Something for history geeks

(The brave souls of The Edwardian Farm together with a randy ram and one of their

big shire horses used for plowing and pulling wagons.)

I don’t watch television. I don’t have cable, and in Colorado if you don’t have cable you can’t watch TV. The mountains block signal. I remember growing up how irritated I was by this. Even with an antenna, the picture was always fuzzy and prone to disturbance.



But I do love a good documentary. If our local cable providers would permit it, I would order the History and Discovery channels a la carte. But they don’t. So about six or so years ago, I told them to take their converter box and shove it. I haven’t missed television (which I rarely watched even when I had cable) at all.



When I do watch television programs, it’s usually a DVD I’ve bought or sometimes a program on Hulu, such as Castle, which I love. (The writer jokes crack me up.)



But my sister knows me very well. She sent me a link to a new program that I've absolutely fallen in love with and which I want to share with the other history geeks out there. Of course, there’s every chance you’ve already discovered it. I’m a bit slow.



The name of it is The Edwardian Farm. It’s a BBC program that shows life on an Edwardian farm as lived through two archaeologists and one historian who move into an Edwardian farmhouse and begin living the way people lived in that area back around 1900. My degree is in archaeology, and the daily lives of ordinary people is one thing that draws me to writing fiction. No detail is too small. I find everything utterly fascinating.

(Here, they’re working a cider press on cider apples. That pile of straw in the middle is actually layer upon layer of crushed apples with the straw folded over and laid on top. It's called a “cheese.”)

And this program goes into great detail. How do you clean germs out of an outdoor privy in that time period? How do you maintain the hedgerows that keep your livestock from running off or getting into your crops? How do you plow a field with horses? How do you make quicklime? How do you preserve food without refrigerators? How do you clean a stopped chimney?



I have loved every episode I’ve watched — all of them on YouTube — and I can’t recommend it enough.



As some of you know, I’m very involved in urban farming and what’s called the “localization” movement. Localization is the reverse of globalization. It’s about making sure that your community produces what it uses, especially where food is concerned. The idea is to prevent unnecessary pollution and to make your community secure in case of a catastrophe. If you grow your own food and your community produces almost all of the food and goods and services humans need to live and thrive, then the global economy can go to hell without your family being hurt.



On a personal level, it means learning skills your grandparents knew — knitting, quilting, sewing, canning, growing gardens, having orchards, keeping chickens and bees. A person on an ordinary lot can do most of these things (depending on climate), and so provide most of the food their family needs. My grandfather built his own house and fed his six children on an orchard, grape arbor and vegetable garden that he cultivated in their backyard. They also had pigeons, rabbits and a goat (for milk).



We outsource most of that nowadays. Rather than doing these things ourselves, we’ve grown dependent on others to do them for us. That gives us more time, but what do people do with that time that really counts? Not only are we less connected to our own lives, we are at the mercy of the entire chain of people who supply the goods and the labor. This fact was driven home to me in December 2006 when six feet of snow fell in four weeks in my front yard and the grocery store shelves became empty. Empty. You couldn’t even buy sugar.



I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be dependent on an entire global mechanism for feeding my family. I don’t want to “outsource” my life. I’m trying very hard to “insource” it. (I invented that word, by the way, as far as I know. I’m involved in the localization movement here in the county and was trying to find a term for what we’re doing.)



This topic fascinates me, so if any of you are interested in the “transition movement,” which got its start in Great Britain and is also called localization, let me know. I may start a separate blog about that.



I enjoy being able to do things for myself and being reconnected with my own life in that way, rather than simply working for a paycheck and spending all that money on things I can learn to do myself. I find it very wholesome and appealing somehow, even if it is a lot of work. And this program, The Edwardian Farm, is basically about these three people learning the skills their great-grandparents had — i.e., reskilling themselves — and learning to be self-sufficient again.



So how do you clean a stopped up chimney back in the day? One option was to stuff a chicken down your chimney. It would flap and claw and break the soot free. But it was also kind of mean to the chicken — something that probably didn’t matter back in 1900. Another less chicken-y option was to take branches from a holly bush, bind them together and shove them up the chimney. Fascinating!



