now - and will hopefully shade out any new weeds.

Coming Soon

We pick up the Guinea Hogs on the 20th of July. Not long to go at all. These animals will be smaller and hopefully easier on the infrastructure of the farm.

All my research tells me they are friendlier too but I have never met a pig who was not friendly with the person holding the bucket!

And yes it is raining. And yes there is hay on the ground. Sigh.

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🐞The Kitchens Garden Farm Blog (since 2011)

Going forward the favorite of the week will be determined by the number of comments. And The Favorite this week is:

Giving Fear It’s Name

If you like it comment on it. Your comments count. And unless my day has gone straight to hell I will answer each comment.

And though the blog thekitchensgarden.com has changed its face over the years - it is one of the few things in my life that remains basically the same.

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🌻Sustainable Sunday

OK. Tips and Tricks for a sustainable lifestyle. A lifestyle that you can sustain without damage. A lifestyle that works towards not damaging our immediate environment.

• Hang your shopping bags on a hook by the door

• Make a list. Plan your meals.

• Make your own breakfast cereal

• Buy vegetables and fruit that are in season

• Get to know your farmer (I am one - we are nice people).

I know that here in the USA the airwaves have been taken over by political rhetoric and danger. I do not have the right to vote here. So I have no comment. I will just continue to work towards a cleaner, safer environment for whatever country I am in.

Just keep plodding on. The environment will change. The climate is already changing. We must make plans to roll with these changes and try - really try to mitigate our own personal impact on our immediate environment. Planting trees to sink carbon for our grandchildren, ensuring our fields are covered with plantings at all times, avoid plastic as much as humanly possible, buy in bulk using your own containers, drag out that bicycle, work hard to keep our public transport, grow greens on your deck, compost, elect politicians who really do give a shit about the land, what else?

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I always like to finish the Sustainable Sunday with tips and tricks and recipes. So you will always have something new to comment on each week.

Comments, Likes and Shares are the flowers. So - go ahead. Tell me what you think.

Celi

PS - TENNERS - you are still The Tenners I will be writing to you privately later in the week. Thank you so much for your support of my mission, my writing and our wee farmy.