Everyday with Bill Allen

Have we introduced you to Bill? He's Emma's dad. He's been running since he was 10, starts seeds in the cellar, and puts his Everyday Oil in a squeeze bottle. Today he's sharing about his spring garden and the everyday in between.

The Garden

Hi Dad, what are you planting in your garden this year?

Well, I put in an early spring garden. I have broccoli, kale, collards, turnips, and kohlrabi, so that's what I'm trying to do a little bit early this year. I'm not doing anything new for the summer garden, just tomatoes, squash, eggplants, peppers, okra. Probably some others in there also, some beans.

How do you prepare your garden? Do you do permaculture or what's your approach?

It's not really an authentic permaculture approach. If I'm putting in a new bed, then I'll use cardboard the season before, and then put a lot of mulch on top of that, and let that sit for the year, and then the next year, I'll plant in that spot.

For established beds, I use a lot of mulch in the winter, so I only have a few weeds that I need to pull out. When I plant, I use a mixture of compost and a little bit of cottonseed mill, and I'll put some of that into the hole where I'm putting the plants. The cottonseed mill is Mr Mcgregor's special blend and it puts some slow release nitrogen into the soil.

How do you start your seeds?

I mix up my starting soil, and I start my seeds down in the cellar. It's one of my favorite things to do, to watch the little seeds come up. It's just amazing, what a little tiny seed turns into. I think that's really one of the things I enjoy the most, just starting the plants themselves. And from an economic standpoint, you can get a packet of seeds for $3.25, and there's enough seeds there to last for several years. If you buy those plants already started at the nursery, it's remarkably more expensive.

What do you do when you have too many vegetables?

Well, lately, these last two or three years, we've had an ecological change in this neighborhood, unfortunately, because some trees have been cut down to put in houses nearby. We had a lot of hawks and their nests that lived in those trees, so we had this nice balance where the hawks kept the rodent population down. The squirrels and the rabbits didn't go out into the open as often. Once the hawks left, we have a lot of squirrels and rabbits that really take care of any excessive amounts of vegetables that you might have.

I like to share with the animal population, but they really are pretty greedy in the last few years and take a lot of the vegetables. So this year, I'm working hard with chicken wire to protect them. And I'm hoping the hawks will come back and restore the balance to the ecological system.

The rabbits and the squirrels don't like the basil a whole lot, so we do have a big basil crop and make a lot of pesto.

Pesto: Basil with garlic, pine nuts, or walnuts, or pecans, and olive oil, salt, lemon and parmesan... that's about it. 

And the eggplant does really well. I make a lot of baba ganoush and roast eggplant, and make eggplant sandwiches and things like that, but we don't tend to save the eggplant. We eat most of them. Or give them away.

Baba Ganoush: Put them on the grill and roast them with woodchips so they get smoky. They get soft, then split them and take all the eggplant out. Add tahini, lemon, and olive oil.

The Routine

What is your exercise routine?

I run three days a week. I swim two days a week, and I play tennis two days a week. The other thing I started doing in the last year is that every morning I stretch for 12 minutes. And I have a routine that is now just kind of ingrained. I do the same thing pretty much every day. I stretch, and do push ups, and do leg crunches. I found that has been very helpful to make me feel better. I don't have as many aches or pains. I can do more push ups than I could when I started, and I can do more crunches.

How many push ups do you do?

I do 20 perfect push ups, meaning I do them very slow, methodical, and I do them in sets of five. Just psychologically that's a whole lot easier than trying to do 20 straight.

How did you arrive at 12 minutes?

Well, that's just what it takes me. I've timed it. That's how long it takes me.

How do you maintain discipline to exercise every day? What do you do when you don't feel like it?

Do it early in the morning. That's the only way I can fit it in, is if I do it before my day starts.

What if you're tired one day?

I won't say that I never miss a day. I might miss one or two days a month. But I find that if you just don't think about it and you just do it, some days when you start running, it's just harder and seems like it's gonna take forever, even though it's always pretty much the same 20 minutes. But I think those days that are the hardest are the ones that your body gains more from, probably. I try to do intervals every day, times where I flat run as hard as I can, and I can't go anymore, and I'm huffing and puffing. I think that's a good thing. It makes your mitochondria get involved, to keep your muscles going.

What's your running routine?

I'm a steady runner in that I do it regularly, but I'm not out there trying to run long distances. I run about 20 minutes. I'm a gentleman jogger. I used to think, oh, I'll try to run a marathon one day, but my knees started to hurt. When I got around people who ran marathons a lot, one of the main things that they talked about were their injuries. So I figured, if I'm in it for the long run (the long run, that's a pun), I probably ought to just do what my body can do. I don't think I'm made for running marathons. I think my body's not really equipped for that. But I do try to add some intervals to my run every day so that I have about five minutes of really pushing it really, really hard, and I do some hill work when I run.

