Yard tea

The chickens and ducks have, as they do each year, leveled the piles of grass clippings, leaves and barn waste we have dumped on the garden, and return every day to sift through the sheet mulch for slugs, pill bugs and the like.

They're also nipping off quite a lot of kale and collards, but I think we've had all of two frost nights so far, so the stuff is not as appealing to us as it might have been.

I don't feel deprived. The potatoes, of which we have about a third of what we've harvested most years, are actually holding out well. Not as hungry for them in all this relative warmth, I suppose.

We bought a lot of dry beans and grains and such long enough ago that we're having to start eating them down to rotate in some newer stuff.

The new Khaki Campbell ducks and the Golden Sexlink hens are producing eggs regularly, which is good as the Welsummer hens and Ancona ducks are slacking off, waiting for more daylight (we don't subject them to artificial lighting).

Meadow mushrooms came on big in October and ran for six weeks. I skipped these for years due to their affinity for cesium but at my age it may not matter that much, so I said the heck with it and ate my fill -- they appeared in three meals a day. Very good with eggs, for example.

For greens I have been picking dandelions and adding in a bit of finely chopped garlic leaves, which are already over a foot tall. I've yet to convince those around me, but I think these, steamed, added to mashed potatoes, make a fine colcannon.

I'm also drinking a lot of what I call "yard tea." This is whatever comes to hand seasonally (currently dandelions, sage, marjoram, rosemary, lavender, broadbean leaves, and mint -- lots of mint) wadded up and dropped into my old Faberware butter warmer, along with two cups of water, and simmered until the liquid is golden. The butter warmer has a steel-covered aluminum plate in its base for even heating, which gives it stability on the wood stove, and the upward-tilted handle stays away from the heat quite handily. I get two rocking-chair tea breaks per picking.

There is some serious rain going on at the moment. Some areas of the state have flooded or sagging roadways and there could be slides. A friend has had five inches and counting, and I think she is cut off from town. But she's a mighty resourceful woman, so I won't worry needlessly.

We seem to be missing the worst of it yet -- I'll know more in the morning, but so far our creek has stayed within its banks, which means we've had less than an inch. You never know how these things will go. In '97, one of these storms ripped out our fences, wiped out our two creek bridges, drowned the cat, stole the garden soil, and put a bow wave on the corner of our foundation.

To build up the fire a bit with a small oak log, pull open the drapes for a view of the rain, pour a mug of yard tea, and settle into a rocking chair is as much as anyone should aspire to, to my mind.

God-willin'-an'-th'-crick'-don't-rise, as my momma used to say.

Turning inward

This is that time of year (in our hemisphere) when, just to keep from falling in the mud and breaking something, one goes all domestic.

What have we here?

Leaden skies, scudding clouds, a bit of rain and wind. Well, they are welcome; that was the longest summer, I think, we've ever had here, and the water in the well was getting low.

It's that time of the year, for us Northern Hemisphere inhabitants: inventory is on my mind. I'm going to prowl about in the kitchen, the pantry and the cold room to write down items and, for some, their current weight. This will help us with the upcoming Hummingbird order. Here is an inventory, with remarks, from a post here from four years ago:

February 2010 Stored Food Inventory

We've always bought bulk and stocked up. Not all that much of it is local; many things we get from our food cooperative turn out to be from Texas or somewhere, and of course there's the rice ... on the other hand, we eat a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit, grown right here, that would not show up in a midwinter inventory; organic, though not "certified."

What's on hand? I mean other than in the refrigerator, like yogurt, or the cabinet where the incidental canned goods live? For example I don't list below some things such as the peanut butter, which we used to buy in ten pound lots but now grind for ourselves at the grocery store, a pound at a time.

Taking a spiral notebook, a pen, and a flashlight, I give myself a tour. Hmmmm ...

Under the kitchen work counter there are two galvanized steel trash cans on casters.

Can #1

• 10 lb. stone ground WW flour

• 10 lb. spelt flour

• 5 lb. rye flour

Can # 2

• 20 lb. pinto beans

• 10 lb. short grain brown rice

• 15 lb. Basmati brown rice

• 30 lb. rolled oats

In the cold room are three more such cans.

