Ah, hindsight

In the seventies, once we had settled upon each other as life partners, we made a number of careful purchases that reflected our mutually agreed-upon goals. Land, of course, and seed; lumber and hardware and windows and an Aladdin lamp; tools for outdoor work, and tools for indoor work.

One of our indoor tools was a Corona hand-cranked flour mill. Like many others, we were very proud of our mill, as it symbolized for us independence and "self-sufficiency." But, again like many others, we found over time that the self is not sufficient for easily or conveniently making flour at the end of a long day of land-clearing, logging, firewooding, venison butchering, childcare, hand-washing of clothes, construction, bulldozer maintenance, and sock mending. Some things had to give, and so the mill made fewer and fewer appearances on the kitchen counter, and its stand-in, the sack of whole-grain Red Mill flour, became the principal player.

We never sold or gave the mill away, however, and it traveled with us from the Oregon coast range to Pennsylvania and then back to the Willamette Valley, where we reside today. You never know when you might need to make some flour, yes?

And I worked for the University for twenty-two years and never needed to make flour.

So here I am the stay-at-home housewife at last and it's seriously winter and the creek is over its banks and it's dark out there and I need to clean house and I just have no oomph and what's around here to eat, a little tired of potatoes and a little tired of winter squash and don't want cabbage and a little tired of eggs and a little tired of beets and a little tired of rice and chicken broth and I could make spaghetti to cheer me up but don't feel like putting together the sauce and I really shouldn't wipe out the walnuts and what will become of me if I start in on the baker's chocolate and anyway what's in the pantry, and -- oh hey, here's the old Corona mill.

Hm. Probably has less than an hour of use on those steel burrs. So I dig it out and wash it up and dry it on the wood stove and set it up on the kitchen counter.

One problem we had for a decade or so was that the mill, which attaches with a wing-nut bolt, needs more torque applied to the crank than the mill can stand still for without the bolt being first applied to the counter with such force that it will mar the countertop. You can use something to pad it, but the slippage factor is still, well, inconvenient. But our present counter was once a big shop table, made of two-by-fours and four-by-fours, and doesn't mind being modified, so, noticing two slots on the foot of the mill's stand for screws, I hunter-gathered about for a couple of drywall screws and a Phillip's-head screwdriver, and in short order the mill was fixed in place.

The other issue the mill had before was that it didn't make flour so much as it made cracked wheat, even on the tightest setting with which we could still turn the crank. To get flour, it seemed necessary to put the contents of the receiving bowl back through the mill two or three times, which was the real deal-killer for us as would-be bakers on a tight schedule.

But this time what I have on my mind is porridge. Mush. Gruel. Whatever. Hot cereal. Comfort food for sitting right by the wood stove and watching the eternal rains come sheeting down.

I pour in about a cup of wheat berries, half that of barley, half that of rye, and half that of amaranth seeds. And crank away.

The bowl fills reasonably quickly with what I can see at a glance is going to be a perfectly good hot cereal, mixed with boiling water and seasoned with a bit of salt and butter.

And I can see that it's not all cracked grain. Some of it is, but some of it is clearly flour.

Why didn't we, all those years, make cracked wheat and sift it for bread flour? That would have been easy enough, I should think.

Ah, hindsight.

She doesn't seem to mind

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 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.
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Intended for burning

Firewooding home grown trees gives a sense of satisfaction.

It's primary-production income that can be used for heat, cooking, light, or as a trade item.

We're working on the two cottonwoods that were cut last week; about two thirds of the wood has made it into the pile.

You can see that we use the smallwood -- everything between twig size -- say, 3/4 inch -- and round size -- 6" diameter and up, with anything over 8" split. Chunks split off from rounds that have the bark on may be laid along the top of the pile to help shed rain and begin the drying process even in our rainy winters.

Smallwood can be mixed with kindling to get larger pieces going, or it can be bundled -- with a bit of string or masking tape. Incidentally, a bundle of smallwood intended for burning is called a faggot. So now you know something about what goes on in the heads of bigots.

Must check on the squash soup. Best of the season to you!

This would be the year for that

We need to renovate the south "pasture" (we're talking about less than 1/4 acre here) a bit, but it is going to take some doing.

Sixteen years ago, there were a few blackberries, several cottonwood saplings, and some Japanese knotweed (we didn't know what that was) along the creek bank, and there was a cow fence along the property line. We installed a duck fence along the cow fence, turned the corner at the far end, and followed the creek back to the shed, which we were converting into a small barn and potting shed.

The pasture has served well, but it had its weaknesses. There was no keeping up with the blackberries and Japanese knotweed, which eventually engulfed the fence on that side. And deer and assorted predators were hopping the fence on the property line, to roam about and do the things they do. The cottonwoods grew into, for us, monster trees over sixty feet tall, which, if we ever wanted to firewood them, should come down before we re-fenced. And they were well guarded by the blackberries, with the steel 2X4" mesh of the fencing hidden among them.

We deer-fenced the property line last winter, and that has been a moderate success, but the new fencing stopped, half-unrolled, in the corner, waiting and waiting for us to do something about the creek line. This would be the year for that.

We've determined to proceed in this order: 1) Bush-hook the blackberries and the Japanese knotweed all the way from the barn to the corner where the creek comes in. 2) cut the three cottonwoods. 3) Cut up and stack the cottonwoods to season for use a couple of years away. 4) mulch various places around the property with the trimmings. 5) pull the old fencing out of the blackberries with cable and block-and-tackle. 6) Cut up the fencing to recycle as chicken barriers around fruit trees. 7) gather old five-foot steel fence posts for use in the gardens, etc. 8) Set eight-foot fence posts. 9) finish the deer fence.

One roll of six-foot orchard fence and two strands of wire to a height of seven feet, with flagging, seems to stand up to the deer pressure around here reasonably well, and holds predator traffic to a trickle. Right now, though, as we are only up to 3), things are wide open along the creek and some kinds of traffic are to be expected. Marley the cat met something big last night, and instead of plucking the screen door to be let in, she climbed halfway up and screamed. So, we're going to hurry this along.

The cottonwoods had put on so much weight in a decade and a half that the fourteen-inch electric chainsaw was put to some trouble to get them down. If your saw does not reach through the tree, you must make six cuts, in matching pairs, instead of the usual three. This increases the likelihood that the tree will not go exactly where you want it, and we had a crabapple, a rushing creek, and a fenced property line to miss -- not to mention not letting them go over backwards, which would hit a hot fence in a pasture full of horses.

Insurance was provided by a wire rope, stretched from a clump of willow coppice and tightened by a come-along, to encourage each tree to follow the cable down the middle of the pasture. They pretty much behaved themselves.

The cottonwoods had become the perch of choice for hawks to read the chicken menu, being the right height and distance for a perfect glide path, coming out of the sun for surprise, with enough gravity-assisted momentum to do the job.

