Ann Torrence [the Ann-alog]

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

  • Home
  • About
  • Archives
  • Publications
  • Newsletter
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Powered by Genesis

B&W Tuesday: fog descendant

November 26, 2013 · By Ann ·

Fog descendant, Capitol Reef National Park

Epic Storm Update

  • At least 12" of snow here.
  • The swales captured a bunch of windblown snow.
  • We got the bunkhouse up to 79 degrees with the new woodstove, just trying to keep the fire hot enough to burn cleanly. Seriously, I had to open a window one night. I am anticipating a happy dance when the power bill arrives.
  • The goats yelled and complained but ate and ate to regulate body temperature. R set up a plywood sheet to shield them some more from the wind and declared the shed warm enough that he’d sleep there, if they didn’t smell like goat.
  • The chooks have declined since Thursday to come out of the coop. They are just hanging out on their roost. No eggs. Going to move them into the hoophouse soon. They probably still won’t lay until after the solstice. Freeloaders.
  • The hoophouse stood up fine under the snow. R used a push broom to encourage some to slide off each morning, solar gain did the rest. There is a 3′ pile on the north side that has essentially sealed the roll up door better than all my shovel work. Yesterday, with full sun, we had a 42°F differential (74 inside/32 outside) yesterday. In the worst of the storm, we were still getting 10 degrees at noon under cloud cover.
  • I carried Slate out to the hoophouse when I couldn’t stand his cabin fever whinging antics any longer. He got into the redneck root cellar and spent some happy hours in his lair. Now he begs to go out there–I don’t need to worry about mice in the feed if he’s on the job.
  • Wholesome mindfood clickables for your consideration.

    Several friends have sent me links to this Mother Jones article, “Why your supermarket only sells 5 kinds of apples,” about one man’s efforts to preserve heritage apples in Maine. John Bunker is a legendary fruit exploer, someone who hunts down old and abandoned apple trees and propagates them for future generations. Because apples don’t come true from seed, they must be cloned from existing trees. When a variety falls out of fashion for whatever reason, we risk losing that unique genetic material forever. Bunker, who founded Fedco Trees (one of our favorite nurseries), has spent decades trying to save our culinary heritage.

    ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

    I remember learning about the six simple machines that convert force into useful work when I was in elementary school; I would have loved the GoldieBlox toys back then. Today I love their video, and their homage to another Rube Goldberg video by Ok Go. And forget the hater comment that the video only teaches girls to make a mess. If only my nieces hadn’t grown up already, I know what they’d be getting for Christmas.

    ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

    Alternative power, both at the homestead and neighborhood-to-town level, is as critical to local economic resiliency as food production. It may even be a solution to closing the environmental loops to convert waste to utility. Cooperatively owned biodiesel plants, for example, could run in most counties off of local waste streams, which makes far more sense than trying to build huge petro-refineries. If for whatever reason, one plant goes down, the disruption to the national supply is minimal. There’s plenty of white space for action at the local and individual level for fuel independence.

    But as I study the numbers in a run-up to another reading week this winter, the economics of electric generation make no sense today in our local economy. Our rural electric cooperative sells residential electricity at only 5.9 cents a kilowatt/hour and buying it back through net metering at only 2.6 cents/kWh! We must have the cheapest electricity in the U.S., which yo’d think would be a boon for economic development. But there’s no guarantee that the coop can sustain that rate, and there may be other reasons, like our dependence on the Bonanza Power Plant, a coal-fired operation in eastern Utah, or the frailty of the national electric grid in a natural disaster, to gear up. After looking at NPR’s Interactive Electrical Grid Map, the system looks pretty brittle to me. With our woodstove, we can manage an extended power outage, but I’d rather have the computers, lights and frig running too.

    ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

    In the category of “why haven’t I heard this story before?” is the Women’s Land Army, a World War II program to recruit middle-class town and city women to replace labor lost by the millions of men leaving the fields to serve in the armed forces. The Victory Garden is small potatoes compared to the real story of thousands of women leaving their homes to grow food for their country.

    “We’re working for Victory, too; growing food for ourselves and our countrymen. While other women work at machines and in factories—we’re soldiers in overalls.”

    The 1993 story from Prologue, http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/winter/landarmy.html the magazine of the National Archives, describes how voluntary women’s organizations led to a federal program to get women on tractors and in the fields as part of an all-out war mobilization effort.

    ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

    Oatmeal, toast, eggs? You can partly blame me for Kellogg’s plummeting sales of breakfast cereal, since I have stopped buying marshmallow-laced oatish kibbles for humans. I’m really slacking off on my part as an American consumer of convenience foods. Apparently, I’m no the only one. Campbell’s red and white cans of flavored salt in water aren’t flying off the grocery shelves like they used to either, according to this Bloomberg report.

    ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

    If this storm is headed your way, be safe out there. Hopefully you aren’t shopping with the hoards for last minute Thanksgiving supplies. Have you read anything lately that has changed the way you grocery shop? Are you saving for a solar panel? Do you remember anything at all from sixth grade science class? Do share!

Filed Under: B&W Tuesday, Singles, Way out west, … and another thing … Tagged With: apples, B&W, Capitol Reef National Park, click this, food policy, self-sufficiency, snow, winter

B&W Tuesday: Making mushrooms

November 19, 2013 · By Ann ·

Mushroom propagation workshop | Boulder, Utah
Mushroom propagation workshop | Boulder, Utah

R and I took an afternoon off last month to go over the mountain to the Boulder Harvest Festival. There were workshops on ice harvesting, raising chickens, sharpening tools (BYO axe). Cindy Wilson of Wilson 2 Bar demonstrated soap-making using goats milk while two little Nigerian doelings scampered around. At the session on how to innoculate a mushroom log, we learned why our last attempt mostly failed. Eric, the workshop leader, has a kickass misting system to keep the logs damp. Bolstered by this shared wisdom, we are going to try it again this spring. But there are limits to our homesteading self-sufficiency commitment: we are probably not going to help cut ice off a pond and sled it back to the icehouse, not this winter. Or any winter, I hope.

Filed Under: B&W Tuesday, Trip reports, Way out west Tagged With: B&W, Boulder, Utah

B&W Tuesday: firebrand

November 5, 2013 · By Ann ·

My branding iron, made for me in Mt. Pleasant while working on my US 89 book.
My branding iron, made for me in Mt. Pleasant while working on my US 89 book

When all your Facebook friends are wishing you a happy birthday, there’s no point in denying it. Today I start a new decade, enough said on the actual number. I’ve been anticipating more than dreading this day for quite a while. Maybe it’s because I still feel 12, hopeful, scared and open to a brighter future. Not that the past decades have been dim. But I definitely don’t feel old. Yet. And I don’t want to.

Ten years ago, I was still working at my university job, wrangling recalcitrant professors, and had barely started blogging. Twenty years ago, I had just arrived in Utah, and had not yet been to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Glacier, Japan, Australia, Argentina or the wilds of the Northwest Territories. I hadn’t paddled a kayak. Thirty years ago, I didn’t have a clue. I have reinvented myself from a Californian to a Texan to an expat-in-Utah, from a bureaucrat to a photographer and writer to a start-up, value-added farmer. And I’m not done yet.

Today, I know some things, and one of them is knowing better than predicting what the next ten years (if I am so blessed with them) will bring. It will take ten years for some of our apple trees to start fully producing, for one thing. It’s not like I planned to have an apple ranch in southern Utah. If it had been according to my vague idea, it would be a cottage on the shore, and look at what I would have missed.

I want to know what native bees will come back to our land, how to finally knit a properly fitted sweater, how to back a trailer. I haven’t yet witnessed an animal give birth, or made a bottle of cider. I want to safari in Africa, to see the northern lights, the fall colors turn at Denali, and walk from pub to pub in Herefordshire.

Harriet Doerr, Titian, Isak Dineson, Burt Munro, Alvin Batiste: these are my role models and heros going forward. These folks only started revving their engines at my age. And then there’s my grandmother Rosemary, twice-widowed, who at age 50 decided to chuck her job as a doctor’s assistant and became an L.A. County social worker. I still have a hard time imagining my Nana going into Watts during the turbulent 1960s, but that’s what she did. Did she see that coming when, more than a decade earlier as a young widow with two kids, she sold everything one autumn and moved to California because she couldn’t take one more winter? I kind of doubt she ever imagined where Route 66 would eventually lead in her life.

There is a river guide who carried me safely through the Grand Canyon and the Tatsenshini by the name of John. He introduced me to Bill Tilman, an English mountaineer and adventurer who . John loved to quote Tilman’s reference to a saying by the Buddha: "Strenuousness is the immortal path; sloth is the way of death." No whining on the hiking trail with John! But I need to engrave two other Tilman quotes onto my forehead for easy reference as I venture onward:

"Any worthwhile expedition can be planned on the back of an envelope."

And, finally,

"Put on a good pair of boots and walk out the door."

Enough navel-gazing; let’s get going!

Filed Under: … and another thing … Tagged With: B&W

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 15
  • Next Page »

Search

Newsletter

Sign up for occasional updates from Ann and the gang at Stray Arrow Ranch

13 how-to articles

  • Start here for tutorials and tips on photo technique, Photoshop, Lightroom and more

Recently

  • The Woman's Tonic-Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription
  • So Bone Broth is a Thing Now
  • 9 months later
  • Homestead Log November 20-26
  • Homestead Log November 13-19
  • Homestead Log for November 6-12
  • Cowdogs don't swim
  • I live here
  • Homestead Log October 23-November 5
  • Homestead Log October 1-22