The greenhouse!

At last, my new hobby greenhouse is up and running. I thought this day would never come. So many things went wrong, so many delays, terrible instructions, installers who didn't keep their promised dates, who had to do things twice because they misinterpreted the pictures (the only instructions).

This greenhouse is pretty much a mini version of the one I had at the farm - 6' x 8' instead of an 18' x 24' commercial greenhouse in which I grew several thousand plants each season. So I knew what I needed here. No sense putting up a greenhouse if you do not follow some basic principles that will get you lovely home-grown plants.

I looked at a $200 (sale price) hobby greenhouse at Harbor Freight. After doing a good bit of research, I decided on one a little heavier, with more features. I got it at Home Depot. The one I chose had some pretty good reviews, and some pretty horrible ones. Since I always read the bad ones first, I decided I could get around the problems many purchasers had with this model by doing a more robust installation.

I hired two men to put it together for me, me being a single 75 year old woman. In spite of lifting weights three days a week, I am pretty sure it was beyond the scope of my capabilities, even with a little help. Since I wanted much more than the "normal" greenhouse, it cost a pretty penny. There is electricity run to it (how to plug in heat mats, radios, lights and fans?), and after looking at pictures of these greenhouses lying in pieces on the ground after a strong wind, I bought the tie-down kit. The installers set the anchors into concrete instead of just screwing them into the ground. They also built a 4' x 8' frame made of 4" x 4" untreated lumber (still doing that organic thing, so no treated lumber) and set it on corner posts, also set in concrete.  In addition, I bought the automatic vent opener and a shade cloth. So many people think that you want all of the sun and heat you can get, but the sun will scald your precious plants if they get direct sunlight, and the heat will cook them.

Here are a whole bunch of pictures of the project, from start (parts all over the ground) to finish (heat mat plugged in and bringing the temp up to 80℉ to optimize tomato seed germination). I have no idea what I am going to do with 300 plants. I have room for maybe 50 of them here, including the flowers I am growing. Tomatoes? I can plant about 10 of them in pots on my deck, and I'm going to try growing a few in the greenhouse. They are organic heirloom plants, indeterminate, and I'm going to try to grow them on twine in the greenhouse, where I can control heat and light. I can dream, right?

I'm happy.

The puzzle laid out on the ground

Getting there

Electricity done

Note guy wires - the anchors are in concrete!

A place for indoor growing - I'm dreaming of fresh organic kale in January.

Shelving had to be jury-rigged to get 8' of continuous shelf. Bad design! But we made it work.

French Breakfast adishes and butter lettuce coming along

Seedling tray - finally arrived and filled with organic seedling mix

Note the split door. This means I can get a cross breeze without having to keep the door open. Too many geese in this neighborhood! I can imagine them going in and having butter lettuce and French Breakfast radishes for lunch. If not geese, then the rabbits. Or perhaps Fred will go on a digging expedition.

Hoping to get a crop before it gets too hot. Blistering yesterday! 

Erin and Tim came over, and Tim got the end shelves level. I still need to add wire cable in the corner, but I'm ready to roll!

Thermostat to control heat mat. It's working on getting temp up to 80℉

At last! Growing things!!

Vent still closed this morning, but it will open as the temperature rises.

Passionate Phoenix can feel it coming on . . .

A few days before my sixty-first birthday, I was croned by my dear friends.  There were about 50 women and men there, from four states, from old jobs, family, fellow drumming women, young, old - and of course the first two crones in our group - Sparkling Wisdom (who has since passed to the Summerland) and Flowering Creatix, also known as Butterfly Peggy, a woman who has a way with words.  We wanted to capture the poet in Peggy, hence her crone name Flowering Creatrix.

So there is this thing about crone names.  We don't get to pick our own; we are named by the group.  The woman being croned has to leave the circle while the group deliberates on what her name will be.

Before I left the group to their task of choosing my crone name, I read a couple of letters, one from my sister Lynn who wrote about how as a young child, I had always opened green beans to look for worms before I ate them.  She related how my mother tried to break me of it, but even if she put a cream sauce on the beans, I still broke them open in spite of the mess.  One day I found one!  Whoa!  Lynn recounted my mom saying, "Well, I'll be darned!"  It got a laugh.  And of course, having found one worm just once, the deal was sealed.

