Incredibly proud of our first year of food gardening!

It's been a long time since I posted a blog post.  I've been busy with gardening, but also my mind has been pretty scattered all over the place as I found out back at the end of April that I'm pregnant!  Our little boy is due in early December and we're both so excited to meet him!  Needless to say, besides time spent gardening, I've been spending a lot of my time thinking and doing things to prepare for our new baby. 

I'll come back at some point and post pictures from this gardening season also.  I'm just really, really proud of what we accomplished in our first year of gardening.  I hope every year goes this well.  I

Last fall we decided to finally do what I had been wanting to do for several years.  We put in eight raised beds for vegetables.  We also planted a cherry tree, blueberry bushes and hazelnut bushes.  I was a little worried that come spring time neither of us would be motivated to actually start planting or that as summer went on we'd neglect the garden.  We did the opposite, we both spent so much time taking care of the front yard and all our new plants.  Our vegetable garden is located in the front yard and we live at an intersection right behind a grocery store so we get plenty of foot and vehicle traffic.  We met so many of our neighbors from around the neighborhood this year, we talked about gardening, why we were gardening in the front yard, we talked about the environmental impact of lawns with a few who brought it up, etc.  It was better than I ever dreamed it would be.

 

I see people walk by with their young children daily and the kids ask questions and the mom or dad points out things in the garden to them, one neighbor brings his 3yr old boy over to pick cherry tomatoes since we've had so many of them and the little boy is really fascinated by them.  I do believe that children need to be encouraged to be a part of growing food and knowing where their food comes from as they are our future and better choices absolutely need to start being made right now for them.  So, that's been my favorite part of all, seeing the kids get interested in the garden and seeing them see how some of their food grows, that it doesn't just show up magically at the grocery store.  We have also had people tell us that they built boxes to garden with and there's a lady about a half mile away on a main street who put in a couple smaller boxes in her front yard to grow kale and other greens in.  I really hope to see more neighbors start growing some food in their yards next year as well.  If we all turned our front lawns into food producing gardens so much food would be grown and what better food security is there than growing and storing your own food? 

 

I'm also really proud of how well we did with the plants and how well everything produced overall.  We did snap peas, peppers, broccoli, tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, Brandywine tomatoes, roma tomatoes, strawberries, eggplant collards, kale, lettuce, spinach, carrots, turnips, beans, watermelon, pumpkins, zucchini, acorn squash and butternut squash for our spring plantings.  Not everything did as well as I hoped and some things I had no hopes for did really well. 

 

The snap peas produced like crazy and because I planted one row about a month later than the original plantings we were getting snap peas until late July.  I wound up freezing about 12 cups worth just because we couldn't keep up.  They'll be great added to stir fries and soups this winter.  The peppers didn't perform well at all, I'm just now getting some miniature sized ones to turn red. I learned that they prefer acidic soil and mine is neutral so next year I'm going to make one of the boxes more acidic for peppers and eggplants.  The eggplants didn't go anywhere, by around July the plants were just dead.  They never grew or anything and I suspect it was a combination of the soil not being acidic enough and I planted them too early.  I'll be waiting until June to put in peppers and eggplants next year instead of early May like I did this year. The broccoli performed better than I expected, I got big main heads off them and then for about two months I got so many small little heads/offshoots that it supplied all our broccoli needs and kept Arya very happy.  We learned that Arya absolutely LOVES broccoli.  She'll eat it right off the plant if we let her. 

 

What impressed me the most was the tomatillos and the tomatoes.  I had no hopes for tomatoes and I wasn't sure about how the tomatillos would do here in the area of the state I live in.  My dad has always loved to grow tomatoes but he doesn't have much luck with getting a lot of fruit off them and I've seen other people who garden struggle with tomatoes as well.  When we put in the garden beds we picked the sunniest location we have and it gets sun from pretty much the minute the sun rises until it sets behind a large tree in the neighbors yard.  Also by doing boxes it helps the soil warm up faster than the soil in the ground does and then I also covered the soil with a thick layer of straw to prevent weeds from growing and to keep moisture in.  I only watered them about every four days and I would give them a deep watering.  I fertilized them quite often until late July when their growth finally took off and then I stopped fertilizing them completely.  All I was really hoping for was maybe a few fresh tomatoes for salads.  I would have loved to get so many that I could make tomato sauce with them since we eat a lot of dishes that I use tomato sauce in, but with only a few plants and seeing so many others struggle with tomatoes in the past around here I didn't expect to get enough to make sauce for freezing. 

 

I did get enough for making sauce and freezing!  The roma tomatoes produced so many tomatoes it was unbelievable.  We didn't get our first tomato until September as they took forever to start ripening.  I decided to start picking them when they were light yellow with a bit of orange to ripen them in the house so that the plant could send that energy to other tomatoes to start ripening them.  It seemed to speed up the ripening process on the vine so I continued to pick them when they were yellow/orange with some green on them still.  So far I've made about a gallon of sauce and I have enough tomatoes spread out on the dining table ripening to make another gallon.  I've also made about a half gallon of salsa verde from the tomatillos and I've got another four or five pounds of tomatillos on the dining table waiting to be made in salsa.

