Strawberry Yoga

Okay, back to the lighter side of life at Berryridge Farm. You might not think that growing your own food and yoga has much of a connection. But this summer, I not only realized the importance of yoga at our little farm, but that there are many different kinds. I don’t mean Hatha, Ashtanga, or Kundalini yoga—I’m talking Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry and even Fudge.

It all started with a fabulous book called Chocolate Yoga. While author Margaret Chester approaches her practice with a wry sense of humor, the book is full of wisdom that feels both innovative and time-honored. Chocolate Yoga is about all the ways you can use the small moments of your life to relieve stress, and bring more peace and contentment into your life. Margaret Chester's stress-busting yoga also feels so natural, even organic in a way, you might find yourself thinking, “this stuff is so easy, why didn’t I start it a long time ago?” Practicing Chocolate Yoga, which provides lots soothing mantras like “what can I let go of right now?” and “there is no rush,” has made me realize all the many varieties of yoga that can be sort of organic, besides the Chocolate kind.

Take Vanilla. For years, I’ve been doing some basic yoga stretches to loosen up after riding my bike, plus a few more for my creaky back. Vanilla yoga is nothing fancy, just something to get the kinks out. But a couple of months ago, it came to me that I’ve invented a whole new style, Strawberry Yoga. This yoga practice starts in late June, when the berries come in. Here on Berryridge Farm, to keep out the critters, our strawberry beds are fenced and netted within an inch of their lives. Naturally, it’s a huge hassle to undo everything for picking, so you’ve got to climb over the fencing, clamber under the nets, then peer under the thick foliage, searching for flashes of red. Of course, the ripest, most delectable berries are always just out of reach, so Strawberry yoga involves contorting yourself into some really awkward positions. These vaguely resemble popular yoga poses like Warrior, Downward Dog, and Half-standing Forward Bend, only they’re really uncomfortable. Sometimes, picking strawberries means you’ve got to stand on one foot to avoid stepping on choice berry clusters—then, you’ll find yourself doing a kind of one-legged crane pose popularized by the Karate Kid.

I like to think I’m simply modifying some basic poses, but I know in my heart yoga isn’t supposed to be painful.

Now, unlike traditional, Vanilla, or Chocolate yoga, Strawberry does not increase your fitness level or decrease your stress. It strains your joints, torques your knees, and ties your muscles into knots, necessitating even longer sessions of Vanilla Yoga, or even a trip to the physical therapist.

There’s a still another variety of "organic" yoga: Fudge. Like Strawberry, it’s another yoga practice you don’t realize you’re doing until it’s too late. I’ve often been doing Strawberry yoga all day, picking berries, or crawling through our overgrown asparagus patch for weeding (and wondering, how do the weeds grow in the dark, under all this thick foliage anyway?). Or I’m cleaning the chicken coop, leaning sideways to avoid brushing up against all the “stuff” ingrained on the walls, the roost, and the nest guard. Then, before I know it, the day is gone and I’m starving. So I go inside to start dinner, and I’ve “Fudged” on my vanilla yoga.

Fudge yoga also comes into play this time of year, when harvest creates a veritable Perfect Storm: you’ve got to water, weed, pick, put up the fruits of your labor, sow your fall crops, and collect seeds for next year. I often wake up in the morning, and my mind starts racing through the gazillion chores I should accomplish that day: the loganberries and tayberries need pruning, it hasn’t rained for a month and I’m miles behind on watering, the woods are seriously encroaching on our crops and I’ve just got to start hacking at the underbrush, and while I’m at it, the cukes are coming in by the dozens and I should be making pickles. Naturally, the days are getting shorter but my chore list is getting longer! Before I know it, I’m getting more and more stressed out—and I’ve fudged on Chocolate yoga too.

However, it helps to keep in mind that Chocolate Yoga is your dedicated veggie grower or mini-farmer’s saving grace. It helps relieve that pressure of those dozens of chores, all of which must be done simultaneously. Chocolate Yoga helps you focus on what’s really important (like your breath), and remember that “this too, shall pass.” In other words, it will soon be a cold and rainy November, and you’ll long for those crazy-busy days in the light and warmth of late summer.

So I’m heading outside, to weed and water and harvest, and trying not think about how late I’ll be up tonight washing, cutting, pickling, and freezing. But hey, I’m not worried. I have Chocolate Yoga! I take a deep breath. There is no rush.

Collateral Damage, Part 2

You’ve probably guessed it by now: there was not just one Chip, but many Chips.

After this first chipmunk death, the pillaging in the strawberry patch continued unabated. So my husband John set up more traps, one just outside our bedroom window. (Where the chipmunk had climbed behind our siding, mentioned in my previous post.) A couple of days later, I was in the bedroom when I heard a sharp Snap!—then some mewling cries. I couldn’t bear to look. I knew it was another trapped chipmunk, in its death throes. Luckily John was nearby, and he once again had to put the creature out of its misery.

