Off kilter

We're looking at some strange conditions here -- many trees refusing to turn color, let alone shed leaves. Bees flying, hummingbirds wintering over, mosquitoes everywhere, and many annuals and perennials sprouting or blooming as if it were spring. The highs here at this time of year should range 25 to 60F and we're within that range -- but more or less stuck between 50 and 59, at the high end. Not many records, but it's adding to the excess degree days that throw life on the planet farther and farther off-kilter. 

I don't remember a year with no killing frost before December. Not quite sure what to do in the garden, and I'm sure many others are scratching their heads as well. So I go ahead with the indoor projects I'd lined up for those cold days we didn't get.

This is the accumulated ham, bacon, turkey fats and drippings from assorted family offerings over the last week, mixed with some apple juice used to blend down some garlic, onions and spices. After it solidifies here in the freezer, the cubes will be dumped into bags and used in winter recipes involving beans, split peas, lentils, soups, rice, etc. A good way to keep off the stuff except in small quantities over time.

I keep the smaller pint and half pint Mason jars handy as they are emptied and whenever I have seven, I look around for what might go in them. Nothing growing this time of year, not even the mysteriously lingering tomatoes, has enough acid for water bath canning, but pickling is an option till we can find a gasket for the pressure canner.

We have a surplus on hand of root vegetables from the CSA our son belongs to, along with some Brussels sprouts. I've cubed all these -- beets, turnips and carrots mostly -- steamed them, then jarred them up and poured apple cider vinegar with honey, sea salt and spices (home grown and dehydrated) over them, with a little grape oil, and set the lot on the wood stove. The stove has to be managed with smallwood on these relatively warm days and so doesn't get hot enough to seal the lids safely, but after it has done its best I'll move the canner to the range to finish quickly.

Sorry about the blurred shot, but you can see the beets have made the whole "pickled vegetables" thing quite attractive. I had the leftovers with rice and I think it's a success.

Plant migrations

Awhile back I showed off, here, this picture of my small comfrey patch, which utilized the north side of the house.

Although comfrey is said to be twenty percent protein and chock full of nice vitamins and minerals, as well as excellent for stock feed, it has recently been deemed by the food and medical establishment as too toxic for regular human consumption. I'm not going to question this publicly, other than to note that the way things are going, the approved stuff from industrial farms seems to me likely to end up more toxic than comfrey ever was, if it isn't already.

So, since our poultry were ignoring any comfrey I brought them, I fell into the permaculturist's practice of using it as a sure fire compost starter. This entailed going after it with scythe or sickle, and I ran afoul of household aesthetics. The harvested patch did look pretty ragged for a couple of weeks after each cutting.

Fortunately the poultry changed their mind and began begging for the stuff, so a deal was negotiated. I could create a border along what's left of the (now-tiny) yard, next to the chicken moat, so that the birds could graze through the fence at will. There would be enough plants, multiplied through the magic of root propagation, that I could harvest all I would need from my side of the fence without creating that ragged-haircut look.

And, if starvation conditions ever set in, there would be yet another perennial crop to fall back on if need be, toxins or no toxins. As I have been known to say, my alien-attack meal plan is chips-and-dip anyway.

I once listened to a Chinese famine survivor who said she got by through the expedient of stripping leaves and bark from just about every tree in sight. She was in her nineties when she told this story, and looking pretty spry.

Comfrey roots are famous for their resprouting properties, and in fact the patch I'm moving has been in three other places (don't ask). Usually I've been able to easily start the entire patch in its new location by simply forking up one plant and dividing it with the shovel. This time I am using all eight.

They say that a very tiny piece will do but I try to use a more or less intact chunk of the crown if possible, with some intact side roots as shown. Facing the tree-planting shovel toward me (which I used in this manner as a professional reforester, years ago), I drive it about six inches deep, lever it away from me and then back, set the d-ring against my shoulder, and pull the soil up and toward me. This gets a nice hole just about right for a six-inch crown fragment to be buried up to its chin with a juducious tamp of the foot. It all goes very quickly, given that young tree planters sometimes set out more than a thousand seedlings in a day.

The birds are highly interested in the proceedings.

