Kirk Ranch Organics

The Pioneer Woman, Pioneering.

2012-02-18T09:03:00.000-08:00

Here’s something people who live on the coasts love to say to people who live on the plains:

“Oh you’re from Texas? I’m sorry.”

This is such a habit for coastal urban dwellers, I think they don’t realize how totally offensive it is. The fact is, people who live on the Plains often live there because they like it, not because they can’t figure out how to get to Manhattan.

I think it’s an education issue. One that Ree Drummond also known as The Pioneer Woman is handily addressing.

Drummond lives somewhere in Oklahoma. She moved there from LA after marrying the blue-eyed cattleman she calls Marlboro Man. Lots of people know Drummond now because in 2009 The Pioneer Woman was named blog of the year and sees up to 22 million page visits monthly.

People send me links to Ree’s blog about once a week because some say my life bears a resemblance to hers, minus the homeschooling and the articles in Forbes.

I think part of the reason for Drummond’s success is not just that her blog is engaging and fun, but its origin was totally organic.

Drummond started doing something she loved - writing about her life on the ranch and photographing it - and she kept going. A few years down the road, Pioneer Woman mushroomed and now she’s a doggone brand. I’m sure she couldn’t have imagined that happening when she first moved to Oklahoma.

I watched her show for the first time this morning. As a ranching resident of the Great Plains, I can tell you it's legit. You can tell it is crafted by her and not someone in LA with a goofy, patronizing vision of “country folk.”

photo credit: The Pioneer Woman

On this morning’s episode, Ree’s mother in law, who they call Grammy, took Ree’s four kids and their cousins camping by the river on their ranch. A few dads and uncles showed up ahead of time to set up the canvas wall tent and capably used chainsaws to cut firewood. Most of them were dressed in Carhartt jackets, which clearly were not costumes because they had cow poo on them.

The kids helped out gathering firewood, and didn’t look like clueless, little weebles stumbling around trying to figure out how to pick up sticks. They also wore little wrangler jeans with mud on the knees and they were pretty good at climbing trees.

If this makes you nostalgic, it should.

This is at least one reason some people still choose to live in rural, uncool places doing quaint and uncool things. Some people, even kids, still think it's cool to sit by a campfire with Grammy and make peppermint patty s'mores.

Shift Happens

2012-02-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

Last fall, Ranch Boss grew tired of the pummeling we'd received from the historic Texas drought and the endless US recession; so he took matters in his own hands.

In November, Kirk Ranch Consulting accepted a new management position in East Texas - a place that looks an awful lot like Louisiana, because it has swamps and trees. As such, the geography of Kirk Ranch Organics has changed again.

The beautiful thing is, we do what we do no matter where we are. So we've got people working on Gorman, while we are firing up Kirk Ranch East.

As of February 10th, the lavender, basil, tomato and pepper starts are germinating and the spring garden is ready to plow. Our fabulous new neighbor Bobby, a retired Amtrak conductor, got into the blueberry business a few years ago and then quickly got out. He and his wife are swamped with more blueberries than two humans can eat. So Ranch Boss and I plan to help out - expect jars of Texas blueberry jam in your stockings next Christmas. Bobby is a big gardener and has offered to plow me a plot when when the rain stops. Yep, it rains here.

It didn't over the summer of course, but it is now and the lakes on our new project property are refilling. Tanks in Gorman are full now too, as the picture on the right attests. The one on the left was taken last August on the 40th day over 100 with no rain. Looking at it makes me hot.

One of the exciting surprises of our new venture was learning that the house we were to move into had, for numerous reasons, fallen into disrepair. So, we are remodeling it. If you are keeping track, this is the third house, Ranch Boss and I have remodeled together in five years.

So here we are starting afresh in Mineola, Texas, home to former Texas governor Jim Hogg, who, and I am not making this up, had a daughter named Ima.

Stay Tuned.

Baby Steps.

2011-09-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

A really smart person once told me that the key to success is to:

a. Start.
b. Keep going.

Yesterday, we started; taking one baby step toward our vision of long rows of lavender undulating their way to the porch of the Kirk Ranch house.

Here is what the front of the Kirk Ranch looks like right now.

Please cut us some slack as we have endured an unprecedented eight-month drought. Happily, the temperature has begun to drop, a few small showers have graced us and fall seems to be settling in.

Here's what we want the front of the Kirk Ranch house to look like eventually.

We are big believers in photographing our dreams and putting them in conspicuous places, as a reminder to the conscious or subconscious mind to plan accordingly.

Here is our first baby step toward that goal.

Three test plants of the lavender variety - Grosso, Provence and Laceleaf - have been planted in cultivated, sandy soil with a 7.0 ph and given a cool drink of water. They should have at least 60 days before our first frost to get a little bigger and stronger. Their performance will determine what varieties get planted next season and if we can propagate their very own genetics with cuttings.

Taking this little obsession into consideration, it's easy to explain what I am doing in this picture and why my sister is laughing about it.

It may have been a fake lavender field hanging on the wall of a skin care products store in Avignon, France, but I figured I ought to check out the soil anyway.

We're thorough.

On 9/11 and Jesus.

2011-09-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking all week of a meaningful response to the ten-year anniversary of 9/11.

Certainly, there will be no shortage of fist-pumping Facebook posts, excoriating Muslims and liberals and Pepsi, which allegedly wants to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance on soda cans. (A persistent urban myth that invades my inbox regularly.)

We can also expect a healthy number of challenges to "repost" some belligerent defense of Jesus in honor of 9/11. The failure to do so, people say, proves an obvious unwillingness to acknowledge your faith. Really?

It is said that the United States is the third largest "mission field" in the world, after India and China. That means Christian missionaries travel from all over, to the US, to teach Americans about Jesus. The Barna Group, a Christian research firm, puts the number of "unchurched" at one in three Americans. They define the term as an adult who has not attended a religious service of any type in six months. I think that number is conservative.

I've been reading the bible and studying it every day for the last 18 months. I've actually read the entire book, which is something, studies say, only ten percent of professed Christians have done.

So with that tiny bit of street cred, here's something I've learned. I hope this isn't news, but here goes:

The Jesus of the bible is different from the Jesus of Facebook.

There was a guy on tv this morning, who was born in Calcutta but naturalized to the US, who calls himself a missionary to America. He was in the North Tower when the first plane hit. His pregnant wife was in the South Tower. Both of them survived. Five minutes prior to the first crash, he sent an email to a friend asking for prayer because he felt like his life wasn't adding up to much. He hoped God could do something with him.

Sujo John is an ordinary guy, who on September 11th 2001, got caught up in an extraordinary story, which he tells with articulate thoughtfulness. His website says "We exist to be a vibrant and passionate expression of Jesus to a broken humanity." After 9/11, he quit his corporate gig and took up telling people about the love of God full time.

There are lots of reasons people reject religion. Some of them aren't the church's fault. People can be lazy and getting to know anybody - especially Jesus - takes effort. Religion makes it easy to rationalize that choice because many churches fail the message of Christ by, among other things, attempting to codify behavior before cultivating love.

