Blogging Binge

Okay interweb, that's enough of you.  Tomorrow night I head back to the great state of Michigan for a week with the fam.  Despite my every attempt to get her to drop out of school and join a farm that existed in my mind only, Caitlin Dronen is graduating from college.  And it's time to celebrate!  

As for the women in the knitting circle who my mom overheard planning to bring their "Bomb Obama" signs to the stadium on Saturday (Obama will be the main speaker at the ceremony) ... knitting: good   protesting: great   violent, not even clever, signage: do us all a favor and stay home.  

Mixed feelings for Obama though I do have, you'll be hard-pressed to convince me that he is not an upgrade from the speaker at my college graduation: the inventor of spellcheck.

Back to the mitten!

Hello Saturn!

A quick post to celebrate the 27th candle on the cake of Mr. Neil Vargas.   Lasagna, German chocolate cake,  vanilla ice cream, all made from scratch - more eggs, butter, and cheese than have passed through this kitchen in some time.  Aldona provided the roasted leeks and sauteed morel mushrooms; Tyler poured wine and won Settlers of Catan.  In the process, Bellingham felt a little more like home.   

The several-thousand-dollar bicycle I bought for Neil got lost in the mail, but I think reminders of the loves in our lives are a serious upgrade:

Happy 27th love!  May Saturn be good to you!

bees in the bathtub

I didn't start out Saturday morning knowing I would end the day with 10,000 bees in my bathtub.  True story.  But that's the way it turned out.  And that's the reason I love open-ended weekends; Anything can happen.

Actually, the thousands of bees may have to fight it out (but who would want to face them?) for the top spot of weekend awesomeness.  Giving them a run for their honey money is the Rendezvous that Neil and I found ourselves at Saturday afternoon.   Also known as Rhondies or Mountain Man Events, these events are created to mimic the gathering of the pioneering men (often fur-trappers) who roamed the Rocky Mountains in the early 1800s.  Participants camp in canvas tents, dress in period clothing (buckskins, furs, moccasins), compete in various weapon-wielding events (archery, knife and tomahawk throwing, black-powder muzzle-loaded rifle shooting), and gather with the dozens of others (women and children included) who share this obscure interest.  One of those people is Joe, Neil's co-worker at SFEG.  Joe makes his own moccasins, dyes his own clothing, even built his own rifle - incredible.  Neil has been talking for a while about Joe and these rendezvous he goes to.  And this weekend seemed like the perfect opportunity to check one out.  

Sights and sounds: 

Thanks Joe for being a great host and a patient teacher (and convincing me that I probably wouldn't have many opportunities to shoot a black-powder muzzle-loaded rifle ... I think you're right).

So back to these bees ...  Their arrival in our bathtub wasn't completely random.  Neil took a Master Beekeeping course last fall through the WSU Extension, ordered his bees early this winter (springtime is when you want to start a hive), and built his own top-bar hive.  Saturday morning he got a call saying that the bees needed to be picked up by 3 that afternoon (a small window to work with, but luckily the bee place was just a few miles from the Rendezvous).  The bees spent the night in the bathtub, "on deck" for their release into the hive the next evening.

The hiving was epic - particularly for someone who used to be deathly allergic to all stinging insects.  And as a vicarious beekeeper, I'm already learning tons about these incredible creatures. A post with amazing bee facts is in the works.

 

The homestead grows!

earthday souljoy continued

Trees and shrubs seem to be the long-term relationship to the quick and steamy affairs of annual vegetables.  Tart little tomatoes and plump eggplants come and go several times over before the proud Douglas Fir has time to enter its infancy.  As a planter and a grower, I've been a swinger in the plant world, preferring the quick cycles (and overt edibility) of the veggies to those plants that return year after year, growing slowly, signaling the seasons, persevering.  Or at least I've felt more comfortable in my (admittedly small) knowledge base of the vegetable world.

