trees-- growing to the sky

daughter.  and plums.

I was working in the backyard last week with Hunter, a fellow blogger- whose blog has also gone partially dormant.  We were making cider from apples he had foraged from around town, and the last of a batch that I had gotten from an orchard near Le Sueur.  We had a lot of apples to work through and it took most of the afternoon.

It was a pretty much perfect fall day- golden sunshine, a little chill in the air, but not enough to make a jacket really necessary.  The smell of apples while we worked.  A little breeze.  A few clouds.  Smell of some smoke from a neighbor's fire. 

While we worked we both noted that the blogs that we've followed for years- the ones dealing with peak resources and climate change adaptation and global economic stuff seem to be falling by the wayside.  Going dormant like ours.  And why is that?

Are things really different this time?  Are trees going to grow to the sky?  Will the Dow reach 40,000 and the Singularity dawn upon the eastern horizon?  Why shouldn't everything we want to happen, just happen because we want it to?

Because of gravity.  And those laws of physics and stuff.

About which I am not an expert.

I am an expert, of sorts, on plants though.  And I don't know of any trees that do grow to the sky.  

The hard limits which have always been there, are still there, and printing money hasn't changed that.  Of course, I do have a job at present, and that makes my worldview reasonably rosy- and I'm working on starting a business, which makes it rosier yet.

But part of the reason behind that business- is the creation of resilience- moving into an industry that is needed- or at least wanted- during the best and the worst of times.

Right now- my desk job- my real job- is as a landscape architect.  I learned a lot about design and planning and theory and plants while in school, and now I mostly design sidewalks and parking lots.  Not a necessary profession in a world where few things are being built.  The recession of 2008- the last time that people suddenly needed fewer things built- hit people in my profession hard, and many haven't returned.  Those that remain are worked harder, sometimes for less pay.  It's not a pretty picture, but one that a lot of people have learned to live with.

I don't know that it will get any better either.

Now- take the area  I'm moving into- manufacturing wine, cider and mead.  Making alcohol.  That's a product that's always in demand.  Using ingredients from city trees, or surplus from agricultural production or distribution moreover.  It's resilient in the way that a job designing parking lots isn't. 

The decentralized supply chain is a central part of it.  This year so far, we've picked apples from trees half a block off of Lake Street in Minneapolis, plums from a lot just across from downtown St. Paul, organic apples from a cabin in western Wisconsin and the previously mentioned organic apples from a small farm in Le Sueur.

We've juiced them all and they're fermenting in our basement right now.  The trees they came from won't grow to the sky, but they will produce fruit every year- so long as the sun shines and the soil is alive. 

So long as the climate doesn't change too quickly or too radically- those trees will provide us with the raw material to make something delicious and potent- the way they have for thousands of years. They are the real source of wealth.   They won't grow to the sky- but who can pick fruit in the sky?  I'd rather have the fruit on the ground.
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In that vein- if you would like to support our effort to start Urban Forage Winery and Cider House, take a look at our kickstarter video.  I've posted the link below.  If you like what you see, consider making a contribution.  Even a small one helps. 

Thanks for continuing to read eighth acre farm even as I post less often and put a greater amount of energy and time into this new venture.  I appreciate it.

Cheers.

Urban Forage Kickstarter link here

a summer to test a gardener's mettle

late august rain garden.  this is one area that did really well this wet and cool summer

It would have been a hard summer for gardening even if my focus had been completely on it.

It wasn't and my garden showed it.  Both my backyard and my community garden space look worse than they have since I started them.  The rain garden (above) looks great.  Not because I did a lot to maintain it, but because it gets most of the water that comes off the roof of our house, and half of the water off our garage.  There's some happy ferns in there, and some phlox and a (new this year) japanese maple.

There's the newish job and the winery startup, and this Saturday a surprise with a plugged sanitary sewer line at our rental place that resulted in me spending most of a beautiful day in a dark basement with a wet-vac slurping up fecal matter. 

That aside-- it was a gorgeous weekend-- with kids getting their last swim of the summer in our neighbor's front yard.  The neighborhood kids and ours decided to bring all the pools and waterslide all to one yard and make their own water park.  So they did, or the dads did, and it was fun.  Dads (and a mom) also having beers while kids play.  It was nice to be in town and have others in town as well- a wonderful end to a rainy, cool and really busy summer.