The next day, I was near one of our woodsheds, when there was another Crack!—the sound of a trap. I turned toward the sound, and saw a trapped chipmunk, flipping in agony. It died right before my eyes, before John could do a mercy-killing.

He continued to set traps, and within ten days or so, the body count had reached a dozen. “I’m starting to feel like a killing machine,” he said sadly. I couldn’t blame him. John and I have no objection to hunting, but this war on wildlife was feeling pretty horrible. But because we’re trying to grow as much of our own food as possible, what other choice do we have?

The thing is, John and I are the first to admit that Chip, or the many Chips, had been here first. And they’d only been doing what came naturally: eating the best food available. Here in the woods, we were the real intruders.

Back when we first moved to the Foothills, carving our small clearing out of the woods meant bulldozing. Since the area bird population appeared unscathed, we didn’t understand until how much collateral damage a bulldozer would do until the following spring. After a year of hand-tilling the ground, John and I saw our first earthworm. The dozer, we realized, had not only wiped out the brush, saplings, trees and stumps, but the worms, the toads, the salamanders and snakes. All “good garden friends,” as John would say. (If it took a year for an earthworm to show up on Berryridge farm, it took two before we saw a toad, and months longer before we found any more reptiles or amphibians.) Even the mere presence of our house constituted a wildlife hazard: last summer, we lost two of our resident hummingbirds—they’d crashed into our front windows during one of their dogfights. John holding a dead hummingbird in his palm before going into the woods to bury it, was about the saddest thing either one of us had seen on our place.

Since moving to the Foothills, we’ve cleared additional ground by hand, maybe a quarter acre, but we’d like create some pasture for our hens. But we’ve held off on hiring out the job, since a real pasture would involve more dozing. More death. So for now, to make more grassy plots for the “girls,” we’ll use the combination of grunt work and hen scratching. And to somehow try and give back to nature what we’ve taken.

Collateral Damage

From my last post, you can see that all is not sweetness and light here at Berryridge Farm. Because this summer, John and I turned into the perpetrators instead of the perpetratees.

You see, the varmints had been in the strawberry beds.

Because of our chilly May and June in the Foothills, the strawberry season had been really late. So four weeks ago, when I spotted the first perfect, plump red berry, I was eagerly anticipating my first taste. I had to spend the day in town—I was presenting at a writers’ conference—but I knew this luscious berry, safe under the netting, would be protected from our resident robins. Then, the next morning, I hustled to the bed to pick the berry, but it was…gone.

A chipmunk, of course. They’d become regular visitors to Berryridge Farm in the last year. I admit, they were fun to watch, scampering through the yard, fast as lightning. Then we realized where all that scampering was leading.

Last summer, we’d seen one run right through the berry nets, and I’d gotten pretty ticked off to find berries scattered here and there, some with bites in them, some not. But this year, after that first berry disappeared, I realized that Chip had become much more destructive. I’d go out to pick, and find smashed berries covering the large rocks ringing the bed. Half-destroyed berries were strewn everywhere, mostly the biggest, ripest ones. We even found strawberries littering the woodsheds, where he’d obviously set up housekeeping.

You may be thinking, c’mon, what’s the big deal? How much can a chipmunk really eat?

As it turns out, a lot. It was eating our berries as fast as they were ripening. And since we’re trying to grow as much of our own produce as we can, we were counting on the berries for not only our fresh summer fruit, but to freeze for supplementing our winter food stores. “Chip,” I told John, “is ruining our crop. We’ve got to do something.”

A friend had recommended peanut butter bait, so John dutifully set out a couple of rat traps. All of which were ignored. Chip had also grown bolder, scurrying all through all the garden beds, always leaving smashed berries in his wake. In fact, when we’d get close enough to try to shoo him back into the woods, he’d give us a look like we were bothering him.

Then, after a week or so of trap setting, we were once again trying to shoo Chip away. But instead of darting into the woods, he clambered up our house foundation, and disappeared behind the siding. Meaning, he could be moving his household from the woodpiles to inside our walls! That was it. The. Last. Straw.

John came up with a new strategy: traps baited with peanut butter, with a ripe strawberry on the top. Could Chip resist this confection? Soon after, from the house I saw a chipmunk racing into the garden. It halted mid-stride, and did a somersault, tail switching, his whole body flip-flopping madly. “John,” I called, “there’s a chipmunk in the yard, acting very weird.”

Outside weeding, John found it immediately, and as I watched, he speared it with his handfork. I turned away, wincing. I’m the kind of person who can’t watch even the mildest violence (if there is such a thing). So my relief at catching our resident thief was tempered with regret, that John had to resort to hand-to-hand combat. After he’d buried the chipmunk, I met him out in the yard. “You okay?”

