Columbus Day is the traditional day to plant garlic in these parts so that's what I did. As I believe I have mentioned, I turned a lot of chickenshit into the garlic patch and it hadn't all broken down and incorporated yet, so I got up close and personal with it. That's the gardener's lot. I was very pleased by the way the sand I had also added loosened up the texture of the soil. I filled up almost the entire plot with seed stock I had saved from this year's crop, just had to fill in about a row and a half with some store bought. So I'm looking forward to bushels next summer.
Now, here's the strange thing. The concept of Columbus Day is supposed to be the first holiday with that cool fall weather. There would normally be a danger of frost around now, at least downright chilly mornings and maybe even a jacket in the afternoon. That's not what's happening. The weather is like midsummer, hot and sultry. We did have a brief dip in the temperatures at the end of last week but no frost. My chilis are still going strong, in fact. They're absolutely beautiful, still blooming and setting fruit, and the bees are working them. You know, chili peppers - that tropical plant from Mexico.
It's predicted to cool down a little -- stop setting all-time records, in other words -- but there's no cold weather and no frost in the forecast. Who knows how long this will last or whether it's the new normal. We'll just have to see. But it may mean my dream of building a sugar shack and making maple syrup is doomed. It will mean a lot of other changes as well. I'll try to notice them all.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The woodshed
Alas, I don't actually have one yet. I have a guy lined up to build one. I'll help when I can but as a weekend project, it would just take me too long to get it done. But, of course, he hasn't started yet and he keeps putting it off. Trades are slow, but somehow they always seem busy.
Anyway, meanwhile I'm going ahead and harvesting the deadfall from our recent hurricane. It's incredible. I didn't explore the woods much for a few weeks because they were still too muddy. (Those of you not in the northeast may not appreciate the endless flooding rains that continued relentlessly after Irene had passed -- another tropical storm, and plenty of plain old downpours.) But yesterday things had dried out enough for me to take a walk around the lowlands and it's like the Tunguska event. Okay, I exaggerate, but we hadn't had a windstorm like that for more than a decade, at least, and the wood is everywhere -- huge trees snapped off or uprooted, entangled with the collateral damage in a continuous jumble.
I'm taking advantage of the long weekend to get as much of it as I can out of the woods and piled up for splitting. Record heat for the date won't help, but I'll just have to sweat it out. I'll be all set for the fall of 2012, and 2013 I should think, if I exert myself. Getting ahead to where I'm always burning 2 year wood, and have some to share with the old folks as well, will be a win.
It occurred to me that our exploitation of firewood is essentially the opposite of what the Indians did. Having only stone tools, they could only use small diameter material. They cut saplings to clear their gardens and presumably would have taken the tops from the deadfall, but left the trunks to slowly rot away.
For me, thanks to Pie Are Square, the big pieces are the prize. With a chainsaw, a tractor, and a log splitter, I can turn a two foot section of a 30" trunk into a perfect day's supply of stove wood. The small stuff, what the Indians would have taken, is what I leave behind. (By the way, since small diameter wood burns up quickly, they must have had to attend their fires continually. We like the big stuff because it lasts a long time, so you only have to fuel occasionally.)
I have no idea how this affects the life cycle of the forest. I can speculate about all sorts of effects. But it's a reminder that human impacts can have all sorts of subtle consequences.
Anyway, meanwhile I'm going ahead and harvesting the deadfall from our recent hurricane. It's incredible. I didn't explore the woods much for a few weeks because they were still too muddy. (Those of you not in the northeast may not appreciate the endless flooding rains that continued relentlessly after Irene had passed -- another tropical storm, and plenty of plain old downpours.) But yesterday things had dried out enough for me to take a walk around the lowlands and it's like the Tunguska event. Okay, I exaggerate, but we hadn't had a windstorm like that for more than a decade, at least, and the wood is everywhere -- huge trees snapped off or uprooted, entangled with the collateral damage in a continuous jumble.
I'm taking advantage of the long weekend to get as much of it as I can out of the woods and piled up for splitting. Record heat for the date won't help, but I'll just have to sweat it out. I'll be all set for the fall of 2012, and 2013 I should think, if I exert myself. Getting ahead to where I'm always burning 2 year wood, and have some to share with the old folks as well, will be a win.
It occurred to me that our exploitation of firewood is essentially the opposite of what the Indians did. Having only stone tools, they could only use small diameter material. They cut saplings to clear their gardens and presumably would have taken the tops from the deadfall, but left the trunks to slowly rot away.
For me, thanks to Pie Are Square, the big pieces are the prize. With a chainsaw, a tractor, and a log splitter, I can turn a two foot section of a 30" trunk into a perfect day's supply of stove wood. The small stuff, what the Indians would have taken, is what I leave behind. (By the way, since small diameter wood burns up quickly, they must have had to attend their fires continually. We like the big stuff because it lasts a long time, so you only have to fuel occasionally.)
