Category: The land

Normal weather at last??


My whole-house fan, as seen from the attic

I am starting to feel optimistic that the frighteningly hot, dry, droughty weather of the past few years was abnormal, in spite of climate change. I am hoping that we are returning to more normal temperatures and levels of rainfall. When I say this, I am ignoring the clear global trend of extreme weather events. I am thinking selfishly only of this little part of the world, and of my ability to grow things here and to endure being outside in the summer without being baked to a crisp.

I suspect that La Niña was the culprit. La Niña, of course, is one extreme of a normal oscillation of water temperatures across the tropical Pacific. This oscillation still is not well understood, but it has been observed for hundreds of years. This oscillation causes a redistribution of rainfall on both sides of the Pacific. If India and Indonesia are getting more rain than normal, then here in the American southeast we are getting less. And the reverse is true.

Typically this oscillation occurs every three to seven years. Often La Niñas are 10 years apart. But since 2008, the pattern has been unusual. The La Niña of 2008 was quickly followed by another that lasted from 2010 until 2011. This La Niña ended in this past few months, and it was one of the strongest ever recorded. It was the cause of a devastating drought in Australia and probably last year’s drought in Texas as well.

Those years since 2008, unfortunately for me, were the years I’ve been working so hard to build Acorn Abbey and to get a garden, orchard, and landscape going. No wonder I have been so discouraged and exasperated at times, watching young trees die and gardens baked to a crisp.

The amount of rainfall varies greatly from spot to spot of course, especially the rainfall from thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are the source of most of the rainfall in this area during the hot part of the year. One spot can be flooded, and another spot 10 miles away can be high and dry. So I realized that I needed my own accurate rainfall record, and I started collected data on Sept. 1 of last year. Since Sept. 1, 39 inches of rain have fallen on Acorn Abbey, well on the way to equaling or exceeding the official average of 44 to 45 inches for this area. That is most encouraging.

I also am finding that, with normal weather, I need far less air conditioning at the abbey. So far this season, I have not turned the air conditioning on at all. The highest temperature we’ve had so far was about 92. The temperature in the house reaches 86 or so on a day like that, but after the sun goes down and the outdoor temperature drops, I turn on the attic fan and the indoor temperature comes back down to the upper 70s. I can live with that. But when the temperature gets above 95, I probably won’t be able to take it.

I’ve often mentioned in this blog how odd it seems that a fanciful house such as a Gothic revival cottage can be so practical. Here’s another way it’s practical: It’s livable when it’s hot outside. Actually, that was one reason I liked the design. There are lots of big windows, as with older houses. The high ceilings and large attic help. If I had large, grand shade trees — as I hope to have in 10 or 15 years — this house would be as livable in hot weather as any Southern country house of the 19th century.

A lot of the readers here are building houses, including Gothic revival cottages like mine. So I can add a few points to lessons learned after living in this house for almost three years. Large, south-facing windows are pure gold. They will warm you in the winter, and yet in the summer when the sun is overhead, they admit no direct sun at all. West-facing windows, however, are a different story. Heavy sunlight pours in on summer afternoons. You’ll want deciduous shade trees outside your west-facing windows. Lacking that, awnings would be good, though window shades are better than no protection at all.

I cringe when I look at some modern houses. The windows are tiny. Some people probably never even open them and instead rely on their heating and cooling system year-round. That would make me crazy. I like hearing the birds. And if a chicken squawks to alert me to some emergency, I can hear her.

Road trip


This building is in Alleghany County near Sparta. I’m not sure if it was a church or a school.

My sister and I made a little road trip to Ashe County yesterday to go to a funeral. It was the perfect day for a road trip — sky busy with heavy, fast-moving clouds, pleasant temperatures, everything lush and green from the generous rain western North Carolina has had recently. The old buildings always catch my eye.

Ken has been drawing sketches for a shade shelter and straw shelter for the chickens. I thought this little building, on Booger Swamp Road in Yadkin County, had a lot of charm. Yes, there really is a Booger Swamp Road. The road sign was missing yesterday, so the signs must get stolen all the time.

If there are day lilies, it must be May


[Click on image for high-res version]

Each year, there are more blooming things at the abbey. I’ve decided that it’s impossible to have too many wildflowers, even if some of the blackberry patches have to be cleared. Next year: More wildflower patches. I also saw the first finch yesterday. They were attracted last year for the first time by the wildflowers, and they’re back again this year.