After the last tree came down, I gazed bemused at the featureless sky where all the bare branches had just been. The big redtail came along, momentarily moderating steady wingbeats as it approached the spot -- then picked up speed again and flapped off for greener pastures.

"Yeah," I sent after it, "you do that."
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Eight feet of water

 

You would not believe it from the rain and darkness, darkness and rain all this afternoon, but I spent much of the morning kayaking on the reservoir. We in Oregon call such windows of winter opportunity "Blue Holes," and this one, after the big freeze, was a treat -- 58 degrees F, sunshine, very little wind. 

The lake level was high, with no water going over the dam except through the single power turbine, and in order to put in at my usual spot I had to set the boat down in the path, gear up, assemble my paddle, climb into the cockpit under the low-hanging cottonwood branches, and shove off, sliding down the muddy trail right into the water, bow on. 

How I was going to get back I had no idea -- if necessary, I could use the boat launch area over at the marina, and hike back for the truck. The thousands of coots that were here last month were not in evidence -- perhaps the freeze had encouraged them to depart for climes even warmer. There were a few seagulls, some cormorants, grebes, Canada geese, and a solitary harlequin drake. 

I paddled into open water, about a quarter of a mile from shore, and looked about. Apparently I was the only human on the water. It being a Wednesday. It being mid-December. It being the poor-grinding-heart-of-a-recession. I know that the pundits go on and on about how there is now this great recovery going on -- just look at the stock market. Yah, yah. But I don't actually know anyone that has recovered. The cities, counties, states, water districts, fire districts, soil districts, school districts, parks districts, library districts, and most of the small businesses are hurting more, not less, than a few months ago, and all my friends still working for the state have the four-day-week furlough days to show for evidence. 

Beloved listens to one frightful tale of woe after another from families -- mother, and kids, and also father, aunt, grandmother and grandfather -- huddled together in the children's section of the library. The jobs that ended. The flu they all got. The benefits that ran out. The extension of benefits that ran out. The life without a phone, without heat. The overloaded caseworkers that yell at them. The empty shelves at the community food pantry. She can offer a few hour's warmth, computer access, story time, and some lame suggestions: "Have you read this one?" They look at her gratefully. 

I measure the economy by looking over the marina, on the theory that the boaters, having deeper pockets than the rest of us, may serve as indicators. How it's going for them. In good times, there are about fifty or sixty sailboats. Shining. Multiple coats of varnish, clean brasswork, new shrouds, neatly furled sails. People show up in gleaming Acuras, let themselves in by the marina gate, saunter down the docks to their slip in spotless Dockers, cast off, and glitter across the glittering water, racing down to the east before the afternoon winds and tacking back; then they anchor in the lee of the town and dine on shrimp fresh from the galley below, with a local wine. In a down economy there are usually about forty boats. 

A third of them will have slunk away to be parked high on their trailers in spacious back yards, "for maintenance" say the owners, but really to save on the slip fee. The other craft manage to stay put, but over time they get a bit raggedy. Algae fouls the sails and shrouds and waterline, and drips from hawsers and outboards. "Ripstop" nylon escapes at one corner and flaps itself to shreds. Sometimes two or three vessels, after a serious blow, take on a bit of a list. Nobody home much; got things on their minds. 

Meanwhile the wide waters may host a few waterboarders, with their stunningly loud stereos thumping away and twin Yamahas growling, and a few fishermen, their shoulders hunched away from the stereos, but the sailboats mostly stay in port. I paddled over and looked in on the marina. In this recovery they keep telling us about, we're down to: Nine sailboats and dropping. This was a shock, but I looked for one boat in particular. For years I have had an oddball acquaintance among the sailors. 

His sloop, which I'll call the Matilda, was notable among the fleet for clean lines, despite a very large cabin: a double-ender, black-hulled with one gold band all around just above the scuppers. You could tell she was not owned by money, but he tried to keep her clean and trim. 

A somewhat elderly blues musician, he worked weekends. He weathered good times and bad about equally well, by maintaining an extremely simple life. He lived for his boat, and much of the time on it, though there is a rule against this in the marina. His method was to stay in town for a few days, sleeping, I think, on friends' couches, and then drive his beater pickup out to the park, clamber aboard the Matilda, head out for the lee of the town, and ride at anchor there for four days at a time. He seldom appeared on deck. I suspected alcohol to be part of this routine. When I paddled by, I could smell beer and cigarettes. 

Once, when I found him sitting in the cockpit repairing something or other, I gave him a book of poems. He thanked me gravely, and we talked awhile. "You stay out here a lot." "Well, I love the water, so I want to be on it every chance I get." He had a coughing fit, shoulders practically knocking together. "Troubles, y'see. No [hack, hack, wheeze] insurance. So I come out here, watch another sunset, y'see?" A snaggled, conspiratorial smile. I sought him out to talk sometimes after that, he in the cockpit with his busy hands and cigarette, I below in the Matilda's lee, paddling softly fore-and-aft to stay in place. We liked each other. 

Once, when I hailed the Matilda, two heads appeared at the hatch. My friend's companion was a remarkably skinny woman about my age (in other words, not young), as craggy and world-beaten in appearance as he. I couldn't understand a word she said -- seemed to live in a sped-up and mumbly sort of universe. I gave them a trout and paddled off, happy to see he had company. They waved until I was a speck on their horizon. 

The last two years, though, Matilda has stayed in the slip. She's looked a little less winsome each time I paddled by, which is no more than I can say for myself, and while I worried about my friend, I'd never learned how to reach him other than to find him on the water. Today, as I reached the marina, I could not find the Matilda. "So," I thought, "they must have hauled her out." 

I paddled a little closer. There did seem to be something at the slip. It was a mast, heeled about thirty degrees. Algae had already made a green streak in the water, where the boom had come to rest just beneath the ripples. Matilda has sunk at her moorings, and is resting on the bottom in eight feet of water.

Just like summer

Dec. 14 update: Tried the pump, and we have water. No leaks discovered yet!

One way, when you're determined to live mostly on what you grow or forage for yourself, of making sure you get a variety of nutrients, is to grow a lot of kale. We have Red Russian, which does well here, apparently even when you've had, as we've had, three nights in a row below ten degrees Fahrenheit. And of course freezing makes it taste better.

We also still have turnip greens, broccoli, fava greens, bok choi, onion greens, garlic greens, dandelions, arugula (which I don't like as much as Beloved does). Some of these are flourishing mainly because they are in the hoophouse, although the chard and spinach in there are looking pretty hammered. This morning I gathered all the wilted red chard and lettuce leaves for the chickens, who were fine with the limp stuff, and then brought in some kale for us, to have with potatoes and duck eggs.

We live where year-rounds greens are fairly easy to get. But even if there were not such a cornucopia of winter greens to choose from, we can get quite a lot of the same nutrients and flavors (and often do) by using dried greens.

These look great on eggs or oats or rice or squash or pot pie or four-bean soup or ... well, anywhere you might put basil or parsley flakes or Italian seasoning, and they help with any hankering one might have for high-mileage seasonings, such as black pepper. We even drop a small handful in as we knead the bread dough.

