Merry Mabon (preserving log)

Dressed the altar for Mabon today, a day or two early. I’ll continue to add to it as the season progresses. I bought these Japanese lanterns from a nearby farm stand, but they also had the live plants, and I bought a few and planted them in my garden. Hopefully next year I can harvest some of my own. I also want to add more seasonal plants - I like the red amaranth and yellow tansy at this time of year. 

It was an “on” year for the Italian plum tree. There are still hundreds of plums on it - falling fast - but I think I am done with plums for the year. In addition to eating them fresh until I was sick them, I dehydrated a gallon sized ziploc bag full and made twelve half-pints of plum jam. 

Actually, my mom and I made the jam together and it was really nice. She’s amazing, she doesn’t use pectin and her jam always turns out perfectly. She uses her own system for eyeballing when the sugar syrup is ready - she says it will jell when it looks like “King Farouk on a barstool,” which is to say when there are two side by side drips coming off the spoon instead of only one. 

I also canned six pints of salsa ranchera and six pints of regular tomato sauce, and smoked two sockeye salmon. The main harvest left is the pears, but it wasn’t a very good year for pears and there arent a ton of them, for once. 

New Buck (Breeding Season)

We sold Jupiter, our gorgeous Nubian buck, a few months ago. We have used him for three seasons now and it’s time for some new blood. 

 (see this post for my thoughts on swapping out bucks and for some semi-historical tidbits about ritual sacrificial kingship http://newtofarmlife.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-must-die-goat-breeding-and-divine.html?m=1)

I didn’t really want to buy a new buck because 1) they’re a pain in the tuchus and 2) I’m pretty sure each year of breeding is going to be my last. Finding a suitable buck to rent is often difficult. Luckily, my husband has a client just down that road who owns this handsome specimen. I forget his name, but he’s beautiful. He’s not quite as tall as Jupiter, but he is stocky and strong, and he has the same beautiful brown and white coloring. And check out those horns! 

Best of all, he was available for the old fashioned fee of a kid back. 

The Rains Are Here (Hallelujah)

Third straight day of rain, hooray. 

The smoke is gone. I don’t think the forest fires are actually put out yet, but it won’t be long. The rain is supposed to continue for a week, at least. Who knows, they might continue until May of 2023. 

Alas, I think it’s too late to see any fall flush of grass. Temperatures have dropped precipitously and we won’t see much sun for a while. But without the cow (now in the freezer) we ought to have plenty of hay. 

Time to buy some propane, I guess. 

Monster Squash 2021 (Count on Cucurbits)

My mother used to say there were only two things for certain in this world - death and taxes. But I know there is another - that every year volunteer squash will grow out of the compost pile. 

It’s so funny, I don’t usually have much luck trying to grow winter squash on purpose. The plants get powdery mildew, or they are poorly pollinated, or they get blossom end rot. But lo and behold the vigorous vines that sprouted this year from our discarded supermarket squash seeds:

There are actually three separate volunteer plants in that picture, and together they cover a good 500 square feet. All of them bore copious fruit, but unfortunately since supermarket squash are mostly hybrids, none of the three distinct varieties of fruit they bore was good to eat. 

As varied as squash fruits are - that is to say, infinitely - squash blossoms are uniform. All squash plants, be they winter or summer or of unknown provenance, produce lovely yellow trumpet shaped flowers that are delicious. 

We like to tuck the fresh raw flowers into quesadillas, but they can be prepared in any number of different ways - one Italian preparation is stuffed with goat cheese, battered and fried. They can be added to soups or just sautéed in butter. 

Since we didn’t care about the inedible fruit of these particular plants, we picked both the male and female flowers, but if you are growing squash to eat just pick the male flowers. They are easy to tell apart because the male flowers grow in tall stems and the female flowers stay stuck close to the vine. Remove the pistils; they can be bitter. And always check for bugs! Our vines were still producing flowers last week, in chilly late October. 

Although inedible, this year’s gourds do make a fine halloween porch display. There are many more that are not pictured here. One gargantuan vine produced more than a dozen of the huge warty gourds - probably well over 100 pounds of squash. 

I am not certain if the seeds of all these squashes are edible or not. I believe they are - I never heard of a poison pumpkin seed - but I should probably look it up to be safe before I decide to roast all the seeds after Halloween. 

Mercy is in the window. 

Farmer’s Swap Meet (Fall Harvest)

A neighbor of ours, a friend who started out as one of Homero’s clients, started a farm a few years ago. She raises medicinal plants of all sorts and makes them into tinctures, salves, ointments, and decoctions. She started just two or three years ago with a weedy patch of ground and now has a lovely three acre medicinal plant garden. 

Last month, she decided to throw a swap meet for all her local friends - mostly farmers but also bakers, artists, musicians, and people with skills of various sorts. I was super excited to be invited - a decade ago I did the same thing, hoping to make it an annual event, but alas there was only one September Swap Meet and Jamboree on our farm. 

Deciding what to bring was half the fun. I didn’t know what might be available to trade for, so I didn’t worry about that and just brought a little of everything, hoping to hold my own and put on a pretty spread on front of my farming peers. 

We had lots of fruit from our trees - Italian plums, pears, and apples - both fresh and dehydrated. And just the day before Gleaner’s pantry hosted a farm glean for organic cherry tomatoes, so I had a ridiculous number of gorgeous cherry tomatoes in various colors. I also brought a selection of ferments - some caraway kraut, some kohlrabi kimchi, and some sourdough starter. 