Corn and beans

I’ve mentioned before that, this year, for the first time, I’m growing green beans from seeds that have been in my mother’s family for four or five generations. They came from my mother’s family farm in the Yadkin Valley, and I ate them — both fresh and canned — when I was a child. I thought they’d been lost, but my sister learned that a cousin has been growing the beans and saving seeds all these years. This cousin sent me some seeds so that I can help continue the line.

The seeds came up very strong and are looking good. It’s hard to see the bean leaves in this photo because the leaves are facing upward. Each bean is planted beside corn.

Where to start?


The garden, this morning

It’s been over a month since I posted. The abbey has been caught in a whirlwind of spring projects, spring farm work, and community organizing. I really appreciate the emails from those of you who have written to make sure everything is OK. Retirement is not supposed to be like this.

I think I’ll try to catch up with a bulleted list of items, stealing a bit from the way the late Herb Caen used to do things in the San Francisco Chronicle.

  • By far the biggest time sink in the past month has been getting involved with the group of people in Stokes County who are organizing to resist fracking in Stokes County and in North Carolina. Fracking is now illegal in North Carolina, but right-wing members of the North Carolina legislature are working hard to fast-track legislation to permit fracking. I was aware of what the legislature was up to. But I did not know until Ken and I went to a county commissioners’ meeting (to speak against a county resolution supporting North Carolina’s marriage amendment) that there is a potential fracking area here in Stokes County. There were people who came to the meeting to speak against fracking, and Ken and I immediately got involved with that group. Ken started a Facebook group (No Fracking in Stokes County), and I started a web site for the group (nofrackinginstokes.org). We helped set up a community meeting at the Walnut Cove Public Library, which almost 100 people attended. This isn’t over, because the legislature just reconvened in Raleigh, with right-wingers in the majority and ready to continue with all sorts of corporation-coddling, the-people-be-damned evils. The abbey — normally quiet and peaceful — has been noisy and busy, which leads me to the next bullet item.
  • The abbey does not have a land line telephone. Rather, we have two Verizon cellular phones with oversize antennas and 750 shared minutes a month. Normally we come nowhere close to using all those minutes, but this month we’re having to check to see how our minutes are holding up and budgeting the minutes out according to our needs. Yesterday Ken and I were on the phone at the same time. I was in a conference call with a consortium of North Carolina anti-fracking organizers, and Ken was doing interviewing for an article he’s writing. He also has calls to his literary agent in New York, his publisher, and his publicist. How did this happen? It’s temporary, but I told Ken yesterday that I feel like we’ve both been yanked out of the abbey and cast kicking and screaming back into the corporate world.
  • I finished with my book project. I did the editing, typography, and prepress work for People Skills Handbook: Action Tips for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence. The book is now being printed and should soon be for sale. It’s a corporate training manual, and it brought in some extra money that has been very nice for getting some projects done (which I’ll mention in later bullet items).
  • Ken sent the manuscript for his book to his publisher. He had edited it through eight drafts, and of course the book got better with each draft. He has worked like a dog. The book will be published in May 2013. Now that Ken is no longer tied down with writing and editing work, he’ll be leaving soon to work on his next projects (later bullet items).
  • The irrigation project ended up taking way more time than we expected. It also cost a great deal more than expected. Ken spent many days wearing waders, building a dam in the small stream below the house. At last the dam is holding and is impounding a generous amount of water. The first pump I bought was underpowered; the second pump is working great. Now we just open a couple of valves, and branch water flows into a drip system down each row of the garden. This has made a tremendous difference in the garden’s yield. The garden is picture perfect. We have eaten so much lettuce that it’s a wonder we haven’t turned green. The broccoli is starting to come in. There will be cabbages — and possibly spring sauerkraut. There are two rows of very fine beets coming along, and two rows of sweet Georgia onions. Ken planted the first round of corn and my family-heirloom green beans on Sunday. The tomatoes and such are still in the greenhouse but should be ready to transplant soon (Michael Hylton of Beautiful Earth Garden Shop at Lawsonville is starting our plants for us this year).
  • The trees in the orchard are three and four years old, but they’re going to bear fruit this year. The orchard has never looked so good. We have observed that, if the orchard grass looks good, the trees look good. My theory is that all those organic soil amendments that we’ve spread on the grass is getting down to the tree roots. And credit for that, no doubt, has something to do with our rising population of earthworms.
  • Using the nice money from putting that book together, we’ve gotten two other important projects done in addition to the irrigation system. We poured the basement floor, and we had the attic floored. Both were jobs that I didn’t have the budget to do when the house was first built. There’s a good-size basement down there, but the floor was dirt, with all the dampness, cellar crickets, and ickiness that that implies. Now the basement is dry and snug with a concrete floor as smooth as marble. There’s shelving for tools and canned goods. Upstairs, the attic floor has opened up a tremendous amount of new storage space. It’s amazing that a house so small contains so much space. It’s on five levels — basement, first floor, second floor and two levels of attic. There actually have to be steps in the attic to get from the lower level to the upper level. The roof is so steep that there is standing room even on the upper level. Both these projects created a lot of fuss and disorder, and each ruined a week of peace and quiet at the abbey.
  • I’m going to learn to can this summer. I got an All American pressure canner. My first effort probably will be pickled beets. And later this summer I want to can as many tomatoes and green beans as possible. I’m really counting on that irrigation system to not only maximize our yields but also to make yields more predictable.
  • Now I have to buck up and prepare for Ken’s departure. I often marvel at how absurdly optimistic I was with my dreams for this place. I bit off more than I could chew. One person working alone can’t start a tiny farm, no matter how tiny. One person can maintain, barely, but there is no way that one person could manage all the start-up projects. Without help, I would have gone under. But not only did help magically appear, the magic was powerful enough to bring Ken Ilgunas. Ken Ilgunas! I sometimes find myself writing little Visa commercials on my morning walks. They go something like this: “Garden and orchard, with fence and hawk net: $2,208. Chicken house and chicken infrastructure: $1,422. Irrigation system: $1,088. Stone and sand for stone walkways: $792. Five hundred dinners with Ken Ilgunas: Priceless.” Ken is brilliant. Ken is modest. He is polite. He is quiet. He is tireless. His self-awareness, and the Socrates-level refinement of his character, often make me feel like a crank and a curmudgeon. Ken is a born writer.

