Urban farming on an acre in beautiful, tough Spring Valley, San Diego County, Californ-i-a. I am Erynn Pierce, a woman, a mother, and a farmer. This is the story of the land as it rises to meet me.
As I write this, I can hear the tick-tock, tick-tock of the kitchen clock winding away the minutes left till the outdoor temperature is bearable for farmwork. Today, looks like 5 o'clock is the magic hour for 79 degrees.
It is frickin hot here at Magnolia Farm, kiddies; so hot I hallucinated under my San Diego Hat Co. wide brim as I attempted to double dig some new beds at 11am the other day. I must've been a sight, sweat dripping from my chin in the shadeless field, panting, cussing, talking to people that were not there as heat exhaustion began to set in. Such a sight, in fact, that it compelled my six year old son to retreat to the house to fetch a huge glass of ice water without the slightest hint from me.
"Are you mad?" Lucian asked in his hoarse little man voice.
"Do I seem mad?" I threw back as I chugged the water.
"Well, your face looks kinda like [scowls, furrows tiny brow]..like this."
"Oh. I'm not mad, sweetie! I hadn't even noticed till you said something." I claimed ignorance.
"Well, could you please, like, soften your face down? And maybe smile with your mouth a little?"
He paused. I stared at him, almost empty glass in my hand. What does he want me to-Oh! I got it.. he was waiting for me to, like, soften my face now.
And so I did. And he smiled at his good work on my face. And I smiled all on my own at some point there.
I've got 9 hens. They live in a luxurious coop built especially for the chicken of discerning taste and impeccable style. They have a shady ground floor, a sunroom on the southwest wing, and a grand staircase leading to the laying room complete with eight nesting boxes; four on each side like saddlebags.
My girls all free range. Just about every day they are out, scratching up layers of carefully laid sheet mulch, eating newly planted mint (it will come back), and practicing their best freak-out flights across the open fields, just in case there ever is a real coyote stalking them. They are, as a bunch, quite diverse; different breeds, (same age) and varying cranial wattage, from chicken-bright to dullest bulb in the bunch. The latter would be the lone Americauna. The one who invariably paces back and forth in front of the open coop door for at least twenty minutes before getting the' jump up to get out' part. Every time. No fail.
They very recently began to lay, just a couple hens at first and it was completely obvious when they were fixin' to drop an egg. They would cluck in agony upstairs like an overdue pregnant woman in her eleventh hour of labor while I am out in the fields or listening from the kitchen window. Funny thing is, even though they have eight nesting boxes, every time I would collect eggs, all of them would be in the same compartment. I watched a little closer the next time I was out with them and saw the most hilarious thing...
You know back in the old days, when you and your friends would cram into a dark smelly bar to watch a friend's band play? ( "Theyre gonna get signed, dude. I heard Interscope called them..") And there was always a one-stall ladies room with grafitti on the walls, no seat covers, no toilet paper, no soap, no paper towels, generally NO PAPER PRODUCTS of any kind anywhere? And you would wind up standing in line with four drunk girls waiting to pee, hoping desperately to get back to your pool game? Good. Well, same thing here, minus the bar, graffiti, lack of general hygiene, and drunk girls. I caught three hens either laying or waiting to lay in the same stall, like there were not seven other identical stalls to either side! Later, I came back, lifted the box roof and one of my French marans hopped off a pile of eggs a' la The United Colors of Benetton. Sigh...
And these girls have a ravenous sweet tooth. I have a very large strawberry patch in full swing. It used to be so cute to pick off the overripe or half slug-eaten berries and push them through the wire of their coop. They eagerly pecked at the sweet berries, and it was fun to watch the calamity ensue when one would snap up a whole one and run around yelling, as if to announce, "I got it! I got it!" At which point another hen would always snatch it away and peck it down to nothing before her very disbelieving eyes. Little did I know that we had created quite a strong taste for strawberries and they would not be denied.
Thus the newly coined term, "chickenberries". Far be it from me to spend every waking moment guarding the strawberry field from the inevitable carnage when the girls are out. I've seen what they can do to a fully ripe row of strawberries. It's like the killing fields. In mere moments, all traces of red berries are just bloody stains on the straw. Disturbing.
