Spring Clouds

       

    Spring in the Willamette Valley is cool and misty, kind of peaceful. It’s good. Plants sprout and grow, students and teachers stay focused, night noise is at a minimum until June, when most of the college kids go elsewhere for the summer. The trails have dried out enough to walk on, but they are not summer dusty. Gardeners have time to set up the irrigation system and mulch it in before it is really needed, at least in theory.   A person can spend the afternoon staring into space and not feel guilty about it—after all, starting an outside project, like repainting the yellow curb marker, will clearly bring on a downpour. Better to think about it for a little longer and keep the grass dry.

            This year has been a little weird. The rains stopped about three weeks ago and the sun came out. At first, we were all thrilled. Warmth! Sun! Tan! Warmth! Light! But then, reality set in. The pile of papers on my desk grew deeper, day after day, when I left school to watch the bees, rather than staying in to grade.  Kids started the “can we go out?!” chorus in early May, which is never a good thing, then they shut their brains off. I poked my fingers into the soil, and it was dry. I’ve been watering some plants. The blooms fell off of the apple tree before the fruit was fully pollinated, I am afraid. It feels, wrong, somehow, to have sun for a week straight in early May.

            The weather shifted back to normal this weekend. It’s been cloudy, with downpours and drizzles, for several days. The light is muted and slow. I need an extra layer, a sweater or an ancient flannel shirt, when I sit down to read, barefoot. The grass is damp. The cool weather crops are thriving. A dove calls over the neighborhood in the morning while we drink a second cup of tea, contemplate the world, and drowse.

Rhubarb and Blackberry Pie

 This is a one crust and crisp topping pie….

6-7 stalks of rhubarb

1.5 c of blackberries from the far back of the freezer

.75 c of sugar, usually white

a pinch of cinnamon

Toss together, and put in the pie crust

Topping:

1 c oatmeal

.5 c flour

.75 c of sugar, usually brown

.33 c of butter or margrine or both together

Squish together with your fingers and pack lightly on the top of the fruit

Bake at 350 until bubbly, about 45 minutes.

Eat with vanilla ice cream.

Betty Lou is... Billy Lee?

       

    Denial is a powerful thing….for weeks, we have been looking at the peeps as they grew into peepsters and pondering Betty Lou. She was bigger than the other Barred Rock; her comb was a brighter red and more pronounced; her peep chest butts were more forceful than the others. But, I just thought “She was born a few days earlier.” Or “She has a stronger personality than the Buff Orpingtons. Barred Rocks are a more aggressive chicken, after all.” I never thought—is she a he?

You would think we would notice sooner, but it’s been a busy few weeks and the peeps are just a small part of the daily routine. Take them out in the big blue tub at seven in the morning and pop them, one by one, into the cold frame under the plum tree. Make breakfast, pack lunch, go to school and take another whack at the huge pile of junior assignments on my desk. Come home, make dinner, check the transplants in the garden, read a bit, move peeps in when it is growing dark so that they are easy to catch.

  Yesterday, however, the whole situation came to  the forefront of my attention. I moved the hoop of fencing that they run in to the far back yard, right against the chicken run, thinking that eventual flock integration might go more smoothly if they saw each other first (hope springs eternal in raising chickens). This meant that The Ladies, Gladys and Henny, were exposed to the peepsters for the first time and they were Not Happy. They squawked “My Yard! My Yard!” for five hours, until they finally lost their voices and were distracted by an overgrown sprouting and flowering broccoli plant.  It was a long morning. Meanwhile, the peepsters ran around singing “peeps just want to have fun” while snapping at flies, shredding newspaper, playing King of The Blue Tub, and munching on their own broccoli plant.

At dinner, Mark raised the issue—how do we know we have a rooster? I fetched our Raising Chickens book from 1975 and we studied the notes. By eight weeks, it read, you will see wattles and comb. Hmmm….we walked to the back. There they were. “Looks like wattles to me,” Mark observed.  “I think Betty Lou is Billy Lee,” I added. “Now what?”  We went back to dinner. We don’t want a rooster; there is enough noise in the neighborhood already. We want eggs.

Maybe, I thought as I popped them back inside last night, we are wrong….maybe Billy is Betty…just a little bigger than the others. But, I doubt it. Those wattles are pretty red.

Breakfast Granola—basic recipe from The Sunlight Café, with variations

This is breakfast at least twice a week with homemade yogurt. All ingredients are measured roughly and subject to change!

3 c.   oatmeal

1 c.  barley flakes

1 c. sunflower seeds

1 c. of pumpkin  or sesame seeds

1 c. of nuts—almonds, pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts….

.5 c oat bran

1.5 t salt

1 T cinnamon

Toss dry stuff together in a BIG bowl.

Add: .25 c of oil

            .5 c of honey

            1 t vanilla

Toss again, then spread on a sheet pan. Bake in 350 oven until lightly browned, turn, bake for about five minutes longer until golden brown. The last bit goes quickly, so keep an eye of it.

