Garden then/now photos

 Greenhouse winter/summer

 

Corn mid June/ August 6th

 Painted by Methodists from Grove City

 Pumpkins July 1st and August 6th

 

 young grape tomato June/daily Harvest of tomato August 6th (and young miscellaneous pepper)

 Beans, Chard and Tomatoes.

Raccoon Caught

We had wondered if it could have been ground hog that had done the deed. Ed made a spear, and almost killed one.  I put a rib from Wilson's, the most revered food item/delicacy in all of the North Side. I checked the trap the next day... 

I called animal control. A few hours later, it was gone. Kinda cute. Faith even came by to see it. Even squirming visibly vexed by its captivity, it played interestedly with a grass stalk Faith stuck in the cage. This passivity seemed to represent a lack of morals, as if honor would require being pissed or least unresponsive toward your captors. When i caught it I could not believe how small it was. It weighed as much as a pair of boots. The beast I had been describing to friends and coworkers must have inflated in my memory as my mind struggled to provide logic to the story of the chickens. This little bitch-face could not have downed 7 chickens in one night. Could it have?

The psychologist doing that study on mood disorders ( two post ago) jutted in after a pause indicating that the story had appropriately ended due to my lack of words. "A clear sign of hypomania" he said like a referee saying "strike three" or "home run". Fuck that guy. I'm never taking pills because of some chickens. Maybe a tums. Maybe something for salmonella poisoning. ciprofloxacin .

TO BE CONTINUED. well it' kinda done.

Faith and Becky

I first met Faith at the garden. She was living next door in a squat. She told me she had plants and my plans began to bloom. The idea of a community fertilized the seeds. As I got to know her, she showed me her house, told me about her travels including living in fabled caves in Greece, and eventually she came with us to get the chickens. She had her own chicken, which, as she described it more, degenerated the romantic agricultural quality into an odd fact. "Her name's Becky" She said, "She's blind". Her eyes then, clashed with my own as I switched from regarding to staring. Sure enough, a rescue from a farm west of Philly, Faith took Becky to Pittsburgh, to share in her journey. Faith is always journeying even staying still. I was glad she had the chicken, sorry Becky, since her living conditions were abismal, dismal, and mal; squalor. Moldy. Her house was named "Mold Squat," no electricity or water, a few windows and walls. She slept on an old couch on the third floor. Becky needed hand feeding and hand watering. Graffiti filled the moldy walls, frescos by Murph Dawg, a local legend, scrawlings by passers through. A studded jacket, piled high with fungus and ceiling plaster still sat in the coat rack in the foyer. She had an elaborate system of bottles, the pattern of which she would inspect upon entering to see if anyone had been there in her absence.

photos by Anna Brewer

Photos by Anna Brewer

Eventually she moved in with Verasi and Ed, to an established squat, and began working construction for cash and building the raft that she would eventually take down the Ohio River.

She was the first to find my chickens dead. A week later, Becky, tucked away in Mold Squat got ambushed in the afternoon. Only feathers were left. Verasi thought that Racoons would not enter an inhabited house. This isn't true. I neglected to remember the story of a family friend who was once bitten on the big toe by a raccoon as he slept in his bed. There must be some folklore that grants meaning to the intrusion of a raccoon into a home. I finally got the trap. The hunt for the raccoon began.

She's got two new chickens, and is on a raft right now with Collin and Verasi. Check out her blog at http://www.wewillnotdrown.blogspot.com !!

Chickens

I bought 8 chickens on a whim. Asked for an experience in which I had acted rashly, I told the story to a researcher who was studying mood disorders and wanted to see ifi was eligible as a subject. 3 chickens is what you are legally allowed to have in PGH if you have a permit. Although I did not get a permit, and did not ask my landlord, I figured they were a commodity that would trade quickly on craigslist if worst came to worst. I had started building a coop out of pallets I had got from behind home depot. Without drawing anything, this is what formed:

  The chickens from Chicora were a month old. We had 7 months to go, maybe more before they started laying. Three months into it, my upstairs neighbor told my landlord, because he said "the smell was too bad". This was some bullshit. He lived 2 floors away from them, and would not be able to smell them even if they were not having their cage cleaned every 2 days. His dogs crap was in a bin on my front porch, but I didn't say anything because he subtly hinted to me one day that he would call some board or another and that "they would not be happy to find out about it". He then berated my entire idea of chickens, and a garden, as he termed it "the movement". He later apologized, with the undermining stipulation that he had meant every word of his previous diatribe, and so I wish sterility on him and allow this blog to be a forum to express my thoughts on the behaviors of human beings in close quarters, which are often driven my primitive tendencies to instil and maintain a pecking order. What rubric we use to gain and fall is much more complicated than that of the chickens, at least more elaborate, though possibly the same hormones are released in the brain of my neighbor and a chicken. While a person tries to keep up with the jones's, the chickens strove to jump on top of one another. It was interesting to note, that the most dominant chicken died first. Speedy. The runt who took over as biggest dill-hole. He must have expressed his dominance to the Raccoon. I wish my neighbor (it feels improper to use the word, despite close proximity of living), who, thankfully, has moved, would express his dominance to a bus.

He and his friends who don't have the capacity for true compassion, or friendship, told me that I'd better get the chickens into the unfinished coop. They had already told my landlord, and fearing eviction I had already been to work on the coop for two days prior to our showdown. Now with legal repercussions of some mysterious government board, I flew to the coop, working late into the night and moved all 8 of them in.

 A few months in the basement.

for 3 days I worked to provide them water and food, creating a cardboard feed dispenser and a over-turned bucket watering system. While I had acces to the back door to the coop, the chickens needed let in to the front door, which was within their enclosure. A little walkway lead to the door. Their door swung down with hinges above. Every night some of the fence was pulled apart, big enough for an arm to reach, so that the door could me fastened. Very important to get them in before dusk, before the animals come out. Then I went to Washington DC for a long planned trip. Since Anna was busy, I asked Faith, the neighbor who also had a chicken, to lock them up at night. Anna said she would help too. While I was away Anna let me know that animals were messing around with the coop, riling the chicks a few nights in a row and forcing her to go outside. She assured me they were fine. A few days later I called her and she told me they were all dead but one, "Chocobo" the littlest, a brown silky with "fuzzy boots" as the feet were referred to. A Raccoon I suspected was the culprit, since I had seen a big fella wandering around the abandoned houses in the alley. Must have gotten in through the whole used to latch their front hatch. When I got back, raccoon fur not matching any local cats was found on the wire fencing. The day after the first call, another. One chick, Anna told me, was killed in broad daylight, torn right through the 1 sq Inch fencing, resembling fancy processed meat with a feather boa on its way to the Copacabana, or some gay event.
Never got to figure out their sex's. They died, and a week later, So did faith's Chicken. My neighbor Charlie, told me he had a trap, and leant it to me. "Take it as long as you need it" he told me.

TO BE CONTINUED

Much has happened

The passing of time. Gardens do it themselves. That's what I figured starting a garden, and so it feels like I've done relatively little since last post. I've decided to post a few times in a row, as a means to organize the content of the photos. I had chickens for a little while. They died. The garden grew. I met some people (Faith and Collin). They moved. That is the table of contents for the upcoming posts.  The lead tests came back fine. I made 3 trips to the river view stables for manure. Here is the rest of the greenhouse going up in January or February.