Cool and rainy enough that we never used air conditioning this summer.  We have a couple of window units I install in the bedrooms each year on the first really truly hot and humid day of the summer in order to be able to be able to sleep.  But they were never really needed.  We spent a night or two in the basement, but that was it.  No AC-related backache for me this summer.  Thanks global weirding! 

Of course, I may have to install them during a heat wave in November now.   You never know. 

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So I dug out my purple potatoes and onions this last Saturday, after marking out paths and plot boundaries for 20 more plots at our community garden.  The garden is doing well, maybe even better, without me being at the helm, and that's good to see. 

As one gardener commented last year- "This is becoming less of a community garden and more of a gardening community."  Which I think is a good way to be.  Gardeners have stepped up and filled vacant roles and taken charge.  So I get to do more actual gardening- at least in theory.

I had a great crop of crabgrass in my plot this year.  I finally dug over the entire plot this spring, and I can say with confidence that the tilling allowed a lot more weeds to grow.  I haven't had crabgrass anywhere close  to this in the first two years there.  I did a no-till experiment the first year- tilling only half of the plot, then did minimal till the second year.  Relatively few weeds both times.  This year- a thorough turnover and a crabgrass explosion! 

For anyone interested in the results of the no-till experiment- the no-till side had soil that was a bit denser, and still compacted, but not to the point that I had expected after two years.  I could dig to about 6 or 8 inches on the no-till side, and 8 to 10 inches on the tilled side.  Both sides had improved organic matter, and both had earthworms.   The sides were remarkably similar, for having been treated so differently. 

So I guess I'll continue with minimal tillage and layering  on organic matter.   I think a balanced approach- that roughs up the surface soil, but doesn't deep dig, at least not every year seems to work.  Weedier in the early spring, but over the course of the summer, less weedy if I can get at the May weeds. 

I have no idea where I'll be at next spring and summer with my garden.  If all goes well with the Kickstarter campaign, I'll be equipping a winery next April or so.  Which won't leave me a lot of time for planting stuff.  Although, in theory, the idea behind this is to allow me to spend more time as an urban agriculturalist, or at least the producer of value-added urban agricultural products.

There is beauty in the busy-ness of starting a business.  Hard to see the beauty sometimes, but I'd be busy with something else if I wasn't doing this.  I apologize to you if you've been disappointed by my lack of updated posts here at eighth acre farm.  I never intended to let this blog go dormant, but other things pulled at my time- particularly that other blog- the Urban Forage one- that has had a bit more urgency to it, given all the other things going on.

I will keep posting here- maybe not often enough, but still here.  Cheers.  And happy fall.

Urban Forage Winery and Cider House!

last fall's crop of hard cider

I may not have been emphatic enough in my last post.  I tend to do that.

But yes, we ARE starting a business that makes wines, ciders (and mead!) from local fruit and honey.

It's a windy, bumpy road- starting a business that makes alcohol in Minnesota in 2014.  A bit easier than it may have been a couple of years ago, but still a bumpy road.

I spent a considerable amount of time while I was unemployed lobbying for the passage of a bill in my state legislature that would allow urban wineries to be treated the same as farm wineries.

I had no luck there.  The Minnesota farm wineries know that they have a good thing going and don't want to let anyone else in on it.  Right now they pay a tenth of the licensing fee of a non-farm winery and are allowed to make a full range of products, including hard liquor and have a bar, and have on-site retail sales.   Me, being in the city and not the owner of a large tract of land, must pay the full fee and sell through an approved wholesaler and so on and so forth.

Soooooooo... 

our first piece of professional equipment- a rather attractive 300 liter stainless fermenter

I am pondering the options.  Open a brewery- or at least a business that is licensed as a brewery, and comply with the regulations (silly as they are) that require that I mix everything I make with at least 25% barley sugar (also known as malt) to magically make them into beer.  So I can make cider, mead, fruit concoctions- with 1/4 malt syrup, and they can be sold under far fewer restrictions than can the same beverages made solely with fruit or honey.  Then, I can have a bar- or taproom as it is known in Minnesota- and I can sell bottles of cider and mead for home consumption.

