Storing Eggplant

As our cold weather season approaches, the warm weather crops must be harvested before the first frost. Dealing with the resulting glut of fresh veggies takes many forms around our house. The tomatoes picked green, set out on a table and covered with newspapers, will eventually ripen enough to be canned or otherwise processed; the cucumbers are pickled or fermented; the winter squashes and onions cured for storage.

Many gardeners don't realize eggplant, the big round Italian types, can be stored for a couple of months in the pantry. Pick your eggplants at the peak of ripeness, when the skin has a glossy sheen. Once in the house, trim the stem as close as possible to the top of the fruit, without cutting into the flesh. Lift and break off the "petals" of the green cap so the spines won't pierce the wrapping, taking care not to break the flesh. Then wrap the fruit as snugly as possible in plastic wrap, and store at room temperature, or a bit cooler. A shelf in my pantry works best in my house.

Chickens 101

I'm not a big television watcher. I'm bored by most programming today - I'd just as soon have music as my "background noise." However, there are a few TV shows I do like to watch. One of those is Survivor. I'm an adventurer at heart - I wonder how I'd "survive" (I'm too old and slow now - they'd vote me out first thing). I also like watching the personal interactions, the machinations and manipulations, the internal struggles. I was a bartender for years - I'm a veteran people-watcher. Nothing shocks or surprises me all that much.

But last night, watching the show, was a first. I was totally aghast at what happened.

One of the teams won two hens and a rooster in a cage to take back to their camp. Usually when this happens, I'm waiting for the first idiot to let them escape, and the ensuing antics as they try to catch them again. In daylight, chickens can see very well, and are extremely quick. Without a fence corner to corral them against (or Grandma's wire leg hook to snag one) they can be practically impossible to catch when running free. But once night comes, they squat down and don't move. If you just wait until dusk, watch them settle down (and quite often, if allowed, they'll come back "home" to roost), you can then just walk over, pick them up, and put them back in the cage.

But last night, they'd just got the chickens back to camp - no one yet had the chance to talk baby-talk to their little pets, or mess around and let them get loose. They were ready to eat one. Those people are hungry - I can understand they'd want to eat one right away; I'd agree to that. But one person made the comment that they should keep an egg a day coming in for a steady supply of protein; that's a good plan too. But then, I just couldn't believe it when they reached in and grabbed one of the hens to butcher. Could they not see the difference between a rooster and the hens? Did they think they needed the rooster to get eggs? Have we so vilified science and sex education in our country that an entire group of grown adults knows nothing about "the birds and the bees" anymore? Are we that distanced from our food, and where it comes from?

Ok folks, here's the deal: hens lay eggs even when there isn't a rooster around. The only time a rooster is necessary is if you're planning on hatching out your own homegrown baby chicks. I really find it hard to believe that of all those adults there, not one seemed to know that. The game only goes for, tops, 39 days - they know that. They're not really marooned forever - they don't need to be raising a self-perpetuating flock of chickens. Listen, people: next time, eat the rooster, keep the hens, and you can be eating two eggs a day.

Janan's Jalapeno Jelly

I didn't get many jalapeno peppers this year. Summer was late, and then it never did get really hot this year (plus, our visiting Bambi reached his nose down inside the plant cages and ate the tops of the plants, spitting out deer-slobbered chewed peppers, until we finally got a tall enough fence up). But I did get a small bowlful, so started thinking about what to do with them.

Last year, I planted extra jalapenos, and then smoke-dried them into chipotles (tutorial here), enough to last for 3-4 years. I still have a couple jars of nacho slices, and besides, there weren't enough this year to bother getting out the pressure canner. I've run out of jalapeno hot sauce, but like my cayenne and habanero/orange hot sauces better anyway.

And then, my friend Janan in Tennessee posted a beautifully staged photo of a cracker with a smear of cream cheese, topped with a dollop of jalapeno jelly, on her FaceBook page. Bingo! It looked sooo good, I asked for her recipe. She was kind enough to send it to me. And when it turned out as good as it looked, I asked if I could put it on my blog. "Go ahead," she said, "make me famous."


Janan's Jalapeno Jelly

2½ cups roughly chopped peppers (I use approx. 20 smaller jalapenos = 1½ c. jalapenos, + 1 c. bell peppers)
2 cups apple cider vinegar (divided)
7 cups sugar
2 packets liquid pectin
optional - a couple of drops green food coloring

WEARING GLOVES! (I've been working my way through a box of latex surgical gloves for the past six years, and probably still have enough to last me a couple more years - definitely a worthwhile investment), remove stems, seeds, and inside ribs from jalapenos. In a blender, liquefy peppers with one cup vinegar. Combine with sugar and remaining cup of vinegar. Heat to boiling, then continue to boil for 10 minutes. Add pectin and, stirring constantly, continue to boil one minute more. Remove from heat, and stir in food coloring if using. Fill hot, sterilized jars to 1/4" headspace, seal, and process in a hot water bath 10 minutes (I did mine 15 minutes, since I'm at 5,000 feet altitude).