Can #3

• 5 lb. flaxseed

• 25 lb. wheat berries

• 25 lb. stone ground yellow cornmeal

Can #4

• 18 lb. textured vegetable protein (20 lb. sack, opened)

• 12 lb. Bear Mush (wheat porridge, remains of 20 lb. sack). We like this. But now we mostly grind our own.

Can #5

• 25 lb. Basmati brown rice

• 25 lb. long grain white rice

• 5 lb. sunflower seeds

There are lots of shelves in the cold room, too, which are looking bare compared to last November. Much of what's missing now is most of the beets, apples, winter squash, pumpkins and small potatoes, and all the turnips and cabbages, all home grown.

• 5 lb. spaghetti (angel hair)

• 11 lb. stored apples (individually wrapped; some are only fit for the chickens by now, though)

• 1 lb. beets

• 170 lb sacked potatoes (most for seed), mostly reds and some Yukon Golds

• 1 gallon jar dried peppermint, home grown

• 1 gallon whole wheat pastry noodles

• 15 lb. box sesame tahini

• 10 lb. assorted bulk spices

• 2/3 gallon pumpkin seeds

• 1 gallon fava beans, home grown

• 1 gallon dehydrated apple slices

• 15 winter squash (the delicatas are out-keeping the butternuts), home grown

• 1 15 lb. pumpkin, home grown

• 10 liters home brew

• 42 bottles homemade grape/apple wine

• 1 1/2 gallons molasses

Some of the shelves in the kitchen are dedicated to gallon, half gallon, and quart jars of miscellaneous items, from which we do much of the actual cooking.

• 1 gallon dehydrated tomatoes, home grown (we've used about half what we made)

• 1 quart dehydrated pear slices, home grown (ditto)

• 1/2 gallon dehydrated zuke slices, home grown (ditto)

• -- just wiped out a gallon of apple slices, these are popular

• 3 gallons whole wheat pastry flour

• 1 qt. fava beans, home grown

• 1 pint runner beans, home grown

• 10 pounds of elephant garlic in ropes and baskets, home grown

• 1.5 gallons rolled oats

• 2/3 gallon buckwheat flour

• 2/3 gallon cornmeal

• 2 lb. electro-perk Colombian coffee, self-service ground at store

• 1 pt. wheat berries (these are going fast)

• 2/3 gallon TVP

• 1 gallon dried peppermint, home grown

• 1 pint flaxseed

• 1 quart quinoa seed

• 1/2 gallon white sugar

• 1 gallon pinto beans

• 1/2 gallon black beans

• 2 gallon molasses

• 1/3 gallon confectioners sugar

• 1 pint short grain rice

• 1 pint long grain rice

• 2 pounds sea salt, 2 pounds regular salt

• 1 lb. raisins

• 1/2 gallon red beans

• 2 gallons dehydrated mixed vegetable greens, home grown (these have proved extremely useful)

• 1 qt. Italian seasoning

• 1/2 gallon stevia (not as popular as we had hoped)

• 1 cup rye flour

• 1/2 gallon dehydrated medicinals (haven't been sick much), home grown, mostly comfrey

• 1 pint homemade rose hip cordial

• 1/2 gallon whole wheat pastry noodles

• 1 gallon sesame seeds

• 1 gallon powdered milk

• 1 gallon spelt flour

• 1/2 gallon amaranth seeds

• 2 cups chickpeas (from a gallon it took decades to go through)

• 1 lb. Sri Lanka tea, loose packed, and assorted herb teas

On the spice shelves are quart and pint jars of home grown and bulk bought items, as well.

• 3/4 qt. flaxseeds

• 1/2 qt. cocoa

• 2 qt. whole cloves

• 1/2 qt. nutmeg

• 1.5 qt. curry (2 kinds)

• 1 qt. paprika

• 1/2 qt. chili powder (this has suddenly become popular with all the bean growing)

• 1 pint powdered ginger

• 2 qt. dried allium blossoms, homegrown (we like much better fresh)

• 3/4 qt. ground cloves

• 1/2 qt. cajun spices

• 1 pt. dried myrtle leaves, foraged (like bay leaves)

• 1 qt. baking powder

• 1 pint cream of tartar

• 2 lb. baking soda

• And some of the little jars of things, like black pepper

On the canning shelves, things are disappearing fast. As this space is unheated, you'll also find the seeds for this year stored here as well.