A couple of hours' work and I'd hopefully set out about seventy comfrey starts. If you look again at the mere eight plants in the first photo above you'll see that this is a huge amount, but for our style of gardening we really need all the green mulch/compost we can get -- we're a little heavy on the barn straw and brown leaves.

The old patch, which now belongs to a fuchsia (still in bloom in November) and two goumis, will of course sprout lots of comfrey from broken-off root tips so it will have to be mulched heavily with cardboard under straw and watched carefully. But there's plenty of room along the chicken moat for more strays. I hope to establish more goumi bushes through holes in the cardboard, as I did before when we were smothering the vinca that formerly occupied this spot.

If you can replace vinca you can replace anything.

You can also insert unwanted comfrey roots around the base of your apple trees for a nice companion planting, so I am told. Ours are in with the birds and we are stone-mulching them at present to prevent damage from the hens, but we could have left the wire cages and gone with comfrey and might yet.

It was hot out, 73F, and I stopped to water all the roots in, a good practice even in the rainy season (which this is supposed to be) as this helps the soil and roots snuggle together. Air pockets are injurious to roots.

After lunch I was still in the mood for more of this kind of thing, so I moved eight raspberry canes that had strayed into the path, divided one hops vine and set it around the corner of the house from the others, and dug up and moved a daughter fuchsia -- that last one for aesthetics, of course. ;)

Moving it indoors

Yesterday a small tornado, apparently, touched down on the street where we lived before moving here -- about eight miles away. That's a reminder that many things we think can't happen can. Today, we had a longish area-wide power outage -- just a bird in a substation, poor thing, but another reminder. Our winter storms have come, and I and many others get to hunker down, unlike our utility district's heroic line workers.

We have put up firewood, water, kerosene, gasoline and food, lucky us. But some of that ability to save ahead came from a simplified routine. We build our own fences and barns, combine trips, staycation, do without cable, entertain ourselves with reading and conversation and even contemplation, and don't have a smoking habit. I won't belabor you with et ceteras, except to say that, if you put your mind to it, you can generally fix a leaky toilet yourself and apply the savings to any outstanding debt.

Ask those still alive from the early forties how they got by. They will tell you things that are not impossible for most of us to emulate.

These simple practices, plus jobs that we managed to hold down, helped wipe out car and mortgage debt, just in time for the triage that's now going on. As we see it, we have helped others by preparing not to be a burden to them. That sounds like libertarianism, and maybe it is a little, but we also believe in paying our taxes to spread the safety net beneath our neighbors. After all, something could still happen to us at any time -- a tornado, say, or failure of the retirement system.

Meanwhile ... I'm home. For once, I got up the storm windows in good weather, swept the chimney, and did a lot of caulking. For the last three years I've been distracted by the need to be three thousand miles from here -- as an only whose parents were failing -- and, in the eternal balminess of Florida, often lost track of the northerly cycle.

Now I am remembering! Darkness early and late. Cold air seeping round the doors. Rain-soaked adventures letting out or putting up the poultry. This is our season for drawing in and sitting by the fire. I have rearranged some furniture accordingly:

This is the spot for November through March; and there is enough light from the double glazed dining room window for shelling beans, mending, reading, and -- ahem -- blogging. The stove is shown in its busy mode, making hot dish water, cooking beans and hissing up the kettle for tea.

Indoor projects also include making up the cider, wine, and beer. This is beer making -- Weizen, with porter notes, this year, using our own hops:

Canning was not a huge undertaking this year, but we did put away some blackberry preserves, apple sauce, apple butter, apple pickles, cucumber pickles, tomato puree, and salsa. There are still chutneys and pickled beets, etc., from last year.

A big success in this enterprise is the direct canning of apple and grape juice from the apple press. We discreetly add these juices to soups, breads, pancakes, meat dishes, and even quiche, along with our dehydrated veggie foliage flakes.

But we also take time to enjoy the traditional mulled cider. Especially when there's company.

Apple buttering

So the rains have come, and I'm feeling better about working indoors! One of the last things we did before the rain was get in apples from our apple trees, and we also foraged some along some of the neighborhood's farm fences, where birds have planted trees the Johnny Appleseed way. Multiple varieties add zing to one's homestead apple products.

There are plenty of apples in baskets in the mudroom. As they are organic, most years there are worms at the core and if I try to store them they will deteriorate fairly rapidly. This year is no exception, so if I want to capitalize on these I must cider, dehydrate, freeze, or can. I've been doing all these things and right now there's really only room for canning jars. What we don't have yet is apple butter and so that's what I'm doing today.