 

I pulled the plants out yesterday and removed every last tomato from them and put the vines in the compost.  We had a stretch of very dry weather but now the rains have finally come back in and I didn't stake the tomatoes since I had no hopes for them so some of the fruit was resting on the ground and I noticed a few completely green ones were starting to rot from the moisture.  I'm also 7 1/2 months pregnant and bending over, even with the raised beds, gets harder by the day, and some days triggers Braxton hicks contractions, so I'm ready to quit harvesting for this year.  The Brandywines didn't produce a ton of tomatoes but they produced more than I expected.  They also took a very long time to ripen, longer than the romas took.  The cherry tomatoes were insane!  The plant got huge and produced so many cherry tomatoes that I've been throwing them in with the romas to make sauce.  We barely could keep up with harvesting the cherry tomatoes and we only had one plant.  Even with the neighbor coming over with his son to pick some, and giving some to the chickens almost every day, we constantly had probably a dozen half pint containers overfilled with cherry tomatoes on our counter.  I also pulled that plant yesterday and took off every tomato from it and I've currently got over 10lbs of cherry tomatoes on the dining table also. 

 

The spinach bolted around July if I remember correctly.  I had planted it around February under a cold frame so we got plenty of spinach before it got too warm for it.  The kale went crazy and eventually also started to bolt around July or August and it started tasting pretty bitter.  I've been breaking the plants off and giving them to the chickens and it continues to grow but it doesn't taste good.  The lettuces did okay and we had salad greens until August.  The carrots and turnips were a failure.  Last fall when we put in the beds I ran out of compost for the two by the road so I just added vegan fertilizer this spring before planting the carrots and turnips and then covered the bed with straw.  The weeds did better than the vegetables did.  I had so many problems with weeds in that bed since I didn't cover it with straw in the fall like I did the rest of the beds and while the soil was organic it still needed to be amended with compost to make it more nutritious for vegetables.  From what I understood we should have had carrots and turnips by early June and when I finally cleared the bed in late July they were still only the size of month old carrots and turnips.  I learned my lesson on how important it is to put in compost in the fall and cover with a nice thick layer of straw.

 

The beans did okay, I didn't really do much with them so I'm sure if I'd fertilized them at least once after putting them in they would have produced a lot more but that's okay.  I did learn not to plant varieties of beans next to each other on the same trellis because of course they'll cross each other then you may not know what's what.  I planted Cherokee black beans along with scarlet runners and purple podded pole beans.  The purple beans were easy to identify of course but the scarlet runners and the Cherokee black beans had me confused.  Next year I'm just going to do all Cherokee black beans since we do eat black beans often and we weren't great about eating the other beans.  I also realized that I want to do more legumes next year.  I'm using our gardening here to learn how to grow things and what works and what doesn't work because I want to become a lot more self-sufficient food-wise in the future and I realized a huge hole in our gardening is that we need to also be doing legumes such as black beans, chickpeas, soy, etc.  Clearly I wouldn't be able to grow enough where we live to support ourselves but I want to learn how to grow them successfully so hopefully when we finally stop moving around we have some land that we can grow plenty of legumes as well as our fruits and vegetables.

 

The pumpkins and the zucchini did amazing but the acorn and butternut squashes were a failure.  The patty pans did okay also, I wasn't sure what to expect from them production wise.  We had two patty pan plants and we got about a dozen patty pans off them.  The pumpkins were awesome though!  They went crazy from August on and took over a lot of the area.  Once the pumpkins started to turn orange it just looked really cool and gave the garden area a natural fall look.  I planted two Cinderella vines and we got seven pumpkins off them and three of them are huge.  I cooked down one of them to make pumpkin puree and got 12 cups of puree out of it.  When you buy baking pumpkins at the grocery store you usually get 1 to 2 cups of puree out of them so that was pretty amazing.  I will definitely be doing pumpkins again next year!  Just those two vines probably gave us enough pumpkin to last until next fall.  I bought the acorn squash and the butternut squash at a nursery and they never did anything.  Finally in September the butternut squash started to grow out and started to produce a butternut but it was far too late.  The acorn also never did anything until the end of September when it finally put out a single acorn squash but by then it was too late of course and now the plant is nearly dead.  Interestingly, the squashes I did from seed, the pumpkin, zucchini and patty pans all did well and produced well, but the two I bought from a nursery as plants did nothing.  I did plant butternut and delicata squash from seeds but they never grew and then when I dug up the same area to put in the plants I found the seeds finally starting to sprout after being there for a month.  I think I must have planted them too early (even though it was beginning of May) since it stayed so cool until mid-July and so next year I'm going to wait until Mid-May to plant the seeds and I'm going to mound up the spot so the seeds planted are about six inches above ground and cover it with a cloche to also help heat the soil some.  

