Un Bain de Plein Air

The finishing touches are almost done in the Potager.

Then, the fun part... the styling!

I've got some dreamy ideas that I hope I have time to pull together... 

I can't resist doing a bit before the big day on Monday.

I promise Fifi, 

I won't have hurt feelings if you giggle your Parisienne giggle and tear the entire thing apart and start over!

Alas, no bread oven yet.  

Even a DIY project can be trés cher!

It's been a grueling week of long, long days in the garden.  

Long, filthy days that would have had to have been done - photo shoot next Monday or not in order to finish the big expansion.

Did I mention how filthy???

With 8 City Chicks and 3 "Chickens" the dirt tracked upstairs to our one and only full bath is getting a little out of control.

Read: Insane.

I've got this bonne marché brainstorm for an outdoor, solar shower.

Now, if only I could find a claw foot tub on Craigslist for $50...

Hollowed (Hammered) Ground

After a good many days pleading for rain we were just hammered... HAMMERED for two hours straight.

I am afraid my poor little chamomile and carrot seeds might have even been washed away.

Now, all is calm, "my chickens" are tucked in and the City Chicks are roosting high.  It's the tail end of dusk, almost dark,so I headed out with the camera... ISO as high as she would go.

The traffic in town, just blocks away has died down and the garden is beyond serene.  Even though the mulch* is not down yet and the pea gravel delivery will be here in a day or two... the chicken gate will be up later this week, the patio fountain is not put together yer and the wisteria is still hanging, hoping this is the "year of the pergola" (as I say every year).  Enough with the disclaimers except to say that NOTHING from the crazy project we started last October is finished (but it WILL be by the time Fifi comes to shoot for her new cookbook in about 9 days... AHHHHHH!!!!!), I'll refrain from all the ideas I could never afford to implement...
 I was still moved, my breath was still taken away with how lovely it all is.

The stillness, the youth of the budding life, the fragrance of my viburnum almost knocking me over. 

 I feel high.

  I feel calm. 

 I feel Loved.

Once July hits I think I will do a major Avant et Aprés post but here is a quick reminder of what the left side of this photo looked like in November...
(For the full groundbreaking click here!)

 OK, so that's not a very realistic collage but you get the idea of the view now thru the arbor.

 Remember my Potager 101 advice about a focal point - well, here is my HILARIOUS focal point for now.  An old blue chair.  Don't you think I "need" some sort of little, crusty greenhouse/potting shed right there.


I tell my kids all the time, "The answer you are looking for is Yes Ma'am."


I am thinking about two Cyprus or something right there where those sad little box woods are at the entrance to the "original" stone Potager.  It needs some drama!

 Getting ready to feed this family of 6 with our big Potager expansion.  In the last 3 days I have started by planting... 11 raspberry bushes, 5 blueberry bushes, 75 strawberry plants, 160 onions (so far) 18 head of broccoli, TONS of carrots, sweet marjoram, chamomile, Rosemary and Bon Vivant salad mix - my favorite blend.  And there is still so much to get in the ground tomorrow!
Just look at all that space!  Can you stand it! It's going to look so clean and chic when all the pea gravel goes in over the landscape fabric!   I can't believe how much we were loosing before we put the fence in!  
I feel so blessed to grow so much food!!!!!

 The "focal point" - it makes me laugh it's so sad.  But it will have to do for now, til that perfect, killer garage sale or flea market find this summer.
I will be sprucing it up with some sweet "step-ables".

 I haven't done my yearly pond cleaning.  I drain it and then jump in there like a crazy woman and scrub the rocks down with bleach - oh yeah, me and my prego belly are REALLY looking forward to that.

Last year, all along that fence, four feet deep was a mess of lilacs, mock sunflower, hollyhocks, and dreaded flox.  A border I thought was mostly my neighbors until I measured our lot.  Now all the square footage has been reclaimed as ours and we have covered up most of her ugly white trellis.  She is a doll of a neighbor, I just didn't want to look at her garden all day long.
Here is an rooftop before photo from last year of the far right side of this photo - see all that "mess" and my neighbors yards... and the dreaded 20 foot tall white trellis?

Joel trimmed my apple trees on Sunday and we tied a few more branches together.  They are so amazing when they leaf out!  Like a tunnel!