I rounded out my section with a bunch of canned goods from the pantry. Admittedly, some of it was weird stuff from years last that didn’t get eaten, like my “spicy mixed stone fruit chutney” and some apple-plum butter. But I also brought a whole bunch of freshly made blackberry jam and pickled asparagus and dilly beans. Oh, and a two pound wheel of cheese. 

There was also a potluck, which was delicious. I brought lentil soup with bacon from our pig, and a big sourdough bread made with the same starter I had brought to swap with. 

We came home with a lot of stuff. Two or three different salves and some lip balms; tomatillos; raspberries; eggs; a carved wooden kitchen spoon, a fancy bottle shaped like a skull (which I think started out filled with tequila); a load of firewood; and a dehydrator. 

It was a great day. I got to meet lots of my neighbors and fellow farmers. Most of them were considerably younger than me, but it’s nice to be slowly morphing into a kind of elder in the community. I got to show off a little bit - my table was definitely one of the more diverse and well-frequented. And Homero and I got to wander through the beautiful garden eating raspberries and holding hands. 

Samhain Season Altar

I’ve neglected my altar for many moons. Not for any particular reason - life just rushes in and gets in the way. Like everyone else’s, our family has been preoccupied by dealing with life in the Covid era. The new school year has been difficult so far. Distance learning is not going well, and it’s been exceedingly frustrating. We aren’t in lockdown, but there are still strict rules about how many people outside your own household you can see per week and how restaurants can operate and so on and so forth. It’s all exhausting. 

Last week I finally cleaned and purified the altar - and used way too much copal. The whole house filled up with resinous, fragrant smoke. I just used my turkey feather wafter to waft it all around, smudging the house basically, and then opened all the windows and doors wide and let the cool breeze finish the job. 

(Altar tools: the turkey feather fan is for wafting smoke, smudging an area. The pampas grass wand is for doing a limpia of a person - brushing their aura, for lack of a better term)

Except for lining up some squash, however, I left the altar empty. I just wasn’t inspired to decorate it. It wasn’t quite Samhain season, not quite time for the day of the dead altar, and too late to dress it for Mabon. So it stayed empty and clean for a week. 

Today my oldest daughter Rowan was visiting, and Hope asked if we could all dress the altar together. She found an altar cloth (a crocheted shawl I had just given her for her birthday) and we all chose seasonal items to place, either from the yard or from my collection of altar pieces I keep on a shelf in the kitchen. It only took about fifteen minutes and was a really nice group activity. 

The picture of the whole altar doesn’t show details, so here are a few of our seasonal items. Shed antlers, decorated with rose hips. Reminds me of a seasonal crown on Cernunnos, although he isn’t really a deity I have dealings with. 

Pomegranates, of course, are a beautiful and appropriate decoration for an autumn altar. Persephone is sinking into Hades right now, to meet her husband and take on her aspect as queen of the dead. The black corn I brought back from Oaxaca, and is there simply for its beauty. The skull shot glass has apple cider in it, for visitors. And that tattered crocheted animal is a representation of the Black Rabbit of Inlé (What? You haven’t read Watership Down? Go start it right now). 

This altar will probably stay up through the day of the dead, and we will add to it as the day approaches. We will out up photos of our dearly departed, and add flowers and fruits and sweet breads. On the day itself, we will make a big batch of hot cocoa, light a fire, and sit around the altar eating and drinking and telling stories of our ancestors and beloved dead. 

The house feels so much more homey with an altar laid. 

It’s Pear Time!

We had a bit of a windstorm a couple days ago, and as usual, it knocked a bunch of pears off the trees. Went out and collected some today - just some - and here’s the result. 

On the left - pears that need to be dealt with NOW or never. Mostly Comice pears - my favorites. They are buttery and delicious and dependably ripen off the tree. There are approximately twenty perfectly ripe pears on that platter, which will be past-perfect tomorrow. 

On the left, a humongous bowl of unripe pears. These blew down off the other two peat trees - I can’t remember their varieties - and every year I am perplexed by their stubborn refusal to ripen. I’ve tried various things - closing them up in a box with some ripe pears or with a banana, and it doesn’t help. I’ve tried putting them in the refrigerator drawer because I have read that some pears won’t ripen without chilling. Nada. They just stay hard like greenish brown rocks until they eventually begin to rot. Someday I will unlock the secret if these pears, but this year I’m going to try cooking them and see what happens. 

But what to do with the ripe pears today? We can probably eat six of them out of hand. Or I could make a pie. Pear pie is delicious. There’s always the dehydrator. Or, of course, pear sauce. But my kids don't usually eat a lot applesauce or pear sauce, and it tends to just sit on the pantry shelf for years. Plus, there’s a severe shortage of canning jars at the moment. 

Maybe I’ll give them away. That’ll probably work! 

Thankful for the Truth (Warning graphic photos)

I love Thanksgiving, especially in the years, like this one, that I get to host. I enjoy the process of writing a menu, shopping for ingredients, and setting a beautiful table. There are few things that make me happier than seeing people I love really digging in to food I’ve prepared for them. I’m happy when my adult daughter comes over, and I’m happy to see my mom. But there is something about Thanksgiving that make me feel uneasy. There is a whiff of - if not hypocrisy, then maybe willful blindness - that hangs around the Thanksgiving table. 

Thanksgiving is a day of delicious excess, a national fantasy of happy peaceful families and endless sweetness, but the truth is often unpalatable. Enjoying an abundance of good things and being thankful for what we have is, of course, wonderful, and in no way a bad thing. Indeed, we’d all be happier and the world would probably be a better place if we came together more often to share our abundance and to give thanks out loud and in the presence others. 