But I'm starting to get excited about getting to know and love new plants, creating guilds of plant communities, becoming both a farmer and a steward.  And a designer!  With the help of several native plant landscaping books and the unending inspiration of my favorite plant-o-phile,  Rosemary, I recently completed my first landscaping design project.  I used most all native plants.  Not that I'm a purist necessarily - After all, I'm a member of perhaps the most invasive species ... ever, and I myself have certainly uprooted myself from my native soils and managed to thrive.  But 1) once established, natives should be able to take care of themselves with little maintenance 2) they're what I know  and 3) how do you say no to a deer fern?

I'm happy with how the project turned out, though already growing impatient waiting for the plants to sprawl out and fill in the gaps (How many successions of radishes could I have had in this time? my antsy farmer mind thinks to itself).

Some before and afters: 

What I've enjoyed most about this project is knowing who it's for: John and Lee, the sweet couple who have made this garden I've planted their gift to one another for their 40th anniversary.  

Happy Anniversary you two!  If that's not cause for souljoy, I don't know what is. 

earthday souljoy

Much to my delight and not at all to my surprise, I found myself with my hands in the soil on Earth Day.  A day that started in leaden clouds slowly broke to a clear sky, sun beaming, by the afternoon.  And I was beaming too.  I've just started doing some gardening work for an elderly couple - Tom and Dorothy - who are both sweet and fiery.  With slight figures and small hunches to their backs, they refuse to stop for age, and spent most of the day outside with me gardening.  And I'm not talking watering-plants-with-a-miniature-watering-can-gardening.  No, I mean shoveling huge scoops of compost and soil into a raised veggie bed area they've created.  The best part of it all was that they weren't alone; as I wrangled day lilies out of the ground for transplanting, I watched as Tom and Dorothy and their neighbor Greg worked on the plot together.  Apparently these neighbors have shared this garden spot for years, sharing in the abundance it has put forth as well.  Beautiful. 

Dorothy sent me home with a bouquet of tulips from her garden and inspiration to do some gardening work back at home. 

I've spent a lot of time as of late wishing that my dream of becoming a farmer on a communal farm would just realize itself already!  But yesterday served as another reminder that it's happening - right before my eyes.  And as I helped Beau and his friend Chris (who came with his sweet daughter Ela) put the finishing touches on one of our hoop houses, I let that realization sweep over me and felt a great deal of gratitude.  

The day ended in homemade Irish soda bread, the last of our tomato soup (the best canned soup I've ever tasted - botulism-free, too!), and a sunset walk with Neil to get gelato in Fairhaven.   

Happy Earth Day!

Props

A quick post to spread the word on a few of the people, farms and projects I've been lucky enough to work with in different areas around Washington. Two of them are just establishing their presence on the interweb; all of them are amazing. Check em out!

Persephone Farm (Indianola)

Island Meadow Farm (Vashon Island)

and Cloudview Ecofarm (Royal City)

April Pictorial

Neil and I took a long weekend in early April to see his family down in Oregon. I haven't been great as of late with taking pictures - If I had, I would have actually taken some with his family! While the highlight was certainly catching up with those familiar faces, there are some other aspects of the trip that made it onto the camera and are definitely worth noting.

These, for example, taken at the 22nd Street Station - a sweet cafe in Forest Grove.

This breakfast is endorsed by Mexico (and Bob Ross).

America's no slouch! The glob of butter and jar of maple syrup probably aren't necessary on this already decadent Bavarian French Toast. Incredible! But do not plan on thinking, moving, or operating any heavy machinery after consumption.

Spring blooms at the Fernhill Wetlands - my first time seeing the deep red trillium.

Meanwhile, back in Bellingham...

Scenes from our Douglas Avenue homestead:

New Arrivals!

Chicken and Vegetable babies absorbing heat.

An afternoon of cribbage on the yurt porch with our friend and neighbor Baker.

