The Golden Girls

I like having a flock of chickens that looks like a handful of trail mix. The Black Sex Links are the raisins; the Rhode Island Reds are spanish peanuts. The black and white speckles of the Barred Rocks can be toasted coconut, and the the varied browns of the Brown Leghorn/Amerucana crosses and our Golden Wyandotte are the chocolates, seeds, and oats. We've got Coach, the little bantam Buff Cochin rooster, as a little golden raisin, but I've been thinking we needed some more golden girls.

Running errands today, we stopped in at the Feed Store for bags of scratch and laying crumbles. Guess what - it's chick time already! They had three stock tanks full of cheeping little babies. The white leghorns were already fully feathered out - almost big enough to be outside. Only the tiny, little balls-of-fluff bantams were straight-run (meaning who knows how many roosters you'll get). All the rest were hens. So I picked out two Buff Orpingtons and two Red Sex Links, then spent the afternoon setting up chick-central in the dog crate in the spare room.

They are the quietest bunch I've ever had! They've already got their wing feathers, and I think they'll be warm enough without a light. Right now, they're snuggled together in a little chickpile, and not making a peep. What sweet, mellow little girls!

Not For Amateurs

Aries grew up in a home heated with wood, up at Lake Tahoe. When he was eight, he was considered old enough to go out with his dad and grandfather cutting wood. When he was twelve, he was big enough to hold a chainsaw to cut downed trees into sections, his grandfather helping pick the saw up each time afterwards. By sixteen, they let him start felling trees. He knows what he's doing, and he likes it when he gets the chance to play with a chainsaw.

Last month, he had the chance to help out a couple friends of mine. We live just above the valley floor. Our native vegetation is desert chaparral - sagebrush and other shrubby plants. But the hills rise steeply just west of us, and the change in altitude is just enough that tall conifers thrive. My friends live just a couple of miles away, up a canyon, but it's enough to be a completely different environment.

One friend had some pines infected with some kind of root fungus. In order to save the surrounding trees, the infected ones were marked to be cut down. She doesn't burn wood, but her next door neighbor, another friend, has a wood stove and she needs the wood. So we headed up to do a bit of woodcutting (well, ok, Aries does the cutting - I'm there in case of emergency and as laborer after the tree is down).

He cut two then, and left one dead, broken, leaning one as too unsafe to cut - that one will have to be chained up and pulled with a tractor enough to drop. When we went back later to cut the last two, I remembered to bring my camera. For the first tree that day, the only place to drop it was right down the driveway towards the house. In the top photo (click on any photo to see better), I've got my back to the house, standing right about where the top of the tree should land. Next photo, you can see the tree bounced a bit left when it hit, but overall it pretty much went where it should. Of course, we then had to get it out of her driveway - Aries cutting, I dragging limbs away to slash piles, rolling cut sections over to another pile.

Then on to the last tree - probably the tallest one Aries had ever cut (Aries is 6'4" for scale). For this photo, I'm standing between the house and garage, a low wall in front of me - the tree would more than reach to where I'm standing. Aries wants the tree to fall to the left, and is just starting the throat cut on that side. There's no wind, the tree is growing straight on level ground, it's symmetrically shaped - it should be no problem, and then we're done for the day. Wrong!

The throat cut lined up perfectly, Aries moves over to the other side. I usually watch for the top of the tree start to sway. But this time I'm zoomed in, watching him through the camera lens, thinking I'll snap an action photo when it starts to fall. Suddenly, he raises his right arm out straight, pointing the opposite direction, signalling to me this tree is breaking backwards. I lower the camera, watching him back away with the saw, still pointing, and start backing up. Open-mouthed, I watch as the tree spins more than 180º on its stump, and then falls away to the right. Amazingly, it landed completely in the clear - just not at all where it was supposed to.

Aires said he felt the saw suddenly go dull in the last couple seconds of cutting. Upon examination, he found wire inside the tree on the side where it spun instead of breaking. It turns out the previous owner, decades ago, had run an electric fence by just nailing the insulators to the trees. This tree, growing quickly next to the leach field, had engulfed the wire so he'd just cut the wire, leaving nail, insulator, and wire hidden inside. We were so lucky the tree didn't fall towards the house, didn't hang up in any of the surrounding trees, and Aries wasn't hurt.

The February Cellar

I went shopping in my cellar again yesterday evening. The temperature is stabilized nicely about 43F (6C). There were still a few tomatoes but they're either really soft or hard and completely tasteless so I tossed all of what was left to the chickens. We'll eat canned or dried tomatoes now until probably July. I won't buy tomatoes in the store - talk about tasteless!

I brought up more apples. Some are getting softer and the peels getting tougher, but since they were free for the gleaning last fall I really can't complain. They're certainly not to the make-applesauce stage yet.

That's the last of the cabbage. Quite a bit of the outer wrappers had gone mushy, but two still had a small edible head inside. I'm still looking for a variety specifically for storage that will grow to size in our short, hot summer. No matter, I've still got sauerkraut - crunchy-good since it's never been canned - some in the refrigerator, some still keeping nicely in a crock in the cellar.

Plenty of potatoes - I grow both Yukon Gold for boiling/frying and Russet for baking/roasting in chunks. The yellow Copra onions are still looking good - I'm hoping I'll have enough down there to last me until the walking onions are up in the garden (and I do still have plenty of shallots in the pantry).

