The plan last spring was to build a new garden shed and put a field fence around the garden. Then it rained, and summer never came except for that one afternoon in July, and it wasn't until not long ago that the earth began firming up again.
OK,now it's concrete. I fully understand how the ruts of covered wagons heading west can still be seen a century and more later. We still have ruts in the garden from that soggy day when I took the bush hog in there to mow down the feral weeds and locusts that had shot up from the never ending monsoon. I expect they will be there for another six months -- a liability for a feller trying to finish stretching the last of the fence and add a couple steel gates.
One day last week, I snipped the last of the 12-gauge wires and drilled the holes for the L-shaped hinge screws and hung the gates. Simple as that, now that the field has stopped tugging the boots off anyone who walks near it. So the fences stand more or less vertically, the gates swing as intended and the garden cleanup for the fall has begun. I've mowed out most of the sorry-looking tomatoes, sorry-looking broccoli, sorry-looking okra, sorry-looking squash vines and the sorry-looking-I-don't-know-whats, and begun removing most of the gizmos that held up the foliage that never really bore anything edible. Also mowed around the asparagus patch and the blueberry patches, and need to get some mulch on the asparagus ferns before cold sets in.
A bear, or something big and surly, I think, got into our best blueberry patch and laid waste to a couple of bushes, so I've got some pruning to do there, and if there's time I'm going to get started on transplanting some blueberry bushes from the wrong side of the creek to the west-facing patch. But most of the spring's projects are now about done, so I'm only about six months behind, and catching up. And beside, wood's up, split and stacked, just awaiting the first cold day. Time moves on.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Ghostly ruins on the Rappahannock
Since I was a little boy I had heard stories about the old homeplace of my grandmother's family. It had a name -- perhaps Four Chimneys, or maybe it was Two Chimneys -- but most folks in my family called it Towles Point, not far from where the broad Rappahannock opened onto the Chesapeake Bay.
It had been the place where my great-grandmother, Margaret Delaney Towles, had been born in 1844 and where my grandmother, Mary Atkinson Monie Betts, had perhaps visited her grandparents sometime during her 103-year lifetime since her birth in 1876.
It had been, according to to an aging volume called Virginia Homes and Churches, "not only one of the oldest houses in Virginia, but is remarkable for having continued for more than two hundred years in the possession of one family." Here's a page from the book that shows what the house looked like when it was still standing:
It was built in 1712 by Henry Towles, and it was occupied until 1933, when my grandmother would have been 57. Sometime after that the house fell into disrepair, and eventually collapsed. The old ornamental iron gateway disappeared into someone's possession, and the property became overgrown and tangled with the encroaching forest. My cousin Sid Paine and his brother Christopher had both visited the site decades ago and found a brick and a nail; they recalled there was little left of the place other than a chimney. Martha B. and I had visited nearby in the 1990s and thought we had gotten to the right site, but all we could see was a jungle there on the banks of Towles Point, just inside Day Beacon 6 a few hundred yards out into the channel.
Then in June, while we were anchored on a sailing vessel with friends across the Rappahannock near Urbanna, I happened to notice on a nautical chart these words: "Towles Point -- submerged ruins" -- just about three miles east. That fired my imagination and made me want to look again. Maybe the foundation of the old house was underwater, or at least partially so. So when my cousin Sid and his wife Elaine invited us to visit them in a time share at Williamsburg's Powhatan Resort last week, we agreed to make another visit. Towles Point appeared to be about a two-hour drive, give or take a dozen or so stoplights and stopsigns, from Williamsburg.
The ruins were not where we though they were, but they were right where they had been since the house was built 301 years ago. Someone had bought the place, cleared the undergrowth, built a new house and garage nearby and, apparently, lovingly preserved the ruins, if that's the right phrase, to protect them for years ahead -- capping raggedy parts of the brick and mortar with new concrete, repointing some of the mortar and, I suspect, putting in one new mantle beam to help support what was left. The remaining ruins are well above the waterline and much of the northwest wall, with one standing chimney and at least three fireplaces, showing. Here's a view of the ruins as I first saw them across a wooden fence:
A placard on the bricks reads: "Towles Point Plantation. Towles Family Home. Occupied 1712-1933." The place now belongs to a family from Richmond, according to records at the Lancaster County Courthouse. I'm glad it's in their hands. It is certainly better kept than we could have managed, and it still stands, at least in part, on a point of land in a region that has seen momentous events in American history occur on its waters and in its fields and forests. It remains a familiar landmark for the living and for the ghosts of the dead who first settled these parts more than three centuries ago.
