March 2008 – Into the Woods

Baby grass!

It’s disappointing that, because of the wet weather, I’ve not been able to move my trailer up to Stokes. The ground is too wet to roll the trailer out of my Mama’s backyard, or down my steep road. However, all that grass seed I planted is loving the rain. The white clover that I mixed with grass seed on top of the septic tank area is germinating nicely as well. The clover is still too tiny to photograph with my camera.

The loggers tore up the drainage ditch along the roadside, and I was afraid I’d never get grass to grow there again. But those excelsior blankets work wonders.

What's a wellhouse, and what's a pumphouse?

A typical North Carolina wellhouse. In this abandoned wellhouse, the well is gone, but it would have been under the porch. Inside are the milk troughs and places for food storage.

In a comment here, a friend asks what’s the difference between a pumphouse and a wellhouse.

The pumphouse is a small building to house (and keep from freezing) the parts of the water system that aren’t in the well. That includes the pressure tank and the pressure control switch. It’s a necessary part of the water system.

A wellhouse was a common outbuilding in the days before electricity. The well itself, with a windlass and bucket for drawing water, generally was near the wellhouse door. Inside were water troughs in which the milk jars were stored and into which cool water was poured a couple of times a day to keep the milk cool.

I have no real need for a wellhouse on my place, but I do need an outbuilding. I decided that an outbuilding in the style of a wellhouse would not only be practical (not least because wellhouses always have a porch) but also would work well with the style of the house. For rural people who had neither electricity nor ice, the wellhouse was the refrigerator as well as the source of water. It was always built in the coolest and most shady spot available. My grandmother’s wellhouse was overhung with a willow tree. I may do the same thing, for the sake of tradition.

Ugly work, but necessary…

1. The truck that brought the septic tank got stuck in the soft soil and had to be towed toward the septic tank hole using the backhoe’s hydraulics. Notice the chain between the backhoe bucket and the rear of the truck.

It’s hard to think of a more unphotogenic process than putting in a septic tank. But in spite of all the hole-digging and trench-making, the process takes less than a day. Some statistics: The tank holds 1,000 gallons. My system, as spec’ed by the Stokes County environmental health department, called for four drain-field trenches totaling 210 feet in length. Each trench is 50 to 60 feet long.

2. A little closer to the hole

3. Down into the hole we go.

4. The septic tank is now in place.

5. Looking over the top of the septic tank to one of the drainfield trenches

6. The septic tank has been buried, the trenches have been filled. I’ve planted a mixture of annual rye, fescue, and white clover, then covered the bare earth with straw. With the spring weather I hope to have grass before long. The cap is the clean-out port for the drain-field filter. This is a fairly new feature in septic tank design. The filter keeps solids from getting out of the septic tank into the drain field and helps keep the drain field healthy and flowing freely.

In goes the septic tank…

This heavy piece of crockery holds 1000 gallons.

The septic tank, and 210 feet of drain field, got installed today. Another mess. But I got it cleaned up, and seeded, fairly well by the end of the day. I’m too exhausted to post more photos tonight, but tomorrow I’ll post details and a photo sequence.

This is a big deal. It means that now all the life support systems — water, electric, and septic — are in place, and I can move my travel trailer up to Stokes and start living (and working my tail off) on my land…

New photo with all the trim in place

Bob, my brother, finished putting the trim around the eaves and soffit of the pumphouse today. In the photos I posted last week, some of that trim was missing. So here’s a new photo with all the trim in place.

Bob with the finished pumphouse.

Notice that what Bob calls “the birds,” the facing on the soffit, has a slight gothic curve, as does the trim over the door. We’ll use these same themes on the wellhouse, which I plan to start early next month. I’ll let the wood cure a bit, then I’ll apply some sort of preserving finish on the white pine siding. I’m not yet sure what that finish should be, but to me the right answer is — whatever they would have used 60 years ago.

Spring

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1914. Photo by Arnold Genthe

It’s a ritual of mine to send out this poem every year using whatever communications system is close at hand. It used to be newspaper Atex or SII systems. Then it was email. This year it’s the blog…

The Goose-Girl

Spring rides no horses down the hill,
But comes on foot, a goose-girl still.
And all the loveliest things there be
Come simply, so, it seems to me.
If ever I said, in grief or pride,
I tired of honest things, I lied:
And should be cursed forevermore
With Love in laces, like a whore,
And neighbours cold, and friends unsteady,
And Spring on horseback, like a lady!