But it’s also important to acknowledge the realities that underlie the feast. These are manifold. Firstly, I acknowledge that to make this feast, a beautiful turkey had to die. 

I acknowledge the work that went into raising him - this bird was raised on pasture by a local farmer, so I thank my neighbor for her work and expense. But I also recognize the labor of the people - mostly immigrants - who toil in the vast and dangerous poultry processing industry; I acknowledge their worth and affirm their right to safe working conditions and just recompense. 

I thank my husband for the work he is doing right this minute - butchering the turkey out in the cold November wind. I acknowledge this is a disagreeable task and I thank him for being willing to develop the skill to do it well. 

The vegetables on the table - the potatoes, the Brussels sprouts, the salad greens - are produced by an unsustainable system that abuses workers and the earth in equal measure.  I am a witness, and I pledge to do what I can to avoid participating in those injustices and to mitigate the tremendous waste generated. 

And finally, I acknowledge that I live on unceded land of the Lummi and Nooksack tribes. All of us settlers live on land that either was never ceded by the tribes, or which was ceded under deeply unequal conditions, in which one side held all the power. I acknowledge that uncomfortable truth. If you want to know on whose land you reside, visit this link: 

https://native-land.ca/. I pledge to work toward correcting the grave inequalities that resulted by upholding the efforts of local tribes to sustain their culture and supporting their businesses and candidates for office. 

None of this is meant to be a huge bummer.

It is possible to be grateful for our wealth while recognizing the problem of poverty. We can celebrate being together with family while knowing that some are lonely. We can give thanks for warm homes, abundant food, and all the good things in our lives without trying to shut out the knowledge of the many who lack those things. It’s not a sin to be warm, to be fed, to be loved. These are wonderful gifts.

My hope and my prayer is that naming our gifts and sharing them with our loved ones will inspire us to share them more widely, as well. I remind myself, as I bask in warmth and light, of the existence of cold and darkness not out of guilt, but so that I may be moved by gratitude and grace to expand the circle of warmth and light to include others. I remind myself, as I nourish my body with roast turkey, of the death of the animal I am eating not as some sort of penance, but to honor the truth that this act embodies the cycles of life and death on this beautiful planet, cycles we are all of us bound by. 

May you be abundantly blessed this Thanksgiving. May you have much to give thanks for, as much as I. 

Lobsters of the Forest (Mushroom Madness)

These ugly lumps are actually highly prized lobster mushrooms. 

It’s prime time for mushroom hunting in the Pacific Northwest. The rains came in mid September, right on schedule, and since then we’ve had alternating rain and sunshine, which is just perfect for making the mushrooms pop up. By all accounts it’s been a bumper year for chanterelles. 

I have long been fascinated by fungi, but I’ve not done the work of educating myself to pick them, beyond a very few varieties that are easy to identify. There’s a patch of shaggy manes out in the back pasture. I’m relatively sure I can recognize agaricus campestres (though there are toxic lookalikes). If I happened to trip over a chanterelle or a morel I would know what it was. 

Nobody just trips over forest mushrooms though. You have to go out and search for them, and you have to get off the trails and go bushwhacking through the deep woods. It’s hard physical exercise and it gets you wet, dirty, and scratched up. Also exhilarated and energized. 

A relatively new friend of mine is a confident forager. In the past I’ve traded her goat cheese for mushrooms, but this year I asked if I could pay her to just take me out with her foraging. Not to any of her secret spots! That would be a very rude thing to ask. Just out into the woods and help me improve my eye for good habitat and gain some confidence identifying a few more varieties. She was happy to do so. 

We found several edible mushrooms - coral mushrooms and oyster mushrooms, a couple of decent boletes, and a small patch of chanterelles- but the coolest find was a large number of lobster mushrooms. 

The ugly lumps after careful cleaning.

Lobster mushrooms are cool. They are actually a boring, bland mushroom that has been attacked by another fungus and improbably turned into something delicious. Lobsters start out as Russula Brevipes, which is a large white mushroom that pushes up through the forest duff in evergreen forests. They are edible but exceedingly bland. Wherever you find lots of Russulas, though, you will find a few that have been turned into lobsters. The fungus makes them bright orange and hard, and curls them into fantastic, tortuous shapes. Keep an eye out for glimpses of orange poking through the forest floor. 

Cleaning them is a chore. You don’t want to wash them with water if you can help it because they will soak it up like a sponge and ruin their texture and dilute their subtle flavor. Use a stiff brush instead. Most lobsters will have at least a few wormholes in them (these ones are exceptionally free from worms) but don’t worry about that. Just trim off any bits  that seem too wormy to eat. Ditto any parts that are stubbornly grubby - though as my mom says, you gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die and eating it along with wild mushrooms seems like as good a way as any. 

There are lots of ways to prepare lobsters, but they are one of the few wild mushrooms tough enough to stand up to being sliced and fried in egg wash and crumbs like chicken-fried-steak. I added Parmesan to my bread crumbs and pan fried the mushroom steaks y til deep golden brown on both sides. I found I liked them better the more cooked they were, so next time I might use a little lower heat and give them more time. 

The other mushrooms we found went into a pasta side dish with spinach. My husband and kids were a little leery of eating the lobsters at first, but they both enjoyed them after trying them. Homero, in fact, ate an entire lobster mushroom

all by himself. 

After three hours of hiking in the intermittent rain and then cleaning the haul and cooking dinner, Ipushed back from the table, told everyone to clean up please,  I was going to take  a long hot bath. I earned it. 