• 13 pint jars tomato puree

• 24 quart jars tomato puree

• 25 quarts applesauce

• 4 pints blackberry jam

• 1 qt. maple syrup (bought)

• 1/2 gallon dried runner beans (these are for seed)

• 1 pint buckskin beans (ditto). Bought at a sustainability fair; said to be good in a drought

• 2 lbs basmati puffed rice (a luxury item)

• 1 lb. popcorn

In the freezer there is lots more space than there was in November, shown here.

• 18 pints blown goose eggs, home grown free ranged

• 4 pints homemade chili

• 2 loaves homemade bread

• 4 pints filberts, home grown

• 1 quart plum sauce (last of about 24 from 3 years ago, 2 bad years since)

• 30 pounds assorted homegrown vegs

• 10 pints chicken broth, homegrown free ranged

• 3 ducks, homegrown free ranged. Drakes, actually. All named Andrew ...

• 6 pints boned chicken, homegrown free ranged

• 70 lb. lamb, assorted cuts, local free ranged.

• 8 small trout (getting freezer burn, must use and go for more), local. Definitely free ranged!

• 15 lb. ham, local free ranged.

There are still some blueberries and blackberries in there somewhere; I just can't find them right now. There are also some highly processed foods in there, of the kind called "take and bake," that belong to Last Son; but with any luck I will stay out of those!

The things in the kitchen stay fresher than you might think, as our wood heat is in the dining room, where we hang out. Kitchen temperatures hover around 55F all winter, except during baking. This year, an especially warm winter here, even the cold room seldom drops below 50, which is really too warm for the potatoes and apples.

You'll see that our meat, especially red meat, consumption is relatively low. We're not consistently vegetarian but we do not care for CAFO's and the horrors those represent, preferring to raise and butcher for ourselves, or buy from neighbors.

What would we do differently? Well, we'd remember to put dates on things. Some have been here for years and lost some of their food value and flavor. And I know from this list that I want to try and get a big bag of barley at some point.

There is not an especially TEOTWAWKI-oriented storage plan here. We simply took advantage of cooperative bulk-buy savings, sales, gardening, orcharding, and poultry raising, mostly, in order to have a low average monthly food bill and not have to run get things, spending more on gasoline than necessary. But it is certainly an inventory on which such a plan could be founded.

A forest road

Everyone takes a break sometime; we are fortunate here in having the hills very near us to run to, and so we did that last week.

Our first stop was the place, thirty-seven years ago, that we honeymooned. I had been part of a Hoedad crew parked there for five or six weeks by the Forest Service on a tree planting contract, and had fond, if still fresh, memories of the place, with its grove of seven-foot-diameter Douglas firs and mystical bend in the river.

Beloved and I owned at that time a housetruck -- a cab-over-engine 1946 Chevrolet two-ton flatbed with a cedar-shake house built onto its flatbed. We lived beneath the oak trees in the meadow for a month in August 1977, getting to know each other better.

The place has now been marked off by the Forest Service as not-for-camping-or-vehicles; it's has a pressure-sensitive biome. But we knew no better at the time, and neither did they. They'd used it for a work-camp site for many years; babies had been born there.

We walked around the site, reminiscing. We'd car-camped here in the Eighties, with small children, and explored huge fallen tree trunks, upended towering root-wads, tiny frog-serenaded springs, and gravel bars filled with black rocks shot though with white like photos of night lightning.

We then traveled up the road beyond "Honeymoon Flat," checking the accessibility of various unofficial campsites, some of which nestled among trees almost as big as the ones at the Flat.

This route does not open huge vistas of lava flows, glaciers, and remote peaks, but it does give one a sense of what the old growth forests of the Cascades had once been. At over five thousand feet, we settled into an otherwise unpeopled campground for the night, and spent the evening listening to a hundred tiny waterfalls.

As we are in our sixties, we were once again reminded that tent camping is becoming difficult for us, and we suffered a bit, I'm afraid, from our communion with the hard ground. Nevertheless, the journey was good for us in more ways than not.

We returned to our tasks and routines refreshed.

Stone Buddhas

It looks like the peppermint oil soap misted onto the kale has saved it, just barely. From a distance the greens don't look too bad, but from up close the older leaves are fine green lacework. But the flea beetles are gone, who knows where.