But Jesus' message was about love, and His life on earth was a complete and perfect expression of it. If you read the actual Bible, like you read To Kill a Mockingbird in High School, that becomes plain.

"Clean it up so I can love and accept you," was not Jesus' message, but for a number of reasons, that's often what people hear. That message is super easy to reject.

So in honor of 9/11, I plan to do what Jesus told us to do.

Love God. Love Others. Especially your enemies.

You've heard it said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy; but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. -Jesus. Matthew 5:43-44

I, myself, have miles to go.

It's Just The Way We Do It.

2011-08-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

Nixon Ranch South Dakota

I blew through Kansas and Nebraska last week on my way to the big cattle country of South Dakota.

For anyone bursting with a snarky comment, bite your tongue because the Midwest deserves props for quietly manufacturing items many of us enjoy but would find unsavory if we had to make ourselves.

Liberal, Kansas comes to mind.

Liberal, among other things, is a feedlot and slaughterhouse town with rail lines connecting it to beef markets throughout the Midwest. A lot of Americans, especially those on the coasts or where real estate is dear, never see a feedlot and that makes it easier to ignore what happens in them. The sight and smell of feedlots baking in 104 degree heat is something most people set their GPS to avoid. We passed thousands of head of cattle, some of which may have come from our own ranch, baking in the feedlot sun.

I called Ranch Boss to complain for the thousandth time about this. Those cows have to be dying in that heat, I whined and he said "it's just the way it is."

Given a choice cattle will get out of 104 degree sun and find some shade to lie down. In a feedlot they don't have that choice. To be fair, on the Plains there aren't that many trees either, but still. It is hot and crowded in those pens and the air is full of poo dust.

According to Drovers, the State of South Dakota estimates its cattle losses this year from 1,000-1,500 head mostly due to intense heat and humidity. Feedlots across the country are experiencing similar heat losses. There is an estimated 99 million cattle in the US and 10.4 million are being fattened for slaughter in feedlots.

Without getting all sanctimonious, this is one of the things local food activists like Michael Pollan are hollering about. Cattle are grown, stored and processed like every other commodity in this country, but unlike corn, cattle are capable of suffering.

If this bothers you, like it does me, there are ways around the industrial meat system. Did you know you can buy beef quarters and halves directly from certain ranches? Is that a convenient or inexpensive solution? Not really, but anymore growing numbers of people are going a little out of their way to reject the "that's just the way we do it" rationale. Here's a Wyoming ranch that is producing non-feedlot beef right off their Teton Range grass. Here's another ranch raised beef site that ships non-antibiotic fed quarters for $500. Here's another one in Idaho.

And to quickly cut through the hype: If you're only worried about what your dinner has been eating, buy natural beef. If you want leaner beef with higher Omega-3 buy grass-fed. If you want to cut out the feedlot, buy ranch raised and ask how it's "finished." Some ranches do all three of those things.

Nixon Ranch -South Dakota

Before WWII, there were thousands of small, local meat processors that made this approach more practical for the average consumer. But as we got smarter they struggled to comply with myriad food safety laws, which are often worked into legislation by lobbyists for the big processors. So most of them are gone now and buying locally grown beef, pork and chicken is harder. Spend a little time with Virginia farmer Joel Salatin as he rages about this issue. Salatin says he's not just a farmer, he's in the "redemption business."

Oh yah and where that smarter thing is concerned, E Coli only became a big problem with the growth of industrial meat system, not when people had easy access to beef raised by their neighbors. Salatin has a lot to say about that too.

I keep saying that one day Kirk Ranch beef will be 100% ranch raised and chemical free. But that's a capital intensive promise that requires more real estate with better grass. Of course, right now it seems we are going backward, because like many other producers in Oklahoma and Texas, we just sold our herd. This relentless heat and drought has dried up fields that should be on their third cutting of hay. We, like many others, have no feed. So we sold our bred cows for hamburger. I guess the good news is, they didn't spend much feedlot time before slaughter.

As consumers we have the option not to support the feedlot system. Is it as convenient as buying beef in Walmart? No, but convenience isn't everything. Next time you meet a cattle rancher ask what kind of beef they eat and why.

Some of them will give you an earful.

24 Hours in Paris

2011-07-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

Two things occurred to me as I was hauling Chinese Communist propaganda posters in giant glass frames up four flights of stairs in Istanbul:

1. I spent six weeks in France and never went to Paris - An insulting omission.

2. Christy's new apartment is lousy with bizarre travel mementos.

So, when booking my flights back to the US, I deliberately planned 24 hours in Paris with part-time Istanbulli and new friend Susanne Fowler, who is not only a whip-smart travel writer but an editor at the International Herald Tribune.

I dropped into Charles de Gaulle airport, which is only 14 miles from Paris yet still surrounded by farmland - a nod perhaps to the French's agrarian sensibilities. After quick glass of wine on Susanne's terrace we met her friend Elaine at their favorite neighborhood spot called Le Stella. It is a traditional French Brasserie that was praised in Gourmet Magazine in 2007 as one of the last Parisian Brasseries actually doing things right.

How refreshing and quintessentially Parisian that the tuxedoed waiters not only carry white napkins on their arms but can also supply an immediate and credible wine recommendation. Service like that in the US seems either the purview of the wealthy or a throwback to a bygone era. I kind of miss it.

"The steak tartare is excellent here by the way," said Elaine, who is British and has lived in Paris for about ten years.

For the uninitiated, steak tartare is a traditional French dish composed mostly of raw beef and raw eggs. Way worse than cookie dough, but with a local recommendation how can you not? Millions of French can't be wrong.

Turns out, they are not. It was delicious and it came with fries and then champagne and then a bottle of wine and then creme caramel and then coffee and...

A three-hour dinner passed in what seemed like 30 minutes and soon we were rushing to catch the Eiffel Tower at the top of the hour.

Why?

It seems the French spent some time pondering how they could

enhance one of the world's most spectacular and iconic buildings. Somebody must have said,

"Hey, let's make it sparkle."

And so it does. For five minutes at the top of the dark hours, the whole structure twinkles like champagne bubbles in a fluted glass. I don't care how many times you've seen it, especially at night, all lit up, it still takes your breath.

We rounded the corner a few minutes late though and missed the sparkles. So we decided to have a few of our own at the local Champagne bar not far from Trocodero Square. The Hotel Dokhan, a former private mansion built in the 18th century, hosts champagne tastings in its candlelit Grand Salon, even at 11pm on a Sunday.

Our server was charming and deeply knowledgeable about the Pinot Noir Champagne by vineyard Marie-Noelle Ledru. Our tasting was accompanied by a plate of tiny, warm cakes that I think were made of fig.

Susanne and I ducked out at 11:45 headed for Trocodero Square. We arrived just in time to watch the Tower twinkle and visitors from all over the world kiss and take their pictures in front of it. It doesn't take long though for the bustle to settle and to catch people just watching it in awe; letting it wash over them.

Leaving Paris hurts.

