Sapping, spaetzle, and an infestation

© 2017 Joshua Stark

The fun with the stand mixer continues!  I've whipped up egg whites for home-made Belgian waffles, and made a gingerbread (from James Beard's recipe) with the paddle.  I've also tried the dough hook twice -- for a soda bread, and yesterday, for spaetzle dough.  I'm still getting the hang of it, but it is coming along.

If you've never made spaetzle, the recipe is super easy: 3 cups flour, four eggs, a teaspoon salt and another of nutmeg, and about 1/2 cup of water.  After mixing the dry ingredients together, mix the eggs in the middle with half the water, and then beat in the rest of the water until it's a smooth, elastic and fairly sticky consistency.  The dough hook worked for this part really well, and let me do other things while it worked.

Now, the hard part (for spaetzle):  I don't own a spaetzle press.  I do it the old fashioned way, by cutting it on a board... something like what this absolutely amazing woman does.

Please, take a moment to watch that video, because that woman flat-out rocks!  

Anyway... I'm actually nothing like that woman.  First, I don't have a board with a handle.  Second, the board I do have is too wide to fit into my pot. I also don't have a knife that flat -- my knife is too sharp and kept getting caught on the board. What I got was a quick whipping up of the dough, followed by an hour or so of wrestling with a very sticky, gooey mess.  

I finally was able to cook up a bunch (it kept growing and growing!), served alongside garden chard and elk meatballs. The kids liked it alright.  The wife absolutely LOVED it!

That latter fact bodes ill for my future.  


Now, for the infestation:

Not the best pictures, but they clearly show what was a short-lived infestation of maybe twenty or so Meleagris gallopavo.  They were first heard jumping from our roof to our neighbor's roof -- I wasn't quite sure what they were, then hey!  There's a jenny staring at me through the window!

I called a couple of times, since a jake was keen on struttin' his stuff, and then I hooted like an owl a couple of times and three or four of 'em immediately gobbled back.  It was great.

I don't know if they were roosting in one of our gigantic trees, but we'll be looking for them tonight (update: no return of the flock).

These are city-folk, and we won't be hunting this particular flock come Spring.  However, I have been very pleased with the efforts of our first bird last year


Speaking of trees, I just this morning discovered that people tap walnut trees for sap.  I have a monster English walnut in my back yard (it could easily accommodate three taps), but I have a sneaking feeling that our temperatures rarely get cold enough for a good flow.

Has anybody out there tapped trees in California?  Have you tapped trees where you maybe get three weeks, total, of below freezing temps?

On waiting...

© Joshua Stark 2017

I've never been very good at waiting.

Oh sure, I can sit stock-still for a good time in the company of a buck, or scan the skies from a duck blind, or even watch the end of a stick with a line coming out of it into the water.  I could do these things, and things like them, for hours on end.  But that's not really waiting.

Watching and listening are active pursuits. Yes, a person can drift off during these times, but that's all a part of it.

For many hunters, this past Monday marked the first day of Waiting.  Duck hunters (good friends of mine, and family) are especially moved at this time -- memes flew around the social media last weekend talking about the dreaded Wait.  The End of Duck Season.  Questions of, "where were you when it happened?", soft-light photos of the final sunset over the marsh (surely, a tear was wiped away during the shot), and wistful, thoughtful, sometimes poetic eulogies made their rounds.

This is good.  Hunting is filled to the brim with ethical-minded people who absolutely, wildly and passionately love a place and an activity.  Make no mistake, any one of us could get up this morning and go poach a bunch of animals, but the thought never enters our minds.  The end of season is as final and truthful as the sunrise for hunters. And it is wonderful to see (often) grown men wax philosophical and wistful -- men who otherwise think that their joking love for a particular brand of beer is as emotional as they are allowed to get.

It is the end of a season, of a cycle, and we, like millions before us, now wait for that cycle to come round again.  We know that next time, it will be different, yet completely familiar.  Especially this year, we know that the deluge we've received will have altered the hunting grounds in unknown ways.  That is a beautiful thing about hunting: it is ever the same, yet each time, absolutely unique.

