Ann Torrence [the Ann-alog]

the character of the American west: stories, landscape, lifestyle

Homestead Log Week of August 28-September 3

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The hoophouse cover tore from end to end in one wind gust. We had been working insider earlier in the afternoon and all was fine.
The hoophouse cover tore from end to end in one wind gust. We had been working insider earlier in the afternoon and all was fine.

Plans: the first thing to get tossed aside when life happens, or in our case when the wind blows. Late on a calm Monday afternoon, I was in the house with sleeping dogs when the wind gusted from the north. That’s an odd direction for us, usually it comes somewhere out of the west. The dogs went crazy, more than was warranted by a few things blowing across the porch, so I looked out to see the plastic cover of the hoophouse ripped from end to end. The break was as neat as if it had been cut with scissors, failing along a faint line in the plastic.

It wasn’t really a surprise. I knew the four year warranty on the cover was up this summer and we had it on our list for this year to replace it. I was hoping to put it off a few more weeks for fall weather, but no. R managed to tape it back together well enough to keep it in place for a week, and I ordered the replacement on-line. Working with Growers Supply all these years as been great — they haven’t even changed the catalog number from the original order, the shipping was super reasonably priced for the weight, and it arrived on Friday.

Now we have to organize a few extra hands to help weight down the plastic in case another gust comes up when we pull it over the top. The last thing we need is to lose control of a 36′ x 50′ plastic sail in an ill-timed gust of wind. I will make another timelapse video when we do it, with more frames at the critical moment when the plastic slides over the peak. If all goes right, it goes up and over in seconds, the sides get secured and everything is safe in just a few minutes.

Husbandry and gardening: Weeding, watering and waiting for things to ripen, that’s the garden routine of the moment. I pulled up the bed of bush beans to replant with fall greens. Our hay selling friend has some for us; we need to go pick it up, probably a ton in small bales. Skunk #4 of the season was caught and dispatched without any extra laundry incidents. R has the upper half of the Bluebird orchard irrigation improvements done and we took our overnight watering turn without getting up once in the night. He needed some parts, so we finally organized our trip to Richfield, which turned into two trips because the parts had to be ordered and a kind employee at one of the three big box stores in town let it slip that the gas grills would go on sale on Friday.

Food, harvest and preserving: We grow grain corn, which we don’t want to cross-pollinate with table corn, so I bought some in Richfield for the freezer. Some green beans turned into pickles, the rest were frozen, along with a half flat of Bear Lake raspberries a friend brought us. I gave away a bunch of cucumbers — if I do any more pickles it will be ferments once the weather cools a bit. We mostly ate leftovers from last week’s band party. We tested the new gas grill bought on our second trip to Richfield with locally-raised lamb chops. There are artichokes in large numbers ready to be turned into something, not sure what yet.

Finances: About a year before R retired, we realized we needed some data on our expenses so we could figure out our plan for financing this operation. We use a desktop version of You Need A Budget (YNAB) software, which has since been retired. I am not a fan of subscription software and have resisted upgrading to their on-line version; the old one is working fine so why change? We are not candidates for best YNAB user of the month club, since I don’t budget as much as record, but it works for us. I do office-type work once a week, after picking up the mail on Thursdays when the local paper comes out. Whatever checks need to get mailed go out that afternoon when we make our weekly run to Loa for supplies, mostly cream for coffee and sacks of feed.

Other projects: I put a gas grill together. R helped with the heavy parts. It worked the first time.

Community: We took the dogs out with some friends. R played at a house party on Sunday. We went to a birthday party earlier in the week. Labor Day weekend is the beginning of the end of the social season and the next few weeks will be busy.

Creativity and recreation: I smashed my fretting hand while loading concrete bricks so my mandolin effort focused on making the metronome my friend.

I’m putting all of my creative energy out at the stove top. I invented some killer peach-jalapeno hot sauce. The cucumber-cantaloupe salsa needs more testing, but I think I know how to fix it. Leftover potatoes became a hot dish that will go into regular rotation. If this carries on, I’m going to have to start a fitness category for the log.

Next week: Plant transplants, build a raised bed in the hoop house, get to the bees, and get ready for a quick trip to Phoenix to see my family.

Seasonal observations: The native currant bushes alongside our house are turning red. I spotted a mixed flock of starlings and robins foraging across the street. The temperatures haven’t shifted, still in the 80s in the afternoons and dropping to the mid-50s at night, but the monsoon pattern broke up and we didn’t get rain all week. Up and down the county, farmers are cutting hay while they can in the dry weather. There is a sense of purpose in the air: stack wood, bale hay, finish up projects that need doing before the weather turns. Three more weeks until we expect our first frost, but it could come at any time now. The rush is on.