The next morning, to ease the pain, I started with a cafe creme and a pan au chocolat at the corner patisserie. That helped but it wasn't enough so Susanne and I followed it up with a hot chocolate at the local chocolatier. It is probably more apt to describe Parisian hot chocolate as a large bowl of thick, hand-made 85% dark chocolate soup served with a dollop of Chantilly creme and cocoa powder.

Of course I told you all that to tell you this:

I just spent six weeks in France listening to locals - French and Ex-Pats - talk about their favorite places and then trying them myself. I'm headed back next June to do it all over again.

Wanna Go?

Call to Prayer

2011-07-21T02:17:00.000-07:00

I was in Indonesia, the first time I heard a full Muslim prayer call.

It was dawn and I was climbing a not-terribly dormant volcano on the island of Java with a friend. The tone and melody surprised me so thoroughly that I sat down and just listened. I recall wondering then, as I do today in Istanbul, how many times, if ever, I'd climbed out of bed at dawn and got down on my face before God.

I'm fascinated by devotion.

If you've ever been curious how a Muslim prayer call sounds, watch this handy 38-second video.

If you live in Istanbul and have zero curiosity about Muslim prayer calls because they issue five times a day from loudspeakers in your neighborhood, but you are curious about the ridiculous view from Christy's new apartment, watch the handy 38-second video below.

I'm here to serve.

Wanna Go?

2011-07-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

I bought a print in the South of France weeks ago that I have been toting around by hand, since it won't fit in my suitcase. The image is such an emblem of everything I love about France, that if I accidentally leave it in a yellow cab in Istanbul, I will cry.

The print is an art deco-period woman in a swimsuit standing in front of a restaurant - probably in the 1930's. Oh thanks Google, there she is. She isn't the point though. Like all good memento purchases, she has a story.

On Sam's last week in France, we walked to the far side of the port looking for the beach that our new friends, Tristan and Kathryn, who are American/Italian/British travel journalists living in Nice, suggested.

Along the cliffs hangs a shell of a building, with an equally decrepit structure perched on a small rock promontory rising out of the turquoise sea. Nothing is left of the structure but a three-story spiral staircase attached to a concrete pillar and a rickety, rusty metal gangplank that hooks the promontory to the main.

Local teenagers gather there to perform the universal teenage mating rituals - shoving, squealing, strutting etc. They also rockclimb the cliffs, swing their legs up onto the rusty gangplank to access the platform, climb the spiral staircase and the concrete pillar and then....

Jump off.

It's at least a 30 foot jump, maybe 40, from the top of the pillar. Girls climb up the slippery and overhanging cliff too in order to sun and preen and jump, well away from any parental supervision.

Sam and I found this deeply entertaining and noted that it really was a perfect way for teenagers to express their considerable teenage angst. In America, of course, such a place would be wrapped in concertina wire and plastered with keep-out signs. Not so, in France.

Besides being a demanding and dangerous climb, the platform provides a perfect stage for the young men to perform feats of aerial bravery and make obscene gestures to the incoming Sardinia/Corsica ferries.

Of course this impresses girls.

The day before I left Nice, I wandered through the old town, photographing architecture, drinking cafe au lait and breathing the Catholic incense burning in 17th century cathedrals. On my way, I happened into a shop selling art deco posters. One caught my eye.

It was a woman in a bathing suit standing on the rocky shore, under a restaurant called The Reserve. The restaurant was perched on the cliffs with the conspicuous elegance for which France in the 30's was so famous. Across a small gangway, restaurant guests were invited to gaze at the Mediterranean from a milk-white, wrought-iron three-story gazebo attended by tuxedoed waiters and a string quartet.

How swank and delicious this place must have been at a time when Nice was bustling with British aristocracy and famous French
impressionists. Today, there is still a swank and lovely restaurant next to the former location. Happily, the restaurant's current website has another picture of it's former glory.

The salesgirl saw me get really excited, when I figured out what I was looking at. When I told her I wanted it, she said in French, "do you know where this is?"

"Oui, oui" I said. "Les garcons sautent."

Believe it or not, "The boys jump" was one of the first sentences I learned while studying French with the Rosetta Stone. The shop girl was clearly pleased that not only did I, an American tourist, knew the site of Restaurant De La Reserve but that I was able to explain myself and my excitement in French.

This exchange marked the end of my keen observance of French culture and the start of my love affair with it.

Americans like to say that the French are rude or even less kind adaptations of that word. But I think the French and their value system are misunderstood by my people.

The French are exceedingly polite and bristle at American informality and presumption. They rigorously defend their beloved cultural institutions from tacky global influences, so that even MacDons on the Promenade des Anglais has flower beds out front.

Because the French haven't surrendered their singular cultural aesthetic in the name of efficiency or commerce, (I'm thinking WalMart) when you stumble into a small town in Provence on a Wednesday morning, you find a local market fairly bursting at the seams. Vendors are selling artisan bread, cheese, porc, chocolate, wine, grass baskets, lavender bunches and warm bread all as a matter of daily course. Normal people - not just tourists or French with boatloads of cash - shop, socialize and conduct business there - like humans have done in the marketplace for millennia.

In my opinion, this is at least one reason why France is the #1 most visited nation on the planet, according to 2010 global tourism statistics. Believe it or not, the US is second and we have the Grand Canyon.

I told you all that to tell you this:

1. I just spent six weeks in Provence, the Cote d'Azur, Haute Provence and The Jura.

2. I plan to be near-fluent by this time next year and I plan to go back.

3. I would like to bring a few of you along: A few smart, fun women who, like me, appreciate high-quality, local food, wine and culture. Who are up for soulful, sensuous travel, where people and their lives trump cities and their buildings.

4. I have scouted a route through lavender fields, roadside cherry stands, mountain lakes, antique markets, wineries, Roman ruins, Mediterranean beaches and other natural and man-made wonders.

So, my question is, what are you doing next June?

A Whole New KRO

2011-07-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

It seems, to me, that a successful blogger is one who employs a platform that a) doesn't require three hours per post to untangle messed up code; b) gives the impression the blogger actually does live in the 21st century.

Good news! Kirk Ranch Organics has finally achieved this. After 18 months of wrangling our old site, Kirk Ranch Organics has a fresh new look, with proper RSS, a new address and even consistent fonts. Wow.

Since we will no longer spend three hours on jacked up code, we might actually blog on topics like The French Riviera, What to do in Nice, Where the best markets hide in Provence and shopping at Ikea in Istanbul. We even have ideas about bringing a few of you back to Provence with us next summer to scout out the best cheese, antiques, flowers and perfume. France is soooo good. I can't keep it all to myself.

We are very much looking forward...

Brave or Crazy

2011-07-15T06:41:00.001-07:00

In honor of my upcoming 39th birthday, I decided to quit agonizing about it and finally do something with my hair.

My current style, which I like to call aging-hippie-spends-too-much-time-in saltwater-chic, I believe is the main culprit behind people inquiring which of us, me or Christy, is older. This is intolerable.

So this morning Christy took me to her Turkish hairstylist here in Istanbul. She had an approximately 30 second, halting conversation in Turkish with the salon owner, pointed to my grey hair with exasperation, and then left.