On the other hand- I could go for the more expensive and restrictive winery license- and produce wines, fortified wines, meads and ciders which are completely gluten-free and made from pure extracts of whatever I choose to make them from and make them as strong as the yeast will allow them to be.  This is the purists' route, and of course the route I'd prefer to go- except that it may not be monetarily viable- at least in the short term.  One of the tiny little problems with going this route is the fact that the only outlet for my wines, meads or ciders would be, by law, through a wholesaler, who would then sell to a retailer, and who would both take a rather large cut of the profit and leave me with relatively little.

Yes, the law makes no sense.  Some people have advised me to buy a farm, which I admit I've thought about.  But that would also mean selling our house, uprooting our kids and a adopting a completely different lifestyle, not to mention the possibility of failure being much more catastrophic if I'm unable to get a job in whatever rural area we'd end up in.

our kids and a couple of their cousins- gathering dandelions in Highland Park

No- I love the city, and everything that goes with it, good and bad. 

One of the good things about the city for an aspiring winemaker is the glut of fruit and flowers that grows all around and never makes it into food or forage.  There are countless apple and plum and mulberry trees going unpicked within a few miles of us because the owners are too busy to pick them, don't know what the fruit is, are afraid of bugs, or simply don't know that they can pick the fruit off of their tree as easily, if not more so, than they can pick fruit from the produce section of Whole Paycheck.  It's that fruit that I want to harvest and make into wine and cider.  And mead from the nectar, gathered by the hardworking bees of the city.

That's my vision.  For now, I am still working full time as a landscape architect.  Harder than ever at the new job.  I sit at my computer, looking out the window and wondering what else I could be doing at that moment- what opportunity is passing by that I'm not taking advantage of.  What fruit is falling off of a tree unnoticed.  What license I should be applying for that I'm not.  What person should I be calling to talk about labels?   So much to do, and so little time.

How many dandelions do you need to make a batch of wine?  About this many.

The newest batch, now in the new 300 liter (about 80 gallons) fermenter is a batch of dandelion wine, with some lilacs added for extra bouquet.  It's the flavor of Minnesota in May- the essence of the most loved and the most hated of the flowers of Minnesota.  At least that is what I'm shooting for.  It'll be ready to try in September.  Just in time for our Kickstarter campaign.


If you'd like to learn more see our new website:  urbanforagewinery.com and/or our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/urbanforagewinery


Cheers!


Jeff

steampunk dehydrators & other fun things

the steampunk dehydrator

I had some fun over the weekend cobbling together a solar dehydrator for Gita.  She wanted to dry out some bitter gourds that she had purchased at the Asian food store, and didn't want to smell up the house (because they don't smell good) or burn lots of energy using the electric stove to dry them out.

So I rummaged around in the basement storage room for an old electric grill which I knew had been down there for years, and which I had looked at before and thought that it might have potential as a solar cooker.  It's an old West Bend electric frying/grilling thing that has a black metal base and a glass cover.  From the looks of it, it's between 10 and 15 years old.

Also in the basement junk closet was a bathroom medicine cabinet with a beveled mirror.  It was in perfectly good shape, but it didn't fit in our remodeled and reconfigured bathroom.  So I repurposed it as a solar reflector.

It was a simple - and kind of ugly- combination, but it worked fairly well to dry out the bitter gourds. 
In the spirit of John Michael Greer, I'll call it a steampunk dehydrator, rather than a bathroom mirror married to an electric skillet.

 As for the bitter gourds, Gita will powder them with a mortar and pestle and eat the powder mixed into other foods over the next few months.  It's apparently an effective Ayurvedic remedy for preventing cancer and other ailments.  I've tried them (in whole form, not powdered) in curry, and they're really, truly bitter, but it's a flavor that grows on you over time.  If you enjoy really bitter foods, you can find them at most Asian food stores, or at many farmers' markets these days.

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So I started a new job today.  Much the same as my previous one- but in a different location and with a little bit different mix of projects.  I'm still a landscape architect for a consulting firm as my day job.  The upside is that now I'll be working mostly on designing schoolyards and their associated parking lots and retaining walls, rather than parking lots and retaining walls for oil refineries and chemical plants. 