And in truth, many of us will take up a rod and reel in short order and hit these swollen waters after fish.  I'm already waiting like a dog in a kennel at the edge of the corn field for the warden to swing open that door and send me shooting out after shad.

In May.

Of course, it's February 3rd.  Which brings me back to my original thought here.

Since I'm no good at waiting, I'm sure to put too many irons in the fire.  In the leatherworking realm, I've gotten completely stuck trying to finish my first, custom-made chef's knife roll for a friend/customer, and I'm therefore backed up on an order fixing another friend/customer's custom-made guitar strap.  I'm not getting any new orders from the internets so I've less of a fire lit under me, and that, coupled with the wide-open nature of a new product sometimes makes it hard to actually just start stitching pieces together.  There's a fear that comes from hovering over a $100 piece of leather with a knife or punch, wondering if you'd measured right.

I picked up an old classic, the oldest, in fact -- I started re-reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, written probably two thousand years before the "Iliad".   I'm also reading "A Sand County Almanac" with my son as part of his reading log homework every night.  I get a chuckle out of writing it down on the check-in report to the Kindergarten teacher, but it has turned into an actual event now.  We are able to talk botany, biology, and even some math as I defined and drew out an example of "diameter."

I've also collected some absolutely beautiful feathers from some of the most gorgeous birds to ever grace the skies: greenwing teal, with breast feathers that resemble shad eyes and sienna-colored mottled neck feathers; northern shovelers who, at first glance, look like 70's game-show host throwbacks with their powder-blue feathers, but up close, show incredible subtleties; and a pintail -- perhaps the most beautiful duck on Earth.  The flank feathers, alone, can set me up for years tying wet flies and salmon flies, something I haven't done in years.

The garden continues its slow decomposition, with the exception of two swiss chard that sprouted up on their own (that stuff is nigh invulnerable).  We received half our annual rainfall in five weeks here, and another week-long rain has just rolled in, with two inches expected over the first two days, which means that there simply is nothing I can do out back, but wait.  The leaky old shed continues to rust my tools, and the 50+mph gusts mean that even my tiny overhang at the back of the house does little to keep things dry.  When we finally start to dry out, there'll be many trips to the dump in my future.  At least the trees haven't blessed us with too many large branches (a redwood tree branch is the equivalent of a regular tree falling sixty feet, horizontally, from the sky).

And my archery side-business is on hold, as well -- no rains + no indoor facility = no teaching.  I am lined up for March, however, which is right around the corner, so I should probably get to organizing and fletching up my arrows, and even looking for a better way to hang my targets.  Ah, the targets!  The rain is also beating down on them...

So, much of what I do now is wait.  Waiting for the rain, waiting for confidence, waiting for the seasons to turn.  Many projects sit half-finished, and I'm not very good at waiting.

Silent Spring? Try, a too-early Spring for California. Also, a quick update on the leather work.

What with climate change and a drought, Spring sprung in California in early January.  However, that just means that the time between January and April is fraught with chaos: we may get no rain, and highs into the 70's for a couple of weeks, to be replaced, overnight, by three days of precipitation in which we get 5 inches of rain; or, we may instead get visited by a cold snap into the 20's for ten straight days.  Of course, we could get days and days of deep, thick fog.  Or a wind that blows everything dry as toast and lights Southern California ablaze...

It means that planting times really don't change all that much due to the weirdness of the jet stream and pressure ridges.  Just don't talk yourself into a false sense of security about an earlier planting time.

But they do change due to a warming climate.

This graph from the US Environmental Protection Agency, for example, shows that the average length of the growing season in the U.S. has increased by nearly two weeks during the 20th Century.  And this animation by the Arbor Day Foundation shows the shift in hardiness zones in the U.S. in one decade.

The California portion of that map just barely covers it, since California has so many climate zones and microclimates.  It is interesting to note the creep of hardiness zone ten inland from the coast... also, keep in mind that California is in a drought now approaching four years long, and well past the data of that hardiness zone map.

