Oktoberfest!

Been busy since the hurricane, then with work with a co-worker on vacation for the month of September.

But it's Oktoberfest! God bless Germany!

My first bruscheta!

Someone on a forum last night mentioned bruscheta and I asked what's that...Oh yum. I think it's Italian for pizza without the sauce :)

I put hot sausage & onions in frying pan.

Lightly toasted wheat bread.

Cut up a tomato, removing the seeds.

Cut up some fresh Mozzarella.

Drain the sausage & onions on paper towel (and tamp them).

Drizzle olive oil on the bread, put down a light layer of Feta.

Put on the rest of the ingredients

Top with fresh basil (literally just picked while the bread was toasting and sausage frying).

Bake 8 minutes @ 300º

Bats!

Saw my bats out for the first time this year...not that I'm out at dusk that often, but I hadn't seen them flying :) Let out a w00t! Oscar looked at my like I was nuts.

Tomato Soup 2011

The 4-3/8" of rain on Monday left me with splitting tomatoes (after the 5-3/4" the week before ended the summer dry spell).

What to do, what to do...

Had enough to fill a stock pot about 2/3rds. Medium heat to a low boil for about an hour, roughly every 20 minutes I mashed with a tater masher and took off excess liquid with ladel (putting it through the cheesecloth strainer).


Remember after I began I had thrown out my sieve because it was getting rusty and hadn't bought a new one. Had some cheesecloth though :) Stir and press with a wooden spoon, also let it sit for a ten minutes a few times between pressings till I got what was going to be easily got:


The rest of the ingredients. I didn't use the red onions or shallots after all...though I could've without any negative effect. White onions were garden fresh as in I realized I wanted more onions and didn't want to use my storage onions. The organic stock is because it was cheapest(!), and the organic celery didn't cost me any more -- it was $2.99 for a 1-1/4# of organic or $2.99 for a 2# package of conventional and I didn't need two pounds. Carrots I had in the fridge and needed to use up. The container with the tomato juice I used to measure how much I made -- filled a 1.6L container to the brim!

After the photo was taken I went out and got basil and oregano (two varieties each) from the deck pots, chopped them finely and added to the mix.


Moderate boil for, oh...an hour? Till the carrots felt right :)

Added raw milk to the mug and a garnish for the photo.


Other then the mug for dinner, the rest will get frozen for this winter. No sense adding milk or cream to the whole batch now -- besides keeping it on the plain side allows you to mix it to taste with stuff like pepper, sugar, cream, etc. when it's used this winter. May end up needing capacity in Mom's fridge...

Rain rain...

Since last Sunday:

Sunday: 3-3/4"
Tuesday: 1-1/2"
Sunday-Monday: 4-3/8"

Ghost Chickens in the Sky

Some old family photos

My mom, aunts Madeline & Louise, and Grandma Beebee


Grandpa & Granny Kivela (Arvid & Impi)


Doyen home on Wolf Den Road


Me


Grandfather Raymond Doyen (b. 1894), Uncle Serge (b. 1898)(and for years I thought Raymond was the youngest one looking at the photo!), and my Great-Grandparents Fernand (b. 1870) and Marie (b. 1873). They immigrated in 1905.


My Dad


And another picture of my dad.

Old Aerial Photos

Of my place and the Kivela farms:

http://www.d90.us/fire/Aerial_Photographs

Felt like I was a CIA Analysis looking over photos from the Cuban Missle Crisis and putting on labels to point out what I saw on them :)

Tomatoes!

Are starting to come in nicely!



Brought in the onions from that had been curing in the garage; those are on the stove and I'll braid up the ones that look like good keepers after work. Some more recently harvested onions, shallots, and garlic behind the basket are currently curing.

Carrots and a Birthday...

Spent Saturday morning planting a fall crop of carrots:



I haven't had good luck with carrots before, but I also didn't know they're real tough to get to germinate -- can take upwards of three weeks. Because they're planted very shallow (1/8" to 1/4" max) they're also very sensitive to moisture so one trick is to put burlap over the row and water it each day until you see the carrots germinating.





