Sunday, August 24, 2008

Well situated

[posted by Risa]

We went over to the East side of the Cascades (people there call themselves the Drysiders) for a bit of R&R. We measured; our destination, a cabin belonging to a friend, was only eighty-four miles from Stony Run Farm. The cabin is a one-room modified A-frame with pine paneling throughout, built some time ago, in an unincorporated community surrounded by National Forest lands, in the midst of miles and miles of lodgepole pines and little else, as most plants don't care for the twenty-feet-deep or more of pumice around there, laid down by the Crater Lake explosion seven thousand years ago. The site is well situated for visiting some good places up there, and we took full advantage.

A brief home away from home.

The first day, we went to Miller Lake, near the Mount Thielsen Wilderness, and then dropped into Chemult for ice cream. We walked up to the Union Pacific tracks there, and Beloved found a penny someone had left there to be flattened by the Coast Starlight, which travels between Seattle and Los Angeles. The local people were very welcoming, and we just about waved our arms off.

Beloved takes in Sawtooth Ridge, Mt. Thielsen Wilderness.

I paddled around on Miller for hours in my miniyak, trying to worry the kokanee (landlocked salmon) into biting, but August is just not their thing, as local fisherfolk acknowledged.

South and Middle Sisters from Crane Prairie Reservoir.
Lots of ospreys, eagles, herons, geese, and ducks were in evidence, as well as
dragonflies, mayflies, and damselflies -- signs of relatively healthy water.


The next day, to test our theory that staying at the cabin would improve our chances of a successful day hike up South Sister next year, for my sixtieth birthday, we timed and checked mileage while driving there along the Cascade lakes Highway, and found it to be a big improvement over driving from Eugene. On the way back, we stopped at Crane Prairie Reservoir, where I spent more hours in the miniyak looking for that lake's famous giga-rainbows, but -- August! -- settled for a couple of smallish bullhead which we had for dinner with some of our homegrown Yukon Gold potatoes. There was a forest fire nearby, but it was a small one, and the firefighters in the area looked pretty relaxed about what they were doing. Oregon has had another easy fire year, unlike California.

Today, we cleaned up after ourselves (we are messier people than the cabin's owner, so this took awhile) and took in Waldo Lake on the way back home.

Waldo Lake from Islet Campground.

At the extreme right in this picture, you can just see some dead trees on the shoreline. This was the southwestern extremity of the Charlton Fire, which burned some 10,000 acres of wilderness in the summer of 1996. Daughter and I were camping on Broken Top Mountain at the time, and could see the flames, a good twenty miles away, leaping bright red against the dramatic column of miles-high smoke, while we pelted each other with snowballs. Later, we picked up a couple of stranded campers who had been chased out of the North Waldo campground by the fire.

Waldo Mountain, which I have climbed many times with the kids, is just to my left in the picture. So this could be said to be my country ... yet this is the first time I've actually been to the lake in all these years. There is so much to see here that you cannot do it in one lifetime.

Ten square miles of some of the cleanest water on the planet. It's a rare sight -- but we both found most of the people hanging around to be unfriendly, unsmiling, and very focused on their private down time. We're private, too. But in the woods we practice our privacy by finding places where the other people aren't; when we meet others we like to treat them nicely, and be treated the same. So we took the hint and went home, where the poultry, who had been literally "cooped up," were more than glad to see us.