I gather the worst leaves and give them to the residents of the poultry moat. I'm also delivering to them a fair amount of zucchini, sliced, some comfrey, and bunches of seeded grapes. I stand companionably among them, munching my own grapes (the seedless ones). The chickens are quickly done with theirs and gather round my feet, waiting for the ones that get away. 

The not-so-bad leaves are carried to the dehydrator. They're a bit too tattered to interest the people in my life, but dried, crumbled almost to a powder, and stored in a jar close to the soup-making and bread-baking, they'll find their uses.

It's hot out, 97F yesterday and 94F today, and smoke from the fires has settled in the valley. An old firefighter, I tend to think the wood smoke smells like money, but I was step-tested out of that line of work three decades ago. I know breathing the smoke's not good for me now (if it ever was) and so I wear a mask when out of the house.

My shadow is tinged with red. Heat waves shimmer on the street beyond our place. Behind the heat waves there's a curtain of brown -- can't see to the other end. Maybe I shouldn't stay out too long.

I'm here to pick tomatoes, but I'm getting distracted. A couple of ears of corn would be nice at dinner, some of the pumpkins have turned, the gourds are ready, and as usual there are zukes -- half for us, half for the birdyard.

I pile my winnings around the stone Buddha and bow before bringing them in.

To make this kind of Buddha all you need is three rocks in three sizes. Find a nice place -- I've turned up a terracotta dish among the rhubarb plants for a platform -- set down the big one, then the middle sized one, then the little bitty one, in a bit of a balancing act.

There's no actual need to do this, of course; I'm one with everything, so why single out some rocks and put pietistic freight on them, neh? My son saw the rockpile in the rhubarb patch, immediately kenned what I was up to, and said, "why don't ya put a soup can there and bow to that? You're looking for trouble."

We laughed.

I'm old now; sixty-five. I might need reminders of stuff. Three rocks can be the legs, body and head of Shakyamuni or any bodhisattva or practitioner of zazen -- all of the above. I'm reminded of my commitment to spend some time sitting. And I appreciate that, so I bow.

Three rocks can also be the Three Refuges.

I take refuge in the Buddha
I take refuge in the Dharma.
I take refuge in the Sangha.

Sometimes the Buddha is the bottom rock, upholding the Dharma (the four great truths, the eight great ways, and the five right doings), which upholds the Sangha (the community of those living the Dharma). 

And maybe the Buddha is the little head rock, the one that falls off sometimes when a busy gopher tunnels by. Many a budding Buddha falls off the Dharma from time to time, but the Sangha waits, rock-steady for that Buddha's return.

There's a rock stack on the bureau in my bedroom, and for the life of me I can't find the Buddha's head, which fell when I went to get a pair of socks. Rolled into a corner somewhere, and is enjoying a stint as a spider's web anchor, perhaps.

Or, the rock stack can serve as a reminder of Permaculture's three ethics.

Earth Care
People Care
Fair Share

Well, that's all right, too. I mean about falling rocks. Sometimes I flub earth care, as when I drive the truck to town, having chosen to live too far away to ride a bike. Or I flub fair share, as when I dip the serving spoon one too many times into the nicest dish.

But it's good to have the reminder right there, three stones doing what stones do, which is remain rock steady.

So, out in the zendo, my day in the kitchen garden and the garden kitchen done, I pull up a bench and sit, imitating the stone buddha that I've stacked on the side table that serves as an altar.

 

I take refuge in enlightenment and earth care.
I take refuge in right doing and people care.
I take refuge in mindfulness and fair share.

 

 

Something like that.

The Autumn cycles begin

There is fog along the river in the mornings now, geese are honking their way over the pass, pumpkins are turning bright orange, and the cornstalks are falling all over like tiddlywinks.

I'm not sure what that's about with the corn; in the past it has meant the arrival of raccoons but the ripe ears have not been molested (except by us).

I have been carrying a cloth shoulder bag on walks and doing a bit of foraging. There are apples and plums along the fencerows, but I'm looking for things for tea: crimson clover, blackberry leaves, chickory, dandelion, thistledown, oregon grapes, and rose hips. I add these to the mint, which has gone to flower but is still very good. The tea comes out a golden color and has a meditative quality.