Rainbow Blend
Nantes Long 6-1/2" 70 Days
Royal Chantenay 6-1/2" 70 Days
Little Fingers 3-1/2" 65 Days

Ran out to my friend Eric's family cottage on West Island, Fairhaven that afternoon -- what a beautiful spot. While I didn't weigh it, I brought a bag that had to be a solid 15# of mixed veggies of tomatoes, potatoes, white onions, beans, squash, zukes...first really good mixed harvest of the year. Missy made the.best.clam.chowder.ever. Honest...I don't think I'll ever be able to eat it from a can or even in a restaurant ever again.

Sunday it rained -- had 3-3/4" of rain! So I spent my birthday cleaning the kitchen.

The Farm Problem: 1959

Nifty series of articles from Life Magazine that shows a program in transition from first national farm policy during the New Deal, to the current framework of farm policies implemented in the early 1970s under the Nixon administration:

30 Nov 1959 (Weakest of the three articles, this is more a collection of short statements and pictures but does give some background that's good to know when reading the other two installments.)

7 Dec 1959 (A nice write up of a mid-sized, relatively diversified Iowa farm.)

14 Dec 1959 (Contains the most "wonky" details of the issues of the day.)

Cool Clouds!

Of course all the rain missed my house (and not by much looking at the radar).

Let Oscar out about 7pm and saw these cool "cotton balls" poking down:



Asked on the 'net and found out they're called "Mammatus, also known as mammatocumulus"

Real interesting storm in that it just sat over the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut, plus parts of Western Connecticut and the lower Housatonic Valley...area of Deerfield got smacked by 6" of rain in a few hours; I've seen that before and it's just not pretty:

Garden Updates

Last Thursday's dinner...ended up going all-garden vegetarian :) After I started frying up the taters, I realized I had no meat that would cook up in the same time frame, then decided I really didn't need it. Went to visit Mom in Maine the next day,


Sunday night's harvest.


Had Monday off...spent Sunday pulling weeds (between jumping in the pond). Today was another 93º day...hour in the garden, ten minutes in the pond, short break in the house, and repeat.


Planted today for the fall garden:
Tall Telephone Peas
Knight Peas
Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans (tore up what remained of my 2nd planting of bush beans; a rabbit got in and really did a wonder on the young plants)
Several different lettuces
Spinach
Beets
Pak Choi
Kholrabi
Swiss Chard
Cucumbers
Early Prolific Yellow Squash (42 day maturity)


Squash.

Durn it, I deleted the photo of the tomatoes!

Hmmm, my Better Boy(?) Tomatoes are growing WAY taller then the U-posts holding the twine. I had to buy some wooden stakes to tie them up to today. Next year I'll need some 5' or maybe 6' T-posts to use by them.

The fierce winds when a line of Thunderstorms passed through last Tuesday didn't help -- it was swirling (not swaying) the tree tops at first...with Tornado Warnings up for our area! That contributed to bending them over, so I had to straighten them carefully today.

Still hot!

Greeen and yellow beans, cucumbers (showing signs of stress from heat and dryness!), squash, chard. I think I was supposed to start picking the chard a bit sooner.

Little warm today...

10:43am and 99º...two weeks since the last measurable rainfall.

First Tomato and Green Beans!

Plus some lettuce (last until fall, it's finally turned bitter), baby yellow squash and zuke, couple red onions that were flowering that I didn't pick yesterday, couple of shallots.

Onions are in!

Fixins for Saturday's dinner after I got home from Old Sturbridge Village (Photo essay here.)


Oh my this needs cleaning! Glad it's a 90º day, I'd hate to get a chill while doing this...


So, I had been thinking a bird or something was "sitting" on some of my onions because they were randomly bent over.

Du'oh. That's HOW they're SUPPOSED to act when they're done. Never had them come out this well to recognize good!


Picked the yellows and reds today, the whites still haven't started flopping.

99 Days since I put them in the ground, rule of thumb I read this year is 100 days, so we were right there. I think it'll be interesting experiment next year to make some successive plantings from late March to late April and see how they do.


Later in the afternoon.


I had to give the bush beans a little support with poles and twine...I tried to keep it "loose" as I did it, just enough to prop them up off the ground.