Last Chance Fuego

We’ve had a nice long stretch of dry weather - long for post-solstice September in the Pacific Northwest, anyway; about ten dry days in a row. I love this time of year when the sky is blue and the leaves are red and you can still go outside in a T-shirt. I’ve been spending my afternoons out with the goats, letting them feast on the fall-flush of grass. Waste not, want not is the motto of the season. We laid in only a small supply of hay this year, so the more I can fatten the goats on the September pasture, the better. 

The lack of precipitation has also allowed our brush pile to dry out. Several days ago, we tried to start a fire but the moist brush refused to burn. This afternoon I tried again, and with the help of a small amount of lighter fluid, I got it going. The last couple hours have been devoted to reading a magazine next to the fire and watching the first stars come out.

October Altar (Waste Not)

An enormous volunteer squash plant grew out of our compost pile this summer. This happens not infrequently, and because squash vines love rich compost, the plants tend to sprawl over vast areas and produce prodigious amounts of squash. However, most summer squash are hybrid varieties, so volunteer plants that sprout from discarded seeds are unlikely to bear fruit that is much good for eating. 

All squash blossoms are nice for eating, though. We picked many many blossoms for stuffing inside of quesadillas, or for stuffing with goat cheese. But no matter how many blossoms we picked, there were plenty left over for making squash. Past volunteer squash have produced warty gourds, yellow crooknecked squash but with hard shells and thin meat, or strange globular fruits. This one produced tiny rubbed hard shelled pumpkins, the kind you see 

decorated  with googly eyes and painted grins in bins at the grocery store in October. I’m sure they would be poor eating, but they make a nice autumn altar. 

After we picked all the little pumpkins, I let the goats go to town on the giant vine. They appreciated it. After we enjoy them on the altar for a while, I am donating these little guys to my sister, who is a pre-school teacher. No doubt they will all be festooned with googly-eyes and painted grins. 

Happy Fall to you and yours. 

Apple-anch, 2018

It’s apple season again, which means I’m too busy to write about it. These lovely specimens were part of a farm glean courtesy of the Gleaner’s Pantry. I’m hoping the weather holds and we can haul out the press this weekend, but in the meantime I’m dehydrating, making sauce and pies. 

Enjoy fall!! 

Preserving Log 9/18

Arrived home from Oaxaca ten days ago. In that time we had a lot to do to get the kids ready for school- go shopping for supplies and clothes, adjust their schedules, etc. Paloma made a schedule and posted it on the fridge:

We did all that. Also I started a serious job - ten days of full time, 8 hour days interpreting for a student enrolled in he Washington state Caregiver’s training program. I have done this same course several times before. It’s very demanding; after eight hours of simultaneous interpretation my brain feels like a bowl of cold oatmeal. But it pays well and after our expensive summer abroad I couldn’t turn it down. 

Meanwhile, the pears and the plums and the early apples just kept on coming. Here’s what I’ve done in the way of preserving in the last ten days, more or less in order:

1) dehydrated two gallons of pears and two gallons of plums

2) canned six quarts salsa ranchera

3) canned four quarts pear/apple sauce

4) three gallons lacto-fermented pickles

5) made three gallons of plum wine - currently undergoing secondary fermentation in a carboy on the mantle. 

6) made three pounds chevre

7) canned eight pints blackberry jam

8) froze a gallon blueberries

Planning on picking up several pounds of peppers for canning later this week. That’s about it for now. I want to hit the farmers market and look for wild mushrooms - chanterelle season is in full swing, and I’d like to dry a few pounds. 

Happy Mabon to you all. 

Making Up for Lost Time (Mabon Again)

We arrived home late the night before last. Or perhaps more accurate to say, early yesterday morning. We finally opened the door to our home at about 1:30 am Friday morning, to a couple of very happy dogs. 

After sleeping in quite late, we set about cleaning the house (my daughter Rowan did a wonderful job taking care of the farm and keeping the place operational, but she apparently didn’t sweep the floor or scrub the toilet once in seven weeks). I had cleaned out the fridge before we left, so there wasn’t much food in the house. 

A quick reconnaissance of the orchard revealed that there is still a heck of a lot of fruit to cope with. The greengage plums are done for this year - though a neighbor friend picked a bunch and dehydrated some for us - but the Italian plums are still a week or so away from ripe, and the tree is loaded. 

Pears are falling all over the property. I think I may have mentioned that I have FOUR pear trees, which is a ridiculous number. The Bartletts are ripe, and the Comice pears are not far behind. The Seckels and whatever the fourth one is (I forget) have a ways to go. Today I picked up a few dozen fallen Bartlett pears that were still firm and  fragnrant and tomorrow I will haul the dehydrator out of storage and scrub it. The girls love dehydrated pears in their school lunches. School starts Tuesday. 

The cider apple tree is covered with apples. Cider season will be soon.  The other Apple trees, still quite young, have a few dozen apples apiece. And the Asian pears trees, planted two years ago, and a half have a few pears on them. 

Today I went to Gleaners’s Pantry. Came home with the crate you see above - about twenty five pounds of tomatoes and peppers. Tomorrow I will can. I’m guessing there’s a good dozen quarts of salsa in that box. 

Tonight I spent a few hours making good use of other produce fromGleaner’s. Roasted hatch chiles, red onions, corn on the cob, and fresh tomatoes became this beautiful salsa: 

I also brought home a half dozen loaves of ciabatta bread. I like to cube it up and toss the cubes with a mix of olive oil, herbs, garlic, salt and pepper, and bake until they are crunchy croutons. Store in a ziplock bag in the fridge. 