It had been the place where my great-grandmother, Margaret Delaney Towles, had been born in 1844 and where my grandmother, Mary Atkinson Monie Betts, had perhaps visited her grandparents sometime during her 103-year lifetime since her birth in 1876.
It had been, according to to an aging volume called Virginia Homes and Churches, "not only one of the oldest houses in Virginia, but is remarkable for having continued for more than two hundred years in the possession of one family." Here's a page from the book that shows what the house looked like when it was still standing:
Then in June, while we were anchored on a sailing vessel with friends across the Rappahannock near Urbanna, I happened to notice on a nautical chart these words: "Towles Point -- submerged ruins" -- just about three miles east. That fired my imagination and made me want to look again. Maybe the foundation of the old house was underwater, or at least partially so. So when my cousin Sid and his wife Elaine invited us to visit them in a time share at Williamsburg's Powhatan Resort last week, we agreed to make another visit. Towles Point appeared to be about a two-hour drive, give or take a dozen or so stoplights and stopsigns, from Williamsburg.
The ruins were not where we though they were, but they were right where they had been since the house was built 301 years ago. Someone had bought the place, cleared the undergrowth, built a new house and garage nearby and, apparently, lovingly preserved the ruins, if that's the right phrase, to protect them for years ahead -- capping raggedy parts of the brick and mortar with new concrete, repointing some of the mortar and, I suspect, putting in one new mantle beam to help support what was left. The remaining ruins are well above the waterline and much of the northwest wall, with one standing chimney and at least three fireplaces, showing. Here's a view of the ruins as I first saw them across a wooden fence:
A placard on the bricks reads: "Towles Point Plantation. Towles Family Home. Occupied 1712-1933." The place now belongs to a family from Richmond, according to records at the Lancaster County Courthouse. I'm glad it's in their hands. It is certainly better kept than we could have managed, and it still stands, at least in part, on a point of land in a region that has seen momentous events in American history occur on its waters and in its fields and forests. It remains a familiar landmark for the living and for the ghosts of the dead who first settled these parts more than three centuries ago.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Crisp around the edges lately
Sometime in the past few weeks the wet stormy weather that had vexed us all year turned to something approaching perfection. Cool days, mostly, with enough sun to remind you it's still late summer but enough nip to the breeze to remind you that autumn is coming on. Thermometer this morning read 53 degrees -- not cold, but enough to grab your attention.
It brought to mind a phrase from something we learned back in high school days in a writing class. I don't recall and couldn't Google up the author or the precise phrasing, but the line was its own form of perfection: "It was the kind of day October served up -- warm and soft in the middle and crisp around the edges." That used to describe exactly the best days of October down in the Piedmont, but up here around 3,100 feet or so, we're having the best of the crisp around the edges part every day and it's only early September.
Fine weather has allowed us to catch up on chores interrupted for eight or nine months by heavy rains, dense fogs and gooey ground. We're about halfway around the old garden, stretching out some 300 feet of 1047 field fence (so called because it has 10 horizontal wires and it's 47 inches high) with a Rube Goldberg rig involving a portable dummy post bolted to the front of our 4WD RTV, two come-alongs and a pair of 45" angle irons bolted to the end of a piece of fencing as a kind of bracket to stretch the fence out tight. Here's a quick look at the gizmo.
We're also finding time to clean up some of the old buildings on the property, some of which are leaning badly. The old homestead down in the bottom has begun losing its rusty metal roof, and siding has exposed a second-story room to the ravages of wind and rain. The first-floor ceiling below it has begun to let go, and I'm trying to salvage anything useful from the old place.
A couple days ago I sorted through the old barnwood that we've stored on the front porch there for years, and I was amazed, once again, to find such wide boards in relatively good shape. I won't know for sure until I plane off the silvered outside wood, but in the past many of these boards have turned out to be American Chestnut -- cut down in the 1920s and 30s after the blight came through, and government officials urged that all trees be brought down before the blight ruined them for any use atall. I've got some 16 inch-wide planks of what I think is chestnut, as well as some smaller stuff that might be cherry. Years ago I planed down some barn board and was stunned to find some lovely cherry -- rich in color and still sound beneath the 1/8 inch weathered grain on the outside -- that was used for siding on a corn crib or some such farm shed.