For our region, it means watching our plants bloom and leaf early, and then hope for enough water while dreading the dramatic shifts in temperature that tend to come with our precipitation.  You see, the lion's share of California's water is supposed to arrive in the form of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada (which is right now at about 25% of its average for snowpack, a terrible irony if you look up the meaning of its name). But, blooming fruit trees are especially susceptible to damage from hail and freezing.

If we only get our precipitation from what people are now calling "atmospheric rivers", but what we used to call pineapple expresses, we get a LOT of rain, but warmer rain.  In a typical year, that could mean a really bad rain-on-snow event, leading to flooding.  However, with no snow, at this time we are hoping for just about anything.

Sadly, the warmer weather also brings out the nasties -- in our case, mosquitoes, ticks and fleas.  Yea.  Even worse, a longer hot season will mean more West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes, which is only a small trouble for people, but may potentially lead to the extinction of our endemic yellow-billed magpie, as well as wreak havoc on multiple other avian species.

As I type this, I'm watching one picking up sticks for its nests.  They have two in the walnut tree from last year, masses of twigs about 2-3 ft. in diameter.

Updates around the grounds:  Our walnut has a slight case of mistletoe, and I am contemplating just what to do with it.

Our pomegranate, fig, and boysenberry, and my wife's japanese maple (that I feared had died) are all budding and leafing.  I'm tempted to try to plant cuttings of the fig and pomegranate to make hedges (if anybody has any advice, let me know).

As for the leather shop, I've picked up another customer -- my brother in-law, who has commissioned a belt.  Having never made a belt, I looked up "custom tooled leather belts" and, after taking recovering from the shock of seeing how much people are willing to pay to hold up their pants, I decided to only charge this one, being an experiment, for materials and the cost of one new tool (an adjustable groover).

I can feel the possibilities in it, including the possibility that I will royally screw it up.

I also banged out another arm guard, this one a birthday present for a good friend, Mr. Jung.  It was really nice to get a sense of the speed I've picked up, having cut arm guards for two other clients (one of which I haven't yet delivered, due to my shipment being drawn on by a four year-old).  Mr. Jung has a great story, having just recently reunited with his family in South Korea after having been adopted as a baby.

The Jungs can take some really nice pictures.

Posts I've neglected as of late

© 2012 Joshua Stark

While playing with my kids and my new dog, painting the kitchen, visiting long-unseen relatives and driving all over town, here are some posts I've worked on and thought up but haven't finished:

I took my nephew on his first-ever hunt where he could shoot (last January he passed his hunters' safety course - and so did his mom, my sister);

My new friend and brewer Matt brewed up a few bottles of nettle beer, and we discovered that one can squeeze a lemon out of a nettle;

Agnes' herb garden is growing, with additions of lemon balm, cilantro, garlic and lavender, and we are looking for herb suggestions (legal ones, of course);

My slug battle has heated up, and I'd love to find a cure that doesn't cost as much as patented prescription drugs.

In other garden news, the first sprouts have sprung up in the Summer vegetable bed, and the potato patch has come alive, thankfully with potato leaves.  Also, the orange tree and boysenberry are blooming, and the walnut has lost a ton of tiny (about 1/4") walnuts.

Last, every third Saturday of April, Kiene's Fly Fishing puts on their annual Expo in honor of trout season opening the following Saturday.  I've missed it the past couple of years, but hope to stop by there Saturday morning to say hi and to let some travel fly-fishing fellas about Hippo's resort, and how they'd better get out there before he catches all the fish

So, lots going on here.

Garden note to self (because self didn't label the rows)... and a dog update

© 2012 Joshua Stark

Yesterday and between storms, me and the kids planted up one of our raised beds.  Starting West and moving East:  pole beans, corn, okra, swiss chard, okra, nasturtium (edges), cabbages (edges), cherry tomatoes (North), beefsteak tomatoes (South), poblano peppers (North), early jalapeños (South), basil.

Ruben, the eighteen-month old, was the catalyst for the plantings.  Day-before-yesterday the little elf, famous in this house for throwing everything he can into the pond, had gotten hold of my package of basil seeds and tossed it in the drink.  Since they'd soaked for a while, I decided it would be best to just plant the whole packet - something I never do (I still have seeds from five years ago).  Frankly, it was kinda cathartic, and I knew it was time to get the rest of the stuff in, too.

