stony run farm

Ahhhhh

2012-01-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

So, you're 62 now and the farming is giving you more aches and pains, or you're just noticing them more.

1. Take about a pound of flax seed and sew it up in a spare scrap of flannel, say from your kids' pajamas (that's what's good about the Empty Nest, yes?)

2. Go over to the wood stove and drop the bag in your Dutch Oven on top of a nice big trivet (if the trivet doesn't seem clean enough, you can put a bowl in on top of the trivet). There should be air space under the bag, you see.

3. Cover.

4. Later, as you're passing by, remember that you did this, retrieve the bag and drape it around your neck, shoulder, across lower back as you sit in rocking chair, wherever it's needed.

Ahhhhh.

Repeat 2 through 4 as needed.

An honest living

2012-01-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

The garden is at rest. It's seldom this naked in winter -- but for a month it hosted two dozen chickens and ducks and that comes to much the same thing as plowing! What was left to rake together into beds was surprisingly little. Fortunately they also manured in place, because they, by choice, spent all their daylight hours there. They still gaze forlornly through the shut gate.

It dawned on me, looking at this scene, that we have met an important goal here. The rains in the last week came to about four inches, most of it in twenty-four hours; yet there is no lake out there. The organic matter and the increased capillary capacity from expanding worm populations have given even this much water somewhere to go. There's now very little runoff, even when the garden is this bare.

Happy dance!

It took eighteen years and many, many wheelbarrow loads of straw, hay, leaves, grass clippings and barn bedding to get to this point.

But this also leads to sobering thoughts.

You get from anything pretty much whatever is there to begin with plus whatever you add. Whatever you add comes from somewhere else. It's a round planet. Whatever you take in, it's not where it was before. If it was someone else's then either with or without their permission their lands have been diminished to enrich yours.

We at Stony Run habitually gather whatever is freely offered to the extent of our ability, and we pay for the straw, but it's very clear that nothing comes from nowhere. We like to say that urban culture too easily forgets that everything ultimately comes from farming, but that idea has inherent flaws.

It's the oil (and coal) we're forgetting, not the farming, for farming without inputs is like musical chairs. To make it "pay" on an industrial scale -- competitively, with apparently inescapable middlemen -- so as to allow us to bloom from a relatively feedable one billion or so to seven billion and eating, we have felt it necessary to inject into the farms tremendous quantities of energy and artificial fertilizers dug from the finite planet beneath our feet. We now do this on a scale grand enough to heat the globe, even if we did not drive everywhere.

Talk about unsustainability! Soil degradation alone will teach us the error of our ways. And now the extra heat roiling about in the oceans and thin blanket of air overhead is adding to the uncertainty of farming. It's January, and the dirt in our garden smells like May. Flowers are blooming, and robins chirp and flutter in the budding apple trees. Tough to figure out how to farm when it's snow one week and a "heat wave" the next, all winter long.

There has been a debate lately in the blogosphere concerning whether the "housing" crash of 2008, and hence our current Great Depression, was brought on by debt or by peak oil. The argument for debt runs: "Multiple claims on every loaned dollar (or whatever is your local currency) cannot be sustained, for it is only one dollar (same as for its collateral, which must ultimately be a physical asset). Sooner or later the debt must unwind till there is one holder, the creditor with the most power. That is what we see here." The argument for peak oil is: "Sooner or later demand for oil outpaces economically feasible pumping, and the price rises to the point at which it is uneconomical to run industry and transportation. That is what we see here."

Well, I think both are right. Which, when you think about it, puts me in the oil camp, but, hey -- it's a round planet. Everything is connected.

How we get "multiple claims" on a dollar is by making promises as to our future productivity so as to get someone to hand us that dollar in the first place, in the expectation that, at a future date, we'll hand them that dollar back with some extra change, which we'll have earned by means of that productivity. Business loans, student loans, car loans and mortgages -- the "multiple claims" come in when your creditor in turn borrows money based on, not their anticipated productivity -- they aren't farmers, miners, loggers or fishermen, after all -- but yours. If you are a primary producer, you have to make enough to cover not only your taxes, mortgage, groceries, car payment, student loans, insurance, medical bills, heating, light, trash disposal, entertainment, furniture, and espresso but theirs as well.

Strikes me as a fragile system. An economy should have productivity as its wide base and organizing capacity as its smaller apex; here we seem to have a huge managerial apparatus (not "big government" alone but increasingly "big business" and especially "big finance" with "big government" as its yea-saying servant) riding upon a smallish and perhaps decreasing productivity base. The pyramid is inverted and ready to topple over.

Increase the costs (or decrease the income) at one or more points to individuals and families at the "bottom" and their capacity to service debt diminishes. With nearly everyone at or near the break-even point, sensitivity to such changes is very high -- and can suddenly dissipate the expectations of our creditors, who now comprise practically the entire establishment.

It's common, over on the right, where many of the "sound bite" memes are manufactured and propagated by supranational corporations and giant financials, to blame taxes when this happens. Their solution is to roll back taxes (on mostly them, not so much on the productive sector, commonly known as labor, by the way). Governments do have many pet projects (though over time, more and more of these serve the apex, and not the base, of the pyramid) and so are protective of their revenue stream. Certainly they should be held accountable as to how much they need and what they want to spend it on -- should the U.S., for example, really spend almost more on the military than all other nations on the surface of the globe combined? But the cost change that most seems to strike at the heart of the productive -- the laborer -- is at the pump.

This tends to catch the left quite as flat-footed as the right. The leftie feels virtuous to go out and demonstrate against greed in the financial sector, and I would argue that, indeed, it's rather curious that we even have a financial sector -- since it consists of loans made by the rich to the rich upon the impossible collateral that my productivity will always increase so that where there was once a dollar for me and two dollars for them, some day there will be a dollar for me and twelve dollars for them.

But I have a prior interest.

In country after country, beginning with those that have no oil in the ground, but wish to drive cars, like Greece, and spreading to those that have some oil but wish to drive more cars than they have oil, like Egypt, the productive citizenry slowly find they are being priced out of the available transportation infrastructure. A crash comes when suddenly the price of Archie Bunker's tankful of gas to get to work next week means that some other obligation cannot be met.

Let the price of gasoline (and, in proportion, the other liquid fuels) advance from, in the U.S., with its artificially depressed prices through international bullying, $3.50 to $4.00 and hang there long enough, and the day comes that Archie cannot get down to the docks to drive that forklift. There are cascading effects. Ships lose their margin, trucking companies lose their margin, airlines lose their margin, gate receipts fall at national parks, restaurants lose customers, and the dollars promised to the rich by the rich begin to vanish, to their consternation. So they begin "letting people go" -- adding to the spiral.

Ultimately this scenario includes the farmer with a three hundred thousand dollar tractor (five percent paid for) and nothing to run it with, as well as no money for artificial fertilizer, the requisite Monsanto seeds, and the pesticides s/he is required by Monsanto to buy and use with those seeds. Perhaps the U.S. Department of Agriculture should have been supporting small, diversified farms after all, yes?

No wonder it suddenly seems so reasonable to invade countries that have, or share borders with, pools of black gold beneath their sands, and piss upon their dead.

At the bottom of the bottom of the productive pyramid as it now stands is oil -- with coal -- along with schemes intended to replicate the paleochemical miracle, such as nuclear, with its frightful under-the-table costs and even more frightful potential health and even survival costs -- not that the fossil fuels don't have these. The coal, for example, as nuclear apologists love to say, releases far more radioactivity per unit of energy used than nuclear. Yes -- though that equation can change in less than a second, and devastatingly so. Never happens, say they. Just did, say I. Again. But back to our rant.

People in general (with help from draft animals -- this has its own ethical implications, I know), their skills, and some judicious use of fire, levers, the wheel, the sail, and so on -- were once primary producers, and this has shifted increasingly onto complex machines, up to and including computers and fiber-optic networks, which are presupposed in our world, as we now know it, by highly intensive application of fossil fuels and split atoms -- labor substitutes. We may say these made it possible to give up slavery, but, oh, my, terrible thoughts we're skipping over, there! Let's say what we gave up was whatever we conceived as drudgery. Not that there isn't still plenty of it. But everyone seems to want someone that speaks some other language to do the bulk of it, and cheaply -- ergo, a form of slavery. But I think that might be a digression, though it's related.

So ... the (post-steam) fossil fuel based industrial economy was designed for somewhere around twenty-cents-a-gallon-gasoline (and diesel equivalent) transportation. Yes, that's in 1920s dollars -- though I remember once paying twenty-nine in 1968. Assume that we've only used up 10% of the stuff (I think it's closer to 50). Even so, it's getting tougher to get at, and the people we want it from are using more and more of it for themselves. The cost will rise. We're about to price ourselves out of a civilization.

At the bottom of the bottom of the real pyramid -- past the energy-source intermediaries -- is food, clean water, clean air, adequate shelter, sufficient clothing -- and also at that bottom is any livelihood so engaged with these as to be what can, without equivocation, be called an "honest living." Or as Buddha put it, "right livelihood," one of the eight prerequisites for spiritual attainment. Or if you prefer it without any religious coloration, we can say: Right livelihood is ethical livelihood. There is no right livelihood where the work creates injustice or dispenses poisons indiscriminately.

Acknowledging that, so far as we can tell, "sustainability" is at present only a disastrous meme if it includes the self-contradictory notion of "sustainable growth" -- "growth" being understood as loans made by the rich to the rich on the predicated productivity of, not so much people, as oil, coal, and nuclear (the three great slaves of our impertinent empire of comfort, each run by computers and machinery in lieu of people) -- let's see what would be the pillars of an actually "sustainable" economy on a round and finite planet.

We would protect the soil. We would grow land-based foods and fibers in such a way that one hundred years, or one hundred thousand years from now, other things being equal, such as the absence of a forced climate inimical to agriculture, the land would be as productive as it is today, or better; enough to feed everyone equitably. This would require reduction in petrochemical (and, incidentally, radionuclide) inputs across the board, and an increase in physical labor -- expanding the "bottom" of the productivity pyramid. Factory farmed meats? You must be joking.
We would protect fresh water sources. This would require reduction in petrochemical and radionuclide inputs across the board, resulting in an expansion at the bottom of the productivity pyramid. Mercury-based gold mining? Uranium mining? Mountaintop removal? Tar sands? Fracking? Urban, field and forest petrochemical runoff and accumulated irrigation salts? Effluent? Factory farmed meats? Clearcutting in steep, fragile watersheds? You must be joking ...
We would would protect the oceans. Runoff from the land and fallout of assorted acids, petrochemical pollutants, soots and radionuclides, the byproducts of our schemes to get much and give little, along with the heat convected into the waters from air laced with excess heat-trapping gases and particulates (more than ninety percent goes into the oceans), plus blithe overfishing, plus the accumulating leakage of crude oil from widespread and poorly regulated drilling, adds up to a simple disaster for all concerned. Once large fisheries easily supported many a fishing village that is now abandoned, shrinking the productivity pyramid; in place of those villages we now have enormous trawlers and factory ships, dragging the seas and the seafloors for whatever might fall into their nets -- and the harvest drops even as the ships grow in size and have, for the sake of the bottom line, more and more mechanization and smaller and smaller crews. Envision: in the night, the roaming, hungry trawlers pass a brilliantly lit, titanic polystyrene cruise ship, furtively dumping hundreds of tons of waste overboard. Right livelihood, indeed.
We would protect the air. The ball on which we live is tiny -- only about 7900 miles in diameter. Most people cannot comfortably work and breathe (some would die) above fifteen thousand feet. This is the thin, fragile and irreplaceable medium of our daily lives, and into it we pump the wastes of numerous coal, oil, and gas fired power plants, more than a billion cars, trucks, locomotives, airplanes, and tractors, more than a billion buildings, and more than ninety varieties of alpha- and beta- emitting radionuclides from hundreds of aging and leaking uranium- and plutonium-fueled steam turbines. We have relegated the work of our hands to machines and in so doing made the air increasingly poisonous to ourselves and every living thing. Suppose you were to shut an idling Prius into a garage with yourself -- does that seem safe to you? What about a bigger room? House-sized -- feel safe now? Still dangerous? How about a McMansion? Still creeped out? Well, let's build (in our imagination) a hermetically sealed geodesic dome over your house and your neighbors' and run the car. Would they not feel a bit threatened by your behavior? What has just happened to that "God-given right" to own such a thing and drive it wherever we please? Like the health of the soil, the aquifers, lakes and rivers, the oceans, the forests, plants, and animals (including, alas for the views of many, humans) the health of the air is a commons.

Given the crimes against the commons enumerated above, by themselves, the financials, heinous as they are, are only a part of our current and coming troubles; too many of the rest of us share, or are convinced of the necessity of, the overarching necessity for our elaborate "labor-saving" apparatus -- on which financials feed, and which they also feed by their incessant making of loans upon impossible promises. Attacking such a tree at its roots may make sense compared to flailing at its leaves and branches, but we also are its leaves and branches. Its fall would not go unnoticed.

Am I not writing this on one of these very machines from the comfort of a modern (if relatively modest) home? So, in the interest of at least token acknowledgment of Buddha's insistence on the primacy of right livelihood, I won't advocate the complete Luddite agenda -- so easily one kind of worldburning substitutes for another.

But I will suggest that the right -- shall we say, spiritual -- practice for these times is that of letting go.

That's going to come across pretty silly if you're already poor, or just becoming one of the nouveau poor. But I've been there, dears dumpster dived for lunches back in the day, and I'm talking in this post to people who maybe think they're gonna get through this next period and come out at the other end still suburban, new car, white collar, insured, and polite. 'K?

So. Knowing the hidden cost, in cancers, in broken lives, in inequities, in ruined lands and waters and air, and the making of interminable wars, of avarice, of greed, in a word, of covetousness (Exodus 20:17) -- consider doing, each day, with a little less of what "they" want you to have or be doing, and a little more resilience.

So ... ready to fight the good fight? to #occupy a little bit of leaf somewhere on your own branch of the tree, to, perhaps stumblingly, but with "right intention," do more good and less harm than hitherto?

If you like, call it a hobby when your friends question your sanity. Works for me ...

You may have your own checklist, and perhaps you'll share it with me? In the meanwhile, here's mine in its present form:

Debt. If you possibly can, get out of it and don't get back in. Double payments are worth more to you than eating out or going to the movies or the game. To do the debt game, you need to know you can outproduce the cost and the insurance on the cost. That mental picture of how you can do this? Doesn't include having an auto accident in which you lose the use of both legs, yes? If you're with a bank or a loan shark, move the money and/or the debt to the credit union. Then double those payments. You've just occupied Wall Street.

Car. Stay home more. Combine necessary trips. Carry more gas (petrol to some of us) at a time, to prevent evaporation loss, get regular tune-ups, check the tire inflation. Trade down in size to better mileage: there are vehicles that do over fifty miles per gallon, and this is more significant to your kids' future than the prestige that big one gets you. Buy used. Get more passengers, and carpool. Be a passenger. Leave the car home and ride the bus, the train, the Railcar, the subway, the ferry, the monorail, the light rail, the taxi, or the bicycle. Or just walk. No intercity rail? No light rail? No bike lanes? No sidewalk, no trail? Write and call the local planners and city administrators; lobby relentlessly. Push hybrid; push electric. Sell the effing thing. Or give it to the Goodwill or St. Vincent's. While you're at it, sell (or give to a nonprofit that has a need for it) the motor home, the motorboat, the plane, the skimobile, the jet ski, the go cart, and the dirt bike. You don't need them; if you do find you actually need one once in a while, don't buy, rent. Telecommute. Lobby for staggered work shifts to reduce congestion. Ask for a shorter work week, then spend the long weekends, the holidays, and the vacations working in the garden!