This was the first summer we made the stuff, and it was one of our garden's big successes this year, I think. A regular dish in our household is small potatoes sliced, with dehydrated veg leaves sprinkled over, with a little salt and olive oil (the only two high mileage items), zapped for four minutes, covered. The veg leaves reconstitute in the steam as the potatoes cook, and the whole thing comes out tasting just like summer!

Of course, if you're a stickler for the best possible nutrient retention, bundle everything up and dry it the shade the traditional way. Ain't sayin' don't -- let your preferences and your schedule be your guide. But here's what we wound up doing:

Build a solar dehydrator by making, basically, a plywood-floored cold frame with a used sash window and putting in vents at each end, then tipping it up to face the sun like a solar oven.

Window screens or egg cartons will do to help keep the produce off the floor, as air must circulate well. In ninety-degree weather this is a very hot dehydrator, and it's going to lose you some nutrients, but the idea here is to make really dry stuff. You can make a screen or slatted cover for your dehydrator if you think it's drying too fast. We wanted a quick turn around for high volume so we let it run full blast. An alternative is to build more dehydrators and that is something I think we will do.

Fill the box loosely with leaves: parsley, turnip, spinach, cilantro, fava, chard, basil, bok choi, lettuce dandelion, and outer leaves of broccoli, red cabbage, cauliflower, and collards all worked well for us.

After a day or two in hot weather, or longer otherwise, inspect. Whatever "looks dry" can be harvested, and the rest turned and dried some more, and new stuff added. You get the hang of it pretty quickly.

I process by sitting in the shade with a heap of very dry leaves and a cardboard box.

Take a leaf. If, like turnip, it has a long stem and strong midrib and veins, wrap a thumb and forefinger around the stem and strip toward the leaf tip, over the box. All the flat matter should break up and fall into the box; the stem can be discarded into the compost heap. Put your hands in and crumble the flakes up as small as you prefer. This is very satisfyingly tactile, and the smells are enticing. Pour out the box from one corner into your kitchen containers, perhaps with your canning funnel.

If you're confident in how dry your flakes are, you can cover right away, to hold in goodness. I sometimes leave a jar open for a couple of days, just to be sure nothing is damp enough to mold.

You might want to separate varieties. I do this with medicinals -- there's a pint jar labeled "comfrey," another labeled "plantain" and yet another: "blackberry leaf" -- but the food greens tend to go, stirred together, into gallon jars labeled "dried veg." I have a non-discerning palate, I guess ...

To use, reach into the jar as you are making whatever, and sprinkle a pinch over it. Healthy, healthy, healthy!
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Last things last.

I'm fond of tub baths, and Beloved likes showers, but tonight I bathed in a basin, in front of the wood stove.

Not that I mind that, it's what we used to do; we were migrant workers and drove round to our jobs in the Northwest woods in a GMC pulling an old trailer that we got for 150. It had a wood stove too, come to think of it.

Anyway, a basin bath was my only option tonight, and that was our own fault.

The piping in a house this old, with no more retrofitting than it has had, is vulnerable to cold. In cold snaps, we generally get away with running the taps lightly and putting a 100 watt incandescent bulb (turned on) under the pump in the wellhouse.

That cuts it down to about 16F, but we have had three mornings in a row of about 7 or 8 degrees above zero.

Now, that's not a record for here, but if we had thought about this instead of paying attention to the weather reports, which kept predicting lows of around 20, we'd have turned off the pump and the hot water heater and opened the drain cock on the line in the pump house (which is lower than almost all of the water system).

But did we remember to do that in time? N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o, we did not.

So the water system is DOWN.

And how damaged, we do not yet know. Liquid water, as everyone should know, expands eleven percent when it solidifies. It's how you get cracks in granite.

Whenever this scenario plays out in our household, you can bet it does so in thousands of others around us, meaning that the plumbers might get to us in a month, if we are lucky!

But we have options, and we're putting them into play.

The ducks, geese and chickens must have water, and as they don't have heated waterers, in the mornings we go to the bridge over the creek and let down the two buckets on our homemade yoke one by one, and dip them in the water and bring this up to the pens and dump it into empty drinking buckets.

The buckets will freeze before long, so we also fill some buckets and set them in the living room, for use later in the day and in the evenings. These also stand by for jobs like flushing.

For ourselves we generally have a ten gallon or so supply, which we can supplement by taking empty milk jugs to town with us when we have business there, and filling them at Last Son's place.

If all else fails there is the hand pump -- which can be primed from the creek if necessary, but we'd rather not, so the last gallon on hand would be for the pump. Not that the creek is dirty, as creeks go, but there are horses upstream ...

For that matter, the well that has the hand pump on it is a bit too close to the chicken run, and for kitchen use should be boiled. So we think of it as a backup/irrigation well. Last things last.
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A little extra bird seed

"You're as co-o-o-o-ld as ice ... "

Down to 14F this morning; a little extra birdseed in the feeder. To get water to the poultry under these conditions we keep five gallon buckets under the inside taps that we've left dribbling, and when they are full we rotate them out to the henyard.

The ducks and geese have kiddie pools which they use for their baths, and these do still have some water in them but there is now a good three inch layer of ice. We're keeping about a third of each pool open with a pickaxe. The trick is not to punch through the bottom!

A Rosie (Rhode Island Red) tops up on ice water

In a few days this polar outbreak will ease up, and I hope to work in the crawl space under the house again. Not, I hope, on the plumbing ...

We've put up four blankets to cut off unused parts of the house so that the wood stove will be equal to the task of keeping us warm. We're into the heavy part of our annual diet: Cornbread, split-pea soup, three-bean soup, potatoes, eggs-and-broccoli, winter squash with rice.

Hot choco alternating with home brew.

The hoophouse stood up to some spectacular winds a few days ago, and now it's standing in the still air and bright sun of the cold snap, shedding condensation ice all over its interior. The bok choi, kale, broccoli, onions, lettuce, and arugula look hammered but they seem to be coming round.

We were in the Big City a few days ago, helping Daughter move house, and I spotted a neglected female holly tree. Squirrelled away a couple of bright-red-berry laden twigs, and today I made a nice wreath, adding some Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, male holly, rosemary, and lavendar, all from home.

We're not showy and have never put up outside lights or vinyl reindeer. The wreath will go on the living room door, on the inside where we can enjoy it. On Christmas Eve we'll add an extra plate to the table and put a candle in the kitchen window. Then, in the morning ... a little extra bird seed in the feeder.
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Gotta love 'em

After we brought home our fifteenth, and for the time being, final, truckload of firewood, I lay down and took a nap.

About twenty minutes later, I awoke with a sense of foreboding. Stepping out onto the front porch, I looked around and saw that all the poultry, except for two chickens, had gone into the barn, which is unusual for a sunny afternoon.

