Snugging Down

A cold front has settled over the Willamette Valley. The sky is high, and bright, and clear. All of the leaves are falling off of the trees and rustling on the ground, shades of gold, and red, and brown mingled with the bright green of the grass. The days are beautiful, the nights chilly.  And, because of our schedules, we are a little behind  on snugging the house down for the winter. This weekend, we went into full on snug mode.

                First, we had to wash all of the windows, inside and out, in preparation for the storm windows.  There is no point covering up fig splatter and bird poop with storm windows for the winter! Once the windows were washed, Mark went to the basement to wash and wax the wooden storms and I worked up stairs. Wool blankets on the bed. All of the curtains washed—it was a good drying day! The last of the summer shirts shifted into the spare room closet, the heavy shirts moved to the bedroom. I made mac and cheese and a baked butternut squash for dinner, which warmed up the kitchen nicely.

                Outside, the leaves from our neighbor’s linden trees were raked into a tempting fifteen foot long windrow, ready for the gathering.  Before they were disturbed by cars running through them, I wanted to collect them in the re-purposed recycling bin on wheels, haul them around back, and dump them, one bin per bed, onto the cleared out garden beds.  This is a yearly task, made much nicer this year by dry, fluffy leaves. Once the beds were covered, I made sure that the plastic cover over the lettuce bed would withstand the winds. All of the plants in pots were moved into the greenhouse. Mark gave the bunny extra straw to block breezes in the hutch from below. The chickens, all five on one perch, are fine until the temperature drops to the teens. When I came home from a meeting last night, I went back out into the street ad gathered more leaves, piling them up in the driveway. This week, I will add them to the other perennial beds.

                Tonight, we have a fire in the stove. There are beans in the crock-pot, bread in the oven. All of the garden beds are covered. The storms are on the windows. The curtains are drawn. Outside, the wind picks up the dry leaves and blows them against the door, but we are all snug inside.

Autumn

It is autumn. The rains have begun. The dining room roof talks, low voices for drops on the roof, high pings for drops on the vents. The little stove is glowing in the late afternoon, warming one room of the house; we have not yet turned on the heat. The laundry hangs from the rafters. The cat sleeps on her pillow on the stool. There are gold and green decorations in the room, gold and brown tablecloth and napkins. Tonight, we are having lasagna with delicate squash and kale tucked into the layers, along with fresh apple cider. I will bake bread and granola, make yougurt and the last batch of tomato sauce. Outside, we have brought the dining table and benches in, moved the coop to another bed, begun to break down the tomato jungle as green tomatoes bounce onto the ground. Rainbows span the sky as the clouds move in a stiff seabreeze; thunder and dark clouds race along soon after. Autumn.

Autumn Snug

            The long sunny Indian Summer this year has thrown me off. Every day, I came home, looked around the garden smugly, and thought “Not much to do here” before heading off for a walk or a book. It was true—the beds were orderly, still producing, and needed little work. I had, however, forgotten about the flip side of Autumn preparations—the cleaning and ordering of interior spaces, the snugging in for the rains. 

            Last weekend, the realization hit. Mark brought home our traditional 70 pounds of onions from Denison Farms that needed to be stored in the larder—which was still home to a pile of recycling and several huge spiders. One afternoon went to vacuuming up webs and clearing the shelves, while the recycling went into the Ark to be hauled away on Saturday. After the onions were in, I gathered the squashes from the yard and tucked them away as well, before the rains began.

            After the larder was cleaned out, I moved onto the basement shelves. This was  the week to bring home fifty pounds of hard wheat berries and thirty pounds of oatmeal from Greenwillow Grains. That all needed to be poured into large storage tins (we use old Christmas popcorn tins from Goodwill), labeled, and tucked on shelves. However, the shelves needed to be ordered and swept before anything new was stored there which led to some re-arranging of canned goods and storage jars and preserving equipment. Where the drying racks clean? No. They needed to be washed and dried. Cleaning up the winter storage areas took several hours.  While I worked, I found some more recycling for the Ark…

            Meanwhile, we still had some Autumn yard projects. The new greenhouse needed a layer of plastic over the thin parts of the walls and some insulation. Pots needed to be moved in to increase thermal mass. The temporary shelves needed to be rearranged…and I still needed to find plugs for the clawfoot tub so that water did not slosh out of the old plumbing holes. That took a couple of days after work.  Now all we need to do is arrange a floor, either using more large flat stones or our reclaimed bricks. That will be a winter project.