For this job I get out the Victorio apple peeler. It's a nice machine, as it does work. They warn you, though, that the clamp must never be set with a pair of pliers on the turnscrew, or it will void the warranty. Hand-tighten only. I have to say, I'm quite strong and hand-tightening does not get me a tool I can use here. They need a hole in the base at the other end so that one has the option to put a screw into the work surface if you're willing to do that otherwise, you might have to void the warranty as I've done by applying a pair of pliers (you can see mine at upper right). A paper towel folded and inserted under the base seems to help hold Mr. Victorio in place. For next year I will drill a hole and set a screw.

To use, hold out the spring-loaded handle on the right here, pull back the lathe (which is what it is) and chunk an apple onto the fork, stem end to the fork. Push forward, let go the lathe release handle, grab the lathe-turning handle, and the magic begins. Peeling comes off, often, in one piece, while the slicer and corer are doing their work, and when the apple has gone through the corer, open the lathe release and pull back on the lathe, and the apple and core fall off the fork (usually).

Separate the two parts of the peeled apple, examine the coiled apple meat for worm damage to cut out, then drop the core in with the peelings and cores in the bucket below (to take to the chickens, or to the compost, or to make cider or vinegar). Tear apart the coil and drop the resulting rings into a crock pot or stock pot. I usually put a half pint of grape juice (from our grapes) in the bottom of the pot to get things going without a burn.

Stock pots often burn apple butter, no matter how hard one tries to remember to stir enough, so we tend to use three crockpots for the initial cook down. Then we ladle the resulting chunky applesauce into the blender with cinnamon, ground cloves, and honey, then pour off the thin apple butter that results back into one crock pot. This will simmer, stirred, until thick, then goes into jars for a ten minute water bath to seal the lids. We like to use pint and half-pint jars for this, so that there is little wastage as there might be from opening and refrigerating a quart jar and letting it age in the refrigerator in the inevitable presence of mold spores.

If you have some left over that doesn't fill a jar, be baking some bread at the same time. Spread the one, fresh, upon the other, also fresh.

Bon appétit!

"A society that has no public spirit is poor."

The following was authored by my father, Thomas Eugene Smith, at age 86. He had suffered a stroke and, not yet having recovered his speech, wished to say one last thing to his country. But he had more years of vitality in him yet. He passed away at age 95 on October 6, 2012. He was a veteran, having served on the U.S.C.G.-manned AKA-17 Centaurus, in the Pacific Theater, WWII. A retired railroad lineman, Mr. Smith  devoted 63 years of his life to his wife, daughter, and grandchildren, and lived an honest and hardworking man all his life.

His statement, laboriously penciled in block letters on note paper, reads as follows:

The following items are all on public record and can be verified in your local library.
President Roosevelt with a democratic congress were the beginning of the following legislation. Each and every one of these acts were voted against by the majority of the Republican members of Congress at the time of their presentation. Had they have been in the majority at the time, none of those acts would have been placed into law.
Some of the acts are:
Social Security and unemployment comp
Fair Employment Bureau
Medical Disaster Relief
AAA – Aging Adm. Act
Agriculture Adj. Adm.
RFC – Child labor laws
Civil Works Adm.
Economic Stabilization Act
Fair labor standards
F.T.C. Commission
Federal Emergency Relief Act
F.A.A. - Securities – Banking Laws
Federal Housing Act
Food & Drug act
Health Education and Welfare
Soil Conservation
Works Project Adm
Civil Conservation Corps
(CCC) (Needed now)
About as many omitted as listed here
The following are some of the things built by the WPA & CCC that helped the country as it gave people wages to keep from starving and to save their dignity and to build needed projects for the country. Most paid for themselves and made a profit above cost.
Ohio Valley flood control system
Roads and bridges to Key West, FL
Seaport for Brownsville, TX
Lincoln Tunnel NY to NJ
Triborough Bridge NY to Long Island
Electrified Penn RR
City of Denver Water Supply System
Built the DC Mall
Built DC Zoo
Federal Trade Comm Building
Built Calif Camarillo Mental Health Bldg
Built Fort Knox Gold Depository Bldg
San Francisco Fairgrounds
Dallas, TX Dealy Plaza
St. Louis Conservatory
Bonneville Dam
Tenn. Valley Authority dams
(Multiplied avg. income in valley and gave this section their first electricity)
Planted over 200 million trees
Completed Colorado Boulder Dam
(Started by Pres. Hoover and taken over by Democrats to finished. 200 WPA workers died here)
WPA and CCC in 1930s did all this AND MORE
Built Waterworks for many towns
Built many post offices
Built and repaired Bridges everywhere
Built Jails – Airports – Sewers – Culverts – Sidewalks – Public Swimming Pools – Athletic fields – Play Grounds – Civic Buildings – R. R. Stations – Repaired National parks – Many, many dams – 4H campgrounds – School houses – new roads – new hospitals – city halls.
Put unemployed teachers back to work.