These old boards are treasures of sorts. They stood up to decades of heavy weather, witnessed the joys and tragedies of generations of farm families and still await further use as sturdy tabletops, chair legs or picture frames. That'll take some study, figuring out how to make the best use of wood that grew up on this property, helped feed and shelter the hardy folk who lived here and is still good for generations more. Mute though those boards are, they bear witness to vivid stories of life on the mountain.
It brought to mind a phrase from something we learned back in high school days in a writing class. I don't recall and couldn't Google up the author or the precise phrasing, but the line was its own form of perfection: "It was the kind of day October served up -- warm and soft in the middle and crisp around the edges." That used to describe exactly the best days of October down in the Piedmont, but up here around 3,100 feet or so, we're having the best of the crisp around the edges part every day and it's only early September.
Fine weather has allowed us to catch up on chores interrupted for eight or nine months by heavy rains, dense fogs and gooey ground. We're about halfway around the old garden, stretching out some 300 feet of 1047 field fence (so called because it has 10 horizontal wires and it's 47 inches high) with a Rube Goldberg rig involving a portable dummy post bolted to the front of our 4WD RTV, two come-alongs and a pair of 45" angle irons bolted to the end of a piece of fencing as a kind of bracket to stretch the fence out tight. Here's a quick look at the gizmo.
 |
| The lower corner |
 |
| Stretching fence |
We're also finding time to clean up some of the old buildings on the property, some of which are leaning badly. The old homestead down in the bottom has begun losing its rusty metal roof, and siding has exposed a second-story room to the ravages of wind and rain. The first-floor ceiling below it has begun to let go, and I'm trying to salvage anything useful from the old place.
 |
| The old place, last October |
 |
| Awaiting cleanup |
A couple days ago I sorted through the old barnwood that we've stored on the front porch there for years, and I was amazed, once again, to find such wide boards in relatively good shape. I won't know for sure until I plane off the silvered outside wood, but in the past many of these boards have turned out to be American Chestnut -- cut down in the 1920s and 30s after the blight came through, and government officials urged that all trees be brought down before the blight ruined them for any use atall. I've got some 16 inch-wide planks of what I think is chestnut, as well as some smaller stuff that might be cherry. Years ago I planed down some barn board and was stunned to find some lovely cherry -- rich in color and still sound beneath the 1/8 inch weathered grain on the outside -- that was used for siding on a corn crib or some such farm shed.
These old boards are treasures of sorts. They stood up to decades of heavy weather, witnessed the joys and tragedies of generations of farm families and still await further use as sturdy tabletops, chair legs or picture frames. That'll take some study, figuring out how to make the best use of wood that grew up on this property, helped feed and shelter the hardy folk who lived here and is still good for generations more. Mute though those boards are, they bear witness to vivid stories of life on the mountain.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
I'll have a Red Oak, thanks, if it's all the same to you
The woods up here have gone silent again after a month of the roar of chainsaws, bucket truck, industrial chipper, tracked grinder, log splitter, splitting mall, steel wedge and kindling hatchet chewing up broken trees, dead trees, live trees, widowmakers, raggedy limbs, a billion or six leaves, old stumps and, I guess, about 400 or so billets of locust, beech, maple and oak that will eventually go into the soapstone stove and up our chimney over the next couple of years.
About an hour ago we finished stacking the last of the red and white oak that will season over the next year and provide a good bit of our home heating in the winter of 2014-15. I've been splitting old rounds of maple and oak since early June, the last produce of the destructive winter of 2010 and its serial ice and snow storms that wrecked so many of the lovely old hardwoods on this farm. We had so much firewood, and so little chance to burn any of it after a summer lightning strike reduced our house (and our first soapstone stove) to ashes and molten lumps of hard stuff, that it has lasted us through the first two winters after rebuilding the new house. It still leaves us with a cord and a half of wood to start the upcoming heating season.
I've split a lot of wood over the years, much of it with maul and wedge, but more recently with the help of Messers. Briggs and Stratton and the miracle of the hydraulic ram. It's the kind of gizmo every old boy loves: It's painted red, it makes a big racket and it makes smaller stuff out of bigger stuff. And when you finish, the idea of a cold beer sounds real good.
A lot of the stuff was near our house, and most of that stuff was maple, beech and locust -- including a fair amount of dead locust. Locust makes fine firewood, if the carpenter ants or whatever they are haven't already reduced it to powder. I spent a couple weeks splitting the stuff near the house, loading it onto a trailer and hauling it to our woodlot to be stacked. A lot of the locust looked like ant resorts, so much of that went to the burn pile. No sense in bringing the ants inside for the winter, however briefly before burning.