“It looked like its back had been broken.” John looked down. “I had to put it out of its misery.”

“Oh, Honey,” I said, feeling a little sick. “That must've been grisly.”

“It’s hard to kill something when you’re looking ‘em right in the eye,” John said heavily. “I mean, I always liked chipmunks--I grew up watching ‘Chip and Dale’ in Bambi.”

“I hear you,” I said, patting his shoulder. Back in the 60s, I’d watched “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” myself, so I’d been fond of these little woodland critters too. But at any rate, Chip was gone. So our problem was solved.

Or was it?

Next post: Collateral Damage, Part II.

Homicide at the Little Farm

I'd just returned from town around dinnertime and found John outside...in his underwear.

Because John's always been the conventional type, not inclined to cavort out of doors in his muck boots and undies, the underwear alone was cause for concern. But when I saw the shovel in his hands, I felt a twist in the pit of my stomach. "The hawk?"

He nodded somberly, "I didn't get there in time."

Earlier that day, before I left, I'd seen a red-tailed hawk swoop over the chicken yard and settle on the fence post. I bolted outside, waving my arms. "Go on! Get away!" The hawk lazily took off, as if not the least bit intimidated by my yelling. Meanwhile, our six hens had taken shelter beneath a young Douglas fir, and there they stayed, quaking in terror.

I returned to the house to get ready to leave, but before long, the hawk was back, alighting on the fence again. Same drill: I ran into the yard, shouting, but this time, the bird only gave me an insolent stare with its beady eyes. It didn't even blink. Really mad now, I picked up a chunk of wood and hurled it at the hawk. With my pathetic aim, I didn't expect to actually hit it, and sure enough, I didn't. But my flimsy weapon seemed to have done the trick. The hawk flew off toward the deep forest next to our woods.

I figured the chickens were safe, under the tree. So did John. Still, while I was away, he'd worked outdoors most of the day, so he could keep an eye on things. Near sundown, he'd decided the "girls" would be okay, and went in to take a shower. Half-dressed, he'd looked out the dining room window, and saw the hawk in the yard, standing over a hen. A dead one. John raced out, and threw a big stick at the hawk - and at least had the satisfaction of running off the hawk before it had a chance to eat its kill.

When I arrived, he'd just buried the chicken. For two days afterward, the traumatized hens wouldn't leave their coop. Both of us feeling sad and guilty, John and I vowed to protect our five remaining girls a lot better. No more unsupervised roaming around the yard from dawn til dusk, whether we were home or not. From now on, we would only let our chickens out of their fenced-in coop area - a 10' X 10' "cage" of poultry and utility wire - when we were outside too.

The hawk hasn't been back. We like to think that since John prevented it from enjoying that delicious chicken dinner, it figured, why bother coming back for another try? I suppose in the larger scheme of things, we've been lucky. The hens haven't been molested by your usual chicken predators, like foxes, raccoons or coyotes. Still, I've gotten into the habit of scanning the sky, and checking the compost area for animal sign.

And keeping in mind that when it comes to wildlife, the operative word is "wild."

Ideas for a Simpler, Greener Holiday

Up until a few years ago, my husband and I celebrated Christmas all year long—that is, it took us the next twelve months to pay off our holiday gifting. But when John and I conceived a dream to start a homestead in the country and needed to save every dime, we had to quit running up our credit cards. Still, we wondered: how could we jump off the spending merry-go-round, without wrecking the holidays? Well, after lots of soul-searching, reading inspiring articles, and a bit of self-discipline—and helped along by our homesteading lifestyle—we’ve managed to not only downsize our holidays, but make them happier and almost stress-free!

Here at Berryridge Farm, we focus on creating lots of small celebrations, rather than one giant one. How? By stretching out our holiday season. Which at our place unofficially begins around the end of October, when John starts listening to Christmas CDs on the sly. And that’s when I can’t wait any longer to taste homemade pumpkin pie. So, for our first mini-celebration, I’ll start warming up for Thanksgiving by making a “practice” pie.

Sadly, the cool weather this past summer meant that our pumpkin and winter squash harvest was a bust. Canned pumpkin would have to do. Still, last week, when I pulled out a big can of Libby’s for the first pie of the season, I decided that lacking some in-house pumpkin, I’d try a few other local ingredients.

Since we got six laying hens this past summer, naturally there were plenty of Berryridge Farm-fresh eggs on hand. Now, I’m normally not an adventuresome cook—I go with what works… and in this case, I’ve used the same pumpkin pie recipe since I was a teen. But this time, I told myself, take a risk! So instead of two cans of evaporated milk (24 oz. total), I used about 21 oz. of organic half-and-half from a local dairy. It made a beautifully textured filling—and not too watery, as I’d feared it might be. I was sure fresh half-and-half would cost a lot more than canned milk, but after I did the math, I discovered that organic wasn’t really more expensive. Who knew?