 Not pictured here is a new experiment - plum shrub. A shrub is a fruit based concentrate, made of any fresh fruit macerated with sugar for a few days and then mixed with apple cider vinegar. That makes a storable concentrate that can be mixed with fresh water - still or sparkling - for a delightful refreshing non-alcoholic beverage. If you like, of course, you can also add a jigger of vodka or gin. My first attempt at a shrub is a half gallon of chopped Italian plums and a few springs of rosemary. I expect it will be delicious. 

I missed a lot of preserving season this year - for the very worthwhile reason that we were in Mexico with my husband’s family - but I am making up for list time. Mabon is upon us, almost, and I intend to embrace the motto of the season and be prepared. 

Besides, I love it. Putting up food is just about my favorite thing ever. 

Fall Fermentation (Wine and Cider)

Plum wine in the autumn sun 

The satisfactions of living off of one's own land are many and varied. It is, for example, delightful to invite my extended family over for Thanksgiving and feed them on turkey we raised ourselves and apple pie made from the apples on the trees of our own orchard.  It makes me happy and proud to throw a big birthday bash for Homero and give his Mexican friends the pleasure of an old-fashioned goat barbacoa such as they remember from their younger days back home in Jalisco or Oaxaca; the slaughter, butchery, and the digging of the pit oven included. These pleasures still lie in the future this year - imagining them is one of the distinct joys of this short ephemeral season. 

This is my favorite time of year - after the heat of summer has dissipated and the leaves have turned and are falling, creating a crisp, fragrant carpet underfoot - but before the rains have turned everything into cold muck. The sky these past several days is a cool, cerulean blue, and the trees are ninety different shades of gold, orange, burgundy, and brown. I try to let the goats out every afternoon to forage on the dry leaves and blackberry vines, and on the fall-flushed grass before the first frost comes and kills the nutrition. 

Today I enjoyed the unique pleasure of sitting out in the late afternoon sun on a warm October afternoon and drinking a glass of beautiful, pink, home-brew plum wine. I'd have to page back in this blog to find out when, exactly, I started this batch of plum wine. I don't want to do that - bathed as I am in the rosy glow of the same. Let's just posit that the wine was ready, today, for bottling. I decided to do it today not because of any learned examination of the wine itself, but because I had finally collected a sufficient number of large brown bottles. Corona beer puts out a "family" size that measures 36 ounces. There were eight of them lined up today, and I decided that the time was ripe. 

I have never made wine before - though I have made apple cider a few times. In fact, I made apple cider earlier this year. That's a funny story, and a lesson. We pressed apples on three separate occasions this year, which is three times more often than we usually do. Faced with many gallons of fresh juice, I decided to try making hard cider. I'm not the kind of person who cautiously measures and precisely calibrates anything. I'm more of a "wing it" kind of cook. I'm a good cook, I won't ever say I'm not, but I am much better at soup (such a forgiving medium) than I am at baking cakes.  When it comes to brewing, that means I am not going to be exactly certain of the strength of my creations. 

A few weeks ago, I bottled this year's cider. I bottled it in these same 36 oz Corona bottles. My husband, seeing them lined up on the mantle, decided he was thirsty and didn't feel like going to the store. Accustomed as he was to downing one of these hefty bottles full of Corona, he did just that. But the bottle was full of home-brew cider. Hard cider that you buy in the store is usually more or less beer strength - 5 to 7%. I, however, used a champagne yeast, and my cider was at least twice as strong as beer. Maybe as much as three times. Had my husband consulted me, I would have told him to drink it like wine, not like beer. Alas, he did not. 

I have never seen Homero so drunk. He was accidentally drunk, so it doesn't reflect on his character at all - but it was pretty funny nonetheless. Poor man could hardly speak, and hardly stand up. I had to put him to bed. My main regret was that he had downed  too much of the limited supply of cider.

Most of the plum wine was bottled today in the same size jugs. I simply capped them with bottle caps instead of using wine bottles and corks. My local brewer's supply store rents out a corking machine, but we don't drink enough wine to have bottles to use. I asked about using beer bottles and capping them like this, and was told that if we drank the wine within the year it shouldn't matter at all. 

No problem there. I drank about one-tenth of it today. Such a beautiful afternoon and evening. I absolutely love days like this - crisp enough that other people complain of the cold, and I can feel superior and smug sitting out in my shirtsleeves. Especially on days like this, when I have completed all my housework and I can take a book outside with me to read without remorse or guilt. Well - only the delicious guilt of reading trashy fiction instead of anything "serious." 

A canvas slingback chair, a cheap novel, a jug of new plum wine, and the sunset......

Merry Mabon (Be Prepared)

Mabon is one of the eight high festivals of the ancient Celtic calendar, and one of my favorites. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the autumnal equinox can be counted on to be one of the loveliest times of the year. The sky will almost always be electric blue, the temperature a comfortable 70 degrees, and the golden afternoon will nearly always fade to a crisp evening full of stars. This year is no exception.  I've been enjoying many beautiful afternoons lately out with the goats and a good book.

Mabon is the middle harvest, out of three. Lammas, or midsummer, is the festival of the early harvest. Here, we celebrate flowers, snap peas, spinach and other tender greens, eggs and milk. The late harvest is celebrated at Samhain, or Halloween. Pumpkins and gourds, nuts, and those crops which are improved by frost such as parsnips and kale. Mushrooms.

But here, the richest harvest is the middle harvest. I have been writing about nothing but the harvest lately, so I don't want to repeat myself, but I can't resist a little bit of harvest poetry.