In between the U posts, I hammered in some red oak stakes I made, from branches of trees I cut down for firewood. These just pushed back on the baling twine to push the whole row back, nothing fancy.


57 Onions curing in the garage. They'll stay here for a few days, a week for the tops to dry and the skins to harden up. I'll have to sort through them then to see which ones seem like they'll store well, and which ones I should chop up and freeze (or give away for use fresh).


Tonight's dinner -- Hot Italian Sausage from Campbell's Farm in Griswold fried up with my onions, baby zuke, and baby yellow squash.

Lunch!

Nice thing about the home office...picking your lunch, fresh.

Mad Men, why hast thou foresaken me?

It's summertime. There's no new Mad Men this summer.

Instead, I'm watching Ally McBeal on Netflix. FML.

Let's see, 2010/2011 Must See TV:

1) Community
2) Game of Thrones
3) Mad Men

How bad is TV now that I can only figure out three shows that I can put a number to?
Chuck...meh when it's ordinary, phenomenal when they recapture that Season 2 magic. Budget cuts alone don't excuse the inconsistency of the writing. But what a cast. But it takes writing to get a number!

Glee...a TV show that needs Ritalin. I just can't bring myself to give it a number. Focus folks, focus...I know it's bubblegum, but focus.

Sons of Anarchy

House...meh it's run it's course.

Can't even think of any other fictional shows I watched this past year!

Garden Photos

My first cauliflower ever. I squeed when I saw it.


In the basket! (To be steamed for dinner tonight)


July 4th weekend I cleaned up some by the entrance to the driveway, and moved a selection of native and hybrid daylillies down there. Over the next couple years I hope to expand this bed more, too.

Was originally forecast for 1"+ of rain on Sunday night when I planted them; we got a trace. It's been over a week since good rain and I've started irrigating the garden using a hose that diverts some of the flow from my sump pump -- just leave the open hose in place for a few hours to flood a section at a time (not enough pressure for sprinklers or soaker hose, but I'm already using the electricity so just let it have at it.)

Not enough hoses to reach these flowers though, so I'm hauling it by five gallon bucket...I like the looks of the American flag buckets.


My herbs...I'm really liking them in containers like this. I had thought about a raised bed, but now I'm thinking next year I'll get a table and just continuing to use containers for a bigger assortment. Plus with them up this high, Oscar can't pee on them :D


Potatoes, tomatoes, daylillies, squash all blend together...there must be a trick to good garden photos I haven't learned yet for situations like this!


Toms


Volunteer tomatoe in the big pile of manure...where the heck did that come from!


Summer Squash...maybe a smidge not enough sun way back here. There's more in the weeds towards the back, hopefully I can mow this weekend for mulch for them!


Chard! Hrrmmph...just remembered I wanted to taste it and then I started weeding, and watering, and photographing...and forgot to taste it!


Red lettuce is starting to wind down, but the green one is going gangbusters still!


Onions...I think a bird landed and flattened several onions in several spots. Only explanation I have, they've been squished, it's not a natural lay down.


Beans doing well...no beans yet though. Soon.


The big squash is a Blue Hubbard, specifically planted as a trap crop. It's July 6th and I haven't seen a Squash Bug yet. Past history is I've found egg masses on 7/1 and seen adults by 7/8...so I'm watching patiently :)

Gardening Then & Now

Two nifty films I've found in the past week.

Sometimes folks use the words "conventional" or perhaps "modern" to describe how most farmers (and gardeners) do things today. "Industrial" sometimes is used, and "organic" especially since it was codified by USDA for use as a marketing term doesn't necessarily mean what many thought it did -- and thus is born the type of farming called "Industrial Organic." Might be an interesting Venn diagram to draw one day!

More then anything else, I guess you'd describe modern (the style that became dominant after World War II) as "high standardized external inputs" -- add self-propelled machines, fuel, fertilizer, pesticides at specified levels to achieve X result (from which commercial farmers also need to pay a decent finance charge to the bank for the money you borrowed to get going for the year.) Many "Industrial Organic" folks do just that, they just substitute different things for fertilizer and pesticides compared to the Industrial Non-Organic world.