Homestead Log Week of August 21-27

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R busted out an ancient enlarger filter to observe the partial eclipse in Torrey, Utah.
R busted out an ancient enlarger filter to observe the partial eclipse in Torrey, Utah.

On Monday the sun disappeared with the partial eclipse; on Wednesday the skies opened up. We had a half inch of rain in about twenty minutes, plus a pounding of hail that probably didn’t get measured. We almost never get standing water-this time we had puddles all the way to the south fence, the driest part of our property that never gets irrigated. The dogs were in heaven. Wyatt would bark at the thunder and they would chase each other through the puddles until the next bolt of lightning. If we’d had fruit on the trees, we would have had something to worry about. Since we didn’t, we just marveled at the power of nature. At one point it had nearly stopped at our place but I could hear and see the hail pounding on our neighbor’s roof about a 100 yards away. A half hour later, the water was gone, the sun came back out, and we were left with a muddy mess of stinky, tired, happy dogs.

Husbandry and gardening: The duck pen clean-out is finished. I made a compost heap in an old kiddie pool, about 4′ across and 4′ high. It took off, internal temperature of 155 degrees F and hasn’t cooled off yet. Once it’s done, there’s another pool full of leftover bedding, ready to be combined with the end-of-season garden waste, like tomato vines, into another pile.

We rescued the fall transplants from being completely pummeled by hail.
We rescued the fall transplants from being completely pummeled by hail.

The hail pounded the tomatoes and corn, but everything seems to have bounced back. The pole beans are flowering and should start to produce about the time the bush beans give out. I’ve replanted some greens for fall and have more to plant once I make room.

Ben the turkey tom looks terrible. It’s temporary, he’s only molting, but he has lost all his tail feathers and isn’t strutting so much these days. The young turkeys are growing fast now, they are almost to the size of Tom’s pair of adult females. I assembled four new supers for our beehives for when we get around to checking on the bees. All the other animals are doing great.

Food, harvest and preserving: Harvest season is ramping up. We are eating artichokes, green beans, cucumbers, summer squash and all the herbs I want. My shallots from last year are still in good shape, and I’m trying to use them up instead of buying more onions, such a luxury problem.

R bought a box of peach, which we peeled and froze for a wine-making project when the temperatures cool off a bit in the house. I’ve been picking, blanching and freezing extra bush beans every 3-4 days. And I finally weighed the garlic before putting it away: over 10 pounds. I see loads of roasted garlic heads on the winter menu this year.

As far as the annual zucchini glut, I think I have found a solution. When we bought the dehydrator last year, I had read in the manual that summer squash weren’t great candidates for drying. This year I decided to study and test out that assumption a little further. When I found Hank Shaw had a traditional Sicilian recipe for dried zucchini, I knew I was on the right track. I’m ok if rehydrated zucchini isn’t the same as fresh, so long as it’s good, kind of like how marinated artichokes don’t much resemble fresh but are delicious in different dishes.

So I did a test run of dried zucchini noodles, cut on my ancient mandolin. That mandolin is so old, it says “Made in W. Germany.” I julienned the squashes (we grow both regular and yellow zucchini) in both regular thin strands and a much thicker, almost french fry cut, then salted them to release water for about an hour. After their trip through the dehydrator, I used them for dinner. Instead of rehydrating them separately, I stirred them directly into some reheating spaghetti sauce. The flavor was great, and the texture from the larger shreds was just fine. The smaller julienne seemed to just disappear in the sauce. Since then, I’ve dehydrated all the extra squash before they’ve grown too huge, and no one need fear having me shove zucchini in the cars when they visit. I’ve kept up a little too well, in fact and I need to set some aside to try Shaw’s recipe.

Other projects: There is a plan to get over to Richfield to gather materials for fall projects, but we keep putting it off.

Community: I finished the grant for the town’s tree planting project. Two different sets of friends from Salt Lake dropped by, one bearing tomatoes and eggplant (thanks Al!). We had a little dinner party for Robert’s band after their performance for Entrada on Saturday night

Creativity and recreation: My mandolin teacher has assigned me to start playing with the community band, but we have to change my lesson times so it doesn’t conflict.

Next week: Get over to Richfield for supplies, keep freezing and dehydrating, look in on the bees and decide how much honey we can take.