A week ago I got to the brawnier stuff down by the barn -- white oak and red oak, mostly. Some veteran loggers and ministers of the home fires will swear that white oak is a lot better firewood than red oak -- smells better and burns better, but is somewhat harder to split than red. Here's my take on it: Maybe so, but the sheer pleasure of splitting red oak makes up for a lot, and properly seasoned, it burns just fine in my stove.
You'll find on the 'net all kinds of advice about splitting wood and burning it. Some say splitting white oak is a lot easier if you wait until if freezes, but I found this gem: "Waiting till the 3rd full moon of the 5th month while the cicada's are singing doesn't seem to make any difference in how it splits." I agree. It's stringy and sometimes splintery, but neither Mr. Briggs nor Mr. Stratton complain overlong about it. So, like Admiral Nelson, I just go at it until it's done.
Red oak, on the other hand, will practically pop open if you hit it just right with a maul, and it splits smooth as silk on the log splitter. I put 20-inch logs on it and the engine barely burped before producing a clean, straight-grained cut. I nibbled some billets down to nearly square logs that made the stacking a heck of a lot easier on the old bad back and bad knees and bad arthritic hands that do the work around here.
So, as of mid-morning, I'm done for the year when it comes to cutting, splitting and stacking. And I'm thinking seriously about that beer. Trouble is, the one I want is down in Greensboro, where they make Red Oak lager. Figure I can be down there in time for a late lunch, if only I could persuade these off-duty knees to get up and go, the slackers.
Update: Originally I called it Red Oak ale, but the good folks at Red Oak straightened me out: It's lager, which may be why I like it so much. Bill Sherrill writes:
"Red Oak is the Largest Lager Only Craft Brewery in America... We have never brewed an ale nor will we. Our Lagers are brewed with Heritage Malted Barley, Noble Aroma Hops, and Lager Yeast from Weihenstephen in Bavaria... The oldest brewery in the world... They have been brewing there since at least 1040 AD."
\
About an hour ago we finished stacking the last of the red and white oak that will season over the next year and provide a good bit of our home heating in the winter of 2014-15. I've been splitting old rounds of maple and oak since early June, the last produce of the destructive winter of 2010 and its serial ice and snow storms that wrecked so many of the lovely old hardwoods on this farm. We had so much firewood, and so little chance to burn any of it after a summer lightning strike reduced our house (and our first soapstone stove) to ashes and molten lumps of hard stuff, that it has lasted us through the first two winters after rebuilding the new house. It still leaves us with a cord and a half of wood to start the upcoming heating season.
I've split a lot of wood over the years, much of it with maul and wedge, but more recently with the help of Messers. Briggs and Stratton and the miracle of the hydraulic ram. It's the kind of gizmo every old boy loves: It's painted red, it makes a big racket and it makes smaller stuff out of bigger stuff. And when you finish, the idea of a cold beer sounds real good.
A lot of the stuff was near our house, and most of that stuff was maple, beech and locust -- including a fair amount of dead locust. Locust makes fine firewood, if the carpenter ants or whatever they are haven't already reduced it to powder. I spent a couple weeks splitting the stuff near the house, loading it onto a trailer and hauling it to our woodlot to be stacked. A lot of the locust looked like ant resorts, so much of that went to the burn pile. No sense in bringing the ants inside for the winter, however briefly before burning.
A week ago I got to the brawnier stuff down by the barn -- white oak and red oak, mostly. Some veteran loggers and ministers of the home fires will swear that white oak is a lot better firewood than red oak -- smells better and burns better, but is somewhat harder to split than red. Here's my take on it: Maybe so, but the sheer pleasure of splitting red oak makes up for a lot, and properly seasoned, it burns just fine in my stove.
You'll find on the 'net all kinds of advice about splitting wood and burning it. Some say splitting white oak is a lot easier if you wait until if freezes, but I found this gem: "Waiting till the 3rd full moon of the 5th month while the cicada's are singing doesn't seem to make any difference in how it splits." I agree. It's stringy and sometimes splintery, but neither Mr. Briggs nor Mr. Stratton complain overlong about it. So, like Admiral Nelson, I just go at it until it's done.
Red oak, on the other hand, will practically pop open if you hit it just right with a maul, and it splits smooth as silk on the log splitter. I put 20-inch logs on it and the engine barely burped before producing a clean, straight-grained cut. I nibbled some billets down to nearly square logs that made the stacking a heck of a lot easier on the old bad back and bad knees and bad arthritic hands that do the work around here.