"Bring me up some beer, honey!" Aries called out as I was heading down the steps. So I grabbed a couple of small bottles of Nut Brown Ale and a big bottle of Belgian Red for sweet husband (he was out there filling up the wood box for me, after all). Then, he was on his own for dinner. A friend was hosting a Girls Night Out at her house - potluck and games. I took my Salmon Dip - always a crowd-pleaser - and my ancient Trivial Pursuit game. We had a great time!

First Crocus Blooms

Look what was outside my window, after last night's snow had melted away - Spring's first crocus, cheerily opening up protected from marauding chickens by the wire laid down over the herb bed. After things had dried out a bit more this afternoon, the dog and I got out for a walk in the sun.

Thursday, February 19, was also my scheduled day to write for the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog, so I spent the morning getting that together and online. I say it "was" my day, because the blog was originally set up in Australia and this morning was already tomorrow there. I found it frustrating at first, trying to time my postings correctly, until I found this colorful little real-time website. The Sun Clock option is pretty cool too. Anyway, after thinking about the recent wildfires in Australia I thought I'd write about preparing to evacuate in an emergency wildfire situation. We've gotten that dreaded knock on our door twice, had to leave once, and watched a few more times as flames covered our hillsides. So I do know a bit about the numb brainlock that can strike at such a time, and why it's best to have things written out and prepared ahead of time.

Building Community

We went to a little neighborhood gathering this evening, from an interesting source. Ours is a little group of only about 20 homes, hemmed in by highways on two sides, steep hills rising up to government land on a third, and mostly undeveloped space over a ridge to the Indian Colony on the fourth side. It's a semi-rural area of small homes spread out on large lots, zoned for horses and other small farm use.

Urban sprawl has sent commercial development creeping along the highway frontage over time. As the older neighbors die or move away, developers have started eying the large lots up for sale with designs on multiplying their investment by breaking up the lots into smaller sections. The lack of infrastructure has been a stopping point for some - there is no sewer system here, and it was only in the last two years that city water lines have been laid.

Of course, we all noticed when a new house started going up on an empty parcel just down the street. Then, a couple of weeks ago we received notice that the builders of that house are now petitioning the Planning Commission for permission to cluster seven more homes there - concentrating them in a much higher density than the norm because so much of the property is too steep to build on. So they invited the neighbors to an Open House tonight - a chance to show us what they want to do, let us ask questions, and to address any of our concerns.

I really appreciated the gesture. It was a marked contrast to the outrageously high-density project across the street from us. In that case, the developers snuck around the neighborhood, asking who wanted to sell out and telling all to keep their talks a secret. Of course, that only worked for the first one to sell - once everyone else started comparing stories we all agreed those developers weren't to be trusted. Our distrust was well-founded. We had a lot of unresolved issues with that project, voiced them to the Planning Commission, and the zoning change was denied. But those developers made some backroom deals with the City, went over the heads of the Planning Commissioners and got their plans approved, ignoring the concerns of everyone else in the neighborhood.

That was two years ago. But then, the housing market tanked, they have yet to break ground, and their permit expires later this year. I really hope they've gone bust, the lying snakes. And this past election, one of the incumbent City Council members that approved the project got ousted. Instant Karma - don't you just love it! I have a couple of issues with these latest plans, so will be at the Planning Meeting next week. But I do think it was a nice thing for these developers to do, and it made for a nice chance to visit with the neighbors too.

Just Do Something, Anything

It's been cold, cloudy, wet, and windy for more than a week now. We really need the moisture, I know, but I miss the sun. It's been cold in the house when I get up in the morning, and even though I get a fire going right away it still takes quite a while to warm the house up without the sun shining in the east window. Even the dog shivers curled up on his pillow - maybe I'll cut up an old sweatshirt to make him a sweater.

I've been filling the bird feeders daily. The finches and sparrows sway in the wind on the hanging feeders, the quail cluster underneath (and the occasional guinea too). There's been just enough snow nightly and then melting each day that the streets can be slick without looking like they are. We call it black ice - it can really get your heartrate up when you hit a patch of it driving, and makes walking a challenge on our hilly streets. But we've got lots of sand and sagebrush in our neighborhood, where traction is better and falling less likely. During a break between snow showers, I bundled up and got out for a walk with the dog. I've got my own little incentive system - stickers for my kitchen calendar - so that earned me a gold star.

Stop Procrastinating

I keep meaning to write, and then life happens and I get busy doing something else. By the time I get back to the computer, I end up (obsessively) checking email or reading others' blogs or many of the other ways I can just waste time online. The February blahs have struck - it's so cold and windy I don't want to go outside. Lethargy is such a vicious circle. It seems I'm only doing things to meet deadlines, and none of the things that bring me joy.

So just to get myself back on track, I'm posting these little tips to myself. I've got to stop this ennui, before it slides into depression.

Stop trying to be perfect Fear of failure, or even of success, can be one of my biggest paralyzers.

Don't get overwhelmed I'm really good at seeing the big picture. Problem is, sometimes my vision is so big that I need to stop and focus on just one little bite-size piece to get myself started.

Resist temptation I love the Internet and the connectivity with others it brings. But all too often I'll end up checking email or surfing blogs as a procrastination technique. I've got to fight that tendency, even if it means turning off the computer.

Reward yourself I frustrate myself, resisting joy because I haven't finished the things I keep telling myself need to get done first. Now that's just plain crazy!

Ok. That whole rant was just for me. Do something, do anything! At least it's a start.