Remove. Spread .25 c brown sugar over it all and stir. Add a handful or two of  small dried fruit, like cherries, raisins, or blueberries. Nibble while it cools.  Store in a couple of quart mason jars.

Sunday Night Suppers-- April

Rhubarb Cake--potluck supper

Beets and chard, cabbage with tuna

Sweet potatoes, sprouting broccoli, rice

Crop Rotation with Chickens

   

        It’s not easy to plan a large veg garden around a chicken tractor. When we first acquired two hens, we had three 4 by 10 foot beds and they could settle in by November if need be and stay until late March. Now we have nine beds, mostly 10 by 4 but several 8 by 4, and it has grown more complicated. The key is to remember your harvest dates, rather than trying to rotate the cole crops every three years. This year, the arrangement looks something like this:

Bed A: dried beans, probably Indian Woman, and some edamane beans

Bed B: Spring crops—mustard, peas, lettuce, radishes, kale, broccoli. All of which will be eaten by July (or August, if the kale lasts that long).

Bed C: Garlic and ceremonial wheat, to be replaced by sprouting broccoli and fall cabbage.

Bed D and E: potatoes.

Bed F: pole beans and yellow wax beans

Turn the corner and move up the other side, to….

Bed G: vines—zucchini, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers

Bed H: Summer crops—chard, lettuce, beets, collards, fennel bulbs, and more broccoli

Bed I: Alliums and roots—scallions, leeks, beets, carrots, parsnips (if they sprout).

Tomatoes and peppers grow out front  where the driveway used to be in black tubs.

Next year, each shifts over bed, so garlic is planted where the potatoes were this year, etc.

The chicken coop will be placed on the spring crop bed in early September, when I go back to school and they can no longer run all over the yard anyways. A month later, all of the beds will be covered in leaves for the winter.

This system works well for us because it leaves beds free at predictable times. When I tried to plant by crop, there were always a few random plants still producing right when the bed needed to be chicken  tractored.

Weekend Breakfasts….

Pancakes—from the 1955 Betty Crocker’s cookbook

1.5 cups of flour—half wheat, half low gluten white

1 t BP

.5 t BS

.5 t  salt

1.25 cups of buttermilk

1 egg

2T oil

Add berries from the freezer….This is just enough for two people, at least in our house.

Waffles—from Molly Katsen’s Sunlight Café

 PREHEAT THE WAFFLE IRON!

1 c rolled oats

1 c flour (I sometimes use half whole wheat)

.5 c oat bran

.75 t salt

1 t BP

.25 t BS

2 T sugar

1.5 c buttermilk

.5 c water or milk

2 eggs

3 T oil

Once again, add berries from the freezer to the batter, esp. raspberries.

It's Spring!

peep house

Bees!

Sprouting Brocolli

Garlic

Signs

Lilac and camillia

Back Alley

Rhubarb

Blueberries in bloom

Bay Tree blooming

Front garden bed

Macintosh tree, with bottles

Sat morning....

A Wednesday in Spring Dinner:

 Chop and saute asparagus-- three or four just picked stalks in enough-- in the cast iron frying pan. Add some morels if you have them.

Add three beaten eggs and two cloves of garlic, chopped fine, salt and pepper. Finish cooking.

Eat with a new salad greens and fresh Anadama bread....

We're not eating fancy these days, but we are eating tasty.

Anadama Bread using the five minutes a day basic recipe:

1.5 T yeast
3 cups of water

2 cups of whole wheat flour
1 cup of cornmeal
3.5 cups of white flour

.25 cups of brown sugar
.25 cups of molasses
1.5 T salt

Mix, let rise for two hours. Put in the fridge overnight and back in rounds the next day-- 450 oven on a baking stone.

Two Tramps in Mud Time

Two Tramps in Mud Time

Robert Frost (1934)

Out of the mud two strangers came And caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!” I knew pretty well why he dropped behind And let the other go on a way. I knew pretty well what he had in mind: He wanted to take my job for pay. Good blocks of beech it was I split, As large around as the chopping block; And every piece I squarely hit Fell splinterless as a cloven rock. The blows that a life of self-control Spares to strike for the common good That day, giving a loose to my soul, I spent on the unimportant wood. The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March. A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume His song so pitched as not to excite A single flower as yet to bloom. It is snowing a flake: and he half knew Winter was only playing possum. Except in color he isn’t blue, But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom. The water for which we may have to look In summertime with a witching wand, In every wheel rut’s now a brook, In every print of a hoof a pond. Be glad of water, but don’t forget The lurking frost in the earth beneath That will steal forth after the sun is set And show on the water its crystal teeth. The time when most I loved my task These two must make me love it more By coming with what they came to ask. You’d think I never had felt before The weight of an axhead poised aloft, The grip on earth of outspread feet. The life of muscles rocking soft And smooth and moist in vernal heat. Out of the woods two hulking tramps (From sleeping God knows where last night, But not long since in the lumber camps.) They thought all chopping was theirs of right. Men of the woods and lumberjacks, They judged me by their appropriate tool. Except as a fellow handled an ax, They had no way of knowing a fool. Nothing on either side was said. They knew they had but to stay their stay And all their logic would fill my head: As that I had no right to play With what was another man’s work for gain. My right might be love but theirs was need. And where the two exist in twain Theirs was the better right — agreed. But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For heaven and the future’s sakes.

