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.

Dog update

© 2012 Joshua Stark

More to come...

A blogging legend calls it quits: Nor Cal Cazadora hangs up her blogging hat

© 2012 Joshua Stark

Hey, she's been doing it for nearly five years, which in this genre is pretty danged amazing, but in her last post, Holly Heyser aka NorCal Cazadora says she's moving on from blogging.

Head over there and say good-bye and thanks.  She's a real inspiration to women in hunting (she's even got a Cabela's wader named after her!), but in my life, she's been a real inspiration to try writing, and to do it honestly, even in a genre where the replies can be immediate and harsh (or worse yet, nonexistent).

She says she's working on other prospects, and I, for one, can't wait to see it.  And if you need a Holly fix, just head on over to her monthly article at Shotgun Life, "Butt, Belly, Beak, Bang".

Thanks for posting Holly, and I'm glad we live close enough to visit.  See you in the field!

On dams and rivers, California's climate, and morals to stories

© 2012 Joshua Stark

Here in Northern California we are experiencing Winter in a Fortnight.  Of course, we are two months past the waterfowl hunting seasons, and so the storm doors are opened wide; the wind is howling, the hail may be here shortly, and the rain pours and pours.  California's is often called a "Mediterranean Climate", and I don't know if that is an accurate comparison for some parts of it, having never been to Europe, but I know it is inaccurate to label all of California with one climate  (for a great map example of what I mean, click here). Here in Northern California, for example, we get about 20" of precipitation in the Northern Central Valley, about 35"-40" in the foothills, and about 50"-70" in Blue Canyon (about twice the annual rainfall of Seattle).  The most important thing to know about our precip., however, is that it all falls between November and April-May.  Effectively, then, we are a schizophrenic climate: desert for half the year, and pretty wet the other half.  Our Great Wall, the Sierra Nevada, does a wonderful job wringing out rain and snow from the Pacific Ocean, giving us an amazing, fertile valley for much of the year and very deep snow drifts during the winters and springtimes (the entrance to Lassen Volcanic National Park usually has ten feet of snow by the end of the season).

Of course, being a Civilised Nation, we've plumbed the hell out of the whole river system, and now support one of the largest urban centers on Earth with water from 400 miles away.  We've also dammed nearly every river flowing out of the Sierra Nevada, doing great damage to one of the largest Chinook salmon runs in the world.  Both of these are issues I feel strongly about, but I won't go into them here.

Like every boy, I've always been fascinated by good engineering.  The juggling act that our dam managers have to conduct, keeping the balls of water storage, flood protection, and electricity generation in the air, is amazing.  They pore over weather predictions, flow charts, market prices and myriad other factors in determining just how much water to keep:  If you let too much go, there may not be another storm; but if you hold onto too much, you just might find yourself having to flood downstream communities.  Obviously, timely information and working equipment are vital, as is having boots on the ground, as it were.

When the weather gets this crazy, I often think of a story that may have happened when I was a boy.  In the early 1980's, a great hydrological engineer by the name of Nathaniel Hastings worked on-site at a dam in the foothills.  It was a sizeable dam, and protected a few towns directly downstream.  Nathaniel was very good at his job, knew the weather like nobody else, and knew when and just how much to open those flood gates.  Of course, in California's zeal for the Next Big Thing, he (and a number of other engineers at dams up and down the Valley) was replaced by a system of mechanical equipment, cables and such, that were operated centrally from the power company's headquarters.  In Mr. Hastings' case, literally, there was a gigantic cable-operated lever (for you Brits, that's pronounced lehvr, not leevr) installed right where he used to sit at the controls.

Well wouldn't you know it, the on-and-off nature of California's climates being what it is, a huge cold front froze up the mechanical equipment, and with the roads out (why plow when nobody is going to be there?), the next rainfall blew out the gates, and flooded three towns and hundreds of thousands of farm acres.

It was then that California learned its lesson:  better Nate than lever.

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...

Other pages here

© 2012 Joshua Stark

If you haven't noticed, I've got a couple of additional pages (linked right below the title up there) for your perusal.

If you have ever been interested in using green walnuts... then, sadly, you are very much like me.  Anyhoo, feel free to visit my Green Walnuts page.  I've got quite a few recipes for those that get knocked out of the tree early by your friendly neighborhood squirrels. 

I also have a link to my "Lands on the Margin" writings.  It's still a bit under construction, but over there you can find my love for those little (and big) chunks of land that tend to get ignored, but that have much to offer (foraging, hunting, fishing, and just living).  As I organize my thoughts, I'll put together my experiences, advice and recommendations for adventuring in these great places.

Last, I've reposted my River Nature Tours page, with an addition:  I now offer services for companies and organizations looking for more inspiring places to conduct conferences and in-service meetings.  If you are interested, check out the idea here and then email me for more information.

I would especially appreciate feedback from readers.  Let me know what you think works, what doesn't work, and what you might like to see (or read) that I may be able to provide.  Thanks!