My stylist knows the word OK in English and I know the words Hello and Thank you in Turkish. Hooray, what else do we need? Let's color my hair.

Some of you who know Christy might be saying, "wow you let Christy tell them what color to dye your hair?"

I know, that thought crossed my mind as I sat helpless with ammonia based goo all over my head. I resigned myself to the fact that the horses were really out of the barn on this one.

I comforted myself by remembering what she said as she left; "don't worry you can always grow it out."

The story has a happy ending. They were in fact incredibly competent and my hair looks much like it did when I was 20. This is good because I have been invited, this afternoon, to be a panelist for a United Nations Development Program agency seminar on organic farming. I'm pretty sure I will be the only Texan there.

It's a long story how this happened and I will post more after it happens but at least I can go with good hair. July 11, 2011

Encouragement.

2011-07-15T06:40:00.001-07:00

Browsing through some photos of last June and July in Texas, I realized that we actually got a bunch of soaking rain last summer.

The fields were deep with healthy green bermuda, my beds were growing like crazy and big drenching rainstorms weren't all that uncommon.

In this hard season of heat and drought in Texas, I thought I'd post these photos as an encouraging reminder that when it does rain again, it will be lovely and grow. July 11, 2011

Easter Evacuations.

2011-07-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

Evacuate is an ugly word. One that forces this weird union between hysteria and disciplined action. Both are required, I think, if you plan to get any of your stuff out.

As luck would have it, I 've had this experience, now twice, in the last ten days: Once for oncoming wildfire and once for oncoming tornado. I would have hit the trifecta if the predicted softball-sized hail had, in fact, occurred. Happily, it didn't. It was only quarter-sized.

I'm going to spare you the details of conditions in Central Texas right now because you can just go to CNN and find out.
In short, two weeks ago, Texas, which is suffering the worst drought since the 30's, started burning and it hasn't stopped. Then last night it started raining, which should be terrific news, and it was, until it turned into hail, massive lightning strikes and then tornadoes.

When a wildfire is burning in someone else's backyard, like in California, it usually prompts sympathy but not much else because well, what can you do? When a wildfire, which is swallowing oak and mesquite trees so fast it makes them explode and disintegrate, barrels toward your life galvanized by 60 mph winds, things get real. Fast.

Horses. Dogs. Cats. Truck. Trailer. Hard Drive. Guitar. Guns. Saddles. Change of clothes. Water. Wedding Album and the rug my sister gave us from Azerbaijan. And each other. That's it.

Had the fire managed to jump a highway or two and burn my precious home, which has been defying natural disasters since 1917, that's what we would have had left.

A mere eight days later, as we raced to our neighbor's storm cellar and I alternated between praying for and cursing this crazy-ass Texas weather, I had my iphone, my hard drive, a hard copy of my book and Sam. Everything else was on its own.

It's hard not to be schizophrenic about all this.

The number one feeling is gratitude because thanks to our volunteer firefighters, we never had to pull down our driveway to escape the advancing fire and the tornado turned Northeast and petered out.

So we had a nice underground visit with Durwood and Aletha and her 92 year old mother, my yoga student, Aline. They are all more experienced with hail, fire and tornado than I and therefore seemed to enjoy a lesser degree of panic.

That's the good news.

But the bad news is a fireman lost his life fighting the Gorman fire and 167 families have lost their homes in a nearby community. Thousands of others are homeless from these tornadoes. We are in this weird middle place. We aren't cleaning up wreckage but we are deeply paranoid about the possibility.

Maybe things seem more radical than they actually are because we are new here, but how do you tell?

It's unsettling to be so distrustful of the natural world; to sense that it is hostile to your presence. I'm an earthquake girl myself. At least with earthquakes - the initial one anyway - you don't know they're coming. You just get out from under your desk (hopefully) and start surveying the damage. But this stuff has been going on for weeks. I'm exhausted by red radar screens with purple tornado dots and weathermen saying things like "baseball-sized hail hitting Gorman in eight minutes."

In addition, looking at the weather almanac last week, I discovered that the normal average high temperature for April 20th in this area is 77 degrees. It was 102 that day just south of us in Comanche.
I think that is what's bothering me. I'll bet people in Missouri and North Carolina and even Japan and Haiti - places that have gone wild on their human inhabitants lately - feel the same way. Maybe I'm overreacting, but this stuff is making me pause and reflect.

There's not much we can do about earthquakes and tsunamis. Maybe there is nothing we can do about droughts, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes either. However, I believe 98% of the scientific community, when they say there is.

Scientists repeatedly say, when the number of carbon molecules in the atmosphere increases, the earth's temperature increases. This has a huge impact on ice, oceans and weather patterns.

In 400,000 years of atmospheric history, as recorded in ice cores, there has never been this much carbon in our atmosphere.

Never.

It's easier to blow off this data when you are not demolishing historic weather averages and enduring 80-year droughts. Watch PBS correspondent Martin Smith's thoughtful and interesting documentary called Heat here.

Even as I write, I can hear the tv in the next room. The newscasters have taken over the golf tournament Sam was watching to tell us about a whole new set of tornadoes. These are working not far from the area that, tonight, is still on fire. The tornado west of us is heading our way and we are hoping it veers south.Or better yet, dies completely and just settles into a good soaking rainstorm for oh, I don't know, a month.

At the end of the day, I still believe in a sovereign God, who knows exactly what is going on and will work it out for the good of those who love Him. He doesn't however, promise the ride won't be bumpy.

On the way to church this morning to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus - we drove past black fields and scorched trees. The roads are torn up with firebreaks and everything smells of smoke. Yet somehow, even with zero moisture last week, green shoots have sprung up through the charred ground. All over, there are swaths of black death covered by the fuzz of bright green promise.

How's that for an Easter message. April 24, 2011

My Auction Buddy.

2011-07-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

There is nobody in the world who loves an equipment auction more than Ranch Boss.

No, sorry Danny, Durwood, Mark; R.B. loves them more.

A day at the equipment auction for Ranch Boss is like a day in Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, theMetropolitan Museum of Art and the spa all rolled together, for me.

His palms even get sweaty as he throws them up on a hay baler that he totally does not need but "it's such a sweet deal." Actually, he never throws his hand up, that's what rookies do. He just catches the bid-catcher's eye and nods. That way nobody around him really knows who is doing the bidding.

Believe me this little addiction is not without its perils.

Once, we nearly brought a $7,000 horse home in the back of my Nissan pickup. Ranch Boss was insulted that such a fine horse should sell for so paltry a sum. The bidding stalled with him at $7,000. I had no idea, he held the winning bid. The loud sigh of relief he blew when someone bid $7,500, tipped me off though.

If we'd hauled a trailer to Fort Worth that day, I'm pretty sure we'd own that horse. This is a long way of saying, we may have to hold an auction intervention soon.

The auction yard is crawling with coveralled, cigar-chewing men in sweat-stained caps that bear the names of local implement dealers.

One guy, who wears a lifetime of farming on the skin of his hands,eased his field-worn body up into the seat of an old Massey Ferguson and assessed - correctly I might add - "what she'll bring."