Blue plums, on the branch and on the ground

wonton in abundance and in sweetness

a feast for wasps

hazelnuts, walnuts and chestnuts

glossy shells peering through their spiny husks

green beans and shelly beans and dry beans

rattling in the pod

still clinging to the yellow vines

thistle down and burdock root

blown dandelion and amaranth

pasture grass seed headed and heavy 

nearly horizontal

apples and apples and apples and apples

pears upon pears upon pears

fall raspberries, few and golden

blackberries, insouciantly out of reach

late potatoes, asleep in the loam

sweet corn and field corn and popcorn 

tall and tasseled, dressing up the landscape

staunch chard and sturdy kale

cabbages, round and ready

opening their outer leaves

proud to embody

the crisp green heart of fall. 

Today I dressed the altar for Mabon. I removed my Demeter icon and replaced her with a painting of autumn leaves. I laid down pears from our trees and chestnuts that I found on a walk, along with the last two blooms on my rosebush. It looks like there are several bottles of beer on the altar, but actually those are several bottles of home-brew apple cider, which I bottled today. I was a bit short on bottles, so I am enjoying the excess cider as I write this. 

Mabon is a time of preparation. In the most literal sense of course, a time of preparation for winter. Have I preserved the harvest? Is the freezer full? The bank account? Can we pay the second half property taxes? Do the children have winter coats? Are there home repairs that need to be completed before the rains start, or before it freezes? It is good to be reminded, via the calendar, to pay attention to the mundane work of the season. But for those who are so inclined, Mabon is an appropriate time to address other kinds of readiness. 

For those who choose to do so, this is a good time to ask not just what is the state of my larder,  but what is the state of my soul? What is the state of my marriage? How about my health? Have I done what I need to do to prepare for the next phase of my life? How about my children, have I laid a path for them to follow? Maybe I should write a will. Do my loved ones know what my wishes are?

These are hard, deep questions, and I don't know about you, but when I decide to think about them in a serious way, I want divine guidance. Far be it from me to suggest who anyone ought to pray to, but there are some gods and goddesses associated with this time of year, the time of perfect balance between light and dark. These are the threshold crossers; those numinous beings who are equally at home in the underworld and the world of light. My personal guide at this season is Persephone, bride of the God of the underworld. She joyfully sinks into the earth to meet her husband every fall and she joyfully rises again every spring to blossom in the sun. She is both the queen of the dead and the resurrected daughter of the dawn. She is the wisdom that comes at life's end and the hope that is manifest in the first signs of every spring. 

painting of Persephone I did many years ago

When I appeal to her, I ask her to grant me the ability to sit quietly in the midst of doubt and fear, in darkness and uncertainty. To stay balanced in the muddled middle until answers make themselves known.  I ask her to show me what are those aspects of my being that need to be brought up out of the depths and into the light of day? How can I make manifest and concrete those inklings and urges that want to remain hidden? Which of them should be lifted up and which of them should be remanded to outer darkness? Help me decide what belongs in the light and what belongs in the dark. Where, O Persephone, are the roots and where are the shoots? Help me give the right gifts to each, that each may be nurtured and come to full fruition. Help me, in this season of balance, to find the right balance in my life.

Help me to see the beauty in the bones, in the deepness, in the decay and the quiet work of winter. Help me to honor necessary rest, to partake in necessary rest, help me to gather and to guard my strength through the long dark, that I might rise renewed as you do, ready and refreshed. Blessed be the sacred season of repose, and thank you for the hospitality of the velvet earth.

The Bog of Eternal Stench, The Dog from Hell, and Bad Knees

Once again it is November, number one on the list of months I wish I could fast-forward through, closely followed by February. Torrential rains have turned the barnyard - as always this time of year - into a sucking swamp. There is still a small pile of hog fuel we could spread, but so far we haven't been able to figure out how to do that without the pig charging out of the yard and into the backyard.

The pig has been able to get out of his pen for months now, and he has rooted up huge clumps of the pasture. He is now about 350 pounds, and that's no joke hurtling towards you at high speed and emitting high-pitched screams at the volume of a Van Halen concert, circa 1984.  The pig has a date with destiny, courtesy of our local mobile butcher, in a little over a week, so the problem will work itself out soon enough.

I did make a deal, way back last spring, with a tree service guy to trade cheese all summer in exchange for cedar chips come fall. He has called a couple of times, but we haven't been able to nail down a delivery, and now it is looking more and more doubtful that I will ever receive any chips.  That's the risk of trading for future goods. Meanwhile, the mud threatens to come up over my boot-tops.

Haku, our new German Shepherd puppy, has apparently made it his mission to tear my entire house into bite-sized chunks. I would post a picture of our playroom, if I could figure out how under the new operating system, but that would probably bring FEMA down on our heads. Seriously, it looks like - well, like a German Shepherd puppy has torn apart two queen-sized mattresses and one large sofa, not to mention gnawed an antique Victorian dollhouse to matchsticks and knocked over a shelf full of board games, torn up the boxes and ripped up all the cards, etc,  and evenly distributed all the chewed-up bits. I figure there's no point in cleaning it all up until he's finished - it might keep him occupied enough to leave a few of our furnishings alone. Why he isn't interested in the fifteen chew-toys I've bought for him I have no idea.

Homero has been suffering greatly this fall from a torn meniscus in his right knee. As a mechanic, he spends a lot of time getting up and down onto a concrete floor, sometimes squatting and sometimes kneeling. His knee will freeze up on him and leave him hobbling back to the house, unable to work for the rest of the day. He hates to take medicine of any kind; apparently he prefers to lay about looking pitiful and asking me to bring him stuff.