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.

Looking inward... to the workshop, and to personal space.

© 2012 Joshua Stark

After seeing Mr. Fashion House's amazing hobby-shop, I knew I had to organize my space.  I'm now going to town on my workshop, having purchased not one, but TWO pegboards.  I just tore out some old shelving put up by some previous owner, and installed one of the pegboards, and I must say, it is looking much better.  So much better that I am beginning to believe in starting some projects again.

Of course, I was going to head out today to pick nettles and see if my old single-shot twenty gauge still worked, but today was the day Winter decided to come out here in California, so the rain sent me inside.  I'm not complaining about the rain - in fact, by putting me in the shed, it gave me a twinge of hope for a space that is mine, a rare commodity in a 900 sq. ft. house with two little children.

I'm not the type to bang my chest and say, "my ManCave, my Space!  You Go!" to my little, doe-eyed, amazing kids.  First of all, I've noticed that the ridiculous trend of putting "man" in front of words kinda makes things sound gay (not that there's anything wrong with that).  But, even if I did try to get all macho and keep them out, one (five year old) would just laugh at me and the other (16 months) would push me out of the way; he could do it, too.

Really, I wasn't raised to make a fuss for a grown-up space; I was raised that children are people just as adults are people, and so I give "my space" up for the time being.

How I get some space is through cunning mind-games:  First, just like drinking iced tea without sugar, or eating liver, I get space by making it boring or distasteful.  Second, I make it so that I can watch them in another space, and then make that space much more fun, while I do some of my own things. 

Do these tricks always work?  No.  For example, my children absolutely love liver.  They would eat it every day if they could.  But, do these tricks almost never work, but sound good?  Absolutely.  You see, kids like to do whatever grown-ups are doing, whether it be sitting on our butts watching some horribly inappropriate murder mystery, or building a bow.  As I've heard it put, "they'd want chocolate covered poop if you had it", and really, you don't even need the chocolate.  So for those of you with kids, no more crack!  And for those of you without kids, you had darn-well better absolutely flipping love children if you are going to have them, because they will be doing their darndest to give you a colonoscopy for years.

Right now, my wonderful kids are being watched by my absolutely amazing parents, and so I have time to do things that would be dangerous for them.  Okay, at this moment I'm typing, but in a few minutes I'll be vacuuming up rat feces (sadly, child labor laws prevent the latter from being delegated, but it is all for the Greater Good).  Soon, I will have a space to make better and faster bows and arrows with which my children may more effectively terrorize the neighborhood.

So, back to my shed before I get to run down and grab up my children.  And for the record, I absolutely flipping, head-over-heels love them.  

-----

Note:  To check my spelling, I occasionally type in the Google box the first part of a word; in this case, I typed "colon" because Blogspot here tells me that "colonoscopy" is misspelled (of course, it also says that "Blogspot" is misspelled).  Anyhoo, I thought I'd share the top ten choices that Google offers a person who types in "colon".  They are: colonoscopy, colon cancer, colon cleanse, colon, colonial life, colonial willamsburg, colonic, colonialism, colonial penn, colonel sanders.

That last one just threw me for a loop.

What a mountain!

© 2011 Joshua Stark

I've been up in the Sierra Nevada range during any free time I get lately, and I've found something new each time.  A quick update, I've made a mountain berry pie (thanks for the name, Mom!), and found chinquapins (a nut, not a Spanish curse word), snowberries, huckleberries, and chokecherries.  I've also found still-ripe gooseberries alongside the first snow and a flowering columbine!  California microclimates are amazing.

Working on kicking this site up a notch

© 2011 Joshua Stark

I'm hoping to add some good content to Agrarianista over the next week or so.  Topics include a short guide to edible and useful foraging plants (of California's marginal lands), a slightly more comprehensive corner on current and upcoming seasons, and possibly advertisements.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

And yes, I fully plan to have more pictures, and videos should make a comeback here soon, too.

Update: Around the garden and yard (tip!), pickling, and looking for ideas

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Well, it looks as if my latest attempt to keep the ducks out of the raised bed (give 'em one bed, and fence the other with five-foot bamboo trellis) is proving successful, but I wonder if it's only because they are getting older and care less about thwarting me.  Whatever the reason, I'm getting a late batch of corn, beans and possibly okra - I'm especially excited about the beans.  I wish I had pictures for you all, but our camera was stolen from our car a couple of weeks back (along with my fly rod)...

The potato patch (described here) isn't working as I'd hoped - I only see one potato trying to grow, and it doesn't look like it can work its leaves through the bamboo sun-shade I'm using.  However, I'm still hopeful, and the plants I put in on top are still coming up, too.  They aren't looking too healthy, but this is a learning process, and next time I plan to layer some good soil from the worm bin in-between layers of straw.

My lawn experiment is also coming along nicely.  When I built our little duck pond last year, I inadvertently killed the majority of our lawn.  You see, I used the dirt from the pond to in-fill the lower sections of the yard, but I didn't really believe that the dirt below the topsoil was sterile.  Boy, was I wrong on that one.