Janan says this recipe makes 10 half-pints, but I average six to seven. Even so, mine does have the perfect balance of heat and sweet, and the jelly, while firm enough to hold its shape in the jar, is still "spreadable" too. My jalapenos averaged a little over 2", which I figured were on the small side - Janan said hers were more like 4 inches. I've since edited the recipe include my notes over the years.

In the photo above, the jelly is on the right (I did add the food coloring), and then a few jars of tomatillos on the left. There's more information about growing and canning tomatillos here, in my post on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog.

Sour Pickle Experiment

When I was a kid, I asked Santa for a ChemLab one Christmas - back then, a toy laboratory in a tri-fold tin box. The best part, for me, was the microscope. But playing with chemical mixing and reactions was fun too. I still like experimenting with chemical reactions. Only nowadays, I have a whole kitchen for my laboratory (plus now, my results are edible - well, most of the time, anyway).

The end of August this year, I had a glut of cucumbers. For some reason, they did really well (especially the hybrid Sugar Crunch - earliest, prolific, and yummy; next best were from my saved Lemon Cucumber seeds - though later to start setting fruit, they're amazingly prolific, and the last ones picked will keep a few more weeks in a bowl on the counter, on into the fall; not so good - an open-pollinated one, Long Green). I feast on fresh cukes when I've got them, and quite often have planted enough to put up as well. Only thing is - Aries doesn't like pickles, so I'm the only one eating them. I already have enough sweet relish, dill chips, sweet pickles, and bread & butter pickles. I started researching other options.

My dill chips, from my Aunt Lillian's recipe, are tasty, but not crunchy enough. Pickles can add such a nice crunch to a sandwich. Hmmm - maybe pickling them whole would be better. These were pretty good-sized cukes though - two, maybe three, to a quart jar. Then, I started looking into fermenting instead of pickling. Ooo, something new to experiment with. I like sauerkraut; I've got a nice glass crock (extra cool for playing scientist, for observing those chemical changes).

I thought it especially interesting reading about the need to cut the merest little slice off the blossom end of the cucumbers. The blossom end produces an enzyme that hastens ripening of the fruit, and if left intact can contribute to softness in pickles. News to me - I'll definitely have to experiment more with that when I next make any other kind of pickles. Ideally, leaving a bit of the stem attached to the other end also makes for a better pickle.

Especially in the older recipes, layering grape leaves in with the cucumbers was said to contribute to crunchiness in the end product. I just happen to have a couple of organically-grown grapevines, so I picked and washed a bunch of palm-sized leaves. Everything ready, I made a layer of grape leaves, shiny-side up, on the bottom of the crock, then stacked in the whole cucumbers with fresh dill, garlic, and a couple of dried hot peppers. I topped the stack with more grape leaves and a ceramic plate, poured in the lightly salted (with only a little bit of vinegar) brine, and then left it to start fermenting (the recipe I used here).

After a couple of weeks, it was smelling pretty good. The fresh cukes were still rolling in, so I pulled out the plate and top layer of grape leaves, added another layer plus more brine, and replaced the leaves and plate to let it go on fermenting.

And now, it's five weeks later. About every third or fourth day, I use a stainless steel spoon to skim the thin layer of whitish scum off the top of the water. It stills smells yummy. Inside the crock, things are really interesting. The cucumbers have lost their shiny green color, and are starting to take on a more translucent look. At first glance, it looks like a white mold is forming on the top sides of everything.

But disturb the crock and it turns into a 20-pound snow globe. The white stuff swirls around, almost flaky in appearance - floating about, turning the brine milky, and then slowly settling again.

My research said fermentation takes about 4 weeks in a 70-degree environment - our average countertop temperature this time of year. When finished the pickles should have a uniformly translucent appearance, and a pleasantly sour taste. I cut one open, and there are just little bits of still-whitish flesh. It was sooooo good! I left it out on the cutting board this afternoon, and have already eaten half of it - one slice at a time.

A lot of the sources say the finished pickles will keep 4-6 months refrigerated, but should be heat-processed for longer storage. But they also say that if you maintain at least a couple inches of brine above the pickles, and skim the top scum off regularly, they'll keep fermenting, getting sourer and sourer. Fermentation slows down too, the lower the temperature. I don't want to cook the pickles (possibly lessening crunchiness), and don't have much refrigerator space, so my plan is to try keeping them in the crock through the winter. I pulled everything out of the crock, and cleaned and re-sterilized it. I filled a quart jar with a couple of the smaller pickles, to keep on the fast-track ferment here on the kitchen counter. I then re-packed the rest of the pickles back into the crock, mixing up a bit more of the brine to top it off.

We've been opening up the cellar nights now - the inside temperature is now down in the low 60's. I'm going to move the pickle crock down there, and keep a close eye on the scum situation (if left too long, mold then forms too - ruining the pickles and possibly poisoning me). But I'm thinking, the cellar temperature will continue to drop, fermentation will slow down, and I can safely eat yummy sour pickles all winter (or until they're all gone, anyway). Worst case scenario, they'll end up in the refrigerator by February.

**Edit added six months later: Now, towards the end of March, the pickles are still doing fine down in the cellar, where temps are still in the low 40'sF. They pickled all the way through, but since then I haven't noticed that they've gotten any sour-er.