Home. Why have a big one when a well-planned small one will do? Insulate all around, seal, turn the heat down a bit, put on a sweater and a lap blanket, get rid of the air conditioner and plant fruiting or nut-bearing shade trees on the south side and a windbreak of evergreens on the north side. If there's room, raise your own firewood. Discover water conservation and, where possible, greywater. Consider all-edible landscaping. Paint it, roof and all, white for reflectivity and reduced heat gain. Make things out of rocks or used bricks instead of concrete. Use non-toxic agents and eschew inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. Become an expert Dumpster diver. Use hand tools. Hang out wash. No time? Turn off the television, you'll have more time. Look for low-wattage entertainment. Try romance. Instead of diamonds and skyview restaurant dinners, try being a good listener. Learn an acoustic instrument. Sing. Tell stories. Read. For lighting, go with bringing sunlight through a skylight, or lower-wattage fluorescent, or LEDs. Switch things off. Go to bed earlier. Paint the interior walls white or use white materials; you won't need as many watts. Replace the hot water heater, refrigerator and the freezer if they predate the energy-saving models. Or learn how to do without them. Use solar hot water. go off-grid. Get solar power. Install a ground cloth in the crawl space. Sort, reuse, sew, mend, reskill, repair, repurpose, recycle, compost. Haunt Craigslist and the thrift shop. For the furnishings, when possible find, accept hand-me-downs, make your own or hire or buy locally made. Learn to cook. Cook from scratch. Make your kitchen your favored hangout, and keep it simple. Tear up the lawn and put in cover crops, fruit and nut trees, and fruiting perennials, on a plan that will prevent your having to buy a new gasoline lawnmower when the present one gives out. Avoid plastic. Avoid products which must come thousands of miles to you, are poorly made, or both.

"Prep." People tend to avoid thinking about this. Don't. Sometimes the power goes off. Sometimes there is a flood or fire or tornado or hurricane or a home invasion. We're under a flood watch as I write this, and I have experienced all of the above. I've learned the hard way that what happens, happens and it may be up to me to dig out sometimes. Here's where you may actually get to shop your way to resilience; but don't forget curbs, hand-me-downs, freebies, and Craigslist. Invest in a generator, store water, store non-freezer food; if there is an electric well learn how to get at the water. Store some stabilized gasoline, safely. Store candles, kerosene, have lamps, have LED lamps and flashlights and spare batteries; if you don't have a wood stove consider having a small rocket stove and/or solar cooker, or a propane two-burner and a full tank. Have "trail" food, waterproof matches, flashlight, whistle, Mylar "space" blanket, GPS, compass, maps, spare woolen socks, poncho, hat, gloves, N95 masks, folding knife or Leatherman style tool, fifty feet of clothesline or "paracord" rope, toilet paper if you will, sunglasses in case of snow, duct tape, and a medical kit reflecting your preferences in a backpack for each of you, along with a small tent or large tarp or both, gallons of water, an axe, a shovel, and a bucket in the trunk of your car, with a small rocket stove and cooking pot. To make sure of your own list for these things, envision sitting by the roadside in any weather for a week and no one comes to help you. Also: keep your cell phone, not just a land line, in your lockable bedroom and train everyone how to leave the house in any emergency and rendezvous at a collection point, even in the dark. If you believe in defending yourself, take the NRA course at a minimum, then shop and train accordingly. This paragraph is not intended to alarm you, it wants you to think this: if the neighborhood were all of a sudden on its own and held a meeting to find out its assets and liabilities, would I be an asset or a liability?" Do what you can to be an asset to your community and not a liability. The axe, shovel and bucket in the car may help others. See Sharon Astyk's essay on 100 things to do -- many of which focus on community needs.

Community. Get out and meet people. Dance. Meditate. Volunteer at the library or the park or the food bank or the hospital or the shelter. Have a block party or an apple squeezing. Go to your local Transition Initiative meeting. Don't have one? Start one. Go to your local food co-op, or start one, or join or start a food club or a community garden in a vacant lot. Support urban farming. Be a smallholder. Get an allotment. Go to your local seed/plant exchange, or start one. Go to your local tool exchange, or start one. Go to your local farmer's market, or start one. Or your local fiber arts get-together. Or quilting. If yours is a very conservative community that is afraid of these things, try the Grange or the Neighborhood Watch or the Church Social. People who know you will be more likely to help you after a fire or flood, and you will be more able to help them. Get this poster and put it up everywhere. If anyone cries "Socialism" just say "So are stop signs." Download and print out things you think your community may need to know, from such places as here and here.

Food. Cigarettes? I won't even tell you, you know better. Drink less commercial alcohol and more water (from the well or the tap, if safe enough). Again, learn to cook and cook from scratch. Know your dry beans, lentils, split peas, and rice. Skip HFCS. Make your own beverages (learn to brew and make good wines). Prefer filtration over buying bottled. Eat less meat and more fiber. Eat less prepared/processed food and more fresh produce. Eat local. Meet your local farmers and chat. Discover cast iron. Use double boilers and steamers and avoid frying. Try solar cooking. Audrey Hepburn said the most effective diet is to share your food with the poor. Clean out the cabinets and put the stuff in the food drive bin. Find out who's offering organic produce in your area. Find out if what they're offering is really organic. Build a food club around organic wholesale. Find out what "organic" is first, if you don't know, and don't depend on the television and/or industrially-sponsored labeling to tell you. Dehydrate. Ferment. Patronize local organic cooperatives, merchants and farmers. Raise your own food. Discover the Permaculture way. Avoid those patented hybrid and/or genetically modified foods and seeds/plants/foods from large corporations; patronize farmers, merchants and cooperatives providing heirloom varieties -- locally when you can. Discover foraging. Use hand tools. Eschew toxic agents, inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. Avoid plastic. Landscape with edibles. Garden organically. Plant vegetables and fruit and nut trees. Even garden, if need be, in a window box, halved water bottles strung up in a window, or containers on the balcony. Collect seed, start plants, learn propagation and grafting, how to brew and make wine, handle a scythe, build a compost heap. Preserve your own produce. No time? We already talked about that. If it's from out of area: who works there, how much do they make, what are their working conditions, who owns what, and what did it cost to get that banana or cup of coffee across the oceans to you?

Clothes. Buy less frequently, go for longer lasting, and think cotton and wool and natural dyes. "Polyester" should become an embarrassing word in your wardrobe, along with expensive labels. Frequent the thrift stores. Appreciate hand-me-downs. When possible, make your own or buy locally or cooperatively made, and find the age of workers overseas, their wages, hours and working conditions before supporting the big factories.

Health care. If you are renting yourself to the avaricious in exchange for a false security, or taking their advice generally on what to consume (a word that contains its own criticism), you are likely to help make yourself and everyone sick. Enter upon the adventure of figuring out how to live, accepting the risks attendant upon a simplified, clean and thereby increasingly just life. If that kills you, well, were you going to live forever? All things in moderation (except perhaps cigarettes -- just dump those), eat less, eat better, drink clean water, sleep more, build your immunity, be aware of safety issues in your surroundings, don't overheat the house in winter or overcool it in summer, use non-toxic cleaners and agents, stay away from the telly, the couch and the junk foods, walk, bike, paddle, do things yourself, stay out of debt, be wary of the promises made by pharmaceutical corporations, find health care professionals who understand prevention and can help you plan your activities accordingly.

Work. Are you working to get your kids out of planetary debt or deeper into it? What are your living expenses? If you're a couple, consider cutting those expenses until only one of you has to work or both of you can work half time. There are large hidden costs in both of you working outside the home. Give the earned time to increased quality of life for the children, or, if you've wisely refrained from contributing to the disastrous population curve, give some attention to your friends and neighbors. If you're in the mining, manufacture, distribution, transportation, sales, advertising, or application of depletionary items, from autos to herbicides, re-career as soon as you feasibly can. Think small. Make something useful for yourself, your friends, family or neighbors, or if necessary for sale or barter or work with someone making something useful. Think owner-operator, partnership, cooperative, non-profit, employee-owned enterprise before heading out to sell yourself to the omnivorous giants. Small farmers in particular can hardly go wrong here. We're not talking communism, just common accountability -- ok, communalism; there's a big difference and we need not go into hysterics. It's all tribes. Even Wall Street is a tribe. You like big tribes? The commons is, or should be, the biggest tribe. And, because what goes around always comes around on a smallish globular planet, your greatest loyalty should be to the commons and never to those who would enclose it. If democracy is your thing (I like it too), think about this: on private property there is no democracy. It occurs only in public spaces -- the commons.

You can get a whole lot of quality living done sitting out front and waving hello to passersby, or just pausing, while putting up tomatoes, to watch the golden-hued rays of the sun creep warmly across the kitchen. If you know someone who is not in a position to enjoy even these simple things, consider making a gift to them of your time.

It is in your ability to have less, give more, and yet be happier that you will exceed the worth of all that either personal or corporate avarice can ever bring you.

---

“If greed were not the master of modern man--ably assisted by envy--how could it be that the frenzy of economism does not abate as higher "standards of living" are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain the almost universal refusal on the part of the rulers of the rich societies--where organized along private enterprise or collective enterprise lines--to work towards the humanisation of work?" -- E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful.

---

Home comfort

2012-01-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

Properly wintry weather at last -- though the robins, who seem to have all stayed with us this year on a bad hunch, are suffering, it's good for the fruit trees, and by now any form of precipitation is very welcome.

For us, though, the main comfort of home right now is the woodpile.

The leftover kale and collards are doing fine. The rest of the garden sleeps -- except in the greenhouse, which is wide awake. It look quite scraggly, but there are beets, onions, kale, chard, and bok choi. The bok choi looks great and would not be doing this well in the garden, so that might be something to remember ...

Eggses, it is

2012-01-12T16:50:00.001-08:00

Eggses, it is, originally uploaded by risabee2007.

Risa brings in three or four days' worth of eggs for processing. There are two dozen duck eggs and a dozen chicken eggs. Ten hens are laying four a day this January, and eight Khaki Campbell ducks are producing five or six. The goose and the Ancona ducks only lay in spring and a little ways into the summer, and are the most prone to broodiness. We don't use lights or daytime confinement. Tonight, though, it will fall to 18F out. We'll turn on the brood lamp in the barn and cover the birds' front door with a blanket.

When conditions allow

2012-01-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

It's 84F in the greenhouse, so I think I'll work in the garden instead. We do things when conditions allow, and as conditions are, strangely, allowing in December instead of April, away we go, in shirt sleeves and sun hat -- 55F out. After six weeks, the poultry have been excluded from paradise and it's time to rebuild the beds the chickens have leveled with, and made indistinguishable from, the paths.

As usual I try this with a rake and as usual find myself switching to the five-tined general purpose long-handled fork. It's a tool I wouldn't be without. Ours is not an expensive model but it has held up for years.

Here, the beds are beginning to shape up. The ridges are actually at the edges of the beds, two ridges to the bed, and we'll be filling the middles in with garden waste, binned compost, kitchen waste, straw, leaves and grass clippings. Even grape and fruit tree prunings go into this mix. The beds on the ends, which are perennial soft fruit plantings, will also get sawdust, found eggs of dubious date, and conifer prunings.

Here's the binned compost going onto the beds. We prefer, as you can see from the preceding paragraph, to sheet compost but a summer barn cleaning was too "hot" to go to the garden (poultry manure should wait ninety days ideally) and so was piled up by the compost barrel last year.

What a contrast to summer!

On a foggy January day

2012-01-01T15:18:00.000-08:00

Now, it's like this: there are better cooks and there are better gardeners than I, and goodness knows better recipe writers, and better writers for that matter, on any topic you could name. I am, by heritage and disposition, a peasant wife, on my better days a bonne femme (good user of leftovers), and my incosistent skills and short-sighted interests amount mostly to: how shall I get from here to the end of the week while staying within my means?

So, this blog is seldom likely to bring news of the best this or the most interesting that -- it might in fact better be called "How to Muddle Through With What's On Hand."

The breads, soups, gardening techniques and household stratagems on display here will not win you awards at the county fair. Some of them might win you, at best, a citation from the county inspector. But they are things that -- for me -- help to find a little wiggle room between "cold and hungry" on the one hand and "warm and fed" on the other, without overmuch commerce between me and the branch banks, the big box stores and the filling stations, all of whom strike me as designed to help Wall Street occupy me.

We grow as much of our own wood as we reasonably can, and cut up some every year with which to heat the house. The heat stove has a nice flat top, and over time I have come more and more to rely on that top for supplying me with hot water for tea, dishwashing, general housecleaning, and even bathing. This gives the hot water heater a rest and that gives the electric bill a bit of rest.

Sometimes I pop a stored winter squash or pumpkin into a stock pot of simmering water (which means this water won't subsequently be used for much besides watering, say, an apple tree) and left overnight. Usually it's done by the middle of the next morning.

I set aside the stockpot to cool, pour off the water for other uses, and split the pumpkin. The seeds are set aside to dry (on the stove, of course), be seasoned, and roasted for a treat some other day. The "meat" is then scooped out into a saucepan or a bowl for processing into a pumpkin soup, or perhaps as an ingredient in other things -- bread, say.

This will be a soup. I find the meat stringy, and I'm averse to fouling blender blades and the like, which would then have to be washed, so I go with the, for me, simpler expedient of rooting through the pulp with a pair of scissors.

Other ingredients as the whim takes me. Potatoes from the cold room and a young onion from the greenhouse, with applesauce and some dehydrated leaf matter from last year's garden (we call it veggie crumble), and some salt and a bit of bacon fat from a recent feast day.

Back to the stove. When the potatoes are cooked down, this will be ready to eat. Best thing you ever had? No. But it's not martyrdom either. It is to my taste, it is nourishing, it has cost me little more than my labor, and I have kept a little bit of small change out of the hands of the "one per cent." And now you know how I #occupy myself on a foggy January day.

Friends are coming over...

2011-12-28T15:56:00.001-08:00

Friends are coming over, originally uploaded by risabee2007.

...for their choice of (veg) chili or (non-veg) split-pea soup, bread, salad on the side, rhubarb crisp and tea after. This meal is about $2.00 a head. Yes, you can do that. And who cares if the dishes don't match?

Occupy that

2011-12-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

As the northern-hemisphere city-park Occupy camps wind down through artful opposition and wintry attrition, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that while calling attention to corporate greed is useful, thwarting corporate greed is more so.

What we have been protesting is really nothing more or less than the end-game of those who, centuries ago, enclosed the commons, shutting off the less well-to-do yeoman farmers and shepherds from access to the land in the name of greater farm efficiency (but diverting more and more of those efficient earnings into the pockets of -- yes -- the top one percent of the social pyramid: "by 1876, after some 4000 acts of Parliament, less than 1% of the population owned over 98% of the agricultural land in England and Wales" (Bollier, 2002 see link above). The practice of ownership transfer from, in effect, the owners of labor to the owners of capital has continued, spreading to the taking away of unmediated access to seed, to fertilizer, to water, to energy, and to all means of production.