But don't kid yourself, this is no place for rookies.
Some of this equipment has clocked enough peanut and hay field mileage to go from here to the moon and the guys with the implement caps know it. They stomp clutches and raise buckets, check hoses and hookups.

Ranch Boss, who's been going to equipment auctions since he was a kid in North Carolina, knows too. So I'm thinking maybe I should rent him out to auction rookies who want to buy some used equipment but don't know what they're up against. I think I'll call it "My Auction Buddy" or something like that.

Sounds like a win-win to me. March 20, 2011

It's a New Day

2011-07-15T06:32:00.000-07:00

It hurts a little to note that my last post was in July. It's telling to note that grasshoppers were mentioned.

Farming is so humbling.

One of the advantages of living in a rural place is that you can usually throw a raging temper tantrum in your driveway, unwitnessed. One afternoon I was doing just that; smashing grasshoppers with a shovelhead and shouting expletives when, unfortunately, my neighbor Durwood pulled in. I failed to pull it together in time and Durwood, who knows a thing or two about crop failure after a lifetime of peanut farming, watched with sympathy. Then with great kindness he suggested I fog the whole show with Sevin and poison the little suckers.

"But I caaaaaaaan't do that Durwood!" I wailed.

Sometimes holding the line blows.

Later that same day, Ranch Boss drew his own line by announcing that the grasshoppers on the balance of the Kirk Ranch would be sprayed in the morning, to protect his hay crop. I know when things are non-negotiable. So, last summer the Kirk Ranch became something like a restaurant with smoking and non-smoking sections.

But thank God hope springs eternal and we are back at it, with our second year of organic gardening in Central Texas. We are wiser and better prepared now.

Seed catalogues arrive daily, baby green Bermuda shoots are poking up through their dormant beige brothers and we've had four calves in seven days. Here are a few things on the horizon that have us excited.

1. Lavender. I decided, over the winter, to quit pretending I don't want the front of my ranch tolook like a farm in Provence. I have surrendered and plan to plant several hundred lavenderplants in the open space between vegetables and orchard. In my mind it looks like this. Lavender likes sandy, loamy, sweet soil with good drainage, which I have, it is a drought tolerant plant as well, which, well duh..There are thriving lavender farms in Austin, which we may visit in an upcoming post.

2. Bees. If we aren't concerned about bee colony collapse, we should be. Remember the plants that sustain us are pretty undemanding except for a couple things. Their need for pollenators is absolute. Given that the EPA says that pesticide overuse is at least one probable cause of colony collapse, we hope to provide a haven - if possible. Plus bees love lavender. I love honey. See how this works? Of course I know almost nothing about beekeeping, but I know people who do. Stay tuned.

3. Pullets. I am happy to announce that my baby pullets are becoming hens. Six fresh brown eggs this morning! This may deserve its own blogpost but these little babies came from the Leon Valley Hatchery just down the road. Come to find out they are the largest distributor of fertilized eggs on Ebay! Who knew? People buy fancy breeds of chickens for 4-H or whatever, the eggs are shipped in special packages and then incubated by the buyers. By the way, because I wondered about this too, fertilized chicken eggs are dormant until somebody with a fluffy butt (or other technology) sits on them.

Oh and did you notice the funny looking comb on Tom the Rooster? Do you know what happened? Frostbite! Yep, it got that cold for that long in Texas a few weeks ago. When it doesn't break 18 degrees for four days, it's hard to keep your comb warm.

He's fine though, surrounded by six "blossoming" pullets, if you know what I mean.

4. Farmers Market. The bottom line is this: I don't want to drive to Dallas to sell produce - especially with trouble in the Suez. So I wonder, if somebody started a Farmers Market in Gorman with a mess of backyard growers and then marketed the pants off it, well....If you build it will they come? Perhaps its worth a try. Saturday mornings starting in April/May? More on this to come.

5. Raised Beds. You might recall the industry that double digging 500 square feet of raised beds required last spring. Because Ranch Boss is a genius, he promised he could duplicate the process with all the required finesse if I would just come "look at" this sweet backhoe attachment for his tractor. See how things work around here? Turns out he was right. We more than doubled our raised bed planting space in less than eight hours. Last year each bed took 8-10 hours to dig by hand. We are so ahead of the game that shallots, onions, peas and spinach have been in the ground for a week now.

I promise greater diligence here, stay tuned. February 26, 2011

Shop Your Local Farmers First!

2011-07-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

I have a wheelbarrow of cucumbers waiting to become pickles. I have about 30 lbs of sweet, fuzzy, drippy, baseball-sized peaches sitting on top of the cucumbers. A friend loaded me up with about 10 garlic heads yesterday, the chard is, unbelievably, still producing in the sweltering July-ness of Texas. Plus, the grasshoppers have descended heavy enough to make us guard for the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse.

No wonder I haven't blogged.

Summer is in full swing here and I am going to bang the drum once again for local farmers.

A study just released by Virginia Tech found that if each household in the State of Virginia spent just $10 per week on local food - squash, milk, pork, fruit or whatever, it would add $1.65 billion - that's billion with a B - to the State's economy. Holy smokes - how many jobs would that create?

If that doesn't convice you to stop by your local Farmer's Market this week with a ten in hand, here's a story:

Across the street from the Kirk Ranch is a roughly 25-acre field farmed by some friends of ours - a couple in their 70's, named Charles and Carolyn. For decades, the two of them have grown squash and cukes on this land, harvested, sorted and driven this totally fresh, never refrigerated produce to the Dallas Farmers Market. Since 1941 DFM has sold local, wholesale produce in South Dallas. The farmers market, as a trend, has clearly taken off, with the number of markets more than doubling in the US in the last 10 years, but for DFM it's not a trend - it's old hat!

The chefs show up at dawn every day in the summer and buy their produce direct from the farmer - it is an elegant win-win situation for hardworking chefs and farmers both. Charles and Carolyn have been taking their produce there for DECADES. This requires them to get up in the middle of the night, drive 120 miles to Dallas, arrive before dawn for a good spot in the local vendors shed and be ready for the chefs and other early birds.

Ranch Boss asked Charles yesterday when and where they sleep - do they get a room or something. Charles, who is a hilarious character anyway, said , "Heck no, you sleep right there with your vegetables."

So let's review.

A couple in their 70's gets out into the field in the morning, harvests squash until noon then washes, sorts and boxes it well into the afternoon, completes all their other normal chores - which for Charles probably means spending the balance of the day on the tractor mowing hay. Then they load up at midnight to drive to Dallas to sell vegetables at dawn. They repeat this procedure as long as there is squash.

As you are taking your second coffee break of the day, stretching a little from a morning of answering e-mails, I'd like you to pause and calmly consider Charles and Carolyn. Consider how hard farmers actually work to grow and sell food. What's sad about this story is there is a glut of squash on the DFM right now- maybe because of all the rain we got, I don't know, but Charles told Ranch Boss they had to bring a bunch home. All that work for nothing. Ugh.

So this is a battle cry!