I have no idea how this affects the life cycle of the forest. I can speculate about all sorts of effects. But it's a reminder that human impacts can have all sorts of subtle consequences.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Some trite thoughts
Yesterday I went through the sad annual ritual of taking apart the tomato patch. I leaned the poles neatly against the barn, saved the ties in a bucket, and ran the mower over the ground to chop up the stalks. I'm not sure why the plants crapped out -- we've had no frost, not even close -- but I guess the cool, damp weather and the shortening days just told them it was time to go. My chilis, on the other hand, are still going strong.
One of the great things about this whole deal of having seasons is that what the fall is really about is getting ready for the spring. I also started to prepare my root zone. The soil was really too dense and gummy for root crops so I dug in five buckets (i.e., the loader on my tractor)of sand. Then I dumped a bucket load of chicken shit on top and did my best to spread it around with a rake. Yuck. The chicken shit has been sitting in a pile since I picked it up in April, and it was still soaking wet with the consistency of drying glue. With luck it will start to break down and dry out a bit in a few days and I'll be able to distribute it better and get the area really ready to plant garlic in a couple of weeks.
I still need to build a woodshed, paint the house, and repair the driveway before the end of this month. Then I'll be ready to hunker down for what, with any luck at all, will be an easier winter than the last one, which set all kinds of records for snow depth and collapsed roofs.
Our ancestors on the African savanna knew a cycle of seasons, but it wasn't much like this one. Yet for those of us who have always lived here, it feels as though it's in our DNA. This slow rhythm, however painful it can be when the world freezes over and the light is sparse, just feels right. But it's already changing, and it will change more in the years ahead, in ways we can't entirely predict. New England is actually probably one of the most fortuitous places to be as the planet grows warmer, but I'm not actually looking forward to it.
One of the great things about this whole deal of having seasons is that what the fall is really about is getting ready for the spring. I also started to prepare my root zone. The soil was really too dense and gummy for root crops so I dug in five buckets (i.e., the loader on my tractor)of sand. Then I dumped a bucket load of chicken shit on top and did my best to spread it around with a rake. Yuck. The chicken shit has been sitting in a pile since I picked it up in April, and it was still soaking wet with the consistency of drying glue. With luck it will start to break down and dry out a bit in a few days and I'll be able to distribute it better and get the area really ready to plant garlic in a couple of weeks.
I still need to build a woodshed, paint the house, and repair the driveway before the end of this month. Then I'll be ready to hunker down for what, with any luck at all, will be an easier winter than the last one, which set all kinds of records for snow depth and collapsed roofs.
Our ancestors on the African savanna knew a cycle of seasons, but it wasn't much like this one. Yet for those of us who have always lived here, it feels as though it's in our DNA. This slow rhythm, however painful it can be when the world freezes over and the light is sparse, just feels right. But it's already changing, and it will change more in the years ahead, in ways we can't entirely predict. New England is actually probably one of the most fortuitous places to be as the planet grows warmer, but I'm not actually looking forward to it.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
I'm back
I realize I haven't posted here for about two months. I'm not sure why -- there's been plenty to write about, but the muse seems to have abandoned me for a while. I believe she will return now.
Among the subjects I have neglected to cover:
The suicidality of squirrels. They wait until a vehicle is coming, then run into the road and try to get squashed. At least so it seems. Driving around here requires continual alertness.
Hurricane Irene. The principal reaction of the wise guys was to mock the news media for making a big deal out of it, but it was, in fact, a big deal. It just didn't happen to destroy Manhattan, but out in the countryside we had quite the time of it. I sat here listening to huge trees crashing down all around me. I'm now in the process of harvesting the wood, which will last me through 2014, I think. So it's not all bad. But a week with no electricity and all the stores and gas stations closed was highly educational.
Glenn Beckistan. I don't know what it is about low population density that makes total wackoism appeal to people. Living in Boston, you could safely assume that people you met were not wingnuts. Not so out here in the woods. I'll have to do some pondering on why this is.
The continuing effort of the State of Connecticut to kill Joshua Komisarjevsky. I have written about this horrific situation before, but the trial has now started. This is one of those death penalty cases that comes down to the bare, simple question. He's guilty, he's a career criminal, his deeds are atrocious, obviously he can never be permitted to walk among us. But why do we have to kill him?
And there's plenty more. I'll be back.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
It's an inva-a-a-a-sion
Yesterday my neighbor showed up with a pickup load of firewood, which he was dumping off as an informal exchange for some work. Henry doesn't do chainsaw, ostensibly because his first wife told him not to, although as far as I know his current wife doesn't care. He also borrowed my splitter to process his holdings, including the portion I had sectioned. So I didn't refuse the donation.