I know I sound unsympathetic - and maybe I am. He never reads this blog, so I feel free to say that his knee is nowhere near as bad as mine was - MY meniscus had two big "bucket handle" tears and various smaller tears.  My ACL was completely severed (the surgeon who read my MRI report used the word "trashed" to describe the state of my joint). Without health insurance, I had no choice but to live with it for four long years. I did my share of bitching and moaning - I'm not saying I didn't. I'm just saying I know how he feels, and then some. And then some more.

In my case, as soon as the ACA kicked in and we could finally afford health insurance, and the insurance companies couldn't exclude pre-existing conditions, I scheduled surgery and Hallelujah it has been almost a total cure. They had to remove almost all of the meniscus, and I was told that I'd need a total knee replacement sooner or later, but the pain has almost entirely disappeared, and the instability has been reduced by about 75%. The surgery - first surgery I ever had, unless you count wisdom teeth - was a piece of cake. From the time I woke up in the recovery room I was in less pain than I had been the day before. The next day I was walking on the beach.

Homero has been reluctant to schedule surgery. I'm not sure why. He's never had surgery before either - not even wisdom teeth - so maybe he's afraid. I was. But just as everyone told me, the only thing I was sorry about is that I hadn't done it sooner. I guess Homero just had to wait until it got bad enough. He's finally having surgery at the end of this month. I hope it will be as good for him as it was for me.

The first part of December looks to be a nice quiet time. Homero will be recuperating, and I will be taking a break from work. Right now I'm just finishing up a big job that, though it has left me exhausted, will pay enough to ensure a merry christmas and let me take time off to nurse my husband back to health.

Now if it we could just get a nice, hard freeze to lock up all the mud.

Mushroom Show

Last weekend we went to the annual wild mushroom show, hosted by the Northwest Mushroomers Association (click the link https://www.facebook.com/pages/Northwest-Mushroomers-Association/189323751142082 for their Facebook page). The last time I went to this show was back in 2008 ( Mud and Mushrooms). It's really a wonderful event. In addition to beautiful displays set up on long tables around the room, they also have areas for more in depth investigation. There is a "touch and smell" table:

Paloma at the touch and smell table

And a table with microscopes and slides for looking at microscopic structures. There is a kids table with coloring and crafts and instructions on making spore-prints. There are artist's tables with beautiful and intriguing works of art made out of or on the subject of fungus. One lady, who is a professional scientific illustrator (a career choice I sometimes regret not having pursued) was selling a lovely little booklet full of illustrations of slime molds, with accompanying haiku. In the kitchen, they were offering tastings. And of course there was a table offering books, posters, T-shirts, and what-not. 

And memberships.  Rowan and Paloma and I were so enchanted, I decided to ask about membership in the society. I have been interested in mushrooms, in a general way as part of my larger interest in herbs, plant medicine, and foraging, for many years. I can identify some three or four varieties of edible (and otherwise interesting) mushrooms, but I am very far from being knowledgeable. I would love the chance to learn more, especially if it is something I can do with my kids. 

Family memberships are only $15, regardless of the number of people in your family. That gets you a newsletter, attendance at lectures and identification clinics all year long, and the right to go along on mushroom hunting forays led by experts. And a nice discount on merchandise, which we promptly put to use at the merch table. 

Mushroom season is probably about over this year. I picked and ate all the field mushrooms in my yard three weeks ago. I didn't go out to the back of the pasture to look for shaggy manes, but I'm sure they are done already. I have a meeting set up with a local forager to buy a few pounds of chanterelles tomorrow... and then that's it until next fall... unless there's a morel-picking foray this spring, that is!

Weather Weirdness (Charts and Graphs)

The weather changed about two weeks ago from warm and sunny to warm and wet. Well, of course it has cooled off - enough so that I have broken out the winter blankets - but it is still pretty warm. T-shirt weather for me when I go let the goats out to graze. I'm still drinking my coffee iced; I haven't switched to Americanos yet. There has of yet been no sign of a frost.

Two weeks of rain has turned the barnyard into poo-soup, and when I go out to do the chores in the morning I definitely have to put on galoshes. The dog comes with me, and is banished from the house until her paws dry off. The sky has been low, grey, and glowering, which has an effect on my mood. It hasn't been very pleasant, weather-wise, but neither has it been cold. Today, a friend posted a link to a weather blogon her Facebook page, and it was very enlightening. So far, Pacific Northwest Weather this year HAS been unseasonably warm - record-breakingly warm, in fact. But the record - highest average low temperatures - is not one that people generally pay much attention to. The following is chart heavy, but I found it very interesting.

A note: as much I am unsettled by weird weather, tending to real out and imagine catastrophic climate change on a human time scale, I am nonetheless grateful for this year's odd warmth. We will not be able to use our furnace until all the work is done in the crawlspace. and that isn't projected to be completed until mid-November. So as far as I'm concerned, let the frost stay wherever it is now!

Reposting from Cliff Mass Weather Blog (link below)

****UPDATE****** I don't know why the cut-and-paste job below is cut off on the right margin. I can't seem to adjust it in my editing platform. However, if you click on any of the graphics, they will show up whole and legible in a new window.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-extraordinary-minimum-temperature.html

Something amazing has been going on this fall, and for some reason the Ebola-crazed media hasn't picked up on it.   But that is why we have blogs.  Gardeners know something weird is happening.Vegetable plants are not dying.   Tomatoes are still ripening.

There are movies about this issue.

Here are the temperatures at Seattle-Tacoma Airport during the past 4 weeks, with the average high (red) and lows (blue) shown.   Only ONE day in that entire period has seen the temperature dropping to the average low.  For most days, our minimum temperatures have been 5-10 degrees above normal. Our minimum temperatures last night were close to the average maximum for the date!