Every week to 10 days an almost gel-like layer of scum forms on the top, occasionally with a couple specks of blue-topped white mold on top of that. It's easy enough to just pinch that layer, pull it out, and toss it.

The pickles are still submerged a couple of inches below the surface, beneath the heavy china plate. When I want another pickle, I'll fish one out, redistribute those left, and replace the plate. Inside the house, I have a quart jar of brine in the refrigerator, where I keep the current pickle, cutting slices off as needed. No scum forms on the jar in the refrigerator.

A lucky bonus came from using the grape leaves. I don't know if they made the pickles any crisper, but they pickled along with the cucumbers. I'll usually eat one or two standing right there in the cellar. I have some recipes for making dolmas, grape leaves stuffed with a rice filling, and might try that if I have any left when it's time to empty the crock to move what's left to the refrigerator as the cellar warms up. They're good enough that I think I'll add even more grape leaves to next year's batch.

A Sociable Weekend, Out and About

The weather was absolutely gorgeous this past weekend, and both of us got the chance to be out enjoying it. After Labor Day, when the kids head back to school, the number of tourists visiting Lake Tahoe naturally drops - at least until snow brings the skiers. However, right now really is the best time of year to be out and about - the heat of summer gives way to pleasantly warm days, while the nights have yet to get down below freezing. The area capitalizes on this by scheduling a plethora of outside events every weekend in September and into October - luring the tourists (and their money) back.

Earlier this month were the Reno Balloon Races, the Camel Races in Virginia City, the the Reno Air Races , and closer to home, our local Basque Festival.

Aries took a week's vacation this past week, just so he could finally check out this weekend's big event: Street Vibrations - "a celebration of music, metal and motorcycles." The highway is only two blocks from our house, and from Thursday afternoon through Sunday, the rumble of motorcycles was almost non-stop. For three days, Aries was out with his buddies - riding up to Virginia City, and then checking out the bikes, vendors, and shows in Reno and Sparks. I have a bike - an 800 cc 1989 Honda Pacific Coast, but haven't ridden it much lately. I let the boys have their fun without me.

But, not to worry, I was out and about having fun with the girls. My Soroptimist Club held our biggest annual fundraiser Saturday - the Stroke to Help (fight breast cancer) Golf Tournament. The money we raise pays for mammograms and biopsies for uninsured local women. On the day of the tournament, I volunteered to be an official observer on a par-3 hole where a hole-in-one would win a $10,000 prize.

I used to work at Eagle Valley Golf, where we hold the tournament. I know the hole-in-one hole I'd be working - it's one of the prettiest places on the West Course. I packed a thermos of coffee, a magazine, and my Ipod: prepared to spend the morning kicked-back in a golf cart, looking out across just about all of Carson City. I stitched together two photos (above, click on photo for a closer look) and still only show a partial slice of the view. No hole-in-one (it's a pretty tough hole - short distance, but there's a ravine between the tee and the green that shakes a lot of golfers' confidence).

Sunday, Aries and I were out and about together. He joined me to check out the Candy Dance Faire in Genoa. Originally called Mormon Station, a trading outpost built during the California Gold Rush days, Genoa is the oldest permanent settlement in Nevada (photo above is statue of Snowshoe Thompson, legendary skiing frontier mail carrier, outside the Mormon Station State Park in Genoa). In 1919, the town needed money to buy street lights, so they held a fund-raising dance with home-made candy for refreshments. Of course, once the street lights were bought and installed, they then had an electric bill that had to be paid each year. So the Candy Dance became an annual tradition.

Ninety years later, they still hold a dance on Saturday night, and they still make candy (hundreds of hours by devoted volunteers - making, packing, and selling over 4000 pounds of candy). But the biggest draw now is the Arts & Crafts Faire. They close off the streets in this tiny town of only a couple hundred people, and for two days hundreds of vendors attract thousands of people. We didn't buy anything, other than our lunch, but I love wandering about, people-watching and to see what other people have made - it's a great idea-starter for my own projects.

Drying and Storing Herbs

I can't believe how time slips away between posts here. I've been doing a lot of seasonal chores, and some kitchen experimenting, and I know a lot of it would be interesting to my readers. I find myself composing blog posts in my head, and then never seem to find the time to sit down and type. I have taken some photos too, so will try to use them to rebuild a bit of my activity of the past few weeks.

Between the rigors of late Spring freezes meaning a slow start to the garden season, a summer on the cool side, and Bambi's predation, my harvest is going to be somewhat meager. I haven't been doing very much canning this year. The nights are still hanging in there above freezing, with the lowest of the lows in the high 30's, so I'm still hoping for a bit more from the tomatoes, squashes, and peppers. Right now, I'm harvesting herbs.

Perennial herbs are great. I love that they're, for the most part, low maintenance and drought tolerant. Once I find the just the right spot for each one, they pretty much take care of themselves. Throughout the summer, I snip bits here and there for fresh use. But now it's time to clean things up for the winter, cutting the plants back and hanging labeled bunches to dry.