    But in the important ways, I don’t think I have ever misunderstood Ken or the deal we have: Acorn Abbey is about leveraging his freedom, not about tying him down. It’s a place to write, a place to winter over, even a place to be needed — but not needed so much that leaving feels like shirking a responsibility. Ken is an adventurer. I have always understood that. I believe his next project will take several months and stretch into the fall. I’m sure he’ll talk about that on his blog when the time comes. But I do hope he’ll be back and that Acorn Abbey will be his home base as he starts the publicity tours for his book after Thanksgiving.


    Chioggia beets, red beets, lettuce


    The first broccoli


    The spring chickens


    Peaches


    Apples


    Patience starts her morning stroll. Note the lushness of the orchard grass. It’s all about feeding the earthworms.


    New rose trellis (built from scratch by Ken and David)


    The first day lily stalks. They’ll start blooming soon.


    The water tank, which contains branch water for irrigation


    The basement project


    Two spring chickens


    At the anti-fracking meeting


    The virgin pressure cooker, waiting for beets

    • Honeybees


    [Click on images for high-res versions]

    We see disturbingly few honeybees at the abbey. Last year, it seemed as though bumblebees did most of the pollination. There were some honeybees working the apple blossoms this morning, though, and they were a welcome sight. There also were lots of other nectar-sipping creatures.

    Let's all scratch in the dirt


    When the daffodils are out, it is time to scratch in the dirt.


    Onions, lettuce, and chard from plants bought at the roller mill in Walnut Cove. They don’t look like much when they first go in the ground, but they’ll be much more photogenic in a few weeks. I’m probably about two weeks away from planting my broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. Those plants are being started for me in a nearby greenhouse from seeds I ordered from Baker Creek. I figured that a greenhouse could do a much better job with young plants than I can do under a grow light in front of a window, which is how I started my plants last year.


    I finally found some sour cherry trees, Montmorency. I bought two, and Ken planted them yesterday. I’m not entirely happy starting fruit trees in the spring, and the dirt ball on these trees was poor. But having spent more than two years looking for sour cherry trees, I’ll take what I can get when I can get it. We also planted a peach tree, a couple of lilacs, and some NanKing cherries (see below).


    A gardener friend of mine recommended NanKing cherries. I was not familiar with them. They’re a shrub that produce edible cherries that the birds also love. They’re a hardy plant from Asia that was brought to this country over a century ago. NanKing cherries grow in the Himalayas.


    When we scratch in the dirt, the chickens come running up to help. They know that it will mean worms and grubs for them.


    Patience


    Ruth

    Nosy neighbors

    It’s surprising how much wildlife drama there is right outside the doors and windows of the abbey. This little scamp from the woods frequently plays on the deck and climbs the chimney, but today he put on quite a little show-off act while Ken and I stood by the deck door and took pictures. The squirrel went through a wide range of antics as though it was taunting us. Ken said it even rubbed its belly.

    There also have been rabbits on the steps, and once after hearing strange noises I found a groundhog with his nose to the glass of the front door, looking in.