I just can't get over how the delineation of the fence makes everything look so much cleaner and bigger.  All that work and all the work that is still to come as we wrap it up.  We say every time we walk out there how worth it it is.
Someday when I have my farm it will feel so private and other-worldly but now we have that feeling on our little in-town lot.


It's going to be a gorgeous summer.






*I've got a little star there lest you think I am going to lay woodchips or something horrible like that.  I always go for the most organic looking, dirt like mulch I can find.  Always very dark, NEVER, EVER, EVER, red and never giant chunks of wood.  Ugly mulch is a pet peeve of mine, in fact I would rather have just dirt... alas there is not time to pull weeds all day and they Loooooooooooove my garden.

Introducing...The City Chicks

(Let me clarify... Most of you are used to me calling my children, My Chickens.  

Nothing has changed... lest you get confused. 

 My Chickens will always be My Chickens.)

Funny Story....

I know, I am constantly announcing upcoming posts that never turn out to be quite so upcoming... but last month I posted "Adventures in Wisconsin Part I" and I have been waiting for the day when I dared to post part II.

Here goes...

After leaving the charming new niece Sophia we drove out of Madison into the beautiful countryside of Wisconsin looking for a mapdot town between rolling fields and jutting walls of limestone.
 Simply stunning.

After the mapdot we watched for our road to the Certified Organic Farmer I had found on Craigslist a few days before who was selling her 10 month old - 1 1/2 year old hens as she had 150 chicks keeping warm getting ready for next year.
Out with the old in with the new.
Or one Farmgirl's trash is another Farmgirl's treasure.

You see, I wanted to keep chickens.
 I have wanted to for a couple years but we could not afford the fence it would require.  Anyone I told looked at me like I was nuts but I had calculated that I spend about $500 a year on eggs and never have as many around as I'd like, nor do I buy the kind I really would like to.  Organic AND free range.  Those bad boys are a good $4plus dollars a dozen.

I had in mind to order chicks and raise them in our warm school barn over the winter but the minimum is 25 so they stay warm enough in the mail.  (Yes, they come to your post office).  Now, I may be crazy, but I am not crazy enough to get 25 chickens. 

As we turned on to the gravel road leading to this woman's farm I had that intense yearning come over me yet again for a farm of our own.  Never, in my life had a seen such gorgeous terrain.  She is located on a hill overlooking a glacier path and it was stunning.  

She said I could take some photos but I would have totally been rude had I taken as many as I really wanted to -- I have never seen a farm like this.  Nor have I ever met such a peaceful, sweet person.  (And I am not the type to walk away from anyone and call them "sweet"... that's just not me.)  She is doing exactly what I dream to someday... she runs a 150 family CSA, sells at the farmers market on Saturdays, makes goat cheese... breathing fresh air all day and working in the dirt.

Ahhhh....

We pulled in and she came to us in her Wellies and sock cap ready to help us load our 8 hens a layin' into the two long cardboard boxes in the back of our Suburban.  We selected 5 Bovans, an Amish bread on account of they're being good layers and very docile.  You can pet them, pick them up... and we selected 3 Ameraucanas because you just gotta have those blue eggs.
 Are they docile?  

Not so much.

The 5 Bovans gave a smidge of protest as we closed the box and duct taped it shut but as she reached for the first of the Ameraucanas it let out this
BLOOD CURDLING 
scream like I never knew a chicken could make and Joel looked at me like,
 "What the h--- are we doing?"
He was freaking out that we were going to get home and this bird was never going to shut up attracting all sorts of unwanted attention to our little wanna-be urban farmstead.

"What comes first, the chicken or the ordinance?"

...was the title to a piece in a magazine I saw recently and it's a good question but you see - I don't care.  I had heard that it was not allowed in our town and I got it in my head that that was just plain STUPID.  You can keep chickens in a lot swankier suburbs than ours... Evanston, Batavia, Oak Park for pete's sake!  Who should care what is going on behind my fence?  I wasn't getting a rooster and at least chickens can't bark!  My neighbors stupid dogs bark at me thru my kitchen window every time I wash my dishes.  As if they have never seen me before!  OK, maybe not EVERY time but they drive me nuts when they do.

Anyways, this dumb bird actually starts throwing up from the stress and Joel looks at me and starts giving me the "Axe" sign, like
 "No way, we aren't taking those ones, I don't care how bad you want blue eggs"...
 To which I shot him back the silent
 "Too bad buddy, I am getting my way on this one!" look.
Real submissive,
I know.