Beyond the barn, in a tall cottonwood, sat the largest hawk I'd ever seen. My first thought was that it might be a golden eagle. The raptor was clearly agitated, and flexing its wings and tail, and its war bonnet of red tail feathers glistened in the sun.

We get lots of red-shouldered hawks here, who like to sit in the cottonwood and watch the barnyard antics the way our cat watches the bird feeder: food porn. But none of them has ever dived on the flock; they're smallish to try to make a meal of a full-grown hen, especially with Andrew, Chanticleer and Sylvester on guard, all of whom take their duties seriously, however ineffective they might be in the face of a determined assault. This red-tail was much bigger than the red-shouldered voyeurs. In a class unto itself.

I looked again at the two hens, and saw that one was down, and very still, and the other was keening over her in a voice of mixed bereavement and vicarious carnivorous interest. Her attention seemed to be divided between urging her erstwhile companion to her feet and nibbling at her brisket -- chickens are an immensely practical lot, and I sometimes think watching them gives one much insight into the mindset of the Far Right.

My own mind at that moment was on the discouraging of Very Large Hawks, so I went and fetched the .22 and sent an ineffectual bead of brass-jacketed lead whistling after the marauder, who was already departing anyway.

I collected the deceased, who had only been gnawed about the neck and head, and didn't yet have rigor mortis. She'd be suitable for crock-pot reduction.

Her friends, emboldened by my appearance on the scene, came forth from the barn and sampled the scattered neck feathers with obvious relish, cracking the stems for whatever was still fresh inside. Ish, thought I -- but their ideas on salvage were similar to mine, I realized. Mustn't throw stones at their menu choices.

Juncos and golden-crowned sparrows darted down to join them.

The ducks and geese stayed put. "Whatever you all are doing out there is None Of Our Business," they seemed to be saying.

We had hoped the narrowness of their pasture and the height of the deer fences made a sufficiently difficult and deterrent flyway for hawks, and indeed this was the only known attack from the air in our twenty-five years of poultry raising, right here in Hawk Central. But apparently the long cold snap we're having has raised the stakes. The Rhode Island Red, possibly too heavy to carry away even for this enormous red-tail, had been struck right by the spruce tree in a quite constricted space. Hmm.

I collected all the spare wire on the premises and, like Arachne, spun my web everywhere, from the barn to the deer fence and back from the deer fence to the garden fence, covering open air, at about seven feet of the ground and intervals of six to ten feet, as far as the supply would take me. On wires near enough to the barn and low enough to cause us any personal inconvenience, I hung orange flagging to warn us off self-decapitation.

Two days later, I thought I saw, out of the corner of my eye, SuperHawk lollygagging along the road at about a hundred and fifty feet in the air, from the vicinity of the neighbor's sheep enclosure toward the river. Yeek, but that is a big bird.

I checked on the poultry.

All the hens had gone under the low spruce branches and made themselves into a tableau of frozen chicken. Chanticleer had moved into the open and adopted, bless his heart, a posture of defiance. The Khaki Campbells and Susannah had done the same as the hens, and Sylvester, the White African gander, had taken up a self-assertive posture at the other approach. I looked into the other pen. Andrew, the lone male Ancona drake, had herded the Annies into a corner of their pasture, and stood guard over them, alert, calm, and resigned to whatever might be his fate.

Guys. Gotta love 'em.

Two gnarly hands

Left to right: butternut squash baking in a flat-bottomed
Dutch oven; a pan of duck eggs slowly becoming "hard-boiled";
tea water, dishwashing water.

We have heated, and sometimes cooked or heated water, with wood for 33 years. Averaging three cords a year, we've reached about the 100 cord mark. Most of this has been Douglas fir salvaged from reject wood on and around landings, left over from logging operations. We've also used Western hemlock, Western red cedar, Ponderosa pine, logepole pine, red alder, Oregon ash, Oregon black oak, wild cherry, viney maple, bigleaf maple, assorted willows, cottonwood, and the large and medium prunings from apple, plum, pear, and filbert.

Much of what we have burned in the stoves is typically burned by our neighbors in trash piles. But we try to use everything we can on our acre, down to a certain size, for household energy, and the rest -- the twigs and leaves -- is scattered to feed the soil. Whatever will go into the mower's grasscatcher is carried to garden beds, and much of the rest piled around the feet of the various fruit trees. Yes, it takes a stick a long time to break down to the point where it will feed a fruit tree, but it will do it.

Now that I'm freed up, by virtue of old age, from the forty-hour week, I can cruise the free box at Craigslist for other kinds of salvage opportunities. The local utility is removing a small grove of lodgepole pines from their power lines across the back of a young man's property, and he being all-electric has made the logs available in order to get his yard cleaned up.

Getting at them means climbing down an eight-foot embankment and returning slowly, with each chunk, sometimes four feet long, on a shoulder. And the footing is made treacherous by vinca, ivy, and mud. Way too much for a sixty-year-old lady, but, oh my, I want that wood! So I have hired my youngest son, a powerful man, to get the pieces to where I can go with them to the pickup with a wheelbarrow.

We're taking a break for Thanksgiving, but so far the truck has made seven trips. I estimate there are ten to go. Lest anyone think we are nickel-and-diming ourselves to death, this one Craiglist ad represents about fifteen hundred dollars' worth of winter fuel at current pricing.

I'll be gnawing at this woodpile, GWATCDR, for two years, getting it all down to stove size, stacked, and dried, then carried into the house bit by bit, in winter sunshine, rain, ice, and fog. Sometimes the surrounding hills will be visible, sometimes shrouded in deep, chilling mist, sometimes they will be as white as a New Hampshire calendar photo.

But I will have enough to do of work that I've always found interesting and enjoyable; it will (hopefully) keep me limber into my latter years, and the mugs of hot home-grown cider, held between two gnarly hands, will be good.
.

Built where it stands

Several friends have commented on or asked about the dining room table. "I bet that has some stories ... " Actually, not so many; it's only about eighteen years old. Or: "How did you do that?" It's very easy. Really. No, really.

In our case we got the idea by looking at a piece of two-by-ten in the yard (with a bit of grass growing out of it) and saying, hmm, this could be a pair of uprights. We didn't know terminology, but had both seen a table that we liked -- a quick Net search suggests that it is called a Trestle Base Table.

So we bought some two-by-eights, scrounged some two-by-fours and some three-inch lag screws, and proceeded as follows:

Sorry about the drawing; I never could draw with a cursor anyway! Click to see the lack of detail even bigger!

Okay: lay five two-by-eights, in the length you want (ours were eight feet) side by side on the floor, or maybe on a drop cloth on the floor. This is your tabletop, upside down. (!!)

Across each end, about eighteen inches to two feet from the end, set a piece of the same cut to fall two or three inches from either edge, centered. Bolt down to each two-by-eight beneath. Ours had half-inch heads and were tightened with a socket wrench. Your lag screw should tighten down firmly without penetrating to the floor, of course. (!!) You may want to pre-drill guide holes to start the screws.