So, as of mid-morning, I'm done for the year when it comes to cutting, splitting and stacking. And I'm thinking seriously about that beer. Trouble is, the one I want is down in Greensboro, where they make Red Oak lager. Figure I can be down there in time for a late lunch, if only I could persuade these off-duty knees to get up and go, the slackers.
Update: Originally I called it Red Oak ale, but the good folks at Red Oak straightened me out: It's lager, which may be why I like it so much. Bill Sherrill writes:
"Red Oak is the Largest Lager Only Craft Brewery in America... We have never brewed an ale nor will we. Our Lagers are brewed with Heritage Malted Barley, Noble Aroma Hops, and Lager Yeast from Weihenstephen in Bavaria... The oldest brewery in the world... They have been brewing there since at least 1040 AD."
\
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Snagging that blue darter for the final out
My Dad told a story how he had once seen Shoeless Joe Jackson playing in an industrial league game out at Cone Field in Greensboro sometime in the 1920s or so, years after he was banned from organized baseball for his role in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Said he could still hit the horsehide like a man afire, and throw rifle-shots back into the infield after gathering in way-back flies in the outfield.
I dunno if there's any reliable record of Jackson playing in Greensboro, but I heard the same thing from folks who keep tabs on Greensboro history. But I do recall that Dizzy Dean used to use a phrase that supposedly came from someone describing a Shoeless Joe Jackson line drive: a blue darter. Wikipedia has this to say: "The term "blue darter" is a baseball term referring to a low line drive that "speeds viciously through the air, as though it were propelled by a blue gas flame."[3] The term came to be associated with the line drives hit by Shoeless Joe Jackson[4] and was popularized by ballplayer and sportscaster Dizzy Dean.[".
Sunday evening along about dusk I felt like a seven-year-old kid again, watching Washington Nationals Third Baseman Ryan Zimmerman snag a genuine blue darter that was rocketing to his right near the third base line. Zimmerman went airborne, horizontal, and outstretched quicker than the hiccups, snared the ball and ended a wonderful baseball game as the struggling Nats beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-0 for their first-ever three-game sweep of the Phils in Washington. And then Pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who had just won his first complete-game shutout in the major leagues as more than 32,000 people in the stands went crazy, tipped his cap to Zimmerman and his magnificent catch. Good God Almighty, you ought to have seen it.
About 60 years ago, in 1953, see, I was planning on a big league career. Preferably with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but anywhere would be fine as long as it wasn't with the Yankees. I had heroes all over the place -- Brooklyn's Edwin "Duke" Snider my favorite. Pitcher Bob "Rapid Robert" Feller with the Cleveland Indians. Third Baseman Jackie Robinson of the Dodgers. We didn't have a TV then and rarely but sometimes were able to tune in a game on the radio. But we pored over the stats in the papers and longed for the day when the Dodgers would win and the Yankees wouldn't. There weren't many of them, seemed like.
Third base was my position, though I really wanted to be a pitcher. I could throw fast but had no idea where it was going. So I clung to the notion that I could field the ball and get it to first in time. Did a few times -- sometimes having to swat the ball down before I could get a grip on it. And once snagging a not-quite-blue line drive to my right. Those shots seemed to come at you like little white bullets. And once on a bad hop I liked to have choked to death on a wad of Double Bubble that I swallowed when the ball up and popped me in the cheek.
So when the Phillies' Kevin Frandsen belted that blue darter at Zimmerman Sunday evening, my heart skipped three beats. I could only see the contrail of that ball before Zimmerman snapped it up and stomped the Phillies flat for the final time. Just exhilarating.
It's hard to feel like a kid again when the knees ache daily and you have to run hot water on your hands to make a fist some mornings and there's always something reminding you of the toll of 67 years of hard use. But some close friends and I had been planning for a couple of months to get up to Washington to see a game, and by chance we landed on Sunday's 5 p.m. game with the Phillies. Could not have picked a better time to sneak away from the hills, meet up with new friends and sample the fare: cold beer, hot dogs, salted peanuts, and a lot of other things our doctors probably wouldn't be too happy about. Well, she should have been there, dammit. I 'spect she would have enjoyed it, too.
