Archives for May 2017

Homestead Log Week of May 23 – 30

May 30, 2017 · By Ann ·

We have been on a quest to find our favorite breakfast sausage. It isn't the one from the fancy pants, full price, nuts and fruits chain grocery. That was as bland as could be. Sourdough biscuits, sausage patties and my first attempt at sausage gravy. Just so you know, boring sausage makes insipid gravy. — We have been on a quest to find our favorite breakfast sausage. It isn’t the one from the fancy pants, full price, nuts and fruits chain grocery. That was as bland as could be. Sourdough biscuits, sausage patties and my first attempt at sausage gravy. Just so you know, boring sausage makes insipid gravy.

Once a month, R and I have a coffee date and update the homestead to do list and sync calendars. We cross off the stuff we got done the last month and do triage on the things we need to do on the homestead and maybe even get ahead. Things like, “the turkey poults are coming, how many bags of starter feed should we order” and “what kind of tomato supports do you want to try this year?” are necessary, but not all that fun. So we started scheduling a fun activity or two each month as well. For May, we had planned to take the dogs on a picnic up on Boulder Mountain and introduce Wyatt to chilling with us in unfamiliar territory. It was all planned for last Wednesday, the day after R went up to SLC for some routine medical stuff. R hadn’t been gone 10 minutes when Carson raced through a gate and yipped. He somehow caught his skin on the edge of a livestock panel.

Husbandry and gardening: Because the universe conspires to make us laugh at ourselves, R and I had taken all three pets to the vet on Monday. Slate needed a follow-up on his abscessed front paw, which he wasn’t putting any weight on. Naturally, he was cured during the car ride over, but got some more antibiotics anyway. Wyatt got his puppy shots and Carson got to ride along and get his annual shots. Vetting done for the year, or so we thought.

The next day, while Carson got worked into the vet’s schedule, Wyatt and I had a delightful time wasting four hours in Richfield. Wyatt learned about the miracle of the drive-through fast food and discovered concrete sidewalks and street lights. I used the time to get an estimate on fixing the deer damage to the 4Runner, and then we had a delicious mole chicken on the patio of La Gringa. Wyatt likes chicken. Eleven stitches later, our assignment this week is to keep Carson from running, jumping and otherwise ripping out the stitches. Needless to say, the day trip has been delayed.

Instead, we dug the garden beds for the solanaceae: potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. Our garden rotation plan is a three year cycle for the solanaceae. R would always plant more tomatoes, but there are six beds and that’s it and it’s enough. We put three beds into tomatoes, two into potatoes and the last one gets peppers and some basil.

R got the irrigation system started up while I filled the water tube season-extenders. Last year we did the experiment of red vs green with the same kind of tomatoes, and the plants in the red ones got bigger faster, but we still have loads of the green ones that will stay in rotation. Some of our collection have got to be over 15 years old. If you use the wall-of-water type season extenders, do yourself a favor and buy this hose filler. It’s ridiculously expensive. It will last forever, and you won’t be dripping wet when it’s over. There have been years I swore I should have worn rain pants. We had one in Salt Lake and misplaced it in the move. It took me hours of scouring the Internet to find a replacement, at a rabbit husbandry site of all places. This hose attachment is the bomb. (No affiliate link, just an unsolicited endorsement.) Buy it and put it in your Christmas stocking for next year.

We put honey boxes on five hives. We would have done so for the other three hives but the boxes weren’t assembled yet. The new split hives look good but we didn’t take out individual frames and check on them. Either they will make their own queen or not, we aren’t interventionists as a rule with the bees and so why bother them?

Energy and conservation: R changed out the the track lighting bulbs to LEDs. We had to borrow a ladder that could reach to the highest part of the ceiling. Besides saving electricity, it’s going to be a lot cooler inside—400 watts of halogen bulbs get hot. The last time we changed them out, the LED bulbs were outrageously priced. This time they were nearly the same as the halogens.

We finally ordered some outdoor blinds for the porch, after five years of thinking we might extend it with a pergola to block the late afternoon sun. For about three hours each afternoon, our west-facing porch is in full sun until the shade of the cottonwood trees finally reaches it around 8:00 pm. The heat that builds up on the porch permeates into the rest of the house and since we don’t have air-conditioning, June and July can get uncomfortable unless I am diligent about closing doors and windows. It remains to be seen how they hold up in the wind.

