Is that your baby?

Posted on April 21, 2012 by

Two weeks ago Kristin and I welcomed Tennessee Lynn into our lives. It was a long wait, but it was all worth it:

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Time gets away

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

There are lists and then there are lists of lists and piles of those lists of lists. One item is crossed off while three others are added. As we enter week 39 of pregnancy, I am somewhat relieved that we have managed to get all the major projects removed from the list.

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…

 

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Return of the Snapshot

Posted on March 7, 2012 by

Kristin and I went to Wilmington last weekend to see friends and have a baby party. We stayed with Kristin’s parents, and during the stay I was able to look through a couple hundred old photos (out of thousands) of her and imagine what our baby will look like.

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.

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Up the bees

Posted on February 10, 2012 by

A bit of early spring weather has flowers popping up all over the yard. The purple crocuses are moving into their fifth week up and about, while the daffodils are threatening to pop. All over town there are signs of spring, and there is no doubt that things are happening very early this year. It looks like my plan to constantly burn raw coal in an open pit in the backyard is finally working out and hastening climate change.

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.

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Tree planting

Posted on January 22, 2012 by

Kate and Keith gave us an apple tree that was left over from last year’s workshops. It sat on the porch for a bit, waiting for a nice day for a planting. We also had a few fig trees in pots that we started from cuttings from trees in Wilmington.

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.

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Posted in farthing farm, food sources | Comments Off

Out with it

Posted on January 1, 2012 by

2011 came with some pretty high expectations. We were going to build our straw-bale house, expand the garden, think about having a kid. With the implosion of goal number one and the realization that we were becoming outcasts on our own land, we quickly moved on to goal number three.

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!

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Posted in biographical, farthing farm, food sources | 2 Comments

Lard pie crust

Posted on December 17, 2011 by

We have a lot of rendered lard in the freezer,and by “a lot” I mean quarts and quarts and quarts of it. I have used the lard a few times in biscuits, but it just doesn’t seem to go away very quickly. In the totality, recipes that use lard do not use that much lard.

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.

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The urban wheelbarrow

Posted on December 13, 2011 by

So here we are here, back to the city, back to the highway noise and police sirens and curbside trash pickup. What do we do now? For starters, how about dig up a piece of the yard for the new garlic bed?

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.

 

 

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Posted in Durham, food sources, house | 2 Comments

Baby Ginger

Posted on November 27, 2011 by

Last Winter I went to a ginger growing workshop presented by Debbie Roos from the Chatham County Extension. At the end of the workshop, everyone was handed a paper bag full of ginger seed pieces. After a few months of pre-sprouting, we planted the seed pieces in a variety of buckets, feed bags and cardboard boxes.

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.

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Posted in food sources | 3 Comments

Intro to Documentary Studies

Posted on November 8, 2011 by

For the last nine Saturdays I have attended my second class at the Center for Documentary Studies here in Durham. The class is one of only two required courses in the certificate program. It is titled, appropriately, Introductory Seminar in Documentary Studies.

(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: An Introduction from Cricket Bread on Vimeo.

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.

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Posted in crop mobs, films, photo essays, work, young farmers | 1 Comment