            Finally, there was the general yard tidy. Hoses brought in from garden beds and out of the yard, coiled, and hung from the rafters in the shed. Tools put away. Tomato cages stacked and tucked behind the old chicken coop. Leaves hauled from the street and layered onto the beds, snugged in around the still growing kale and collards. The coop  shifted to a new bed.  Even more recycling appeared when we cleared out around the trash cans.

            We are, I am pleased to observe, almost done with the autumn clean-up. I have to plant the garlic (I was waiting for a bit of rain), wash and hang the storm windows, and clear up the front garden beds. The firewood storage area in the basement is still a disaster. And there is a hand-knit sweater that I was hoping to wear at school conferences, which are this week. I am half way down the body right now and have not started on the sleeves. This may be a winter project.

Bean and Barley Soup, originally from The Savory Way, altered to be totally local ingredients.

In the crock pot, place about two cups of Indian Woman beans, a chopped medium large onion, and several cloves of garlic. Cover with water. Cook for hours, until soft and friendly. Add about one and a half cups of cooked barley, a bag of frozen corn, salt, pepper, and parsley.  Allow to mellow together. This is a very simple soup that really grows on you over time.

Harvest Reckoning, 2014

Here it is—the annual reckoning of the harvest….

Tomatoes:

salsa 8 pints

                        Roasted 25 half pints

                        Dried 3 quarts

                        Longkeepers 10 pounds

Apples:

            Sauce 15 pints

            Cider 14 quarts

            Dried 6 quarts

            Butter 14 half pints

Blueberries:

            Frozen 2 quarts

            Dried 2 quarts

Peaches:

            Dried—2 quarts

            Canned 8 pints

Figs:

            Dried 3 quarts

Zucchini—one quart dried

Grapes:

            Dried 4 pints

            Juice 14 quarts

Pickles:

            Dill 6 quarts

            Senfgurken 5

            Beets 7 pints

            Red Cabbage 3 pints

Red Currant Juice: 5

Potatoes:

            Desiree 25 lbs.

            Ruby Crescent 8 lbs

            Yukon Gold 24 lbs

            Kennebec 21 lbs.

            All Blue 25 lbs

4 pumpkins

3 sweetmeat squashes

Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Pasta

Cube an eggplant and roast it in olive oil until soft. 

Saute onions in big cast iron frying pan until soft. Add eggplant and two half pints of roasted tomatoes, as well as a handful of olives, some salt and pepper, and basil.  You can also add a can of nice tuna, which puts the whole meal over the top.

Cook a large handful of whole wheat spaghetti. Mix the whole mess together and top with Parmesan cheese. Eat with salad.

October Work List

October is the end of the gardening season, the time to put the garden to bed for the winter and to snug in the house as well. It is also time to sit in the sun, on the top of a hill, looking down on mountain lakes, preparing the soul for the long dark time ahead as well.

·       Leaf collection and mulch.

·       Compost veg plants in the hoops; compost flower beds in place.

·       Clean the dehydrator screens and put them away.

·       Close down greywater systems, collect hoses.

·       Place bulk orders for Fill Your Pantry in early November.

·       Clean out the larder before filling with squashes, pumpkins, onions, and apples.

·       Carve pumpkins.

·       Take one more hike in the mountains.

·       Wash the windows and hang the storm windows.

·       Rake leaves.

·       Parent teacher conferences….

·       Clean the fireplace so that we can have fires inside.

·       Find the orange glass candleholders for the mantle.

 Oat Bread

1.5 c oats

1.25 c buttermilk

Soak for an hour or so.

6T oil

2 eggs

.5 c brown sugar

Add and mix

1 c whole wheat flour

.25 c bran

1t BP

.5 t salt

1 t BS

Mix and add

Pour into a bread pan and bake in 350 oven until done. Eat with apple butter.

Pumpkin Spirits

We may all need a little more protection in the coming Winter....this is an old post.     

      Pumpkin Spirits guard our house on the thinnest nights of the year. 

            The first two spirit guards are the big pumpkins, carved with faces. We light them in the house and carry them out  the  front door. We walk around the house—North, East, South, West, through two gates, asking the spirits to protect the space for the winter. Mark places his in front of the dining room door; it is a face made from leaves this year. I carry mine to the front steps; a huge smile and a third eye watch the night.  Gaurdian Spirits.

            The second  two  are carved gourds from Sunbow farm, with thick skins. The designs are simpler—triangles and slits let the light through. These leave via the back door and  round the house as well. As I walk, I remember all of the fruits of the gardens—grapes, raspberries, flowers, figs, tomatoes, greens—and we place these in the back veg garden. Mark’s is on the bridge, mine under the collard patch where the rabbit likes to hide. Garden Spirits.