I hate thinning plants that I've planted and that have shown the courtesy to come up, so my gardens always look a bit anemic because I'm afraid to over-plant.  Not this time.  I planted many, many seeds.  We'll see if I'll be callous enough to do the dirty work and thin the babies, although I probably will do what needs to be done and just eat them, anyway.

The bed is 4' x 8', and I'm sure I'm straining somebody's take on companion planting (tomatoes with corn), but let me explain myself.  We have three raised beds, and this year the Upper Bed was planted early with greens, onions and leeks (and now garlic, too).  Agnes asked for the North Bed, which I was tickled pink to give her.  In it we've put lemon balm, cilantro, marigolds, and more garlic, and we still have some room.

The one bed left, then, was "my" vegetable garden, and it all needed to go in.  So I started with pole beans and corn on the Northeast side to minimize garden shading.  I know that corn and beans don't get along with tomatoes, so I put in some okra (which supposedly gets along with everybody) and chard (which is always just happy to be here) in-between.  I edged everything with nasturtium (yes, I'm 30 years late to the party, but I don't care, I love a plant I can grow that tastes just like black pepper).  On the West side are rows of cherry and beefsteak tomatoes, poblanos and jalapeños (not jalapenos - and never, ever make that mistake when typing about Spanish years), and finally the infamous row of basil.

I'm afraid that the latest storm will slow down the peppers and tomatoes; I'd rather not buy flats of started plants this year, but instead get some good show from these seeds.  Our Spring temps. usually shoot up 20 or 30 degrees the day after a storm, so I'm not too worried, but you never know.  I hope to use some of the cherry tomato seedlings to fill a hanging garden bag my Mother-in-law gave us a couple of years ago, but I will buy a started pear tomato if they don't show.

Speaking of hanging gardens, we also put a Rutgers heirloom tomato in an upside-down tomato bag (complete with pretty metal stand).  The stand was my Christmas present from one of my lovely sisters, and it looks great!

Around the property, the cuttings are showing no additional signs of life, but the pomegranate, orange, fig, currant and boysenberries are definitely thriving.

Consider me your experiment for getting your entire vegetable garden in one bed.  I'll do my best to keep you posted.

----------

On the dog front, more crappy news.  The local SPCA turned us down over the phone because the dog I was interested in (a "lab/hound mix" which looks awfully like a lab/GSP mix) was not, according to them, good for a home with children.  Apparently, the reasoning goes, she "jumps up a lot."  B.S.  I told the lady that it was too bad they were prejudiced against children instead of taking the time to get to know the potential owner, and hung up.  I suppose they've never met a person who could train a dog not to jump up - and I'd like to know if they've ever had a medium-sized or larger dog under the age of two not jump up.  According to the Sacramento SPCA, then, kids shouldn't be raised around big dogs.  I don't know what they are trying to accomplish, but building a constituency of people who love dogs enough to want to save them obviously isn't one of them.

Propagating from cuttings

© 2012 Joshua Stark

I'm learning all I can about propagating from cuttings.  We have a pomegranate that is supposed to be fairly good at it, and a boysenberry that suckers (which is cheating, I know; sue me).  I've also learned that plants like rosemary and lavender can be propagated this way.  Folks out here in electric wire land, let me know any tips and tricks!

Is this little guy going to make it?  Probably not.

Winter is here... but, so is Spring, say the birds

© 2012 Joshua Stark

Last week we got our first Winter storm (1/2" of rain in 24 hours) and this week the storm doors have really opened up.  It looks like Winter through the week and on into the next.  For here, that means rain and rain and more rain in the Valley, and big snows in the aptly named Sierra Nevada. 

Of course this happens during my wife's two-week break from her 70-hour-per-week job, and my chance to get outside and work in the yard and garden...

Speaking of the garden, the severe temperature swings over the last few days (70 degrees F to 35), plus my not-by-the-minute watering, have caused my three-inch cabbages to bolt.  Thankfully, the bok choy and collard greens still look good.