It also comes with a pay raise, which is a bit of a surprise after being laid off, but a very nice one.

The last two months have been a bit chaotic, what with all of the running around that the unemployment deities make a person do to justify the weekly check, the jobsearch itself, and the additional duties that come from suddenly becoming a house husband and primary caregiver for two beautiful kids.

Additionally, I've been pursuing a longtime dream.  Something that has been slowly but surely growing over the last year, and which I haven't discussed in this blog, at least not yet.

Not that it isn't relevant to the eighth acre farm.  It is.  It's all about local organic food production, and making something out of that food.  It's also about resilience in the face of peak oil and climate change.  And it's about building community around something that very much brings people together-- liquor.

Yes, liquor.  In this case it will be produced by the fine establishment to be known as Urban Forage Winery and Cider House.

It's an idea that has been brewing for a while, and which still has a long way to go, but if you'd like to follow our progress, I'll be blogging about it at the Urban Forage Winery and Cider House blog.  I may be posting there a bit more often than here, since that's where my energy is focused at the moment.

We're hoping to kick off a Kickstarter campaign soon, so if you're feeling generous, feel free to participate!  I'll give details as the time gets closer.

Cheers!

leading economic indictor- my job

well, now I have more time to spend with the kids

   So, last Friday I got a call from the head of Human Resources while I was sitting in my cubicle trying to finish a project that I was supposed to turn in before the end  of the day.  In a very nice voice he asked, "Would you mind coming down to my office, Jeff?"

Of course.  Why wouldn't I?  But I knew exactly what the call meant as soon as I got it.  The same call I've heard that others had gotten a few years ago when layoffs happened in waves, each month or so during the depths of the Great Recession.

I  walked down the stairs,slowly, to the HR Director's office.  I've been there before to chat.  I had designed his patio and some of the landscaping for his yard, so I stopped by every so often to see how things were going and to say hi.

The Vice President of the Architecture Division was there too.  I pretty much knew he would be, because I had heard that this was what happened when they were going to lay you off.  Make you reudundant.  Kick you out the door.  Send you a pink slip.

So we had the obligatory awkward conversation. Your workload had been low for the last couple of months.  It isn't your fault.  We'll have you back as a casual worker if we have more work to do soon.  Oh, and your health insurance ends today, sorry.  Here's a form to sign if you'd like to get severance pay. Think it over, and get back to us.

At least they didn't walk me out the door as I've heard they've done to others.  I suppose I didn't pose much of a threat.  I've never made a stink about anything in the past and I suppose they knew I wouldn't about this either.  Even so- I decided that I wanted to clean out my desk that afternoon and make sure I didn't have to come back again.  For what, I can't really say.   Maybe to face the humiliation of seeing everyone, knowing I'd been laid off, when they weren't. One other guy, an architect, was laid off at the same time, but I still didn't want to face those who were left behind if I didn't have to.

It felt very different than I had imagined, being laid off.  In the past- in 2009 and 2010, when seemed like layoffs occurred every odd Friday there was a sort of funereal air about the office as the rumors drifted around of who had lost their job that day.  Of who may be next.  Would it be me?  Back then I had two very young children at home.  We had an infant and a toddler and I desperately didn't want to lose my job.  It would have been close to catastrophic at that time, and fortunately the axe never fell on me.

But I imagined it, and I prepared, to the extent that it was possible.  We saved some money.  Never enough, but more than we may have otherwise.  We gardened like crazy and canned food.  We looked into alternative employment.  I imagined that the act of being laid off would be as gloomy and funereal as hearing about the layoffs of others, but without the welcome rush of relief of making it through another Friday without the call to the HR office.

The reality was very unlike I had imagined it.  I dreaded the walk down the stairs.   I knew who I'd see in the office, with the exception of the CEO.   I heard he sat in on some of the firings in the past.  He didn't show up for mine.  It was just the three of us, and a fairly friendly conversation.   My voice caught in my throat at times, but I kept it together.  Because, as they were taking my job away, they were also offering me a sort of liberation.

