Into the Woods – Page 178 – Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere

Family dairies, R.I.P.

Small, family-run dairy operations used to be very common all across North Carolina’s Piedmont and the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. They are gone. I doubt that very many of them survived much later than the 1950s. Like all small family farms, the dairy farms had to deal with competition from the larger, more industrialized operations. There also were health regulations to deal with. If I remember correctly from what a dairy farmer told me many years ago, to sell top-grade milk required that the milk be chilled to a low temperature — 34 or 35 degrees, as I recall — within minutes of coming from the cow. Small operations couldn’t support the cost of this refrigeration equipment.

This old dairy, on Mountain Road near Danbury in Stokes County, was typical. The building in which the milking was done was usually made of concrete blocks. This was because the building was constantly being hosed down and washed.

The smaller room to the right, with the sink, is the clean room where vessels were washed and where the milk was brought. The larger room to the left with the cow-sized door is the milking room.

The sink was for washing the milk cans and other vessels.

We're brown while California is green

After I moved to California, it seemed odd to me how the green seasons are almost reversed. In California (except for the mountains), the rainy and relatively warm winters bring the greenest season in March. Then, because it doesn’t rain from April to September, summers are brown.

Here it’s almost the opposite. It rains during the winter, but it’s too cold for anything green. Come March, the greening begins. Several warm, rainy days are forecast for the end of this week. That should get the grass growing.

This photo shows the side of Hanging Rock from Overby Road in Stokes County.

Scrounging for signs of spring

Can you espy the bluebird?

The landscape is still brown and gray and wintry, but given the warmer temperatures for the past few days, and because the birds are singing, spring is surely just around the corner. This time of year, if it’s not raining, I take a walk around the yard every day to see how things are coming along.

A leaf bud on the magnolia

Young mustard. This volunteered beside the chicken house. A morsel that I threw to the chickens must have escaped somehow and taken root.

Daffodil shoots

I don’t know what this is. The ground is thick with it in the flower bed where the cosmos grew last year. I suppose this could be cosmos, but I also suspect that it may be different type of wildflower, a perennial, that I planted last year but which won’t bloom until this year.

A day lily shoot

Young clover, starting to feel its oats

I found the right chairs

For months, I’ve been looking for the right dining chairs. The chairs I’ve liked best are Amish chairs. They have the mass and the no-nonsense lines that work best with Gothic revival and with the heavy, solid cherry tables my brother built for me. I was put off by the price of the Amish chairs, though, and was hoping to find something I liked for less. But today I found just the right Amish chairs at the Amish furniture store in Walnut Cove. They had been marked down by a third because the factory filled an order with the wrong finish, or something like that. The chairs were made at an Amish factory in Ohio. They’re oak, stained with a cherry finish. I bought four — two with arms and two without.

They look severe, but they’re surprisingly comfortable. And they were made by American craftsmen.

Recommendment: Lark Rise to Candleford

BBC: The hamlet of Lark Rise

I wonder if the BBC is making a particular effort to make more period pieces that reflect the lives of ordinary people, rather than aristocrats. For example, BBC Films was involved in the making of Bright Star, which is about John Keats. Keats and those around him were middle class, not aristocrats. There also is the excellent BBC television series Cranford.

In 2008, the BBC came out with Lark Rise to Candleford. This is about the people in the tiny hamlet of Lark Rise, and the more prosperous people of the nearby village of Candleford. These are honest stories based on the realities of village life — gossip, family trouble, poverty, and social jostling. The series is available on DVD, and from Netflix.

I broke down and got a lawn mower

I’ve posted in the past about my doubts about joining the millions of Americans whose biggest job, aside from going to work, is keeping up their lawn. Last year I didn’t mow at all. I didn’t have time, because there was so much work to be done finishing the house. Nor did I have a lawn mower until today. The biggest factor that made me decide to give up and mow is that I want to walk and putter outside without being afraid that I might step on a snake. And besides, a certain amount of lawn is like an extension of the house, as are porches and decks.

I did some thinking and research before I decided on a mower. The area around my house is very hilly and uneven. So I figured I needed a riding mower that was as narrow and flexible as possible. I pretty quickly zoomed in on the Snapper mowers. As far as I could determine, Snapper makes the narrowest riding mower available — 28 inches. The front and rear suspensions are independent so that it flexes nicely over uneven terrain. Another plus was that the engine is in the back, with its weight on the rear wheels to improve traction. Because I lived in apartments in San Francisco and didn’t have to deal with such things, today was the first time I’ve used a lawn mower in almost 20 years. This is the first riding mower I’ve ever owned.