I think the best writer on enclosure today is Vandana Shiva, who sees first-hand in third-world countries the destructive effects of the expanding edge of this practice.

Everything is about debt, how to get more and more of us into it, and how to allow fewer and fewer of us to ever shed it. Popping the financial bubble -- the bundling of these debts and selling the bundles from rich to rich as if they were a form of actual wealth -- will gain us little traction in surviving this century, even if we were to successfully capture and prosecute the Wall Street bankers. And I think it's going to pop on its own. There will then still be the indescribably massive costs that their industrial friends and political sycophants have socialized to the people, the air, the water, the soil, and the biosphere of the world in the form of poisons and waste heat.

Meanwhile we have nearly all lost the skill to live within our world's means. Already the average American or British farmer is over fifty -- and most of them no longer know very many sensible practices.

I would suggest that those interested in the Occupy movement now, or as soon as possible, become interested in the land, the waters, and the air, as well as investigate the sources of food, clean water and energy -- as a commons.

Our food supply, as a species, is in considerable danger. So the question with which we might best be occupied is: How can we live in such a way as to circumvent, bypass, ignore, and render completely irrelevant the schemes of the robber barons? In such a way the 99% could endeavor, not to take down the 1% (fun though that might be) but to save the 100% from utter destruction.

Here's most of the resource list from the sidebar of this blog. Look it over. Click some things. Click through from them to other sites of like mind. If you discover a passion among the livelihoods that seek to recover balance in the world, drop that mouse, get up from that office chair, and go find your piece of the commons that needs saving.

Occupy that.

100 Best Permaculture Books
100 preps you can do
3dcwd --see this!!
A Self Supporting Home (1905)
Agriculture Library
Allotment Vegetable Growing
American Community Gardening
Backyard Chickens
Community Solutions
Cultural Conservers Foundation
Draft Animal Power
Edible Communities
Enough ...
Farming Solutions
Food, Inc.
Free books from SARE
Garden Simply
Green Wizards
Grow the Change
Heifer International
Home Grown Evolution
Home Power Magazine
homestead.org
Homesteading Information Directory
Homesteading Resources
How to Homestead
Live Local
Local Future
LocalHarvest
Mother Earth News
Open Energy
Organic Consumers Association
Organic Gardening
Our Finite World
Permaculture and Regenerative Design
Permaculture International
Permaculture Media Downloads
Plan B
Planet Natural
Plants for a future (7000 edible species)
Post-Oil Survival Guide
Practical Action
Radiation Survival Book
Seed Savers Exchange
Simple Green Frugal Co-op
simpleliving.net
Slow Food USA
Slow is Beautiful
Soil and Health Library
Sustainable Communities
The Accidental Smallholder
The Community Solution
The Energy Bulletin
The Food Trust

The Hesperians
Transition Town Network

Where you find it

2011-12-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

A repost from 2007.

I've spent the day hanging around the woodstove, preparing a relatively simple dinner without going with it to the electric range or any of the other "modern conveniences." It's an entertaining exercise, but I'm not about to pretend that it's meaningful in the wider scheme of things: the wood I'm using was sawed with a chainsaw, the manufacture, transportation, sale and use of which was rife with both oil and coal usage, and brought to us in a truck that is much, much more of the same, over roads that are much, much, much more of the same, and so on.

I anticipate hard times when we all figure out our actual planetary energy income and how far ahead of ourselves we've spent. I was ranting to Beloved about all this, as I tend to do over coffee ("Coffee?" says Dear Reader's eyebrow. "Risa -- do you realize --" Yes, I do. Now, hush! This is my blog.) -- ranting to Beloved, or as she experiences it, at her -- and she posed a question.

"So, what does this mean to us? Not the kids, I get all that, but just thee and me?"

"Well ... " I was brought up short. "Umm, not so much. We're both over 55, now, which is a pretty decent life expectancy given the design. So, we could starve, or have our heads bashed in and our stuff shared out by people who then get their heads bashed in, or pick up the latest epidemic, etc. But these are things that have happened to a lot of people and will happen to a lot more. And we've had a whole heck of a lot of things go our way, just the two of us. So, it's like nobody can really take that away. And if either of us were to lose the other tomorrow, thirty-one years together is the history that we had, more than most."

"Right. So what's the beef?"

She has a point.

As recipients of a portion of that lion's share of the world's resources that privileged people have received in this devastatingly "successful" generation, we've come most of our way already.

Looking back over such opportunities as there have been for finding more equitable, more appropriate, more just, and more sustainable ways of comporting ourselves, we see that we -- as a couple, as a family -- could have chosen some actions more wisely, so far as our own ethical record was concerned, but the whirlwind the world may reap will not be much affected, one way or another, by us. The scale of the problems is just too great.

I could offer to share with you a glass of water, or a meal, because you are thirsty or hungry, and I should -- and sometimes I do -- but it will not change the course of the tsunami coming our way, or the distance from here to higher ground that running will not -- now -- cover.

So, given the distance to higher ground and the speed and height of the tsunami, there's little use in my worrying about the tsunami. I might be a little disturbed by the thought that a better warning system could have been installed, or that the powers that be might have decreed that the city must be built elsewhere, etc -- I know the metaphor is getting strained, but bear with me -- since this is where the jobs were, I did not move, myself, to higher ground, because there was not going to be a way for me to live there, or to offer you food or water there, unless the city came with me, so to speak.

That is, libertarian survivalist behavior is -- it's just irrational. When you fall into the ocean off the stern of the ship, sure, you swim -- it's what you do, we're programmed to keep trying to live -- or you don't. It could be a matter of choice, or of individual temperament. But the outcome is not so much in doubt when you are 500 miles from, say, Anchorage, Alaska.

So I don't feel much resentment when someone up and builds a blockhouse in the middle of nowhere, stocked with food and ammunition. That's their swim. Doesn't change the size of the ocean, but maybe they know that. So, I don't bug them about it. In fact, I enjoy practicing some of the same skills.

Nor do I think some environmentalist-activist behavior is really rational either. Given the scale of the problem, as outlined by the author of Life After the Oil Crash (whose math looks pretty irrefutable to me), haranguing someone about not having yet changed out their light bulbs is an exercise in about the same amount of multilevel futility as the survivalist's.

But, Risa," interjects Dear Reader, "you have in fact changed all your light bulbs and I've heard you recommending it, too."

Mmm-hmm.

Just because I think something's ultimately futile doesn't mean I can't indulge in it. Especially if I think, rightly or wrongly, that it's good for me, or my soul, or my neighbor's well-being, for me to do so.

By hanging around the woodstove, stirring, tasting, putting in another stick, and preparing to feed company, and also sitting by the window stitching a young friend's name into a Christmas stocking, and by sweeping the house, and by looking up fruit trees in our old Organic Gardening Encyclopedia and thinking of setting them out by the south wall, I'm enjoying myself.

And I'm not out frantically shopping, which means a lot to me right now ... on several levels ...

I'm experiencing the quietness of spirit that comes with relatively low-impact living.

Somehow I think that will pay small dividends between now and the apocalypse. Big dividends may never come of this. But quality of life is where you find it.

Suzy reigns

2011-12-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

We do have a living tree this year, in a very heavy pot, and Suzy, whose story is told below in a two-year-old post, is enshrined at its top. This year marks her sixtieth anniversary.

Repost:

We are doing without a tree this year, choosing to make a "tree" of the mantelpiece over the bricked-up fireplace by scattering fir twigs, baubles and such from one end to another, with a string of white lights. This actually has been a bit of a hit, and no one seems to think any the less of us for having decorations that can be completely cleared away in less than three minutes.

The baubles have been with us for decades, and chief among them is Suzy Snowflake, loosely based on the hit 1951 song by Rosemary Clooney -- I know I mentioned her a few weeks ago, but I've finally had a moment, between outside chores and some breadmaking, to go take a picture of her.

My mom originally made Suzy during the great railroad strikes of the early 1950s, when no money was coming into the house, and we ate black-eyed peas for supper every night. Suzy's body is a stiff, relatively heavy thread-spool cone left over from the industrial textile industries that were strong in the American South in those days.It's covered with a layer of golden foil. She has several feet of lace wrapped round her for petticoats and a dress, with a bodice formed by a length of narrow golden ribbon tied round her waist and criss-crossing her breast. She has butterfly-style wings of wire, filled in with lace tied on with more ribbon, and her whole outfit is spangled with tiny gold stars.

Suzy's original head was made by stuffing a ball of cotton in bit of cotton cloth from an old hankie or something, with eyes and a mouth stiched on in embroidery thread. I think Suzy 's current head is a bit of a come-down for her, a repair made in the early 70s I think, using a cheap Barbie knockoff's head from a dollmaking store. A pipe-cleaner halo sits a bit low between her shoulders in back. Suzy holds a wand in her left hand on which there should be two larger gummed gold stars, but I don't have any for her right now. There may have been something in her right hand, but none of us remember what.

So she's a little the worse for wear, but she's totally the household goddess/angel/totemic thingie, reverently laid away in a labeled shoebox in the first week of January every year, then, found and carefully lifted out for holiday service usually about the second week of December. There have been family trees -- first at my childhood home, then here -- and she has topped each one for fifty-eight years. This year she's making do with the mantel, but she doesn't seem to mind.

May all be well with all of you.

.

Apple surprise

2011-12-15T10:34:00.000-08:00

We all know, from a glance at my icon, that I'm kind of about apples. I think every house and apartment block in the area (city) (state) (nation) (world) should be surrounded by apple trees, with chickens and ducks running around underneath them, dodging the drops and then cleaning them up, and people coming indoors with bushel baskets of the things.

Apples and many other tree fruits can be hard to raise organically, and I often remember that my dad took a little sapling with him from our place here in Oregon in his camper truck, en route to Florida, only to get in a ruckus with border guards in Arizona because they didn't want him to cross their state with it (he won, kicking his case up through three layers of supervisors).

We bring in apples by the wheelbarrow load around here, and have done so since our thirty-somethings were five-somethings.

(By the way, buy your wheelbarrow in the 70s and it will last forty years ... )

We dry apples,

freeze bags of slices, make applesauce and apple butter,

juice and vinegar and cider,

and do just about everything except store them the way we store potatoes. Well, we do that too, but we don't count on it, because we don't spray, and we're not far enough from the neighbors to have returned to a balanced ecology on site, the way Greenpa has.

So this year I only kept a half-bushel of "keepers," more than half expecting, as usual, that worms would hatch in the cores and spread throughout, and the whole mess, an apple at a time, would be tossed to the chickens for a protein-rich winter snack.

But this year, not a worm.

Not one.

Zip, zilch, nada.

What's up with that?

Risa builds a fresh December apple taco

About austerity

2011-12-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

The target audience for this post is that downwardly mobile demographic formerly known as "middle class Americans." Many people in other places or circumstances already know how to live, and might wonder what the fuss is about.

I have written over 700 posts here, mostly about the joys of a simple life in the country. Occasionally I get preachy with my ruralism, largely because I strongly suspect that a complex civilization running on nonrenewables with a "just-in-time" approach to inventory puts its urban population at risk in the event of disruption.

Long, tough sentence. Okay, put it this way: live in town? Might run out of stuff to live on at the same time as everybody else. Live lightly, and you can escape much more easily if it comes to that.

So, although I know the arguments in favor of urban life as per-capita more efficient (given our present modes of distribution), those arguments always leave me asking, "what if?" And "if" does happen. There were twelve $1,000,000,000 disasters in the contiguous United States this year; a record. And we're still not over Katrina. Also, we're, I don't know if you've noticed, becoming something of a disaster ourselves. I'd say there are connections here, but that's become a hot political football, and I want to talk about something else.

This is also not about economic inequity. I'm in agreement that there's a lot of injustice on the docket right now. But one aspect of the attack of the rich on the well-being of the poor is the attack on the commons. With a strong commons, you don't need nearly so much money or possessions as you do in a world where everything is for sale, from the rich to you, in cheap quality and of dubious utility. Whether you are in the city or the country, protect your commons and your commons will protect you.

Now, on to our post.

I recognize there are compelling reasons why nine out of ten of us are still in town and that's not likely to change much ("Lord knows, I tried," weeps the inner blogista), so let's talk about urban simplicity.

Let's assume that you have work. Big assumption right now, I know. If you're running out of unemployment, it might be time to think about making some work. Grab a copy of Small Time Operator and start selling something you can make or do. Because rule one in spending less than your income is have an income. Even if you're a vegetarian selling hot dogs.

Aside from disasters (and you've done your minimum preps for those, right?), debt is likely to be your big issue. It's what's holding you back from heading for the country, if that's what you wanted, or from living the "American Dream," whatever that is. A shortage of disposable income and freedom because of, you know, the student loan, the car loan, the mortgage, and the credit cards. And you're not as happy as you thought you were going to be.

There are lots of strategies for debt reduction. Seek and ye shall find. We've used doubled mortgage payments ourselves, effectively. To make such things work, though, the first thing to do is bring outgo below income. Bring frivolous outgo to a halt and you are on your way.

"Voluntary simplicity" is touted as a proper response to modern malaise, but John Michael Greer's analysis suggests this is what people talk about when they're afraid to take the real plunge and go for the gold: voluntary poverty. Maybe it's anything but voluntary, letting that word "poverty" slip in there, but if your goal is to rise up from slavery (and debt is exactly that), it can be necessary to redirect our pride.

In the reality we've been brought up to, validated not by our own good sense but by a lifetime barrage of television and other advertising, we're supposed to aspire to "more" -- a shinier house, a shinier car, bigger and brassier parties, endless gadgets, and smarter and smarter phones, all of which which we're dumber and dumber to get in hock for. The trick is to voluntarily take pride in, not these ultimately empty and unsatisfactory acquisitions, but the opposite: de-acquisition.

If there are more than one of you, it might take a very, very serious "family meeting" to all get on the same page, but it can be very focusing to open the meeting with, "here's one thousand dollars a month we can count on for the time being; how do we get by on nine hundred?"

Sounds unrealistic, I know. Maybe your line in the sand is three times that, or more. Goodness knows, a buck is not a buck anymore. But that's going to get worse, so ... well, here's a story.

When I had my mid-life crisis awhile back, I moved (with family permission) temporarily to town for over a year. They depended on my income, so I got a budget of four hundred a month (in 1998 dollars). Here's how it was done.

First, we did research on rent. The best deal (cheapest housing) was, as it happened, two blocks from my university library job. It was what is known as a quad: a room with a vanity sink corner, sharing, from a tiny common hallway, a bathroom and kitchen with three other such rooms. They are intended for students who can't afford an apartment but don't want to live in the dorms. With heat, electric and dumpster fees, a set of shelves, a bed, two chairs, and a table, it was under three hundred a month. So I moved in.

I took with me about ten changes of clothes (good ones in which to do library reference work, mostly), a coat, a box of bathroom-y/personal hygeine-y things, a bedside clock-radio, two boxes of good books, a lamp, a couple of bowls and mugs, utensils, a good kitchen knife, a sharpening stone, and a rice steamer. You can get all these at a thrift store. Some of them I did.