I dunno if there's any reliable record of Jackson playing in Greensboro, but I heard the same thing from folks who keep tabs on Greensboro history. But I do recall that Dizzy Dean used to use a phrase that supposedly came from someone describing a Shoeless Joe Jackson line drive: a blue darter. Wikipedia has this to say: "The term "blue darter" is a baseball term referring to a low line drive that "speeds viciously through the air, as though it were propelled by a blue gas flame."[3] The term came to be associated with the line drives hit by Shoeless Joe Jackson[4] and was popularized by ballplayer and sportscaster Dizzy Dean.[".
Sunday evening along about dusk I felt like a seven-year-old kid again, watching Washington Nationals Third Baseman Ryan Zimmerman snag a genuine blue darter that was rocketing to his right near the third base line. Zimmerman went airborne, horizontal, and outstretched quicker than the hiccups, snared the ball and ended a wonderful baseball game as the struggling Nats beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-0 for their first-ever three-game sweep of the Phils in Washington. And then Pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who had just won his first complete-game shutout in the major leagues as more than 32,000 people in the stands went crazy, tipped his cap to Zimmerman and his magnificent catch. Good God Almighty, you ought to have seen it.
About 60 years ago, in 1953, see, I was planning on a big league career. Preferably with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but anywhere would be fine as long as it wasn't with the Yankees. I had heroes all over the place -- Brooklyn's Edwin "Duke" Snider my favorite. Pitcher Bob "Rapid Robert" Feller with the Cleveland Indians. Third Baseman Jackie Robinson of the Dodgers. We didn't have a TV then and rarely but sometimes were able to tune in a game on the radio. But we pored over the stats in the papers and longed for the day when the Dodgers would win and the Yankees wouldn't. There weren't many of them, seemed like.
Third base was my position, though I really wanted to be a pitcher. I could throw fast but had no idea where it was going. So I clung to the notion that I could field the ball and get it to first in time. Did a few times -- sometimes having to swat the ball down before I could get a grip on it. And once snagging a not-quite-blue line drive to my right. Those shots seemed to come at you like little white bullets. And once on a bad hop I liked to have choked to death on a wad of Double Bubble that I swallowed when the ball up and popped me in the cheek.
So when the Phillies' Kevin Frandsen belted that blue darter at Zimmerman Sunday evening, my heart skipped three beats. I could only see the contrail of that ball before Zimmerman snapped it up and stomped the Phillies flat for the final time. Just exhilarating.
It's hard to feel like a kid again when the knees ache daily and you have to run hot water on your hands to make a fist some mornings and there's always something reminding you of the toll of 67 years of hard use. But some close friends and I had been planning for a couple of months to get up to Washington to see a game, and by chance we landed on Sunday's 5 p.m. game with the Phillies. Could not have picked a better time to sneak away from the hills, meet up with new friends and sample the fare: cold beer, hot dogs, salted peanuts, and a lot of other things our doctors probably wouldn't be too happy about. Well, she should have been there, dammit. I 'spect she would have enjoyed it, too.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Farm Report
And in all due time, as widely speculated but never quite forecast, the crust of the Earth has drained and firmed and begun to bear the weight of those who had hoped to grow one heckuva lot more vegetables this rainy season than the pitiful take that has come in so far.
The other day I picked two ripe tomatoes -- one the size of a ping pong ball, the other not quite so large as a juvenile handball. That's it for the tomato crop so far. We have picked three zucchinis and four crookneck squash. We have harvested about 19 cucumbers -- perhaps a fifth of what we normally would have gotten by now. The broccoli bolted early on. Rabbits got most of the lettuce while we waited for the water to quite burbling up out of the fence post holes where big husky posts would have held up the new field fence with anti-bunny wiring at the bottom. And the peppers have been audibly gagging in their raised beds, pouring all their energy into whining and griping rather than growing into nice greens and reds as the Lord intended.
Still, we have hopes of getting that fence up sometime this year, perhaps just in time to help remind us where the garden was when the snow begins to fly and the ice spreads its slick sheet of sly surprises across the hillside.
And then there are the blueberries. My gosh, what a crop -- the like of which have remained unseen in lo these many summers. We picked about six quarts Sunday and after some nice sun Monday and a little more Tuesday, expect to haul in as much the next time we visit. They are glorious, and a great many are just now showing signs of turning from green to blush to blue to that much preferred blue-black. Bring it on.
And eight of our 10 or so elderly apple trees (including, I must acknowledge, at least one crabapple tree) on the farm are showing the first of the ripening fruit. There's at least one Golden Delicious, or something mightily like it, but the rest appear to be reds of one kind or another and I need to consult an expert on what we have -- and what to do with them. Sometimes we go for years without seeing apples on these trees, so in this year of gardening disasters, it's reassuring to see these old boys putting out a crop.