Making Fruit Leathers

After reading my post about making Pumpkin Pie Leather, Annette asked if I had any more leather recipes. I usually just blend raw fruit, cored or pitted, into a puree. Even mushy, over-ripe fruit makes good leather, as long as any bruised parts are removed. I peel apples and pears, but leave peels on the stone fruits. You can also make leather out of cooked fruit puree, such as applesauce, adding other fruit purees to change the flavor.

For leathers, 1½ cups puree makes one 9" x 13" leather. You want a texture thin enough to pour out and spread out evenly ⅛ - ¼ inch thick. Too thin, and it tends to stick to the drying surface. Too thick and it might spoil before drying. Uneven spreading, such as thin corners and thick in the middle leads to brittle corners and a center that might be too moist to store. Add a bit of juice or water to thin too-thick purees; you might have to cook a too-thin one down a bit, or add a bit of a thicker type of fruit.

I like the sweet-tart flavor of plain fruit leathers, but a couple teaspoons of lemon juice to 1½ cups puree can brighten up both color and flavor, or an added bit of honey will make it sweeter. Use a light hand (say, ⅛ teaspoon cinnamon:1½ cup puree) if adding any spices, as the drying process concentrates and heightens flavors. If using a rimmed cookie sheet, coating the surface with a very thin film of oil or non-stick spray can make it easier to remove the finished leather. If using plastic wrap, tape the corners down so they don't blow onto the drying puree (leathers stick to waxed paper and foil, so don't use them. Edit added later: I now have a couple of silicone non-stick mats cut to fit my dehydrator screens - even better as they're reusable). Leathers dried until sticky to the touch, but that can be peeled off the surface, are ready to eat, but will only store for a few months. Leathers flipped over and dried until no longer sticky store indefinitely in a cool, dark place, when packaged to exclude moisture and pests.

I use a combination of drying and refrigerated oil-storage to make tomato paste, and have played around with dehydrating salsa to reconstitute when camping. For those looking for something a bit more exotic, here are a few leather recipes from "Food Drying at Home the Natural Way" by Bee Beyer. Written in 1976, it has almost 200 pages of tips and recipes for making and using all kinds of dehydrated foods. The book is no longer in print, but I see Amazon.com has used copies listed for shipping costs plus a penny, so you might want to check into adding it to your home library. For the following recipes, puree ingredients together in a blender in order given, spread out and dry. Makes leathers approximately 9" x 13".

Banana-Peanut Butter Leather (1 leather)
2 large bananas
¼ cup crunchy peanut butter
(the fat in the peanut butter means this leather will only store for a few weeks in a cupboard; six months to a year if frozen)

Cranberry Orange Leather (1 leather)
¾ cup fresh cranberries
1 orange, peeled and white fibers removed
1 very ripe banana
honey, to taste (optional)

Strawberry Rhubarb Leather (2 leathers)
1¼ cups fresh strawberry puree
1¼ cups fresh raw rhubarb puree
honey to taste

Watermelon-Fruit Leather (2 leathers)
1 cup diced seeded watermelon
1 cup diced banana
1 cup diced fresh pineapple (or canned drained unsweetened pineapple)
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Tropical Combo (2 leathers)
1 cup diced strawberries
1 cup diced banana
1 cup diced pineapple
2 tablespoons lemon juice
honey to taste
Optional: sprinkle cinnamon, nutmeg, or shredded unsweetened coconut over puree on trays before drying

Hot Tomato Leather (1 leather)
1¼ cups tomato puree
up to 1 teaspoon chopped fresh hot pepper
1 tablespoon chopped fresh onion
Sprinkle 1 tablespoon chopped bell pepper over puree on tray before drying.
If dried to pliable, bendable stage, this can be eaten as a leather; if dried to brittle, breakable stage it can be powered and used as a flavoring.

I like eating leathers "as-is", for snacking around the house or to carry with me hiking. If made on plastic wrap, they can be stored rolled up, wrap and all. If then cut into 1" rounds, kids will eat them up just like the fruit roll-ups from the store, but you control the amount of sugar (adding ripe bananas to any leather is an easy way to increase sweetness without sugar). You can dissolve pieces of leather in water and use over ice cream or stir into yoghurt. These recipes are just a start. Get creative and invent your own!

Pumpkin Pie Leather

This time of year, my home-grown fresh-food options are things that store well. Apples, potatoes, beets, winter radishes, and carrots are in the cellar. Garlic, onions, and shallots hang in the pantry. Leeks and kale are still out in the garden. Seeds store well. Last year I let a few Daikon radishes and cole plants go to seed - sprouted, they add a tasty zing to winter meals. But we have one more fresh foods storage spot here at Firesign Farm.

Winter squash, cured in the fall out in the dark garage, spend the winter in crates in the corner of our bedroom. The cellar is too cold for squash, the pantry too warm. But with our only heat the wood stove in the living room, this far corner of the bedroom is perfect. I grow a few different types of winter squash. The difference in sizes and tastes allows for variety in our winter meals. The smaller butternuts are nice microwaved and mashed like sweet potatoes. The acorn types are good baked and stuffed. But then there are the bigger squash. They store the best, lasting until May or June, so there's no hurry to use them. They're so big that once I cook one, we're eating it for days. I try to cook one big squash every week or two. The bumpy Hopi are new - I'm still playing with them. I usually use the pink banana squash for any recipe calling for pumpkin, but last summer a friend gave me a couple of pumpkin plants so this year I have pumpkins to play with too.