We finally get them all loaded and calmed down, we'd driven a total of 3 hours so far that day and we have a two hour drive home, at dinner, in rush hour with two tired adults, three starving children and eight hens a layin' in the back of our truck.  I was giggling at the thought of the hilarious memory we were making.

 It wasn't going to be funny for much longer...

Earlier in the week tempers had flared as we built a novice style chicken coop in our garage that was FULL of children's toys and a cabinet job that Joel is finishing up... we hoiked (yes, that's a word) a series of old doors down from the rafters, scrounged up any other wood, old cabinets doors, paint and two by fours we could and I am proud to say that we built our coop for $100 only buy more two by fours, a heat lamp, a sheet of insulation for the roof and some chicken wire.  Everything else we found in our garage.  Which is really cool or really scary depending on how you look at it.  Making it cute would have to wait til spring... we had to get it done as those birds were coming home with us in just a matter of days...

Well, we were glad to know it was done as we carefully drove out of her driveway, me snapping at Joel to take the corners easy.  Every time we turned you could hear frantic claws scratching hopelessly at the floor of the cardboard boxes.
"Buck, buck Buccccckkk!!!!"
And then we hit traffic on the Madison beltline like I have NEVER seen before in Chicago and that is saying a lot.  I mean, red lights all the way to the horizon and we're going like point nothing miles and hour!!!  The truck began to smell a little like "you know what" and our (human) chickens began to get hungry.  It got so tense that Joel jerked that Suburban off the highway, sending birds flying, into a Radio Shack parking lot to buy a GPS for a better route home and then into a McDo parking lot for french fries... the only food we eat from McDo.

Now you tell me the sense of driving all the way to Wisconsin for Certified Organic Birds only to GMO french fries on the way home?

Pragmatism reigns supreme.

Two hours later we were STILL driving, in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black, me snarky 'cause I think GPS's are silly and Joel ready to be on his couch, beer-in-hand, when the kids announced they had to pee.  So we pulled over on a dark country road so they could go along side the ditch, Joel goes to get back in the truck and "Doink" - his door won't close.  "Doink" again, it's ricocheting off the truck and will not close so he's out there with a flash light in his mouth and his giant knife in his hand (that he is never without) posing as a screw driver, TRYING to fix our door.
 "Doink."
I could just see it, we were gonna drive home in the freezing air in a now stinking truck, with three wired chickens, 8 freaked out hens, two strung out adults and a door tied shut with my camel colored Pashmina I got in Paris that I had around my neck.

Yee.  Haw.

Thankfully his crazy knife came in handy and we were on our way once again.  People and birds began to fall asleep which was good cause the hard part was still ahead of us and we had to plot it out very carefully:  Getting our Chickens to bed and getting the City Chicks QUIETLY out of those boxes and into our arms for a crash course in
  WING CLIPPING!

We got home, locked The City Chicks in the truck, put the kids to bed and then carefully carried the boxes of birds into the school barn.  Feathers flapping and claws scratching away!  We decided to cut our teeth on the docile Bovans so we carefully undid the tape and Joel reached the entire upper half of his body into the box which began to jerk around, the squawking of birds and flapping of wings filling the air.  He jumped out, slammed the box shot, regrouped and went in again.  One by one he got those girls out and I clipped their wings with a print out off someones website page on "how to" at my side.  One by one we put them into the coop.  Mind you, before this night I had never even touched a fricken chicken!  And then it was on to the loud mouth, freaked out Ameraucanas.  If you could have seen him reaching half his body in that 5 foot long box after those birds you would have cried laughing.  That stupid bird started screaming so loud I thought the entire town was going to show up on our front door to complain!  But we got 'er done had a glass of wine and went to bed, our Chickens snuggled tight under the covers and our City Chicks roosting on the bars we has so lovlingly installed for them earlier that week, and me, exhausted off to la-la land with visions of omlettes, macarons and fritattas soothing me to sleep.


I am happy to say they didn't even go into shock and egg production began the next morning!!!  Three were molting when we bought them so we were getting an average of 5-6 a day for a couple weeks but now we are into our 5th week and I have already gathered over two dozen since Saturday!!!  It's not uncommon for us to get 8 eggs a day.  We are, officially never without food.