UPDATE MONDAY MORNING:  Here is the latest 4 weeks.  Our low temperatures the last few days have been around the NORMAL HIGHS.  And yesterday broke the record daily high at Sea-Tac Airport.

And this is not Seattle alone, here is the same trace for Bellingham.  Same thing.  Bellingham cooled to 59F last night!

Or Quillayute on the coast.   Mega-warm.

A plot of the minimum temperature anomaly (difference from climatology) for the western U.S. over the past month shows that our regional is RED HOT, with minimum temperatures 6-8F above normal on average.

A close-up over Washington State shows some areas are 8-10F above normal.

And the latest NOAA Climate Prediction Center extended forecasts show no end in sight

to the warmth:

Now why is this happening?   This is an important  question because one can expect some folks in the media and advocacy groups to start saying this is a "sign" or "consistent with" global warming due to mankind's emissions of greenhouse gases.  There is no reason to think that is true.

There are two main reasons for the warmth and they are both associated with the anomalous atmospheric circulations we are having.

Reason #1:  a persistent area of low pressure over the eastern Pacific.  The figure below shows the sea level pressure anomaly (difference from normal) for the past month.   There is an area west of us with pressures well below normal.   Such anomalous low pressure is associated with stronger than normal southerly and southwesterly winds over us that blow in warmer than normal air.

Here are the wind anomalies near the surface for the same period...look closely you will see they are southerly over us. It all fits.

This is probably the major cause.   Then there is something else, something I have talked about in previous blog:  the warm water BLOB off the coast.

Below is the sea surface temperature anomaly map for the past week.  You see the orange and red colors off the coast that indicate temperatures 2-4F above normal?  The BLOB still lives.  So air passing over the eastern Pacific  is exposed to warmer than normal water.  Me like BLOB, BLOB is good.

As I noted earlier, the BLOB has little to do with global warming but was produced by anomalous high pressure over the Pacific last winter and year.

So our ridiculously warm temperatures this fall are being produced by an unusual combination of high pressure a year ago that produced the blob and low pressure this fall that is bringing up warm air from the south.

There is no reason to think that these circulation anomalies are caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.  And remember that the eastern U.S. has been colder than normal.

Well, time for me to go out to my garden to harvest some more red tomatoes.

Right On Time (Rain and Decisions)

Today is the Equinox. As I sit here, writing this, the day is fading. It is almost six o'clock; since school started, I wake up at six o'clock, and the sun is just rising. The heavens have balanced themselves for another turn of the earth.

Cool weather arrived last week and yesterday it began to rain. A soft, gentle rain that you can walk around in for a while without really getting wet. Good, northwest rain, at the expected time. After the summer we had, which was dry and surprisingly hot week after week, the ordinariness of late September rain feels like sweet relief. A week and a half ago, I took the kids to the lake to go swimming, and exchanged the same words with half a dozen people:

"Can you believe this, swimming this late in the fall?"

"It's amazing. I love it."

Sunburns in September. But today it is reassuringly grey. The sky has assumed it's customary autumn wet-rag appearance, and the blackberries, although still plump and glossy to the eye, lose all cohesion if you try to pick them. There are mushrooms on the lawn. I saw several leopard slugs in the playroom. I picked the last of the garden tomatoes. Any late-ripeners will just have to fall off and send up volunteers next spring. The final plums have fallen, and the second crop of pears is just about ripe.

We still have a few weeks before the first frost, probably, and I need to take advantage of them. We have been remiss in the hay department, and there are only about thirty-five bales in the barn. That is not nearly enough hay to get us through the winter - we usually go through double that number, and in past years we didn't have a cow. We will have to get another load of hay, but in the meantime, I can supplement the supply by taking the goats out to browse every day. As long the frost holds off, the front yard provides plenty of roughage in the form of blackberries, alder and beech leaves, and thistles. After the frost, the greenery loses most of its nutrient value and hay becomes the staple fodder.

Most of the work that has to get done before winter is done - the hole Poppy kicked in the barn is repaired. The freezer is full of beef and salmon, cider and berries. The goats still need to be bred, but I have a plan in place for that. The propane tank needs to be filled, but that's just a phone call. I feel fairly well prepared and provisioned.

This takes no account, of course, of the major work that needs to be done in the crawlspace. We have not yet decided if we are going to try to get it done this fall, before the worst of winter, or if we will wait until next dry season. If we do it as soon as possible, there will certainly be a few weeks of cold weather during which we cannot use the furnace. We'll have to buy a couple of space heaters and crowd in one bedroom together. If we wait until next year, we can save more money towards the job (inshallah) and theoretically the damage done by one more winter is strictly incremental....

Every time I try to think about the crawlspace my brain rebels and starts to hum old show tunes instead. Chim-chimeree, chim-chimeree, chim-chim cheree...... my luck has run out I've a cracked chim-en-ney....  never mind.  I will think about it tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day.

Crawlspaces are easy places to ignore; they are underground and nobody ever goes there. They are the shadow side, the subconscious of a home. As the world turns its back on the sun and slides darkness on like a hood, it seems perfectly natural to do the same; just close my eyes and let it all hibernate the winter through. The crawlspace and its nasty issues will all still be there come spring, when hopefully my strength will rise with the sap and I will have new energy to tackle major projects.

That's not really my style, though. However tempting it may be to will it away for another year, in truth I am the kind of person who, once a problem has been identified, can't leave it alone until a course of action is decided upon and underway. So I have another phone call to make. A very expensive phone call.