Make the two uprights (of two-by-ten or twelve) by cutting them an inch-and-a-half shorter than the height you want for the top of the table. Bore holes through them with a 1.5 inch wood bit, lining up the holes so as to form a slot (use a chisel and mallet to finish the slot) at the same distance, say ten inches, from one end of each piece, through which you can slide a two-by-something brace, later (we used a found piece of two-by-six).

With the slotted ends up, snug the uprights against the inner edge of each of the end pieces and bolt them to these. Put your brace through. It should be long enough to protrude about six inches through each upright toward the ends of the table (but leaving leg room). We added a piece of one-by-eight down the middle, measured long, and malleted down tight against the uprights on their inner faces and then bolted on (with more lag screws), for extra strength.

With a level, line up four two-by-fours one by one across the ends of the uprights and bolt them on; these are your table's feet.

Flip the whole thing over. Almost done!

Make any adjustments now, until you are satisfied it looks like the table you want.

Now mark your brace along the outside edge of each slot. Pull the brace and clamp it on a work bench. Bore two holes through the brace from one edge to the other, down the center, with a wood bit, say 3/4 inch diameter, just nicking your slot mark about a quarter inch as you go.

Put the brace back through the slots, and with a mallet, hammer down a pair of dowels or tapered stakes at each end (we used cedar kindling from the wood box), thus pulling the uprights toward the ends and stabilizing the entire table.

You might want to stain and seal at this point. We did.

But wait! We made a mistake, which you can see if you look at our table up close and in person.

We used bought two-by-eights, and specified kiln-dried, but they either weren't, or were done very poorly. So they warped and twisted over the first few months of the table's life. To prevent this, find a couple of pieces of nice fir or something, one by 1.5 inches or so, cut to fit the width of the table, and attach these with a pair of drywall screws to the ends of each of the two-by-eights in the tabletop.

With enough clamping we could probably still do this. But we are awfully lazy old things. We call it a table, and nobody has contradicted us about that, so far as we know.

The shrinkage also spread the gaps between the planks. We chinked these with wood filler, but the children liked to peck at this with their knives and forks when we weren't looking, and so we never did get those gaps to look quite right. But oh, well. This is how you get a table that Has Character.

Built where it stands -- we spent about thirty dollars to make this family heirloom.
.

With or without

Come in; sit a bit by the fire. Yes, it's nasty out there. Snow line is down to two thousand feet, I hear; and there was some hail lying around the foot of the hoophouse this morning. Micro or home brew? Or tea; herbal or otherwise; coffee? With or without Irish?

We like the view

Winter seems fairly well set in, and the juncos are patrolling the feeder outside the dining room window, mornings. We have been watching them every winter; they are part of the coffee ritual, and we never get tired of looking out at them, come sun, rain, or snow. We like the view.

Eighteen years a-gone, Former Self and Company, eighteen years younger and spryer than we are now, faced the grim prospect of pulling up a dining roomful of worn-out, cracked, speckled-gray-pattern linoleum floor tiles and starting over -- but with no money. Something certainly had to be done. The ceiling had been allowed, by the previous owners, to pour cold rainwater on the floor, with resultant swelling and disintegration of chipboard subflooring in several places, creating hazards to navigation. An idea was advanced to try leveling up the entire floor with filler, roller-painting it white, and then, painting by hand, create the illusion of a ceramic tile floor using brick-red paint, a four-inch brush, patience, and a lot of Mozart. This was adopted.

The project, which took about three days, worked reasonably, well, and the resulting trompe l'oile floor lasted almost fifteen years without much maintenance, thanks to the miracle of polyurethane. The last three years, not so well. Some kinds of filler (we had used up a variety of things found in the garage) had more staying power than others, and we at last found ourselves patching and re-patching. Since there is still not much money around (we haven't been especially able to attract the stuff), it's time to attempt a repeat of the original miracle.

The new cracks have been filled with plastic "wood." I'm renewing the "grout" with white latex on a sturdy round artist's brush, and the "tiles" with a three inch flat brush with medium bristles. One uses the lines between the original tiles as a guide, or a pencil line where the filler has obscured them. It's quite slow, and a little bit nerve-wracking, as it seems the best-looking results, as before, are obtained by painting free-hand rather than with a template.

I have found, somewhere, a nice thick pad of polyethylene foam board, which is neither mooshy like foam rubber nor crumbly like styrofoam, and it makes an ideal kneeling platform. Still, I'm finding myself getting up more frequently, and ver-r-r-r-y slowly, with much creaking, then wandering around whining, and procrastinating about getting back to it much more than Former Self did.

Former Self is amused and rather heartless about the whole thing.

"Hey! Get cracking."

"Easy for you to say."

"What's your problem, old lady?"

"It's a long way down there."

"My heart bleeds for you. First we're young, then we're old. If you didn't want to go to Memphis, why did you stay on the train? Mmnh?"

Well ... I guess I must have liked the view.
.

The Century Skillet

Eggs, new potatoes, onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes,
cream, and kale for our recovering flu patient

One of the things my maternal grandmother got for her wedding day, in the late nineteenth century, was a high-sided cast-iron skillet with a lid and two pouring lips. She made six decades' worth of cornbread, butterbeans, chicken-and-dumplings, bacon, ham, and I don't know what all in it.

At the time of her passing, the skillet disappeared. Several more decades passed, and a century came to an end, and my mother's best friend spotted the skillet, minus lid, hanging on a hook in a relative's kitchen, and asked about its provenance. The answer hemmed, hawed and stammered enough to speak for its being the skillet in question and not a similar one, and its having mislaid itself at the time it was supposed to have passed down to my mom.

My "auntie" is not one to beat about the bush, and in essence said "hand it over" and got the skillet. Time passed, and my mom, eighty-one with heart trouble, has had difficulties making it to Georgia, and Auntie, also eighty-one and on dialysis, hasn't been making it to Florida.

When I passed through Atlanta en route to Oregon with my mom's gifted pickup truck, I spent a few hours with Auntie, and while I was there, she gave me (with my mom's prior blessing) my grandmother's skillet.

We have several of the more modern iron skillets, in three sizes, and we're used to the way they handle. Not that we've used them much -- for years, they've hung on the walls while we fell for the ease of use of "non-stick" pans. While these are not as unhealthy to use, perhaps, as they were in the early days of "the miracle of Teflon," they are said to be not good for the people who live where they are manufactured. Our current ones are nearing the end of their useful life, that is, they are about ten years old, and so I've been reviving my interest in cast-iron cookery -- and I like the idea of working with a 125-year-old frying pan that doesn't look a day older now than when it was made.

It's a tall thing, and I've never seen another like it. It's ten and a half inches across the top and eight inches across the bottom, with sheer sides that don't curve in, and would just fit in the eye of the wood range we once had, which I suspect is the idea. It's supposed to plunk into the hole right over the flames and get the bacon going fast.