I use rubber bands on the bunches (tying with string not so good - the stems shrink as they dry and will slip out of string) and then use old drapery hooks for hangers. The pointy part slips beneath the rubber band, the hook part fits over the edge of a high shelf. Once dry, I crumble the leaves from the big stems into a large colander set atop a piece of newspaper. Then a combination of shaking and more crumbling separates out the smaller stems and leaves me with reasonably uniformly shaped bits of dried herbs to last me through the winter and spring. My tea herbs are stored in clear glass jars I've lined with paper to protect them from the light; brown glass bouillon powder jars are reused to hold the cooking herbs.

Building a Hobart-Marlette Link Trail

I love being in the outdoors, and camping (speaking of camping, for my most recent turn to post on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op, I wrote about using a dutch oven to bake fresh, hot campsite treats). Luckily, living here in Carson City, there's beautiful camping country practically right out my back door. Much of the land around the Lake Tahoe shoreline, especially the western, California side and the casino areas just across the Nevada state line north and south, is densely populated, developed property. But thanks to the eccentricities of a few reclusive, rich owners over the years, the land on the east side has remained pretty much undeveloped, and is now in the public domain as the Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park. The interior of the park is closed to motorized traffic, but there are numerous trails for hiking, mountain biking, equestrians, and cross-country skiing, and a few backcountry campgrounds.

When I was younger, I used to do some backpacking. It was hard work then, carrying everything. I know I'm not in good-enough shape to get much into the backcountry now (but I'm trying to get back in better condition, and with new advances in gear weight and technology, maybe someday . . . ). So when, as a member of Muscle Powered, I heard the park ranger was allowing 4WD vehicles to drive the 6-8 miles into Marlette Peak campground for a weekend of volunteer trail building, I jumped at the chance to go. I dug out my old pup tent and backpacking stove, threw my gear in a duffel bag, and met up with the others to carpool in early Saturday morning.

The campground is quite nice, especially for a backcountry site. There's a pit toilet, bear boxes, tables, fire rings, and water available (no trash pickup - pack everything out), and it's right on the Tahoe Rim Trail. We saw quite a few mountain bikers, a few day hikers, and a couple of overnight campers the two days we were there. By Saturday evening, the weather had turned cold and windy, but if it had been warmer I would have walked the mile and a half down to Marlette Lake after a dusty day's work, and jumped in for a swim.

We were working on a section not far below the campground. When finished, the trail will run from the Tahoe Rim Trail to Hobart Reservoir (where there's another campground). It's a reasonably gentle grade - hillside traverses interspersed with swooping turns in the shade of the pines. When finished, the trail will provide a much nicer alternative to the hot, steep climb on the road up Sunflower Hill (the photo at the top of this post is a view across a trailside meadow, with Reno in the distance). It will probably take three years to hand-build the planned five miles of trail. One more work weekend this season (volunteer for just a day, or camp overnight) is planned for September 18-19, weather-permitting. See Muscle Powered for more information.

Deer Defense

We've caught sight of our deer visitor a few times now. I first saw him when I went out to shut up the chicken coop, just before full-on dark. It's a lone 2-point buck, maybe a couple hundred pounds. He was in the garden, but hopped over the fence and headed towards the fruit trees when I came out the back door. I called to Aries, and we both watched as he went over our lot fence to the west, across the road, over our neighbors' fence, and then headed up the canyon. A couple of nights later, I caught him out there again, same time, same place. Aries has also seen him a couple more times just before sunrise.

We might as well just hang out a "good eats" sign - he's not going to be easily scared away. The scent of the dog didn't faze him, nor did the wire I laid down where the tracks showed he'd been hopping the fence. He just went around to another spot. The mirrors hanging in the corn patch, to keep the sparrows from perching on the top tassels and breaking them, might have kept him away from the unripe corn, but I don't think so - he munched the bean blossoms close by, and was probably just biding his time until the corn was ripe. When I put a wire cage over the chomped carrot and beet tops, he ate the onion tops. The choi and chard were pruned to just clumps of stems. He reached down inside the cages to eat the leaves off the pepper plants, and spit out the peppers. Only stumps were left of the lettuce I'd let bolt for next year's seed.

I researched deer deterrents. Irish Spring soap was listed, or predator urine products, or sprinkling blood meal around the plants. But it also said deer get used to scent-based deterrents, so you have to keep changing every few days. The only sure-fire preventative was a fence, a tall fence - mule deer can jump 10 feet.

So, we set to work increasing the height of our garden fence. We had a bunch of rebar out in the scrap pile. We slid pieces of that down inside the t-bar fencepost clips. Then added the old chicken wire, salvaged from the garden fence we replaced earlier this year. Then, to make the fence look even taller, I strung surveyors' tape around the tippy-tops of the rebar. Aries says, from the street, it looks like we put in a tennis court. But so far, so good. No tracks, no droppings, no more damage. If the first freeze holds off for another month or two, most of the plants might recover enough that we'll get a bit of a harvest after all.

With the garden out of reach, he's started eating the leaves on the grape vines and fruit trees. We had such a cold spring that there's no fruit this year, but that might be a blessing in disguise. The trees are big enough that I don't think he'll do much damage, and once the leaves fall, maybe he'll move on. I just hope he doesn't decide to bring the wife and kids.

