City Farm

 

    I want this post to bring nostalgia to old timers, and to serve as a primer for young people. The current recession is not letting up. There are signs of economic recovery, but the news from Europe is not very good. The result may be another recession even deeper than the one we have now. The story below is from my childhood. My parents lived through the Great Depression. They knew how to survive. I was born at the end of the depression. My parents lived as though tomorrow would bring another depression. It took seventy-one years to happen, but it has finally arrived. We are on the edge of another Great Depression.

     We lived in a small two-story frame house situated on a 25 ft. wide lot in Chicago.  The house had a porch with steps leading to the city sidewalk.  Between the porch and the side walk there was room for a strip of flowers and a patch of grass.  The parkway had grass and occasionally a tree

     The space between our house and the neighbor’s was a gangway just wide enough to walk through. The back yard is what I want to describe in detail because it saved my family from starving. Immediately behind the house, dad had a postage stamp size lawn bordered on two sides by a flowerbed.  The third side was the sidewalk leading back to the alley; and the fourth side was the house. 

            At the end of the lot, dad built a one-car garage built directly on the ground.  He added a chicken coop to the side with a fenced open space for the birds.

            The plot of ground in between the garage-chicken-coop complex and the flowers along the edge of the lawn was mom’s veggie garden.  The lot was 120 feet long.  In that precious space, mom and dad managed to have a front lawn and flowerbed, a three-bedroom house, a back lawn and flowerbed, a vegetable garden, a chicken ranch and a garage.

            Mom had most of what she needed to feed the family growing right in the backyard.   She planted tomatoes, onions, kohlrabi, cabbage, corn, carrots, parsley, beans, peas, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, zucchini and more.  What we could not use immediately, she preserved by canning (no freezers).  The chickens provided us with eggs and meat for Sunday dinners. When we did not have chickens, she switched to raising pigeons, and even rabbits.

    When mom could not grow enough in our backyard, she found an empty lot a block away and started another garden.

     Are you ready to begin farming the backyard to feed your family, or are you going to line up to get food stamps?

Dumb Ass Squirrel Gets Smart

Squirrel on BungeeThe squirrel living in my yard finally got smart. I posted a piece back in March called “Dumb Ass Squirrel #!!&+*^(#?” I described my frustration about getting the squirrel to take a corn cob from a hanging bungee cord. He never did, until I changed things drastically. In the beginning, I hung the cob a few feet away from my bird feeders.  The squirrel was smart enough to get the easy food, and ignored the corn. It wasn’t until I stopped feeding the birds that the squirrel even found the corn.

 

I finally spotted him stretched out along the wire extending from the branch to the cob. He was hanging by his toenails. He finally got smart, I thought, The next day, I was going to lay in wait and video him in action.  Much to my surprise, the following day the corn and  the cable were gone. Disappeared! I searched the yard, but could not find it. Most likely a smart ass racoon stole it.

Last week, I was cleaning in the the woods behind the garden, and there it was, the cable with the empty corn cob. I reattached it to the tree. This time, though, I tied the cable to the tree with a cable tie. I do not want to meet the creature that takes it next.

The squirrel found the fresh cob within  four hours, and now empties one cob a day.  A single animal will make multiple trips to the cob until he is sated. Most likely, I will be pulling baby corn plants from my lawn all summer long.

The Funk Rules Negative People

Grumpa Joe Looks at FlowerWow! It seems like forever since I last posted. So much has transpired. The baby steps have been ticking off faster and faster. In spite of all the positive activity toward my goals I have been stricken with a slight case of depression. My self-esteem is low, and that always is the result of depression. Some little thing triggered me into a funk. The funk is over, I’ve survived and now it’s time to BLOG again. How did I get myself out of the funk? Well first there is work. Good hard physical work. Thank God, I can still do physical work. That meant taking many baby steps in the garden. In the past week I planted about forty perennials around the pond. I added annuals, and planted seed too. All of it is doing fine except for the few plants that the rabbits are bothering. Two of my most expensive perennials being native hibiscus are being munched on by the rabbits. They gave up on the rose of sharon, and are now on tastier plants. If you are old enough to remember Elmer Fudd, and his ongoing battle with Bugs Bunny, you will understand how I must proceed with the critters. Unfortunately, my dear Peggy is an animal lover, and she will prevent me from openly taking a shot at the furry creatures. I’m a poor shot anyway.

A friend stopped by last week and deposited ten good size goldfish into the pond. We can now see fish from our kitchen window, whereas before, the little guys were invisible. Everyday, Peggy and I throw a handful of fish pellets into the water to feed them. I want to train the fish to come to us when we approach the edge of the water.

Another powerful tool for getting ot of the funk is to pray. I pray every night before retiring. I coax my sub-conscious into bringing me only good health, great stories, and abundance. Included is a request to help a bunch of people who need it. In the morning, when I walk, it is  another opportunity to pray and speak to God. I can’t walk without praying. It’s a habit I developed over the last seven years.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the endorphins begin to kick in and the funk begins to disappear.