You've been running every day for, what? 30 years?

Oh, no, I started running when I was 10 years old, so 60 years.

Have you run consistently since you were 10?

Yeah, pretty much. I wouldn't say I'd run seven days. In some years, in the middle of having kids and working and things, I would run at least 5 days a week. But right now, I'm able to exercise seven days a week.

You've been known to do some dancing on your runs.

I do believe that you need to switch things up with your running. If you're just running straight, you need to be moving in different directions. It's good for your body as far as balance, as far as moving one way to the next way. And one way to do that is to dance while you're running. So I call it running and dancing. My playlist is named "Running and Dancing into Your 70s" (linked here). I have a whole bunch of different music, some is slower, some is faster, but I do tend to move around a bit.

The Compost

Tell us about your compost system.

I've built two bins (with pallets from Everyday Oil) that are lined. They're about 4 feet, 5 feet high, and 3 or 4 feet wide and deep. I line the entire inside with hardware wire, which is that tiny wire that is fairly durable, I make a top that also has hardware wire. That keeps all the varmints out of your compost, so when you go out to put compost in, you don't have mice jumping at you, or a snake in there, et cetera.

I save all the leaves from the neighborhood, I run the mower over them, I mulch them up, and I have them in a huge bed. In the compost I put leaves, and then I put a layer of dirt, then I put the food waste, and I just keep layering that. Some people, they turn it over all the time. I just leave it alone. It keeps getting taller and taller in this little enclosure that you have, and then, when it gets to a certain height, say three fourths of the way to the top, I will take all of that and put it in the bin that's next to it. And at the bottom, there's this amazing soil that has turned to compost and it looks just like soil. It's dark, it's black, it doesn't have any smell to it whatsoever. It's just like you've made dirt right there. It's just amazing.

So then for the other one you just keep adding to it, and then six months later, you move it back, because you've used up all the compost at the bottom, probably about two and a half, three feet of it. So the compost really just kind of works its way to the bottom, and you just keep doing that cycle again and again. It's a wonderful way to use up all the scraps and things in your kitchen. You don't have to throw that out in the trash.

What do you put in from the kitchen? Do you compost meat?

No, well, we don't eat meat. But no, I don't put meat into the compost, because it goes rancid. So all the vegetables, organic matter, everything else goes in.

And then I have a separate compost area that's off of the garden, and that's called my long length compost, for all the plants and all of the things that I pull out of the garden, weeds, and everything. I just have a long kind of row for that, and I just let that sit there, and literally, in three or four years, I'll take the top off of it, and at the bottom, there's great compost. There's great soil, and it's just waiting to be used in the beds. So that's kind of a longer term compost. I just let that sit there. I don't do anything except keep adding to the top of it.

So, the kitchen compost, every six months, you're turning it over and getting all the compost at the bottom out, and then the long term garden compost, where you have a lot more thicker branches that you put in, it's gonna take a lot longer to break down.

Everyday Oil

What is a new way you use Everyday Oil?

In the shower, I use my plastic ketchup bottle with Everyday Oil in it and I just squirt it over the top of my back, and then I have a long kind of cloth that has two little handles on the end, and I go all the way down my back with that. In the winter, it's miraculous. It keeps your back from itching. It's great.

Here’s an older video of Bill demonstrating his ketchup bottle in the shower :)

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Bill's parents met in Sweden during WWII. His dad, Herman, was serving in the Air Force and his plane crash landed on the island of Gotland. Sweden was neutral during the war, and if you landed there you were allowed to stay for the duration. His mother, Hedy, was working for the OSS — the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA — and was also stationed in Sweden. The OSS recruited Herman to gather intelligence by taking out German women and drinking with Nazis stationed there. Herman was very charismatic, and also Jewish. Hedy was the one to record his notes at the OSS, and they fell in love.

They decided to get married in Sweden, but they didn't have family there. They had become friends with Count Bernadotte, and he gave Hedy away at the wedding.

Herman and Hedy had saved some money to send their five children to Sweden, and after they passed, Bill and his siblings took the trip together. They went to a huge park in Stockholm, looking for the spot where Herman had proposed to Hedy. They knew it was by a particular statue, but the park is so large it was hard to find. When they finally found it, it was almost dark.

As they sat on the bench that evening, a woman walked by with her little dog. She asked them what they were doing there, and they got to talking. It turns out she is the niece of Count Bernadotte — the man who gave Hedy away at her wedding.

These Cleome flowers were growing by the bench. Bill put some of the seeds in his pocket. He planted them in his garden, and they are thriving.

Photography by Sadie Culberson