Ann Torrence [the Ann-alog]

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Homestead Log Week of August 21-27

September 1, 2017 · By Ann ·

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.

Filed Under: Stray Arrow Ranch Tagged With: dehydrator, garden, turkey, zucchini

Homestead Log July 9-August 13

August 15, 2017 · By Ann ·

Red Toch garlic harvest
Red Toch garlic harvest

Isn’t it the truth? I go on vacation for a week and spend twice as long getting myself back on regular time. Our Colorado camping trip was wonderful, the dogs are great campers and Ouray is a fun place to hang out for a while. The wildflowers were spectacular. I want to go back for aspencade in the fall.

So we went, came back and went again, to SLC for another Red Butte Garden concert and a big shop. We have relied heavily on friends to house sit and otherwise care for the barnyard creatures. All of R’s work to get the garden watering automated paid off handsomely.

Husbandry and gardening: We are having a hell of a time with the turkeys this year. They rejected their coop in a rainstorm and we moved them into the orchard, only to discover that one had escaped the covered pen and been attacked, probably by a hawk. Since then we’ve lost two more to predators. Probably skunks, as raccoons would have killed wantonly, and the big hawks around here won’t stoop in the trees. So now we are down to nine, with more than three months to go before they are ready for harvest. It’s enough to drive us back to raising chickens. Jersey Giants would be in the freezer already.

We have a skunk trap set right now because R saw them eating our bees. He went out with was out with a flashlight looking for turkeys and saw the skunk shaking the hive to get the bees to come out. No bueno. Then Carson got skunked again (twice since we’ve been back). And there are more skunks at the Bluebird orchard, probably doing the same thing to those hives. Getting rid of them is going to be a project. Until then, I’m laying in more hydrogen peroxide for deskunking, and marshmallows because a friend who knows stuff told me to use them to bait the trap.

Before the end of July, I started seedlings for fall transplanting, and they are doing well. The garden plan for the hoophouse this winter is less than ambitious, but I do want to do some greens under low cover outside, so I started three trays, or about 150 plants.

Now that the garden is in the “growing to make up for lost time” mode, the main task is tying up tomatoes and trellising cucumbers and squash. We have had rain almost every day since mid-July, with cooler daytime temperatures, slowing down tomato ripening but making luxuriant growing conditions. Tomatoes will happen in plenty of time.

R has been mowing for a week in the orchards. It’s like painting the Golden Gate bridge, once he finishes it’s about time to start over, especially with all the rain. This year the trees we planted in 2014 are really putting on the growth. They say that apple trees sleep the first year, creep the second and leap the third. We usually get more than one year of creep before they take off though, more “sleep, creep, weep, leap” because by the third summer, we start to worry. And then they take off in the fourth year.

Food, harvest and preserving: Garlic is our first big crop of the year, and the Red Toch variety I planted last fall finished earlier than any I’ve tried before. I need to weigh it and set aside the seed garlic for fall planting, now that the garlic has dried and been braided up, but we have plenty and I’m thinking of making some pickled garlic.

Until last week, we mostly have been eating zucchinis (Costata Romanesco and Golden Arrow, a really nice yellow summer squash). Now we are getting cucumbers, the kale has rebounded and the green beans are almost ready to pick. R dug up some new potatoes that were nearly full-size. I couldn’t get the red seed potatoes I usually buy along with the Kennebecs that are our staple, so we are trying a new yellow potato, the Daisy Gold. The first ones were delicious. We had them last week with some salmon from the freezer.

I am easing into the food preserving. I started with refrigerator zucchini pickles a couple weeks ago. Yesterday I put a batch of mixed zukes and cukes into a fermenting jar and salted down about a gallon of pickle spears to can up today in a vinegar solution. R is the pickle fiend, we’ll see which ones he likes best.

Energy and conservation: When we moved the turkey poults, we finally unplugged the last heating device of the season. I hate blowing electricity on heat, but baby chicks need a heat lamp. I’m planning to consolidate watering basins for the winter so we can cut down on deicers. Last year we ran four, which is more than I want to pay for. On the other hand, the water bill savings with the new irrigation control has been substantial: the Rachio will pay for itself this summer. That’s a win.

Other projects: With R here now full-time, we have had the time to work through some of the backlog of infrastructure upgrades we’ve wanted to do, and just catch up on things. I stacked firewood, he’s been reorganizing the “warehouse” of spare parts in garage and hoophouse and clearing out so we can upgrade our hoop-sheds. Tools are getting cleaned and put away.

Community: I helped out with the “Take the Stage” youth music workshop the Entrada Institute sponsored, which meant I got to spend two days with Samba Fogo instructors banging on drums.

