Putting it all on the Line

I think this past weekend may have been the last time I get to hang laundry outside.  There may be another mild, sunny day with a nice breeze this fall but the days just aren’t long enough anymore to get the clothes fully dry.  I supposed I can keep hanging out laundry until the snow flies but I'm not that hardcore.  My grandmother told me how much she hated hanging out clothes in the winter. Her fingers would get so cold.  Sometimes the corners of the sheets would freeze to the line and tear when she tried to take them down.  She did say it was kind of neat to see the frozen clothes standing up on their own next to the wood stove.  When they thawed they would be completely dry.  I still don’t really understand how that all worked but I’m a historian, not a scientist.

I really like the way clothes smell when they dry outside.  There’s a freshness to them that can never be captured by dryer sheet companies no matter how hard they try.  I also like the way the fabric feels after a day flipping about in the wind.  Sure, a drying can fluff up your towels just fine but it’s just not the same.  I’m not so fond of birds that decide to sit on the line, especially during berry season but I suppose a spot to rewash is a small price to pay.  One of the first things we added to the back yard when we bought our house was a clothes line.  I almost feel sad that I won’t be using it again regularly until spring.

I will finish up these insignificant ramblings with a little poem I learned from my grandmother.

I love you. I love you. I love you almighty.

I wish your pajamas were next to my nightie.

Now don’t get excited and don’t get all red.

I mean on the clothesline, not in the bed.

For Future Reference

There was not much progress made on the garden this past weekend as other projects popped up.  We did get the pool cover laid down under the wooden walkways to serve as a weed barrier.  I hope to have more to report in the next couple of weeks.  I really want to have construction finished before winter sets in.  Of course, around here, snow can fly in October so I should get my butt in gear.

The Garden as of Sunday, October 12, 2014

In the meantime, I figured I would go through some of my reference books for this project.  For some reason, I love reference books.  I know that I can look up almost anything online now, but I enjoy having shelves full of books that I can flip through when the need or desire strikes me.  The general gardening reference section in our library is fairly good.  I’ve got the standard A to Z gardening encyclopedia as well as several how-to guides.  I’m a huge fan of the Storey books. 

Gardening reference books in the home library

The book that first fed my dreams of a Shaker style garden was The Shaker Garden: Beauty Through Utility by Stephanie Donaldson.  It is a beautiful book filled with wonderful photographs of vegetables and various shaker tools and buildings.  It is a very basic practical guide but, by design, only focuses on Shaker gardening.

The source of inspiration

I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I know very little about Shaker history.  I know what I assume is common knowledge: Shakers were a religious sect that lived communally, though men and women were separated.  They made furniture and sold vegetable seeds and generally led simple lives. ('Tis the gift to be simple, after all.)  So, I turned to Amazon and found a couple of books so that I can become more educated about the people I hope to emulate, at least in their gardening practices.

New books - yay!

My books just arrived today.  I’ve only had a chance to flip through the first one but I have high hopes.  The People Called Shakers by Edward Deming Andrews was first published in 1953 after Mr. Andrews had spent some 35 years researching the Shakers.  It seems to include a lot of primary sources so I’m excited to find the time to read it. 

The second book, A Shaker Gardener’s Manual is a modern reprint of an 1843 publication by the United Society, New Lebanon, NY.  This tiny book is 24 pages of pure gold when it comes to a practical, first-hand source of Shaker gardening information. I read it cover to cover and am now anxious to try to find the varieties of seeds once sold by that Shaker community.  I also want to try the rhubarb pie recipe in Chapter XI.  Keep an eye out for that recipe adventure next spring when rhubarb is in season again.

German Giant tomato sandwich

"Tomato or Love Apple. – F. Tomate. – S. Tomatera. – This is a very healthy vegetable, and a great favorite when we become accustomed to it, though generally not very palatable at first." - A Shaker Gardener’s Manual, p.18. (A nice slather of mayonnaise helps!)

Tales of Gardens Past

I was never very outdoors-y when I was kid.  I remember my mother yelling at me one summer to go outside and get some fresh air instead of staying inside reading.  So, I took A Tale of Two Cities with me out the window onto the porch roof.  Then she yelled at me for being on the roof so I had to come back inside.  I never did finish reading the book.  But, for some reason, once I got married and settled into a garage apartment with some land, it made sense to plant a garden.