Trouble in the Garden

They say a garden is always greenest in January - in your imagination, while paging through those beautiful garden catalogs. The reality though, in August, can often be quite different. And so it is here.

As always, I had such high hopes for this year's garden. The new fence was doing its job - no ground squirrels or bunnies had munched anything. Reconfiguring the chicken coop and pen worked too - no guineas flying from the top of the gate into the garden for snacks; no chickens flying in either, scratching up the dirt. Three of the newly aligned garden beds were in place; the rest to be done this fall.

Despite a long and cool start to summer this year, things were starting to look really good when I left for a week in Colorado. Aries stayed home, so I knew he'd keep up with the soaker hose schedule. But, upon my return, just walking up to the gate I could tell the garden didn't look even as lush as when I left.

I'd deadheaded the calendulas, but there were no new flowers to greet me. The bean trellis, almost completely covered with leaves, with flowers just about to open, was now just a few bare vines twisting upwards. The summer greens - chard, kale and choi - looked like they'd been severely clipped back. Aries doesn't eat salads. What was going on?

Bunnies, or birds, couldn't have done all this. Everything still looked green - I knew Aries hadn't skipped watering. What had happened to my garden? Wait! What was that dark pile over there, in the middle of a side path? Certainly too big and too many to be rabbit droppings.

There's another pile over there, and another. Oh look, are those tracks in the dust? Arrggh! These are deer tracks! Oh, no!

I did see deer up on the hillside above us, last winter. Even then, I remarked that it was rare for them to be down this low. In the summer heat, they stay up even higher. I've never had to deal with deer in the summer, in the garden! This is gonna get ugly.

Stalking the Wily Chicken

Junior chicken, so named because she looks just like her mother, Missy (so does Baldy, if it hadn't been for the unfortunate head pecking she got as a young pullet her first day in with the rest of the flock), disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Missy used to pull that trick every summer for years, reappearing three weeks later with a newly-hatched clutch, so we haven't been too worried about Junior yet.

Junior disappeared last year, too. I watched the calendar and eventually found her nest. But Junior's too fast, and flies too well, for our little Bantam rooster, Coach, to catch, I guess. After four weeks, and nothing hatching, we took the eggs away from her and got her back in with the rest of the flock.

This morning, while I was out hanging some laundry on the line, Junior came up squawking for food. I kept an eye on her while she gobbled up the feed I put down for her, and then as she got a drink of water. Then she went over to where I'd been watering a plum tree, and proceeded to dust-bathe. Finished with the laundry, I sat down on a log a little ways away from her to watch and wait, to see if I could find where she's been hiding.

She knew I was watching though. She pretty much finished with her bath, but then just stayed in her little hole, murmuring and clucking to herself, picking a bit a the dirt around her. I sat, she sat. I tried facing off towards the distance, keeping her in sight from the merest corner of one eye. No dice. She was in a nice damp hole in the shade, I was in the sun and the humidity from last night's brief thunderstorm made it even hotter.

Ok, something's got to give - guess it'll have to be me. I got up to move the water on a couple of the trees. When I was clear down at the bottom of the lot, she jumped up and ran up towards the house. I ran too, just barely keeping her in sight - she was heading towards the shed. By the time I got up there, she was nowhere in sight. Under the fence? Under the shed? Wait! There, in the middle of a clump of Oregon Grape next to the patio, a leaf wobbled back and forth in the still, heavy air. Gotcha!

Chinese Veggie Time

The Sugar Snap pea plants have shriveled in the heat, without ever allowing any of the few picked to make it into the house. I can't seem to catch the English peas at the right time. They seem to go from no pea in the pod to starchy overnight. But the Chinese pea pods, both the Mammoth Melting and the Oregon 2, are still hanging in there. I've been trying to get them picked daily to keep them coming.

Joi Choi is the only bok choi I've found that holds without bolting once our summer heat sets in, and it hasn't disappointed me this year either. Crispy, crunchy stems and thick, dark-green leaves - thinned earlier by harvesting entire plants, and now I just snap off a few of the outer leaves whenever I need some.

Chinese veggies are especially suited for stir-frys. The short cooking time is perfect for this time of year, keeping the house cooler in the late afternoon. I use a Mix & Match Stir-fry method that lets me vary the menu depending on what I have on hand. I try to get a jar of mung bean sprouts going about once a week, and then just do a wander through the garden before dinnertime to see what's ready. I've written out my stir-fry basic recipe on my post over on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog this week. What's in your garden?

This Year's Corn Patch

I really need to get better organized with my garden seed storage - not the actual storing of the seeds, but seed expiration dates. I know some of my seeds are too old. I find it hard to just throw them out, though. I also have seeds that I grew once or twice, and then they never seem to make the cut again when it comes to plotting out my growing space.

Time to sit down and clear things out. Sowing seeds that no longer germinate just wastes time, and my growing season is short enough as it is. Hanging on to seeds I'll probably never plant is silly too. Time to whittle my seed storage box down to what I know I like, will grow here, and then keep up with it.