I could not be more thrilled.
I am not an animal person, in that I don't gush over animals but I sure love my City Chicks.  (As always when I say Chickens on this website I mean my children lest there be any confusion.)

They are each named after Jane Austen Characters...

Lady Catherine "DeBird" (She's the loud, opinionated one)
Miss Jane Bennett
Miss Elizabeth Bennett
Miss Elinoir Dashwood
Miss MaryAnn Dashwood (another loud, sassy one)
Miss Margret Dashwood
Miss Emma Woodhouse
Miss Anne Elliot

Le poulier is called "Henberly."  Because we could not resist.  Corny.  We know.  But my manly hubby loves Jane Austen as much as I do.

I have not blogged about it because my neighbors read my blog... not that I would ever dream they would have a problem with it but just out of the whole "loose lips sink ships" thing.  They are all hard core locals and I am the transplant.  They know a lot more people around here than I do... if the wrong person found out... it sounds paranoid, but we went thru so much to get to this point and we love our Single Ladies (another knick name) so much...

I was at a neighborhood luncheon on Saturday and was amused to find out that everyone already thought we had them because of a crack I made weeks ago on my blog about butchering chickens in my back yard.  I denied it so much that they all let it go for a moment and then I said,
"But if I DID have chickens, would anyone report me?"
(The alderman's wife, a friend, sitting at my side!)

  At least they will know who to come to if they need an egg.

Now, one more hurdle.
 The village comes to inspect our fence on Friday...
how to keep those squawkers quiet?

We're gonna hide them in the basement!

Say a prayer!

 The coop is in our garage and a hole is cut in the side of the house so they can come and go... remember that side of the house that I said we never got any use out of until the fence?  Well that is the chicken run.  They have PLENTY of room and are very happy Ladies.

Pre-coop clean up. 

 Half way there.  There is a door on the right to walk in and feed them and a door on the left to walk in and clean under the roosting bars.

Inside, pre-paint.  I'll show you the almost finished product in the next few days.  It's even decorated a bit for Christmas but I can't wait to go for it next spring... now if they would just stop crapping everywhere....

 The view of the Glacier Path.

Their original home. 

Gathering the freaked out birds. 

 Aidan ready to pounce if one got away.  Anyone want to take a stab at my L.P.?

 Me.  Geeked.  Tucking them in that first night.

 The next morning.

 Miss MaryAnn Dashwood.

 Me.  Even more geeked the first morning.

 Les Oeufs.

 Miss MaryAnn Dashwood again.  The girl has gumption.

 I have always wanted hens at my backdoor.  I never factored in the mess they would leave... but Juliette sure enjoyed them before the weather turned!

 So cute.  Next summer is going to be a riot.

 Hours of fun.

My little farmer.  He feels like such a little man when he goes in that coop to tend to them.  It's so charming.


A bientôt!

Urban Homesteading.... Parisienne Farmhouse Style

The big gardening project.  That's right, the one I have been alluding to for the last month or so... I finally found a moment to tell you about it.

Dear Anne at Nada Farm knows how badly we would like a farm of our own so she sent me a YouTube clip about that family in California who created an urban farm on their 1/8 on a acre... the exact same size lot that we have.  Joel and I watched it together and he was completely inspired!  Within days we were digging up the sod and planning the rather large expansion of our Potager and an equally as large expansion of the cutting/rose garden - which the kids have dubbed "Petit Giverny" as we are studying Monet at "Whole Heart School." We aren't finished yet and we are praying for some more days of warm sun to finish up. (turns out it's 70 degrees this week and I am out of town!)

This whole "Urban Homesteading" it's kind of  hilarious to me and I love to sit and ponder how the entire thing came about... there have been definate influences...

 like Homemaker Ang...
and other random blogs...
even catching occasionional snipets of the Glenn Beck program in the car...
wanting to know how to do more for myself if the you-know-what ever hits the fan...