I implore you shop your local farmers first! Sure you can buy squash at thesame time you buy toothpaste and charcoal and that's super convenient - but just remember somebody busted their tail to grow that squash and if they can't support their families doing it (as all the farming trends suggest) they will quit.

Then what? This isn't a small problem.

We at the Kirk Ranch are awaiting news about a Texas Department of Ag grant called "The Young Farmer Grant" designed to help young people get back to farming. Think about Charles, can you blame twenty-somethings for their reluctance to go all in on a farm?

Now of course, Charles and Carolyn are an absolute delight to be around, they have farmed their whole lives and Charles is one of the happiest guys I know. I can't imagine trying to keep up with his 1000mph lifestyle and I'm half his age. So certainly there are joys inherent to a life spent outside in the sunshine and air with plants. But don't kid yourself, it's hard work.

So make a day of it, take your kids to your local farmers market and spend some money there. Texas is crazy ripe and delicious right now.

See for yourself! July 13, 2010

Why Heirloom Matters - A Primer.

2011-07-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

It's so hip to be green right now, it's awesome.

Consumers are panicking about the recent Harvard study which suggests that pesticide residue in fruits and vegetables may increase the occurrence of ADHD. Analysists predict the demand for organic produce will double by the end of the decade and every urban restaurant worth its salt, has heirloom vegetables on the menu.

Unfortunately, the lexicon has become ponderous - USDA organic, non-certified organic, locavore, F1 hybrid , non-GMO, heirloom etc. If you are lucky enough to eat heirloom vegetables but have no idea what they are, we are here to help.

Heirloom vegetables come from plants, usually old varieties that maybe your grandparents grew, which have undergone no genetic modification or hybridization. Simply put, if you save a seed from an heirloom sweet chocolate bell pepper and then stick it in the ground, you will grow a sweet chocolate bell pepper plant.

"But wait," you say. "I've never heard of sweet chocolate bell peppers, I can't even imagine what one tastes like." That's because sweet chocolate bell peppers look weird, they're delicate and don't fare well in shipping containers crossing the ocean. So, in our industrial food system, farmers don't grow them because wholesalers don't buy them. Therefore, you don't get to eat them.
The good news is you can save seeds from bell peppers and plant them in your garden. Humans have done this for millenia. Unless, of course, the supermarket bell pepper you are eating is an F1 hybrid - which it probably is.

With apologies to Gregor Mendel; a first generation hybrid is the product of two different plants with desirable characteristics, like heavy-bearing, frost-tolerant etc. Their union creates a new, uniform variety with those desirable qualities. These days hybrids are bred not so much for flavor and novelty but to withstand the rigors of the industrial food system.

Say you were inclined to save hybrid seeds to plant in the garden. You'll wind up with a pasty, wilty mess of a plant that is good for nothing. "So what," you say. "Seeds are cheap. I can just go to Walmart and get more." Well..yes..but those are probably hybrids too and they make plants that can't reproduce themselves either, so you go back to Walmart the next year and buy more seeds and...see where I'm going with this? Also, the seeds for sale at your neighborhood garden supply are, due to supply changes in the industrial food system, a narrow genetic slice of the variety that was once available.

Are you Irish-American? I am. Two and a half million Irish were displaced in the 1840's because they basically all planted the same variety of potato. Nature likes diversity and if the Irish had planted several varieties of potato, maybe one of them could have survived the blight; and I could be drinking a Guinness in County Cork right now.

Seed Savers Exchange, whose members have saved an estimated 1 million varieties of rare garden seeds since 1975, put it thus: "The vegetables and fruits currently being lost are the result of thousands of years of adaptation in diverse ecological niches around the globe."

Renowned plant collector Jack Harlan said of seed saving, "These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine."

Whoa.

In addition, seed company scientists are churning out varieties that have been genetically engineered - Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO. For instance they might splice a cold-water fish gene into a tomato to make it more frost-tolerant. Unlike hybrids, which are like breeding a horse and a donkey to make a mule, this is mating fish and tomatoes - something that could never occur in nature.

So is this food safe to eat? Thirty countries from Japan to Austrailia and the entire EU don't think so. These countries have passed restrictions or outright bans on GMO. The US is a different story. According to the USDA, in 2007, 91% of the soy grown was GMO. By the way, if you eat anything processed, you eat soy.

Health questions aside, there are two other facts that freak me out as much as the phrase "catastrophic starvation."

Problem #1 - Worldwide 81% of GM crops were genetically engineered to resist herbicides, says research by the Center for Food Safety. That means you can spray the whole field and everything dies, including beneficial insects, beneficial microbes in the soil, birds, fish, frogs, etc., but the crop doesn't. This is the wonder of modern science.

But oops... this just in, farmers across the US have found 10 weed species growing quite well in their Round-Up Ready crops. Round-Up Ready means the plants are genetically engineered to tolerate the application of glyphosate. The presence of weeds means the weeds are evolving to resist the chemical. So what do we do now? Spray more? Yum!

Problem #2 - Fans of the recent documentary Food Inc.will recall a fellow in it named Maurice Parr. He travels from farm to farm, for a living, helping farmers save their seed.. However, since genetically modified crops are developed in a lab they can be patent protected as intellectual property.

So the film tracks Parr's legal troubles with Monsanto - who according to Wikipedia is the largest conventional seed producer in the world, who produces 90% of the GMO sold and posted revenue of $11.3 billion in 2008. In the film, Goliath has been punching David in the face without pause for several years now but David just won't lie down. Look at Monsanto's website, they defend their position.

It's fascinating and provokes questions like: "Who owns the global food supply?" A question which is worth calm consideration and then complete hysteria.

So here's what it boils down to.

If you buy seeds from places like Seed Savers or Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, you can skip all this nonsense. You can save your seed and grow it again next year without being sued or growing crappy plants. And you are personally helping prevent a catastrophic starvation event by encouraging genetic diversity in your own garden.

If you can't swing all that, just eat a prosciutto and melon appetizer made with an heirloom Charantais melon at your favorite restuarant. After you freak out over how good it is, find the owner, thank him or her and then go get all your friends and repeat the process as often as you can.

We can handle supply, if you handle demand. May 22, 2010

Free Lunch!

2011-07-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

They say there's no such thing as a free lunch.

They are sooo wrong. There is one. It is absolutely free, it's everywhere and we all learned about it in fifth grade. Its called photosynthesis!

Now before you roll your eyes and go check your Facebook page, consider the following excerpt from Second Nature, Michael Pollan's fine treatise on gardening, which he wrote before the Omnivore's Dilemma made him the prophet of the local food movement.

The first person to verify that indeed this is a miracle was a seventeenth-century Flemish scientist by the name of Van Helmont. He planted a willow sapling in a container that held 200 pounds of soil and, for five years, gave it nothing but water. At the end of that time, the tree was found to weigh 169 pounds, and the soil 199 pounds, 14 ounces - From just two ounces of soil had come 169 pounds of tree.

Pollan's relays this story after considering the giant, warty Sibley squash he planted from seed in May and harvested in October. It took nothing from anyone but water, air, sunlight and time and here's the best part: Pollan ate it. He may have even fed his family with it.