An annual event, the pulling up of bean roots, letting the vines die, and collecting all the uneaten green beans and scarlet runners for seed, heralds the fall season. As it is often raining here by this time, we have formed the habit of moving the beanpods indoors and shelling them over time as their green turns to brown. To prevent them molding, we hold them in a washing tray made of two-by-fours and hardware cloth, for better air circulation.

Currently the potting shed/greenhouse is also home to the Excelsior dryer, which has found employment all summer. At the moment it's waiting for a load of tomatoes.

 The Gravenstein apples are done and it's the Roxbury Russet's turn. More apple butter and apple juice on the way.

This tree toppled over years ago and leans on a crutch made from an eight-by-ten post.

I use a fruitpicker to go after the few apples that are out of reach but also fill it up with apples from lower parts of the tree and dump it into the wheelbarrow so as not to have to walk back and forth as much, or trundle around the barrow trying to keep it near me.

The day begins and ends with a little bit of zazen in the zendo. Birds that are gathering to head south like to hang out around the zendo and sometimes quail run across the roof. It's a good place to ripen oneself.

A place to sit

The summer has been a crowded one, not so much in terms of projects as lots of good company. We're equipped to handle the traffic nowadays, and we enjoy seeing the people we love, from near and far. Yet Beloved and I are essentially loners, and so we have to recharge a lot when we've been visiting for hours or days on end.

She recharges by working on correspondence in her office, changing out the duck ponds' water, or walking in a nearby park.

I putz around in the potting shed, or lie down with the laptop and post evidence of doom to fb and Twitter, or head out to the zendo.

The "zendo" isn't what you might think; our offspring had a plywood playhouse that I built them at our last place, in the late 80s, and so when we moved here I built them a bigger one, post-and-beam, 8'X10', using dimensional lumber from scrapped wooden fences. It never really caught on like the old one, perhaps because there is a lot of glass (large scavenged windows) and they were big on stick fighting. 

Occupying a quiet corner of Stony Run, on the edge of the pasture across the creek, the empty building beckoned to me after the kids grew up. I moved some furniture in and wrote seven books there. So its name, until recently, was the Scriptorium.

By and by, as I became aware of the level of destruction we've already wreaked on our biosphere, and began to despair of doing much to reverse the trend, I began to need to recharge more often and more deeply, and decided to try a couple of fb friends' advice to try some meditation. 

It's something I did a lot of at one time, but it had fallen off the calendar during the last couple of busy decades. What I was familiar with was the Soto Zen Buddhist practice of "just sitting" -- a little more than theoretically, but being terribly shy, I had almost never actually practiced with others.

Just as I began to wonder about doing so, an old acquaintance turned up in our area after a long stint in California, who had become a Zen priest in the meanwhile, and took a house in the woods and turned it into a zendo. We reconnected, and I found myself attending monthly zazenkai -- daylong intensive retreats. These I felt to be so helpful at this stage of my life that I began sitting more and more at home. But, as I said, lots of folks are in and out, so the urge to settle down to practice alone often clashes with the need to be present as a friend and hostess.

I told Beloved it had occurred to me to clean out the Scriptorium, which was becoming disused and cobwebby, and find times to "recharge" there.

"Are you going to go out there and sit?"

"Yes, and read Dogen and stuff. Maybe have a few quiet meals, too."

"Okay, so, it's not really the Scriptorium anymore. Can we call it the zendo?"

"Yes. let's do that. But not capitalize it or anything. It doesn't want to be pretentious."

"You bet."

I sit in the seiza posture, using a bench that I've been given, because I'm too stiff for that cross-legged stuff and because chair sitting doesn't seem as beneficial. 

I don't have a zabuton because they tend to put my feet to sleep; the ugly discarded deep pile carpet that I installed twenty years ago seems really adequate.

Toto, my late mom and dad's terrier, who is living with us in his retirement, generally sits with me and rests his head against my knee. So I give up the traditional Dhyana mudra and rest my hand on his head, until he sighs and falls asleep. It's all very informal here.

In one corner of the little room I've set up a "kitchen" on an old crate. It supports longer stays than the half hour sittings that I've been doing. There's an old rice steamer, some pre-seasoned rice and millet, and usually some vegs and fruit, water and solar tea on hand. The "seasoning" is dehydrated vegetable leaves, herbs and tomatoes all grown here at Stony Run, and really the meals can be quite sustaining.