I also took along a bicycle with a rear rack and pannier baskets. I had found the bike, a decent old ten-speed that still knew where six of its speeds were, leaning against a driveway fence with a sign taped to it: "Free. Take me." Best bike I ever had. With it I brought along my bike helmet, cable, padlock, and key, which I put on a keyring with my quad key.

On the bike I rode to the discount grocery store, stopping to top up the air pressure in the tires at a filling station along the way.

Inside the store I grabbed a shopping cart and sought out a twenty-five pound sack of white beans, another sack, same size, of long-grain rice, a ten pound sack of yellow onions, a ten pound bag of russety Idaho potatoes, a pound can of salt, and a family-sized jar of Italian seasoning. I also splurged for some rolled oats and a head of bok choi.

You might think all this would not go home on the bike in one trip, but it can.

I now had more than a month's food, purchased for under fifty dollars, rolling home beside me as I gripped the handlebars.

Sure, people looked at me funny. So? In most places, it's how you roll.

Back at the apartment I set up the steamer on the "dining room" table, near the wall, and loaded it with water. This was a little Sunbeam with a forty-five minute timer -- much better ones are available, but as Goodwill steamers go, it was not bad. Its plastic rice dish was long gone, but I could put a cup of rice or beans or diced potatoes in one of the bowls, add the appropriate amount of water and some salt and Italian spices, set the timer, and, by and by, take out the bowl and there was dinner -- or breakfast, or lunch.

Waitaminnit! says the careful reader. Surely not rice for breakfast!

Why not? And without coffee or tea, usually. Didn't miss them at all.

Reader: But -- but --

Or beans. Or potatoes. Usually with onions. And a glass of tap water.

Reader: But you couldn't --

Yes, I could. For months on end. I lost a little weight, but in my case, that was a good thing. None of this required refrigerating, if managed carefully, and though I was charged for it, I never haunted the communal kitchen, which was a howling disaster area non-maintained by my three unmet student roomies. There was no need.

I should mention our town seems to have a good supply of unattended cherry, apple, pear, plum, and Asian pear trees and no end of blackberries, dandelions, lamb's quarters and such free for the picking, for all of which the bike baskets came in handy. And over time I got to learn how to ask grocers what they were about to throw out. When company came, I felt I was in a position to be generous.

Wind in the Willows. Arthur Rackham. Children's Imaginative Illustrations

Reader: And the rest of your time -- ?

No problem. I slept, or bathed, or ate, or thought, or went for walks or bike rides. Of course, if you are at all like me, it helps immensely to do this sort of thing in a university town. A university town has, in effect, a functional commons. I went to town meetings, galleries, museums, free concerts, free plays, and lectures. I read many books; all of my own several times and all I could carry back from the library. I spent long evenings in that library, which closed at eleven p.m. (it was only two blocks from home, remember). I had access there to not only books but music, videos if I wanted them (I generally didn't, and kept no television at home), magazines, newspapers, and of course the Internet. I worked on my volunteer project, at my own desk after my colleagues had gone home for the day, and produced first drafts of this, this, this, and this. I was also in school (full-time employees could take classes for next to nothing), and when I could I would take the bus and go do a stint of parenting and farm upkeep.

Reader: [Weakly]: On -- on $400 a month?

Yes, with change left over. One family goal was to pay off the country place ASAP. I couldn't spend too much on my mid-life crisis because we were making double payments. It was a twenty year mortgage and the idea was to clear it in less than fifteen. Which we did.

And I want to emphasize that I am telling you this because if you think things through, and have a bit of luck to go with it (I had no major illness during that time), you can live on far, far less than you may currently think you will need, and perhaps even be happy doing so.

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A commons in action : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2072383/Eccentric-town-Todmorden-growing-ALL-veg.html

Extra low cost seed starting kit

2011-12-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

So, here's an idea I had, don't know if it works.

Tear the lid off an egg carton. As you use eggs, just tear off one end of the shell (the ones shown here are from our ducks) and place it in the carton after the contents have been dumped in the pan or whatever. When the carton is full, take it out to the potting bench.

Add potting medium and seeds.

Water eggs. Place carton in greenhouse, cold frame, whatever makes you happy.

I would not overwater these, as they don't drain, though it would be easy enough to fix that, for example with a dremel. The plan here is to get some seedlings up (these are Forellenschluss lettuce) and then transplant. The method will be to crack the egg as I'm about to put it in the hole, pot, whatever. What say ye?

lettuce in winter

The potting room was a miserable dank
shed, trash-chocked, roofed in plastic, blackberries
ingrown amid bedlam. she dragged it all into

the light, sifting for tools or nails, then
consigning the rest to dump runs. With one son,
the quiet one, she roofed the room with scraps,

tucking, there, or here, oddly-sized old windows.
To the south, a sliding door turned on its side
served for greenhouse glass. A friend's offer

of a chimney to salvage solved the question of how
to floor. With her other son, the tall one, she
rented a long-legged ladder for picking bricks

from the air, frightened at every ragged breath.
They piled them by the plant-room door, and the girl,
last child, brimful of jokes and laughter, brought

bricks to her from the pile, which she set face up
in a herringbone pattern. They swept sand and mortar
into the cracks, and danced in the sunbeans then.

Now for a bench, new-painted green for the color
of wishing, and pots of all sizes, flats too,
with a tall can for watering. She hankered for lettuce

in winter, and sowed the flats in October. After
a month, wild geese and their musical throats gone south,
she noted her seedlings spindly and sad, so taking

her hammer and two-by sixes, built a quick coldframe
with the other half of the always helpful sliding
door. By the sunny south wall in the duck pen she framed it,

and dibbled the seedlings within. They liked that,
but a darkness comes on in December; after a full
day, full week, one comes home exhausted, to eat,

to sleep, not to water gardens. One thing
only has saved the lettuce: the ducks do not like
coming in for the night. She goes into the dark

to disturb them; they rush about complaining;
the madwoman hops and chuckles. She locks them away
from coyotes, and turns, as in afterthought, to visit

her seedlings. By feel she gives them water, her hands
stretching toward summer in the unseen leaves.

From Collected Poems

The good life

2011-12-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

Processing beets to simmer in vinegar and spices on the wood stove

It seems like in all my online communities at once, we are all suddenly asking one another, "what is the good life?" Most of the answers are now necessarily contexted in a simple reality: there are fewer and fewer rural people. The National Geographic, perhaps under the influence of its new TV partner News Corp., has now gone so far as to suggest saving the Earth by dropping whatever we're doing in the boonies and heading for the nearest apartment complex.

I get that it takes six times as much copper for me to discuss this with you than if I lived in town, and all that. But I think that if the plug gets pulled (fun link), as well as more likely scenarios I can think of when reviewing the situation we're all now in, I am and would be happier where I am and feel somewhat justified, despite the Tolkien quote concerning advice, in recommending this life.

Beloved and I read books in the Seventies that had a lasting impact on our thinking about how to live, among them this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. They influenced everything that we have done since.

But the one that impacted my personal outlook the most, despite some criticisms of the authors that have surfaced since, was this one. Helen and Scott Nearing pared down, pared down, and pared down. They bought land as cheaply as they could, avoided debt, dug, sowed, composted, built with native materials, found items and salvaged objects, made implements, bartered, ate simply, and entertained themselves and their guests at home with acoustic instruments and with reading, talking, debate, and contemplation. Their regimen of strenuous effort for a short part of the day and rest and relaxation thereafter, with an extremely simple and low-cost diet, appears to have added many disease-free and senility-free years to their lives.

I would not or could not be the Nearings; I'm not as social or socialist as they were, and I remain mildly omnivorous. But I do believe in paring down, and I do believe in subsistence. My own book about this, written about ten years ago, does not really do these thoughts justice, though it tries: it recommends watching the nearest mountain (if you have one nearby) and having a cup of tea -- as opposed to busying ourselves with running to big box stores for huge television sets.

You can do this in an urban setting. I have. But access to land matters; no one can exist without food, and as farmers disappear and corporations take over, almost everyone's food is fast diminishing in quality and becoming downright dangerous. And as the climate, abetted by greed in general and the climate obtuseness of the American establishment in particular, destabilizes, access will become an issue. If we know this, and we are independent-minded enough not to wish to become a burden on others, might we not seek a way to produce, and not merely consume?

Work, as defined by the industrialists, the bankers and the politicians, has come to mean, more and more, a cubicle existence in exchange for chits which we may exchange for toys which are made of poisions. But especially for food -- which has also been poisoned, with our water and our air. Henry Kissinger said, "Control food and you control the people."

Do you wish to be controlled?

Apples and garlic in the kitchen; the empty bucket at left held beets until today

A way out of the present difficulties, though perhaps it will not do for all, is to reverse the trend of urbanization, at least family by family, as way opens. As we pare down and refocus and become more productive -- not productive of poisonous toys and needless services, but of our own necessaries and subsistence -- I submit that we will be happier.

Not to mention revolutionary.

Edit: a friend wrote essentially the same post much better than I did: http://www.squidoo.com/live-the-good-life, writing at exactly the same time. "Great minds..." ^_^

Garden Year 2011

2011-12-03T14:59:00.000-08:00

Latest in the series of annual farm summaries. Some seasons are missing as your blogista was away much of the year. For more videos see: http://www.youtube.com/user/risasb.

Here it is December already

2011-12-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

The ducks and their adoptive mother, Susannah the goose, along with the chickens, have now spent two weeks snootling through the garden beds, with the result that the whole garden has been knocked flat, and you can't tell by looking where the beds are supposed to be. But we know, and we'll be raking everything back into place before spring. This is sheet composting at its best.

The hens have rolled out a number of potatoes we missed, and I've plodded around, once every few days, and scooped them up. These typically have had more solar exposure than we like, and are a bit bitter, but they make fine seed potatoes. We're moving potato production away from the garden to a bed across the creek, and so I really appreciate spud discovery by the flocks.

En route with the spuds to the washing faucet on the south side of the house, I notice the herb bed is still in pretty good shape.

We moved the basil indoors two weeks ago, but the sage, marjoram, oregano, and of course rosemary are hanging in. We've only had about four actual frosts, and here it is December already.

The washed spuds from today's gather pose here with a fava.

Foliage on favas makes a decent winter green, even in salad, but once the seed pods set, it turns bitter. A few of the spuds are not sunburned, so I will probably make a colcannon with them and some leaves from the favas. Add in some winter squash from the ever-present stock pot on the wood stove, with diced dandelions and spring onions (they winter over or start early here) and you have a nice winter soup.

The scrapbook

2011-11-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

Here are links to a set of galleries I've built on Flickr. They serve to me as reminders about my views of how to live. I look through them and rededicate myself to my goals of low-impact, healthy, beautiful living.

Fermented foods

Railcars

Victory Gardens

We can because we can!

Subsistence dehydration

Women's Land Army

Off Grid

Urban farms

Smallholders

Allotments

kinhin

Zazen, Shikantaza 只管打坐

Zen places

Zen people

Keep it simple

Transportationdevolution

Hand tools

Women of the World

Kitchens as the Heart of...

How to live

Mix & match

2011-11-29T22:06:00.000-08:00

Back in the summer, our beans looked like this:

Right foreground, your basic green bean. We forget the variety, they were planted from last year's crop. Kind of a Blue Lake thingy. Center, farther away, are the runner beans, which shot up ten foot poles and doubled back, coming after us like triffids. But we stood our ground and ate a lot of them. Last year there were two kinds: Scarlet, and Hungarian. We knew what they had done, behind our backs, but we were kind of curious to see how it would turn out. So we planted the two kinds again this year, knowing they had become more or less one kind that would yield multiple characteristics.

Here's what we have saved for seed. Sure enough, the runners had melded. In the three jars at left, the dark blue came out like Scarlets, and the cream with brown spots look like Hungarians. But the violet ones are trying to look like both. Over on the right you have the Blue Lake thingies. They don't cross with the runners.

We'll plant these next year and see what comes of all this. These new runners are not as pretty as either the Scarlets or the Hungarians, but they taste about the same. Over time maybe we'll come up with our own variety. Mendelian mix & match.

Food club

2011-11-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, you're out beyond the city limits, the garden is put to bed, the bean pot's simmering, the cat's asleep on your chair, you don't feel like prepping next year's spud bed in this much wind, and you know you're not quite ready to pull everything out of the bedroom so you can paint.

And maybe you're not prepared to envision yourself running a fruit stand or CSA and spending time with agricultural regulators of one kind or another. Yet, anyway.

What to do?

Well, you can get to know your local organic wholesaler and see if they do food clubs.

Our wholesaler requires your club to buy a minimum of $150 a month. That's really all. You murmur among yourselves as to who wants what when where and how, then a call is placed or email sent, and the next day your representative appears at the dock with a check and heads home to the scales (you'll need scales) to do any splitting of orders (most things are in 25 or 50 pound bags). Then typically either everyone comes over for a distribution party or you head out with the prepped load and meet folks at a prearranged location.

We've tended to do this the latter way as I am out in the sticks and my friends all still work in town. Benefits include: I get to see them once in a while, I get kudos, my friends and I get wholesale prices on bulk items that are organically grown, wholesome and nutritious, we get to educate ourselves on where our eats come from and what it takes to move food around, and we get to support a burgeoning local bean-and-grain farming and supply chain.

The food club can be about as informal as you want. With a full-blown co-op, you can do more, and for more people, but it's more complex and there are more opportunities for some of those involved to burn out on the inevitable stress. You need not invest so much of yourself in the food club that when it starts to go down, and they can do so for many reasons, just like a co-op or business, your heart and soul need not go down with it.

And should the need arise, you can always start it up again. Assuming there are still farmers, wholesalers and trucks when that time comes.

Temp fence up, birds in

2011-11-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

About this time every year, we open up the potager (kitchen garden) for a month-long bill and beak treatment. This helps some with slugs and insect pests as well as weeds, weed seeds, and out-of-season volunteer plants. It also stirs the sheet-composted layer throughout and adds manure.

To do this, we run a section of used welded-wire fence around from one corner to the other, near the house, in such a way that the birds invest the garden with mucking up our walkways. We still have access through a gate we have by the driveway, the usual use of which is to import bales of straw and wheelbarrow loads of grass clippings and straw.

We also set up a five-gallon bucket of water, as ducks can die of asphyxiation from mud-encrusted beaks if they can't snortle in water from time to time, and it's a long way back to the barn from here.

When everything is ready, the gate from the garden to the far end of the "chicken moat" is thrown open. The waterfowl and the "wild bunch" chickens (Australorps) can be counted on to find this expansive opportunity first thing in the morning. The more sedate Araucanas and the rooster, however, must be driven at least once or they'll miss the whole show.

a) House b) garage c) wellhouse d) garden shed e) barn/poultry house f) garden beds g) fruit trees h) chicken moat i) optional goats/sheep j) truck access k) walkway l) shade trees such as mature cherry or walnut. Not shown: plantings of tea, spices, berries, grapes, lavender, etc. m) place for humans to zone out.

Here is a crude drawing of the sort of thing we're trying to do, though it does not represent our actual layout. The homestead (or least the part of it on the house's side of the creek) is surrounded at the perimeter by a tall deer fence, on which we are encouraging blackberries, grapes and such. Ten to twenty feet in is the poultry fence, forming in effect a moat -- the birds' pasture is the outer ring of the property. This keeps them active, as they have a large enough territory but it's long and narrow. Our home, yard, and garden have the "interior lines" -- thus we don't have to spend all our time thinking about chicken poop underfoot or tracking into the house.