Skills: Dutch-oven cooking and outdoor cooking in general has been high on my list of skills to practice. This weekend I waited and waited for the wind to die down; finally on Sunday the weather cooperated. Too bad the charcoal did not. Lessons learned: don’t buy off brand charcoal, just use the firewood and practice with simple recipes that can take a variable fire until I figure it out.

Community: Saturday was the opening event for the Entrada Institute, a jazz trio and a chance to clean up and see friends for a couple hours. I helped spring clean the venue. R is practicing with some mates to perform at Apple Days in July. Some friends from Salt Lake invited us for dinner at their campsite in Capitol Reef NP on Monday, more stopped by on Sunday during a break from their British motor car club activities. High season has begun in Torrey.

Upcoming: It’s also sleep-deprivation season. The animals wake with the sun. The cat wants out now at 4:30 am. Any minute now the weather will shift so that we want to do our physical work early in the day and creative or computer work in the heat of the day. I need to pay attention to the clock, not the sun or I won’t get dinner ready until 9:00. I love the longer days, but it’s all about pacing right now. We have 120 days of frost-free weather to maximize in the days ahead. Next week is more planting, our irrigation cycle, and maybe a picnic after Carson’s stitches come out on Friday.

Homestead Log Week of May 15-22

May 25, 2017 · By Ann ·

Wyatt, our McNab herding puppy, after too many hours in the garden.

I’m stealing this idea from Erica at Northwest Edible, a weekly-ish update of what’s happening on the homestead. And I’m not getting it done on time my first week either.

There isn’t an official last frost date for our micro-climate. The old timers say don’t plant tomatoes until after the full moon in June. Then there’s climate change — the season is whackier and longer than of lore. In Salt Lake, I planted on Mothers Day in wall of waters. Here, I delay another two weeks or so, still using the wall of waters. Good thing we weren’t ready to plant this week, it snowed! Nothing stuck, but the night temps dropped to below 30 on the weather station, and a half inch of ice on the animals’ water buckets. Now it’s back to normal. We spent a good part of Sunday getting the beds ready for the solanaceae trio of potatoes, tomatoes and peppers, pulling out weeds and piling on the goat manure.

We came out of the winter with four healthy bee hives. Now our beekeeping style most closely resembles benign neglect, so we hadn’t looked in on them in about a month. Right before the storm, our neighbors had one of their hives swarm. Another beekeeping friend had had a swarm a few days earlier. Three of the four hives we wintered over came out pretty strong, the fourth one was split last year and was fine but not huge. On Monday we put on the bee suits and check on everybody, even though the weather conditions were challenging. Two of the hives needed emergency action, so we split those. It was too windy to find the queen and with the storm coming, we just gave each hive half of the brood and half of the honey. Whichever one didn’t get the queen will have to make a new one. The other two older hives and the two new ones (we had 6, now 8) need new supers, we spent the rest of the afternoon getting them ready, but haven’t put them on yet, since it really hasn’t warmed back up again. Hopefully everyone adjusted to their new arrangements and we still have all our bees.

I made a new herb bed near the hoophouse gate, firmly in Zone 1 in permaculture principles, finally had some solid parsley transplants to get into the ground. For some reason, I have a terrible time getting parsley of all things established here. The garlic is doing amazingly well this year, in a bed that got a lot of manure last year and was well-mulched in the fall.

Stepping into the confessional moment: I transplanted the last of the nursery plants I ordered and should have done weeks ago. If any survive, it will be because of life’s intrinsic resilience and good luck, not my brilliant husbandry. They are in pots in the hoophouse along with the apple grafts, sheltered from the wind.

R noticed Friday evening that the turkey hens hatched their chicks! We had given up on them, because their shared nest had flooded out twice during our neighbors’ irrigation mishaps (note for next year, move the nest boxes to higher ground). The eggs had been submerged in cold water for who knows how long and we figured they were duds. But the girls stuck with them and now are co-parenting seven adorable little poults. Ben is being a protective father and even the last two chickens in the orchard aren’t bothering them. Yay girls!

In Wyatt’s 16th week, he learned to ring the bell by the back door, the one Carson uses to ask to go out. He hasn’t quite associated it with anything other than treats. We are so close to being done with house training. The little punk doesn’t whine when he wants something, he makes a gruff sound that’s halfway between a growl and a bark. “I’m being thwarted and I don’t like it!” is how he wakes up in the crate, lets us know he’s hungry or wants out. It’s hilarious, really.