ALL OF THE ABOVE DONE IN EVERY STATE.

All of the above listed acts were passed for all our conservative and liberal citizens alike.

Truman, Johnson, and Clinton guided like legislation.
Pres. Theo. Roosevelt was the only Pres. on the Rep. Side who ever did legislation of a like kind.

True, Pres. Eisenhower was the architect of our Hwy. System. He saw the potential from observing Hitler's system in Germany. He financed the project with a gas tax. Pres. Eisenhower in his last days issued to our country in somber language to beware of the military-industrial complex.

Republicans mindset is: If I have the intelligence, drive and talent to overcome obstacles to become a success then to hell with those who can't, let them do as I have done. Well, some folks need cooperation to make it sometimes, thank God Roosevelt knew this. A society that has no public spirit is poor no matter how rich it thinks it is.

October surprise

So here it is October first, and the garden is like it would be on September first, most years. For a change, we are getting time to do things when the crops want them done, instead of rushing out in a driving rain to salvage immature stuff. We revel in it, but in the back of our minds we suspect that this is the leading edge of the westward expansion of the Great American Drought. It's very dry out, a fact brought home to us daily by the lingering smoke from the Pole Creek Fire, now over 25,000 acres in size. We have been watering the perennials and fruit trees, and much of the water is simply running away across the hard surface to flush itself down the nearest gopher hole.

In the above photo, taken this morning (yes, I climb onto the roof to take these) we have picked the corn and beans and pumpkins and taken down the trellises and the corn patch. Yesterday I started lifting potatoes. The kale is pretty but tough and bitter still, and some has aphids, which goes over the fence to the chickens at lower right.

We've taken down the sunflowers, though they could use a little more maturation, having been planted late. I've laid the heads on the veg-washing table in hopes of curing them for a winter treat for the poultry. Most years, they'd be moldy by now if left out like this.

Some tomato vines are giving up due to sheer old age, and I'm hanging them over the fence to get a few more of them to turn red before gathering. It took them forever to bring on a crop and I'd love to get one more batch for the canner, though I know the flavor has peaked. The Cherokee Black heirlooms turned out exceptionally well for us, better than Brandywine does here. They don't seem to need such warm nights, which we don't get here even during heat waves.

It is supposed to reach 81F today. It has surpassed that a number of times in the past week, often more than five degrees hotter than predicted, and I have continued to seek shade while working, just as I did in August.

These apples will go to juice, syrup, cider, and vinegar. In hotter weather I dried them, along with tomatoes, but there is not really enough energy left in the sunlight for that, in spite of the warm days. the pumpkins are being cured and will go somewhere in the house, to be cooked up one by one over the winter, some for us but mostly for the poultry.

It's still warm and bright enough out to dry some things. Here, we are adding kale to our stash of "veggie crumble" -- like Italian seasoning, but with the nutrients from kale, collards, broccoli leaves, spinach, bok choi and turnip greens added.

The dehydrator, when full, will be closed and tipped up to face the sun. The glass will start steaming in under five minutes.

What's in the one over on the right, behind the cherry tree?

Sunflower stems. Fastest way to dry them for kindling.

According to the weather people, there will be at least one more week of this. Time to ring the gratitude bell again.

Now hear this

I was given an outdated surround-sound system. Had no use for the big DVD changer, but was intrigued with the possibilities of the amplifier. I bought a new mid-range turntable from Sony, plugged it into the CD input, and εὕρηκα! it works. 