The round things inside the chicken moat are the majority of the orchard trees. Apples and such that drop and are not retrieved by us are the traditional transition zone for some fruit pests -- but the birds get them, as well as the fruit. The birds also interdict slugs and snails that are migrating toward the garden. Those that get past -- well, we hope the birds can find them in November and December, when they are our guests in the inner sanctum.

Winter squash routines begin

2011-11-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

Snow on the hills again, a little lower.

I've been processing squash for the poultry -- about one fruit every two to three days. There's plenty of winter squash as well as pumpkins this year, unlike last year -- our worst garden summer ever here -- but also we have a lot of zuke-kins.

These are crossbred seeds saved from 2010 or 2011 that resulted in large green or yellow blimps a la zucchini, on zucchini-type vines, but yellow fleshed and hard like pumpkin. Some weigh over twenty pounds. They don't store very well, so we are using them up first.

Here you can see the zuke-kins peeping out from under the winter collection.

There is a stock pot dedicated to life atop our wood heat stove, which resides in the dining area. Sometimes it's heating dishwashing water; sometimes it's processing squash or pumpkin. I cut up a squash and put the pieces in the hot water overnight, and the next day I drain the rich water into the "wet" compost, cool the squash, and toss it over the poultry fence.

Yes, it makes a mess, but that's why we live a little ways out past the suburbs. In this picture a piece of new squash is at center, the peeling left over from the last one is at lower left, and the stripped greens are the remnants of whole kale and chard tossed over last month.

The birds appreciate this menu. The chickens quickly clean up the seeds and the ducks and goose go for the softened flesh. Then the chickens entertain themselves with the rind until it's cleaned to the "bone."

Sometimes the squash is so big the pieces don't all fit in the pot. I could wait and do half now and half later, but sometimes you want to make a pie or a squash soup. Around here, one doesn't try to do that too often, especially the pies. This family maxes out on "pumpkin" quickly, even if you throw a lot of nutmeg and sugar at them. The soup seems a little more sophisticated, and I for one can eat it quite often.

When I'm doing this I like to set aside some seed from our share of the squash for salting and roasting. We have a veggie processing sink in the laundry room with a short bit of hose and a brass nozzle, and the seeds can sit in a colander and have their pulp blasted away. Drain, bring into the kitchen, add some grapeseed oil and salt (I also add veggie seasoning [dehydrated leaf vegs, crumbled] as I do to everything), move the seeds to a small iron skillet, and set that on the stove along with everything else. Below, at left, you see the soup sections of the squash simmering, the stockpot of poultry feed is simmering in the middle, and a light lunch of salted "pumpkin" seeds is roasting at right.

Yes, the stovetop is a bit stained. If you're going to do this kind of thing, it's going to get that "lived-in" (in this case, "lived-on") look. But the heat's radiating to the house anyway -- so why not use it?

Snow job

2011-11-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

The hills around us are white today, but we've only gotten the one flurry so far -- bit of a "snow job." But because we expect a relatively severe freeze, I'm moving smallish fall-garden plants to the greenhouse. There's room to do this because while I was away, the greenhouse was necessarily unattended, a heat spell came through, and the place exploded with cabbage worms, who wiped out the kale, leaving behind some bedraggled chard, beets, onions, peas, and surprisingly enough, cabbage.

They've died down now. I've covered the path with burlap and shored up the plastic where it was pooling rain, and we're back in business. Outside temperature is 38F, greenhouse is a balmy 54.

Indoors, I'm making some pre-mixed cereal for quick hot meals.

Contains wheat, rye, barley, oats, quinoa, TVP, veggie crumble, powdered milk, salt, stevia. If you're gluten-sensitive maybe leave out the wheat or substitute what you like. One cup to 1 1/2 cup water in a bowl, or as you like it. Being incredibly lazy and not fond of cleaning wheat-glued pots, I zap for 99 seconds at 1K watts, with some dried apple slices or apple butter, and it's ready to eat. YMMV, we just don't hang out too close to the zapper.

When I have more patience, I use the wood stove. There's a bit of a trick to this. We have a couple of nice large trivets and a small one. Pots of water move from stove top to trivet as needed, which is the usual use for these; but you can pop the little one into a flat-bottomed Dutch oven and set your cereal bowl on top of that. No trivets? Canning jar rings work well.

Cover with the iron lid and fuggeddabout it while you're transplanting in the potting shed. Come back a couple of hours later and you have cereal or soup or whatever. You can even bake bread in the bowl, if you like. Takes a long time on a heating stove, though. This is another reason, if there are two or more of you, to at least try to find a way to have someone at home full time. This kind of work adds value and isn't taxed to death.

Pour yourself some tea water from the teakettle while you're about it; if your tea is homegrown like much of ours, I can't think of much cheaper eats. If you can move out past the suburbs a bit, and grow your own fuel, all the better. Now, have your hearty lunch and look out the window.

There. Isn't this better than TV?

Tea for two

2011-11-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

Planted two camellia sinensis (tea). These are a Russian cultivar, supposed to be able to handle our winters, should be delivering green tea within two to five years.

A gathering in

2011-11-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

The mulberry trees are transplanted, the pickled beets are canned and spuds lifted. The tea (camellia sinensis) bushes, raspberry canes, replacement kiwis, and red grape vines haven't arrived. What's a girl to do?

Winter storms have begun passing over Stony Run, and Risa finds herself sitting in her corner with a lap blanket more, and digging in the mud less, as the days diminish and the nights lengthen. She knows it's the other way round in, say, New Zealand at the moment, but for her, November is a time for appreciating the things that have been gathered in -- apple juice, pickled beets, tomato sauce -- and reading and thinking, as well as making lists and planning. One hopes for another spring, and the resources with which to honor its potential.

Pictured here is the reference section in the dining room, across from the wood stove. It's a rotating collection -- John Seymour is on the beside table, for instance -- but you can generally count on certain things staying put until wanted, such as the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (here's why we like our older edition).

It's worth noting that most of the books shown were found, over time, in the free box at a local used book store. They've discontinued that service, Risa mourns its demise.

John Michael Greer is the current exponent, in blogland, of things Seventies, and, looking over her collection, Risa must admit she's cut from the same cloth. Yes, there were things we didn't know then, but the rough-and-ready experimentalism of the time -- how much heat can you trap in a used hot-water heater if you peel its insulation back, paint it black, and park it in its own "cold" frame? -- was useful then, is useful now, and does not wait for the attention of venture capitalists and the mercy of the 1%. The answer to the above question, for example, is "quite a lot" -- you can lower your electric bill by making such a thing out of scraps -- though you might not want to discuss it with your county code enforcers in some areas, if it's hooked up to the house for that purpose.

Right next to the reference collection are the white boards, with the homestead map and the year's planned activities, with assigned beds -- mismatched gardening styles dictate this. There's a dance among the reference section, the boards, the seed catalogs, the teapot on the wood stove, and the gathered-in things.

In other words, just because we homesteaders are sitting in our corners under lap blankets at the moment doesn't mean we're not farming ...

A particularly sunny smile

2011-11-09T17:49:00.000-08:00

When you want to serve pickled beets for dinner and there are beets in the garden, one thing can lead to another.

Risa went out and picked about half the year's beets, a mixed lot of Chioggia and Detroit Dark Red, and "strangled" them, i.e. wrung off the leaves, which she tossed over the fence to the chickens, and brought the roots in to wash.

She's finally got a saucepan, a really big one that kind of resembles a wok, which she knows will make seven pints of canning contents if filled to within an inch or so of the top.

So she cut up the beets, along with an onion, and threw in some honey and some homemade vinegar and spices, right up to the rim of the pot almost, and set it all to simmer while lifting more potatoes and weeding in the greenhouse. Later, she got out the smaller of the two water-bath canners and swapped it onto the burner that was cooking the beets, then filled seven jars from the pot, lidded, ringed and labeled them (she just writes on the lid -- "BEETS 11/11" in this case), set them in the water bath, and there in the bottom of the pot were the pickled beets she wanted to serve with dinner.

She'll rinse the pan, pour out the rinse into the compost bucket, and set it aside to wash, then take the jars off the boil, set them out to cool, and use the hot water from the canner to wash some dishes. Oh, and stop to take a portrait of the jars: pickled beets have a particularly sunny smile, she finds.

A lot to offer

2011-11-08T12:15:00.000-08:00

Would love to just sit inside and sip cider while contemplating the fall foliage and the newly put-to-bed beds:

... but there are things to do.

One is to hunt down stray potatoes. Risa had to go away for eight weeks, leaving a number of things undone, including spud lifting. The main patch grew over in weeds very quickly:

But that doesn't mean there's nothing there. With her ho-mi and kneeling bench, Risa pokes about underneath the grass roots:

These are Yukon, German Butterball, and Red. Reds are down in production this year, but yellows -- both kinds -- are up. You never know. Risa's maintaining three patches in rotation, so as to get away with using her own potatoes for seed ... what with the price of seed potatoes these days.

She doesn't neglect the smaller spuds, down to about marble size, as they can be planted as seed spuds and the results seem to be just fine.

She'll sort these into two categories: 1) large, without solanine (green patches) for eating this winter, and 2) everything else, for planting. Five wheelbarrow loads should just about do it, y'think? Imagine how well this would go if she'd hill them up and water and weed them like she's supposed to! Spuds,well, for the lazy or absentee farmer, they have a lot to offer, it seems.

Everywhere at once

2011-11-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

So, it is time to get caught up a bit.

Frost hit the garden while Risa was away:

There's still plenty to eat out there, so she picks the remaining tomatoes and squash --

-- harvests the sunflower stems for kindling --

-- sets them out to dry in the sunny part of the woodshed --

-- and stores the squash and pumpkins indoors. She'll make tomato sauce later, after harvesting a few onions.

At the rate we're going, it will be next week or even later before the potatoes are lifted. But who can be everywhere at once?

How to get there

2011-11-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

Four thousand mile Amtrak trips. Coach.

How to get there is, you have your laptop, a batch of favorite DVDs, a book you're writing, tons of food, and a water bottle (not that kind) to refill at every opportunity. And a blanket. (unless you want to rent one). You people with the iPads and smart phones won't need the DVDs and don't have to wait to get to Washington DC to do your Internet time. The rest of us ... well, at least there's 110 at every seat now. Headset or earbud required, or as Risa often does it, just captions.

It helps to go during slack season when you have a good chance to get a pair of seats to yourself. Pull up the leg lifts, or whatever they are called, and spread out horizontally with your blanket. It's not the sleeping car, but it works.

In the daytime, which, on transcontinental trips, for some reason, is hard to come by, take pictures. There's plenty of good stuff. Here's the Octsnowber event getting underway in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia.

Plenty of things to think about when you look at the cities. Here are some Sunday drivers in Chicago.

Spend time with other people. The Lounge car is good for this. But downstairs there are six dollar sandwiches and seven dollar beers, which is why you brought your own stuff.

And eventually, Home Sweet Home will appear in your viewfinder.

She can hardly wait

2011-10-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

Palm sunrise

After eight weeks away, more or less, Risa is en route home. She's writing this from the train station in Washington, DC. A very busy place. She knows she's moved a long way north overnight, because the temperature was about 80 (F) when she clambered about the Silver Meteor, and here her thousands of fellow travelers are bundled up against an October snowstorm that is assailing many of their destinations.

She's heard she will be lifting potatoes, cutting cornstalks and sunflower stalks, spreading cardboard for the next potato patch, and doing repairs, repairs, repairs. In the rain. In the rain. In the rain. She can hardly wait. She's seen enough SUVs and superstores to last any sane person several lifetimes.

Economia

2011-10-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

A place of refuge

Risa continues to walk in an effort to stay out of trouble (with her waistline, among other things) and write (she's working on a treeplanter's memoir). She has tickets for a journey home, though, things in Florida being as they are, she doesn't know for how long.

Beloved is holding down the fort with help, but the farm, except for the poultry, isn't making it onto a lot of the chore lists -- tomato vines, cornstalks, sunchoke and sunflower stalks are still standing, and the potatoes haven't been lifted. Also, Risa's wholesale food club has had to skip two months.

While zooming around on errands in (alas, the shame) an SUV, Risa's hungry eyes seek out evidence of agriculture and simplicity, and she's not finding much. Here's a hayfield near Satsuma:

While looking it over, she mused on agricultural culture, so to speak: the round bales give evidence of the presence of one or more very large balers, which are a sign of dependence on petroleum-based (and coal-fired or nuclear electricity-based) industries and transportation, with paved roads and all that goes with that. So, it's thought of as a bucolic rural scene, but in terms of the drain-down of resources and the production of pollutants, this might as well be downtown New York City.

On the phone to her son last night, she shared some of her thoughts, remembering an article she had seen about Europe's economic unravelings -- that the troubles are erupting in those countries that basically have no oil of their own, but whose citizens want the same lifestyle as those of countries that do have oil.

In a country, or world, in which one expects to live within one's means, transportation (and much labor) may tend to look like this:

Vietnam Diary

Just so we know where we stand. Most people in the world actually live this way, though advertising and other media are clamoring to give them aspiration they, and we, would have been better off without. There is the checkbook you're used to balancing, and there is the one which throws in the ignored costs. Your ultimate banker is Mother Nature.

And your grandkids are gonna need a helluva bailout.

Son listens to the rant, then points out: "In the country you get to do a lot of cool stuff but you make a lot of carbon emissions coming into town. Me, I'm rice and veggies and a bicycle. Middle class lifestyle on next to nothing, just for not having a car."

"Yes," says Risa, " well, somebody has to practice what I preach."

Gentlemen

2011-10-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Four days of rain and wind, and even a few fatalities; Risa does not remember Eastern weather being this exciting but apparently the new normal is as advertised. She has been cooking, eating, driving her mom to the grocery store, and cooking and eating, and the weather is her latest excuse for stumping around on her walks like an old elephant Carrying a walking stick, no less.

During a break in the weather, she attended a birthday party for a couple of old Marines and got to eat without being the one doing the cooking, as well as listen to harrowing tales of Korea and Vietnam. The canal was very still and pretty, but a bit too civilized; gators that try to colonize it are usually disposed of in the interests of the hundreds of small-breed dogs that live in the vicinity.

The neighborhood is very pretty, but there is a lot of wear around the edges. Many houses are no longer occupied; about half of these wear half-hearted "for sale" signs year after year, and the weeds become an issue as they can harbor enormous Eastern Diamondback rattlers. The snakes are beneficial; they live on pesky squirrels, rats and armadillos, but stepping on one can be problematical.

It's not an urban area, which is hard for Risa to realize as it's very high density for what she thinks of as rural. With practice, she has come to regard herself as immured in a wild area, peppered with rattlers, wild pigs, bears, and other interesting things, but also with a high population of of socially maladjusted young males. She's cultivating the old Marines for added security; to a man, they are what in former times were called gentlemen.