Herein lies the miracle of agriculture and it's so simple we miss it three times a day. Through photosynthesis, plants take air and sunlight and turn it into food for us.

If that isn't the quintessential free lunch, what is? May 13, 2010

A Texas sized surprise!

2011-07-15T06:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a fact from the Texas Hill Country.

Should you ever pass a 30-acre field of red corn poppies surrounding a massive farm store at 70 mph, it is acceptable to brake hard enough to give your husband whiplash.

To call Wildseed Farms a "farm store" is like calling the Sistene Chapel a community church. A huge retail section at the entrance is home to every lavender and bluebonnet product the mind can imagine. Garden art, architectural elements, clothing, jewelry candles and gourmet kitchenimplements fill this beautiful "barn." Shop cats snooze in box lids on the checkout counter but you don't even have to buy anything, you're welcome to just soak the place in. (As if!)

Outside, walking paths wind through an impressive nursery collection of herb starts and ornamentals and cactus in full bloom. Did I mention the bier garten and the gourmet food section - brimming with local, artisan delicacies. After snacking on samples of sweet potato butter and peach salsa, one can sidle up to the bar which serves Shiner Bock and homemade peach ice cream from Gillespie County peaches.

But the best part is the 1/2 mile of walking paths that meander past shady benches and fountains and row after row of deliberately cultivated (and labeled) wildflowers.

In 1983 a Texan named John Thomas began converting his turf business into a wildflower farm. At that time, buying wildflower seed was prohibitively expensive. Thomas invented equipment for large scale wildflower cultivation and seed collection. Today, Wildseed Farms boasts 200 acres under cultivation and another 800 acres in production. Pause and calmly consider that - I'll wait.

The company sells 88 varieties of wildflower seeds on line and in the store and you can even buy mixes for your particular region of the US. Wildseed Farms is the largest working wildflower farm in the US and more than 350,000 people per year stop by.
As luck would have it, Ranch Boss struck up a conversation with a lovely woman named Marilyn - who happens to be married to John and owns this rolicking, extravagant whoop-de-do of a business. She said part of their inspiration was Former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson who was a neighbor and friend. They built the business row by row and hired a local builder who sucessfully translated John's architectural vision into an absolute masterpiece.

She said a few years of drought really hurt their fields but after all the rain Texas saw this winter, the fields of black-eye-susans and larkspur and cosmos and bluebonnets are positively orgiastic. (My word not hers).

To me this is evidence that you can build something sublime and miraculous from absolute scratch if you are doing it out love for the task. John and Marilyn have been at it for 25+ years and their place is love incarnate. Go see it!

If you can't swing that, here's a virtual tour. May 1, 2010

Courtesy of a Generous Rain

2011-07-15T06:19:00.000-07:00

Some days I wonder if I have the faith to farm.

It takes faith to believe that tiny, delicate seeds put in the ground are actually going to grow into radishes. It takes faith to believe the rain will fall at the right time and bugs won't destroy everything and more faith that our organic approach will even deter them. It takes yet more faith to believe the mulch layer isn't too acidic and the baby tomato starts we yanked from the greenhouse won't fall over and die at the prospect of living outside.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for but not yet seen, says Hebrews.

I remind myself of that daily when I stare at my beds waiting for new things to sprout. Aren't we all waiting for new things to sprout? Really?

Nothing sprouts without rain and despite a wet winter, the drought topic has been creeping into casual conversation around town. But yesterday it rained hard and it galvanized this gardener's faith in a much-needed way.

On a physical level, 68 degrees and raining couldn't be better for vegetables. The soil is warm and wet, the wind is calm - things can't help but grow well, like weeds. So I'm grateful for the approximately 2" that has fallen since yesterday.

Despite the drizzle, I took 24 tomato babies out of the greenhouse and planted them in their beds. Ty Wolosin - an organic growing neighbor friend - said don't kid yourself, April15th - no sooner.

Late frost and wind are a topic of great paranoia to Texas gardeners, so I've been agonizing over this. Consider taking your kindergartener to New York City and turning him/her loose in Times Square to "grow up." That's kind of how planting tomato starts in Texas in April feels - it's a cold world and predators love innocent, little babies like these.

No sooner had I begun, the rain got serious. I was halfway through wrapping protective plastic around my kindergarteners' cages when it really started coming down. Incidentally, 13 gallon kitchen trash bags with the bottoms cut out fixed with clothespins make pretty good mini-greenhouses for tomatoes.

Rather than dashing for the house, a move Ranch Boss suggested from the covered porch, I just kept working.

I recalled days when I used to take dude ranch guests riding in the forest. Panic would descend the moment it began raining. After we put on our rain gear I would always suggest that everyone hold still, notice how dry they actually were and how the horses seemed to care less about the rain. Once the panic subsided, people remarked on how much mist warm, wet horses create and how each rider got to swim through it. We noticed how much louder the birds and frogs got and how the pine trees smelled.

Oh, how a wet forest smells.

It's not all that different in a wet garden. In fact, it felt like a benediction - a message to quit panicking, quit questioning and just focus on the task at hand. I calmly moved from cage to cage continuing to work as if I were not soaking wet. I just enjoyed the warm, heavy rain and a rested in what to me was a tacit confirmation that "the farmer who plants generously will get a generous crop."

The soil is fertile around here. April 17, 2010

Oh Yah Spring!

2011-07-15T06:16:00.000-07:00

Spring exploded all over the Kirk Ranch this week.

Apologies to our Pagosa friends for spreading on the "No way, you still have snow on the ground" routine. It's inevitable.

I'd like to think we are out of the woods with freezing weather, but the old timers say if it thunders in February you can count on frost on that same day in April. It did. So this gardener is betting on April 9th.

This is the fabled Texas Bluebonnet. It and several friends are growing in our front yard. The Lone Star State will be silly, gorgeous with them for the next month or two. Local lore holds that because of former first Lady and wildflower advocate, Lady Bird Johnson, the pockets of state highway workers were filled with wildflower seed. It is a fact, according to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, a 1987 federal law mandated one quarter of one percent of all highway landscaping funds be devoted to planting natives. This was largely due to her efforts. She was an early and avid environmentalist and a proud Texan.

I've been dying to show off this fabulous greenhouse. I'm dying even more to tell you that its mine.

Well....It's not. This is the home of Hardwick Nursery & Produce in Rising Star, Texas. It is the mothership for three separate retail nursery operations. They must have, on site, fifteen or so 100x30 foot green houses packed to the gills with daisies, petunias, bouganvillea (which in Texas is a hanging, potted annual - smart) peonies, begonias. lobelia, hotpeppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, okra starts and countless other plants.

It is possible to feel a little inadequate wandering through the Hardwick greenhouses, but I had to remind myself, they probably started with one, little recycled materials greenhouse too.

Grandaddy Kirk was able to celebrate his 85th birthday on the Kirk Ranch, last week.He was escorted all the way from Lexington, North Carolina by our good friend and gynecologist Dr. Quiche. (The gynecologist jokes, believe me, are never not funny).

