These days are strangely familiar. January; the hills are monotone brown and the needles of the pine trees are dulled, coated in the dusty soil. The days are hot and the nights are cool. The fields have been cleared, leaving the dry soil susceptible to involuntary removal by gusts of warm winds.
The holidays and harvests are over and now women are busy preparing their children to return to school from the two month "summer" break. Schools themselves are busy constructing more classrooms due to higher registration rates than school capacity. I am here planning, dreaming, hoping and waiting.
"Stuck between a rock and a hard place" is, I think, the appropriate saying to describe my position. It has been over 6 weeks since I have had any 'official' work. By 'official' I mean organized meeting with a group of women. The holidays and harvest and now the starting of school has stolen all the women's time away from our meetings. Yet, here I am, excited and full of ideas and projects yet unable to realize them, at least at this point. Let me explain what I mean. The women of my committee are incredibly jealous women. If I start a project, even the simplest of projects, and I don't first talk to the committee about it, when we do meet, they will be distant and angry with me over the fact that I did not run it by them first. However, one should know that running it by the committee first does nothing of benefit for myself or the project. These women rarely help to refine the ideas or organize any of the work. What they might do is help spread the word, which I suppose may have greater impact than I realize. Meetings have been scheduled and canceled or postponed due to one thing or another. Or meetings have been scheduled simply to have no one show up. So, I continue to wait through the hot days.
I am excited for a project that I think could be very successful here. Growing potatoes in tire towers. One starts by planting 3-4 potato starts in the bottom of a used tire. Once the plant has grown 6-8 inches above the upper rim of the tire, another tire is added and filled with dirt, burring the branches of the plant and therefore creating more spuds. I have heard this method can produce up to 25 pounds of taters in a season. It is recommended that the soil is a mixture of compost and soil for greatest success, so I hope that this will allow me to push worm composting on the previously hesitant group.
In the mean time, for myself I have enjoyed dreaming and planning for my own gardens. I too, will have a tire tower for taters. I will nix carrots and onions in my own garden this year (both are cheap and abundant in markets and take up precious space in my small gardens) to have more room for chard, kale, brussels sprouts, broccoli, beets and spinach. I will also leave a shady portion underneath the peach tree for beloved sweet potatoes. I am working on the sprouts now.
Sweet potatoes are actually more closely related to morning glories than to potatoes. As such, they sprout differently. Where potatoes sprout from eyes, sweet potatoes produce shoots. Once the shoots are about 2 inches long they can be planted, each node throwing down roots and creating the delicious and nutritious tubers.
Work will come, we have a meeting planned this Wednesday to begin discussing the potato tower project. Until then I will do my best to enjoy the slow days and plan for future gardens.