Starvation Ridge

2011-10-07T07:34:00.001-07:00

STARVATION RIDGE

By Risa Bear

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Karen Rutledge had grown up in seclusion from a devastated world. But now she was alone in the open to face the unknown. Would she find a place among those seeking to rebuild civilization? This second edition contains the novels These Will I Bring, Abide the Fire, and Bright in the Skies in one volume.

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They turn and wave

2011-10-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

Risa is in Florida assisting her parents. Twice a day, to keep herself mentally and physically healthy, she walks through the retirement park to the river and back, a distance of just under six miles a day. There is a dock at the turnaround point, and sometimes there is a heron there to greet her.

The park's not unattractive, and there are live oaks with Spanish moss along almost the entire route. She dresses in white, with a white hat, and ambles along at a reasonable pace, using a favorite cane so as not to build up too much fluid on her left knee. She carries water. The hottest day last week was 98F, so the walks are very early and very late. She thinks about Dogen as she walks, who said "You must let fall (release) body and mind." Curbing one's expectations while retaining one's courage and perseverance is key.

Most people remain indoors in this park, watching television. It is a waiting place, with a hint of sadness. But sometimes some step out to visit neighbors. As Risa passes by, they turn and wave.

Three trains

2011-09-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Empire Builder

The Capitol Limited

The Silver Meteor

Photos credit: Wikimedia Commons

Insurance

2011-09-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

All packed. Now here is a report on the greenhouse.

Regular readers (there are a few) may remember we had to kick the ducks out of the outside pen because a raccoon was ripping the poultry netting and using that space to enter the barn and take a bite out of a different chicken every night. All the birds had one entrance, through the barn, so now everyone stays locked in the barn all night, not a mode the ducks prefer but at least the predation has stopped for now.

So Risa moved several years' accumulation of extremely rich bedding from the pen, found the soil very compacted, tilled the remaining rich dirt, and started a fall garden in July. That might have been a bit early, but you do things things when you can do them; who knew all of our summer heat would come in September?

Here's the pen right before tilling:

Here's the garden growing:

And here's the "greenhouse."

Well, really, just a very kludged lean-to grow tunnel. The budget did not really admit of anything pretty; so Risa spread three odd-shaped pieces of plastic (left over from other jobs) over the poultry netting as best she could, then salvaged boards to attach the bottoms and is holding the whole thing down with salvaged eighteen-gauge wire from around the place. The idea is to keep the family in kale, collards, beets, onions, peas, cabbage, and chard in her absence. These things sometimes make it through the winter here, but sometimes they don't. The polyethylene is insurance.

Also, the cover is intended to have these plants get by on well water instead of rain water. In times like these, that's insurance too. Such as it is.

AWOL soon

2011-09-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

Risa is getting ready for another journey related to the health of her parents, and so she's ... busy ... battening down the hatches and doing what she "can" for the harvest. In aid of which, here's a repost from a much colder September, 2009:

The fall rainstorm has arrived. We had been reading about it on the weather sites for a week, and knew from the way they posted a weather alert and warned travelers to dress warm and consider the possibility of snow above six thousand feet, that this one would arrive more or less on time. It poses a hazard to our tomatoes, blackberries, drying-on-the-vine beanpods, to our dehydrating schedule, and to anything left lying about outside which we'd be happier to have brought in.

So we got busy after work on Friday and harvested every red (or orange) tomato in sight, along with French beans, filberts, zucchini, eggplant, apples, and all the blackberries we could see in the gathering dusk.

The weather came in about 4:30 in the morning, and Beloved awoke to listen the big raindrops hammering on the roof and pouring onto the parched earth. I, the deaf one, slept through it all, as usual.

Today, Saturday, Beloved has to work all day and so I am the housewife du jour, baking bread, roasting a duck, canning applesauce, cracking filberts and freezing them in batches, and putting up dried apples in jars. Everything is labeled with what it is and the year -- '09. The first jars we ever labeled had the year '77. Thirty-two years of 'putting food by'!

Oh, my. And I still sometimes find a canning lid dated from the 70s and 80s; it's like archaeology.

We did a lot more of this sort of thing then, as we were real homesteaders and worked as either migrant labor or seasonally in the valley where we lived. We were proud of our shelf upon shelf and rows upon rows of canning jars, our five-gallon buckets of grains and beans, and the venison in our freezer. Having food ahead made a lot of sense to us, with our irregular income.

In the 90s, we grew and stored quite a bit less and shopped more, as we had 'careers' and were soccer moms as well. But as that part of our lives fades away, we're getting serious again. The garden has doubled and re-doubled in the last couple of years, and I'm trying to remember how to do things with the resulting harvest.

We have been blanching and freezing a lot of vegetables right along, because that seems simplest, though it isn't, necessarily, and there are reasons, good ones, to get away from using a freezer. Ours is an efficient chest freezer, medium sized, but it does constantly draw current and is vulnerable to a long power outage. Since there's seldom much meat in it any more, loss would not be much of a financial blow as it would to a steak-and-pork-chops family, but it would still hurt. So we think about diversifying our assets.

We do still have the five-gallon buckets, and have added galvanized trash cans mounted on casters for storing various flours and grains. These we don't grow ourselves, and we're aware how hard they might be to obtain during a long emergency -- but at least we have a two years' supply at any one time.

In our kitchen quite a bit of the space is taken up with gallon jars (we think we need even more of these) filled with beans and grains, which we top up from time to time from the 5-gallon lots; also there are jars of dried vegetables and herbs, apples, zukes, pears, and tomatoes, from the farm, as well as a zealously guarded jar of fair-trade Colombian coffee.

The dehydrating has gone well this summer, and I'm hoping for one more week of good sun after this storm, to put out some more apples and tomatoes before taking in the dry-box for the winter. I hope to spend the remainder of the long weekend firewooding and making a start on getting down the awnings in preparation for the winterizing.

Turning the radio to my favorite station, which will play blues, sixties classics, gospel, and old-time country (as in Jimmy Rogers old-time) throughout the day, I start the morning slicing apples, then cook them down while preparing seven Mason jars for the water-bath. We get away with leaving the peelings in the applesauce by dicing the slices up fairly small. I add some cinnamon and nutmeg to my batches, as the whim takes me.

While the applesauce cooks, I make up a batch of dough with 32 ounces of water, which comes out to four small loaves of bread to bake on a cookie sheet. Setting the dough aside to rise, I run back and forth between stirring the applesauce and cracking filberts. When the applesauce is turned off and the water bath is coming to a boil, I shape the loaves and put them in the oven to rise, then pour the applesauce into the funnel over the mason jars, wipe their lips for luck, lid and ring them, and pop them into the water bath. Then I work up the thawing duck with some sliced onions and leeks and a bay leaf in salt water and sherry in the roasting pan, and set it aside to bake after the bread.

The water bath is done, so I retrieve the jars and cool them, check the bread, turn on the oven, note the time, and go crack filberts. When I have a 12 oz. jar full, I write 'filberts' and '09' on a sandwich baggie, dump the jar into the baggie, seal it, and set it in the bulging freezer. If we hadn't taken out the duck I don't know where I would have put the filberts. And there are more of them out there in the rain, calling to me.

The bread comes out and is shoveled onto the drying rack, the duck goes into the oven, I un-ring the applesauce jars and pencil 'applesauce' and '09' onto the lids, then stack the jars in a row on the cold-room pantry shelves.

I pause, trying to visualize future labels. ''10'. ''11'. ''12'. With any luck, what will be my last one? ''22'? ''31'? In September of ''31' I would be eighty-two years old, my mother's present age. She's had two strokes, a myocardial infarction, dozens of cardiac arrests, throat cancer, has debilitating arthritis and rheumatism, and is legally blind. She doesn't can anymore and hasn't for many years.

Time to cut up some green beans, zucchini and tomatoes to go with the duck dinner tonight.

I'm well aware that my farming and preserving and cooking is not of the best quality, and not all that cost effective, and doesn't do as much as I might wish toward self-sufficiency and all that. If civilization collapsed, where would I get canning lids in two years?

But I enjoy it. Beats watching commercials.

Yesterday morning, a friend took me out for coffee.

"So, you're retiring in three weeks."

"Mm-hmm."

"That's said to be a big transition, dangerous to a lot of people."

"How so?"

"Well, they find they don't have anything to do."

My coffee almost went up my nose.

Fresh kale and mulled cider

2011-09-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Apple season has begun, and Risa has climbed down from the roof-sealing chore long enough to pick, grind, "press" and can.

Two wheelbarrow loads made thirty quarts of apple juice. There are easily enough apples out there to do another thirty quarts. The drying, saucing, and freezing are done -- and experiments with "keeping" haven't turned out well lately -- the cold room isn't cold enough to keep worms dormant (unsprayed apples).

So that means juicing.

Thirty quarts is not so very much from this many apples, but the budget has not yet admitted a fruit press into our stable of tools. With so many young apple and pear trees, plus grape vines, coming on, that's certainly on the wish list, but it's as far as it has gotten -- other expenses come first. [ed. -- several readers have shown me kludged presses of just the sort I would make, myself -- the problem with these is if anyone sees me using one, they won't drink the cider. It's a public relations problem.]

This year's procedure is the same as last year's. Chop each apple into about four chunks, throw it into the electric shredder (dedicated for this purpose), throw the buckets of pulp into a suspended cloth bag, and let gravity (mostly) strain the pulp into a clean tub. Risa did tie up the bag with several loops of baling twine, slip sticks through the loops and twist, but a lot of the juice stayed with the pulp. That's okay -- the chickens get the pulp, and they don't waste the juice that's in it.

Primitive procedures of this kind are an instance of resiliency -- not letting the lack of an expensive gadget keep you from doing a thing. Labor will often get you what you want, within reasonable tolerances, in the absence of money to do it more efficiently. And there's a hidden inefficiency in gadget-buying:

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day (H.D. Thoreau).

The next few days are going to be our big heat wave of the year -- upper nineties. More than a hundred thousand acres are burning just over the hills, and even the very grasshoppers look parched. But our mornings are dropping into the forties, the orb-weaver spiders are staking out the best blackberries, and geese are flying low over the roofing job. Soon it will be time to cover the greenhouse.

What's in there, mostly, is kale, onions, cabbage, beets, chard, and peas, planted in late July. Everything has matured faster than anticipated, and we can't really use much of it. The chickens are helping as best they can, by craning their necks through the poultry netting to peck away all the kale they can reach. This saves cutting it to bring to them, so Risa will put off covering as long as she can.

As this "greenhouse" is only a failed poultry pen (the raccoons were gnawing through the netting), it will need some redesigning. the poles that stretch the netting will be dismounted, then the plastic spread on and made fast, then the poles will be re-installed to tighten the skin from within. Right now the netting is taller than the barn, and rain water from the barn roof would have nowhere to go.

There are a few summer things in this garden as well, planted out simply because they were in the last flats. The squash turned out to be crookneck, not much favored by anyone but Risa. There is a little room in the freezer, so she'll harvest these, dice them, spice them, lightly oil them, zap them, bag them, and tuck them away for January, to be consumed with a little fresh kale and mulled cider, when no one else is at home.

Home-grown love

2011-09-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

Daughter was here for a lovely visit and when she got home, posted on social media this photo of loot acquired from the "parental units." Aww ...

Recently, Risa read an article, which she cannot find now, about an observed cultural phenomenon among Vietnamese, or Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S., to the effect that the current elder generation worked to send the children to college, then to acquire access to a bit of land, and upon retirement concentrates on supplying their extended family with vegetables. It's absolutely the way to go and Risa strongly recommends it: if you're done with the nine to five and you have family, get out there and feed them. Remember, subsistence is income and not taxed; and world agriculture is in trouble and will get worse. Subsistence strikes at the very heart of the rich-me-poor-you system currently in place, so wherever you can grow some vegs (hopefully non-Monsanto), please! Do so. And send th' kids home with home-grown love.

Post-apocalyptic writing project done!

2011-09-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

For those interested -- warning: it's not The Road but it's not for everyone ... One-volume edition of Starvation Ridge should be availalble before the holidays ...

BRIGHT IN THE SKIES

By risa bear

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Paperback, 235 pages

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Book III of Starvation Ridge. The people of the valley must fight a war for survival in the midst of fire, drought, and famine. Will they be able to stay, or must they join the ranks of the ragged Pilgrims?

September morn

2011-09-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

September opens with a question, because the tomatoes began coming in today, ditto the apples and blackberries, but health issues in the family, three thousand miles away, mean that Risa could be called away at any moment, losing the harvest. She really wants this one, because rain this winter could render the garden, which has been lightly dusted with cesium, even more unhealthy through accumulation.

So how much can she do? It's a marathon week. Blackberries are going into the freezer and canning jars, tomatoes into the dehyradator and canning jars, and apples are also going into the dehydrator and canning jars. Whether there will be a juicing operation -- for which many quart jars await -- remains to be seen. There is also roof work to be done, which was put off by a busy August elsewhere. Risa's -- well -- frantic.

Fortunately apples can be processed quickly. We have a gadget which probably came from Lehman's -- an apple corer-slicer. It's basically a round, two-handled knife with thirteen blades.

Slam it down over the apple and you get a core and fourteen slices, ready to dehydrate or cook down for sauce/apple butter. We don't peel these, so since we don't want lo-o-o-ng peelings in our apple butter, we score the apple around its equator with a paring knife before slamming. Nothing could be simpler.

Here we have apples on the right and apples and tomatoes on the left. We keep it really simple with the tomatoes as well. Risa grabs a tomato, slices its top off (thinly), flips it over onto the cutting board, and slices again down the sides from the top, resulting in five to nine pieces that have the peeling on them, and a hulking, pulpy core that has none -- it's been "peeled." The ones with peeling go in the dehydrator, and the middles go, with some onion, veggie crumble, salt, and spices into the cookpot for canning.

Uneven quantities are evened up with a bit of judicious blending. A salsa might have a touch of apple in it, or apple butter might be brightened up with a little blackberry juice. We're not trying to be chefs here, just resilient.

Save the children of Fukushima

2011-08-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

Evacuate FUKUSHIMA - 福島の子供を守れ by moonkaii

The other thing

2011-08-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Well, we went. This was to be a fast route over a portion of last year's epic paddle. Fifty-eight miles to the pickup point in Albany and only two days to do it in. We'd be picked up at seven in the evening, so the second day's paddle was to be extended to pull it off.

We succeeded, and Risa's arms are not as sore as she could have expected. But she was not as mentally and physically prepared for this journey, after climbing South Sister, as she had meant to be. She slipped stepping into the boat at the put-in and got one leg wet, and she and Beloved, the shuttle driver, felt a premonition. But, ever the rationalist, Risa put blade to water and went round the bend in the river, barely remembering to look back and wave.

Every year, of course, a dynamic water system like the Willamette is completely different. This year the water was higher and faster than last year, and all the deadly cottonwood "sweepers" had shifted to make new traps. There was never a dull moment, seldom an opportunity to hook up boats to drift and be chummy. It was work. Beautiful work, but work.

And then came the railroad bridge at Harrisburg. "These places can be dangerous," said Risa, as she aimed the kayak to pass a smallish, unimpressive whirlpool loaded with snags. The next thing she knew she was in ten feet of water next to an upside down boat, going in circles, emitting a muffled whimper. She reached for, and got, her passing paddle, righted the 'yak, draped her arms over it, and kicked rather feebly in imitation of a swimmer. Daughter backpaddled to give her a tailhook to cling to.

