Inner City Farmer

It rained hard last night. Finally. We had gone months without a significant downpour so it sure felt good to wake up to the smell of damp earth. The plants and shrubs in my yard were especially pleased. My garden is pretty much done for the summer except for a hardy watermelon vine and the cucumber vines you see pictured above. As if in gratitude to the rain, the flowers appeared this morning. Could cucumbers be on the way? I sure hope so. I want to learn how to make pickles.

Almost finished the first layer of plaster on the Garage Wall Project. I am getting quicker and more proficient at slapping the stuff on. I did myself no favors when I made a wall with countless windows and an arch my first plastering project. I still haven’t finished that one, and what I have done isn’t very pretty. But my garage wall is looking good, at least to my forgiving eye. Yes, there are cracks but these will get buffed out once I apply the finishing coat, and, yes, the wall sports three different colors but this will be rectified when I paint the entire house (Project #89).

Like cobbing, the key to plastering seems to be figuring out the texture of the perfect mix. Too much sand and it doesn’t stick to the wall very well, too little and the resultant cracks (it’s nearly impossible to avoid them entirely) will be more pronounced. I know a batch is ready when it begins to resemble a Wendy’s Frosty and the color (at least with the sand I use) is nearly the same as well.

I’m pretty proud of myself. One of the most essential tools you need for plastering is a “hawk,” defined by my dictionary as “a small board or metal sheet with a handle on the underside used to hold mortar.” They sell them at Home Depot for about twenty bucks, but I made one for free out of a scrap piece of plywood and the end of a mop handle. All I did was drill a small hole in the center of the plywood, and then I jammed into that hole the part of the mop handle that screws into the mop head. I keep expecting it to break in two, but the darn thing refuses to die. I’ve used it about fifteen times now, and it’s in as good shape now as it was the day I made it. Another simple solution.

Just about every single thing I have made out of cob still needs to be plastered. Why has this taken me so long? What’s the delay? The truth is that I’m just not very good at plastering. Yet. Compared to the mindless ease of cobbing, plastering requires a certain finesse that doesn’t come naturally to me. One of the biggest problems I’ve experienced so far is that chunks of plaster that contain rocks or other large debris tend to immediately peel away from the cob. Hard-headed mule that I can be at times, it took me about five frustrating plastering experiences to figure out that I needed to sift all the large debris out of my sand before I added the lime to it. Duh.

The answer to my problem came to me as I stared at the pile of “junk” I recently removed from my garage. One of the items was a large screen window. I immediately recognized it as the perfect solution for the plastering problem. Now before I start plastering I spend about three or four minutes sifting random stuff out of my sand. The result is a perfectly smooth plaster that goes on without a struggle. Now I just need to figure out how to stop the plaster from cracking so badly. I’ve been spraying each coat with a mister, but it’s 95 degrees here and dry as a bone and the water nearly disappears before it hits the wall. I’m sure it will come to me with time and practice.

The chicks I got in late March are now nearly full grown. They’ve been living in the same coop as the three older hens for about the last six weeks. They have a separate “den,” essentially a box made out of scrap particle board with cinder blocks covering the entrance, where they can eat their own food (first “grower” and now “developer”) in peace and escape the hens’ wrath. To get inside the den, they sneak through and around the cinder blocks, something the fat old hens can’t do.

One of the funniest things about my five chickens is that they are all different breeds. I have a Wyandotte, a Black Australorp, a Rhode Island Red, a hatchery-created breed called an Ideal 236, and a Polish Crested, which might be the freakiest-looking chicken of all time. Here’s a close-up of its face, as seen through a cinder block:

As my garden continues to burn out and fade away, I have become even more dependent upon eggs for sustenance. Much to their credit, my hens are producing, usually at least two eggs a day. In fact, I’m getting a little sick of omelets. Who’s up for a trade?

Self-Sufficiency Meter: 30%