Creativity and recreation: loads of mandolin practice, especially on my 5-string electric. Camping gear is sorted and ready to go as soon as it stops raining for a few days. Can’t complain about rain.

Next week: more same days. The duck pen needs to be cleaned out and composted. Nothing exciting, just enjoying the end of summer.

Seasonal observations: We are seeing the first signs of the changing season, now that we’ve passed the cross-quarter day of Lammas. The rabbitbrush has started to bloom, dotting the roadsides in brilliant hues of chartreuse changing to marigold as the flowers open up. Even more certain signs are the sparrows, flocking up now that they aren’t defending nests. The goldfinches arrived last week to nibble on sunflowers and grass seedheads. Spring brings us the insectivorous warblers hunting the hatches in the succulent soft green leaves; sparrows and finches are birds of the harvest season, gleaning ripeness from the fields and margins. The first flocks, even more than the shorter evenings, is a reminder to savor every chance we have to be outside in the sunshine.

Filed Under: Stray Arrow Ranch Tagged With: bees, garden, Homestead log, skunk

Homestead Log Week of July 3-9

July 12, 2017 · By Ann ·

These McNabs are certain I need their help putting the goats back into their pen. It will be a couple more months before Wyatt's ears stand up permanently.
These McNabs are certain I need their help putting the goats back into their pen. It will be a couple more months before Wyatt’s ears stand up permanently.
After 24 years at the University of Utah, R has officially retired. The send-off was heart-warming: they issued him an honorific retirement rank I didn’t even know existed, three lovely parties and a book of photographs going back decades. We crammed all the festivities, a Kenny Wayne Shepherd concert and a trip to the Salt Lake farmers’ market in less than 48 hours in the big city. No wonder we collapsed in our hammocks Saturday night when we got home.

Husbandry and gardening: My enemy has a name and it is redroot pigweed, a member of the amaranth family. There aren’t going to be Brussels sprouts this year, as some pest ate all the last-chance seedlings while we were gone and I am out of time to start them again. I am going to try to plant more peas instead. If I get them in now, they may just flower and finish before it gets really cold. The tomatoes are setting fruit. We had overnight irrigation on Tuesday. It wasn’t our best effort with really low water levels. We are hoping the monsoons will set up soon and raise the water allocation as well as raining on our land. All the critters are doing well and next week we are booting the turkey poults out of the garage. Wyatt is teething—he lost a tooth on the drive home and his behavior is erratic. He’s got 14 of 42 adult teeth so far. In the next three months, he will be done with that nonsense and we will have a much happier dog.

Food, harvest and preserving: one friend runs a goat herd share and we got another friend’s allotment while they were on vacation and turned that into mozzarella and pizza on the grill. We should be eating greens that are coming out of the garden. Instead it has been eggs, bacon, potatoes and chiles. I made some chili for the freezer and that’s about it. I am planting cilantro every two or three weeks, trying to figure out when I need to plant it so it is timed for the great salsa-making project that is coming. We are down to the last two pint jars from 2016.

Energy and conservation: I’m looking forward to turning off all of the animal heating devices: water deicers and brooder heat lamps for a few months.I keep saying I am going to build a solar deicer for the goats, maybe this is the year for that project.

Other projects: R has been reorganizing our office and music space to better suit us both with him being here full-time. Naturally, the place has been in disarray — you never quite believe that all the stuff will all go back together into the space it was in before, but it does and we now have more bookshelves in the office and a place for my mandolins.

Creativity and recreation: We hadn’t been to a Red Butte Garden concert in years. It was over 100 degrees while we were waiting in line and I wondered if we had lost our minds, but a breeze started up when the sun went down and there were dragonflies buzzing the audience while the band played some awesome blues. We have more tickets for August to see the Tedeschi-Trucks Band.

Next week: we are getting ready all week for housessitters the following week. There is always a bunch of nonsense I am willing to put up with but not inflict on others who take care of the place. Hazards will be picked up, water lines moved to more efficient locations, deep-cleaning everywhere. At the same time, we will roust out the camping gear and figure out how to fit it all in the truck with two dog crates.

Seasonal observations: Most everyone has their first cutting of hay baled by now. Hay-making started right before the holiday weekend and we saw the last fields had been cut on the drive back from Salt Lake, farmers hoping the rains wait until after the hay is dry enough to bale. We also saw nighthawks on the way into Scipio. That’s the earliest we have ever seen them. I was wrong about the barn swallows, their nest was already full and they fledged babies last week. R rescued a couple that fell onto the porch. The first sunflowers are starting to make flower heads and the bees are gorging on alfalfa blossoms. It really feels like summer now, full stop. Like they say, make hay while the sun shines, because it won’t last long.

Filed Under: Stray Arrow Ranch Tagged With: cheese, garden, McNab dog

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