"Tow me to that gravel bank," Risa said. "Kinda slowly."

Daughter's calm, methodical navigation past the snags was superb, and halfway to the gravel bank, Risa's feet hit welcome bottom. She walked ashore under her own power, cold water pouring out of everything from her hat to her shoes.

The gravel bank was the perfect recovery place -- total southern exposure, not strewn with jetsam, and with some welcome shelter from the eternal river headwind.

Daughter helped unpack and dismantle everything. Clothing and other articles were spread in the sun to dry. The sleeping bag, which had been underwater in Risa's dry bag for at least four minutes, was in pretty good shape. The rest was wetter than the river. All the electronics were gone; double-ziplocked is not enough, as it turns out.

No, wait -- Daughter, who had seen wet cell phones before, took over. "Your screen's about to go. But I think I can get one call out." Beloved received a message assuring her we were intact; and would she please bring a camera to the pick-up?

Risa's had been stripped from a Velcroed pocket in her PFD and was now lying, shiny and new, somewhere among the rocks and snags in ten feet of whirlpool.

Then the phone, as predicted, died. Daughter set it aside and served a great lunch.

Risa stood up and finished stripping down to her bra and panties. She noticed the bra, a bit of padded vanity, was heavy, and so leaned over and wooshed what seemed like a half gallon of snowmelt onto the rocks and sand. Daughter was amused.

"Mommy, I'm always going to remember this trip as you standing here in your underwear!"

Well, it beats the other thing she could have ended up remembering.

Just ... happy to be here.

Let's hope

2011-08-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

Finally it looks somewhat August-like around here; a few paltry tomatoes, but plenty of zucchinis and beans, and even some cucumbers. We are tidying up for our annual open house, Meteor Night, though this year it falls on the full moon, so everyone will be lucky if they spot even one meteor -- perhaps we should have called it "Teahouse of the August Moon." If you show up, bring a dinner dish, maybe some breakfast makings, a flashlight, warm layered clothing, bedding, and a sense of humor. And let's try to keep it down, we have neighbors ...

The corn is Golden Bantam, a sign of short seasons (getting shorter in this weird locality).

Runner beans having a banner year. We will dry all of these, some for seed, some to bake.

Squash and pumpkins doing their thing. Bees are ignoring them though, preferring the runner beans. Risa may have to start "heading" blossoms to encourage the fruit that has already set. She's already doing this with the tomatoes.

A couple of gallons of green beans have been picked small; these will be allowed to make seed.

Peas are still happy, but we are running out of edible lettuce.

Delicatas are turning color and look like they will have time to mature. Let's hope.

This is the fall garden in the former duck pen. Photo-clicking readers may spot some ducks upper right, and the neighbor's boarded horses at top. Here we have mostly kale, chard, cabbage, squash, tomatoes, onions. The tomatoes and squash were set out very late and are mostly an experiment. Plastic is planned to go over this greenhouse in October and stay up through next summer, with eggplants, peppers and tomatoes mostly, come late spring (and squash in place of the present tomatoes).

Always lots of duck eggs

2011-08-05T13:02:00.000-07:00

A cool-summer garden in August. The beans and runner beans have decided to participate, and the sunflowers at right, are adding height. Don't ask Risa about tomatoes, though, or you'll have a serious whiner on your hands. Next year the green house stays up all summer!

In this view you can see that the corn (we punted and went for the old standby, Bantam) might just make, and there's fruit on all the winter squash vines, though it's running way behind.

We've harvested and cured about fifteen pounds of assorted garlic.

What is this stuff, you ask. Well, we've an incurable infestation of Japanese knotweed. Yes, you can eat the shoots, but there's always something on hand we like lots better, and the poultry agree with us. Sheep and goats like it, but we're between those. We demand that most things on the premises make themselves useful in some way; so we harvest the knotweed for compost, beanpoles (believe it or not) and -- kindling. These foot long pieces will dry nicely before winter, and furnish a kindling that will light directly from the match and burn long enough to get the smaller firelogs interested.

Here are a couple of pics from 2009 to help whet your appetite for scrounging this kind of poor people's bamboo:

Today, the first blackberry harvest! And of course there's always lots of duck eggs.

Everyone slept soundly

2011-08-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Risa was abducted by her two youngest as a guide, having been, in younger days, to the top of South Sister (elev. 10,358 feet) three times. She fell for as it had not yet occurred to her the effect that a twelve mile hike with five thousand feet of elevation gain can have on a merely moderately healthy sixty-two-year-old.

Well, now she knows.

But she's glad she went. Here we are above, still fresh after climbing up the steep trail from Devils Lake (departure 7 a.m.) to Wickiup Plain. Our destination is glimpsed right between Son's and Daughter's shoulders.

On previous hikes, heat had been the main issue; this time it was snow. It being August, we failed to google the conditions, and apparently everyone but us knew that things this year were just shy of rope and ice axe. About a third of the journey involved kick-stepping, so we found it quite tiring and even a little dangerous.

Fortunately from the bottom of Collier to the summit, the snow was all gone along the traditional summit trail. If you click on (enlarge) the photo above, and know where to look, you can see people on the trail silhouetted against snow near the summit, upper left. I know some who dismiss South as a cakewalk, but to us this was a serious endeavor. We ate at Collier, noted that the weather was coming in and it was getting late, and did we want to go for it? Adventure is, y'know, what happens when you risk things not really knowing the outcome, so we decided on adventure.

Here's that weather coming in. It was clear everywhere but the summit; South is big enough that it's its own weather breeder. That green splotch is the little tarn at the base of Collier Glacier. Photo taken from about 9500 feet. The wind, by this time was doing thirty-five miles an hour, gusting to near fifty.

Risa, braced against the wind, does her high-fashion thing near the top. She's happy she made it but a little sad because she knows she's likely never coming here again. Her body's not truly up to it anymore. But, oh! so much beauty to be seen from here ...

On the way home at last. Daughter looks back over the long snow field we spent much of the afternoon descending. Risa's left knee gave out pretty much, soon after this, and the remainder of the descent took a lot out of her. We got to the car at 8:30 p.m., and reached our "base camp" (a friend's cabin) at 10 p.m.

Everyone slept soundly...

... and a fabulous breakfast was served by Daughter.

The shade of the maple

2011-07-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

There is certainly enough to do. The young people are here helping, and the kitchen is gradually sinking under the weight of the detritus from snack, coffee breaks, juicing and the like.

Old people don't firewood very fast when there are so many other things to do, like moving straw bales and hoses, planting a fall garden, or harvesting garlic. None of this stops wild geese from flying south, which they have been doing since mid-July (!!). The woodpile has fallen farther and farther behind in the schedule, and now if Risa cuts any more green stuff it will still be green by the time we need it, say, in February.

Consequently we got onto Craigslist and found a nice man who is clearing a woodlot behind his house in town: good straight clear second-growth Douglas fir, some of which had died on the stump and seasoned itself. He brought us two cords for a decent price. Risa keeps a radio going, on a good old-time country station (think Jimmy Rogers and Patsy Cline) and walks back and forth, bringing two sticks at a time. The day is warming up, so the youngsters plan to take on the evening shift, after the shade of the maple falls over the woodpile.

That's why they call it elephant garlic

2011-07-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

Risa has a variety of pleasant tasks in hand and a little bit of help for a change: Last Son is home the next week or month or so, between apartments. He's watering fruit trees with duck pond water, a job that's getting tough for his sixty-two-year-old mom, while she plants fall peas, pulls garlic, firewoods a coppiced willow, and moves hoses.

This year, mirabile dictu, Risa remembered to behead the garlics, which helps the bulb plump out and make cloves. We're not that into scapes, but love the tiny little flowers, so we "plant" the scapes and, while they don't root like tomato branches or such, they stay alive long enough to bloom. Meanwhile the elephant garlic grows to softball size, or even bigger --but then, that's why they call it elephant garlic, neh? And when the leaves begin to brown, she forks them out to lie in the sun and dry for a few days.

Egging ourselves on

2011-07-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Risa noticed it was time to do goose eggs again, an annual event. Since she needed a new bicycle pump, she picked one up and also a new basketball needle to go with it, as this is her tool of choice for blowing goose eggs. There were thirty-eight this year; Susannah is getting older. Here is a repost of how we do this:

Every year I have to learn all over again -- the margin of error, with the high-speed grinder and the basketball pump, is relatively small. I'm sure there are better ways to go about this, but this is what we do:

We gather up containers for the freezer, and a Sharpie for writing on the container, spread out some newspaper, find a round toothpick, an old-fashioned milk bottle or a glass carafe, the basketball pump, the high-speed Dremel-style tool (ours is a Craftsman), and a bowl of soapy, salty water.

With the little cone-shaped grindstone, we zip off a bit of shell at each end, about as big as the head on a six-penny box nail, and punch through the membrane with the toothpick, stirring up the yolk, then place the egg on top of a suitably wide-mouthed bottle and gently pressurize the contents with the basketball needle. You can just barely see a small rubber gasket here, cut from a flat rubber band, to seal the contact between egg and needle.

Every second egg we pour off the eggs into a freezer container, so that if we get into a bad egg (never has happened) we won't waste a lot. Mark the container "Goose ~~'10~~ '11." Wash the eggshell inside and out (draw some soapy salt water into the shell and shake vigorously, then blow out). Repeat. Freeze containers, sun-dry shells.

In a few days they are ready to decorate or sell to Pisanki painters ... whatever suits ya. I like to just sit by the table and look at them.

The naked trellis

2011-07-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

Mid-July in the main garden; the beans are reaching for the sky but the peas (4th try) stopped and made peas at about eighteen inches in height -- same kind as grew six feet in prior years -- so their trellis remains naked. Corn and squash dominate the foreground, with lots of volunteer potatoes, garlic, and nasturtium. Grapes, apples, compost heaps and "chicken moat" glimpsed at upper left.

Risa has been reducing the last of the "craigslist wood" (eleven free truckloads in 2009), the knottiest rounds, by notching with the electric chainsaw before putting in a wedge. Some rounds she has simply sliced through the middle and then assaulted with the maul. This results in some interesting stacking.

The saw is a relic from, apparently, about 1963. A Skilsaw, made in USA. It was given to her as scrap, but it's the gift that keeps on giving. You can't get such a saw made nowadays. You could tape the trigger closed and let it run all day and it will not overheat, apparently.

Finished! The smallwood tucked around the pine is from maples, ashes and willows planted and coppiced on the premises. Nothing, maybe, gives a sense of perspective like firewooding a tree you planted yourself. Sad and joyful all mixed together.

The dehydrators are kept going constantly at this time of year. Foliage that would otherwise go to waste -- side leaves and bolted heads of lettuce, chard, kale, choi, spinach, broccoli, collards, cabbage, and turnip greens -- even radish tops -- along with your choice of herbs -- don't forget the dandelions -- are crisped by the sun and hand crumbled, with the stems picked out and tossed. A bushel of greens will make a quart of veggie crumble, good in breads, soups, green drinks, main dishes, side dishes, and salads. You could live on potatoes and veggie crumble if you had to, using any colcannon recipe -- we prefer fresh kale, but ... y'know ... think survival foods ...

You've earned it

2011-07-07T23:56:00.000-07:00

Everything happening at once: paint south exterior wall of barn white to increase fall and spring radiance in the polytunnel/greenhouse. Spread straw in the projected path between the beds. Fork over the beds. Break up forked clogs with seldom-seen-out-of-storage but nifty electric Mantis. Go mowing in a patch of clover across the creek. Spread grass clippings on beds. Plant out, with kneeler and ho-mi, the things that actually came up in the three-inch pots in the flats: kale, collards, chard, and some summer squash (later, peas and favas -- say, late August). Water. Wait and see how it all turns out -- meanwhile, take a nap -- you've earned it.

Next year in Jerusalem

2011-07-04T18:57:00.000-07:00

Risa knows it's actually hot in some places -- Phoenix had 118F recently -- but to her, after being one of the Earth's cold spots since about November, the air in her vicinity is wilting her at 83F. A spot of shade in the late afternoon, creeping over the tomatoes and the star-gazing bed, looks good to her, and so she falls into the star-gazing bed and takes a nap.

Later, it's time for another wheelbarrow load. What has happened, is there was a war between Stony Run Farm and a raccoon whose superpower is climbing up the pen netting, unwinding enough chicken wire to slip in, and taking three bites from a chicken. Ten dead chickens later, none of our old tricks have availed, and it has become necessary to abandon the pen in favor of shutting everyone -- ducks, chickens, goose -- into the barn.

All ten victims were so little chewed that they have been salvaged, and there is a whole lot more broth and such in the freezer than we had anticipated.

The barn's back door is nailed shut, and the front door has been extensively rebuilt. Welded wire fencing has been wrapped round the barn and buried in the earth several inches. So far so good. Nobody died over the last four days.

This leaves us with the question what to do with the pen, which is an L-shaped enclosure wrapped around the southeast corner of the barn, and which looks ... a lot ... like ... a polytunnel/greenhouse!

We had one before, but it suffered from inadequate bracing in today's stronger winds, and from an explosion of veggie-snacking slugs. The one on the back of the barn, though, would have chickens and ducks all around it every day, which might help. Worth a try.

Risa has opened a doorway into the space (which had been cut off from its only previous door) from the potting shed:

Now she's removing most of an eight-inch-deep layer of straw bedding mixed with duck poo, to get access to some actual soil:

Yes, we know, but you can't always muck out when you should, and we were guilty of just throwing new on top of old for a long time. We're much better in the barn. All this is heading for the compost heap. We like to sheet compost and skip the heap, but we've already set up the garden's nutrition for this year and this stuff would burn the plants. Risa's added an extra bin to handle the overflow:

What was the question in the far back? Oh, the mailbox. Yes, well, that's got hand tools in it. Where to grab a ho-mi or a nozzle on the way out to the beds.

So, anyway, the plan is to lay out a path in the polytunnel, fork over the goop that's in there to aerate it a bit, and start a fall garden. Then put the plastic on. Then next year, try it for tomatoes and peppers. If we like what happens, maybe gather materials to switch to a glass house. "Next year in Jerusalem," as they say.

Very impatient

2011-07-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

The July photo-op for the garden shows there has been some growth, especially among the grape vines. Squashes are showing some willingness, and the corn may actually happen. Our fourth try with peas appears to show promise, and there will, by the look of things be some decent beans and runner beans. The brassicas are hearty, and the tomatoes have lush foliage, though not as many blossoms, perhaps, as we would like to see.

You may remember the potato patch Risa laid out awhile back by simply spreading newspaper on the ground, putting down seed spuds, and throwing straw over them:

Looks like this now: (peek over the blackberries):

Not too bad. The plastic at left is next year's patch. You can see from the already-brown slope above the riparian green line that some of the "pasture" is very poor -- all cat's ears and queen-anne's lace. If you dig down an inch up there it's all small round stones, egg-size or larger, all packed together with no appreciable soil. That's why the spud patches are in the flood zone. At least there's something there for them to eat.

At this time of the year everything has to be done all at once. This morning, Risa is in the pie cherry tree. She'll get about a gallon, all her ladder can reach. The rest will go to the mated pair of varied thrushes, who are very impatient for her to go away!