And marvel of marvels, I finally got around to planting the first of the apples that I've been planning on every since retiring more than two years ago. I know, I know, not the right time. But it has been so wet and so cool up here this summer that, after consulting a few authoritative sources in the Jessie Peterman Branch Library's admirable stacks, I bought a few potted varieties at Slaughters and got them in the ground with what I hope will be adequate fencing to keep out the deer.
Given that most of what I know I learned from the error side of trial-and-error study, I expect there will be lessons from this little venture, too, but at least the schooling has begun. Say, will this be on the final?
The other day I picked two ripe tomatoes -- one the size of a ping pong ball, the other not quite so large as a juvenile handball. That's it for the tomato crop so far. We have picked three zucchinis and four crookneck squash. We have harvested about 19 cucumbers -- perhaps a fifth of what we normally would have gotten by now. The broccoli bolted early on. Rabbits got most of the lettuce while we waited for the water to quite burbling up out of the fence post holes where big husky posts would have held up the new field fence with anti-bunny wiring at the bottom. And the peppers have been audibly gagging in their raised beds, pouring all their energy into whining and griping rather than growing into nice greens and reds as the Lord intended.
Still, we have hopes of getting that fence up sometime this year, perhaps just in time to help remind us where the garden was when the snow begins to fly and the ice spreads its slick sheet of sly surprises across the hillside.
And then there are the blueberries. My gosh, what a crop -- the like of which have remained unseen in lo these many summers. We picked about six quarts Sunday and after some nice sun Monday and a little more Tuesday, expect to haul in as much the next time we visit. They are glorious, and a great many are just now showing signs of turning from green to blush to blue to that much preferred blue-black. Bring it on.
And eight of our 10 or so elderly apple trees (including, I must acknowledge, at least one crabapple tree) on the farm are showing the first of the ripening fruit. There's at least one Golden Delicious, or something mightily like it, but the rest appear to be reds of one kind or another and I need to consult an expert on what we have -- and what to do with them. Sometimes we go for years without seeing apples on these trees, so in this year of gardening disasters, it's reassuring to see these old boys putting out a crop.
And marvel of marvels, I finally got around to planting the first of the apples that I've been planning on every since retiring more than two years ago. I know, I know, not the right time. But it has been so wet and so cool up here this summer that, after consulting a few authoritative sources in the Jessie Peterman Branch Library's admirable stacks, I bought a few potted varieties at Slaughters and got them in the ground with what I hope will be adequate fencing to keep out the deer.
Given that most of what I know I learned from the error side of trial-and-error study, I expect there will be lessons from this little venture, too, but at least the schooling has begun. Say, will this be on the final?
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Pickles in the Blue Ridge Rain Forest
The little plastic gizmo ($4.95 from Farmer's Hardware in Floyd) tells the story every morning. Today it's another 2 inches of rain. Since returning from the beach on June 28 we've had 17 inches of rain on our deck here, about 1,000 feet or so from where the Blue Ridge Escarpment rises above the southwestern Virginia Piedmont not far from the N.C.-Va. border.
We've had more than a year's worth of rain in the first 6 1/2 months of 2013, and the prospect is for more here in the Blue Ridge Rain Forest. The garden once again is under water -- this time a sheet of water pouring out of every dry spring and seep and sieve of the southwestern-facing hillside below our house and across the creek that flows into the Smith River and eventually to the Atlantic via the Roanoke River.
But in the 4x8-foot raised-bed boxes, a few things are growing. Some tomatoes are on the vine -- a long way from ripening. We've had a few zukes and yellow squash. And we've had a bunch of cucumbers. So with time on our hands and little opportunity to get out and weed the garden or paint the new garden shed or stretch the wire on the new field fence, we made pickles the other morning.
This has been a bread-and-butter pickle-eating family since high school days half a century ago, when we'd drop by the Strickland home just a couple blocks from Page High at lunch and munch our way through Fran Strickland's crisp bread-and-butter pickles and her stock of Charles Chips. Made a fine lunch.
Fran made her pickles the old-fashioned way -- cooking the pickles in a process that seemed to require the same level of logistics as Operation Overlord and canning them in jars and carefully sealing the tops and putting them on the shelf to keep for years. They were just superb -- but a lot of hard work.