The point of zazen, according to Kosho Uchiyama, is to remove false distinctions between self and other and to lose that discomfort which we tend to have when contemplating the eventuality of our demise. If you lack dualism you will lack anger and you will lack fear.

Behind a temple there was a field where there were many squashes growing on a vine. One day a fight broke out among them, and the squashes split up into two groups, making a big racket shouting at one another. The head priest heard the uproar and, stepping outside to see what was going on, found the squashes quarreling. The priest scolded them in a booming voice. “Hey, you squashes! What are you doing out there fighting? Everyone do zazen.” The priest taught them how to do zazen. “Fold your legs like this, sit up, and straighten your back and neck.” While the squashes were sitting zazen in the way the priest had taught them, their anger subsided and they settled down. Then the priest said quietly, “Everyone put your hand on top of your head.” When the squashes felt the top of their heads, they found some weird thing attached there. It turned out to be the vine that connected them all together. “This is really strange. Here we’ve been arguing when actually we’re all tied together and living just one life." After that, the squashes all got along with each other quite well.

From Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama

Use what you have

On the principle of Use What You Have, I am eating steamed zucchini, dried zucchini chips, zucchini waffles, and zucchini bread. I grate zucchini into just about everything but the coffee. I slice the zeppelins into thin wedges that go over all the poultry fences, where they soon disappear. Occasionally, I have beans. Tomatoes are still a treat, though.

When I collect my empty basket and zuke knife and head out of doors, I stop by the Bonshō to give it a ring. (It's nice to live far enough from the neighbors to have this option.)

Bonshō = Buddhist bell.

In Zen there is a fair amount of bell ringing, drum thumping, stick whacking, and so on, generally at set times, and sometimes accompanying the chanting of the Heart Sutra.

That's all well and good, but if I clattered the bell much it could get old for the neighbors, and I'm awful at keeping to a schedule. My own attitude toward the bell is that when I notice it, I invite it to ring, as explained by Sister Dang Nhiem who lives at Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California.

The bell is a piece of steel pipe about two feet long, which I've hung in a lilac by the path to the barn, and the "inviter" is a handy piece of rebar that's lodged in the same tree. I hold the pipe and give it a light tap to let it know an invitation is coming, then inhale slowly, clear my mind as best I am able, exhale, release the pipe, and bring over the rebar smartly. The tone is acceptable without my having spent a bunch of money on a religious artifact -- use what you have.

The first order of business after a bell ring in the morning is the poultry check. I let them out of their coops, check feed and water, gather morning eggs (these are duck eggs generally), make sure the gates are shut behind me, and return to the house for breakfast.

Then I head out to see what's happening in the garden. If there are zukes and beans, I gather zukes and beans. If a small apple tree needs its apples removed and placed at its base to give it another year of root-building before demanding a crop from it, I do that. I cover weeds with handfuls of straw. And always I pull some morning glories, which I know will defeat me, but, please, not yet. If it's a dehydrator day for greens, I may fill the basket with large side leaves from kale, collards and the like and bring them to the potting shed to dry up in the Excelsior. If I need to do a lot of this at once, I may bring out the solar dehydrators. They were made from scraps yet seem to be holding up very well. Use what you have.

I also check to see if the irrigation should be turned on. We're using the center pivot sprinkler again this year, which allows too much evaporation of our precious well water, but helps to not buy too much plastic. We have it, and we have the tall pipe on which it stands, so we use it. The corn patch is within reach of the sprinkler, so I look at the corn. If the leaves begin to fold, I water, either early in the morning or at dusk. About every third day in the 80s, every day in the 90s.

Dogen said: "The body and mind of the buddha way is grass, trees, tiles, and pebbles, as well as wind, rain, water, and fire."

That sounds kind of comforting, and it is, but thinking of one's natural surroundings as benign smacks of privilege. Grass can take over the garden, trees can fall on the house, tiles can slide down and hit you, pebbles can dull your shovel. Wind can knock down the barn, rain can carry away the soil, water can drown you, and fire can wipe ou the whole neighborhood. None of these events are malevolent. We are not more important than the world. We're just part of it.

It's with this perspective that one respects all these things, rings the bell, and uses what one has right now. As the sun rises over the mountain, all things become possible.