What brought on this rant is the sorry state of this year's corn patch. Wanting to spread the harvest out over many weeks, I have packets of seeds with varying maturity dates - plant once and harvest in succession. But this also means only planting a few of each type each year, so some of those packets are getting up in years. Some, this year, didn't germinate at all; others were down to less than 30%. Luckily, I track what is where (or should be, anyway), so I do know which packets to toss out for the birds.

I think I was able to salvage my corn harvest for this year, though. I've been trying to move more and more to saving my own seeds, so have been giving various non-hybrid varieties a trial or two in my garden. Hometown Seeds has a prepared package of emergency "survival seeds" - a packet designed to store in your freezer, with enough seeds for 3-4 seasons worth, or enough to get an entire block of neighbors growing their own fresh food (a good idea, in my mind - if things really did deteriorate to a genuine emergency state, I don't think I'd want to have the only food source in sight). I've seen other survival seed packages listed online, but I live in a rather rigorous growing environment. Just because something grows well in the Great Plains or Florida doesn't mean I'll get a crop from it. But Hometown Seeds is in Utah - the same Great Basin, high-desert, environment as my home. If things do well for them, they should be good here too.

So, one of my corn rows was their Golden Bantam 8 variety. Those seeds are great! Every one of them popped right up (however, growing well is only half the trial - they have to pass the taste test too). And since I'm used to the lower germination rates of other seed sources, I'd planted too many of them. Corn, being a grass-type plant, can take transplanting though, so that's what I did. I dug out every other GB8 plant and moved it over to fill in the gaps in three other rows.

Not quite enough, though. I still had two almost empty rows. But while grocery shopping the other evening, I checked out the little seed stand there. I found a packet of Trinity Hybrid - at 64 days, the shortest days-to-harvest I could find. I got them in the ground night before last (with lots of protection from hungry birds until they get up and growing). I'm hoping, with the hot days now, that they'll be up in no time . Our first frosts can come anytime after mid-September, but will sometimes hold off until early October. So maybe, just maybe, they'll have just enough time to set a crop.

Make a Jeans Skirt

My Soroptimists Club is working a booth at a local Chili Cookoff this weekend, and since it's the Fourth of July we're going with a red, white, and blue theme. It's gonna be too hot for blue jeans, so I made myself a blue jeans skirt this afternoon.

Since it's also my turn to post on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog, I took pictures of my little project and wrote a tutorial. I've been refashioning jeans into skirts for decades. It's easy enough for even a beginning sewer, and a great use if you have a pair of favorite pants where the inseam is starting to wear. Check it out here.

More Stay-cation Week

Working for the Census for the past couple of months has given me a bit extra discretionary income. I decided to use some of it to catch up on a few health-related matters, so scheduled a few preventative medical exams. While I was doing fun things like getting poked with a needle for a blood chemistry workup, getting poked elsewhere for a Pap exam, and having a couple of suspicious-looking moles checked out, sweet husband took off for a day's outing with some of his biking friends (thank you to Ninja Bandit for this great photo of him and his bike).

My contact lenses have been really bothering me lately, so I also scheduled an eye exam. I wear rigid, gas-permeable, mono-vision lenses - the prescription for my left eye is for distance, my right eye set for closeup. My left eye has changed enough that I've been unconsciously squinting to see, consequently irritating the inside of that eyelid. My new lenses are now on order; my glasses, worn less often, are still fine. Now, only a mammogram left on the schedule (and I suppose I ought to dig out my records to see when I'm due for a colonoscopy - this getting older isn't for sissies, that's for sure).

Busy, Busy Week

Aries took the past week off as a vacation week, and having him around full-time always messes up my schedule somewhat. Plus, he had projects in mind, and they usually end up involving me too.

First item he had on his agenda was paint the living room ceiling. Living in a home heated with a wood stove means it can get a bit dingy looking over time. So I looked through my home decor files to see what color we'd used before, finding out the last time we'd painted had been 1997. Not too bad. Off he went to the store to buy paint, while I started getting everything movable from the room - clearing tables, moving out lamps and dining room chairs, taking down artwork - and then finding drop cloths and plastic sheets to cover the carpet and things too big to move.

I let him deal with dusting back corners, taping off the wood trim, and the actual painting though. I had things to do out in the garden. Our Spring(?!) weather had been too cold and windy to set out my tender crops any earlier. When I could, I'd set them out on the deck during the day, bringing them in each night. But now, I'd finished up with the latest stage of the garden remodel, and was ready to get my kitchen counter back.

While I'd planted the earlier crops in the upper part of the garden, using two of the old "S" shaped beds, I had been digging and re-shaping the lower part from two S's into three 50' long straight beds. Instead of planting each long bed with the same type of plants, I divided each bed into thirds, making three "blocks" of three 1/3 rows. When I redo the upper part in the fall or next spring, I'll have six long rows, making six blocks, in the same area that previously held only four. I'll finish working out a new crop rotation schedule then.

For the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, holes were dug, eggshell, Epsom salt, and a bit of bloodmeal, bonemeal, and greensand added. The plants set out, cages added, Wall-o-Waters placed and then filled. Last year, I was about this late setting out my plants, and I didn't use the W-o-W's, figuring everything would be ok since nights will now be above freezing until mid-September. Our night temperatures are in the high 30's to mid-40's this time of year. But I found out that just because the plants aren't in danger of frost damage, it's still worth the time and effort to use the W-o-W's. Last year, my plants grew so slowly, and set fruit so late, that I didn't get much of a harvest. The W-o-W's, left on the plants until after the Fourth of July, give the plants such a nice little warm transition spot that when the heat of summer finally sets in they can really take off.