-30-

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Time capsule

[posted by risa] "Look what I found while I was cleaning out the office." I glanced at the tattered, yellowed pages in Beloved's hand -- and did a double take. "Whoa! This is the records from the old homestead! Can I post these?" "Sure; they're a window into another world." "When We Were Young." "And a lot stronger and more productive than we are now, apparently!" So, here you go, Dear Readers. A Bear Family time capsule:
1978
Blkberry jam 8 qts
Strawberry jam 12 qts
pickled Beets 6 qts
sweet pickles 42 qts [!!]
dill pickles 7 qts
dill carrots 3 qts
relish 3 pints
tomatoes 25 qts [?]
zucchini 13 qts
1979
Apple Puree 9 [qts?]
Apple sauce 7
Apple butter 8 pints
plum pieces 19 qts
Blk Berry Puree 3
Strawberry Sauce/Puree 14 qts
1980
Strawberry 2 flats freezer 15 qts 11.50
Raspberry 4 flats freezer 23 1 1/2 pints 2 qrts 1 qrt [?] 26.00
U-pick cherries 55 lbs canned 35 qts rest eaten fresh 13.50
Applesauce 1 grocery bag 7 qts 6 pints
Applebutter 1 1/2 grocery bags
Blkberry freeze 17 1.5 pints
peaches 80 lbs canned 63 quarts 20.00
greenbeans 2 rows Royal purple freeze 20 pints
broccoli 2 rows 13 qts froze
dill pickles 7 qts canned
chutney 3 pts Green Tom canned
relish 7 pts canned
apple B 7 pts "
Pear B 5 pts "
sweet pickles 4 pts "
plums 18 qts canned
plum sauce 17 qts, 6 pts
plum juice 3 qts
14 qts Applesauce transparent
10 qts Blk jam
12 pts Blk jam
5 qts corn - frozen
10 qts greens - frozen
1/2 dear [sic] 30 lbs
1/2 salmon 8 lbs (1/2 for 1981) [?]
6 sea fish 30 lbs [rockfish and lingcod]
1/2 pig 50 lbs (1/2 was 1979)
1/4 cow 120 lbs
Green Sprouting Broccoli excellent
Royal Purple good for pickling, excellent taste
Runner beans not prolific -- encourage up poles
Butternut Squash start earlier 10 small
sugar pumpkins excellent one dozen to store
market cukes ok
Pickling cukes ok
lemon cukes ok
Red cabbage excellent
Blk Simson lettuce excellent -- planted directly
chicl [?] lettuce excellent -- planted directly
sucram carrots small, sweet
scarlet keelper carrots Larger, not quite as tasty
Dear [sic] tongue terrific, stood light frost
Kupo4 [??] carrots ok
Sp. [spaghetti] Squash fine dozen to store
1981
goat one freeze 30 lbs free
salmon 1/2 freeze 8 lbs free
cow 1/4 freeze 125 lbs - 168.00
1982
dear [sic] one freeze 60 lbs free
cow one freeze 370 lbs 293.00
pig one freeze 47 lbs 79.00
The "dear" may seem small but they were Coast Range Blacktail bucks, notable for being much, much smaller than Eastern Whitetails. Even the ones that have been raiding our garden this year are considerably larger, presumably because the smaller size of the mountain Blacktails is to their advantage in the extremely dense rainforest vegetation there. "Deer tongue" is a lettuce. I think. Not listed are the dozens of cottontails that graced our tables in 1978 and 1979. Their population had exploded, and there was no rabbit fence around the garden. So they took what they wanted from us, and we took from them accordingly. A fair exchange, it seemed to us at the time. Still does... -30-

Monday, August 04, 2008

The Fashion of My Mothers

[posted by Daughter]

We never ate Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, the product was (is) neither nutritional nor cost effective. I remember relishing the opportunity to indulge in the bright orange noodles at a friend's house. Our pantry was filled with giant jars, some still showed evidence of a label that read: dill pickles. They were re-used for oats, raisins, sunflower seeds, and flours. Our fridge contained large blocks of cheese purchased from the food co-op. (For the longest time I thought that Muenster was only available in blocks bigger than my head.) I would watch my mother at the kitchen sink rinsing zip lock bags and stacking them on the dish drainer, thinking "couldn't we just buy more?" Maybe we could have, but that was not the point of rinsing plastic bags and re-using pickle jars. For as long as I've known them my mothers have been saving the environment, one plastic bag at a time.

And so it is that the "Green" movement has come as some what of a shock to me. I never thought that my mothers would be trend setters, at the forefront of fashion. I couldn't have imagined as a child that I would be following in my mothers' footsteps. I certainly didn't think that I would rinsing the zip lock bags and saving pickle jars. I thought that when I grew up I would be eating mac and cheese every day, instead I'm cooking pasta salad from scratch 90% of which was purchased from bulk bins. (As for the cheese that's an ingredient I consider not to be cost effective.) I'll be honest I started re-using not to reduce but because I am a penny pincher. I refused to buy paper towels because I have one that I can wash, I will not buy Tupperware when I know that there are plenty of Nancy's Yogurt containers to use, and to this day I own one pot and one frying pan. (Which makes life interesting). I don't even notice these everyday items are missing until a guest asks exasperatingly, "where are your paper towels?" I have a do-without-it attitude, I have a sneaking suspicion it's inherited through Mamacita. If I don't have it I simply do without it. I save a lot of money this way and in the mean time I'm cutting down waste and being environmentally friendly. I take the money I've saved by being frugal and invest in products that in the long run are not "cost effective" but they're clean and guilt free.

I have to thank my mothers for setting such a good example. Being green hasn't been popular since the sixties but they have never invested much in popularity. Even while raising three children (none of which were easy) they did their best to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle. With the nest of Stony Run emptied they now have the opportunity to ease into the truly green lifestyle they have been dreaming of. Turning a yard from "aesthetic" grass into a fully equipped garden and barnyard hasn't been fashionable since the 1800's but then again my mothers have never invested much in fashion.