Things are growing and changing (not just in the garden)

Watching videos of police brutality has become a daily part of my life lately, a sick obsession. It began on October 25th, when I, for the first time, witnessed it first hand. I remember how fast my heart was racing, how truly scared I was by the loud noise of flash grenades and how unbearable the stinging was in my eyes and lungs because of the unnecessary usage of tear gas. By the end of that night I was at the verge of tears. Whether they were tears of pain, fear or anger, I am not sure.

Police brutality in the Occupy Movement  is beyond my understanding. How can we possibly excuse such outrageous behavior? Why are we starting to see tear gas as an unavoidable outcome of any peaceful protest? What is the need for the constant abuse of peaceful students protesting?. We are growing accustomed to it, but also we are starting to realize how little we have been questioning police authority and the different powers that play out in the systems of our society. The murder of Oscar Grant was almost a slap in the face but yet we let it slip easily, and the perpetrator will soon walk our streets again. I constantly wonder if the thought of killing an innocent man bothers his sleep? Does it even cross his conscience?

Why do policemen (I have yet to see a video of a policewoman going too far, though I'm sure it happens) get a free card? They are supposed to be providing society with a sense of safety.  The more I see happening through out the Occupy encampments and protests, the more convinced I am that I have real reasons to cross the street when I see cops standing on a corner, that my heart beats faster when I see their guns so easily reachable that, if they wished, could turn against me at any time. I no longer feel guilty for thinking that behind those stiff bodies there is no person. I feel helpless and unsafe around these armed and soulless characters in uniform.

If I walked up to someone and hit them so hard over the head I made them bleed I would go to jail, especially if it was caught on camera, but they walk away from crimes they commit untouched and even protected by those who we have chosen to be our leaders, those that are supposed to represent our opinions and values. I never thought we were voting against our own well being.

It's been a media black out. News are supposed to keep us informed with unbiased opinions, but the mass media is far from doing their job well. As I read different news papers yesterday morning, I thought to myself "how come the police is never the one that clashes with the protesters?".

Perhaps what it takes is a 84 year old woman and children getting pepper sprayed, veterans with broken skulls, men all over the country getting physically abused for literally no reason, lawyers and reporters being harassed and kept away from doing their jobs. Maybe constant events like these is what is going to push us all to the edge, to make us question our power (or lack there of), to pull us out of our homes and finally say “enough is enough”. To take back what is rightfully ours, or public spaces, education, the basic right to have an opinion and not get physically abused for voicing it.

For years we have been spreading democracy left and right, East and West but somehow we forgot to give it to our own citizens, to those that go abroad believing they are doing someone else a favor by getting rid of their leaders and putting our own puppets in their place. We have turned away from the violence we have spread, the unfair treatment of human beings in foreign jails, the destruction of cities, the rape of the land, and displacement of families and people across the world.

I believe that the moment has come; it is finally here. We are outraged, we want change, we are more together than ever before. Tactics are being spread across the nation, our demands, frustrations and desperation are becoming more clear, and those in power are fearful. A nation that is finally realizing its own power and seeing that our freedom of speech and peaceful assembly has never been guarded by the government but rather, but its citizens. We need to keep those in power in check, we need to demand what other generations fought so hard to get. Freedom and the ability to change what we believe is wrong and unfair for this country's people.
 
I believe that one of the most powerful and effective points of this movement has been its extreme ability to inspire creativity and palpable change. People have said enough to big banks, many are writing and calling their local government, some that have lost homes are reclaiming them, others are simply taking time of their day to feed those in the camps and all of them are taking about how they have been affected and what they would like to see happen in the future. But we are doing something. Indifference no longer feels like an option.

A deep sense of community has been growing around the movement and there is nothing scarier than peaceful human beings working together to create change. 

Love,

Clara

We grow

Perhaps we talked about it for so long it only made sense, or we made a rash decision, or we just wanted cute little things running around the basement again.

But whatever it was, here they are.

Betsy and Wasabi.

I am excited to see how they interact with our other  chickens, apparently the older ones can get a bit violent and territorial so there is going to be a slow process of introducing them to the yard. More to come on that.

For now, they grow by the second, make funny noises and try to "fly" out of their home whenever they get a chance.

They look just like little dinosaurs.

The girls

We had been talking about it for months. Real eggs, orange yolks, funny noises.

Last September, before traveling to South America for six months, I bought two chicks for the backyard. They were just a few days old when we picked them up in Half Moon Bay Feed and Fuel.
They wrapped them up in a box, we bought some early chicken feed, a heat lamp (to simulate a momma chicken they'll never see) and we drove them back to San Francisco.
They were as adorable as one would expect, what small animal isn't? They made little sounds that were almost inaudible.We named them Lola and Pocha. Lola is a Rhode Island and Pocha an Ameraucana.
The first few weeks we kept them in a wooden box with the heat lamp on at all times, the mostly cuddled with each other and ate. Soon after I left for my trip and then others had to take care of them.

They grew quickly ( I got photo updates) and soon they were too big for the wooden box. My mom, with the help of some of her permaculture friends built and amazing chicken coop, that later had to be taken down because of neighbor complaints (what they were exactly remain hard to understand...) Then it was changed and here is where they live today:

I wasn't there, but it was a lot of work to build and it was starting to become time sensitive since the chickens where getting pretty large and hard to keep in one place.

                                                      (Around three months old)

They weren't laying eggs yet but as the days got longer they waking time got earlier and earlier. They began to develop their own personalities and to make a lot more noise than before. During the winter months we didn't have much in the garden so they roamed around the yard eating what they liked and, I am pretty convinced, maintaining our larger-than-normal spider population to a pretty low level. Eventually, we started to plan spring and summer crops, and we found out the hard way that they loved sprouts and to take their daily dirty baths in our recently planted beds.