The trees and vines are happy, and a few successful cuttings from my first pomegranate pruning are leafing out.  The latter is especially exciting, as I am happy to get additional trees started for either privacy from the neighbors or for sale (both?).  Heck, I could start a pomegranate orchard... if I had more than 1/8 acre, including house. 

To me, the real signs of Spring come from the sky: the local birds are paired up.  Scrub jays, mockingbirds, yellow-billed magpies and white-tailed kites are among the bigger nesting birds in our neighborhood.  The poor doves (Zenaida macroura, mourning doves) are as dumb as posts when it comes to nest location and building, building on grates, in windy spots, or so close to the door that they spook and knock their eggs through their horribly constructed nests.  The act would be quite funny if it weren't so tragic in its conclusions and came with such a melancholy song to go with it.  Nevertheless, mourning doves seem to have taken a page from the rock doves and Eurasion collared doves and are becoming quite successful city dwellers.  

I'm always happy to see our endemic magpies, Pica nuttalli, the yellow-bills.  Like all magpies, they have suffered greatly from the invasion of West Nile virus, and I fear their numbers might not adapt quickly enough to survive.  They are wonderfully colorful, and a little exotic to me, as there were never any magpies on the Delta where I grew up.  We would only see them on trips to the movies or the grocery store "in town", a forty mile drive. 

The kites are amazing flyers, passing food in mid-flight and doing other tricks, showing off to one another, and also careening into the neighborhood redtailed hawk.  They make a great example for a successful marriage.

If you've never seen Elanus leucurus you are missing out on a wonderful show.  Their hunting style is rare: they not only kite, per their name (every raptor around here kites, else they'd never eat, what with the wind). Kites hover.  Only two other birds I know hover around here, hummingbirds and kestrels.  In fact, their striking colors, plus their hovering ability and, I'm sure, their breathtaking stoops (a straight drop from hover, wings extended above) have given them another common name:  Angel kites.

We also have regular "lbb's", little brown birds of various species.  Our gigantic trees allow a number of mountain migrants to overwinter, and we often see nuthatches, creepers, juncos (whose tiny, sweet song I noticed for the first time this year), and the occasional warbler in them.  In the backyard cover, a hermit thrush makes an appearance.  A nuttall's woodpecker visits the walnut tree.  High overhead, snow geese and white-fronted geese pass to and from the local wetlands conservancy, fattening up for the couple-thousand-mile trek to Alaska for the Summer.

And, frustratingly, since my neighbors cut down their palm tree home, a mugging of starlings now pressures and bullies and pushes their way into other birds' nests.  Vile European colonists spreading their urbanizing, monochromatic influence into the neighborhood, literally kicking out eggs onto the street.  Yes, I get the irony.

Sacramento is still blessed with a good variety of birds, even with the colonizers, because of our location (on a waterfowl flyway and at the bottom of a ten thousand foot mountain range) and the amount of land we conserve for habitat.  Shoot, we even have a federally protected Wild & Scenic River running right through the city proper.

Listening to the birds, I am heartened.  I know that Spring is springing, even in this storm.  All's right with the world.

The typical salacious photo to get all the reader traffic going...

The workshop works, now on to the projects.

© 2012 Joshua Stark

I've installed the second pegboard, finished my rotary tool storage, and put a hole in the workshop wall and stuck the back end of the vacuum through it, so I am ready to go.  For my first project, I started small:  An Aldo Leopold bench (just google "Aldo Leopold bench" and find a design while also learning a bit about the man).  Today me and the boyo went down to a local big box store and picked up a couple of 2x8 boards, and put it together:

One Leopold bench... now to finish that boysenberry trellis.

Now that I have successfully built this bench, I've get some much-needed morale for some of the larger projects I ultimately have in mind (table with storage, swing set, outdoor kitchen, second floor for the cottage, etc.).

The garden is going up and experiments continue, in particular the filling for the potato bin.  This year, since we don't have ducks, we haven't bought additional straw, so I'm using the walnut leaves from the leaf pile.  I'm pretty sure their composition has changed in the past few months, and it looks like good stuff to use.  Best of all, it's free.  Phoebe and I cut some seed potatoes, tossed them in a few at a time, and filled up the bin with the leaves.  Keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime, the raised bed where those leaves had sat looks good, and after this next cold front moves through, we'll start putting in some other seeds.