Seasonal observations: The morning light comes directly into the east-facing kitchen window at sunrise now, and the shadows from the cottonwood trees hit the front porch an hour earlier each night. These are the easy days at the end of summer, a little more sleep, a little less heat, baby critters growing fast, kids back in school. The barn swallows are done with nesting but are still here. Carson spends hours trying to herd them around the house. Wyatt sneaks away every chance he gets to play in our neighbors’ irrigation water and comes back soaked, smelling of horse manure and thoroughly self-satisfied. He’s growing out of his puppy stage too fast. His ears are about to stand up and he’ll be a grown up dog. I don’t want to rush through this part, his puppyhood or my favorite time of year.

Homestead Log Week of August 14-20

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You can grow artichokes as annuals in a high-altitude, zone 6 garden.
You can grow artichokes as annuals in a high-altitude, zone 6 garden if you fake them into thinking they’ve been through winter buy growing them in warmish conditions, then chilling them for a few weeks before transplanting. It’s easier to pay a professional to do this work for you; look for "vernalized" artichoke starts in May from a local nursery and harvest in August and September.
Chores keep the background humming on any homestead – boring to write about, but chaos ensues if they fall aside.

Some jobs are practically on autopilot by now, like letting the birds out and collecting eggs in the morning. (The dogs even know the command “do jobs” and rush to the door when I say it.) I also have memorized a list of six things to do every day to keep the house under control and a weekly cleaning schedule that spreads the work out in chunks.

Last week I actually stuck to the schedule, and it shows. I won’t say the place sparkles, but surfaces are clean and free of clutter. Keeping up at a turtle’s pace is a lot easier than my usual rabbity approach to things.

Husbandry and gardening: The big job coming up is to try out a raised bed in the hoophouse for winter. Before I start working on the garden side, I want the duck section cleaned. We use a deep litter method, and it needs to be scraped to the bottom. I got about half-way done. The garden is booming right now. I pulled up some overly mature greens and replanted transplants for fall.

The irrigation pipe R has been waiting for arrived and he has been super busy upgrading the orchard systems. He also had to go to Salt Lake for a night, which slowed him down, but we got water to neglected spots in Bluebird even so. He plans to be done installing pipe by our next turn.

The dogs have been super agitated at night, and on Saturday Wyatt alerted onto a length of 8″ irrigation pipe R had stowed in the orchard. Sure enough, there was another skunk inside. Happily, we had two 8″ caps nearby to corral it before it got away. There is no skunk release program at the ranch. I need to lay in more ammonia, hydrogen peroxide and baking soda if this is going to carry on.

Food, harvest and preserving: We harvested our first Early Girl tomato! The green beans are coming in every few days, enough to blanch and quick freeze. I made another batch of fermented pickles, this time adding some fresh horseradish. R brought back peaches, fresh corn and berries, which I mostly froze for winter. I did make a big Dutch oven peach cobbler and even bigger pot of cowboy stew (ground beef, potatoes and a heap of veggies) in the fire pit over the weekend.

Finances: R started a massive project to consolidate our retirement funds with one company.

Energy and conservation: No real action here, other than excess skunk laundry.

Community: I’m on the Torrey Town tree committee. We had a meeting and I took the lead on writing a grant for some matching funds for our Arbor Day projects. With only a week lead time, I spent some time over the weekend banging it out. I also went to a county-wide economic development meeting about job creation, waiting to see what if any action item comes out of that.

We took the dogs over to the farmers market to socialize for a few minutes. Both of them are attracted to kids and babies. Carson is finally calming down enough that he doesn’t scare them or knock them over. Wyatt thinks wheels are a bad thing, especially on garbage cans and wheelbarrows; he’s not sure about a stroller with a baby in it. The dogs get lots of attention from our friends and they love it.

Creativity and recreation: I set up a lovely spot on the porch to practice mandolin in the evenings. Not much time was spent off the ranch-we didn’t even get over to the county fair once this year.

Next week: The schedule calls for more of the same: moving duck manure and laying pipe. If we finish that, we might go over to Richfield for some supplies for the next project. I put in an order for firewood and need to get about finding hay for winter. And we really need to look in on the bees, decide how much honey we can take and figure out what we’ll put it in.

Seasonal observations: With only five weeks to go until frost, things are either ripening, fattening up or heading south. R saw a flock of Glossy Ibis flying in formation on his drive to Salt Lake City. I finally put up a hummingbird feeder on the porch, only three months late. Their fall migration is already underway, as the Rufous hummingbirds are here. Our ducks are coming out of their molt-even though they come from long domesticated stock, they still put on fresh feathers as if they were going to need them to fly south. The hops vine is putting out flowers and the wild burdock are starting to open up to a beautiful purple, thistle-like flower. Adding to the chore list: find a shovel and go dig them up before they make a million burrs. Nobody likes the chore of picking them out of dog or cat fur, not me nor the pet in question.