Rescuing volunteer spuds

2011-06-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Strange clouds -- low, heavy-looking, yet raggedy around the edges like mares-tails, and apt to refract sunlight from odd corners -- have been scudding through for weeks. Risa doesn't know quite what to make of them. She's seen others complain online about these clouds too -- in California, Washington, and British Columbia. The stuff of conspiracy theory, apparently.

Meanwhile, it has rained little enough that she's ready to begin watering. Here's the reason for those fifty-foot beds: a fifty-foot sprinkler hose.

Beloved is transplanting today, so Risa's been assigned to remove all the volunteer potatoes from a couple of designated beds, which will specialize in runner bean, squash, and cucumbers. There are already new potatoes under such vines, so Risa got out her ho-mi and grabbled for them -- the proper word for seeking out new potatoes. This was more of a seek-and-destroy than true grabbling, but just as fun. Beloved watched the new tool at work from the corner of her eye, and later, when taking a switchel break, said:

"I, uh, I want one of those."

June garden tour

2011-06-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

A slow year, but better so far than the drowning we got in 2010. Clockwise from left, perennial flower/mint bed, chicken moat, sunchokes. orchard (in chicken moat), Planet Flag, Grapes, greens/beans bed, tomato bed with tomatoes and kale.

A closer look at the greens bed: lettuce, bok choi, chard, collards, elephant garlic mostly.

Looking across the tomatoes toward what's left of the (once one-acre) lawn. Just enough room for badminton.

Looking back toward the house from the lower beds. Mostly you can see rhubarb, grapes, an apple tree, and the compost heaps. Note mailbox at left full of garden tools. White roof aids in fighting off heat waves (just in case).

Thrifty

2011-06-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

The gardens in the Pacific Northwest these days are slow starters (last year was almost a non-starter). The lettuce, collards, kale and bok choi (which has bolted) have gotten rolling at last, but the peas are all of six inches tall, no more than the beans. At such times we look to our perennials and overwintered items to give us a morale boost. In the picture above, there's plenty of rhubarb, elephant garlic, and volunteer potatoes.

Some of the spuds have come up where they are not wanted, such as in the paths. Instead of just ripping them out or hoeing the top growth away, Risa explores the ground underneath them for "new potatoes:"

Here is a mother spud with her daughters. The "mother," a spud that was missed in last year's harvest, is often inedible by this time, but in a pinch you can use some of them:

To show that "it can be done," let's wash the old and the young together ...

cut them to bite size. About half the old spud proved to be usable ...

... and add a bit of oil and some of our specialty, solar dried and ground vegetable leaves (such as the side foliage from kale, cabbages, collards, chard, and spinach). it's our primary spice hereabouts. Stir, cover, and zap for four and a half minutes or steam for fifteen or so (your steamer may vary), and it's a perfect side dish or stand-alone lunch. Thrifty and not at all bad.

Take a hike

2011-06-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

To take her mind off some things a bit, Risa went up to Fall Creek with Last Son; we walked for three hours. That covered only a small portion of the trail; it's over twenty miles long. It's not far at all from Stony Run.

As you can immediately grasp, we're not really the best farm country. But we're fairly scenic!

He's the same age as Risa was when she came to work in these woods ... no, actually about two years older! How time flies when you're having fun. We identified Douglas fir, Western hemlock, Bigleaf maple, Viney maple, Cascara, Pacific yew, mountain willow, mountain alder, thimbleberry, salmonberry, false Solomon's seal, skunk cabbage, trillium, twinflower, bleeding heart, wood sorrel, maidenhair fern, sword fern, bracken, miner's lettuce, wild ginger, vanilla leaf. And banana slugs.

Oh, and a merganser. The young man observed, from a pretty good ways away, that the duck did not have the broad bill that our farm ducks or mallards have. Do they eat different stuff? "Bingo," said Risa. "They eat fish!" "Ahh!" he said. "That explains it." Risa was really proud of him.

Contemplates washing his muddy boots

Mission accomplished

Holes to go

2011-06-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

Risa wants to try out her new Ho-mi, or "Korean Hoe." The weather for once is cooperating. Let's gather up our flats of peas, corn, and butternut squash and our kneeling bench and head out. Wait! First, let's admire the irises and stuff. Sorry about the o rnamental poppies, they're over two weeks behind, this year.

So, let's get down to it; ground level. Risa doesn't know what she'd do without her bench.

First, we pull away the mulch. This is a lasagna garden, so one of the layers down there is flattened cardboard (with plastic tape and labels removed). It's very soggy and pulls aside right along with the straw, compost and grass clippings.

Next, open the earth a little. The tool is heavy enough to whack right in, one-handed -- just like swinging a hammer or hatchet. Ignore the camera strap at stage right!

Grab a pot, invert it, squeeze, lift it away, flip the contents into the hole right-side-up, and tamp.

Now pull back some of the mulch over the "hill" to hide the tender starts from the starlings, who are being bad this year. They're attracted by the "disturbed soil" look of the black potting mix, seems like. They dig up seeds and crack them, hence the emphasis on pots this year.

Done? Great! Bump down the bed a ways; only seventy-one more holes to go...

These will outlast us

2011-06-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Risa's oldest has been here and brought his stunning wife and fabulous daughters, so blogging has been among the things held in abeyance while granddaughterly activities were in full swing. So many blessings! And now the nest is empty once again...

As it is still raining cats & dogs (and they seem to be fighting on their way down), let's stay indoors and admire the future of gardening at Stony Run, there being not much of a gardening present.

Beloved's trowel has gone missing and she needs a traditional trowel -- can't use Risa's, as Risa's has been modified to work like a traditional Korean tool, the Ho-mi. Very different work style (arthritis in different joints). But it's a cheap model, and always threatening to fall apart. So Risa has ordered a hers-and-hers matching set:

They are both by the same company and have gel-filled handles to reduce shock.

We're not used to laying out quite so much cash to acquire things of this kind, but the reasoning here is that it is hoped these will outlast us.

Healthy stuff

2011-05-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

So, this being our most popular thing to post on, here, let's be thorough. You all love to garden, yes?

[Crowd roars.]

And you all love your turnip greens, right?

[Roar subsides considerably.]

Well, okay, here's what ya do. First, get some surplus or freebie windows and mount them on boxes. Put holes in the ends of the boxes, so there will be inflow from below and outflow from above, and screen the holes to reduce bug traffic.

Second, grow lots of leafy greens. (Unless you're concerned there will be a lot of cesium on them, which, alas, is not going to be impossible. But we won't dwell on it here.)

Third, cut-and-come-again with your greens (and your herbs, to taste):

Fourth, put 'em in your box(es) in at least moderately sunny weather, aimed at the sun. Risa uses a window screen or some egg cartons to hold everything off the back of the box and improve circulation:

Fifth, gather the dried stuff, strip the leaf matter off stems and veins --

-- sixth, shred with air-blending --

or run it through a universal grinder for a finer texture, mixing veg species as you go:

Risa's current mix, shown here, includes, in more or less descending order: collard greens, kale, turnip greens, spinach, chard, beet greens, lettuce, dandelions, cabbages, elephant garlic leaves, chives, basil, rosemary, thyme, sage, marjoram. But whatever suits ya! So seventh, we store ours in a big wide-mouthed apothecary jar on the counter and grab a pinch for whatever we're baking, cooking, blending -- keeps for years. Healthy stuff, yes?

[Crowd murmurs mostly in assent.]

Well, you don't have to spoon it right into your mouth. Make everything you like and just add some. We'll maybe skip it on the ice cream, though. Here's some on hard-boiled eggs in a steamed salad.

You like?

[Crowd roars.]

They'll be put to use

2011-05-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

These are Buckskin bush beans, with what looks to be a few sports harking back to some kind of black bean. Risa found them at a sustainability fair two years ago, about 1/2 of a pint mason jar full, and they were advertised as drought resistant, so for two bucks she thought she would try them. They were tucked into the potato patch across the creek, and after a few initial waterings to see them through infancy, allowed only one watering every two weeks thereafter, with a deep mulch. Come fall, after the potato harvest, she lifted the "bushes" (they were very small plants) and wheelbarrowed them into the potting shed to be shelled later, and then was interrupted by a family emergency on the other end of the continent. A few days ago, she got round to shelling the beans -- which were in the pod for eight months! -- that might explain why some of those shown are rather shrivelly.
There were some losses each time they were transported, as the pods like to split and dump their beans, like sweet peas. Nevertheless the end product, for very little labor, was a half gallon of dried beans that were not grown in the regular garden beds. She doesn't plan to repeat the experiment -- these beans seem intended for field use with some kind of harvester, and she prefers pole beans. But they'll be put to use sometime in chili or baked beans.

100 poems

2011-05-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

New blog -- (We all need another blog, right?) -- will eventually, other things being equal, contain 101 posts.

A self-indulgent exercise, but one Risa hopes will do her good: rendering her book 100 poems into blog form, à la Starvation Ridge. The poems were tossed off, without much editing, during the space of ten days, after she'd seen a copy of a book containing all available Hokusai prints from "One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, As Told By the Old Nurse" -- Hokusai's loose interpretation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. Going back over these helps keep her from obsessing about some things currently going on in Japan/the world.

Summer flats

2011-05-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Risa went to the reservoir for the first time in months, to practice kayaking in case she gets to make the repeat Willamette River end-to-end trip, this time with daughter. Out of habit, she took along her fishing gear and rigged to troll while paddling; the results made a nice dinner along with potatoes and onions -- first dinner outside, this year!

Afterward there were chores to do; Beloved renewed everyone's feed and water -- currently at Stony Run there are twenty chickens, twenty ducks, and two geese. Risa brought in all the mint she'd dried for tea, then went to the potting shed to water the summer flats: runner beans, corn, several kinds of summer and winter squash, beets, lettuce.

Beloved brought in the winter's house plants to keep the flats company.

Library presentation

2011-05-19T18:55:00.000-07:00

Beloved is one of the happy employees shown (0:48 and 3:26). They're happy because they have a mission and they're a good and compatible team -- doing their part to preserve the commons!

Outside chores

2011-05-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Risa, impatient as ever, has put in the tomatoes in very coolish ground. The good news is they show no sign of shock, because the continuing rainy weather has been kind to transplants. She hopes it's also because she watered-in using about a tablespoon full of milk powder and sugar per plant, which seems to have been enjoyed by other tomato starts in days gone by. These starts are from a small organic business just getting going about five miles away, owned by a family friend. They are Sungold, Stupice, Black Prince, and Amish Paste, spaced four feet on a diagonal zigzag pattern, with kale starts on the opposite dogleg.

Here we have a bushel of mint beginning to solar dry. Even with the cloud cover, the heat in the box has steamed up the window in ten minutes.

A second bushel. There's lots more mint; Risa needs to make more of these dryers. If there's ever another bumper crop of tomatoes, like in 2007 or 2008, she'll need them all.

The chickens watched the whole process of harvesting and setting up, and now they are bored and picking at the mulch around a young pear tree. They only like grass clippings if you mulch something with it, hence the wire cage. In the background you can see a fresh stump; sadly the plums got a nasty case of a leaf-shriveling virus and had to go. Risa may put quince trees in their place.

When you're done with outside chores, "Chicken soup with rice/Is very nice." Shown here with homegrown zukes, onions, veg-flake spices, and, umm, homegrown chicken ...

Mucking-out day

2011-05-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

A real farm day at last! Risa built a pen for the new chicks inside the barn, on the floor underneath the entire row of nesting boxes, of hardware cloth. It sticks out in a "L" shape at the end, with a chicken wire lid, for handling food and water and changing light bulbs if necessary. The chicks like it because there is real dirt with real bugs in it under the new straw.

Then she went out and scythed all the comfrey and spread it over the grass clippings on the garden beds. From the coverage that resulted, she thinks she's got about 1/3 the comfrey plants she needs. Where, oh where to put them?

Here's the same scene later in the day. Last Son mucked out the barn and spread the bedding over the comfrey, and on other beds as well.. He did a good job -- about twelve wheelbarrow loads. Risa was mowing the chicken moat and poultry pastures meanwhile, and Beloved worked around the barn changing water and updating feed and such.

Here's the renewed chicken moat, with plenty of bird action. The grass clippings were placed inside the wire enclosures of the young fruit trees. Risa has noticed that the chickens will not touch grass clippings that are thrown to them, but will peck and scratch at it endlessly if it's used to mulch trees. Hence the wire cages.

Susannah, the goose at far right, is in laying mode and was distressed to find the barn mucked out. We spread straw in her shelter in the outside pen and she stood looking at it, miffed, for a good fifteen minutes before settling in. Sylvester, her consort, shrieked at her to get on with it -- as if he were anxious about his immortality.

Seeing red

2011-05-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

So here is the future goat barn in red -- the stain will fade in a year or so and the east and north walls will match better than shown here -- the north wall being steel and the new east wall being assorted scrap lumber. The idea is that it matches the poultry barn, shown here undergoing similar maintenance a few years ago:

Probably next winter or the next, GWATCDR, when more free lumber has accumulated, Risa will put in a floor in a third of the building and add milking stanchions. Between now and then, if you have a line on a bummer lamb, drop her a line ...

Newly defined space

2011-05-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

Today, Risa begins collecting Social Security. She's also eligible for a fifteen percent discount on Amtrak, and other goodies. At least she's not using a walker yet!

Risa has enclosed the "goat barn." Next, a coat of barn red (this was requested).

It's always thrilling to see a newly defined space for the first time. The wall and windows are all recycled from free materials.

Meanwhile, in the old barn, new life. These are supposed to be all Australorps, but the guy at the feed store appears to have scooped up an Americauna among them. Oh, well.

Not a lot going on in the garden, but here are a collard and a kale getting ready for seed saving.

Goat barn in progress

2011-05-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

The upper barn, a simple stamping shed, will be rehabbed into a goat barn.

There were hundreds of pounds of fir branches and debris on the roof. The branches made five wheelbarrow loads of firewood, and the sweepings made about as much compost.

An industrial grade push broom can be one of your best friends.

A lifetime partnership

2011-05-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Not entirely trusting the spring weather, Risa has left off planting after putting out the cole starts and peas, and is back to winter tasks. She's replacing the poultry fencing near the house, which had been cobbled together from scraps, with nice new stuff. The old bits will go to surround another potato patch.

Yes, this is not a general-purpose how-to photo. Fence stretching can have safety issues. You don't see a hard hat and safety goggles here. But it's not barbed wire or anything that will be highly tensioned; she's just straightening out about two tee posts' worth of 48" welded wire at a time. For that, the come-along and length of steel pipe have always sufficed.

Risa has owned the come-along for almost forty years. Last week, the pressed steel nub finally came off the end of its cable. She thought over buying a new come-along, but things are not made the way they once were. So she tied a knot in the end of the cable with a nut and bolt through the knot and that is holding well. With any luck, she and the come-along will go out together after a lifetime partnership.

Homestead TV

2011-05-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

Risa returns from semitropical captivity to find Stony Run overrun.

Day two -- looks better already

Time to build a pen for the new Khaki Campbells

Susannah, the goose, calls to them to follow her. Sylvester, the gander, will have nothing of it. He body-blocks her and hisses at them. New channel for us to watch.

Update: Monday, planted out the flats and some seeds: lettuce, kale, collards, chard, beets, spinach, leeks.