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

Water!

The new pumphouse. My brother, Bob, designed and built the pumphouse to harmonize with the house and the other outbuilding, which of course haven’t been built yet.

Tuesday was a red-letter day. The guys from the plumbing company came out and installed the pump in the well. I now have water. There’s a hydrant behind the pumphouse for gardening and such, and there’s a hydrant for the trailer.

The water hydrant behind the pumphouse.

The photos below show the process of building the pumphouse and getting the pump in the well.

This photo is from last week. Bob works on the pumphouse outside his workshop. Bob prebuilt the pumphouse in his shop so that it would be ready to deliver and assemble after the water system was working. Bob’s design for the pumphouse is an amazing combination of attractiveness and utility. He prebuilt it in sections in his shop, so it took only a day today to set it up and nail and screw it all together on site today.

The pump guys lower the pump into the well. This was Tuesday.

One of the pump guys tests the new water system.

Bob assembles the pumphouse. This was today.

The building is well insulated.

Hmmm. Notice any gothic elements anywhere?

Creecy greens (and roadside produce stands)

A mess of creecy greens, probably from South Carolina

Creecy greens have a long history in America. They grew wild, and they appeared in late winter, often when there was still snow on the ground. My dad, who grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, used to say that after a long winter the mountain people developed a strong hunger for something fresh and green. So when the first creecies appeared, they were a feast.

Around here creecy greens can be bought this time of year from roadside markets. I bought these from a roadside produce stand on U.S. 601 near Mocksville. They were relatively pricey — $1.29 a pound. For comparison, cabbage was 39 cents a pound at the same market. The woman who runs the produce stand said she thinks the creecies came from South Carolina. Creecy greens are of the order brassicales, so they are related to cabbage and mustard.

Wintered-over cabbage, 39 cents a pound

Speaking of cabbage, the mountains just to the north of here are cabbage country. Carroll County, Virginia, long known for its cabbage, is diversifying into broccoli as well. I have not yet had a chance to try Carroll County broccoli. Though I have had excellent cabbage in California, there is a tendency in California for cabbage to be pale and fluffy. Proper cabbage should have dark green outer leaves, and it should be as dense and hard as a piece of marble (attention, San Francisco Chronicle food department: you need to do a piece on the dignity, selection, and use of cabbage).

There is only one device I’ve ever seen that chops cabbage quickly and easily for coleslaw, and I’ve tried everything, from blenders to food processors to chopping knives to mandolins. The device is the Wear-Ever salad maker. We had one when I was young. Last month my sister found one in the Goodwill Store at Mocksville, and she was kind enough to let me buy it (I think she wanted it, too). It makes fine slaw, fast, without making a mess and without a lot of waste. It’s a very handy thing to have, because the winter diet here calls for cabbage in some form almost every day.

A Wear-Ever salad maker. They were made in Oakland, California, in the 1950s and 1960s, and maybe earlier for all I know. You might be able to find one on eBay.

The 50-mile rule for local eating is a nice goal (and it might even be possible in a lot of places at some times of year), but for many Americans it’s not workable. I propose as an alternative the 50-year rule: if people in the same place had it 50 years ago, it probably makes economic sense to have it now. I’m no expert on the history of this, but having lived in these parts 50 years ago, it’s clear that the winter foods that were available then are the cheapest and best winter foods available now. This includes Florida oranges, cabbage (from Virginia?), pintos beans (South Carolina? Georgia? Texas?), onions, and potatoes. Fifty years ago, of course, was before the Interstate highway system. I suspect much of this produce came up U.S. Route 1 and went onward to New York and New England. Locally, it probably came by U.S. 601, which is a spur of U.S. Route 1.

Update, 5:50 p.m.:

The finished winter supper: creecy greens with a sweet-and-sour treatment (vinegar, olive oil, and a touch of turbinado sugar); warmed-over pinto beans (with sliced onion); fresh hot flaxseed pone; and salmon cakes. The salmon cakes certainly violate the 50-mile rule, but they don’t violate the 50-year rule. My mother used to make salmon cakes fairly often from canned salmon. This was a premium brand of wild red sockeye salmon from Whole Foods in a 7.5 ounce can. If you’re shipping food from Alaska, canned is the cheapest, which probably means it takes less energy than fresh or frozen salmon. And I admit it. I like fish burgers. This is a low-carb, high-protein, healthy country supper.