I took it for a spin and was amazed. I had not really expected to be able to mow my entire backyard and orchard area, because it’s very steep back there, but I was amazed how well the mower Jeeped up and down my hillside. I ended up bush-hogging my entire orchard area, clearing out the briars, tiny trees, and standing thatch from last year’s thick grass, which grew to about three feet tall.

It’s going to look great when the grass turns green.

What my backyard looked like last May

Let's hear it for the chickens

March 4: four eggs. There are three nests in the henhouse, but they always share and take turns.

My four chickens have averaged slightly better than three eggs a day all winter, and it was a cold winter. Even though it’s still early March, they’re already starting to return to their four-eggs-a-day standard of productivity. They have only ever broken one egg, and that was when they were young and inexperienced. I myself have accidentally broken three or four.

They are content, yet demanding, always hoping for treats, which they get, every day. Sometimes the best I can do is cut up some raw potatoes or carrots, or maybe apples, or pluck the outer leaves from a head of cabbage. Their favorite treats are kitchen scraps — peelings and leftovers. Pasta drives them wild. They seem to think it’s worms. On cold mornings they relish a warm breakfast — cracked grains mixed with leftover gravy or soup. During the summer, finding treats for them is easy because the kitchen always has lots of summer produce. During the winter, treats are more of a challenge. They always have laying mash in their feeder. But it’s treats that keep things interesting.

Newspapers and magazines are full of stories about backyard chickens these days, but here’s one of the best pieces I’ve come across. Peter Lennox, an academic, waxes philosophical on the keeping of chickens:

Watching chickens is a very old human pastime, and the forerunner of psychology, sociology and management theory. Sometimes understanding yourself can be made easier by projection on to others. Watching chickens helps us understand human motivations and interactions, which is doubtless why so many words and phrases in common parlance are redolent of the hen yard: “pecking order”, “cockiness”, “ruffling somebody’s feathers”, “taking somebody under your wing”, “fussing like a mother hen”, “strutting”, a “bantamweight fighter”, “clipping someone’s wings”, “beady eyes”, “chicks”, “to crow”, “to flock”, “get in a flap”, “coming home to roost”, “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, “nest eggs” and “preening”.

On bread and bakeware

I bought an iron skillet only three weeks ago, but it has already become my favorite pan for baking. Whether it’s biscuits, cornbread, or rolls, the iron pan produces the most even baking and the best crusts, both top and bottom.

Today’s rolls contained both cashews and soy flour. I continue with my experiments to try to produce a truly good bread with the lowest glycemic index possible. Just using whole wheat flour, of course, is better than white flour. But I don’t regard whole wheat alone as a true glycemic-friendly food.

Some of my experiments have involved brans, both wheat bran and oat bran. Bran, though, makes a coarse, not very tasty bread. I’ve also tried flax seed meal. But there’s something about the consistency of the flax seed that detracts from a really satisfying bread-eating experience.

One way to lower the glycemic index of bread is to add protein. For today’s bread, I whizzed in a blender half a cup of cashews in a cup and a quarter of water. I added a little more than a quarter of a cup of soy flour, then enough whole wheat flour to make the dough. It was pretty darn good bread.

There are some low-cost iron skillets from China on the market, but I’m sure you’d be much happier with an American-made skillet from Lodge.

The rolls always fall out of the iron skillet clean as a whistle.

And again…

If we had to have one of the snowiest winters I can remember, even from my young’unhood, I’m glad it was the winter after I was safely moved into a cozy new house with a good heating system and a fireplace.

This photo was taken from the deck behind the house. It clearly shows the slope of the hillside I live on.

Rehabilitating potatoes

I’ve written previously about how sweet potatoes have a lower glycemic index than white potatoes and are all around healthier than white potatoes. But lately I’ve become aware that there are things we can do to lower the glycemic insult of white potatoes.

If you Google around, you’ll find a number of sources that say that red potatoes are slightly less of a glycemic insult than white potatoes. But even better, when potatoes are cooked and then chilled in the refrigerator for 24 hours, the glycemic index goes down substantially. Boiled red potatoes, chilled and then eaten the next day, can have a glycemic reading as low as 56.

As I understand it, this is not simply because the potatoes are cold. It’s that, as the starch is chilled, the starch chemistry changes its structure so that it’s slower to digest. I believe this change persists even if the potatoes are reheated.

I keep seeing references to new types of low-glycemic potatoes developed by agricultural universities. But so far I have not been able to find a source of these potatoes, either as produce or as seed potatoes for planting.

Carolina church supper potato salad