Apparently, prior to this, these three had a program called The Victorian Farm, which is equally fascinating. During the Edwardian period, technological advances included combustion-engine plows, indoor plumbing, gas ranges and so forth. When I’m done watching these episodes, I’m going to dive into The Victorian Farm and see what things were like back then.



Update: I’m still going to have the Dessert Diva as a guest together with Natalie. The two will be baking pies. I intended it to be a summer blog, but I have been so, so, so busy that it’s now going to preview holiday recipes.



Also, Carnal Gift will be live any day now on Amazon.com. It’s been edited and uploaded, and now I’m just waiting. This will be a very special release for me because finally — finally! — the book will be available as I wrote it, instead of missing 100 key pages.



It has taken a lot of time and effort to get the books online. Fortunately, my son Benjamin has handled a lot of it. I’ve been working on Defiant and trying very hard to stay off the Internet, which has a huge impact on my ability to focus and get work done. So if I’m not around, please forgive me. I need to write!



I’ll be back soon to announce the winner of the e-book copy of Sweet Release.



Thanks for being so patient! I owe it to you to put my time into my books and to make them the best they can be.

Meanwhile down on the urban farm...

See that little peek of red amid the green vines? That’s our first ripe tomato of the season.

There ought to be a celebration for that day. There’s nothing like a tomato picked ripe from a vine in your own garden. Tomatoes taste like summer itself, and I can’t wait to devour this one.

High summer is here, and the greens that were so plentiful in early June — arugula, romaine, spinach — are history. They’ll be back in the fall, or sooner if I replant. But they don’t like hot 90+ degree days, which is all we’ve been having lately.

I planted the greens, together with swiss chard and broccoli, while it was still snowing back in April. Brassicas and greens generally tolerate cold fairly well, producing when it’s still cool and surviving all but a truly hard frost. So, we’ve enjoyed some broccoli and swiss chard, and both are still producing despite the heat.

Broccoli and greens

One must wait, of course, to plant anything sensitive to cold, like tomatoes. So our tomatoes, green beans, peppers, corn and squash got planted in late May. Tomatoes do really well in Colorado, provided they don’t get beaten into the ground by hail — and you remember to water them. Corn, too, does well, and borrowing from Native tradition, we planted squash with them. Well, and cantaloupe...

Tomatoes and corn plants, together with a glimpse of squash, and green beans

Last year, we got a ton of green beans from two relatively small rows, so this year we planted a bit more than that, along with cucumbers, brussel sprouts and hot peppers. Mmmm...

I swear, I could live off arugula, green beans, radishes, tomatoes and broccoli — and last year I did just that for a time. So hopefully we planted enough this summer to keep me and my mum fed. She'll be staying with me after my operation and taking over the garden while I read and write and rest.

Green beans, hot peppers, brussel sprouts and cabbage plants

I believe strongly in the concept of economic independence. Economic ups and downs have much less impact on a family that is able to supply a lot of its own food and labor — stuff like plumbing, repairs, car maintenance. Knowing how to do these things one's self is important, I think. Canning, sewing, darning socks, knitting — skills our grandparents had but which were forgotten in a single generation.

Looking down the corn rows with hidden squash plants

People have proven that the average family can grow most of its own food in the average yard, and that’s our goal. These garden beds take up only the small south-facing side of the house. The front and backyard, though home to three big trees, also have lots of room where there’s full sun or partial shade. If we were to plant crops everywhere we have plantable space, and include a few fruit trees, a couple of beehives and backyard hens, we’d have most of the food that we need, apart from meat. And if we hunted or went mostly vegetarian... Well, you get the picture.

We won’t be able to accomplish all of this while I’m working full time and writing, of course. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. As it is, I work from the time I get up until dark either at the paper or in the garden — and then whatever time is left goes to having fun and/or writing.

I should add that all of this is organic. We don’t use chemical fertilizers, but rather compost. And we don't use pesticides of any kind, which is why you all heard screaming coming from Colorado this weekend. Washed some romaine and earwigs came running out.... Man, did I shriek!