We try to refrain from putting our iron into soapy dishwater and we season with extra virgin olive oil. The Century Skillet arrived a bit rusty, was scoured with sand and steel wool, got the oil treatment, sat a few hours on the back of the woodstove, and was put into service.

On an electric range this pan seems at a disadvantage as compared to others that we have, but I'm attracted to it, and trying to learn what it wants from me. I'm a ham-handed cook and have to pay attention when experimenting.

The first few times I used it, I burned things and had to re-scour and re-season. Then I tried putting a film of oil into the pan, about 1/4 teaspoon, leaving that on the heat for awhile (fifteen minutes) and then making eggs or pancakes, using a lid to hold in heat. The preheating, for whatever reason, seems to work.

This would be an energy-wasting procedure on the electric range, perhaps, but the skillet can hang out on the woodstove (which lives in the dining room) while I prep ingredients. In colder weather, when the stove is working harder, I'll be able to cook right there. This heat stove has no eye, but I prefer a slow heat and almost never have anything on hand that needs searing anyway.

The last few days, Beloved is feeling better. I've been serving leisurely breakfasts from the Century Skillet, mostly souffles since she hasn't been able to get to her egg customers.

"How's that?"

"Oh, this is wonderful ... wonderful."

"More?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Thank you, Grandma, Mom, and Auntie."

"Hmh?"

"Oh, nothing; coffee with that?"
.

Fretful sleep

Tremendous rains, as is usual here with a strengthening el nino; we are housebound. I, because I always did take exposure rather poorly; Beloved, because she has the swine flu and hasn't been outdoors in a week. She's on the mend but weak, and I have been pressed into service as the nurse, CNA, housekeeper, and duckherder.

We keep telling each other, over hot cider by the fire, how grateful we are that we can do this. Illnesses were always something to be swept under the rug in our household; we were both commuting to jobs, so whichever one went down had to fend for herself. It was a lonesome process. Beloved tends to recover in the main bed, watching old videotapes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Northern Exposure. I take over the easy chair in the living room or drag it into the dining room to be by the fire, and alternately cruise the Web (which takes patience, as we only have dialup) or listen to Haydn quartets.

That's all right up to a point, but the ducks, geese and chickens must be led from the barn, fed, their fouled water changed out, the eggs gathered, and at dusk everyone must return to the barn; firewood needs to be split and brought in, the fire tended, meals prepared, and some basic housework done. Running this kind of low-tech operation alone all day in a dark, hailing, endless winter storm with a full-blown case of influenza is -- well, not for sissies.

So I retired in time to be there for her, with "Soup? Maybe a little apple juice? Oh, aspirin and water? Be right back!" It makes a difference.

Other things fall by the wayside. Insulation is not being tacked up in the crawl space; the cottonwoods by the upper field have not been cut; the cracks in the dining room floor have not been filled in and painted over; the deer fence has yet to make it around the corner of the south pasture; and the second solar dryer isn't getting built.

All in good time. Other things being equal, such as that TEOTWAWKI has not arrived, the progress that's being made is on other fronts: wrens, juncos, and sparrows come to the feeder, the cat sleeps, onions in the hoophouse grow a little taller, cold water slides down Stony Run toward the wide Pacific, worms turn and turn among leaves heaped on the fifty-foot beds, stars peep nervously through rattling dark clouds, Beloved rolls over in her fretful sleep, and I tuck the blankets around her back and shoulders.
.

We buy starts

"Look! another garden diary."

"Wow, this one's more detailed."

"And a little sad, too. I'd forgotten how much we didn't know then, and it amazes me that we're still making the same mistakes now..."

"No kidding! Let's see..."

Garden Notes
Sept 1984.	Tilled main garden spot (hadn't been used for 2 yrs) $55
Oct 1984.	Planted vetch in garden. $6
Jan 1985.	Planted 3 Elliot blueberries 3 Blueray blueberries 2-3 yrs old died next yr :( -- $20
Feb. 85	Tore down old beds on South side, tilled & prepared for Strawberry, asparagus etc. covered with black plastic $8
Mar. 85	finished 8' by 6' greenhouse $50 planted chive starts 3/2. Potting soil. Seeds in greenhouse: pumpkin, spinach, broccoli, zuke, butternut, hubbard, chard, collards, cukes, tomatoes, bell peppers, dill, parsley, zinnia, watermelon, muskmelon. 3/12 In garden: peas, carrots, onions, spinach 3/16 strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, compost $3, dolomite $4, black plastic $3. More tilling; hay 2 tons $20. Seeds $15; Flats $7
April 85	Only 5 asparagus came up bought & planted 25 more $4. Greenhouse: celery, pac choi. Tomatoes and peppers did poorly. Planted too early in greenhouse. Sprout inside when frost danger over, then take out. Plant lettuce and brocs earlier next time. Thinned & repotted in Green House. 4/5 sunflowers in ground; turnips, carrots, rutabagas, radishes & beans in ground. REAL SLUG PROBLEM. Seem to be migrating south from neighbors untilled garden spot. Have sprinkled dolomite along fence line & put out Beer. All rhubarb got slugged -- don't plant on N. side of house!!! Beans 2 plantings of 3/4 oz. One didn't make it. Peas 8 oz. (2 plantings). In greenhouse 4/8 zinnia, marigold calendula, more lettuce more celery. Starts $22. Chicken manure $10. Bone meal $9. Fish fert. $12.
Evaluation	Lost track. let's see: lost all Beans & squashes put out in April. Turnips, Radish, Ruta were a joke, very leafy but we didn't eat them. Broccoli should have been put in earlier (root maggots) took them all out. Too many pumpkins. Better stakes needed for toms & more spacing 60 plants OK
7/1/85	Evaluation and garden status. Snap peas (Sugar Ann) Great. planted early March. Tom out late June. put up 27 1/2 pints. need better trellising wider paths between rows. Try planting a bit early & one succession. (doesn't do too well in late planting) onions -- set, good. corn -- needed more H2O. Melons OK. Two plantings of green beans good. Cukes -- make sure pickling variety. 15 hills too many -- try two plantings. Remember spaghetti squash next time. All squashes OK. OK: red cabbage, beets, chard (plant less) carrots, celery.
Evaluation	Excellent spinach, plant early & late. Plant less of food not really used. Keep up lettuce succession & greens in general planting less at a time. Early & late broccoli. More peppers (24) farther apart & not too neat toms. Eggplant good two or three plants.
Evaluation	suggest that spring/summer '86 be spent cleaning up yard & preparing soil planning & beginning landscaping -- Next time -- record variety, weight, row length & how crop did. Plant broccoli, lettuce in G.H. soon. pumps, melons later. start toms & peppers indoors. Plant mostly june bearing strawbs
1985 HARVEST	Put up: Freezer canned broccoli 11 qts sweet pickles 27 qt spinach 8 pt. dill " 27 qt snap peas 28 pt Apple Sauce 8 qt beans 19 pt " butter 26 pts green peps 9 qt peaches [bought?] 42 qts chard stem [???!!] 2 pt pears [scavenged] 24 qts strawberry [bought] 11 pt tom puree 83 qts Raspberry [bought] 26 qt pickle relish 11 pts Blk berry 5 qt melons 15 qt Pearbutter 6 pt plums 27 pts [plum] juice 5 qts applesauce 18 pts
Garden	$132. Strawberries & asparagus didn't make it. Green house became too dark (dirt collecting on roof & walls) -- not able to clean off -- now a garden shed. [We didn't know how to fight algae on the fiberglass, apparently] We buy starts...