The worm bin has been going slower than I'd hoped, and we don't really have a whole lot of worm compost.  Now, I'm stuck with a nitrogen problem in my cabbage/collard/onion/leek bed.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  The slugs haven't been too hard on the plants, yet, and I've been picking one or two per day out from under the slug board.

The weather has been wonderful:  When it isn't a day in the mid 60's-low 70's, it's dropping a half-inch of rain here in the Valley and multiple feet of snow in the mountains.

Oh, and this week I'm out cutting rose shoots for arrows.  I'll have pictures later.

A New Year

© 2012 Joshua Stark

When your life revolves around outside activities, the number version of a year doesn't always apply.

Yesterday, Phoebe, Ruben and I re-began our plantings.  About a month ago, when it looked like we wouldn't get any Winter, Phoebe and I put seeds in the ground.  Nothing fancy, just some root veggies and broccoli, the idea being that they would pop up by the time of the next rain; but what came first was maybe ten days of freezing mornings, so no luck.

Now, with February flying by, we buckled down.  On Sunday, I purchased flats of cabbage, bok choy, onions, leeks, and collard greens, and two days ago we put down our first three rows.  Phoebe, being five, can do a lot more now, and was carefully planting and patting down with me.  Even Ruben, who'd been fussy that morning, was downright chipper and well-behaved (crazy for a sixteen-month old).

I'm nervous as heck that the menace that was the slug will return in force now that we no longer can turn them into eggs (via duck ducts).  I've got some old oyster shells lying around from our time with the birds, and I may pulverize them even more, and sprinkle them around the plants, but I must do something, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

Further afield, the greens are in full force on the Delta.  In fact, if you get out there right now, you may find some amazing mustard greens with just-about-flowering tips.  They look like broccoli raab, and they taste wonderful.  Another couple of weeks and it'll be bitter-city out there among the mustard, although I've noticed that the radishes have yet to flower so much.

To me, really, February is the New Year.  Last year's hunting seasons end at the end of January, and planting for early varieties begins now.  Waterfowl are in full force on the Delta, decked to the nines in their mating plumage.  Fishing changes, and we start to gear up for some pre-spawn action in March and look for big storm runoff to set our catfish spots afire.  The days even start to feel a bit longer.  Although we only really get cooped up when storms pass through, it still gives me a sense of cabin fever knowing that everything is going to start to pop really soon.

Lordy, I wouldn't stand a chance living in a Northern clime.

A crummy picture of my first planted bed this year... The Sun is just too bright here in California.

Microclimates

© 2011 Joshua Stark

You may have noticed that I've put up a list of what's in season right now for foraging, hunting and fishing.  Homesteaders should most definitely understand their local conditions and learn to recognize the bounty of their region's wild plants, fish and game.  This list is a general description, information I'm gathering from friends and the news.  Your neighborhood, I can almost guarantee, is going to be slightly different from the list. 

One reason for this difference is microclimates: ecological niches that so dramatically shift light patterns, temperatures, humidity, etc., that they effectively create climatic conditions different from the surrounding area.  In California, microclimates can be extreme (due to the wildly varying topography, ocean influences, and other factors), but for practical purposes, a microclimate can be as small as the length of a wall.

More intensive gardening, especially in small spaces, can be greatly enhanced by understanding light and shadow patterns and windbreaks on your property, and matching plants and watering regimens to these patterns, rather than relying on the general assumptions of seed company descriptions.  And this eye toward recognizing the influences of geography, direction, wind, and moisture can also help your local foraging efforts. 

Recognizing niches that vary growing conditions in your neighborhood may lead to pleasant surprises, usually by extending "shoulder" seasons - the weeks on either end of a particular plant's harvest time.  Greens, berries, and root veggies are all especially affected by microclimates because they tend to be low-growing and hardy plants, able to survive in wildly varying conditions (the same characteristics that also make them pests, at times). 