To cook a big squash, I split it in half and remove the seeds - saving some to plant, the rest to soak in salt water and then roast. Some have peels so hard I have to beat an old knife through with a hammer. I put the pieces, cavity-side down, in a roasting pan with an inch of water added and bake at 375º for an hour or until the skin can be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Once cool enough to handle, I scrape out the flesh and mash to use in a number of different recipes. The pumpkins aren't cooking pumpkins - they're the jack-o-lantern type - so once cooked, are more watery than the Hopi or banana squash. So I glop the mashed pumpkin into a colander set into a bowl and put that in the refrigerator to drain. Harry Potter and the Hogwarts kids are right - pumpkin juice really is quite tasty! It also adds a nice layer of flavor to beef stew.

Pie, custard, muffins, pasta, soup - there are lots of winter dishes I cook with mashed squash, and if I have to I can always freeze it too. But since I just wrote about dehydrating fruits and vegetables for my turn posting at the Simple Green Frugal Co-op I thought I'd share one of my favorite treats to make now, easy to store for later (pumpkin pie leather in the big jar, peach unrolled on the left, plum on the right).

Pumpkin Pie Leather (makes 4 9"x13" leathers)

2 eggs
4 cups cooked, mashed squash or pumpkin (or 1 one-pound can)
⅓ cup honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 can evaporated milk (or 1 c dry milk + 1½ c water)

Put into blender in order given, blend well. Spray rimmed cookie sheets with a thin film of non-stick spray, or line dehydrator trays with plastic wrap or parchment paper (edit added later: or even better, a silicone non-stick mat cut to fit -nice because it's reusuable) held down with a bit of tape on the corners. Spread mixture uniformly ⅛ to ¼ inch thick on prepared trays. Dry 8-10 hours at 115º, or until leather will pull away from the tray. Roll up and store in a cool, dark, dry place. Will keep indefinitely.

More on Chicken Coop Construction

After writing about how our chickens thrive in their simple unheated, uninsulated house in the winter, I wanted to write a bit more about how our chicken coop is put together (first part of the story here).

A piece of 4x4 holds their yard gate open in the photo - it also holds the gate closed at night or during the summer. The gate has a wire-covered opening so we can look inside before opening it. The chickens are always looking to get out, and sometimes we don't want that, so it's nice to be able to see if anyone is lurking, waiting to make a run for it. In the winter, I let them out to roam the rest of our lot, but in the summer they'll do too much damage to my plantings so they're confined to their yard. You can see the sun shining through the ventilation gaps between the floor planks at the bottom of the back wall. In front, the unpainted skirting is easily removed when it's time to rake out the droppings pit.

The chickens have their own door, opening out into their yard. The door is hinged at the bottom and when open rests on a couple of cement support blocks. The blocks also support a ramp made from the end of a wooden pallet. Above their door is a rotating block of wood with a cantilevered part that can hold the door closed, but most of the time we use an invention I like even better .

In the photo above, a rope runs from the left side of the door and up through the wall. It's not for support. The rope continues through the building, passing through a support ring, and on out a hole on the other side. There, a big knob on the end stops the rope from falling back through. At night, once I'm sure everybody is back inside (in the summer the guineas are the last to come home to roost - they like it up on the highest roost next to the window, so I'll peer through that window to count little white faces), I close the door by pulling on the rope. Aries affixed a block with a vertical notch to the wall, right where the rope reaches when the door is closed, with a large screw that extends out from the block. A second block, with notch only half-way across, slides on to lock the knob into place, holding the rope tight. It's proved to be raccoon-proof, and I like it because a quick look down from the house lets me confirm that Aries remembered to let the chickens out for the day.

The "people" door to the coop is on the other side, outside the yard. Chickens are very messy creatures. They poop in their sleep, so walking into the chicken house isn't something we want to do on a regular basis. But we wanted the coop tall enough for us to stand up inside. We need to go in when one of the birds dies, to occasionally push droppings off the planks into the pit, at night when I want to catch our flyers to clip wings, or to place a feeder and water dish on the rare occasions the weather is too nasty for them to go out sometime during the day. To the right of our door, two hinged drop-down doors allow access to the four nest boxes. We can collect the eggs without having to go inside.

Chickens like dark little private spaces to lay their eggs, so inside the coop we've faced the nest boxes with some heavy upholstery material sliced into strips. Chickens like laying where others lay, so I use golf balls as nest eggs. I think both having the nest boxes dark, and the hard golf balls inside, helps deter egg-eating.

Part of the fun of having backyard chickens is designing a place for them to stay. I hope this post gives you some ideas you might like to use. I'm thinking about relocating our coop to up by the garage, just past the woodpile. Then I'd only have to shovel snow for only one path in the winter. It would put the coop farther from the garden, which might help save some of my plantings, but then we'd have to haul the droppings farther to get them into the compost. Decisions, decisions - I like playing around with our homestead design.

The Chicken Coop in Winter

Our night temperatures lately have been in the teens (-10C), the days barely above freezing. Our coop has no heat or artificial light, but our chickens are doing just fine. After all, they are wearing little down vests underneath those big feathers.

Our chickens don't have a heated coop, even in the dead of winter. If it's really REALLY cold (say, -10F or -24C), with a gale force wind blowing, the breeds with large wattles and combs could get frostbite damage on those tender parts. But our chickens have enough sense to stay out of the wind if it's that bad - no one's ever been frostbit. Our coop isn't insulated either. It's made out of salvaged plywood and 2x4's, with a small, non-opening window (with chicken wire on the inside to keep the birds from pecking at it) on the southern side for light. The roosts are 2x4's ripped into 2x2's - small enough to wrap their toes around, wide enough so they can hunker down over their toes to keep them warm, and sturdy enough to support the lot of them.