Today, I wrote a letter of introduction to my new writing instructor. Yes, I signed up for writing school. Hopefully, my style will improve and I will get as good as the really fluid writers on the blogs I visit. Man are they good. I admire people who can write their thoughts clearly, concisely, and in a completely understandable way . They amaze me. How can some writers be so descriptive with their words and others like me are complete klutzes. Do you believe this, I’m writing myself into a funk just by giving someone unknown to anyone an “atta boy.”

I am not a klutzy writer, I do well. Even though others can write rings around me, I must concentrate on the positive in my life and not dwell on the negative. The negative, “or dark side,” can quickly envelop the id and predominate. We have to learn and practice being positive every moment of our lives. Being positive is much more fun than being negative. Funk rules the negative person.

Not a Grass Farm Anymore

Grumpa Joe Looks at FlowerSo many things to write about so little time or desire to do it. Memorial Day was spent quietly. A walk in the early hours, followed by breakfast then a trip to the Breidert Green for the VFW Program. I’ve lived in Frankfort for seventeen years, but this is the first Memorial Day Service I attended. I was drawn to the program to hear my two beautiful grand daughters play in the band. The flag was lowered to half mast followed by the invocation. The Hickory Creek Tiger Band played three numbers, The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, and a third number that I don’t recall. The mayor read the names of all known service people currently serving. After, a Veteran read the names of all the deceased vets from Frankfort. The VFW color guard gave a twenty-one gun salute. Three members of the Tiger Band trumpet section played taps in echo fashion. It brought tears to my eyes. Even though I avoided serving, I grew up with WW-II, Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq. In between those there was the Bay of Pigs, Lebanon, Grenada, and some that I’m sure I have forgotten.

I drove the girls home and chastised my son for not being at the service. He was busy painting his garage door.  

The rest of the afternoon, I spent trying to barbeque some chicken breasts. I say tried, because I ran out of gas on my grill. I had to use a roaster oven to finish. Thank God I paid the electric bill. Peggy and I ate a late lunch. We cleaned up then sat on the patio.  We listened to the sound of the waterfall. A pair of mallards waddled through the yard trying to find a path around us to the bird seed. Finally, we went in to let them enjoy the seed. I’m hoping they are in a family way and will bring their young to the pond. Wouldn’t that be a joy!

This evening, I re-boxed some golf balls for shipment to Iraq. After that I took a baby step to sort through Barb’s favorite poetry and prayers for the legacy scrapbook I am assembling. Another baby step went toward getting my bike ready for the road. In years past, I would have had fifteen hundred miles logged by now. This year I’m struggling to get started. I figure a baby step toward making the bike ready will get me to take the next step, i.e. bring it up from the basement.

Wow its warm. It is our first warm day, and I have every window open and all the fans running to stay cool. Even this laptop is adding heat to my discomfort.

Tomorrow, I will bring the bike up after breakfast. In the afternoon we will shop for more flowers. With all of the trees, shrubs, and perennials we planted around the pond last week, the yard is beginning to look like a real garden again. Goodbye grass farm.

Jun-e-or

Grumpa Joe Looks at FlowerFinally, I printed volume three of my memoirs titled “Jun-e-or.” I began writing them seven years ago. I thought it would be great to document my earliest childhood memories for my grand children. I scibbled every memory I could into a tablet by hand, recalling FDR declare war on Japan, riding home with Dad in his new -used car(1929 Buick Special). I stood on the front seat next to him and looked out the back window over the top of the seat. As I wrote each vignette, more memories surfaced until I had recorded over three hundred. The next step was to have them converted to the word processor. I talked my good friend Judy into doing this for me. What an angel, she did it without changing a thing. The final step was the hardest. I had to clean up the grammar, and make the stories sound interesting. 

I published Volume One and presented it to my children and grandchildren for Christmas 2006, Volume Two came in 2007, now Volume Three. It is not completed yet, because I still want to insert art and family photos to enhance the text, and to make it more meaningful to them. Finally, I will bind the book with a nice cover and it will be finished. The three volumes complete my story up til hIgh school.

 My next work will be called “My Love Story.” I want to leave the kids with the narrative of how Barbara and I met, fell in love, and began our life together. This story will end with the birth of our last child. I figure the kids can begin their own stories from that point on.

Here is a sample vignette from Volume Three of “Jun-e-or, Recollections of Life in the Ninteen Forties and Fifties.” 

POOPER SCOOPER
There were many street vendors such as the ice man, the milk man, and others. They used horse drawn wagons to carry their wares. The horse often dropped a load in the middle of the street. If Mom spotted a pile within a couple of houses to either side of ours, she’d shag me out to pick it up. I shoveled the pile into a bucket. It was lousy duty, but I did it. Mom used the manure for fertilizer. Before she did, she aged it for a long time. Fresh manure is too acidic to use. It will burn the vegetation that it’s used on. Aging it cuts the potency. Aged manure is excellent in the garden.