So we set out to create a space just for them, where they could eat whatever they found and dig has much as they could. We built  fence in the back of the yard, about 4 feet tall. They seemed happy in the new habitat. A few days later we found Pocha outside of the fenced area. We couldn't figure out how she had gotten out. A hole in the fence? Underneath it? Above it?? Yup, Pocha, the more wild of the two, had flown right over the fence that had taken us a whole day to put up. We extended the fence another 4 feet, now we take them out every morning to their play pen and they eat the dead bees and whatever kitchen left overs we toss over to them.

They are work. Waking up at 6am some times to take them out (we finally figured out that if we look their coop door at night, they sleep in) cleaning their coop at least once a week, and remembering to put them back at night. They are loud and if they ever get out in the garden their are small tornadoes. But, we having been doing some research on using their poop as compost, they give us lovely eggs, and they keep our spider colonies under control.

It has been a trail and error adventure with Lola and Pocha, but we are thinking of getting one or two more this year. They are lovely garden companions!

I never found any website that were very helpful on the topic, most of them are for farming land or larger scale chicken raising, but I have been seeing more books on the topic of keeping urban chickens.

I failed to mention, that I got the idea and urge to get chickens after reading the amazing book Farm City, by Novella Carpenter.
Here is the link to get great blog:
http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/


If you get inspired to get some chicks of your own, let me know, I'd be more than happy to provide some guidance and help out with any building of any kind!

Today I am feeling engulfed by the movement

The man who speaks for many

and on a lighter note

This Time, Last Year

Well maybe earlier in the summer last year, we began taking our gardening a bit more serious than before. In past years, we had had a roommate who used to be a farmer in (fill in with Midwest state I don't remember) and he had planted artichokes, asparagus and lots of succulents. The artichokes were mistakenly taken down some years later by some overly eager "gardeners". The asparagus are going strong.

We expanded our backyard boxes and went crazy with fava growing.

We also had a French roommate living with us, Christophe, and when his mother visited, she made us some delicious Salade Nicoise, which goes something like this:
Fresh fava beans, prepared; fresh peas, shelled; grape tomatoes, halved; spring onions, slices thin, Kalamata olives and tuna.

We also planted some lettuce, onions and we already had our lovely strawberry line (which is becoming more of a strawberry field this year).

 I got some sun chokes (they grow up to 8 feet and some times get flowers, that look like sunflowers though I have yet to see any) but you can eat the root and it is pretty delicious. Apparently you can even pickle them, which is the plan this year. They are very satisfying to grow, like favas, they are quick and resilient.

Another important addition last year was our herb box! Cleverly placed right by the stairs which lead up to the kitchen, we planted a variety of things: Lemon verbena, lavender, oregano, cibule (scallion), chamomile,parsley, peppers, basil and somehow some tomato plants made it in there as well (I wanted to try out the idea that basil and tomatoes grow well together, hence Caprese salad).

Ah yes and those little plastic containers with brown stuff (beer) was to get rid of slugs, they were all over that precious basil! Next post will include a picture of the herb box this year (looks SO different) and all the things that we have been doing with the herbs and future plans.

Not so Chronological After All

Yes, at the beginning, when I had this blogging idea, probably many months ago, I wanted to be extremely organized about show the progression of things. How one box became two, three, four and then we took over the lawn. There were more trees, then sun chokes, we added an herb box, chickens and bees joined in! But alas, I don't think it will work that way after all.


Thanks to the photographs I will be able to show some of the chronological progression, but I have decided to write about what the latest project is and what I am most excited about. Otherwise, this blog will slowly fade away. Being excited=productivity. I have gotten extremely excited about growing food and the garden production has increased severely. This is a sample of one of the weekly harvests this summer (sweet peas, blackberries, eggs, strawberries, figs, plums, radishes):

Yesterday I visited family in Palo Alto, they had three boxes ready to be planted. The one who was the most excited about the planting was my 6 year old cousin. He jumped up and down we we arrived because he was ready to plant some seeds. We evened out the dirt, decided what plant was going to go with what, thanks to John Jeavons and his handly book!, and all of us (6 year old cousin, 10 year old cousin and her friend, uncle, aunt, boyfriend, my mother and I) found our role in the planting and got to it. Hopefully the next time I visit there are lots of little sprouts on these beds.

Gardening with kids was one of the most amazing things, they are so fascinated by the magic of seeds and plants. Everything is exciting to them and, even in our fast paced computer driven society, they learn to be patient and get excited about what those seeds with turn into.

This morning harvest, will make for delicious celery, carrot and apple juice tomorrow morning!

From the Start

I recently collected all the pictures that I have been taking over the two years of the garden and it was really wonderful to see how much it has changed!

So I got inspired to talk about the progress of it, the failures and also to have a way of keeping track of what we do in our backyard.

I also want to share recipes that we use to cook our bounty, from jams to pickles and juices. As well as creative and easy ways of dealing with overloads of beans, favas, and other crops that do awfully well in this weather.

The garden is located right passed Twin Peaks in San Francisco. Our micro-climate allows for some sunny mid-days, so our choice of crops is a bit more varied than lets say, the Sunset or Richmond Districts, but definately it is no Mission valley weather or Potrero Hill.

Here is a picture of the early beginnings, when we had a a lonesome box in the back. Before we took the Permaculture Design Course in San Francisco, before volunteering at Hayes Valley farm and definately before traveling to South America and working on a farm for two months.

 But more posts to come with lots of details about these awesome things that have been coming together for me in the past few years and have shaped me and most likely my future.