As long as their coop is dry inside and they are out of direct drafts, they do just fine. In fact, with both their respiration and their poo giving off moisture, having adequate ventilation is more important. Between wall and roof, the space between the rafters has been left open - with chicken wire screening to keep out predators. The floor is 2x6 planks, set 1.5" apart, a foot above the ground. Wood skirting covers from bottom of the planks to the ground, but the gap between planks is open to the air between wall above and skirting below. More chicken wire covers from wall down over gap and skirting around the three walls outside the pen fence, and is buried six inches deep and then L'ed out another six inches for predator-proofing. The chickens easily step over the gaps in the floor, their poop drops through the gaps (or we push it with the back side of a rake when necessary). It dries out there, doesn't smell, and they can't get into it. The skirting beneath the wall on the pen side has wire attached that L's out over the ground, held down by big rocks. That skirting is easily removed by backing out a few screws, allowing access to rake out underneath three to four times a year (more about our coop design here).

There's no feed or water inside the coop (helps prevent rodents). If we get snow, I shovel out the area around their feed bin and water dishes. The feed bin has a peaked roof over it, hinged on one end so I can lift it up to dump in their laying crumbles. For water dishes, I look for straight-sided stainless steel pots in thrift stores. Aluminum pans bend too easily - the steel ones can stand up to banging them on the frozen ground to break the ice out in the morning. Sometimes we'll have to leave one upside down to let the sun warm it enough to melt it enough to get the ice out, so we alternate between two pans. Aries usually opens up the coop in the mornings, carrying a bucket of water from the house. If it's really cold, I might have to carry more water down later in the day - dumping out the earlier pan now skimmed with ice.

The pen also has a couple of low-roofed long sheds, back-to-back, facing north and south. In the summer, the girls like the north-facing one - a nice place to lounge in the shade. In winter, the south-facing one can be a place to enjoy the weak sun, out of the wind. Here Lacy and LaRue, our two Sex-Links, indulge in a mid-winter dust bath, oblivious to the snow hanging over their heads. When it snows, I shovel paths from house to coop to dog run, so they have plenty of places to get out and about. There's a south-facing shed in the dog run that's also a favorite hangout.

In the winter, the chickens are part of my integrated pest control system. They're given free run over our fenced lot, with things I don't want them getting into fenced or covered with wire laid down. When there's no snow, I'll scatter some cracked corn in a different place every day, especially under the fruit trees, letting the chickens scratch about, ridding the yard of many borers and other garden pests trying to winter over. Underneath the wild bird feeders is also a favorite chicken checkpoint, at least until the guineas come up to bully everyone else away. And everyone comes running when I step outside with the kitchen scraps bucket. The chickens do just fine in winter. They're such a happy bunch.

Sitting At My Desk

The drizzly rain of the past couple of days turned to a wet, sloppy snow last night and on into today. When Aries walked down to the store this morning to get me a Sunday paper, he saw that whole roasting chickens were on sale - 58¢/pound, 2 to a bag. He picked up two bags - one for the freezer, one for today. It's just as easy to roast two birds as one, so I've got them both in the oven - roast chicken tonight, chicken enchiladas, pot pie, and soup later in the week. I had a lemon, so each got half stuffed inside, along with a couple big sprigs of fresh sage from out in the herb garden and a few home-grown shallots from the net bag hanging in the pantry, a crusting of dried herbs and lemon pepper rubbed on the skin. It smells sooooo good!

It's too wet, and getting icy, to be outside, so here I am at my desk. I love my desk. It was an old broken-down oak rolltop we got free (can you believe it!). Aries fixed it, cleaned it up, and oiled the wood. I even love the ink spatters staining the desk top. I don't know how old this desk is, or where it's been, but it's obviously been used with an inkwell.

It's heavy too - something I was reminded of all too well yesterday. I just bought a new fax/copier, so tackled the job of installing it yesterday. The desk works nicely for our computer needs, and since this room also doubles as my guest (and sewing) room I like that I can close up the desk if I want. We didn't want to cut holes in the beautiful wood to make it work as a computer desk, so getting to the phone jack and all the computer cables behind it means moving it away from the wall. I'm used to moving furniture around, and since I'm the technology installer in this house, I just dove right in. By taking all the drawers out, I could move the desk enough to get behind it. I got everything put together and working, the cables all tucked back away out of sight. Aries got home from work just in time to help me move the desk back against the wall, and then I got the whole room put back together. It's such a nice place to be, with windows to my right and left to watch the snow coming down.

Shopping the January Cellar

This morning the clouds were hanging low - I could see across the valley, but not the hillsides above. The rain had stopped, but everything was wet and the air had a misty feel to it. I got a fire going in the stove, and mended a couple of socks. By mid-morning I just had to get outside. I took the dog, and we walked a mile up the canyon, just to see if the rain had washed out the dirt road. On my way up, I met a neighbor out with her dog coming down, and we stopped to visit a while. This kind of weather is a bit rare around here - we agreed we both just had to be out in it.