Things as they are and things to come

There is a hint of fall in the air here for a few days -- with rain, which has been hard to come by -- and some signs which I am used to ascribing to the arrival of late August, such as the bloom of the chickory, and September, such as the croaking of Canada geese flying low in vee formation toward the south.

We have been promised high eighties and nineties next week, but it's too late for me; something has triggered my nesting instincts and I've become interested in battening down the hatches! I'm not the only one; at the worker-owned Bi-Mart which I frequent (in lieu of bigger boxes), the aisles where one finds weatherstripping and caulk are being mobbed.

My big project this year was the barn; that's slowing down now.

I've checked its interior rooms, of which there are now four, and it looks like my roofing efforts, for once, have been effective. I found the polycarbonate relatively easy to work with, and I hope I can still say that after the coming winter.

There has been a spate of effort in the garden at last; drawn there by the advent of hundreds of zucchinis, I discovered the effect of neglect on the weed population and have begun trying to keep up. paper and straw are the tools of choice. 

As the pea vines died back, I cleared away both them and their trellis and prepped that part of the "bean" bed for some new plants, which are coming up in the newly remodeled potting room. This has opened up the view from the kitchen window considerably.

We are still adding a lot of material to the compost heaps. As we do so, we turn around to check the grapes, which are having a banner year and coming along well. From time to time we are narrowly missed by falling apples, which we give to the compost -- they're not quite ready to use for much, though they aren't too bad steamed with hot cereal and such.

Speaking of compost! We have gone back and forth about a composting toilet for years. The established rules: not expensive, not in the house, not in the dark (light switch and magazine rack), easily reached at night, no fighting through gates.

This one was given to us. I have built a throne room for it between the tool wall in the potting shed and the poultry room (reducing their space, but acceptably). The floor is framed, with ground cloth, sill plates and joists. The recycled storm door is white and the barn and potting shed doors are red, so you can see where to go at night (important as the days shorten), and the poultry fence is out of the way on the left. Potty is vented through the rear wall and the fan has power.

We managed to mangle the seat cover (it was getting brittle) and the step (ditto), hence the homemade lid and cinder block step. These should be fine.

Potatoes and squash are looking good. Cucumbers failed. Tree fruits good. Blackberries almost nonexistent. Seeing very few pollinators. Tomatoes very sparse. Plenty of wind, but still no ears on the eight-foot cornstalks (Stowell's Evergreen). Never a dull moment.

The foot valve died on the well, an d the pump men were here today. One of them eyed our woodpile, and asked who our "wood guy" is. (I put up about two thirds of it myself, from ice-storm wood). So I am not the only one thinking ahead to long dark nights!

The fall plan will be to keep walking around with the caulking tubes. And make a lot of grape juice and apple butter. 

Wide awake

"If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this." -- Dogen.

After a week in the 90s, it's become difficult for me to realize I can once again work outside all day. But it's nice enough out. I could go. But my habit now is to hide indoors at midday. Often I take a nap.

When you're over 65, you watch the thermometer more, and also the cloud cover. If it's over 86F (30C) out, and clear, with a hot wind, rural folks my age know they may do poorly at work with what's left of their "large muscle groups" in the direct sunshine. It's why we were, in former times, so often found sitting together in the shade shelling beans and offering pearls of wisdom to hard-working youngsters as they passed by.

The garden got huffy about all the time I spent on the barn, and in a fit of jealousy sprouted weeds all over. I'm putting in shifts now with paper and flakes of straw, playing catch up.

I can hear the zucchinis growing. I run with armloads of them to the steamer, the dehydrator, the grater, the bread bowl, and the oven. Blimps that got past me are sliced and heaved over the fences to the various flocks.

I yank out pea vines and drag importunate pumpkin vines away from tomato cages. I water corn and worry over the few, few blossoms on this year's tomato plants. it's good that we did not use up all of last year's sauce.

Whenever I pass the bonshō -- the "temple bell -- actually a length of steel pipe hanging from a lilac -- I may tap it with my fingers, politely, and give it a small bow. It now has a little white patch painted on it, with, in black:

Mid-year report from Stony Run Farm

The open three-sided shed that was here when we got here had been built with massive beams, 8X10s and the like.. The whole things is mounted on large stones that had been clawed out of the creek bed, and is settling over the years as the posts dry-rot on top of the stones. Our site is a north facing wetland, and wooden buildings here are even more ephemeral than usual. In 1994 I laid on a skin made up of salvage -- fence boards and old windows -- and we got by for two decades. We surely don't have another two decades in us, but we do feel we need a "barn" for awhile longer.