What it had been like

A story a retired logger told me.

There was a word for that -- I am forgetting it;
forgetting things I thought I'd never not know --
As I once understood the way a shackle will turn

to follow the wire rope reaching back to the pulley,
or which way the water will run when it falls
from the crook of an east-leaning alder in the rain,

or run from an alder's elbow that leans west,
when the storm comes in, always from southwest.
Oh, the word! A short one, I should be able to just

say it! Clevis! Yes, we called a shackle a Clevis,
I don't know why. So, John, he picked up the Clevis
and hung it on the drawbar of the Cat, slipped

the loop onto it, and reached to set the pin;
but Alley, he thought he'd heard John say "Ready,"
and put her into gear. So. That wire rope

sang just like a bowstring, and the Clevis
rotated right around the slot in the drawbar
and went through John like he was made of pudding.

He stood there for a moment -- like me, when I'm trying
to remember. I thought he was trying to
remember, then. Fixing in his mind

what it had been like. Being alive.
.

Shall we?

I know! Let's go upgrade the insulation in the crawl space under the house! Shall we?

Doesn't have to be as fancy

[Scene One]

"So, the tiny little mirror we put up when our friend from China explained that we needed one there to bounce back bad energy from the intersection?"


"Mnh?"

"It's corroded and looks bad and I think it might not work well much longer and so we need a bigger one there."

"Sure, we could come up with something, betcha."

"How about that one with the geese frosted across the bottom?"

"Eek, way too big. Hang on!"

[Rummage, rummage.]

"How about this one?"

"Okay, but is there a way to make it pretty?"

"Umm, pretty how?"

"Sort of El Salvadorean pretty."


"Like the good luck piece in the kitchen?"

"Yes, like that. Doesn't have to be as fancy."

"Good, 'cuz I have not got fancy hands."

"'Well, since it'll be hanging on the outside of the house..."

"Right ... got paint?"

"I'd use the tempera, and here's a brush."

"On it."

[Scene two]

"'K, how's this? There was some, mmh, leftover lath, and screws that were just small enough. We sure could use a mitre saw, though."

"Oh, I love that; is it weather ready?"

"Has some old acrylic fixer on it. S'all dry now."


"What all's happening there?"

"Mmmh, house. Sky, sun. Grass. The red dots can be apples or climbing roses, and the blue ones are English bluebells or what you will."

"Let's put it up and take its picture."

"'N'admire ourselves in it, 'n'maybe it will start bringing good luck right away. Y'think?"

"I think."

[Exeunt. Screen door bangs shut behind them.]

When to do it

Full moon rising at Stony Run

As memory of eight-to-five fades from my bones, I've come to find myself somewhat at odds with clocks.

There is one in the bedroom, one of those little black boxes with red numbers on its face. Can't see it without my glasses, unless I squint mightily. And they are usually in another room.

I look out windows to decide what to do, and when to do it. A certain amount of light, regardless of the weather, means Let Out The Poultry. A little more light may mean Put Something In The Frying Pan And Put It On The Woodstove. If there is rain, that may mean Prepare To Work Indoors. Or if sun, Look For Some Outside Clothes To Put On.

Yesterday was sunny, bright, warm, so much so that I wore my summer straw hat and open-toed sandals. I mulched garden paths, moved flat stones to create walkways in strategic spots that are muddy come winter, and repaired the power line out to the Scriptorium, a little writing house at the back edge of the farm.

I kept busy until the moon, at full, rolled over the hills to the east and looked in on our little valley.

A bit of dark says to me, Supper. A bit more says Chase In And Close Up The Poultry. When there is a full moon they resist. I tell them raccoons and coyotes like a full moon, too. Like teenagers; in one ear and out the other.

A bit more dark is Small Glass Of Wine And Practice Dulcimer.

Bed might be around nine o'clock.

And then I go haywire. I might wake up at any time, raring to go, and only the red eyes of the little clock, heavily squinted upon, tell me otherwise. My spirit is rebellious, and I want to be up and doing.

So, this morning I awoke, aware that Beloved was stirring and the clock assuring me it was 5:30 -- about when she gets up to begin her work day at the library downtown.

And, umm, I thought I might sing to her a bit. You know the tune:

Good morning to you
We work in a zoo
We all smell like monkeys
And look like them too!

I got a pillow in my face -- emphatically -- for my efforts, and it was then that the Mighty Squint let me know ...

... that I was serenading her at 3:30 a.m. ...
.

We did not grow the barley

New layers of compost/mulch going onto all beds

The week in review:

• Planted: garlic, bulbs. Moved rosemary, marjoram, parsley to the herb bed.
• Harvested: still no major frost. A few tomatoes and strawberries! Greens (some are bolting in the polytunnel, with some onions, parsley, chives.
• Blanched and froze something but I forgot what. Some mashed turnips but it is petty bitter with all the warm weather; should mix with some mashed potatoes?
• Cold room done! Mostly in the big cans is wheat berries, pearl barley, cracked wheat, spelt flour, WW flour, rye flour, amaranth, quinoa, rolled oats, rolled wheat, buckwheat flour, dried red beans, dried white beans, dried black beans, chickpeas, WW angel hair. Sacks and some boxes; potatoes. Boxes; apples. Jars; dried tomatoes, dried apple slices, dried zukes, dried/or for seed runnerbeans and fava beans, some boughten stuff such as pickles (we buy these to get the gallon jars). Bowls or bins of eggplant, turnips, beets, onions. Shelves of cured winter squash, pumpkins; 16 liters of homebrew, 24 bottles of (we hope) grape wine/cider.
• Sold chicken eggs and trading seed for walnuts.
• 100 foot diet: a lot of tomato/veg/chicken soups, baked squash, baked beans, baked potatoes, fried eggs with vegs, salad (most greens we've ever had). Frozen blueberries and rhubarb. Dried tomatoes, apples, stored apples, applesauce. Very little outside foods at present except rice and other grains. Ex.: dinner tonight was fresh trout, rice, delicata, applesauce, a salad of fresh red romaine lettuce, mizuna, broccoli leaf, kale, spinach, chard, bok choi, tomatoes. The rice was the non-homegrown or home-caught ingredient. Oh, and homebrew. True, we did not grow the barley ... still ...
  