My daughter Valerie couldn't be there, but she wrote a lovely letter and said that my name should be Passionate Flower, because I am passionate about everything I do and I loved to garden.  Her suggestion was taken into consideration, but she wasn't there, so the others would have their say. My friends sent me for a walk in the woods while they took up their task.

As I left the circle, my friend Matt said, "How about Worm Seeker?"  THAT got a laugh, even from me, but fortunately the group kept working on my name while I walked until I was out of earshot.

I heard someone shouting that I should come back, that I had a new name.  I returned to the circle, stood in the middle, and learned that my crone name would be Passionate Phoenix.  They all agreed with Valerie on the Passionate part, but given that I remake my life every few years, they came up with Passionate Phoenix, which I find very appropriate!  I love my crone name, and feel comfortable calling myself Phoenix every now and then.

It is true that I have reinvented myself more than once.  Wife and mother in my early 20s, I became a single mother at 27, worked hard at whatever jobs I could get (why did I quit college?), started taking some night courses, eventually remarried, sold real estate, then fell in love with a little Victorian house and put a restaurant in it.  Next I followed my husband to Chicago where he had taken a new job.  At that point, I got serious about school and transferred my credits to the University of Illinois at Chicago and got a degree in statistics.  When my husband moved to Florida for his job, I remained in Chicago to finish my degree and decided to stay there after graduation.  The salary for my new job seemed like a lot, until I tried to live in Chicago on it.  So I started my graduate degree at the ripe old age of 55, at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

I moved to Indiana, where the cost of living wasn't so prohibitive, and drove back to Chicago one night a week to finish my MBA at Northwestern.  At last, I was able to get a really good job as a program manager in the aerospace industry.  I was making good money.  But of course I couldn't leave well enough alone.  There were some things about the corporate world that didn't sit well with me, and when I got the opportunity to take early retirement with some pretty good benefits, I jumped at it.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I had bought a farm, designed and built a house, put up a barn to store a couple of tractors, and had moved there a couple of years before the early retirement.  On the farm full time, I got organic certification, bought a small dairy herd, put up a dairy barn and a greenhouse - yup, another reinvention of my life!  But it was hard work, and when I reached 72 and got a new knee, the work started getting to me.  I put the farm up for sale, and after a long search for a house in town, I got the farm sold and the house in town habitable at about the same time.  That was a stroke of luck!

I still have my booth at the farmers market.  I am a one-woman manufacturing department, making soap, skin care and herbals, and bottling essential oils and aroma therapy formulas.  There are no more greenhouse plants or garden produce to deal with, but I'm tired.  My 75th birthday is just around the corner and I'm beginning to feel my age.

I can feel it coming.  The Phoenix needs to rise again from the ashes.  I think I know what my next reinvention will be.  It has been gelling in my mind for several years, but I have repeatedly pushed it aside.  There were always other things to do.  But most of those take more energy than I have to expend.  I was thinking about doing cooking classes, but I did one Sunday and it took me two days to recuperate.  This other idea churning around in my mind takes less energy, and it is rearing its head more and more often.

I envision myself lying in the settling ashes of my life as it currently is, the Phoenix bowed but not dead.  My wings are moving, brushing aside those ashes and the cobwebs in my mind.  I feel it rising - another incarnation, another challenge, another reason to look with relish and purpose to the days ahead.  Soon, soon . . .

Apples, apples, apples!

Since I follow a low carbohydrate diet, I limit my apple consumption to a slice or two when I am baking a pie for someone else.  That is not a slice of apple pie, but rather a slice of apple.  Even the tart, crisp baking apples have way too much sugar in them.  If I were to eat a whole apple, it would be akin to handing a beer to an alcoholic.  There is no stopping me once that sugar hits my brain.

Each fall, we have an apple pie contest at the market.  I submitted my favorite apple pie last year.  It looked beautiful, but I was having trouble with my oven, and it didn't taste nearly as good as it looked.  I didn't win a prize, no surprise.

This year I feel like I have to redeem myself.  I have found some workarounds to get the results I want from my oven, and I'm trying again, this time with a new recipe.  I've made this pie once to rave reviews.  But can I repeat it?

Is it a winner?