I hate bugs... except for pretty ones like ladybugs and butterflies and dragon flies.

In the flower garden, the moment really belongs to rose mallow, a precious flower that bees love. It grows about waist height and is covered with small pink flowers. I love pink, let me say.

Rose mallow. Note the bumble bee in the center. I was particularly
happy to snap a photo of this fat, fuzzy fellow.

My roses are all rebooting. The big spring bloom is over, and now they've been deadheaded and will make another round of buds soon. All of our rose bushes are repeat bloomers. What’s the point of having roses that bloom once? Boooring.

Unfortunately, four of our bushes seem to have caught something. It’s nothing they’ve had before, and I wonder if it’s from the cool weather and rain — a fungus of some sort. The leaves are dying and falling off, and it upsets me. I hope we can rescue them!

In other news: Just trying to get ready to be away from the paper for eight weeks, and trying to prepare my mind for surgery. I’m almost looking forward to it, actually. Two weeks from this past Tuesday.

Urban homesteading

So how many of you are urban homesteaders?

I’m not sure how strong the movement is elsewhere, but here in Colorado, the idea of growing as much of your own organic food as possible and even raising your own chickens in your backyard is very popular — and not just with hippies.

Last summer, I decided to see how much food Benjamin and I could get out of re-opening one of our veggie garden beds. We have a very big yard, and the south side of the house, which gets full sun all day, was once entirely devoted to growing veggies. But that was back when my kids were little. Trying to handle a huge flower garden, two kids, a full-time job and the veggie garden was too much for me. I paid someone to put down weed cloth and bark the damned thing.

But Benjamin is all grown up now. So last summer, we ripped up the weed cloth from one of the beds and planted the things we like to eat most. Sadly, we did it sort of late in the planting season, so Benjy didn't really get to enjoy any of the results of his hard work. But I did. I didn't buy vegetables from about the beginning of August through October until the first hard frost.

I got a lot of broccoli, green beans, butternut squash, tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers out of last year's "experimental" garden, so we're going all out this year. We worried for a while that my surgery would make it all too difficult for Benjy, because there will be a time when he will have to handle it himself. But it will be probably a month before I have surgery, and that's a lot of the growing season. We decided to go for it anyway with a hopeful attitude.

We opened all three beds, and I spent March-May nursing seedlings on my kitchen floor. (It made walking around a bit awkward, but that was okay.)




So this year our garden will include: arugula, broccoli, romaine lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, mixed spring greens, green peppers, Anaheim peppers, Navajo corn (what else???), radishes, carrots, tomatoes, acorn squash, zucchini, summer squash, cabbage, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe.... And I think that's all.

It will easily fit into the space we have — which we hope to learn to utilize better so that we can fit even more next year. And the stuff we grow is not only 100-percent organic, it's so natural that you might even call it “neglected.”

I want to plant some fruit trees to get our fruit needs met. Trees are tricky in Colorado. There were none on the plains, apart from cottonwoods near creeks and springs. And the mountains? Mostly evergreens. But there are some kinds of fruit trees that will grow on the Front Range with lots of TLC. I’m not an apple fan, so I won’t plant an apple tree. Boring. Right now I want sweet cherries, pears and plums. We’ll see how that works out.

And I want laying hens for the backyard, as well as a couple of beehives for honey. Fresh eggs every day? Our own honey? Sounds like paradise to me.

Yes, it's a lot of work, but when you grow it yourself you don't have to wonder what's on it or in it. And then you have a real reason to compost, which we already do. You can form your own happy little ecosystem.

There's a big "re-skilling" movement in our town. If you don't know how to can veggies or freeze food or quilt or sew or darn socks or whatever, you can take classes to learn to do these things yourself. It's kind of strange because my grandmothers could do all those things. My grandfather grew most of the food for his wife and six kids out of their backyard. But my generation — I'm a Gen-Xer — comes from parents that didn't do any of that. Have we lost these skills so quickly?

Urban homesteading feels so very Little House on the Prairie (except in the city), and I love it because I like thinking that we can be more self-sustaining. I don't like to shop much, and I do like good food. So it works out well.