For sweetening, I used ¼ cup less sugar, and subbed in 3 tablespoons of locally-made honey—and the texture was melt-in-your-mouth. I bypassed processed nutmeg, and used fresh-ground instead—I bought the nutmeg “nuts” at my local Co-op. And for the crust, I used organic flour from the nearby flour-mill. And if I do say so myself, the pie was amazing!

Coming up: To gift or not to gift? That is the question…

Springtime Rhubarb

I was eighteen the first time I tasted rhubarb.

It was my inaugural family dinner at my boyfriend’s grandma’s house. Grandma R. was German, and as I soon discovered, she was a stupendous cook who put on a country-style spread every Sunday afternoon. My own family’s standard dinner was a plain baked pork chop, an equally plain baked potato, and frozen mixed vegetables, so Grandma’s groaning table was a revelation.

I looked in awe at the platter of pot roast, an oversized bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy, a basket of homemade biscuits, cooked broccoli, two relish trays, and a tossed salad. A couple of platefuls later, after stuffing myself into oblivion, I wasn’t prepared when she brought out dessert. Or shall I say, the dessert course. There was homemade chocolate cake, ice cream, and two rhubarb-strawberry pies. With my first bite of the tart-sweet pie, all I could think was, “Rhubarb…where have you been all my life?”

So this spring, it was with great excitement that John and I watched our rhubarb patch grow from a pink, bulby-looking thing poking through the soil to a three-foot wide, ready to harvest marvel. This week, I picked nearly five pounds of rhubarb, with the juiciest, deepest crimson stalks I’d ever seen. Within hours, half of it was baking in a crisp, combined with a quart of frozen strawberries left over from last summer’s harvest.

Given the uber-tartness of rhubarb, any way you fix it generally requires scads of white sugar to make it palatable. And if you’re baking rhubarb crisp, by the time you factor in the brown sugar topping, a decent-sized serving can put you in a sugar coma. Personally speaking, crisp will invariably give me the sugar shakes. But I wasn’t about to pass up on this treat. So for this early season, sure-to-be-sweet picking, I got adventuresome: for 2 ½ pounds of rhubarb as the fruit base, I used a combination of about 1/2 cup of locally produced honey and real maple syrup, plus a scant 1/3 cup white sugar. And guess what? It was plenty sweet, with no sugar-reaction!

With the remaining rhubarb, I made a compote for our breakfast fruit—note: if you’re watching your sugar intake, the addition of some cubed organic apples helps reduce the need for too much sweetening. You also can find some great rhubarb recipes at my sister Patricia’s blog, Comfort Dish.

If you have any room in your yard for food-growing, you might consider planting a rhubarb crown ($8.95 at our local Foothills nursery). It’s a no-fuss crop if there ever was one—it needs only a little compost once in a while, and regular picking. What’s more, after the first year, it produces all summer long—without making a pest of itself, like the aforementioned zukes. The last time I priced organic rhubarb in our local co-op, it was $3.98 a pound—which means for fifteen minutes of picking in my own patch, I wound up with $20 of fruit!

Here’s our rhubarb patch, after picking.

Berryridge Farm Holidays

Here on Berryridge Farm, we keep our holidays simple by stretching out our celebrations.

In early October, when the weather turns crisp, I know the holidays are just around the corner—John starts whistling “Good King Wenceslas” as he builds a fire in the woodstove. Back in the day, when my two daughters lived at home, I spent the weeks preceding Christmas in a flurry of mall-visits and schlepping around overflowing bags from Toys-R-Us, then when they got older, the Bon Marche. These shopping trips would culminate in a post-midnight wrap-a-thon on Christmas Eve night, and I’d be so wiped out, I could hardly enjoy the opening presents ritual—much less Christmas dinner! But now that my girls have homes and kids of their own, John and I have created traditions where gifts are an afterthought, not the main event: holiday food and music rules!

When it comes to music, take “Jingle Bell Rock” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”—please. Our favorites are soft, old-Englishy choral music like “In the Bleak Mid-Winter” or “Wexford Carol,” performed by St. Martins-in-the-Fields or the Clare College choir. Early in our marriage, I discovered John was listening to Christmas CDs on the sly before Halloween. For a person who was big on deferred gratification, I just didn’t get it. But now, I embrace getting into the holiday spirit early.

The first two weeks of November, I like to prepare for Thanksgiving by baking lots pumpkin pies “for practice”—which we eat topped with plenty of locally-produced whipped cream—so John and I can also “practice” eating the TG feast. We’ll spend Thanksgiving Day with our parents, siblings, and if the timing is right and the weather gods are kind, our kids and grandkids. Then, we’ve no sooner recovered from too much turkey and pie, and it’s the first Sunday in Advent…

Coming up: Downsize your holidays and upsize your joy!