July 2008 – Page 2 – Into the Woods

Makin' the best of the early garden

With the garden sorta-kinda producing, curry seems to be the default supper. The squash came from the Danbury farmer’s market, because I’m still getting very few. But the cayenne, green pepper, and green tomatoes came from my garden. My sister grew the garlic.

A hastily improvised raita to go with the curry — cucumber and cherries. The cucumber came from the Danbury farmer’s market. The cherries came from Levering Orchard. Lesson learned: next time don’t attempt raita unless I have yogurt instead of cottage cheese. It wants to be creamy, not lumpy-runny.

Curry in the pan, with coconut oil

Crazy birds!

Wikipedia: a red-tailed hawk

It is never silent here. I am surrounded by a dense population of birds. One thing I’ve learned: It is wrong to think that birds always sing. Sometimes they do. But sometimes they yell. They quarrel. They scold. And clearly they communicate. The hawks have been extremely noisy for days down in the woods. I don’t know what kind of hawks they are, and I don’t know for sure why they have been so noisy. My assumption, though, is that they have fledglings on the ground or in the trees, and they’re looking out for and protecting the fledglings. I was able to get about 30 seconds of recording today when one of the hawks came to a nearby tree. Note that this is not just one hawk squawking. It is two more more hawks communicating. Or so I deduce because they take turns and don’t usually squawk at the same time. In this recording, at 28 seconds, the hawk starts to squawk, then its sound takes on a warbling sound. The warbling is because it took wing and flew back into the woods.

Click below to play the MP3 file:

David 0, Nature 962

Nature abhors a vacuum. I suspect that nature also abhors farmers. I have thrown massive amounts of labor, fertilizer, lime and seed at the acre I cleared of old pine trees back in February. I was desperate for ground cover. Though some of what I planted took root and grew some, once the rain begins to fall, nature proves that she is way better at this than I am. Some people would be ashamed to have so many weeds. I am proud of every last one of them. As rebellious children often do, the weeds have succeeded where I have failed. Above: a common weed.

A common weed

Baby mimosa. It’s a weed here.

I planted this! Peppermint.

A common weed

A young morning glory. I have lots of them. I have no idea how they got here. They could not possibly have been here before, because they’re growing in what was formerly deep, and deeply shaded, pine mulch.

A young scrub pine. There are lots of these. I’m sorry to say that, like the sawbriars, they won’t be permitted to stay. Their day is over, at least while I live here.

A common weed

Surprise surprise. The baby clover likes the compost that I put out for the squash.

The corn struggles in still-poor soil. I’m starting to understand what the soil needs, so next year it will be richer.

A squash bloom

A cucumber bloom (I think)

My first baby watermelon

A common weed

Flowers in the ditch

The ditch has been transformed. Back in March it was an ugly gash left by the bull dozer. The logging operation had ruined the ditch, so it had to be opened again to drain the roadway. For reasons I don’t completely understand, the ditch has healed much more quickly than any other area after I took out the pine trees.

Flowers in the ditch. Actually, this is a common briar. This year, us likes briars.

Runners from a bold briar sneak out of the ditch and try to take over the roadway. I say go for it.

The jungle in the ditch

For something like 50 pounds of clover seed, so far I have seen something like two clover blossoms. Two! But the rain has caused the clover to make another stand, so who knows what the future holds.

The clover tries again in July, having not done too well in April.

I believe this is a wild strawberry. It volunteered on the bare bank above the newly made driveway, the area that I have found most difficult to get anything to grow.

Baby peas. I planted these.

I’m not sure what this is. It’s in an area where I put a variety of heirloom seed, but for all I know it’s a volunteer weed of some sort. I guess I’ll find out after I see whether it produces anything I can eat. [Update: I have it from two experts — my sister and my friend Gavin — that this is okra. So it’s an heirloom variety of okra that I’d forgotten I planted.]

Looking down into the same bloom as in the photo above

A baby poplar tree makes a stand near the new pumphouse. Around here, poplars and maples are the first hardwoods to appear in the succession of species that leads to the recovery of a hardwood forest. This poor baby has relatives all around, and it probably came back from an old root rather than from a new seed.

Fried green tomatoes…

… for when you just can’t wait any longer for the tomatoes to get ripe. These tomatoes are fried in a simple batter of whole wheat flour, water, a little baking powder, and a little salt. A generous portion of coconut oil went into the frying pan.

Hurricane season begins

Weather Underground

The Atlantic hurricane season is off and running. Tropical Storm Bertha is now forming in the South Atlantic. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground, whose excellent blog follows these storms and gives good descriptions of the meteorology behind them, says that Bertha has already set a record. It’s the farthest east a tropical storm has ever formed this early in the season. Masters thinks that this may mean that the 2008 hurricane season may be more active than average.

Here in Northwest North Carolina, up against the mountains, a strong hurricane season is good news rather than bad news. Hurricanes rarely do much damage this far inland, but they often bring excellent rains and interesting tropical weather.

Vegan pesto

Vegan pesto with homegrown basil and homegrown garlic

If you’ve got fresh basil (and I do — apparently the deer don’t like it and left it for me), then you’ve got to make pesto. No pine nuts? Use walnuts. No parmesan? Use … brewer’s yeast. Living in an RV and no proper chopping instruments? Just lazily mince the basil as best you can. Pesto is very flexible and very forgiving. Macaroni (whole wheat, at least) works just fine.

I’m not a vegan, but I love good vegan cookery. Brewer’s yeast is a staple that I always keep on hand. During the winter I used it as a binder in salmon cakes. I’m finding that it makes a nice, nutty substitute for grated parmesan. It helps if you’ve ever been to the Red Vic Movie House on Haight Street in San Francisco. Having their brewer’s yeast popcorn is a good lesson in not being afraid of brewer’s yeast.

Here in the rural South, though, the concept of parmesan seems to be different. Ordinary grocery stores have it, but it’s coarsely grated, soft, and greasy, more like grated jack cheese than parmesan. Apparently that’s what country people like, the same way they like salad dressings so thick that they won’t pour and have to be served with a spoon. I’m finding that Southerners have even forgotten what good mayonnaise is all about. A country grocery store may have twelve different brands of mayonnaise, but every one of them will contain adulterants and inferior ingredients, and they’re not fit to eat. Another complaint, as long as I’m complaining, is that Southerners of all people don’t seem to understand buttermilk anymore. It’s almost impossible to find buttermilk that doesn’t have adulterants like tapioca. I’ve given up on buttermilk and have just switched to soy milk. But I haven’t given up on speaking to grocery store managers. If I find the manager and say politely that it sure would be nice to have buttermilk that’s just buttermilk, the manager looks at me like I’m from Mars. But I soldier on.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, people understand about good milk. Around here, that’s been forgotten. People buy whatever the local dairy sells. They don’t read the labels, and they don’t ask questions. Hormones? No problem. Preservatives? No problem. Tapioca in the buttermilk? No problem. I’m tempted to draw parallels between Southerners’ passivity and ignorance about who sells them good food to their passivity and ignorance about who sells them good government. But I’ll leave that for another day, even as I continue to ask grocery store managers if they have any better buttermilk, and where did those onions come from.