Creecy greens, pinto beans, flaxseed pone, and salmon cakes from wild sockeye salmon

More heavy machinery…

The evil machine at rest. It started raining as stone was brought to the driveway, and work had to stop. So the bulldozer waits in place for the ground to dry.

Is there anything uglier than a ditch? I spent hours today working on starting grass in it.

This has been a stressful week. I had far from recovered from having logging machinery on my land. But the septic tank guy and others convinced me that I had no choice but to remove the stumps and that the time to remove them all is now. I found someone nearby with heavy machinery, including a track hoe and a bulldozer. He said he’d prefer to use the bulldozer for the job. He promised that the stump removal would not take away my precious topsoil. We agreed that he would recut the drainage ditch along the road that was crushed by the loggers. And we agreed that he would make a driveway, which he said needed to have a wide enough turnout and wide enough culvert that heavy trucks bringing building materials wouldn’t crush the culvert or run off the driveway. He said he could hide all the removed stumps and brush out of sight beside a ravine at my back property line. He said that it would be a two-day job. The arguments for bringing in a bulldozer are about making a temporary mess now for a better-looking and more productive outcome later.

We agreed on a price, and he started on Monday. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, he was done with everything but hauling the three truckloads of stone for the driveway. Just as the truck arrived with the first load of stone, it started to rain, hard.

I got dripping wet trying to spread annual ryegrass seed on my exposed topsoil. I more or less got it covered, though. The stumps and brush had as he promised magically disappeared. I drove back to Yadkin in heavy rain, certain that the downpour was washing gullies all across the acre that the bulldozer reworked. I took the day off on Wednesday and didn’t go to Stokes. It wasn’t raining, but I knew the ground would be too wet for me to work, and I resisted the temptation to go all the way to Stokes just to see what the rain had done.

Thursday morning I got my first look at everything since the bulldozer and the rain. A miracle: no gullies, no messy runoff, and the little stream was running clear. What a relief. I spent the rest of the day sowing ryegrass and fescue on the ditch beside the road. I spread a straw blanket over the entire ditch. It’s 200 feet long. I put a bale of in front of the culvert. The ditch is unlikely to wash out now. I hope the grass will grow.

As soon as weather permits (more rain is forecast for tomorrow) I’ll give the same straw-blanket treatment to the exposed earth beside the driveway.

The crew that is to put the pump in the well has been delayed. Now they say they’ll be out Monday or Tuesday of next week.

I can already see that I’ll be spending a lot of time this spring getting grass and wildflowers to grow. I’ve decided not to plant the apple trees until fall.

More on flaxseed pones…

I’ve made a lot of flaxseed pones in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve learned from my mistakes. Most important: Don’t put too much liquid into the batter. If the batter is too wet and runny, the pone will never finish baking, and the texture will be gooey and disgusting. Keep the batter thick, so that it stands up when you put it into the baking pan. If the batter is so thin that it runs out to the edges of the pan, then the batter is too thin. Don’t worry if the batter mounds up in the baking pan. It will fill out once it starts to rise in the oven. I don’t quite understand the chemistry of this, because the opposite is true of biscuits. For a proper texture, biscuit dough needs to be as moist as possible. But flaxseed pone batter needs to be thick, thick, thick.

A second hint: Though I think there is no nutritional difference between golden flaxseed and brown flaxseed, the golden flaxseed makes a much prettier pone, the same color as corn bread. In fact, if you get your batter recipe right, many casual eaters of flaxseed pone would think they’re eating cornbread. It’s that good, and the texture of the bread is totally agreeable, in spite of the fact that flaxseed meal is much more like psyllium seed meal than corn meal.

Experienced makers of cornbread already know this, but for the newbies: Well-seasoned cast iron skillets are best for making pones. Get the skillet hot in the oven before adding the batter. If you’re making a supper pone, add some finely chopped onions to the skillet when you put the skillet into the oven to preheat. Half butter and half olive oil in the bottom of the skillet, with the onions sizzling during the preheating of the skillet, will make a fine crust for a supper pone. For a breakfast pone, omit the onions. Onions or not, the batter should sizzle when you pour it into the hot skillet.

The late-winter diet here in North Carolina is starting to change a bit. The Florida oranges seem to be getting more expensive and a bit more dry. But some fine turnip greens are showing up in the stores, cheap and fresh. And I still can’t get over how much better the onions are here than they are in California.

Here’s my earlier post on flaxseed pones.

Also, some Californians don’t seem to know what a skillet is (Hi, Clint and Joshua).