This afternoon, I had some errands to run, and the rain started up again. We don't get pounding-down rain, just spitty-drizzle. We've gotten maybe a quarter-inch in the past 24 hours. But by the time I got home, there was enough run-off that I had to make some little ditches in the sand to channel water away from the front door. Just before dark, I went out for the eggs (three, today), and then "shopping" in the cellar. I couldn't believe how heavy the upper door was, soaking wet. Since the rain is supposed to change to snow by Sunday, I brought up enough produce for the week. Clockwise, from bottom left: a quart of beer (have I ever mentioned that we make our own beer, plus hard cider when we have a bumper crop of apples or pears?), the last of the red Burgermeister onions, plus some yellow Copra onions, Russet potatoes, apples (gleaned from an old tree in the oldest part of town), Yukon Gold potatoes, tomatoes (Early Girls, picked green last fall - our summers are hot and but short; the tomatoes are a bit watery inside and their skins starting to shrivel; they can't compare to those fresh off the vine in August, but certainly beat out the hard baseballs in the supermarket now), and some Kuroda carrots. It was a good night to make pot of stew.

A Taste of Spring

Rain. All day. Drizzly, drippy rain. We have a plastic skylight right above my computer chair, and I can hear it pitty-patting down. If we don't get some kind of precipitation, it's really difficult to water my trees in the winter. I have a couple of tanks we fill in the summer, with buried piping running to gravity-fed faucets out by the trees and garden. But we have to drain all that before it freezes, so I'm left with only the house faucet, dragging around a few hundred feet of hose. I'm so happy to get rain!

I'd prefer cold and snow, but will take anything. This is high-desert - we only get six or seven inches of precipitation a year, and that's in the good years. And then, usually as snow December through April, nothing at all June through September. I'm hoping the weather swings back to cold, so the fruit trees don't start to break dormancy. My trees have the highest chill hours I can find, that are still hardy enough to bear here, but every year it's a toss-up as to whether I get anything.

The chickens liked the rain. Six eggs today! Of the young girls, the two Barred Rocks are molting, so nothing from them now, and the four RI Reds are starting to slow down. But the older Amerucana crosses are starting to come back into production - we got one green and two pinkish-brown eggs today. I wonder - will I wake up to rain or snow tomorrow?

Reno-Tahoe in Winter

Joy, from Perth, Australia, wrote that her youngest son and grandson, both in their 20's, were coming this way and asked what there was to do and see. Oh boy - where do I start? First, let me be clear that this the Reno/Tahoe part of Nevada. It's up where the eastern edge of California makes that angled bend. Las Vegas, despite being in the same state, is nowhere near here. Vegas is a good 7-8 hours drive south of here, a completely different climate and environment.

The jewel of the area is Lake Tahoe itself - a natural alpine lake more than 6,000 ft above sea level, completely ringed by mountains rising even higher. The lake is half in California, half in Nevada - the angled bend in the state line, mentioned above, is out in the middle. The lake reflects the sky and, with our annual average of 300 sunny days, is almost always a beautiful blue. More than 1,600 feet deep, it never freezes. Twelve by twenty-two miles, it has more than 70 miles of shoreline. Driving around the lake can make for a wonderful day. It takes about 3 hours to drive it straight through, but allow much more time to stop and gawk. Every turn brings a new vista and there are plenty of spots to pull over to take photos, plenty of interesting places to stop and shop or to grab some lunch or a cup of coffee.

If limited in time, at least try to make it out to Emerald Bay. Said to be one of the most photographed spots in the world, it's well worth the drive, especially if you're staying on the south shore. On top of little Fanette Island are the ruins of a stone teahouse, part of the Vikingsholm estate built in the 1920's. The estate, now owned by California, includes a "castle" at the end of the bay, open for tours in the summer. Check first to make sure the road around Emerald Bay is open - that part is occasionally closed for avalanche control. And take care - the road is narrow and twisty, and shady spots can be icy even when the rest of the road is dry.

If you'd like to see the lake from the water, there are Mississippi paddlewheelers that cruise from South Lake Tahoe, and Zephyr Cove on the east shore, across the lake to Emerald Bay and back. In winter, there are scenic cruises daily, and sunset dinner cruises Wednesdays and Saturdays. On some winter Fridays, the Ski Cruise sounds like a great time - take a ski bus from your South Shore hotel to the Squaw Valley Village to spend the day, and then party on the return trip across the lake on the paddlewheeler.

Of course, the main reason people come to this area in the winter is to play in the snow. Tahoe offers something for everyone, from downhill skiing and boarding, to cross-country and snowshoeing, to ice skating, sledding and tubing (sliding down the hill on an inflated tire innertube). The area has the largest concentration of ski resorts in North America, and they measure snowfall in feet instead of mere inches. Every place has some kind of lesson package, and rental equipment is readily available. At Heavenly Valley, on the south shore, some ski runs face the whites and blues of the Tahoe Basin, others overlook the tans and greys of the high-desert Carson Valley. A few miles west of Tahoe City on the west shore, Squaw Valley was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Both those big resorts offer gondola rides to the top of the mountain for non-skiers, and numerous other activities as well.

A few miles further west of Squaw, you'll come to Truckee, an interesting little old-west railroad town where Amtrak's California Zephyr stills stops daily on its route between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay. Just west of Truckee is a California State Park memorializing the tragic Donner Party pioneer wagon train. The museum is open year-round, and there are winter trails for cross-country skiers and snowshoers.

Reno is 30 minutes drive east of Truckee on I-80. In between, at the bottom of the pass at Boomtown, is a Cabela's sporting goods store. It's worth a visit, not necessarily to buy anything, but just to wander around and look. The store is a natural history museum of sorts, with taxidermy displays and dioramas from around the world and a couple of huge aquariums. I know it's strange to recommend stores as must-see items on a tourist listing, but Scheels on I-80 just east of Reno in Sparks is another amazingly massive sporting goods store experience. Both stores will provide lots of low-cost entertainment, inside out of the cold.