 

The watermelon I also bought at a nursery and it did the same thing, never grew at all until September and then it finally took off and did produce a melon but of course it's too late in the year.  It's still on there and the plant is still alive but I really doubt we're going to be eating a homegrown watermelon.  I'm also going to try planting the seeds in a mound of soil with a cloche to see if I can't get a better start on watermelon next year.  My only guess as to why the bought plants faired so poorly is they probably spent a lot more time and energy growing their roots to get established in the new ground and they were also planted later in the season than the seeds were.  As far as care goes they all received the same care. 

 

This summer we decided to put in more boxes to grow winter vegetables as I needed to start planting the seeds for that as early as July and we weren't going to rip out our summer plants for that.  We wound up putting in five more 3x6 boxes and four 3x3 boxes.  I planted cauliflower, turnips, rapini broccoli, collards, leeks, radishes, carrots, spinach, lettuces, tatsoi, kale, mache lettuce, brussels sprouts, beets, swiss chard, broccoli and cabbage.  I also planted some garlic for next year and I've got plenty more of that to plant this week and next week.  Also planting some onions and saffron crocus bulbs to start my own little saffron garden.

 

As far as pesticide or herbicide use goes I didn't use anything at all. The only things I used besides water for the plants was compost we had been composting since last fall and vegan fertilizer since I didn't have enough compost yet for all the boxes and straw for weed suppression and to keep in moisture between watering days. Thanks to the layer of straw in the beds weeds were never a problem, we just hand plucked any that we saw emerging and that was pretty rare. We didn't haveany problems with insects except I did have some flea beetles attack the kale so I removed the really chewed up leaves and fertilized it and just tried to baby the kale some so it could get healthier/stronger and it seemed to do the trick. In the late summer the spiders got really out of control and I have a pretty bad phobia of them, gardening has helped this a little bit actually, but of course I don't want to use pesticides and I know the spiders have a very important job to play in the garden's ecosystem. But even so you couldn't move an inch without running into or seeing a spider. There were so many that I don't know how they weren't starving to death with the lack of other insects in the garden. My husband put in a bird feeder pole and I hung up bird feeders near the garden which attracted a lot of birds and then they would go in the garden and under the plants looking for insects. The spider population dropped dramatically and once again it seemed to be back in balance. Since then you see spiders in the garden but they aren't covering every square inch anymore.

 

There is still a lot to do out there to get everything ready for winter but I am really, really proud of what we accomplished this year.  We're currently eating plenty of collards, radishes, carrots, spinach, lettuces, beets, turnips, and broccoli, we're still getting strawberries, and we've got plenty of pumpkins and pumpkin puree, snap peas, and dehydrated zucchini for the winter.  We're also clearing a spot in the backyard for growing some food back there next year.  We had a monster blackberry bush and while we love blackberries the amount of food it provides for the area it was taking up was very, very little.  We realized we could take it out and use that spot to put in a few beds and grow a lot more food right there without taking away any play space for the dogs since they couldn't use the blackberry area anyway before it came out.  I'm going to try growing acorn and butternut squash vertically next year along the back fence.  Otherwise I'm not sure what we'll put in there yet but I'm looking forward to expanding our garden even more and also doing trying my hand at more legumes.

Getting an early start on gardening

Over the winter my husband built a cold frame for one of our veggie boxes and I planted some kale, lettuce, and spinach seeds. Unfortunately I either planted them too late in the year and the soil was too cold or the seeds were bad on the kale and lettuce because they never came up. The spinach has also been very slow growing and we haven’t had any yet. Another problem may be that the plastic we used was pretty thick so it was almost white instead of clear/see-through. Daylight hours are short and on top of that we don’t get much winter sun since it’s usually cloudy and raining here. Thick plastic like what we used may be fine in other areas that get a lot of sunny days in the winter but I’m thinking here it might not be the best way to go. This last weekend he built cold frames for the rest of the boxes so we can get an early start on planting and used a thinner plastic so that a lot more light can get through. It doesn’t get cold enough here to worry about using a super thick plastic but we originally tried that since it stands up better to wind, and it’s harder to tear when you are removing the cold frames to check on the plants.