I baked the first pie with organic Gravenstein apples.  They are very hard to find.  When I got such good reviews, I went back to the store for more Gravensteins.  They were not to be had.  But lo and behold, there was a flat of organic Cox's Orange Pippins.  They are even harder to find, and some believe them to be THE best pie apple in the world.  So I bought enough for two pies, one for the contest at the market and the second one for a dinner party I am having the day following the contest.

Then I got an invitation to a dinner meeting for Purple Porch shareholders, and they are having an apple pie contest.  So I thought, why not?  I went back to the store for more Cox's Orange Pippins. But they, too, were not to be had anymore.

I started reading labels, and what did I find? Be still my heart --  Roxbury Russets!  Too good to be true, but there they were, staring up at me in all of their russeted beauty!  So I bought enough for another two pies.  Mixing the two apples in each of the pies will only make them better!

If you live around Mishawaka / South Bend, it is worth the trip to Martin's.  I'm not sure if they are carrying these antique apples at all of their stores.  Call first, or mosey on out to the Martin's just east of Capital on Lincoln Way East.  But you had better get there fast.  There are people in the "apple know" snapping up these flavorful fruits.

Another deadline - organic certification

The organic inspector will be here Monday afternoon.  I need to do a lot of neatening up of my paperwork prior to her visit.  We talked on the phone at length, and she sounds pretty sharp, willing to teach where I need some guidance.  That is good.

Tomorrow is cleanup time.  I have been stacking paperwork on my dining room table, not just organic certification stuff, but two months of credit card charges and a bunch of filing for things other than organic certification.  It all needs to be done.  I have found out one thing, with my crunch schedule this year - the most efficient way to do this sort of things is to do a full month at a time.  I used to do it at least once a week, sometimes as soon as I came home with the charge slip in my purse, or as soon as I finished the on-line order for organic greenhouse seeds and supplies.  But that was a luxury I didn't really have this year, and so I found myself entering a whole month's worth of items after I got my credit card bill.

Who knew?  It is really more efficient this way.  I do keep the credit slips clipped together, sorted into piles by billing period, and by credit card company.  Then when I get the bill, I make sure I have a slip for each charge.  No sense in putting it into the computer and then finding out when I get the bill that I put it on the wrong card, or some other such mistake.

It does require making notes on the charge slip, since it might be a month before I am entering it into my accounts.  But that is a small effort, and takes seconds while I am standing in the checkout line.

This mess on my dining room table will be cleaned up by tomorrow night.  No Sunday nap this week.  Then I will be sure that I have all of the stuff for the inspector put together into a binder.  It does make a difference.  The easier it is for them to get at information, the less apt they are to start digging.  It is not that I have anything to hide.  I just do not want to go on a treasure hunt.  So the pile for organic stuff must be at least minimally organized by Sunday night, and then I have until 2 p.m. on Monday until she arrives to pretty it up.  I am sure I will be ready, but I am also sure that I won't have too many minutes to spare before she arrives!

Yup, that's the stuff that has to be in order for the inspection.  And of course, paperwork is just half of it.  Androo did a great job of cleaning out the area of the barn where the chicks are residing, and Allen will spend the morning with the weed whip cleaning up here and there in the calf pens and paddocks. 

I'm glad this only happens once a year.  Lots of stress.  But Monday night, it will be over, and hopefully I will not have too long a list of things to correct.  Then I can heave a sigh of relief and put it out of my mind until the process starts all over next spring.

Organic certification is important.  It means consistency from farm to farm.  It clarifies just exactly what "organic" means.  I do admit I resent it when I hear a farmer say, "I'm not certified, but I am same as organic."  My first question is, "Have you downloaded and read the organic standards?"  I know the answer to that will be no.  Next question is, "Then how do you know you are same as organic?"  I am always surprised by the little things I have missed.  And some big ones!  I did not know that potting soil, if not labeled ORGANIC, has a wetting agent that is a petroleum product.  Now I do, and of course, I use the proper soil in my greenhouse.  But until I read through the requirements, I wasn't aware of that.

I will say this - if you suffer from insomnia, you might want to download them and read them at bedtime!  It's about 50 pages of small print, and unbelievably detailed.  But those rules mean that you can rest assured that you are getting some pretty good food when it is labeled "Certified Organic."

Organic certification

My application for renewal of my organic certification here on the farm (including cows, chickens and greenhouse) just went in the mail.  I beat the deadline by a little more than 24 hours.


Enough said.