His painting finished, Aries then decided that as long as almost everything was out of the living room he'd shampoo the carpet too. Fine with me, I still had more work to do out in the garden. In the middle block I seeded corn and beans - the corn in trenches so I can hill up the roots later to keep them from blowing over in the wind, and then squashes, zukes, and cukes in the remaining third. I put wire down over everything to give the seeds a headstart from the birds, put new washers in the hose connections, and got all my soaker hoses and valves arranged. And then got to go inside to put my living room back together. To be continued . . .

It's Always Something

I spoke too soon, bragging about being able to grow such beautiful tulips earlier this Spring. About a week ago, I noticed some dirt thrown up on the edging of the herb & flower garden. I thought maybe the cat or one of the chickens had been in there scratching about, and just swept the dirt back. Not long ago, one of the fence-flying chickens had started laying eggs just inside the little picket fence. I'd put a golf ball in her nest so she'd keep using it, so I could gather those eggs without having to look for them.

Then, a couple of days later, when I looked for eggs, the golf ball was gone. Upon closer examination, I found that it had fallen down into a hole dug out where a tulip bulb used to be. Uh-oh, not a good sign. Checking around beneath the flourishing oregano, wildflowers, and hollyhocks, I found only more potholes, wilting strips of tulip foliage, and gnawed pieces of the very bottom bits of bulbs. The daffodils, I think, are still there, but some squirrel found the tulips and appeared to be starting on the grape hyacinths next. Damn!

So I set the box trap in that garden, and have caught two fat squirrels over the past few days. I took them for a little ride to the south, over to a willow and cottonwood thicket across the creek, far from any other houses but with plenty of grasses and shrubs. There's cover from coyotes, and I hope the running water will prevent them from trying to head back over here.

Yesterday evening, when I was down by the chicken coop to let them out for a little walkabout before dark, I noticed one of the Rhode Island Reds huddled down next to the shade shed. When I went over to see if she was ok, I noticed she had a quarter-sized gouge ripped out of her back, just above her tail, and when she got up she balanced on only on one leg. I don't know what attacked her - the gouge looks more like something took a bite out of her than being pecked by the guinea or trod by the rooster. There was a hawk circling over the pen yesterday morning, and there are owls nesting in the trees across the street. It doesn't look like anything has dug under the coop, and everyone else seems to be ok.

I made sure she got some food and water, and by nightfall she was inside the coop, inside one of the nest boxes. We left her there for the night. Earlier today, she was outside with the rest of flock, so she is still managing to get around. Worried that the other birds might pick on that open sore, or bully her away from the food and water, we moved her up to the dog run this evening. She ate, and then settled down for the night inside the little brood shed. She's still gimpy, but maybe a couple of days on her own will allow her to recover.

Garden Remodel - Phase Two

Once we got the chicken coop moved, the next step was to move the garden fence farther out both to the north and south. Moving it south meant taking out a big rabbitbrush outside the fence by the truck gate, and taking down the little fence around the old, failing, asparagus patch outside that end of the garden. There were only about four plants left in there, and if they survive I might move them to a new patch inside. Then again, I might just start all over with new all-male plants next spring instead.

The old chicken wire fencing and wooden fence posts were taken out all the way around, replaced with the heavier wire fencing and t-posts reclaimed when our neighbor put up a board fence along half our shared lotline. We decided to run one long piece of fencing along the lower, eastern garden edge, and get rid of the wire gate down there.

On the north side, moving the fence out meant it no longer would connect to the old arbor there. I want the new garden beds to stretch almost to the new fence and if outside the fence it would block the way to the chicken coop. So the arbor had to go. But I like that old arbor. I didn't want to lose it completely. So I got Aries to move it to the western side of the garden, the side closest to the house. The photo above shows how much extra space we gained by moving the coop, that arbor, and then the fence - the raspberries in the foreground and the walking onions beyond were just inside the old fence, the arbor in between.

We did still want a gate in that section though, so Aries built a new one using an old wooden picket fence section someone gave us a couple of years ago. A bit of scrounging through the scrap pile produced a couple of gate posts; the hardware bin provided a couple of hinges, and a couple of pipe clamps to hold a sliding rod for a latch. Lined inside with chicken wire, a board sweep blocking the very bottom, and a buried wooden threshold, gave us a lovely critter-proof gate.

Ground squirrels, jack rabbits, and cottontail bunnies abound here (only the occasional skunk, vole, or raccoon). All would probably love to feast in my garden. So we dug a trench all the way around the outside of the new fence, and then buried 1" chicken wire fencing 6 inches down with another 8-10" bent out into an "L" at the bottom of the trench. Animals trying to dig under a fence will dig down right next to it, but they almost never start their digging a foot away from the fence. This left about 18" of chicken wire above ground around the bottom of the fence - enough to keep everybody that doesn't fly out of the garden (and so far, none of the chickens have gone over the new fence either).