Today was a gorgeous day of almost 60 so I decided to take advantage of that and get some work done in the front yard. When we filled the boxes with soil last year we didn’t have enough to fill the last two by the road completely. We filled them each halfway and then figured we’d fill them the rest of the way this spring. At the time I think we were going to fill one of them with just tomatoes since we use tomatoes a lot. But then as I thought about it, they would be right next to the sidewalk, and while I’m all for sharing, I didn’t really want people walking by and just taking the tomatoes since they can be really hard to grow here. Eventually I planned out the boxes and decided to put in turnips, rutabagas, and carrots in one of the boxes between the sidewalk and the road. These are all plants that can be put in pretty much as soon as you can work the soil and all chances of hard frosts are past. The seeds will also germinate at soil temps as low as 40 degrees. With the cold frames on I can be planting them now. I don’t have carrot seeds at the moment (and honestly, I don’t remember if what I just wrote applies to them, but it does apply to the turnips and rutabagas) but I have the turnip and rutabaga seeds so I planted them today. I had to first move the soil from one box to the box that I’ve designated as the root veggie box for this year since we haven’t gotten any more soil yet. I also planted snow peas today as well since they are another crop that does well in cool temperatures.

There are so many things that I love about doing this. I love that we’ll hopefully be growing some of our own food this year because there is nothing better than a tomato warmed by the sun right off the vine with that deep rich earthy tomato smell. Or the taste of my moms calabacita made with zucchinis right off the vine (made vegan now of course). I also love that we’re learning to be a bit self-sufficient and giving a bit of a fuck you to food corporations that are destroying our food supply. But the best thing so far has been the difference it’s making with our neighbors. Just today when I was out there moving the soil from one box to the other box the neighbor that lives behind us came by and said hi. He then stopped to ask what I was doing. We’ve been here just over two years and he has never said a word to me except for when one of our chickens escaped the yard and he came to let me know. All he ever does is scowl when he walks by. Then a bit later a lady who takes her kids on a walk everyday came by and the kids stopped to ask what I was planting. Yesterday when they had gone by they stopped and the kids were pointing to the cold frames and then counting them. Right before I was done out there another guy walked by with a child that I assume was his grandkid and said hi and said he loved what we’re doing out there. Every time one of us is out there at least one person says something about the veggie boxes. People even talk to us as they drive by or stop their cars to chat with us. There’s been at least a half dozen people who have said they are definitely going to do the same. A lot of people ask my husband how he built them and how much it cost to build them. I figured that by doing our gardens in the front yard it might inspire some people to at least think about where their food is coming from, but I never imagined that so many would actually notice what we’re doing and that everyone would be so positive about it. I think it helps that we live on a corner where people have to slow down and look around when they are driving by and we get a lot of foot traffic because we live right behind a grocery store and a good amount of people in our neighborhood walk to the store instead of driving. Even the people at the grocery store have been positive about it and cashiers have asked me questions. Last fall after Halloween was over they had some bales of straw that had been used for their fall displays and were going to get tossed. My husband happened to be working outside on the boxes at the time and the guys throwing them away asked if we wanted them for our boxes instead. We took a couple and spread them out in the shed and the garage since they’d been outside for a month. That was really nice of them and saved us some trips to a feed store since we needed the straw anyway.

I’ve also started some seeds indoors recently. We bought some full spectrum grow light bulbs that you can just put into a light fixture like a regular bulb and they are working really well for starting plants indoors. Back in October I decided to start a tomato plant inside just to see if I could get it through the winter. It’s now over 2ft tall and doing amazing.

A couple of weeks ago I started some tomatoes and tomatillos and they are doing well. I plan on keeping them inside until mid-April and then moving them under the cold frames. I also recently learned when you buy celery if you cut the stalks off about an inch from the root you can plant the bottom and it’ll start growing again, which over time can help cut the amount you spend on celery in half. I decided to try it and I’ve got celery growing on the dining room table right now.

Last night I planted broccoli, zucchini, spaghetti squash, Cinderella pumpkin, eggplant, red peppers, and butternut squash as well. The broccoli I should be able to move outside under the cold frame in about a month and the rest will be inside until end of April most likely. I don’t really think I’ll be able to keep the squashes alive until then and then be able to move them outdoors but I’m going to give it a try. I may have to direct sow them outside once danger of frost has passed. From what I’ve read they are hard to start indoors and then transplant outdoors. But since I’ve got plenty of seeds of all the squashes I listed I figured it won’t hurt and if it isn’t a success it doesn’t really matter since I can’t direct sow the seeds until mid-April at the earliest anyway.

I forgot, last week I planted some other seeds outside in the box designated for greens this year. I planted some kale, swiss chard and romaine lettuce. We changed out the thick plastic on that cold frame to a thinner see-through one so hopefully this time everything will sprout and grow with more light getting through.

Once stuff starts growing I plan on taking pictures to share. I meant to take pictures of the cold frames today but the batteries on the camera are dead and I was too lazy to bother charging them before I went outside to work.

Meet Tango and Arya!

