Cooped up, but content
Emma Smith and Jesse Black are getting along just fine thanks to some baby chicks and a new garden
Only the chickens are cooped up at Emma Smith’s and Jesse Black’s place.
The young Jerseyville couple is busy expanding a new garden during the COVID-19 slowdown. Emma is a potter, Jesse is a carpenter and their combined skills show in their mini food and flower farm.
The latest addition to their rural property is the new chicken coop Jesse built. But the little Orpington and Brahma chicks haven’t moved in yet.
“It’s still too cold for them,” Emma says, cuddling one of the feathery puff balls. “So they’re staying in the guest bedroom.”
The couple lives on the second floor of the house they bought six years ago. On the ground floor, Emma has her pottery studio and runs Black & Smith Country General (blacksmithcountrygeneral.com). The business showcasing finelycrafted Canadian home goods is online only for now, so Emma is happy to be outside expanding the garden.
Much of the yard was a combination of grass and compacted soil over gravel. It had to be changed for any success growing vegetables. Rather than haul in new soil, they started to build their own using the lasagna gardening method.
“We started with a layer of cardboard first to kill the grass and keep it from coming up again,” Emma says. “Then we layered about a foot and a half of material and covered it with mulch.”
That material included manure, grass clippings, straw and compost. As it decomposes, it starts to make new soil. While Emma says the material is too coarse for seeding, it is perfect for transplants.
The transplants going out to the beds are coming from the couple’s new greenhouse, built by Jesse.
“We’ve scrounged for a lot of things for this garden. The glass for the greenhouse came from solariums at a Burlington condo. They were renovating and the glass was in the dumpster,” Emma says.
Since January, they’ve been harvesting kale from the greenhouse. Arugula, mustard greens and other lettuces already have a good head start, carrots, herbs and chard are enjoying the sun in the unheated but warm space.
There was no garden when they bought the house, and once a big tree succumbed to emerald ash borer, their yard became a full sun paradise. That’s when the fruit trees started going in.
Apples, peaches and pear trees dot the garden. The pear is a beautiful espaliered specimen, placed near a trellised seating area. A little peach tree remarkably produced about 400 peaches last year, and the apple, with three different types grafted to a single truck, is just starting to take off.
Along the fence, about 50 feet of raspberries produced a bumper crop last season. Black raspberries, two ever-bearing types and a yellow raspberry kept fruiting until November, enough to share with family and friends.
But not all plants have thrived. Beyond their property, a big black walnut tree sends roots into the garden, and the roots produce a chemical toxic to some plants. The substance, called juglone, hampers air exchange in susceptible plants.
As they can afford to, the couple is adding more ornamental plants to the garden after realizing that vegetables don’t often win beauty prizes.
The new little chickens will add their own cartoon-like animation to the yard. At just four weeks old, they’re spending a lot of time in the house and out of the cold.
“Our internet’s been down for a week, so they’ve added some amusement and distraction,” Emma says.
Even with the disruption to their business caused by the pandemic, the store closing, and moving to online, Smith is feeling grateful.
“I feel lucky, to have the garden, to enjoy handmade objects, to grow food. We can all use more simplicity.”