Anyhow, I was scouting out where to build my woodshed, which might involve clearing some vegetation and even cutting into the hillside behind the house. I had a small stand of some sort of attractive shrub which I was thinking I'd regret removing, but Henry told me they were Russian olives, which are, as it turns out, an invasive alien species that all good people should destroy. I checked it out on your Intertubes and sure enough, he's right. So I broke out my trusty Stihl Farm Boss™ and terminated them with extreme prejudice.
By the way, Henry has also been volunteering on a crew to extirpate another invasive species called mile-a-minute weed from the banks of the Shetucket,* just a half mile from here. The plant is named, of course, for the rate at which it spreads.
The bad news is, this is hopeless. If you Google Russian olive, you will not only find stern orders to destroy it, you will also find nurseries selling it with lavish praise for its beauty and hardiness. Evidently this is legal, though evil. Most landowners will probably never even learn that it's a harmful invader. If they do, they are unlikely to possess the equipment and capability to remove it, and many won't even have the inclination. As for the mile-a-minute weed, those volunteers will just have to keep going back several times every year and yanking it out, but it is highly unlikely they will ever eradicate it.
BTW, I learned from William Cronon's book Changes in the Land that many of our most familiar weeds -- dandelions, plantains, burdocks -- are in fact European invaders, whose seeds arrived as contaminants in animal feed, apparently. Perhaps they are not so harmful, but humans just keep mixing up the flora and fauna of the continents and oceans, to nobody ever knows what result, but it's usually bad.
Oh well, too late.
*Wickipedia:"The river flows through an especially unspoiled rural section of southern New England, despite the historical prevalence of industry in the surrounding region. Parts of the rivers have been designated by the federal government as the Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor. The National Park Service describes the river valley as the "last green valley" in the Boston-to-Washington megalopolis. In nighttime satellite photos, the valley appears distinctively dark amidst the lights of the surrounding urban and suburban regions." Just so you know, that's where we are.
Anyhow, I was scouting out where to build my woodshed, which might involve clearing some vegetation and even cutting into the hillside behind the house. I had a small stand of some sort of attractive shrub which I was thinking I'd regret removing, but Henry told me they were Russian olives, which are, as it turns out, an invasive alien species that all good people should destroy. I checked it out on your Intertubes and sure enough, he's right. So I broke out my trusty Stihl Farm Boss™ and terminated them with extreme prejudice.
By the way, Henry has also been volunteering on a crew to extirpate another invasive species called mile-a-minute weed from the banks of the Shetucket,* just a half mile from here. The plant is named, of course, for the rate at which it spreads.
The bad news is, this is hopeless. If you Google Russian olive, you will not only find stern orders to destroy it, you will also find nurseries selling it with lavish praise for its beauty and hardiness. Evidently this is legal, though evil. Most landowners will probably never even learn that it's a harmful invader. If they do, they are unlikely to possess the equipment and capability to remove it, and many won't even have the inclination. As for the mile-a-minute weed, those volunteers will just have to keep going back several times every year and yanking it out, but it is highly unlikely they will ever eradicate it.
BTW, I learned from William Cronon's book Changes in the Land that many of our most familiar weeds -- dandelions, plantains, burdocks -- are in fact European invaders, whose seeds arrived as contaminants in animal feed, apparently. Perhaps they are not so harmful, but humans just keep mixing up the flora and fauna of the continents and oceans, to nobody ever knows what result, but it's usually bad.
Oh well, too late.
*Wickipedia:"The river flows through an especially unspoiled rural section of southern New England, despite the historical prevalence of industry in the surrounding region. Parts of the rivers have been designated by the federal government as the Quinebaug and Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor. The National Park Service describes the river valley as the "last green valley" in the Boston-to-Washington megalopolis. In nighttime satellite photos, the valley appears distinctively dark amidst the lights of the surrounding urban and suburban regions." Just so you know, that's where we are.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
All God's critters got a place in the choir
That's a song by wandering troubador Bill Staines, lyrics posted here, rather strangely, by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Actually they don't all, but a lot of them do indeed make a racket.
As I reported some months back, in the winter here the dead of night is as quiet as the dark side of the moon except for the occasional coyote howl or hoo hoo, hoo hoooo of a barred owl. But by early spring bird song started by dawn. It gradually evolved from intermittent sparse utterances to a continuous sound track. Pretty soon the tree frogs started up at dusk and no I'm surrounded by a trilling, swirling symphony 24 hours a day.
Unfortunately I'm no expert on bird song so I don't know exactly what I'm hearing. There are many species of chorus frogs, and again I don't know exactly what I've got there either, although I can deduce that the spring peepers, Pseudacris crucifer, must have started the whole thing off, since "Spring Peepers primarily live in forests and regenerating woodlands near ephemeral or semi-permanent wetlands," and that is exactly where I am at; and they also can survive freezing temperatures so they're the first frogs to get going in spring.