We had been thinking about adopting a friend for Holley for quite some time. We kept going back and forth on it because we already shared our home with five dogs and adopting another dog is a big responsibility since we absolutely believe in adopting for life. Holley is five years younger than the second youngest and we know some day they will be gone and Holley will be without any canine friends. She was taken from her mom while she was in the middle of nursing at five weeks of age and in some ways Holley has never grown up and she constantly seeks out the comfort of the other dogs. She still loves to pile up like the way puppies do when they sleep. We knew we could always adopt later on, but it might be harder on her when she’s older and it may add more stress if she loses friends and then some stranger comes into the family. Last Wednesday night I dreamt about my mom’s dog and he was in a shelter and something kept telling me to go adopt him. I very rarely remember my dreams and when I do it’s usually only for a minute after I wake up and then I can’t recall them. But it stuck in my head and it just kept nagging at me. Years ago something similar happened, I just woke up one morning and felt like we had to go to the shelter and that’s where we found and adopted Lestat. It was the same thing, we’d been talking about it for a while but we kept wondering if we should wait or not. I got online and brought up our local humane society’s website and was looking at the small dogs on there. Then I went back to my email to email my husband and in those 5 to 10 minutes between checking my email that morning and looking at the dogs my husband had emailed me about one of the dogs at the humane society. I then went to petfinder.com also and was searching small dogs and came across this rescue that had a lot of Chihuahua’s and it piqued my interest because while Chihuahua’s in rescue has sadly become fairly common it was definitely not common to see a rescue with so many of them. I went down to the local humane society to meet the two dogs I’d seen on their website that were closer to Holley’s size and both were highly popular and someone was in the process of applying for one of them and the other one had people from a rescue there to see him and take him. So I left since they seemed safe. This shelter does euthanize quite often and it broke my heart to see all the bigger dogs. I wish we had the room for a big dog but we don’t because of the layout of our house and Holley is only 6lbs so we have to be mindful of the size of the dog since a dog even twice her size could really hurt her or the other two little ones if they got into a fight or something.

I talked to my husband some more and told him I’d gone to see them and they both had people interested in them and applying for them while I was there. We both looked at that rescue again with all the Chihuahua’s and decided to go there since they have open visiting hours almost every day. We took the necessary paperwork we’d need if we apply (proof of homeownership, current utility bill to prove we live here, vet info, etc.) and we headed out there. Now I will admit, I am a complete sucker for Chihuahua’s. My parents always had Chihuahua’s and they were always my best friends growing up. I adopted a Chihuahua when I was 16 and she was like my canine soul mate. Obviously we’re not the type of people who will only adopt Chihuahuas considering Tisha is a poodle, Lestat and Strider are both lab/GSD mixes, and Holley is a Dachshund mixed with Chihuahua. But I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Chihuahuas.

We got to the rescue/shelter, which is inside of a vet clinic and we were still not sure who we wanted to meet. I had looked at Danny’s profile on petfinder.com and while I looked through their book of profiles I kept going back to Danny. I think it was because he reminded me of my mom’s dog that I had dreamt about. They brought him out and he was nervous and scared but after a few minutes in my arms he completely relaxed. My husband loves puppies and someone in the waiting room was adopting a puppy so he asked if there were other puppies. They did have a litter of puppies so a volunteer took us back to meet them and they were so adorable! Their mom was such a sweetheart and her babies were just beyond adorable. At first I thought he just wanted to see them but after a couple of minutes it became clear that my husband was leaning towards wanting to adopt a puppy. I refused to hold them because I knew if I held one I’d be done too.

I started asking questions about Danny and also the puppies and why do they have so many Chihuahuas. The veterinarian that owns the clinic started taking in local animals that were homeless and providing vet care and getting them adopted out. She had fallen in love with a Chihuahua she’d rescued and began taking Chi’s from L.A. and getting them adopted up here. In L.A. there are a lot of Chihuahuas and hundreds are euthanized every day. Earlier this year the rescue raised enough money to buy a bus to become the Rescue Bus. They drive down to L.A. and load the bus up with Chihuahuas and any others that they can fit in and then bring them up. They take dogs that are on euthanasia lists and this is their last chance. The veterinarian treats all of them and once they are cleared they go up for adoption. Danny had been a stray on the streets and wound up at a shelter and was going to be euthanized. Cupid and her mom and siblings were also to be euthanized because they all had been owner surrendered due to having sarcoptic mange. Sarcoptic mange is completely treatable but can be expensive and some shelters are so over-taxed that they can’t even afford some of the most inexpensive treatments.

We were really having trouble deciding who to adopt. My heart was torn. Danny seemed like such a sweetie and the thought of sending him back to a cage was hard. He’d been there since October with very little interest and to be quite honest all I can think is it’s because he just doesn’t stand out looks-wise and holding him he was so timid and shy and quiet that it can make it difficult to get to know him. But I could tell that he was very sweet. Of course the puppies were just beyond adorable and who doesn’t love puppies? Eventually I gave Danny to my husband and I held a puppy. He was so adorable and I was definitely torn. We left the room and I filled out the application/contract while we still debated on who to apply for. I turned it in and then decided to go back to the puppies one more time. By then I had decided on Danny since I knew the puppies would be very quickly adopted (two were already spoken for but they couldn’t go home until after their last injection for the mange). I picked up this little girl that I had kept looking at and she immediately did what Holley does and what Sable used to do and went for my neck and burrowed herself in while stretching her little body all the way out until even her toes were pointed. I was done. I went back into the waiting room to ask if she was spoken for and she wasn’t. I really could not decide and I joked about adopting both of them. The staff was completely okay with us adopting two of them. We discussed it for a second and then said okay.