I would say it really started for me about three years ago when our painting company took a turn for the worse at the same time the ecomony did...
back then it became apparent that the big kitchen cabinet faux finish jobs were going to drop of 5 or 6 a year to 1... if.
 The swanky Venetian Plaster jobs...
all the high end customers we serviced for so many years...
It became almost impossible to pay the mortgage.  It became impossible to get nice haircuts and the occasional new lipgloss.   It became apparent that my distain for cheap grocery stores like Aldi was going to have to step aside.
 Praise God that Joel has had his "new job" for officially a year now, praise God for the people that bought us groceries and kids clothes during that time, Praise him for the people that DID hire us to work... but I tell you what... it was that shopping for cheap food that did the trick for me.  I hated that.

I wanted control.

I was no longer satisfied with my little potager that grew hobby carrots, lettuce for salads and handful of green beans and basil.  I devoured everything I could on canning and preserving what I grew and soon pretty quarts lined my basement shelves.  I became to crave to know all I could about growing my own food, doing what I could for myself (like making my own laundry detergent and shampoo)... I even imagined if I could ever bring myself to "process" a chicken.... or at the very least, grow my own eggs.  (Let me assure my neighbors who read this website that I am NOT butchering chickens behind my new fence!  I PROMISE!)  I also wanted to learn everything I could so that, if we were ever blessed with a "real" farm of our own someday we would have many lessons under our belts already.

Now, all you city girls, don't loose me here!!!

  I KNOW!  
These things sound crazy. 
 And they don't take away from the fact that I still dream of owning a Louis Vuitton... they don't take away from the fact that I can navigate you thru the streets of Paris better than I can the streets of Chicago... it's just that I am a control freak... and when I lost so much control of our lives when there was no paycheck... I turned my eyes and skills towards what I could learn.  Because I LOVE to learn.  And I have so much to learn but boy have I learned alot...

Fast forward to today.

After careful review of the annual amount we spend on groceries (which I think is pretty modest compared to most due to "from scratch" cooking) we decided to go the whole, nerdy, Motherearth mile and produce as much as we could from our corner lot in the country burbs of Chicago...  Rain barrel, compost pile, cold frames this spring and all winter long we will be pouring over seed catalogs and studying "Square Inch Gardening."  You know, all those things you read about "real gardeners" doing.    We have spent the last few weeks building raised beds, putting up a privacy fence (from which we will grow much of our short rooted produce like lettuce and radish in gutter gardens) and doing other things that we hope will slash our trips to the grocery store in the year 2011.  We will even be turning our ancient cistern into a root cellar to store homegrown root veggies and apples all winter long.
This is going to be quite a step for our family.  And it's cool cause for the first time the garden seems like it's about the family and not just a hobby for Momma.

I tell new gardeners to be prepared to be patient because gardening is always about next year. 

 That's never been more true for us than now. 

 We are full of anticipation.

The view of the original Potager from the rooftop of the house.

Rented sodcutter - $15 a day.
Expanding my rose garden area - Priceless.

Looking down the path, thru the arched apple trees to the Potager expansion.

My Blue Collar babies.

Raised beds.

Daddy's Hands.

No more GRASS!!!!

For now we are using the raised beds for kitchen scraps - free compost.

The sandbox used to be just after the stone Potager but here you can see that we have removed that and expanded with our raised beds.  They add a formal sense with their symetrical layout, the paths will be all pea gravel just like the rest of the gardens... it will be very French when complete of course.  And here you can still see into the neighbors garden but today there is a privacy fence! 

Joel got those post holes dug in a matter of hours!  And Aidan was thrilled to stick his legs down there!

The side of our house has always been very shabby.  It's along the neighbors driveway and was of NO use to us!   Dreadful.  Now it is encased in privacy fence and we can actually USE it!  We will fill it with pea gravel next spring and have our compost bin out there... I am also going to decorate it... maybe make a potting table out of an old dresser or something fun.  Hopefully a simple outdoor shower too so no more garden dirt makes it upstairs to our bathroom and bedrooms!

 Another view.

You can see how this long area along their driveway was wasted property.  We never even went over there.  Now we can exit out the back kitchen door and walk our fenced "alley" to our flagstone terrace... it's so cozy... a wood burning bread oven and stove will be built next spring right where the watermark is on the photograph.    Perfect for those days when I bake bread ALL day!  I hope it makes the entire block smell like a bakery.  

On the next sunny day I will run out and take photos of the fence and I can't wait to share with you the "pretty" side of the project...
"Petit Giverny" as my Chickens call it.  I even planted over 200 tulip bulbs!
Like I expressed earlier...
Next year is going to be wonderful.