Enough leaks had sprung, and walls sagged, that it was time this year to tear down and start over, but the roof beams are just too heavy to move safely. So it was decided we would pull out what dry rot we could, shim the rest, and just put a new skin on. Also we wanted to tuck in a small "throne room" for the composting toilet we'd been given.

The first order of business was to fork bedding out of the indoor construction area, move some nesting boxes,  lay a ground cloth, then install a sill plate, floor joists, floor, walls, and door for the throne room. We need a new storm door for the front entrance to the house, so I unzipped the old one from the door frame and zipped it to the new doorway in the barn, using the same screws. 

This is a very low barn, so the throne room has rather a low ceiling for us tall people, but it will do. I built a wall right behind the toilet and will make a storeroom in the space created.

I then moved windows from the west exterior wall to the east wall and vice versa, so as to be able to add more glass to the west wall, which is part of a combination potting shed and "greenhouse." Then put new plywood and furring strips all around the exterior. The trim is the best of the old rotten fence boards, de-nailed and re-purposed.

I like a white barn, which is cooler for the animals, and Beloved likes to have a red barn to look at, so we have compromised. The east, north and west walls will be painted red with white trim, and the south wall will be white with red trim. Today it will be in the nineties, so I am blogging instead of painting.

On the roof, I will try white polycarbonate for a change, as roll roofing has proved unsatisfactory with the low pitch.

A disadvantage of being engrossed in reconstruction is the weeds get ahead of me. You can see a bad patch in the corn bed. To the left is the tomato bed, to the right is potatoes. In the background, sunchokes and apple trees. It doesn't look so bad in the photo, but these areas are filling up with grass and there are also (drum roll of eventual doom) morning glories. I'm too old to keep up with the morning glories. They will win.

Here are tomatoes on the right, squash on the left, and blueberries on the left. Grass perking up in the foreground. The big ragged thing in the tomatoes is a last year's Fordhook Giant chard going to seed. I want these seeds as it survived a -9F deep freeze in December. Seed savers have ragged gardens even if they do keep up with the weeds.

In the other direction we have the peas/beans and greens/roots bed, with grapes on the left. This area got fresh mulch recently, but the grass is gaining on the greens. Some things have bolted, but there is a lot of food in that bed, so, I'm not unhappy.

Green and runner beans are at last beginning to catch up with the peas and broadbeans. These do a decent job of suppressing their own weeds.

Mr. Sun presides over the entrance walkway, facing north, with Egyptian onions, elephant garlic, goumis, chard, and a fuchsia. He gets about half an hour of sun at the solstice; by August he's back to full time shade.


Update, 7/3:

Still not terrific, but better than it was. Should last us.

The segue into June

The roses on the Rose Gate are a little more than half done for this year. When new branches spring out toward us or our guests, I tuck them back among their companions, thus building a shape we find pleasing. I don't know the variety; they were here when we got here 21 years ago. I moved the bush three times, but not to good places as it has a climbing habit. So the obvious thing was to split the root ball and plant on either side of the gate, where it's very happy.

Warm days and cold nights. The garden did not mind my gamble to put things out early -- the pie cherries are ripening three weeks ahead of schedule -- but things grew to a certain height and just sat there. This week they're beginning to take off. The tomatoes, corn, beans and squash will do all right, by the look of them. It will, with any luck at all, also be a huge fruit year -- apples, pears, grapes and quince have set well. There are even medlars, goumi and aronia for the first time.

As usual though, the stars of this farm are the roots and greens. The potato beds and bins look good. Here we have five kinds of kale, collards, Forellenschluss and Cracoviensis lettuces, red and green cabbages, red and green chard, tatsoi, bok choi, spinach, and turnips. A last year's chard and a kale have gone to seed, which I really want as they survived the -10F spell over the winter, a significant achievement even for them.

Young Man has been here and emptied the duck pools, bucketing the water to the fruit trees, while I have taken on the long-put-off task of cleaning the garage.

Spring can make me keep my head down and back bent a bit much, so it's good when The Cowboy can get away from his job and take me out on the water.

Purple Martins