WWII had many impacts -- one is mentioned in the first video, alternative pesticides were recommended. Although one specifically mentioned in the video is a mineral-derived pesticide, other synthetic pesticides were increasingly popular. The war had disrupted supplies of what's today considered organic insecticides like rotenone* and pyrethrum, just like it had disrupted supplies of natural rubber and silk. Synthetic pesticides could be manufactured from petroleum, something that didn't have to be shipped through war zones. Similarly, the Muscle Shoals Munitions Plant was built in World War I to supply nitrates for the war effort. Afterwards it was auctioned off to produce fertilizer with the caveat the Government could take control and re-convert it to producing nitrates for explosives in the event of a war; this kept the plant active and maintained instead of being mothballed to rust away. Come WWII it was greatly expanded, and after the war once again a market was needed to keep the plant producing nitrates so at a moments notice it could support a war effort again**.

With the switch to modern input-driven farms and gardens, a lot of the more intensive "brain power" of observing and adapting to local conditions withered. It didn't die, but greatly reduced to pockets here and there. Folks turned to simple answers in charts in pamphlets published by the Universities and commercial enterprises; the complex calculus of nature was reduced to simple, discrete arithmetic that took a lot less time and thinking to figure out.

But there's also something I'm sure about -- the best of our modern thinkers about the "old way" of integrated systems and lower inputs have pushed the state of the art beyond "the good old days." The knowledge may not be as widespread, but at least in a few folks like Coleman and Joel Salatin and the like it's a deeper knowledge and greater wisdom then the best of the best had several generations ago.



And Elliot Coleman today -- the first 14 minutes of the audio is really poor quality, so you may want to fast forward through that. That still leaves an hour of wonderful stuff:



* I'm asterisking rotenone since it's largely being withdrawn from the market as I type; EPA asked for more information from the companies that sold it in order to keep listing it as an insecticide due to concerns about water pollution and Parkinson's Disease. The companies decided not to spend the money on the research and instead asked for several years to wind down their operations. The date the last supplies may be shipped from their warehouses is July 14, 2011.

It will remain listed as a piscicide since it's the only poison fish & game departments consider 100% effective at killing fish -- and it's used to combat invasive species by killing all fish in a body of water followed by re-stocking with only native species.

** We forget how many things tie back to national security. We had a need (perceived at least) to keep up a nitrate manufacturing capacity in case of a future war, so we encouraged farmers to use synthetic nitrogen fertilizers to provide a market to fund the plant. We had a need, again at least a perceived need, to build a lot of atomic bombs in a hurry so civilian nuclear energy was guided to using reactor designs that produced feedstock for nuclear weapons programs.

(Oakridge consumed more power in World War II making the fissile material for four bombs then all of Canada! After Trinity and the two bombs dropped on Japan, a fourth was in reserve and it would take Oakridge another six months to produce enough material for a fifth bomb. This was not something the Government could scale up in a race with the Soviets)

We have a nuclear waste "problem" today because it was never intended to be waste -- the spent fuel rods were supposed to have been re-processed into either bomb material or new fuel rods. Jimmy Carter halted reprocessing plans as part of a nuclear non-proliferation strategy, which left the Government holding the bag for what do with the "waste" that they had wanted produced in the first place and now wouldn't allow to be recycled. Private enterprise would've likely chosen lower cost designs that didn't produce as much waste if they had been told from the start they'd be on the hook for it.

The idea for an Interstate Highway System already existed before World War II; but experiences with motorized warfare, Germany's Autobahn, and relative vulnerability of bombing rail lines reinforced the importance of one. With the advant of single weapons that could destroy a central city in a flash, decreasing density of both residences and offices made good strategic sense -- defense by diffusion; and with plenty of land in the U.S. and plenty of synthetic fertilizer to boost yields on what remained in production, we didn't have the constraints of small nations in Europe each trying to maintain enough farmland to be self-sufficient...so suburban expansion made sense to us where it didn't necessarily make the same sense to Europe.

Oh, and they created this highly decentralized, self-healing computer network designed to survive attacks called the "internet."