Danny came home that night since he was already neutered and up to date on vaccinations, flea treatment, deworming, microchipped, etc. Cupid couldn’t come home until Friday night since she needed her last injection for her mange treatment. They were no longer contagious but they wanted to make sure all of them get that last treatment on time. Danny was nervous that night. I don’t know what he’s been through but someone has definitely not been nice to him. He’s been hit by people for sure and I know strays are often treated poorly by people on the streets. Even people who are generally nice to dogs will yell at strays to stay away, throw things to keep them away, etc. He’s housetrained other than he did try marking in the house a couple of times but they sent a belly band home with him and after wearing that for a few days he’s been okay. Our dogs have been very accepting of him but he is scared of Lestat and Strider. I don’t think he’s been around big dogs much before, he’s fine with the other small dogs but he’s intimidated by the big ones. He’s getting more comfortable with them and less scared. He has been such a sweetheart and he is very smart. He pays a lot of attention to us, constantly looking to see where we are. In the yard he doesn’t even care about trying to get out, he acts just like the other dogs. He’ll go out and investigate some but he could care less about the fence line. So I doubt he was a runaway that got out of the yard or something. He’s definitely a comfort doggie, I think his favorite thing to do is sleep on the couch preferably on a pillow.

Cupid came home Friday evening and I just can’t even describe her. She’s the cutest little puppy, she’s almost hairless because of the mange; she has to wear a cut up sock to stay warm because of that. She’s too tiny for any of the sweaters I have for the other dogs. And I think she may be mixed with Dachshund because she’s almost a miniature version of Holley but with a lot more wrinkles. She’s also underweight so she just looks like this teeny tiny little scrawny hairless puppy. She is so sweet too. She definitely loves to be held and attention. She’s also already learned to use a pee pad and she has not had a single accident in the house. When she needs to potty she goes to her pad. I think she’s going to be very smart. The other dogs didn’t know what to make of her at first. Holley was actually angry about her. She was okay with Danny but she was very upset about Cupid. Yesterday she finally broke down some and actually wanted to play with Cupid but then she got scared or something and didn’t. Cupid has had a hard time without her mom and siblings. The first night she cried a lot and last night she cried also. She has to sleep alone which makes me feel so bad, but she’s so tiny we could easily hurt her in our sleep and she could very easily fall off the bed and that could kill her. We set up a puppy pen for her and we turned up our heat for her as well so she’s definitely comfortable but she’s not used to having to be alone. During the day and evening we try to spend as much time with her as possible. I have found that if I wrap her up in a blanket fairly tightly it comforts her and she loves it.

We have decided to give them new names for the new chapters in their lives. Danny is now named Tango and Cupid is now named Arya. We had trouble finding a name for Tango and I was doing some online searching and came across an article that suggested listing like your favorite hobbies, tv shows, books, etc and then pick favorite names of out that. I started doing a list and when I came to interests and put down paranormal it made me think of the t.v. show Ghost Hunters and the name Tango came into my head. Arya came to us easily. Before she came home I kept referring to her as Little Princess and I kept saying she’s definitely going to be a little princess. But I have no doubt she won’t be a prim and proper princess. We’re both currently reading the Game of Thrones series by George. R. R. Martin and my husband suggested Arya since she’s royalty (I don’t think she’s a princess though, right?) and she’s a tomboy. I think she’s already learning her name also. She’s only 10 weeks old and within a day she’s already learned to use a pee pad for going potty and now when I call her name she often runs to me. Tango is definitely learning his name, a couple more days and he’ll have it totally down.

This could probably be another blog post but I want to write it here as well because it did influence our decision to adopt also. When we used to foster the holidays were always the hardest time. A lot of volunteers cut back on volunteering or foster homes will not foster because they are busy with buying presents, holiday parties, and all the other festivities of the holidays. Because of that it would make it harder to find spots for animals about to be killed. We always wound up taking in several more dogs before Thanksgiving and before Christmas. One dog we took in the night before Thanksgiving was on the table about to be euthanized and something about her broke through to the shelter staff and they couldn’t do it. This shelter was euthanizing all the dogs except those on the required three day stray hold because they didn’t want to take care of them over the long Thanksgiving weekend. They called the rescue I was fostering with and my case manager just happened to be in that city. She didn’t take small dogs because she only did large ones and was nervous about trying to mix little dogs with large dogs since you don’t know their personalities when you take them in. Lestat and Strider have been raised with small dogs and they are amazing with them, so I had no problem taking in small dog fosters. My case manager picked her up and brought her over. I named her Merry since it was the holidays. I’ll never forget learning about some shelters doing this. Merry came moments from be euthanized because people didn’t want to care for her over Thanksgiving weekend. This is why the holidays depress me. I always think of the countless animals in shelters that will die before Thanksgiving and before Christmas because people find them a nuisance to care for during the holidays. Isn’t the holidays supposed to be about love, compassion, charity, caring? Why does this happen then? Are parties, festivities, gift buying, etc really more important than the lives of others?