            The third spirit gourds are actually two votive holders of pumpkin faces that have been in the family for years. I gave my mother one for her birthday when I was twenty years old; I just liked the smile. We carry these small figures out of the dining room and around the house, still heading clockwise. One sits on the potting bench; the other watches from the thick wooden plank in front of the fireplace. They look towards the house, leading spirits in. I tuck my mother’s glass pumpkin into the strawberry plants at the feet of Saint Francis. Guiding Spirits.

            At night, before we climb into bed, I look outside. Small golden lights gleam in the darkness.

Cornbread—the ideal potluck food

We had a potluck last weekend and I am always paranoid that there will not be enough food, so I make cornbread. This doubles nicely.

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup white flour

.25 c of white sugar

1 T baking powder

1 t salt

1 egg

.25 c of oil

.75 cup of milk

handful of berries

Mix dry together. Mix wet together. Mix the two and throw the berries in. Bake in a 350 0ven until done using the toothpick test.

            

Harvest is in!

Homestead Harvest is in…and the tally is:

Pickled Beets:6 pints

Blueberries: 2 quarts dried

Plums: 8 pints canned

            6 quarts dried

Pears: 5 quarts dried

Apples: 7 quarts dried

            4 pints of sauce

            3 quarts of juice—already gone…

Grape juice: 23 quart

Figs: 5 quarts dried

Tomatoes: roasted 70 half pints roasted

7        pints of salsa

4 quarts dried

Green Beans: 7 pints canned

Honey: 5.5 quarts, so far

Jam: 3 gooseberry

            6 rhurbarb red currant

            6 peach

            7 grape

Pickles: senfgurten—5

            Olive oil—2

            Dill spears—8

Dried beans—1 quart of Indian Woman

                        1 quart of Scarlet Runner

We also have two trays of apples left, three dozen longkeeper tomatoes, jujubes hanging on the tree, squashes and pumpkins in the larder.

Pumpkin Bread:

You can use canned pumpkin and it is tidy-- or you can bake your own, store in in pint jars in the freezer, and haul it out when you need it. This makes two loaves: one for now and one for the freezer.

3 1/3 c flour-- half whole wheat

2 t BS

1/2 t BP

1 1/2 t salt

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t nutmeg and cloves

2/3 c oil

2 c pumpkin

4 eggs

2 c sugar

2/3 c milk

raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, apples...whatever is around

Mix dry together. Mix wet together. Mix the two. Bake in a 350 degree oven.

        

Balance

It is the weekend of the Fall Equinox, a time to gather in the harvest, count up the blessings, ask forgiveness for the sins of the year, and prepare for the winter. Get your life into balance before the long slide into the Dark Times of Winter. It’s been a lovely fall here in the Northwest this year—warm and sunny, dry and clear for days on end. I believe we should shift our school calendar to reflect this season—stay in school during the rainy month of June and be free in September. But school has begun, both high school and college, and the struggle for balance continues.



Last Thursday night, I witnessed a rather frighteningly out of control party. At ten past ten, I heard some voices and decided to walk around the block and find out where the sound was coming from. I waked past the house o the corner and there were about 20 people there, loud, but approachable. “Okay,” I thought, “I’ll come back to them when I finish my lap.” By the time I walked around the three blocks that consist of our party watch lap, at 10:30, there were cars parked in the streets, people screaming at each other, hordes of large aggressive males walking towards the house, taking up the entire sidewalk, and about 150 people in the yard, with more coming. They were all consulting their cell phones. I called the cops. They arrived quickly.

We spent the rest of the weekend in Eastern Oregon, camping on the Metolious, a beautiful cool clear fly fishing river lined with campgrounds and summer houses. Our favorite campground is near Camp Sherman. It is not trampled by too much love AND there is a great little store within easy walking distance. Mark visits it at least twice; he loves the sandwiches and iced tea and they have ice cream sandwiches as well. It is dark and quiet; for some reason, few people camp after Labor Day. We napped and read, went hiking into Marion Lake on Saturday, and had a fire in the evening. A raccoon stole our apples off of the table, but that was all the night life we had to deal with. We came home on Sunday afternoon, still spacey from the hours of peace and quiet. I started a batch of Challah in honor of Rosh Hashanah and Mark did the laundry. On Sunday night, we will watch the Harvest Moon rise from Chip Ross Park. Peaceful rituals carry us a long way in autumn.