If it is at all helpful to you, come back from time to time and see what is in season, or will be, soon.  Definitely use the list while keeping an eye out in your own neck of the woods, especially during the shoulder seasons.  You may find a treat.

Garden update: Potato leaves!

© 2011 Joshua Stark

A quick update on the garden:  The potato patch built out of bamboo window blinds seems to be working, as the potatoes have started to leaf out.  Additionally, we have other plants I planted on the top layer that are taking off, too.

Garden update and pickling green walnuts

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Well, it seems as if the latest incarnation of duckproofing - edging the raised beds with five-foot bamboo trellises - is working.  Green beans and corn have been allowed to grow to about 10 inches, and I think I'm seeing some okra popping up, too.

I didn't plant the bed in a formal sense, though, so there isn't much in there.  Basically, I threw in some seeds in a very rough pattern, and then covered them in ducked-up straw that I'd mowed over. 

In the potato patch (a bamboo window blind formed into a cylinder and half-filled with straw), I don't see any potato leaves, but the plants I put in on top (radishes, nasturtium, and I can't remember what-else) are popping up like crazy.

From the successes I'm seeing, I envision a radically altered garden next year:  A keyhole raised bed (with a stone base and four-foot walls), with three or four of these bamboo blind cylinders around. 

As for my pickling walnuts, they have blackened nicely sitting outside in the grill, and today I'm canning them.  Today, I'm also crushing the walnuts that have been steeping in the vinegar for the green walnut ketchup and chutney I'll be making next week.  If you are interested in this or other green walnut recipes, definitely take a look at my Green Walnuts & You webpage.

Again with the quick comments

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Man-oh-man, it is hard to get back on the blogging horse.  I'm trying, though.

A quick update on my urban agrarian "stuff" (that's my articulate English for you right now):

Last week, we lost a duck.  Our first loss, she was found lying in the duck run, not a scratch on her.  Not naming them doesn't make it any easier - and, our 4-year old daughter named her posthumously, anyway.  So, we said good-bye to Sarah.  I still miss her.

Just prior to that, our dog, Irma, suffered what I was sure to be a life-ending stroke - but which the vet described as "old-dog vestibular syndrome."  Basically, they get extremely dizzy for a couple of weeks, but get better.  the sweetheart is slowly recovering.

I've built a first iteration of a fence for the raised beds, which the two remaining ducks quickly overcame.  I will now build something more robust - more river reed!  Working with round pieces, though free, is more cumbersome than working with flat or squared pieces.  Perhaps I should split the reed... I knew I wrote in this blog for a reason (that just came to me)!

And last Saturday, we bought a used Toyota Prius, which will save us a significant amount of gas money.  It was also fun to calculate our new carbon footprint over at coolcalifornia.org.

Out from the rain

© 2011 Joshua Stark

If you haven't been interested in California weather, but you still check out my blog, here's a quick note:  The Sierra Nevada has between 125% and 175% of its average annual snowfall.  Some parts of Southern California received 10 inches of rain in 24 hours last week.  Here, we had a tremendous amount of rain, too, but it is clearing out this week, which means it's planting time!  Any suggestions?

New Year's Resolutions, and a technical question about composting

© 2011 Joshua Stark

I'm a sucker for resolutions... yes, even though I rarely keep them.  I love lists, first of all, and I love the potential that comes from a new time. 

So, I resolve to: make a duck-proof greens garden; tie 10 or so flies per week; make some wooden doohickey per week; get grass growing again in the back yard (long story, suffice it to say that I now understand that topsoil really is only a few inches deep); and bathe my dog at least once per week. 

The last one is really important, as Irma is getting on in years, and spends cold nights inside.  If I can get her stank under control, as well as her long hair, she stands a chance of getting to stay indoors even longer, and I like that notion.  She's been a wonderful dog, maybe the best dog I've ever owned, and I want her last years to be comfortable. 

Now for the technical question.  I simply cannot hot compost, I've accepted that.  We also get pounds and pounds and pounds of duff from our three gigantic trees, which we often just pile in the leaf bin and send away.  This breaks my heart, of course.  A few weeks ago, then, I tried just a leaf pile, but I quickly realized a problem.