Since we adopted Tango and Arya I’ve been thinking about all those faces I saw at my city humane society. Some of them won’t be adopted and will be euthanized. People often seem to think humane societies don’t kill but some of them do. Since the holiday season is supposed to be about caring and giving, if you have the time and the financial resources to do so, please consider adopting a cat or dog this holiday season. With all the home foreclosures and the financial crisis the rates of animals being surrendered and euthanized is going up. I can’t think of a better gift to give than saving someone’s life. My husband and I are not buying each other anything this year. Our gift this year to each other and to Tango and Arya was adoption.

Seven years ago we also adopted Tisha for Christmas. She was one of our foster dogs and I had fallen in love with her and when I put her profile up on petfinder.com for adoption I cried for hours and wound up pulling down her profile. I’ve always been fairly against getting animals for Christmas because for so many it is an impulse idea or they are just getting a puppy for their kid and not thinking about the long term responsibility and of course they are almost always going to a breeder or a pet store. But if you have been thinking about opening your heart and home to someone in need I really can’t think of a better time of the year. If you can’t adopt please think about giving a donation to a rescue. Rescues are always in need of financial support along with volunteer support.

Chickpea and artichoke heart masala with saag - Dec 16th 2011

I didn't take any pictures last night because we got home late and just got Thai take-out on the way home. We went and applied to adopt a dog and fell in love with a puppy as well. After hours of debating we decided to adopt both! So, since it was late and we were tired we got mango fried rice, crispy garlic tofu, and fried spring rolls to share from a local restaurant called Peanut Sauce that is very veg-friendly.

Tonight we got to pick up the puppy so once again we got home late. I didn't want to spend the money on take-out again so I cooked up a quick meal of chickpeas and artichoke heart masala and saag on the side. I put the masala over quinoa since I prefer that over rice. It's not the best picture because I'm not a good photographer and I only took one shot since I was in a hurry to eat dinner. We normally do a salad before but again with eating dinner so late tonight I skipped it and just had a bigger than usual portion of dinner.


Soon to come is a post about our two new friends!

What do vegans eat?

I see this question asked often. I think almost all of us in first world countries are raised on a diet that is incredibly meat and dairy centered, so when we're not used to eating dishes or entire meals based on plant foods, it can be hard to imagine what vegans eat. Interestingly enough, since going vegan in October of 2009 I have never had a more varied diet in my life. Same goes for my husband. Instead of the same 15 or so meals that we'd always do, sometimes we now go weeks or months without repeating a dish. Our palates have also changed over time. If someone had told me that I would crave collard greens and kale three years ago I would have thought they were crazy.

I'm going to start trying to post up what I eat for dinner every night to show the variety of foods we eat. I won't be posting recipes but if it's from an online blog I'll post a link to it or if it's from a cook book I'll put down the author's name and the cookbook it came out of. Most of the recipes will also be gluten-free as I try to eat GF at home all the time and occasionally eat non-GF foods when I eat out. I really shouldn't ever eat it all but life's too short to pass up some damn good vegan foods sometimes.

Tonight our salad contained green leaf lettuce, carrot, radish, almonds and pomegranate. I had OrganicVille french dressing on the side for the lettuce.


For our main and side we had spaghetti with beanballs and collard greens. The pasta was quinoa pasta and for the beanballs I used brown rice flour instead of regular all purpose flour. The collards were cooked in water with lemon juice and diced garlic.

Isn't man an amazing animal?

He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes - by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed.
Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them.
This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer.
So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year, sends out cards praying for Peace on Earth.

David Coats, Old MacDonald's Factory Farm




Photos from:
www.predatordefense.org for cougar heads
www.farmsanctuary.org for slaughtered chickens
Wikimedia for the heart bypass surgery
www.nonhumanslavery.com for dog vivisection photo
www.onlyonesolutionsite.org for the cat vivisection photo
www.aboundlessworld.com for the photo of the starving children
www.designcrafters.com for the peace on earth card

Mercy For Animals investigation of Sparboe Egg Farm

From Mercy for Animals email:

VIDEO: http://www.mcdonaldscruelty.com/

A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation , which just broke on Good Morning America , and will be featured this evening on ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer and then profiled on 20/20, gives a never before seen look inside a McDonald's egg supplier - exposing the fast-food giant's secret ingredient: shocking cruelty to animals.