Round Challah for a sweet year

I use the “Fresh Bread in Five Minutes a Day” system from Mother Earth News

1.5 T of yeast, dissolved in 3 cups of warm water
1.5 T salt
.25 cups of honey
1 or 2 fresh eggs from the back yard
3 T of melted butter
6.5 cups of white flour

Stir it all together, cover with a plastic bag, and let rise on the counter for two hours. It will be a wet dough.
Toss in the fridge overnight.
The next day, take out half of the dough and form it into a ball. You will need flour on your hands. Let it relax on a bed of cornmeal for about 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Slide into the oven, onto a baking stone and bake for about 40 minutes, until it thumps hollow, not damp. It will brown because of the honey.

Eat.

Thanksgiving

We just came back from Thanksgiving in Portland; we have been eating our once a year turkey with the same folks for eight or nine years now. The day follows the same pattern—dinner is at two, so Amy and I arrive early and attack the turkey skin—a guilty pleasure from childhood—Mary and Susan arrive at 1:55 in a flurry of cold air and shouted greetings. By two thirty we are lined up at the table for the first round—savories for me, followed by jello and green salads, pickles, and rolls. Susan reads a blessing and asks the same question every year. “What are you thankful for?” We eat for an hour, collapse on the sofas moaning, talk, play games, drink fancy liquors out of tiny glasses, fuss about the state of the world, and digest before the dessert course. Pies and cake follow. Pie fro brunch the next day.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. As a child, my mother cooked huge feasts and set the table with her fancy dishes, lit candles, made me wear scratchy underwear. The night before, we stuffed celery and dates and mixed the stuffing, always adding a little more Bell’s Seasoning. I loved squishing the wet warm bread through my fingers, mixing sausage and onions, toasted cubes and spices. On Thanksgiving morning, I cruised the living room, nibbled nuts and pastel mints from cut glass dishes, and watched the Macy’s Parade with the huge balloons. The house smelled of turkey and perfume. It was heaven for a child.

When I was ten and eleven, I lived on Cape Cod, where it all began, you know. When our class was chosen to perform the holiday pageant, I wanted to be a pilgrim. I WAS a pilgrim in my mind and pilgrims had better parts. Dressed in long skirts and white caps, they dragged the cardboard boat across the stage and had a feast while the Indians looked on. I was a new kid; I was an Indian. And, because I refused to wear make-up, a pale freckled Indian at that. No matter—we sang “There’s no place like home for the holidays” and I hummed the tune while shopping with my mother after the pageant. My cousins were coming down for the weekend; the turkey was thawing in the sink; my mother had made a lemon pie; the stuffing needed to be squished. Life was good.

After college, I took over the cooking while my mother entertained the elders. After Pie Day at Ceres Bakery, when we made 48 pecan, 48 pumpkin, and 24 apple pies, along with hundreds of rolls, loaves of bread, winterfruit tarts, and carrot cakes, I would drive 40 miles south to cook for my family. My mother slipped brandy into my grandmother’s eggnog and watched my aunt to make sure she was not licking the cream cheese out of the celery and leaving behind the gnawed rinds. Meanwhile, I peeled squash and turnip, squished the stuffing, and monitored the turkey. It felt like a fair trade. At dinner, Aunt Jean and Nanny would begin the Irish Lament. “Ten years since Jackie’s been gone, “ one would intone. “Five years for Howie,” the other added. My mother, in desperate attempts to lighten the meal, told a dirty joke. The elders were horrified and continued to name the dead, reaching further back. Dinner took on a rhythm—dead person, dirty joke, dead person, dirty joke—that captured the essence of my family. The first year I tried to break away and eat dinner with my boyfriend’s family, my mother announced that I had been conceived on Thanksgiving and how could I possibly want to be elsewhere on my conception day?! I ate two dinners that day.

Since then, I’ve had years of wandering dinners. I’ve eaten with friends in San Francisco, which is lovely in November, and in Lincoln Nebraska, which is not bad either. I’ve had a small dinners in my own home with just a few people. And now we head to Portland. It is still my favorite holiday—food, conversation, a moment’s reflection back on where we have all been that year—then moaning on the couch and pie for brunch the next day. What more could you ask for?

Fall Fires

The rains have settled in early this year and the entire house feels damp—is damp, to be honest. The bathroom towels never completely dry out. So, on a misty rainy night, we had our first hearth fire of the season and autumn officially began.