We grow mosquitos. 

We live in a wetlands/riparian habitat zone, and mosquitos love it here.  The wet leaves are, unfortunately, providing quite the breeding ground, and to make matters worse, we have a problem with West Nile virus. 

I'm not afraid of the virus for me or my family - it's as typical, and as potent, as the cold or flu - I'm afraid for our magpie population.  You see, California has the only population of yellow-billed magpies on Earth (Pica nuttalli), and magpies are particularly susceptible to West Nile, even for a corvid.  As far as I know, there hasn't been found a single magpie that can survive the virus. 

So here's the question:  For all you leaf composters, how do you deal with mosquitos?

Thanks for any help.

Reviewing the year

© 2010 Joshua Stark

This blog began as a series of notes regarding my attempts at gardening, and then raising ducks, in the back yard, and so it's only fitting to do a review, occasionally, to consider what has been working, what hasn't, and how I should prepare next year's Spring garden.  Of course, this being California, the gardening never really takes a break, but since all the harvest festivals have just taken place, it feels like a good time for a review.

First things first:  What did we like to eat?  The pear tomatoes did well, as did the bigger heirlooms (I've got to look up the name!).  The zucchinis were very good (duh!), as were the green beans.  Some bell peppers were okay, and the first hot peppers were great.  The boysenberries and pomegranates, of course, are in a class by themselves.  The Swiss chard was terrific. 

Next:  What didn't we like to eat?  The mild jalapeños, for sure (they tasted like bitter, fleshless bell peppers), and the hot peppers after the bell peppers took off (I think cross-pollination is the culprit).  Come to think of it, many of the bell peppers had thin walls, and little flavor, themselves.  We just didn't like the tomatillos all that much - we had a couple of salsa verdes, but not a ton.  I think we just prefer pico de gallo.  The radishes were violently bitter.

For me, the next step is to consider what grew and what didn't grow.  None of the squashes grew strong enough to make much of a showing, nor did the cucumbers; they were constantly trying to stay ahead of the wilt I'd tried to eliminate by bringing in all new soil.  Now in their defense, the birdhouse gourds and butternuts didn't have a chance to show me much, because they were clipped clean by the ducks.  But, what leaves I saw on them did get the same wilt as the other squashes.

In fact, the duck raids early on really distort the success of the garden this year.  I just didn't build high enough beds, and very early, the ducks flew in and ate almost all the greens.

The corn also came up stunted, the green beans just didn't produce, and the tomatoes and peppers took a long time to ripen, but this I attribute to last year's weather (cool all Summer).

So what, then, grew well?  Of course, the Swiss chard that survived the duck-tastrophe, the bell peppers (though later), and the pear tomatoes and tomatillos.  Also, it looks like the onions will do nicely.  The orange tree has grown some, now that I pump the duck pond under it, and the pomegranate and boysenberry are taking off.  The walnut continues to reign supreme in the yard, but our harvest was severely curtailed this year by squirrels, rats, and codling moths.  Our roses, too, grew well this year, and I plan to harvest hips for rose syrup this week.  And it goes without saying that the ducks grew well, too - two eggs per day.

At the end of my reviews I like to list proposals for next year's garden.  In my case, some bamboo fencing around the raised beds are in order, to keep out the marauders, and another attempt at greens (spinach to collards).  Also, I will only try to grow one squash this year, out of a pot, and trellised almost immediately.  Tomatoes will again make the cut, as will corn and green beans.  I also plan to dedicate a good chunk of land to potatoes, yams, and alliums (onions, garlic, and leeks).  Peppers I will grow, but separating the hot ones and the bells.  And with my successful worm bins, I plan to provide soil amendments in the form of 'casings' (worm poop) in addition to the pondwater from the oh-so-generous ducks. 

What of your gardens?  Do you have any tips or tricks from your reviews to share?  Let's hear 'em!

First seeds in the raised beds

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Corn, cucumbers, and radishes in the ground.  Easy stuff.  Once the corn pops up, I'll add the beans and squash.

I'll also be adding a plethora of goodies, and I await your advice/recommendations for good plants to eat.