Hidden-camera footage, taken at Sparboe Egg Farm facilities in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado, reveals:

Hens crammed into filthy wire cages with less space for each bird than a standard-sized sheet of paper to live her entire miserable life, unable to fully stretch her wings or engage in most other natural behaviors
Workers burning off the beaks of young chicks without any painkillers and callously throwing them into cages, some missing the cage doors and hitting the floor
Rotted hens, decomposed beyond recognition as birds, left in cages with hens still laying eggs for human consumption
A worker tormenting a bird by swinging her around in the air while her legs were caught in a grabbing device - violence described as "torture" by another worker
Chicks trapped and mangled in cage wire - others suffering from open wounds and torn beaks
Live chicks thrown into plastic bags to be suffocated

Veterinarians and animal welfare experts confirm what common sense already tells us: Egg-laying hens, like all animals, should be given the freedom to walk, stretch their limbs, turn around and engage in natural behaviors. Yet, this McDonald's supplier deprives hens of even these most basic freedoms. http://www.mcdonaldscruelty.com/experts.php

Barren battery cages are so cruel that the entire European Union and the states of California and Michigan have banned their use. Additionally, leading food retailers, such as Whole Foods, Hellmann's, Wolfgang Puck and Subway, and hundreds of colleges and universities refuse to use or sell eggs from hens subjected to the inherent abuses of battery cages.

MFA is calling on McDonald's Corporation to end its use of eggs from hens confined in battery cages in the United States, as it has already in the European Union.

Sadly, not a single federal law currently provides any protection to birds at the hatchery, on the factory farm, or during slaughter. Further, most states - including those in which this investigation was conducted - have sweeping exemptions for farmed animals, which allow abuses to run rampant without prosecution.

As the largest egg purchaser in the United States, McDonald's has enormous power in effecting improved standards of care for egg-laying hens. Click here to sign MFA's petition urging the fast-food chain to uncage hens. http://www.mcdonaldscruelty.com/take-action.php

While McDonald's has the moral obligation and purchasing power to lessen the cruelty suffered by the millions of hens who are abused and exploited to produce eggs for its restaurants, consumers also hold enormous power of their own in preventing animal abuse by adopting a compassionate vegan diet.

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We have six hens and I absolutely can’t imagine them being put through these horrors. Each of our chickens has a unique personality like our dogs. They come running to me in the yard when I go outside just like the dogs. They follow me around the yard. They ask to be picked up, scratched, etc. When I’m not home much and I don’t spend much time with them they become clingy and will stare into the kitchen window watching me until I go outside with them. They know now that it’s cold out that they’ll get a warm meal before bed and they will wait up for their hot meal until it’s past dark out if I’m late with it. There have been times that I’ve gone outside when it’s dusky and they are talking away expecting their hot meal and I’ll tell them that I forgot and I’ll be back out in a bit and they will sit there and wait until I do come back out with it.

Regardless, even if they were the dumbest animals on earth, they still feel pain, they still want to feel the sun on their faces, scratch for bugs in the dirt, make their nests, raise their babies, and do all the chicken things that chickens do. In a factory farm they can’t even stretch out their wings. I’ve seen video footage of chickens trying so hard to dust bathe in these horrible cages and they can't. Dust bathing is a natural instinct for them to get rid of dry skin and parasites, and it's such a simple hygienic pleasure in life that is denied to them. Imagine having even the most basic of daily hygiene being denied to you. Four of my chickens came from someone keeping them for backyard eggs and he had them in this tiny little chicken tractor where there really wasn’t enough room for them to even dust bathe. The first time they got to come out the very first thing they did was dust bathe and one them bathed herself for almost an hour. You could see how much she was enjoying it. She was just one of the happiest chickens I’d ever seen at that moment. It made me cry because up until that point she had been denied something so basic and instinctual for a chicken. My heart breaks for the billions of chickens who suffer so greatly just for an egg mcmuffin or for some baked good with egg in it or for an omelet or for a chicken sandwich.

I would assume anyone reading this would never be okay with or want to have complicity in this sort of treatment towards dogs or cats, so why are these farms getting away with treating others like this? 10 billion land animals suffer these horrible cruelties and die horrific deaths every year in our farms and slaughterhouses here in the U.S. Roughly 9 billion of them are chickens. Can you imagine 9 billion chickens suffering through this every single year?

This is why I stopped eating eggs. I believe once we are aware of these abuses it is our moral obligation to end our complicity by no longer supporting these industries and speaking out for those who can’t speak for themselves. If we want to see the world become a more compassionate and fair world we absolutely must change and one of the largest positive impacts we can have is by changing what we choose to put on our plates.

To get a free veg starter kit click here. http://www.mercyforanimals.org/vegan-starter-kit.aspx
Learn more: http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/
And also: http://www.chooseveg.com/