May 2010 – Page 2 – Into the Woods

Strawberry preserves

The sign marks the spot on Brook Cove Road.

It had been 20 years since I’d made strawberry preserves. Ken was eager to make preserves for the first time. Monday, May 10, was an unusually cool day, perfect for picking strawberries. So off to Mabe’s Berry Farm we went. Mabe’s Berry Farm is on Brook Cove Road near Walnut Cove.

A strawberry field worker loads berries to be sold already picked.

The berries are cheaper if you pick them yourself. Here’s Ken with the three gallons of strawberries we picked.

Our berries are transferred to boxes for the ride home.

Back at home, the jars and berries are almost ready to start. The jars will go into the dishwasher to get them clean and hot.

Ken caps strawberries.

Washed and capped and ready to cook

The strawberries are boiled with sugar. The preserves use a lot of sugar — five cups of sugar for each quart and a half of strawberries. The lids are boiling in the pot to the right.

All done.

Skink on the window screen

Most people call these skinks, but after a bit of Wikipedia-ing, I wonder if they aren’t lizards rather than skinks. In any case, I call them the porch lizards, because they’re often seen on all three of the porches at Acorn Abbey.

This summer at Acorn Abbey…

David and Ken use a rented machine to drill post-holes for the garden fence. The trailer is gone now, by the way. I sold it the same afternoon this photo was taken. The trailer was my home while Acorn Abbey was under construction.

Now that the house is built, much outdoor work remains to be done. The first priority is a deer fence. There is an overpopulation of white-tail deer here, and they can destroy a garden overnight. There also is a great deal of planting and landscaping work to be done. I was despairing of how all this work would get done, so that my vision for Acorn Abbey can continue to unfold. Much of this work — especially the fence-building — requires two people. It’s hard work, and I am not a young’un anymore. It would be possible to pay someone to do this work, but that wouldn’t be frugal, would it, if alternatives can be found?

The alternative turns out to be Ken Ilgunas. Ken, you may recall, visited Acorn Abbey during the winter. Part scholar and part adventurer, Ken was looking for a frugal summer situation that combined peace and quiet for reading with old-fashioned outdoor physical labor. Am I lucky or what? As I mentioned when Ken first visited Acorn Abbey, he has become quite a celebrity after he wrote a piece in Salon Magazine about how he lives in his van while attending graduate school at Duke University. Here’s a link to the Salon article. Many media outlets picked up Ken’s story and interviewed him. Here’s a link to an ABC News video. A literary agent recruited Ken, and they’re working on a book proposal about Ken’s experience living in the van while going to Duke. Ken brought 50 books for summer reading from the Duke library.

On Monday, we picked three gallons of strawberries at Mabe’s Berry Farm and put up 17 pints of strawberry preserves. Photos of the preserve-making will follow soon. We also started building the garden fence. It’s an ambitious fence project. The fence is to be 365 feet long and almost 8 feet high. It will surround the garden area, the chicken house, and my small orchard of 11 trees. After several dawn-to-dusk workdays, the fence posts are all planted. Next week we’ll work on the wire. I’m planning to save the fence-building photos and post them all at once, hoping that our fence-building experience and methods may be useful to someone else who needs to build a deer fence.

I’m exhausted from a week of hard work (though Ken doesn’t seem to be). I’ve declared that we’re going to take the weekend off from hard labor outdoors.

Ken caps strawberries.

The mystery bud blooms

The mystery buds have bloomed. However, I still don’t know what they are. Can anyone identify them?

Update: My sister has identified them: coreopsis.

Old Southern house trimmings

Much of the South’s old rural housing stock is falling into ruin. This is the case with the Yadkin Valley house that my mother was born in. It was built by her grandfather. The house, and most of the land the house sits on, is no longer in the family.

I’m considering salvaging a tiny bit of tradition by duplicating the trim on the front porch posts of my mother’s childhood home. My brother did this. He copied the pattern and used it for the front porch of his house, which is about 25 years old.

Though the pattern is not exactly Gothic revival, I’m thinking that tradition may trump strict adherence to the Gothic revival style of Acorn Abbey.

New day lilies

Waiting to be planted

In July of 2008, I planted 300 day lily sets on the bank above my driveway. They’re thriving, and they should start blooming later this month. All these day lilies are the humble orange “railroad” lilies like the ones that grow wild.

And now an old friend (who happens to be the best gardener I’ve ever known) has sent me six varieties of exotic day lilies. They came from Stout Gardens.

I think the most interesting of the lot is the “Joan Senior,” a white day lily that I assume is named for Joan of Arc, one of whose symbols is the fleur de lys.

Stout Gardens

Sourdough starter R.I.P.

The sourdough crock, after a good washing

I am ashamed to report that my sourdough starter is dead. It molded. I suppose I put too much faith in advice gleaned searching the web that a sourdough starter could safely live outside the refrigerator for up to a week. So I have a new rule: The sourdough starter will stay in the fridge except when it’s being fed.

My sister dispatched a jar of her sourdough starter to Stokes County with my brother, who had to make the trip to Stokes to bring a new bathroom cabinet he built for me. My sister’s starter also is fairly new and homemade. She’s had very good luck with it and has made several loaves of good bread.

My sister’s sourdough starter, recently fed for making bread tomorrow

First rose

Here’s one of the first roses of summer. These are low maintenance, low-growing “knockout” roses. I planted them beside the ditch along the road.

Blackberries volunteer everywhere. This one is in the ditch beside the road, but the edge of the woods is lined with young blackberry bushes.

I’ve planted a number of arbor vitae trees. They’ve become one of my favorite evergreens. They’re growing well. If you look closely, you can see the lighter-colored new growth on the edges of the leaves.

Mystery bud: Last spring I planted several pounds of bulk wildflower seeds. Most of them were perennials and didn’t bloom the first year. This year they should bloom. Here’s an example. I have no idea what it is, but any day now the bud should open, and we’ll see what the mystery buds are.