Gratefully, the ducks have been fertilizing that dirt for the past year.  However, our very hard rains this year turned much of it into durn-near cement (if you put the emphasis on the first "e" in cement, you will pronounce that properly), and I, having no intention of renting a roto-tiller just to find out where my sprinkler lines are, started looking for a short-cut.  This time, to my surprise, I found one:

First, I mowed down the straw used by the ducks.  Then, I soaked the yard really good.  Next, I spread grass seed (by hand, of course - if I'm not renting a rototiller, I'm sure as heck not buying a seeder!), then covered them in a layer of mulched straw, and watered that down.  Every day for the first few days I sprayed the patch, and now, two weeks later, my test patch looks nice and green! A couple of days back, when I saw that the grass had established, I raked up the larger straw, and I'll be danged if it doesn't look like we have grass on our lawn. 

Of course, the ducks couldn't leave it alone, and there are a couple of holes (especially right where the sprinkler pops up), but those can be fixed with extra seed or a patch of sod.  Overall, I'm tickled pink at how well this worked. 

I also finally got around to dealing with my ketchup walnuts.  Instead of the nine days soaking in vinegar, I actually soaked them for over two weeks, and I must say that the vinegar became even darker than I'd remembered.  I wasn't too worried, though, since vinegar just gets better with age, and nothing was going to start growing in that acidic and tannic concoction.

Yesterday, I drained out the vinegar into a stock pot, put in some ingredients (drat! I forgot the horseradish), and about 30 minutes later, I canned four pints of green walnut ketchup. 

I then crushed the walnut chunks (I had a lot), added four apples and a cup of raisins, then some surgar and spices, and made up four pints of chutney, with a little left over for last night's dinner.

Both recipes can be found at my "Green Walnuts & You" page.  I added allspice and cinnamon to the chutney, and it is something special.  If you've ever had store-bought chutney, homemade blows it away - so long as you use good vinegar.  It is smoother, much less sharp, yet still vinegary in a good way.  I could have added some more heat in the form of more cayenne, but then my wife wouldn't have liked it nearly as much.  For dinner last night, the chutney and some yogurt made wonderful fillips for a split pea soup. 

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.

Water, water, everywhere...

© 2011 Joshua Stark

I sit in my kitchen on this cold and blustery June day here in the wilds of the Sacramento metropolitan area.  Last week, the mountain passes over the Sierra Nevada were closed due to white-out conditions, and the snow level dropped to 4,000 ft.  Thankfully, this last storm only saw snow to 8,000 feet, so maybe we are making progress?

Regardless, we get dry days on the days I work, or the days I've spent at home caring for family (a bad flu, oddly enough striking only the females, blew through here last week).  Then, when it looks like I might get a day off to fish or (gasp!) to garden, here comes another storm.  Nor are these storms only in the sense of a person unaccustomed to them:  Last week, we found ourselves, for the first time, in a 'tornado watch' zone, as the tail-end of a system took on that familiar and ominous J-hook over our house.  Luckily, nothing formed, but still, it was June 1st. 

We typically get around 19 inches of rain in Sacramento, and also typically, it all falls between late October and early May, and this is no exaggeration.  But here we are, stuck indoors on a Sunday in June, expecting another downpour, soon, as well as thunderstorms tomorrow. 

I should get out and at least get 'caught up':  Empty the duck pond, dump any standing water, clean up the walnuts (now being dropped by squirrels).  I should even put in the newest attempt at duck-proofing the raised beds (a huge bamboo trellis).  But, I must admit I'm pretty beat down by this weather, and the continual catch-up I have to do, making no real progress, is dampening my spirits more than the rains.

How do I get out of these doldrums?

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.

Quick update: Around the homestead

© 2011 Joshua Stark

Wow, full employment sure can put a damper on personal blog posts.  Not that I'm complaining, because work is just what we needed (well, money is just what we needed, but but the lottery just isn't as lucrative an enterprise as you might think). 

For now, I just wanted to note some things to keep up with the blog:

The ducks, now that I don't put them to bed in their house each night, and also now that the rains have hit again, are laying their eggs in an undisclosed location.  I'm going to do some investigating to find them.  On a related note, I keep buying straw bales that subsequently get rained on, which is why I haven't been putting the ducks in their house.

The rains have hit again, and we are, again, over our average rainfall for the year.  This is good news, because God shut the rain doors there for January, and I was starting to get nervous. 

We haven't put anything in the ground, yet, but will soon start some greens, once I can build the fence line to keep the ducks out.  I have a good plan that I've yet to put into action. 

I have another bow to finish, as well as more flies to tie, but both of these have been coming along nicely.

I haven't been able to get out and pick nettles for the next video (how to cook them), but I hope to remedy that next week.

Wish me luck!  My new job is great (if you are interested in salmon or river management, click over and check it out), and the family is well.