A fried chicken, creamed-potato dinner was held in his honor and also in attendence was Ms. Garrett, who is our favorite 91 year-old neighbor/friend. After comparing some notes with Grandaddy on the Depression and dirt roads, she told some amazing stories about growing up in DeLeon, Texas (10 miles south).

Her family lived in a two-room house and farmed peanuts with teams of horses. As a child, she was the smallest and was often tapped to ride atop a cultivator of some kind and drive one of the teams! Due to my complete lack of mastery in the "southern woman" arts, I was preoccupied with frying chicken and I can't remember how many kids were in her family - but I think there were a bunch.

She told Ranch Boss that baths were taken on Saturday nights. That's where the expression "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" comes from. Baths were taken largest person to smallest, so the baby got washed in some pretty dirty water. Ranch Boss asked "Ms. Garrett, did you have running water?"

"Oh Lord no!" she answered and giggled. She has a great giggle.

In our spare time, we also planted 27 new trees. The driveway now has a unique landscape design I like to call "compromise."

You see, the principals at the Kirk Ranch agreed that the driveway should be lined with trees. One principal favored a tidy, flowering manicured tree called a Bradford Pear. It is pictured at the right.

Another principal, who happens to also be pictured at the right, believes that Bradford Pears are not a "manly tree" and prefers something a little more "masculine" and "western." As such, the bottom half of the driveway features fourteen manly, western, Mexican Plums. The top half features eleven tidy, pretty Bradford Pears.

We often talk about the amazing availability of resources here in Texas. All of these trees came from the Snider Nursery which is less than a half mile from the Kirk Ranch. The owner, Mike Snider, has a zillion trees for sale there, so if you are in the market for a bunch of really nice, high quality trees - masculine or feminine - Mike's the guy. He also set Ranch Boss up with a gorgeous Weeping Willow that will make some fabulous shade for our front yard in the long, hot Texas summers.

So yep, spring is pretty sweet 'round these parts. I know it is still snowing in Colorado, so y'all come visit now! April 3, 2010

Dig It!

2011-07-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

At Kirk Ranch Organics we really love plants...I mean really love them.

So much so that we will spend 8 hours digging up a 100 square foot raised bed to the depth of 24", just for them. This is a ton of hard work, which over the next ten days will be repeated five times.

Normal people build raised beds from the ground up with construction materials and then fill them with dirt. We used to be normal. Then we met John Jeavons and read his book. Now, we dig down and attempt to create a bed of "spongecake" for our baby plants.

Prior to this activity, our midsections resembled spongecake, but after two straight days of double digging, we think John Jeavons might just have a hot new weight loss program on his hands.

The theory is this: Most plants have deep root systems. There is a lovely band of topsoil for about 12" in our garden. We even add year-old kitchen scrap

compost to this topsoil (can you believe that's what's in the wheelbarrow)? Unfortunately, under that topsoil is hardpack red clay. It makes sense that if plants aren't working to penetrate the clay layer, because we have already done it for them, they will have more energy to grow strong and healthy with abundant vegetables.

So we dig.

This is driving ranch boss seriously crazy. Anything that cannot be done with a diesel-powered machine may not be worth doing. Our custom farmer friends, who certainly know a thing or two about growing stuff, confirmed upon surveying our progress yesterday that "Yep, there's no machine that can do that."

So we dig.

The funny thing is, this really is not driving me crazy. In fact, we are rather enjoying ourselves. During a little rest break yesterday, we heard the cranes, who are coming back to Texas. We need to ask around a bit about them because all we know is 1.They are definitely cranes 2. They make a noise that, from 1,000 feet overhead, sounds like doves cooing. We sat and watched them fly over and noted with glee this definite sign of spring. The last time we saw them was November with their V pointed south.

So yes, double digging 600 square-feet to make spongecake beds for baby plants is hard, but so are things done in office buildings. And in office buildings there are no cranes.

So we dig. March 15, 2010

Yoga in Gorman, Texas?

2011-07-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

I keep remembering this line in the movie High Fidelity.

John Cusack's girlfriend is criticizing him for being a professional critic. Because, after all, its much easier to criticize what other people put out in the world than to put something out there yourself.

We're proud this week that we have put something new out in the world. Kirk Ranch Organics Yoga just finished its second class with six students. As usual, all of the things we worried about ahead of time never materialized and we got a few inspiring surprises to boot.

Consider the 65, 74 and 75 year-old women, who have never done yoga in their lives, showing up to class tonight. Two of them, even attended the first one, where their instructor was fooled by their youthful good looks and had them lunging from down dog to standing over and over like nazi yoga girl. They were so gracious to return for a second time. We hope when we're 75, we have the gumption to try new, not to mention physically challenging, things. We are really inspired by these women.

One of our younger students keeps posting to her 450 Facebook friends little reminders to come to yoga in Gorman. We love her. She's our marketing department.

Not only is the company of giggling, sweating women gratifying, but that company, when you are new in town, is especially sweet. As a joke, we suggested that the first man to come to yoga class gets an award, but on second thought...maybe it's perfect with just us girls. March 11, 2010

You Bought a What?

2011-07-15T06:08:00.000-07:00

I'm one of those lucky women who gets whatever she asks for.

Why, just the other day, I casually mentioned how nice it would be to have something to move large quantities of compost into my garden, something like, I don't know, a dumptruck.

Yesterday, Ranch Boss and his buddy Boone ran down to Comanche to drop a hay rake at a ranch auction. Just to be clear, RB is a seller in this case. Despite being the first day of spring, the 40mph wind and sideways sleet encouraged me to stay home.

"Is that a good idea?" asked Mother Jane who knows that I am a "tempering" influence at auctions.

"What's worse," I told her, "he's with a guy who said he likes ranch auctions better than....uh...anyway...."

Hours passed.

When Ranch Boss finally called, it sounded like this:

"Ohmygod, Honey, you are not going to believe how well that rake sold, I mean it was amazing, they just started bidding and it was so great and Boone's with me and we've had a few Coors Lights and we made so much money on the rake that I boughtabiggerrakeandaseederandadumptruck."

"Whaaaaa was the last part?"

Yah, well meet Davis the Dumptruck.

Davis has 131,000 miles that he'll admit to, a 454 with a split transmission (whatever that means), a smashed windshield, mismatched tires, a driver window that won't roll up, tired brakes and a smattering of crescent wrenches and screwdrivers that someone didn't grab from under the seat.

But the best part is DAVIS RUNS AND DUMPS!

This might be where Ranch Boss is a genius because he paid less for Davis than a decent used mountain bike.

Davis and I were born about the same time and the beautiful thing about vehicles of that vintage is they lack all the annoying, unfixable, electronic nonsense that runs stuff like air-conditioning and power steering. Ranch Boss can fix Davis' minor cosmetic and mechanical issues with one-arm tied behind his back. Soon Davis will be hauling everything from gravel to bat guano.

You might be asking yourself how we came up with such a clever and pithy nickname for Davis in less than 24 hours of ownership?

Genius, I suppose.

March 21, 2010