Reno has numerous attractions, aside from casinos, where you can get out of the cold too. The boys might enjoy wandering through the National Auto Museum, watching college basketball at the Lawlor Events Center, or checking out what's happening at the Reno Events Center - all within walking distance downtown. The big casinos, both in Reno and Tahoe's south shore, also offer a variety of shows and nightclubs - pick up a local newspaper to see who and what is playing where.

Of course, boys in their 20's might prefer checking out the coeds and the bars around the University of Nevada, Reno campus, also walking distance from downtown, just north of I-80 off Virginia Street. UNR is Nevada's land-grant institution - the buildings date from 1887 to the present. The Student Union or Main Library could be good places for some downtime and computer access.

The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range is still seismically active, and contains many natural hot springs - a good way to warm up after a cold day skiing. Many are open to the public, with amenities such as the individual baths at Steamboat south of Reno, an outdoor pool at Carson in Carson City, and the full spa treatments at Walley's just south of Genoa, Nevada's oldest settlement.

Carson City, 25 miles south of Reno, is the capital of Nevada. The silver-domed capitol building is open to the public, with interesting displays on both floors. The State Museum is just down the street in the old US Mint Building, with everything from the original coin press to fossils to a walk-through replica of an underground mine. On the south end of town, there's the Railroad Museum and the local Visitors' Center. I haven't been in there lately, but they used to have a great aerial photograph on the wall, showing Carson City in the foreground, the Carson Range to the west, and beyond that Lake Tahoe - with the water level obviously 1,500 feet above the town.

East of Carson City, just off Highway 50, are some local businesses the Visitors' Center might not mention - the bunny ranches (and I don't mean rabbits). Brothels are legal in the rural counties of Nevada, and the county line is right on top of the hill. A couple of blocks off the highway to the north is the Moonlite Ranch, probably best known as the location for the HBO series, Cathouse; to the south are the Sagebrush, Kit Kat, and Moonlite II (formerly Kitty's). Some of the girls used to stop in at the bar where I worked on their way back to their week on-duty at the "ranches", and told me a bit about their job - they are examined by a doctor and tested for various diseases weekly; the men must always use condoms (per state law); no licensed prostitute in Nevada has ever tested positive for HIV/AIDS; and the girls also get a three-day class on detecting signs of STDs in men before they go into the line-up. Everything else, so I hear, is negotiable.

A couple of miles further east is the turnoff to Virginia City. No matter where my travels have taken me in the world, even places where people don't speak English, I can always get across where I'm from by humming the theme song from Bonanza - everybody knows that music and the burning map! While the Cartwrights never really walked the streets of Virginia City, a young man named Samuel Clemens did. Later, using the pen name Mark Twain, he wrote Roughing It, a great account of his adventures in the area. The gold and silver from the mines of the Comstock Lode helped finance the Union Army in the Civil War, and played a key part in the growth of San Francisco, California. The town is the largest designated Historical District in America, with the main street pretty much the same as it was in the 1860's. You can spend a fun day walking the board sidewalks, checking out the little shops and old saloons, maybe wandering through the old cemeteries on the northeast end of town, or taking in a museum or a tour. You might even want to take a ride on the tourist railroad running on the old Virgina & Truckee (V&T) route - the "crookedest short line in the world". Work is in progress to eventually rebuild the tracks all the way back to Carson City someday. It gets really cold up there once the sun sets in the winter, and the town pretty much rolls up its sidewalks then - time to head back down the mountain.

Of course, there are always the casinos. Nevada bars and casinos never close - they're open 24/7. You must be 21, and if you look young probably will be carded - carry proof-of-age identification. Many of the bigger casinos offer lessons in how to play the various games, and just about all have a Sports Book, where you can place a bet on just about any sports-related event in the country (you can even wager on whether the Super Bowl coin toss will be heads or tails). Oh, by the way, it's not called gambling here - "gambling" represents risk; the casinos prefer the term "gaming" - gaming denotes entertainment and fun. It's just Nevada semantics - decide your monetary limits before you start, and don't let the free drinks cloud your judgement. If you're playing, tipping the cocktail waitress increases the likelihood that she'll come around often, and if you're winning, the dealers appreciate the occasional tip as well. Be forewarned - altitude exaggerates the effects of alcohol.

I'm sure that's plenty of things to think about, if you've read this far. If you're driving across the Sierras, check weather and road conditions before you start. Many of the Sierra crossings farther south close for the winter; winter storms and avalanches can close the ones around here temporarily. Carry tire chains, and be prepared for winter driving conditions. Drink plenty of water to alleviate the headaches and possible nausea the altitude can induce - you should adjust after a couple of days. My email address is over there in the sidebar if you have specific questions and would like to reach me directly. I'll try to do a summer-specific post later in the year. Enjoy your visit!

MLK Day of Service

During the 1950s and '60s, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized the power of service to strengthen communities and achieve common goals.
President-Elect Obama has asked Americans to observe Monday's MLK Holiday by performing some action in the days leading up to the Presidential Inauguration to better your own community. So bright and early this Sunday morning, I'll be out, bundled up against the cold, in my work boots, gloves, and bright orange vest, my Ipod in my pocket, picking up trash along a mile of Nevada Highway 50/395 (the photo is from last summer - that's me on the left, in sunglasses and my goofy straw gardening hat). Aries, meanwhile, will be over at an elderly neighbor's place, bringing down a few widowmakers - trees on her property that are leaning over, threatening to fall. Find events in your community here. What are you going to do?