I fell in love with this poem as a ninth grader, when I first began creating my Poetry Notebooks—collections of poems that spoke to me. They were heavy on Robert Frost, who had taught at my high school, and rhyming nineteenth century poets.  I was a conservative reader.  It was the third stanza, which describes April weather, especially in New Hampshire, that rang true with me then. That sudden shift from warm to cold and back again that ran across my back as I sat reading on the shed roof—I knew that weather. I understood, too, the metaphorical cold that lurks beneath the surface of the poem, ready to reach out and pull us under. And that was poetry.

            As I grew older and wrestled with the big questions—What Am I supposed to Do with My Life?—it was the last stanza that haunted me. Work as play for mortal stakes. I used that as the measuring stick for my various occupations. Was sorting the papers of Arthur Dehon Hill, buried in the back corners of the Portsmouth Athenaeum seriously fun? Yes, it was. Was baking bread and cookies for people I knew play for moral stakes? Yes. Being a baker in a town that took food and art seriously was play for mortal stakes. Does weeding leeks and garbanzo beans play bring together love and need? Yes. Teaching English to a bunch of restless ninth grade boys? It is certainly work. But then, when they soar with an idea, it is the best fun I’ve ever had. When I can no longer answer “yes” to Frost’s vital question, it is time to move on.

            The poem came back to me again yesterday as I walked down a trail, far ahead of the botanizing pack of Native Plant Society members.  This time, it was the lines on movement that struck me—the “grip of earth on outstretched feet…the muscles rocking smooth and moist in vernal heat.” He was chopping wood, but the same smooth movement of muscle pushing against the earth happens when you walk along a trail, using not your knees, but your hips for propulsion. A gentle bounce gets into your walk and identifies you, weeks later, as someone comfortable walking on a rough surface, carrying weight upon your back. And when the weight is gone, and there is nothing to hold you down, you bound lightly down the street, feeling the earth beneath the concrete. Frost’s poem is like that, too. Earth beneath my feet, emerging again and again (like the two tramps?) in my life.

Chickpeas and Masses of Chard

Inspired by Deborah Madision’s Chickpeas and Shells with Masses of Spinach….

2 cups of cooked chickpeas. Ours come from Sunbow Farm, usually.

2 cups of cooked rice

1 HUGE bunch of chard, chapped. The chard, this time of year, is also from Sunbow. The leaves are as big as my head and it is still tender.

2-3 heads of chopped garlic

Sautee the chard and garlic in the large cast iron frying pan. Add some salt and pepper, a couple of shakes of tamari.

Add the chickpeas and rice. Heat through.

Eat with grated parmesan cheese or peach chutney or perhaps some salsa, depending upon your mood.

Stump the Cook

   

        “Are you playing Stump the Cook?” Mark asked as I stared into the fridge this afternoon. We had come home from a weekend camping trip to southern Oregon. When we left on Friday, cheerfully abandoning a huge pile of laundry, I felt like we were playing hooky. Now, I was facing the consequences. In the refrigerator:  a scrap of cabbage, the heart of an old head of lettuce, some beets with wilted greens, some ancient chard, hummus and yogurt from the weekend, and a cup of extra rice. In the garden—sprouting broccoli, which we had just eaten the night before. It was ugly. And we had eaten breakfast out, so the old Breakfast for Dinner stand-by of eggs and beans or perhaps French toast or pancakes was out.

            I took out the cabbage, trimmed off the brown edges, and cut it finely into the purple bowl. The lettuce was next. I now had a bowl of “salad” sitting on the counter. It’s a start, I thought. After digging in the Tassahara cookbook, I discovered a recipe for beets and chard—the author must have had a similar combination in his walk-in one afternoon. Sautee an onion, add beets, salt and pepper, followed by the greens and some lemon juice…no lemon. But, there was some apple cider vinegar….We had a hot vegetable. We still needed protein, especially as I had skipped lunch because of the large breakfast. Mark brought up a jar of Sweet Creek tuna from our basement stores and I added it to the “salad” with a bit of vinaigrette. “Is it time to eat?” Mark asked as he passed through the kitchen to hang up the third load of laundry. And it was. Rounded off with a bit of chocolate and a slice of new bread, and we were pretty happy.

            Now, I just have to order vegetables for the week, because there is NOTHING left in the fridge.