What I also don't know is why these creatures make all this noise. I understand that one reason is to attract mates, but that must get over and done with after a reasonably short time, so why do they just keep on singing? It ought to help predators find them, which can't be good, so it must really be worth it for some other reason. Anybody know?
As I reported some months back, in the winter here the dead of night is as quiet as the dark side of the moon except for the occasional coyote howl or hoo hoo, hoo hoooo of a barred owl. But by early spring bird song started by dawn. It gradually evolved from intermittent sparse utterances to a continuous sound track. Pretty soon the tree frogs started up at dusk and no I'm surrounded by a trilling, swirling symphony 24 hours a day.
Unfortunately I'm no expert on bird song so I don't know exactly what I'm hearing. There are many species of chorus frogs, and again I don't know exactly what I've got there either, although I can deduce that the spring peepers, Pseudacris crucifer, must have started the whole thing off, since "Spring Peepers primarily live in forests and regenerating woodlands near ephemeral or semi-permanent wetlands," and that is exactly where I am at; and they also can survive freezing temperatures so they're the first frogs to get going in spring.
What I also don't know is why these creatures make all this noise. I understand that one reason is to attract mates, but that must get over and done with after a reasonably short time, so why do they just keep on singing? It ought to help predators find them, which can't be good, so it must really be worth it for some other reason. Anybody know?
Sunday, June 12, 2011
You gonna believe your lyin' eyes . . .
or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? I was going to post something a few weeks ago when they declared the eastern Cougar extinct, but then I said naahh, there's too much idiocy in the world to bother. The declaration acknowledged that many people had seem mountain lions in New England recently -- and I happen to be among them but what do I know? However, they didn't count because they must be strays from Colorado or animals escaped from captivity or something. Anyway, even if they're here, they aren't really here.
So a 140 pound mountain lion is struck and killed by a car in Milford, and the spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection says "We don't see a lot of those around here." Well actually you don't see a lot of them in Colorado either, or anywhere else, because they don't normally show up for the day-after-Thanksgiving sale at Target, but if you see any of them, that means they exist, right? No, this one must have escaped or been released from captivity. Now come on, how many people keep mountain lions as pets and have them wander off? Is this really going on all the time? Pish tosh, I say.
In other news, our downtown consists of a post office, a general store, and two churches. Or it did. A few weeks ago the proprietor of the General Store drove his pickup into a tree at 2:00 am, leaving no skid marks. Maybe I shouldn't speculate but he'd put some money into fixing the place up and installing a pizza oven, and with half the people in town being out of work and for sale signs everywhere I expect fewer folks were willing to pay an extra 50 cents for a loaf of bread. It's six miles to the nearest grocery store now but people are just working harder at planning ahead and not running out of stuff, I expect.
Now we have no restaurant or store in town, except for a chainsaw shop. So is this really a town? We do have a volunteer fire company, a library, and an elementary school -- we're part of a regional school district above that -- and we share the dump with another town but it's still a place to meet up. There are annual events at the historical society -- Farm Days and the Highland Games -- a farmers' market once a week and occasional flea markets and whatnot on the town green, and Little League baseball at a town park. But we only really exist because of the public sector. There's no Main Street. Shopping means going to one or another big box in Windham. I expect this is happening in a lot of places.
So a 140 pound mountain lion is struck and killed by a car in Milford, and the spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection says "We don't see a lot of those around here." Well actually you don't see a lot of them in Colorado either, or anywhere else, because they don't normally show up for the day-after-Thanksgiving sale at Target, but if you see any of them, that means they exist, right? No, this one must have escaped or been released from captivity. Now come on, how many people keep mountain lions as pets and have them wander off? Is this really going on all the time? Pish tosh, I say.
In other news, our downtown consists of a post office, a general store, and two churches. Or it did. A few weeks ago the proprietor of the General Store drove his pickup into a tree at 2:00 am, leaving no skid marks. Maybe I shouldn't speculate but he'd put some money into fixing the place up and installing a pizza oven, and with half the people in town being out of work and for sale signs everywhere I expect fewer folks were willing to pay an extra 50 cents for a loaf of bread. It's six miles to the nearest grocery store now but people are just working harder at planning ahead and not running out of stuff, I expect.
Now we have no restaurant or store in town, except for a chainsaw shop. So is this really a town? We do have a volunteer fire company, a library, and an elementary school -- we're part of a regional school district above that -- and we share the dump with another town but it's still a place to meet up. There are annual events at the historical society -- Farm Days and the Highland Games -- a farmers' market once a week and occasional flea markets and whatnot on the town green, and Little League baseball at a town park. But we only really exist because of the public sector. There's no Main Street. Shopping means going to one or another big box in Windham. I expect this is happening in a lot of places.
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