Lava Beds and Protection Against Invading Hordes

If you follow us on Twitter or Instagram, you might know that we have a fair amount of deer moving around the property. They graze in our side yard and the copse of snarled pine between ours and the neighboring acreage, they bound over the leaning wire fence that marks our western boundary, down the slope of our eastern claim, and they sleep under our front porch, in the bushes beside the blacktop, beneath the ivy of our walkway, and sometimes even in the driveway up against our cars.

Buckskin tire warmers are an optional feature, but worth it.

As such, there are certain precautions we've had to factor into our life here on the hill, including stomping on the porch before descending the steps, clapping when approaching the front of the house from the backyard, and most definitely fencing in our garden, which meant finishing the garden both practically and aesthetically. Hence the overly-dramatic and slightly-exaggerated post title.

In the last few weeks as the temperature has been climbing, most of our garden - note "most," not all, we'll get to that - has started to thrive, and the allure of all that fresh vegetation has proven too tempting for our woodland friends, who have been spotted nibbling on potato plants and zucchini leaves, and even approaching our intrepid cherry trees, to which Perry responded by rushing out of the house in his sock feet hooting and waving his arms. The deer seemed unimpressed and in no way alarmed, but moseyed on regardless.

So before the plants got any more enticing we pushed our garden plan into overdrive. We'd always known fencing would be needed, but as a permanent solution is pricey, we were hoping to put it off until next season. When that proved naive, we had to improvise. But the first thing we had to do was build the bottom level of the three remaining beds for which we'd allotted space. We don't intend to use them until later in the season or even next year, but we needed them in place before we could move onto phase two, the lava bed.

Our rows are two feet wide all throughout the garden, perfect for pushing a wheelbarrow through or setting down a storage bin while harvesting. Maintaining the green space therein, however, is a pain in the ass. The push mower doesn't get the edges against the cinder blocks, and the cinder blocks being cinder blocks shred any weed-eating line that comes in contact with them while trimming. Our solution was to line the walkways with weed blocker and then cover it all with red lava rocks easily procured from any hardware or home improvement store. After building a wooden frame around the garden - all 80 feet of it - we set about covering the 240 square feet remaining inside. It took a while and a couple pay periods to procure all the supplies, but in the end it came out pretty much how we planned.

All that was left was the fencing itself, which was where the real improvisation took place. In the long run, we're hoping for a wood/wire grid fence around the garden that we can build other fenced spaces against, one for chickens, one for bees, and one for a goat or two. For now, though, we settled for seven-foot garden stakes and simple mesh deer fencing, which we attached to the stakes with zipties. It isn't the strongest or most foolproof fencing around, especially in the high winds we get here in the Columbia Gorge, but so far so good. We even watched from the back porch the other night as a lone doe walked the perimeter but found herself thwarted from stealing the delicious veggies inside. Mission accomplished.

Speaking of the delicious veggies, a lot has happened since our last garden update, both positive and negative. The potatoes are still growing like gangbusters, and in fact the larger of the plants have shown signs of starting to flower, which means we'll probably end up harvesting them a week or so early, owing to the premature and very sunny summer we're having here in Washington. The zucchini continues to grow, as do the carrots and green beans, and even a couple of ginger shoots have pierced the topsoil, but it's the corn that takes this update's spotlight. All the kernels but one have sprouted and are starting their stretch for the sky. The leaves are green and hearty and hopefully the stalks will yield several sweet and yummy ears at the end of the season. And the trio of grape vines - once all but given up for dead - and the pair of nascent cherry trees - cruelly sheared day after day by shrieking winds - have all begun showing signs of vigor, leaves sprouting left and right defiantly, determined to bear fruit. If only everything we were attempting to grow could share their tenacious spirit.

Because alas and alack, there are a few crops not doing so well. In our herb box, only the cilantro has shown itself, and in the same box where the green beans are doing so well, the green leaf lettuce is also failing to thrive, and the jalapenos are just big spicy failures at this point, as we've seen neither stalk nor leaf of them. The lettuce is especially a shame, as that's the product of our garden we use the most, almost daily. The Mesclun that went in alongside the lettuce is growing, though not as it should. We're wondering if perhaps the seeds we sewed were duds, or if they were scavenged by birds. We replanted this weekend, so if it's the seeds, we'll see soon enough. Greenfingers crossed.







And effectively, that ends our garden building for the year. Over the fall we'll finish building the top levels of the last three beds, maybe throw in a winter crop or two, cold-frame a bed for this and that, perhaps, then come early spring we'll finalize our fencing, but for now, we wait and see what a little sun, a little water, and a lot of patience can do.

From Our Bookshelf: ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver

The cornerstone of any education - which is absolutely what we're out to get up here on our hill in Lyle - is reading. As we planned our escape from the city and city ways, there was a collection of books that helped give us direction, as there will be even more in the future to help us navigate our endeavors. So from time to time, we thought we'd share some of these books with you - some inspirational, some practical - because the best thing about getting an education is sharing what you've learned.

There were lots of books we could have started with, but the one that most comes to mind is the nonfiction work Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible). Subtitled A Year of Food Life, the book traces the first year Kingsolver and her family - a husband and two daughters - abandon the industrial food complex and settle on a farm in rural Virginia with one objective and one objective only in mind: eat for an entire year nothing but locally-sourced food, including whatever they could grow or otherwise harvest. In addition to being a humorous, anecdotal narrative about what happens when you put a bunch of highly-educated city slickers on a working farm, Kingsolver's book also provides many practical lessons on farming, raising chickens, preparing and preserving the things you grow, and even serves as an easily-read treatise on the importance of self-sustainability, the trouble with our food system as it stands, and the dangers we face as individuals and a civilization if the latter isn't tempered by the former. Not at all preachy, AVM is instead a polite argument by example for a return to a more agrarian method of food production. There are certainly more scientific books you can read on the subject, Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma one of the best among them, but the appeal of Kingsolver's work is the conversational and as-mentioned anecdotal feel she develops. She's not lecturing us, she's letting us in on the secrets of her family's sustainability, presenting them in a way that makes them easily adaptable to our own lives, no matter what degree of locavore we're striving to be.

Sometimes you have ideas without words, vague sentiments that float formless within you until something or someone comes along and gives them those words and yanks them from the vague, plants them in the actual, in the process showing you how to bring your ideas to life. For us, Ms. Kingsolver's book was one of those impetuses. If you like reading us, chances are you'll love reading her.