Snickerdoodle-ocity

You've heard the saying, If you want to make an omlette, you've gotta break a few eggs. Well, I've got a similar one for tonight's culinary adventure: snickerdoodles. If you want to make snickerdoodles, you've gotta use a whole lot of butter. Don't get me wrong; there are plenty of butter substitutes and I've seen and tasted lots of great lower-fat recipe alternatives. But I'm starting to appreciate the depth and flavor butter lends to all kinds of dishes - sweet and savory alike, from sauteed greens to cakes to bowls of popcorn. A former butter-phobe, I'm surprising myself! And my trials in snickerdoodle-dom have made it official: it pays not to skimp on the butter ... or the sugar ... or the cream of tartar (whatever the hell that is - ok, so I got curious: cream of tartar). Here's the recipe I used - it makes about 2 dozen cookies - I recommend sharing with friends and making your bed beforehand: There's a sugar-induced bliss - the snickerdoodle food coma - that is sure to follow:

SNICKERDOODLES

DOUGH:

1C Butter

1.5C Sugar

2 Large Eggs

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

2.75C Flour

2 tsp Cream of Tartar

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Salt

SUGAR TOPPING:

3 Tbsp Sugar

3 tsp Cinnamon

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
• Cream together the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract
• Combine dry ingredients, and then mix them into the butter blend
• Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 10 minutes or so
• Meanwhile... Mix together the ingredients for the sugar topping on a plate or a pie pan, a flat surface where you can roll the dough.
• Roll the dough into small mounds - about an inch around - and roll those globs around in the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Give them plenty of room on the cookie sheet - they'll spread out!
• Bake for 10 minutes, and keep an eye on them. They cook fast, and their texture changes quickly too. This is why I keep the mounds of dough pretty small - to make sure their middles cook before their edges get too crispy.
• Pull the cookies from the baking sheet and let cool for as long as you can keep your hands off of them.
• Yum.

So I ended my last post with a few smoldering questions, and - I'll save the suspense - no answers yet. No, the questions continue to breed like rabbits (tis the season, afterall) while answers seem to have been poached into endangerment by those lucky enough to have found them. If this sounds like melodrama, well ... it is. And it's life too; life's filled with questions, including some pretty essential ones: Why am I here? What is my purpose? Big questions that humankind - especially those who have the time and inclination for pondering (guilty as charged) - seems to be continuously trying to answer.

I'm starting to think that my reasons and my answers are simple, may or may not have some spiritual undertones, and really aren't even human-specific (I often find myself thinking that there's no reason to distinguish human purpose from any other living thing - a humbling idea, but a walk through the Redwoods gave it some weight) : Live simply - in peace and truth - and nourish something (be it a cause, a community, a child or the earth). It resonates with me, though it also certainly brings with it at least one big question: Well how? Where do things like facebook, train rides, family visits, laundry days, sex, marathons and money fit into that plan?

Well I told you I didn't have the answers ...

But I am learning to find joy (or at least some comic relief) in more of the questions. Like when Harvey, an older gentleman that I do landscaping work for, asks me if I wouldn't mind tying up any daffodils that I see with a slight lean to them. (We humans are crazy!)

Or when my mom asks with an obvious smile to her voice if I received the Easter package she sent (filled with all kinds of chocolate bars and the sweetest of homemade cards).

Possibly my favorite question as of late came when I was substitute teaching for a 7th grade science class (the subject for the day: Reproduction - Thanks, Mr. Maxwell!). It was pretty non-threatening sex stuff, starting with single-cellular reproduction, but the kids were still grossed out. And then towards the end of class a boy asks me: "Miss D, so a single cell can keep dividing and dividing and dividing ... but where did the very first cell come from?"

Origin of life questions from an 11-year-old. Think fast, Miss D.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for my substitute teaching career), I had to defer that question to his family (hell, friends, priest, bus driver, anyone but me). But it was amazing to see him start pondering life's questions. There's more where that came from.

Just you wait, kid.