Linens and Blood and Promises

I have a few items nagging at me. I've had some questions asked and received some emails - I haven't forgotten you. Now that I'm finally through the confusion of the holidays and various organizations' annual start-the-year meetings, I promise, I will put together some long overdue posts.

Joy, from Perth, has a son and grandson heading this way in February, so I want to write about things to do around Reno/Tahoe. I received a new cookbook I want to write about, The Cornbread Gospels, by Crescent Dragonwagon - a fascinating person, writer, and cook. And Nancy M asks about keeping chickens out of the garden. I'm still working on how to do that myself, but I do want to get some poultry-keeping posts out there. Hang in there - those posts are coming. Soon. I promise.

But I'm a bit tired now. I donated blood this afternoon, after my Soroptimists' luncheon. I also got stopped by a policeman, for getting into the left turn lane one car length before I legally could, and then didn't have a current proof-of-insurance card in the car. He could have ticketed me for both offenses, but let me go (whew! but it did get my adrenaline going, just before I had the blood appointment). I don't know why Aries didn't put the card in my glove box - he usually does, every time - so I swung by the insurance office on my way home and got a temporary one. And then made sausage-stuffed squash for dinner. So, I'm just going to post a picture of how cheery the living room looked this morning, with its January red and white decor, and call it a day.

Time to Turn the Compost

It was nice outside today. While I spent the afternoon inside doing the Financial Reports for my Soroptimists' Club, Aries was outside turning the compost pile. It had broken down and compacted since he built it last October (shown then in this photo). It had reduced in size by half and completely cooled off. So he pulled the wire ring off and broke it all apart. In our desert climate, compost can quickly dry out, stopping the decomposition process. It needed to be wet down again (of course, some of the chickens were immediately underfoot - there might be something good in there, you know). Then, everything soaked and stirred, he piled it all back in the wire bin, and covered it to keep any winter snows from leaching too many of the goodies out. We'll check in another day or so to see how high the temperature jumps - the hotter it is, the more that lets us know there was still stuff in there to be broken down. Depending on the weather, he'll probably turn it again in early March, and I'll start working the finished compost into my summer garden beds the end of April.

One 50' bed, the "Early" bed, I prepped last fall with the last of last summer's compost. One-third of that bed was planted then with garlic and shallot bulbs, and seeded with spinach and arugula to overwinter for my earliest Spring salads. They're just now starting to sprout. The rest of that bed is lying there waiting, ready for when I can seed lettuces and peas, and set out onions - probably in early April.

When we get these nice 50º January days, like it's supposed to be the rest of this week, my fingers start itching to get out there and start playing in the dirt. The 20º nights, and the certain knowledge that winter is far from over brings me back to my senses. I'll have to content myself with going through my garden catalogs. The garden of my January imaginings is always so much greener anyway.

Grassroots Volunteering

I belong to Muscle Powered, a small, grassroots, pedestrian and bicycle advocacy group. We had our annual planning meeting/potluck brunch this morning. Reviewing the past year's activities, our small group of volunteers accomplished quite a lot. This year's planned activities include Bike to Work events in May, leading weekly community walks (and maybe bike rides), a Kids' Bicycle Rodeo, a booth at an Earth Day fair, and our on-going efforts towards improving connectivity of access here in town, and more recreational trails in the surrounding open space.

The President of the Carson Valley Trails Association, to the south, brought information on their efforts too. They'll be having their annual meeting next week, and I'm thinking I'll join their group too. They work on a lot bigger scale than we do, so I'm looking forward to learning more about dealing with federal, interstate, and private property trail easements (the California state line angles across Lake Tahoe, and continues southeast, just south of here), and volunteering on their trail-building projects.

Very interesting too, at our meeting today, was the house of our hostess. She has taken a small house in the older part of town, and remodeled it to make it as green and sustainable as possible. This was her chance to show us her work of the past year, giving us a tour before the meeting. Her initial efforts included gutting and reconfiguring the entire place - moving walls (she said one closet door is the only door inside that was still in the same place), moving and replacing all exterior windows and doors, and replacing all flooring with sustainably harvested wood. The gorgeous counters in kitchen and baths are made of recycled glass, and all appliances are energy-efficient. A photo-voltaic array on the roof provides electricity, and the solar water heater, via a heat exchanger and pump system, provides both domestic hot water and heats the house through baseboard radiant heaters (she does have a gas hook-up as a backup for cloudy days, but with our 300+ sunny days annually she hasn't had to use it much). It's a beautiful home, with some technology so new and different for around here, the power and insurance companies haven't quite figured out how to deal with her yet.

Electronic Media Time-out

Alrighty then - time to get back into the blogging rhythm, I guess. I had a nice visit with my sister in the Bay Area. This is one of my favorite sights I pass on my way over the Sierras. There are a couple of statues of big horn sheep flanking a driveway, and then they've added another statue of a mountain lion. But since it's not in the same scale, to me it looks like the sheep are being stalked by a house cat. I smile every time I drive by.

Sweet husband gave me a gift card to Borders book store for Christmas. I got myself some new music (George Harrison's All Things Must Pass), and a box set of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse paperbacks. We had free HBO for a while last fall, and I got hooked watching True Blood, a series based on the books. So I spent last week devouring all seven books, one right after another (I can get a bit obsessive when I get the chance to read), doing a bit of electronic media detox in the process (best if I do that every once in a while). But now, refreshed, I'm back on the computer and back online. I'll be in touch!