Sunday night irrigation, split evenly between the two orchards. We still are operating on full water. At some point each spring, the water level in the river drops and the water master for the Fremont River irrigation companies tells us how much we have to start dialing it back. In drier years, it would have already happened. So far so good, and this last storm likely helped stall it even longer. There’s something beautiful about seeing all that water sheet across your land.

Next week is forecast to start warming up, and then it will really get busy around here.

1355 days older when our nightmare ends

May 5, 2017 · By Ann ·

In other, happier news, we got Carson a puppy. Meet Wyatt, another McNab. — In other happy news, we got Carson a puppy. Meet Wyatt, another McNab.

I couldn’t watch C-SPAN this week, I just can’t take any more. The first Comey hearing, I was riveted to the tv. Round two was just too much. Until the indictments come down, listening to people not talk about what they can’t talk about is maddening and pointless.

Yesterday I watched 217 privileged people vote to destroy the welfare of American families and then crack a beer to celebrate. I am beyond disgusted. I am enraged. Did they not notice that since the ACA, half as many American families filed bankruptcy? Or that at least 24 million people are projected to lose their health insurance. I’m likely one of them, as R is retiring and I will, for the first time in my adult life, not have an employer-based insurance plan. Great timing. This will hurt other members of my family even worse, possibly a death sentence. #ThanksGOP.

I am so sick of the “mason jar on the convenience store counter” as my neighbors’ only solution to getting insurance. I am terrified for my friend with young children who is fighting cancer right now, for another friend with a TBI, for yet another friend whose infant had cancer at three months and, while now cancer-free, will have #Trumpcare insurance premiums that will destroy her young family’s future. And outraged that in yesterday’s version of AHCA, rape is a pre-existing condition? What are we thinking? Every other first world country has figured this out, and we can’t? It’s a hard-headed, mean-spirited unwillingness to treat people with human dignity, and I’m sick of it. Mark my words, if the ruling party screws this up, and they will because they don’t have anything on the table that fixes the Obamacare problems, we will have #SinglePayer by 2021. If we can all survive that long.

Yesterday I made a political donation against the House Republicans who voted for this travesty. Then I went on a Twitter rant (if you don’t like my politics and want to see less of that, follow me on Facebook instead. I keep that to happy news and puppy pictures.) There wasn’t much more to do with the alternating rage-driven energy and despair I felt.

Three years, 8 months and 16 days until this nightmare can end. Unless the indictments come first, and then we are in a limbo. My carefully-curated Twitter feed talks about President Hatch, and if true, the chaos that will ensue as we test sections of the Constitution never before called upon to save our democracy, it’s going to be even more stressful. I am not willing to give up any more of the next 3 years, 8 months and 16 remaining days to these assclowns than I absolutely have to.

After the vote, I went to my mandolin lesson. I am an absolute adult beginner at learning music. We played about 2 choruses of a children’s song and talked about expressing emotion through music. We talked about the state of affairs. I came home and practiced for the first time in a while and made up my mind about some things.

No matter what happens, when this political nightmare is over, I am going to be 3 years, 8 months and 16 days older. I can’t devote all of it to politics. Despite my degree in political science, becoming a political operative is just not who I am. We don’t have enough money to buy off any politicians. I can do my little parts here and there, and it ain’t much in this deeply red state. But I absolutely refuse to be buffeted around any more by anxiety, anger and sadness at the mess they are making. We’ll just have to minimize it in 2018 and clean it up in 2021.

In the meantime, what can I do with 3 years, 8 months and 16 days? Plant a peach tree this week and it will probably bear fruit by then. If I learn a new song for the mandolin each week, that’s almost 200 songs I can’t play today. If I write #500words every day, that’s 677,500 words. That’s eight novels or more 22 Highway 89 books I could finish. And I will. Maybe not 22 more books, but something that benefits me, no matter what’s going on in the DC political sphere. That’s way outside my hula hoop, the area I have any hope to control and influence.

Here’s the challenge. We have to do three things: 1) stay alive and in good health, and that’s going to be hard enough without affordable insurance, 2) regular political actions to bring about changes we want to see and 3) in in the spirit that living well is the best revenge, do something for ourselves that shows we haven’t let the bastards get us down.

At the 2021 presidential inauguration, you will be 3 years, 8 months and 16 days older. If you start today, you’ll be that much better at something. Let’s not have it be something, anything better than just rage. What are you doing with the next 1355 days of your life?

For the record, word count: 830