So, I've given it over to them fully. I mean, outside the few lucky moments when we turn up a pristine berry blanketed under deep green foliage, the strawberry patch is for pure bacchanalian chicken hedonism. Just keep your fingers out of the way. And keep those eggs coming, gals. And for God's sake, "Jump up to get out!" Sheesh..
a lot of people won't get no justice tonight
the battle is gettin hotter
in this iration, armagideon time..
"Armagideon Time"
~The Clash
I was born in 1974. Probably at the tail end of really bad disco, before the whole scene imploded. I remember camping with my family and my beloved BeeGees transistor radio. Thankfully, my mom had some great musical taste so at home my earliest memories are listening to the Doors, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, and the Beatles on our record player. As a young child I used to study the cover of Rumours incessantly.
I was raised by a mom who was, shall we say, accommodating and allowing of our various pursuits. She was (is) an artist, a child of the sixties, and as a young girl growing up in Redmond I recall we had quite the Fourth of July bashes on the ranch. It seems we were the Counrty Mice, and all the Seattle City Mice friends of theirs would show up in droves, Rainer beers in tow, looking for a good, relaxing time. There were a lot of motorcycles in the driveway, and all the guys walked around in cut off Levis with their bellies hanging out. My swingset was popular, and my treehouse was a real hit with all the folks who slurred and talked funny. Sweet Home Alabama and shit.
As I got older, my musical tastes veered toward the foundations of guitar rock (Hendrix, Zeppelin), then briefly toward the hairspray metal of the day, then through Metallica and such, on into bands like The Clash, The Dead Milkmen, Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, The The, U2, The Pistols, Dead Kennedys, etc. Rebel music. Some with a great message, some just pissed off.
So back to farming..
I think on the tree of life, I fall into line just before the branches of biker and hippie split off. On the one hand I could totally see myself turning away from this conventional life and moving my family (not so sure about Vic's opinion on this) into a commune. I love egalitarianism, the idea of a free society where we all raise eachother and take care of the planet. Christ, I am a yoga teacher. On the other hand, I could also see just putting on some leathers, hopping on my panhead Harley and riding with a mean pack of folks whose main message to the world is something like "Big middle finger to the Establishment". Maybe when the midlife crisis hits..
Hence, I am a punk rock farmer. There are many others like me; of this I am sure. I grow because there is a side of me that is so instinctively connected to nature that I have to. I love coaxing plants to make food for us, providing food for others, and I am hellbent on expanding operations to fed more people, teach others how to come back to the land and all that good stuff. But if I am across a table from you (purely hypothetical, wink) as I present a plan to start a community garden in the ghetto, and you mumble to your crony something about growing pot, then fuck you. I mean seriously. Get out. Of the way.
In addition to my main work here at Magnolia, I also intern at Wild Willow Farm and Education Center. I have had the outrageous fortune of meeting and hobnobbing with several key players in the agricultural and culinary world, as well as those revolutionaries who are all about food justice and human rights.
A while back I attended a USCD/Sheepless screening of the film "The Greenhorns", followed by a discussion panel made up of various prominent people (see above). Lucila from Suzie's Farm was up there, and the discussion veered toward the industrial food model, and institutions like Walmart selling groceries. She said, and I am definitely paraphrasing so don't sue me, "If Walmart wanted to sell my produce and I could provide enough, you're damn right I would. I have a business, I want to succeed, and I have my own family to feed."
There was a brief, but impregnable silence in the room as we all pondered our relative position to that controversial statement. The conversation moved on.
I am not going to dissect what was said and categorize it into good farmer/bad farmer.What Lucila said is not as important to me as the fact that she said something relatively unpopular and averse to the mob foodie mentality in the room. There was reality in that statement of hers. There was even an undercurrent of " I am free to choose." Maybe even the tiniest smidge of fuck off.
Just wanted to throw a post up to see how she's a'going before it's entirely too late. Long day in the back, planting, staking, shaping new lettuce beds, and the ever beloved weeding. My back is stiff, my arms ache from slinging a 3 lb. sledgehammer, but I am a happy girl. I walked very very early this morning before the work began, and saw the misty air clinging to the corn, heard the familiar murmurs of the hens, and saw perfect droplets of dew on each of my seventy-odd tomato plants. Finished the day early by digging up garlic cloves here and there, pulling out spent gladiolus, and harvesting red, white and blue (actually purple) potatoes I will make into a 4th of July salad tomorrow. Yep, a pretty productive but relatively easy day on the urban plot. G'nite!