Plan for 2010 in progress:

• Dig up, divide and move the rose to the main gate (it makes good rose hips and has proved unkillable anyway).
• Move the remaining sunchokes out of bed 2 and spread them along the north end of the garden (half are already there and did well this year).
• Shorten the herb bed (it's more in the way of the main path than we thought).
• Put the old orchard back in the pasture (the chickens and ducks make better use of the drops than we do).
• Add hops, kiwis, blueberries, lingonberries, honeyberries, more apples and plums and a pair of persimmons.
• Add a room to the barn.
• Finish deer fence.
• Take down one old ash and four big cottonwoods and firewood them (too much shade on gardens).
  

"Et cetera, et cetera, et ... cetera."

Signs of the times

 

A break in the weather , and after ambling around the polytunnel hand-picking slugs, and making up a batch of dough for beer bread (not with the slugs!), I found myself throwing the little kayak on the back of the truck and running over to the reservoir. It's only eight miles to the put-in, so I feel I should get to do this from time to time. The lake has six miles of shoreline and so there is an endless variety of things to see and do. The gallery of gulls, cormorants, grebes and such changes subtly throughout the seasons. 

I found some immature black-legged kittiwakes in among the numerous Western gulls; these were new to me and I had to spend some time with the bird book when I got back to the house. They are so small, at first I thought they might be sandpipers. Blown off course? I know it's mischievous of me, but I cannot resist drifting along the boom of the boat basin, launching one nervous gull at a time from the top of the boom as I come too close. They wheel around, complaining, then circle in to land about thirty feet behind me, which seems to be their personal distance. The grebes and cormorants require more space than this. There are no coots yet, which means it is officially still autumn -- they are our winter waterbird, and come to the lake in thousands. 

There was only one powerboat out, where ten years ago there would have been dozens. A deep-seated vee-hull, it went by at a brisk pace, setting up a large wake in the glassy water, and as the swells came near, I turned into them and rode them over, counting. There are usually twelve substantial waves, with the eighth one the biggest, and most likely to try and climb into the cockpit with me. I wondered whether that's some universal thing, like the preference water is said to have for spinning one way from bathtubs in the northern hemisphere and the other in the southern. Or is it more to do with depth or the size of the body of water in some way? Wind waves, on the other hand, after crossing a couple of miles of water, seem to travel in sevens. 

There are two reservoirs right here; the other one, behind the hulking dam to my east, is too grand and wild for me at ten miles long between canyon walls -- a vicious wind tunnel with few safe exit points and over two hundred dark and cold feet deep. This one averages eight feet, no comfort if I rolled over, but it's just tamer all around. It's certainly big, and a serious chop can set up just as you get out to the middle. It can be tiring to get back to the dock from the other side when the wind turns. But within my strength and small skill set, if I know when to Stay The Heck Away. This time, though, everything was still, with the sun vanishing into the mist of another front seeping in from the ocean, and its pale light glinting strangely off the miles of glassy water. I could see into the depths more than usually, and unexpectedly found the greenery robust and still growing, resembling vast coral formations. It looked like August down there. 

As we have still not had a serious frost, I found thousands of summery insects dapping on the water, and drowned or drowning bees and yellowjackets everywhere. some caromed off the hood of my jacket or landed and crawled about on my life vest. A quarter of a mile from shore, there was a mislaid orb-weaver spider, resolutely marching farther out to "sea" like a water strider. She paused when the shadow of my dripping paddle passed over her, then carried on. 

This no-frost thingy is disturbing to watch. The grass is growing like it's March, and we have been putting clippings on all the garden beds and around trees. There is a new generation of garter snakes -- we don't remember seeing that before. And the lettuce and assorted brassicas planted according to directions for winter gardening are bolting. Signs of the times, perhaps.

Including the parties unknown

This is a guest post by Lonni

In our alternate universe lives as farmers, my husband and I have been wrapping up summer's bounty. I processed the last of the tomatoes, which exactly covered one dish of chicken Parmesan, yummy.

We picked a lot of jalapenos this summer. I smoked the red ones to make chipotles, and I dried the green ones as backup chiles. I think we are covered in that department.

In the winter garden we have 6 Brussels sprouts, which are being eaten by parties unknown, 18 cabbages which are faring better than the sprouts, and an assortment of lettuces and chard. The latter have not yet expanded in size to the point where we can snitch some leaves. I also planted garlic and some onion starts.

I plan to cover the winter stuff with a floating row cover, but I'm not sure when to do it--when the nights are getting reliably below freezing, I guess. So far everyone has gotten through the mild frosts without a scratch (including the parties unknown that are fond of Brussels sprouts.)

Next up: walnuts. We have a bumper crop of both English and black walnuts that are now dropping into the grass by the bucketful. There is a crop we could sell, if we had the energy to do all the drying, cracking and picking of nutmeats. My husband's elderly "cousins" (related somehow but hard to explain), husband and wife, who lived across the road from our farm, lived very frugally and amassed great wealth. They "retired" in their 70's, allowing their adult children to take over the hard work. But they started another business by picking up walnuts from their trees and processing them by hand. They had buyers as far north as Albany who bought their nutmeats. If they hadn't both died they'd still be cracking nuts. Guess it's our turn.

At the very least we can satisfy our own needs from our trees.

Another ongoing fall task is pruning the fruit trees. I did a lot last year, but much more remains to be done. I expect it will take several years to rehabilitate these trees. We harvested 5 pears, a few prunes and a quarter-bucket of apples this year. It can only get better.

My friend M., a mycologist, has suggested I do a mushroom survey at our farm this weekend and bring whatever I find to Mt. Pisgah. There will be a mushroom festival going on, as I'm sure you are aware. I am excited--there must be some 'shrooms on the farm, surely! I've stepped on a few but I haven't actually gone looking for them. I will try to get H. to help me out. She is fond of mushroom hunting.

It would be nice to have a wild crop to look forward to in the fall, and perhaps the spring too.

Break's over, got to hop back on the treadmill.

Yours everso,

Lonni
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Another rain day

As we are having another rain day we continue with the "cold room." Some scraps, 2X4s, some 3/8 plywood, a door.

Mostly in the big cans is wheat berries, pearl barley, cracked wheat, spelt flour, WW flour, rye flour, amaranth, quinoa, rolled oats, rolled wheat, buckwheat flour, dried red beans, dried white beans, dried black beans, chickpeas, WW angel hair.

Sacks and some boxes; potatoes. Boxes; apples. Jars; dried tomatoes, dried apple slices, dried zukes, dried/or for seed runnerbeans and fava beans, some boughten stuff such as pickles (we buy these to get the gallon jars).

Bowls or bins of eggplant, turnips, beets, onions. Not shown: winter squash, pumpkins (still curing in the living room); ropes of garlic, 16 liters of homebrew, 24 bottles of (we hope) grape wine/cider.
R14 insulation leftover from a project a decade ago finds a home here.

A primer coat on the new cold room wall. Woooo, tired! Head upstairs for Chicken Tomato Vegetable. It's been simmering in the crockpot all afternoon.