I start by choosing the wood carefully from the tottering pile in the basement—the proper balance of laurel log, rosemary twigs, purchased fir from Mr. Bush, and old garden signs of snappy cedar, plus a candle end to get it all started. Then I build the fire pyramid; Mark mutters that I have become a pyro in the last few years, and I do take the set-up seriously. You need air circulation for a good fire. Then it’s time to rearrange the chairs, pulling the old rocker and sixties wooden armchair close to the hearth. I find the folding table rescued from a student dumpster and shift the light to between the two chairs and we’re set. Time to make dinner.

While the soup heats up, I light the fire and Mark checks the s’mores supply—marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey’s chocolate, all in a Christmas tin in the hallway, out of reach of ants. The cats wander in. Kayli the Sun Kitty makes loving eyes at the flames. Lucy tries out both seats. I spread an old fuzzy directly in front of the flames for Kayli and she purrs contentedly. Mark hunts down his notebook, reading material, and suduko puzzle. We have new library books. Water glasses are filled and covered by a napkin to discourage Lucy from drinking. She tries anyways.

After dinner in front of the fire, Mark cooks the marshmallows for four s’mores. Cats settle on laps. Kayli stretches out on her back, paws towards the fire, for a blissful tummy rub. We read, write, stare into the flames. The house grows dark around us—we have become a small circle of light in the universe, focused on the hearth at the center of our tiny house…I remember Wallace Stevens and “the cry of the peacocks” turning in the wind. The night feels late. The flames slowly die into the glowing coals, throwing off heat into the room. Some nights, we move the couch over and sleep there, others, I shift the laundry rack covered in jeans pulled of the line when the rains began in the late afternoon, taking advantage of the dry heat.

The next morning, I clear out the ashes and spread them on the garden beds, clearing the space for another fire, returning the laurel and rosemary to the earth. We will miss the sun—it’s warmth and dryness—but the fireplace begins to compensate for that on the long winter nights.

A Search for balance-- Musing around the Fall Equinox

It is the Fall Equinox—the time when the day and night are of equal length and the world balances before sliding into the dark months ahead. I spend considerable time, around the equinox, thinking about balance in my own life and neighborhood.






Mark has been patrolling the townhouses for the last two weeks, looking for loud parties and calling in noise complaints. One night, when I came home from chaperoning a dance, it was really quiet on the block. “They’re not back yet,” I thought as I walked in. Mark was looking downright smug, sitting in the rocker. “It’s quiet,” I told him. “Good,” he said. “I called in five parties about twenty minutes ago. I thought it quieted down.”

This last week, when all of the freshpeople are in the dorms and the frats are back cleaning up their houses, is notoriously bad. They have nothing to do, so they begin shrieking on Sunday night and do not stop for the entire week. It reaches a crescendo on Saturday. Mark and I went out around ten o’clock on Thursday. People were everywhere, but all heading for the townhouses. You could hear them several blocks away. We walked down the alley, making note of noise, then headed over to the park complex—the passage through the Catholic Church was a highway. Worse by the park…we started for home, when, suddenly, it grew very quiet…”What’s up?” Mark muttered—then we saw the police car in the alley—and another on the street—and three police officers going down the row, knocking on doors while several drunk students climbed over the balcony railings, broke a light fixture, and ran. Clearly underage…

This week, we will hang our fliers about noise and talk about setting up a system to inform landlords about loud party complaints. I’ll probably bake some oatmeal cookies for the night shift. And I’ll go to a meeting about a new development being planned near-by, because the balance between partiers and sleepers in my neighborhood is just way off.





Over the weekend, we fled Loud Week and headed for the Metolius for three days of car camping, day hikes, and the sound of the river at night. I love campgrounds; they feel like home. I spent a year of my childhood living in them—several months traveling around the country then the winter in Florida, raising money to go home to New England. For years after, we still lived in the camper in the summers, first with my cousins by their lake then at another campground. I love the scent of a campground—the fire smoke, the whiff of outhouse occasionally, the damp mulch under the trees. I love the sounds—dogs barking, kids riding bikes in circles for hours, someone attempting to chop wood, the wind in the high branches, the sound of the river at night. I love the lights that hang off of awnings in Old School set-ups, the flashlights like fireflies heading to the bathrooms at 9:30, right before bed, the huge variety of rigs and rigging that people who camp regularly develop, the old guys who like to swing by and chat when you are sitting by yourself at the table, the network of little trails that like campsites with the surrounding woods. I like campground with no amenities—just a water pump and an outhouse, a wooden table at the site—and with hot showers in white tiled bathrooms, electricity for the hotpot, and ice cream sandwiches down the road. There is a place for all sorts of campgrounds…and they all call to me when I climb into the Ark to run another round of errands, when I just want to flee my life here and hit the open road, seek balance somewhere else for a little while.