 

We held onto our LPs from days of yore, and now they are back in service. Beloved has musicals and artists like Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell, and I have operas and collections like Bach cantatas, Mozart concertos, Haydn quartets, and, umm, Joni Mitchell. We each have copies of "Blue" and "Ladies of the Canyon."

Some of the artists date back to the 1940s, with 1950s LP re-mastered impressions of The Weavers and artists like Johnny Tesch. I have operas I started listening to about 1962 or so. If we want to crank it up we have Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Who, Crosby Stills & Nash. There's enough here that we have no strong desire to run out and get "Somebody That I Used to Know" or anything.

If the electricity goes off and stays off, and we haven't re-installed off-grid yet, no biggie, we have acoustical instruments and more or less know how to abuse 'em.

Granddaughter was here, and I said, "ever seen one of these?" -- holding up a "Sound of Music" soundtrack album.

"No, what is it?"

We had fun.

It's a mood thing.

A five gallon carboy of cider needs about eight buckets of apples, seems like. Since they're going to be crushed, I don't have to be careful about bruises. Except maybe my own -- I did fall into the dry wash yesterday, which was lined with blackberry vines and stones. Never a dull moment.

I admit this little electric shredder is my crusher. In general, I would not advise imitating me on this or any other aspect of my apple doings. In my defense I can say a) it's dedicated to this, is not used for tree branches, leaves, poison oak, etc., b) I'm not making this stuff to sell, so it's not like there's going to be a health inspection and c) yes, everything's been washed.

I chop the apples in half and throw them in the hopper. Pour in some blackberries, too, for revenge. When the receiving bucket is full, I transfer the contents to the squeezing bucket, which goes into the press.

This (ahem) press consists of four blocks of six-by-eight strapped together with angle irons, a wheel, an automotive jack, a trimmed-down bucket lid, an inverted one gallon bucket between the jack and the bucket lid which is inside the six-gallon squeezing bucket. There are about thirty holes drilled in the squeezing bucket, all down one side. Maybe 3/8" diameter. Most of the juice that is separated from the pulp will go up past the lid, not down, and will pour out the top three or four holes or so. So, a haphazard press, but it squeezes, and didn't cost six to eight hundred bucks.

All this drains into a plastic tub placed strategically near the table. The cider will be dipped and strained into the carboy through a funnel. There is a lot of adjusting and fooling around going on here, I'm sweaty, and there are a LOT of yellow jackets to avoid putting my hand on. I pour myself a glass of fresh AJ and sit in the shade awhile.

Off to the potting shed with about 4.75 gal. of cider. I've added a bit of wine yeast and will cap the carboy with an airlock. If it makes cider, nice. If I've goofed and made vinegar, that's nice too. Lots of uses for the stuff.

There are four carboys on hand and some gallon jugs. It takes much of a day to do this alone on this scale, mostly because of the clean-up, so I plan on once a week during the picking season. We'll see what apple, apple/blackberry, apple/grape, apple/blackberry grape, blackberry/grape, grape, and blackberry concoctions we can come up with.

Not all of this will be wines, mind you. Sometimes I just can up a batch of juice in mason jars in the canner. It's a mood thing.

Or made into pies

Apple season is upon us; though those in the trees are not quite sweet, there is a serious apple drop in progress. I'm adapting to this by gathering the drops (no way the poultry can keep up with them) before they bruise over, and processing for dehydration. Each apple is smacked with the corer-slicer ring and the core is discarded, then the fourteen slices briefly examined for quality. Those not accepted fall into the reject bucket with the cores, the rest are dipped in vinegar pr vitamin C water and salt solution, then transferred to the dehydrators.

Dehydrated apples keep a good while and represent useful nutrients and carbs. Home dehydrated slices are not as appealing as the sulfured product from the grocery store, but reconstitute well and can be added to hot cereal, breads, soups and other dishes or made into pies.The reject bucket also represents a resource; its contents can be crushed and pressed to make juice, cider or vinegar, and the "squeezings" given to the chickens or used as compost.

While thinking about all this, be sure to wash all your equipment before calling it a day, and pick a peck of particularly pretty "pommes" for the kitchen fruit basket, and/or to share as the evening turns to night.

[Munching fresh apple] "What star is that?"