Our first garden was not particularly impressive.  I had been working at a drug store while my husband was finishing college.  When the seed packets on the small display at the end of the seasonal aisle went on sale for ten cents each, I bought up a bunch of them.  We got a little bit of this and a little bit of that from the garden that year.  I remember picking four, rather pathetic ears of corn and being so excited that they had grown.  Corn is not known for growing well in the rocky soil of the Adirondacks.  Just that we had gotten those few ears to grow was enough to keep me going.

Our first garden on the mountain

The aforementioned corn

We learned really quickly that we had to plant vegetables that fit the nature of the season on the mountain.  Things like peas that could be planted as soon as the ground thawed did well as long as we got varieties that could handle the heat too.  The weather there went from freezing to full summer within a couple of weeks.  Spinach never worked.  It would bolt before it was big enough to harvest.  Swiss chard, however, grew beautifully.  Bright lights chard is still a household favorite.

Our last garden on the mountain

Bright lights rainbow chard

When we got chickens, the garden really perked up. (I’ve got plenty of chicken stories to share later sometime along the way.)  It’s amazing how much their coop cleanings added to the soil.  Chloe, our house bunny, contributed too.  Up north, a compost pile can sit for a whole season without breaking down.  The added manure really helped everything digest.  After just a few years we had such a productive garden that we had to buy a chest freezer for everything harvested.  And that was on top of all the zucchini, tomatoes, and chard we gave away to friends and family.

Our first batch of chickens on their first day in the new coop

Chloe the house bunny

In a way, even then, we were following the Shaker example.  The Shakers kept notes about the weather and growing conditions and what plants grew best.  We did the same thing.  My husband had a weather station and he recorded daily temperature and rainfall.  I’ve got a notebook filled with what varieties of vegetables grew each season and how well.

We had a pretty good thing going up on the mountain but that the economy took a dive and jobs dried up.  One thing led to another and in 2011 we moved to the Southern Tier of New York.  The first house we rented had a nice back yard and we were able to plant a garden.  It also had a well-established family of woodchucks. 

Our Southern Tier garden

Woodchucks hanging out by the shed

The next house we moved into did not have space for a garden but it was close enough to my in-laws’ house that we got to use a couple of their raised beds.  That kept my hands in the soil but it didn’t really feel like gardening.  This summer I planted a few raised beds outside of the museum where I work as part of an exhibit on local agriculture.  It was a fun project but I am really looking forward to having a real garden again.  I remember spending so many peaceful hours working over the same plot of land, weeding, checking for pests, looking for the first signs of vegetables.  I want that again.

And So it Begins

It's time to get this blog started.  I've been thinking about it for quite some time now but, as with many things in life, I haven't gotten past the thinking stage to actually doing. That's going to change now. 

Several years ago I had the idea of creating my own Shaker-style garden.  The Shakers valued order, practicality, and efficiency in many things, including gardening.  Often their gardens had raised planting beds, wood or brick walkways, and a fence around the whole thing.  Their gardens were both functional and beautiful.  They were also fairly permanent, so for me as a renter, a Shaker-style garden had to remain just a daydream.

This summer my husband and I finally decided it was time to buy a house.  We found a nice little cottage with a big back yard.  In the middle of that back yard was a pool that hadn’t held water for many years.  It was made out of plywood and 2x4’s and after we signed all the paperwork and became homeowners, removing it was one of the first things we did.  The process took several weekends but, with the help of my father-in-law, we got it done.

Pool early in the de-construction process

At least three large frogs called this home.

With the pool out of the way, we now have the perfect place for my Shaker Garden.  The space where the pool sat is about 16 feet wide by 24 feet long and nice and level.  We were able to salvage much of the wood from the pool and it is going into constructing the walkways, raised bed and fence.  There was even a nice pile of gravel used for fill that will go into some other narrow paths within the garden.  I hope to get everything set before the snow flies so that the garden will be ready and waiting for planting in the spring.

The pool's gone and the first walkway is in.

The white box in the back houses our weather station.

I expect this blog to be a combination of an account of the garden-building process, a record of planting, an amateur how-to guide, a collection of attempted recipes, a photo album and a journal for times when I feel like reminiscing.