I'd love to hear garden stories from any of you who have them.

Tonight I spent the better part of an hour harvesting arugula, swiss chard, spinach, romaine and mixed greens that I planted back when it was still snowing. Then I had to wash them leaf by bloody leaf. It took forever! And the funny thing is that, although we've been eating out of our garden almost every night, there's so much that it never looks like I harvested anything.

Of course, the pride and joy of this household is the rose garden, and it's about to go into high bloom. I can't wait to see it and smell it and share the photos with you all again. The winter was hard on the roses, and most died back to the ground. So the bushes are pretty tiny compared to some years. That's life in the Rockies.

I'm still on Chapter 7 of Breaking Point, but it will move forward quickly on Friday. Tomorrow marks the end of my workweek, and then back to fiction.

Have a good Thursday, everyone!

Remembering to breathe

Who cares if it's May 7? Last night it snowed. It had melted by the time the sun was high in the sky, but it's still nippy with the possibility of more snow ahead.

Ah, yes, springtime in the Rockies.

Tulips do look pretty in the snow. And so does my lily of the valley, which is just beginning to bloom. Those flowers are so precious and tiny. I have to get down on my knees in the grass to sniff them. I’m sure that makes a lovely sight.

Out in the veggie garden, I have six-inch high broccoli plants, as well as arugula, spinach, romaine lettuce, mixed greens and Swiss chard. When Benjy gets home — and when it actually gets warm — we'll open a second bed and plant tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, peppers and squash.

One zucchini plant only, and even then... At the end of the world, there will be zucchini and cockroaches, as I’ve always said.

I’m taking a moment to breathe. The past two weeks have been a whirlwind. Big papers, special editions, bills in the Senate, hassles in the House, new five-book contract. After we heard that the Department of Corrections was attempting to gut or kill the bill, I found myself getting super stressed out, and that's just not good for me.

We have reached a compromise with them. I'm very reluctant to compromise because I feel that some important aspects of the bill have been removed. Right now it contains about 85 percent of what I originally put into it. But when they start removing phrases like "so as not to cause the inmate additional pain or suffering" you have to wonder WHY. I still don’t understand.

The House Judiciary Hearing is Monday morning. I'm first up to testify. It could be on the House floor as early as that afternoon and could pass the House by Tuesday. Then it will go into conference committee, where the two sponsors and others try to work out a compromise on the two different versions of the bill. Once they do that, both chambers have to approve the changes. And then, finally, it goes to the Governor.

It's been a real education for me to see how things work behind the scenes at the Capitol. I think along the way I've managed to annoy everyone who's been involved with the bill. Me and my temper. Oh, well.

But I'm trying to let go a little bit. I can't write books if I'm stressed out of my gourd and have a migraine. So...

I'm starting Chapter 4 of Breaking Point today. Bad things reach something of a peak for Zach and Natalie in Chapter 4 — and then begin to turn around. Right now, they are just voices in the darkness for each other as they talk through the wall of a place out in the desert where they’re being kept prisoner.

I hope you all have a great weekend. Thanks for your support here and on Facebook regarding the bill. The debate on the House floor will be available via live streaming. I’ll post the URL when the bill is about to come up.

Man-titty and gardening

First, the man-titty. I feel better now. How about you?

I'm busy writing this weekend — I threw out everything I had for Natalie’s story and went in a completely different direction — but I thought I could share this with you. It’s a bit of inspiration for the day. My muse and I both say, “Yummy!”

So what is this new direction, you ask? I don’t think I’m going to say anything yet, except that Zach MacBride is still a deputy U.S. Marshal and the story still begins in Cd. Juárez, Mexico, with Natalie being kidnapped off a bus full of journalists.

I spent yesterday thinking through this new direction on her story while spreading compost over our vegetable garden. And I have to say that being able to spread compost that my son and I made — through both thermophilic composting and vermiculture (i.e, worm composting) — was very exciting. I’m serious! With our little worm buddies, we turned all kinds of kitchen scraps, garden waste and coffee grounds into rich, black dirt.