"That one? Antares." [Munch]

Pick and eat fresh

 

Take a small cloth shopping bag, cut each handle at one end, sew the loose ends together with some dental floss, go picking. Risa has a basket in the bottom of the bag, also not shown, gloves and a garden knife.

We have looked at twenty-to-forty-dollar garden knives in the catalogs but there's no need for them. We pick up dull stainless-steel butcher knives for a buck apiece from St. Vinnies, shorten and sharpen them on the bench grinder, paint the grips red for findability, and leave them in the garden "mailbox" to be picked up when needed as we pass by. They are a little brittle for digging up dandelion roots, but we figure that's what our "Korean plows" are for. We splurged on those but you can make them from steel-necked trowels, just put in the bench vise and bend to a ninety degree angle.

The tomatoes are Cherokee Black heirloom, they came in earlier than even the Sungolds and have good flavor.

We know how to eat

It is blackberry season hereabouts, not all at once, but in mysterious patches -- lots ripe in one spot, all green twenty feet away.  Last Son has been here and put in a shift to clear away the dreaded knotweed all along the creek (we will use it for beanpoles and kindling), so the sun (and our fingers) can get to the berries. 

Early in the season we like to pick directly into up-cycled 32 oz. yogurt tubs, but these can be awkward to carry. Risa has made a couple of picker's bags using small linen shopping bags with the handles cut from the bag at two ends, then sewn together with a bit of dental floss to make a shoulder strap. The tub of the day rests snugly therein, along with a pair of gloves and pruning shears. As soon as there is only two inches of headroom, she'll pop the tub into the freezer. This much room is prudent because the water in the berries will expand eleven per cent when frozen. 

There are already eight tubs full. It might be necessary to start canning or even wine making. Risa might have to head for Florida at any time, given her dad's health (she's an only), so she may not do any wine making this year. A call in the middle of complex activity could leave Beloved with quite a mess on her hands.

Apples are falling from the Transparent tree at a pretty good rate, but a taste test says these are not yet ready to crush, ditto all the other trees, the crops of which tend to mature in September or even October, along with the grapes. One strategy is to juice blackberries and can them, so as to add them to any mixed-fruit canning or wine-making later. One can only use up so many jars of blackberry jam, and we have lots from last year or even the year before.

Our favorite use for the berries, though, is as is, frozen. The 32 ounce batches are moved from the freezer to refrigeration one every two weeks or so, and parceled out for use with yogurt or in oatmeal or the like. Risa also uses them in breads, pancakes, and waffles. Bring on the winter! We know how to eat.

Ringing the gratitude bell.

Cleaning out the pea vines

Risa picks the last peas and drops them in a chilled bowl of vinegar water.
Then she unties the beanpoles and tee posts and stacks them for next year.
If too fragile the beanpoles become kindling.Every year she cuts a few more poles
from the coppice or from the knotweed patch.

The pea vines are separated from the kale and such that had been growing beneath them.
They are thrown over the fence to the chickens. When the chickens are done with
them, they're retrieved and used as mulch around the place.

She winds up the baling twine that held together the trellis to store away
from sunlight. She mulches and waters the greens that have been newly
exposed to the sun. Steps into the shade, rings the gratitude bell, and
eats the freshly "pickled" peas.

Summer squash for winter

Blimps -- we won't use these at the dinner table.
We can soften them on the stove a bit, slice them up and feed to the poultry.

Or slice thin to dehydrate for soups, stews, egg dishes, and breads.
The pulp and half-formed seeds add a surprising amount of protein.

It's a winter staple, says Carol Deppe.
I like to dip the slices in vinegar and salt --
this about half vinegar, half water here.

Yes, this is a solar dryer. It's composed of found materials and it works.
Simply build your box  to the size of your window and ventilate at each end.
 Egg cartons will do for your trays if nothing better is at hand.

Arrange your slices so they get lots of sun and air...

... tip your dryer toward the sun and let stand for a few days.
In hot, dry weather two days may be enough.

The vinegar can be used afterward to clean glass.

Any left over can provide a nice tang to salad or stir fry ingredients.
 Or use to kill a few weeds...

Approaching mid-August, 2012

It's a jungle out there! Left: corn and pumpkins. Right: Runner beans and potatoes

Cukes and kale

The beans are coming in