Branching Out in the Garden
Today’s blog post is a photo dump of an ongoing project that has been underway since Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson got Covid. Do you all remember those bleak days of March 2020? Our son Walter and his partner Heather had been forced to return from jobs working at an eco-village in Thailand. As the four of us sheltered in place at Laurentide, we would take breaks from our rectangles of doom and walk around the perennial fields thinking, “Can we eat irises?” It’s not that we were going hungry by any means, but grocery stores were experiencing shortages and we worried about looming scarcities, especially for vulnerable populations. So we bought books on market gardening. We ordered seeds. We researched food banks. And we started building a fence.
In the photo above, Heather, Walter, Gary, and our friend Cade wrestle the 8 foot deer fence. A common refrain around here: “There has got to be an easier way.” By the time we figured out a better method, the next job was upon us. So, while this post is all about looking back, its message is about moving forward without too much regret for the past.
First, we picked a site. In the pic above, you can see the bare-leafed tree to the right that became the center axis of the whole shebang. There is such an abundance of trees here that we were challenged to find a spot with full sun. Not a bad problem to have. In this pic you can also see the black ag tarp that had to get pulled out. Walter is conferring with Bill, whom we hired to dig the post holes. Bill lives up the road and is married to our dear Dona, whom I’ve written about before. They make a very handsome pair. Some day, with their blessing, I hope to tell the story of their courtship.
Here is Bill in his skid loader very deftly using the bucket attachment to pull up the old landscape fabric. At one point, a mouse skittered out from her hole and ran for cover. Attached to her chest were wee pink babies, and Heather and I watched, horrified as they fell off one by one. The mama didn’t stop, just kept running, until she disappeared into the woodpile with one lucky baby still attached. We managed to retrieve one baby off the ground and set it near the area where the mom disappeared but the rest perished under an avalanche of dirt and landscape fabric. It was rather awful to be the cause of such trauma to a nursing mother but Gary reminded us that context is everything. Would we have been so distraught if those babies were in our kitchen? No, no we would not.
Our post holes yielded a motherlode of rock, which makes me feel good about naming this place Laurentide after the prehistoric ice sheet that dumped them here in the first place. Seventy-five years ago, Bill’s father dynamited the boulders in the field to break them up and make them easier to load onto the “stone boat”, which was a kind of sled that the horse would drag over to the fence line. Apparently he was quite good at setting the charges, sometimes launching directly into the boat. Last weekend in Door County I drove past a place called Stone Boat Farm and thought, ha! I’m in the club that knows what that means! Now you are too.
We spent many a night around the kitchen table planning this garden. On paper, it looked huge. All those ten foot beds! Each one built by Heather. And here’s a lesson learned. (There is always a lesson learned in these blog posts.) We should have quadrupled the size of the garden. It took half a growing season to understand we need more room. But at the time, it was such an imposing labor, we didn’t think we could possibly make it bigger. Each additional square yard meant one more post hole to dig. We were at our limits and spring was upon us.
No one had supplies. The current supply chain breakdown was in its infancy and Gary and Walter ended up renting a U-Haul and driving to Mineral Point to buy cedar posts that hadn’t been treated with chemical preservatives. The U-Haul clerk in Milwaukee wore a mask but no one in the lumber mill did.
Graham (left) worked like a stevedore and replenished his muscles by eating ground beef brownies washed down with pitchers of heavy cream. George (right) worked like a lumberjack and replenished his muscles by eating slow roasted suckling pig washed down with hot sauce. Both bragged about their flatulence — Class 3 explosives, they claimed, powerful enough to dislodge fawns from slumber in glades up to ten hectares away.
In my original sketch for the garden, I wanted to beautify the structure with twigs. This is because in the winter, we have an unobstructed view of the garden from our bedroom window. It is the first thing we see when we wake up. Here we are beginning the work of the freeform interior arbor. This summer, Heather planted hyacinth beans that took off like Elon Musk rockets.
Using a post hole digger and a rock bar, father and son are “going to Tampytown .” Tampytown is the place where you journey to joyfully tamp the clods of clay that pass for soil until your arms hang useless at your side like six-day old tulips.
After taking a Covid test, Gary’s college roommate Reid came for a weekend to start the zhooshing of the fence. One day in and all work came to a screeching halt when Gary became extremely ill with fever and night sweats. Of course we assumed Covid and poor Reid packed up and left. Eventually, with the help of a dermatologist friend and a blood test, Gary was diagnosed with a bad case of Lyme’s. He has fully recovered but it would be a year before we returned to complete the work that Reid started.
Well into our first season and the beds are exploding with kale, chard, collards, radishes, mustards, cabbages, beans, tomatoes, cukes, squash, corn, onions, eggplant. And yet our garden is too small. As we look for opportunities to expand, I think of the 19th century farmers breaking the prairie with horse and plow. Every acre they tilled meant more food. It also meant more sowing, tending, and harvesting, ad infinitum, on an exponential curve of back-breaking labor, but how else could they win at this game?
This became my routine: to rise with the sun, feed the chickens, and then watch the first rays hit the beds. I think of my Persian grandmother who, when she traveled with us to Door County many years ago, would sit with her hands clasped in her lap gazing endlessly out the car window. “Ah, chegatre sabz!” she would exclaim in Farsi. “So much green! “
This summer, Joan came along. She is a recent retiree who has challenged herself with DIY construction projects. I was so impressed with her work, I asked if she would consider this fence job. Boy did she grow into the task. I’d watch her get in the zone, auditioning a branch by twisting it this way and that until it seemed happy. She said, “You learn the let the wood tell you if it will work.” Her favorite piece went up on the very last panel. The worm holes were beautiful.
Joan lost her beloved husband two years ago, and a solo retirement was never in her plans. We’ve talked a lot about how she copes. Being outside and working with her hands helps. I could write pages about Joan — her oversized heart, her gritty stick-to-itiveness, her hunger for new experiences. Is she a cowboy? Yes. A hippy? Absolutely. She’s straightforward, classy, funny, and best of all, she doesn’t care what I write about her.
What you can’t see in these pics are the weeds. Gary tries to keep them at bay with cardboard and wood chips. Walter uses a red dragon, which torches the weeds. Heather has a special hoe. Me, I compulsively yank the weeds until my hands are claws.
Halfway through the second season and the boneyard, as we call the stack of branches for Joan, is growing. Anything left over will be used next year as we build a wedding arch for Walter and Heather.
Our friend Drew is another new retiree who has graciously volunteered many hours at the farm this summer. Here he’s helping Gary harvest branches for Joan. When he works, he is steady and so quiet, he makes a brick look chatty. But when the job is done, and he’s got a brandy old-fashioned in hand, he can hold forth on the subjects of motorcycling, rare gemstones, sailing, drone photography, and, lucky bastard that he is, grandchildren.
Here’s the chicken mafia lurking around Joan’s miter saw. Don’t be fooled by the soft feathers, these dames are out for blood. They ate a frog on this day.
In case you are wondering, my t-shirt reads, “I’m the bossy one in the family.” I guess that speaks for itself.
In the tomato bed, dewdrops look like bistro lights.
The fence beautification did come at a cost. Seems that Joan’s bottom branches provide a perch just low enough for rabbits to leap onto and just high enough to enable them to bypass the tightly gridded varmint fence and pop right through the more open gridded deer fence. So yes, next summer we will be adding another layer of varmint fencing. The work continues!
You made it! Thanks for reading and scrolling all the way through. Do you have words of wisdom to share with us as we wrap up our second season? Please share a comment below!