We are so rich with lettuce right now that we donated some of it to the Stokes Future Farmers’ Market.
The garden is looking great. Photos soon…
Kitty and Ronda, who help hold the farmers’ market together
A good drink was had by all
There had been barely half an inch of rain in the last month. Yesterday, it rained — 1.56 inches. This morning you can almost feel the exuberance of the green things. The honeysuckle and the roses are just getting started. We’ve been eating lettuce for a week, and now we’re covered up with lettuce. The first broccoli probably will be harvested today, and mustard greens tomorrow. Soon there will be cabbage and onions.
American classic
Sometimes when I am out and about and the only choice is to eat what the natives eat or go hungry, I eat what the natives eat. One of the few reliable items on any country menu will be the hamburger. This is because it’s food they understand, and they have to make it fresh.
This classic American burger is at Jim’s Grill near Yadkinville, North Carolina. Jim’s Grill has been around for decades. In the 1950s, it was a hot spot, with curb service, a jukebox, burgers, shakes, and teen-agers. Now it’s a place where old people go for lunch. Many of those old people, no doubt, went there as teen-agers in the 1950s.
It’s that farmer’s market time of year
The farmer’s market nearest to the abbey is in Danbury, and today it opened for the season. It’s operated by a group called Stokes Future, several members of which are friends of the abbey. So far, there’s not much fresh produce available other than lettuce and onions. But you can buy honey from bees that are only a few miles away, or a book written at the abbey.
Iris
How to find a dark sky
The dark blue areas are reasonably dark skies. One of the darkest areas on the East Coast is in West Virginia. Note that almost the entire state of North Carolina has ruined skies, with the exception of the Dismal Swamp in the northeast corner of the state.
One of the cruelest, most magic-killing forms of our alienation from nature is our inability to see the stars. Light pollution, of course, is the cause of it. Cities, suburbs, rural areas, fracking areas — all these places are brightly lit, all night. Massive quantities of fossil fuel are expended to drive off the darkness. This is insane, but it is only one of the many forms of insanity that we’re no longer even aware of anymore, because that’s Just the Way Things Are.
Would you like to see how far you’d have to travel to see a dark sky? Here’s a link to instructions on how to get a light-pollution overlay for Google Earth. First you download a light-pollution map (it’s a TIFF image) from a site in Italy. Then follow the instructions in the link to load the overlay into Google Earth and position the overlay correctly.
I am in northwestern North Carolina, north of Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Note that the nearest dark sky, for me, is in southern Virginia, between Hillsville and Floyd. I am quite familiar with that area. It’s isolated, is sparsely settled, and is reachable on tiny, winding roads.
In my novel, Fugue in Ursa Major, the young protagonist is a stargazer. The novel begins with Jake driving southwest from Charlottesville to go stargazing, to the blue area west of Grayson, Virginia.
The new publication date for the novel, by the way, is May 30. I’m still waiting for one of the first readers to finish. He’s an academic and won’t have time to read the draft until the end of the academic year, which is — tomorrow! His feedback on the novel is very important to me, so I’m holding up the release of the book for a few more weeks.
The griefs of starting an orchard
This apple tree looks spare and lanky because it was pruned heavily last winter. It won’t produce much fruit this year and instead will put all its 2014 effort into the growth of the tree. But, next year and in future years, the pruning will pay off.
Lucky is the man who has a mature, productive orchard. Starting an orchard is like trying to raise children in the Dark Ages — the investment is enormous, and the mortality and accompanying heartbreak run high. The oldest trees in the abbey’s orchard will be six years old this fall. The other trees vary in age, as trees that have been lost have been replaced. This process of death and replacement continues.
Among the lessons learned, a couple of things stand out. For one (as with dogs), know your breeder. Fruit trees that come from fruit-tree puppy mills may look nice when you see them at the big-box hardware store. But they may have come from nurseries far away, and they may be of stock and varieties that are not hardy and not suitable for your area.
The abbey’s strongest trees are all old Southern varieties of antique or heirloom apple trees from a nursery two counties to the east that specializes in such trees — Century Farm Orchards. Though I lost (and replaced) two of those twelve six-year-old trees, that mortality rate is good compared with the mortality rate of other fruit trees. We’ve almost given up on cherry trees. Insects defoliate them. We were on our second or third attempt at growing fig trees, and things were looking good, until the near-zero temperatures last winter killed the figs. So while the cherry trees, figs, and even the pears die of the whooping coughs, smallpoxes and scarlet fevers that afflict young fruit trees, the hardy old apple trees and peach trees carry on. Getting fruit trees to maturity is not a small challenge.
We were tempted to attempt olives. But we pretty quickly decided against it, because olives are not truly suited to this area, and the risk of mortality in any given year would be high. Even figs are a big risk. But we love figs so much that we soldier on.
If (at least in this area) you want maximum fruit and minimum grief in your young orchard, stick with apples and peaches, of old and proven varieties, from known nurseries with a track record and a nurseryman who will answer your emails (as David Vernon from Century Farm Orchards always does).
A baby peach
Baby apples
A fig stalk, killed by the cold winter, though its roots may still be alive
Wild ramps, and ramp pesto
I have heard of ramps for many years, but not until today did I finally taste them. Ramps are members of the onion-garlic-leek family, and they grow wild all over the Appalachians. A friend gave them to me on a recent trip to Asheville. Ramps appear in April, I believe, and then they fade.
I made the tops of the ramps into pesto. Though the bulbs (which look like little onions) are as edible as the tops, I saved the bulbs to plant in the branch bottom where the May apples grow. There is a good chance that the ramps will naturalize here in the Stokes County foothills.
The tops have a mild oniony taste, much like leeks, but more tender. They made a delicious pesto.
Monticello
Click on images for high-res version
I was on the road for the past week. The first stop was Lynchburg, Virginia. Then I went on to Charlottesville, and from there to Asheville, North Carolina.
Partly I was checking out settings that I used in my novel, Fugue in Ursa Major. The book is still in the revision stage (new publication date May 30, I hope), so there was time to tweak descriptions of some of the settings, if necessary. Luckily, it won’t be necessary, though I may write in a few minor details. Google Earth, along with photos found on the web, are excellent resources for writers. An important scene occurs on the campus of the University of Virginia, so I spent a good bit of time there, seeing things with my own eyes and taking photographs. Also, when Jake, the young protagonist of the novel, goes stargazing, he drives south from Charlottesville on Interstate 81 toward the area of the Appalachians where the borders of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina come together. I followed that route to Asheville.
Monticello is stunning. Photographs of Monticello usually fail to capture that the house sits on the crest of a small mountain, with amazing views in all directions. I also had never realized how Charlottesville’s hills are part of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Blue Ridge Parkway extends north of Roanoke almost to Charlottesville, and I-81 shadows the route of the parkway for many miles.
The gardens at Monticello
The gardens at Monticello
The dome at the University of Virginia. The dome was visible from Monticello with a telescope, and Jefferson watched its construction from home.
Coping with screwy weather
A brief warm spell about three weeks ago gave us hope that we might be able to make an early start with the garden. It was not to be. A cold spell followed, and two nights with hard frost. Only the lettuce germinated decently. Even the broccoli and cauliflower, which we started from plants, had minor damage from the frost.
We decided to re-till the area where the seeds didn’t germinate and try again in a week or so when the weather is warmer. Ken took advantage of the downtime in the garden to apply some of the organic soil amendments that had been delivered late, including dried kelp, cottonseed meal, blood meal, bone meal, and lime.
The two new chickens have been transferred out of the bird cage in the house to the chicken coop. They were getting too big and too rowdy to remain indoors.
An apple blossom damaged by frost