Then sometime in the 1970s or '80s while on a trip to Texas, Fran and Hal dropped in on a relative, and found the recipe we use today. It's a lot easier and doesn't require the long time and complicated logistics the old recipe demanded. One reason is you just put the pickles in the refrigerator and as long as you keep 'em cold, they'll do just fine. We're told that they can last up to a year in the refrigerator. We don't know if these pickles will last that long because we eat 'em up well before their expiration date.
We do know that there are people in Idaho and France making pickles this way, because when they sampled the goods here last year, they got the recipe then and reported back on their own success making these pickles back home.
Here's the basic recipe for the pickle juice:
4 cups sugar
4 cups white vinegar
Scant 1/2 cup kosher salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon celery seed
Slice at least a dozen cukes into chips about 1/8 inch thick and slice four onions the same way. It'll help to break or cut the onion slices up. Have a dozen quart-sized Mason jars ready. (You can use smaller jars, but of course you'll need more of them.) Pack the raw cuke slices and onion slices into the jars, alternating two or three handfuls of cukes with one handful of onion slices. Pack 'em tight. They'll float in the juice if you don't.
Now mix the sugar, vinegar, salt, turmeric, mustard seed and celery seed and heat the ingredients in a large saucepan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. When the juice is hot and the sugar dissolved, pour an equal amount over the cukes and onions in each of the jars. We ran short of the brine with the first batch, so quickly made up a second batch so we could completely cover all of the pickle/onion concoction in each jar. Then we put on the tops and put them in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours before sampling the first bites. They'll be good, and they'll get even better as they steep in the juice over time. Enjoy.
But you'll have to find your own Charles Chips. Haven't seen them since Lyndon Johnson was president, but Google can tell you where you can get them online.
We've had more than a year's worth of rain in the first 6 1/2 months of 2013, and the prospect is for more here in the Blue Ridge Rain Forest. The garden once again is under water -- this time a sheet of water pouring out of every dry spring and seep and sieve of the southwestern-facing hillside below our house and across the creek that flows into the Smith River and eventually to the Atlantic via the Roanoke River.
But in the 4x8-foot raised-bed boxes, a few things are growing. Some tomatoes are on the vine -- a long way from ripening. We've had a few zukes and yellow squash. And we've had a bunch of cucumbers. So with time on our hands and little opportunity to get out and weed the garden or paint the new garden shed or stretch the wire on the new field fence, we made pickles the other morning.
This has been a bread-and-butter pickle-eating family since high school days half a century ago, when we'd drop by the Strickland home just a couple blocks from Page High at lunch and munch our way through Fran Strickland's crisp bread-and-butter pickles and her stock of Charles Chips. Made a fine lunch.
Fran made her pickles the old-fashioned way -- cooking the pickles in a process that seemed to require the same level of logistics as Operation Overlord and canning them in jars and carefully sealing the tops and putting them on the shelf to keep for years. They were just superb -- but a lot of hard work.
Then sometime in the 1970s or '80s while on a trip to Texas, Fran and Hal dropped in on a relative, and found the recipe we use today. It's a lot easier and doesn't require the long time and complicated logistics the old recipe demanded. One reason is you just put the pickles in the refrigerator and as long as you keep 'em cold, they'll do just fine. We're told that they can last up to a year in the refrigerator. We don't know if these pickles will last that long because we eat 'em up well before their expiration date.
We do know that there are people in Idaho and France making pickles this way, because when they sampled the goods here last year, they got the recipe then and reported back on their own success making these pickles back home.
Here's the basic recipe for the pickle juice:
4 cups sugar
4 cups white vinegar
Scant 1/2 cup kosher salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon celery seed
Slice at least a dozen cukes into chips about 1/8 inch thick and slice four onions the same way. It'll help to break or cut the onion slices up. Have a dozen quart-sized Mason jars ready. (You can use smaller jars, but of course you'll need more of them.) Pack the raw cuke slices and onion slices into the jars, alternating two or three handfuls of cukes with one handful of onion slices. Pack 'em tight. They'll float in the juice if you don't.
Now mix the sugar, vinegar, salt, turmeric, mustard seed and celery seed and heat the ingredients in a large saucepan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. When the juice is hot and the sugar dissolved, pour an equal amount over the cukes and onions in each of the jars. We ran short of the brine with the first batch, so quickly made up a second batch so we could completely cover all of the pickle/onion concoction in each jar. Then we put on the tops and put them in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours before sampling the first bites. They'll be good, and they'll get even better as they steep in the juice over time. Enjoy.
But you'll have to find your own Charles Chips. Haven't seen them since Lyndon Johnson was president, but Google can tell you where you can get them online.
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