Yes, this is the dirt in my garden. The lighter patch in the center is the unamended soil, while the darkest patch is the compost. The other areas show where I had raked it in to the topsoil.

I hope to plant spring greens today or tomorrow — if I can reach a lull in my writing when it isn’t snowing.

Last year, Benjy, my younger son and I, began the process of transforming our yard — or at least the part of it that isn’t a rose garden — into an urban homestead. Eventually, we plan to grow most of our own fruits and veggies. We already have raspberry bushes, herbs and a huge vegetable garden area. Last year we used only 1/3 of it and grew green beans, broccoli, zucchini, butternut squash, cucumbers and tomatoes, together with herbs. This year we're going to cultivate 2/3 of it, adding more of the stuff we eat a lot of, but also adding the greens and kitchen veggies like carrots and radishes, as well as turnips, beets and chard.

We plan to add fruit trees soon, as well as chickens for fresh eggs and a beehive for honey. It's legal here to have hens and bees in your backyard, and we mean to take full advantage of that.

It's lots of work but it’s the best kind of work, far better than being in an office. And the reward is huge. Not only do we save money on food, but we don’t have to worry about getting e-coli or pesticides with our dinner.

Do any of you garden? Are there any other urban homesteaders out there?

Coming on Monday: Hop over to Cecile's blog for an interview with the I-Team heroes. Reece, Julian, Marc and Gabe will all be there, and Julian has some news to share with the guys.

Harvest time

Sorry to have vanished. Work has been extremely busy. While most newspapers are going belly up, we're growing and doing better and better. Although I'd like to take the credit, it's actually the result of lots of hard work on everyone's part and the fact that we do a kind of journalism that fewer places are doing. But the bottom line is that between ghostwriting and working at the paper, I've been putting in very long days and getting very little sleep.

This weekend, I'm putting the ghostwriting down for a few days and spending my Labor Day putting the final polish on Naked Edge, which I will ship off to New York on Tuesday morning. Then next week, I'll go back to the ghostwriting, which will probably take me another month to finish. And then I start my next book...

In the meantime, it somehow became September. And the veggie garden that my son Benjamin planted this past spring is feeding me quite nicely. We planted a variety of tomatoes, zucchini, butternut squash, bush beans, cucumbers, green peppers, Anaheim peppers, celery and broccoli. The weather here has been a bit funky — June was unnaturally chilly — but I have been getting lots of cukes, tomatoes (particularly romas and cherry tomatoes), and green beans, as well as some Anaheims and a green pepper or two. And I'm about to get a bunch of broccoli.

Too bad Benjy's not here to share the yummy results of his hard work.



Next year, we're going to go all out and plant the entire south side of the house, in addition to putting some beds in the shade for greens and herbs. I want to add a lot of things to what we're growing, including acorn squash, cantaloupe, more beans and more broccoli. The next step will be to plant a small orchard — apples, sweet cherries, plums and pears — and then we'll be supplying the lion's share of our own fruits and veggies.




I'm very drawn to the idea of "urban homesteading," i.e., using your yard to have a mini-farm that sustains your household. Where I live, I can have up to six hens in my backyard for eggs, as well as a hive of honey bees. Imagine how much my garden would love its own bee supply.

Of course, all of this means learning a lot about growing things, as well as learning to can. But the benefit is an enormous savings year to year in fruits, veggies and, eventually, eggs and honey. Plus I never have to wonder where the plants grew or what was sprayed on them. And if Y2K actually ever hits — remember the hype around that? — I'll have food to each.

Though we'll probably spend more than we save at first, long-term it will enable us to be more self-sufficient. And who doesn't get excited about the idea of being a beekeeper?

Did anyone else plant a veggie garden this year? If so, how is it going?

Coming soon: Interview the I-Team heroes

Reece, Julian, and Marc will make themselves available to answer your most penetrating questions. Please send the questions to me via email, Facebook message or by posting them below so that I can get the questions to them. What have you always wanted to ask them. Indulge yourself!

And a happy Labor Day to everyone!