Moving the arbor up to the west side closed up the last gap in the new fence. About 15 years ago, I drug that arbor home when an old house to the south of us was torn down (I asked for the arbor - that lot is still empty but for a few piles of metal and wood rubbish, a couple of ratty old elm trees, and a beautiful stone retaining wall). That arbor was ancient then. But I liked the way it looked (the lattice on the sides and top isn't the stapled together, pre-built stuff - this thing was completely made from scratch). I got Aries to patch it up and put it up in my garden. This time, the bottoms of the support posts had rotted a bit over the years, so Aries cut them off level and then put the arbor up on cement blocks to make it tall enough to still walk under. Some leveling, and brackets on the bottom to hold onto metal posts driven into the ground to make sure the whole thing won't blow over, and the same treatment to critter-proof the gate. And the Aries spent an entire day scraping and then repainting the whole thing. He's such a sweetheart!

Stretching the Corn Harvest

The calendar says it's planting time. The day-length does too (we went up to Tahoe for dinner with some friends a week ago, and even though we left after 8 pm we still had enough lingering daylight for the half-hour drive home - albeit through a snowstorm). I've just been waiting for the thermometer to say so too.

Finally, the last couple of days have warmed up enough to start thinking about getting the rest of the garden in. Corn is one of those things that have to wait to be planted until the soil has warmed up enough that the seeds can germinate instead of rot. Since today was my turn to post on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op blog, I wrote here about how I manage to stretch my fresh corn eating time from the end of July until mid-September, with only a short bit of work for me, a short planting time window, in our short high-desert gardening season (speaking of shorts, today was the first day warm enough to wear mine, and the first afternoon I've left the house without carrying a sweater).

Let's Move the Coop

I've had my vegetable garden laid out in four freeform "S"-shaped beds for years. The long horizontal sections work as a terrace system on ground that slopes away to the east. But the curves are getting harder to reform each Spring, and are difficult to cover to stretch my season. I have one more bed in a separate area below the main four beds, but it's down by the fruit trees and the plants never do as well.

We've done ok with those five beds, but six would work better for crop rotation. So I've been mulling over a garden remodel for a couple of seasons now. If the main garden was just a little bit wider . . . and I got rid of those nasty, thorny blackberries there . . . I'd have room for six long beds, stretching all the way across the slope, plus have the perennial stuff (asparagus, horseradish, sunchokes, and berries) all inside one big sunny space. Get rid of the lower shaded bed, and with straight planting beds, maybe even devise a grow tunnel or two for more fall and winter eating . . . .

So . . . more measuring, plotting, and planning. It would mean moving the fences out, including that old arbor, but everything would pretty much fit just right. Except there in the lower, north-eastern corner - if only the chicken coop were a bit more to the east . . . .

Time to go get sweet husband, draw lines in the dirt, step off some measurements, and explain what I have in mind. And then wait another week for him to take it all in - share in my vision, so to speak. Once he can see it too, he's a git-er-done kind of guy.

Our chicken coop has a slatted floor, with the droppings pit underneath. So first item of business is to pull the bottom skirting off the outside and clean out the pit. A full wagonload, plus more, goes up to the compost bins, covered for use later in the season (kept dry, it doesn't smell at all).

A couple of car jacks from the garage were enough to get one side, then the other, up enough to make a board "highway" atop cinder blocks.

With pieces of metal conduit for rollers.

And so, with a bit (ok, lots) of muscle power, the coop moves east. Time for a design conference: how about, if we also spin it around 90 degrees, so that the east side faces north? Then we redo the pen on this side, and put the gate over here? If we drop it down the hill a bit, the water faucet should be fine, and we'll have the pen door, the coop door, and access to the nest boxes all lined up together, here on the west.

Ok, that's the plan, but it's getting dark. Time to let the flock get back inside for the night, and he'll do the rest tomorrow.

Next morning, let the girls out, rearrange the board "highway", pull down the fence (keeping the ratty, tacked-together, quilt of wire pieces in one long piece to reuse), move everything else out of the way, do a bit of leveling here and there, and the coop spins to the north. Let's get rid of that old pen door, and use this salvaged dog run gate instead. We've got room to give them a bit of pen area east of the coop too, to give them a bit more summer afternoon shade. If we attached both ends of the fencing, and then stretch it out into shape, and then put in the fence posts, we know we'll have an exact fit without having to reconstruct any of the fence pieces.

Dig trenches to bury the bottom of the fence for predator-proofing, and attach new skirting to the bottom of the coop. Get the food, water, and shade sheds into the new pen; get all the re-construction debris cleaned up; the tools cleaned up and put away.

Moving some dirt around with the rake lets the gate swing freely. Meanwhile, the girls are hopping in and out of the coop, inspecting the new pen area, and settling right in. At nightfall, one of the guinea hens walks right past the open door to the east side, then stands there looking quizzically for a door that's no longer there. I have to walk her back around to the north, but then hearing the others inside already, she hops in too. Everyone else, no problem at all. And there are eggs from everyone, even the guineas, in the nest boxes the next day.

Don't Panic!

You do have your towel with you, don't you?