I cleaned my desk out in a haze.  I was out of a job I'd had for seven and a half years.  But not a job that I particularly liked or wanted to hold on to that badly.  A job where I could have done so much, but where I mostly designed parking lots and designed the minimum necessary green stuff to meet the minimum requirements of whatever city or county or watershed district the client happened to have their facility located within.

I sent an email to all my co-workers thanking them for seven and a half years of companionship and mentoring and growth and left my contact information in case anyone wanted to be in touch.  I wasn't sure if my email would work for very long, so I wrote it quickly and sent it without editing.  I could have written more but I didn't.

A technician I hadn't talked to very much during my time at the company, but who I enjoyed talking with when I did, walked out to my car with me, and waited with the push cart full of my desk stuff, while I pulled my car from the parking ramp around into the waiting area to load up my four boxes of books and office junk.  We talked for what have must been a half hour- about how the job sucked.  How the older folks in the office did next to nothing but earned twice our salary.  How people our age were always the ones who were laid off and how it made no sense for the future of the company.  It felt really good, and I wished I had had this conversation with him a year ago, when it could have reaffirmed my faith in the goodness of my co-workers and the company itself.

Also unexpected were the short letters and notes I got that day from (now former) co-workers who had also been laid off in the past and who offered messages of condolence and hope for better things to come.  They were heartfelt and uplifting in the way that a Hallmark card isn't.  Those were the best part of the layoff day, and they made all the difference.

My heart felt light  as I pulled away from the gloomy turnaround in the underpass between office buildings where I once worked.  I was leaving and not coming back and that was OK with me.

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So this last week has been one of readjustment.  Of my spending more time finishing off our home renovation.  Fortunately we've already purchased most of the expensive stuff, and what remains is doing the hard work of putting it all together.   I have plenty of time for that now.  And dropping off and picking up the kids from school.   And working on new job leads, as well as the prospect of self-employment, now that I no longer have a 'no-moonlighting' agreement hanging over my head.

It's liberating- as much so, or even more, than it is depressing.  The initial shock was hard to take.  Now, seven days later, it feels pretty good.   Today, Gita and I spent the day at a seminar held by a St. Paul based non-profit on starting our own business.  I would have had to sneak out of work and feel guilty to attend something like this before.   Now I can do it honestly on my own time.  Now I can say 'yes' to people who are asking if I have time to take a look a their yard this spring.   That is, if, in fact I don't have a full-time gig lined up by then.  I can, in fact, look at all the opportunities that I haven't had the time, energy or ambition to pursue in the last seven and a half years as I was bound to a place which churned out parking lots and highway medians with abandon. 

I would have had difficulty walking out of there on my own- so I owe them a certain amount of gratitude for making the decision on my behalf.

On to bigger and better things.

polar vortex redux

frost covered garage

  

If I had a nickel for all the times I wanted to leave Minnesota in the mid-winter I'd have a big jar of nickels by now.  I love my state, but it's so damn cold here in the winter sometimes.

It keeps the riffraff out.  At least that's what people say.  Of course if that's true, why hasn't it kept me out?

This cold is hard to deal with.  It's supposed to get no warmer than minus four tomorrow in Saint Paul.  But it's also beautiful at times.  I woke up the other morning and went to get something out of the garage- can't remember what- but found the door and lock covered with a delicate lacework of snow that was blown onto it by the snowstorm the night before.  I couldn't open the door- not because it was frozen shut, but because I had to get a camera to take a picture of it before I made a mess of the scene by opening it.

 

dormant garden

There isn't a lot I can do for the garden right now.  I'm glad to have the break.  It's under almost two feet of snow, so there's not much to do but plan for the next garden season.  Which I haven't done yet.  Too much to do on the kitchen remodel, and I still haven't gotten my gardening mojo back after last year's disappointing season.

I know it'll be back at some point.  The return of garden  mojo usually coincides with the freakout over the length and severity of the winter.  Usually some time in February.  I can feel it coming pretty soon.  If I didn't have cabinetry to work on, it might already be here.

There are little things here and there I've done lately for the garden.  One sub-zero morning a week or two ago I found a frozen dead squirrel on the sidewalk as I left to go to work.  I picked it up by the tail and it was stiff as a board.  I could have tossed it in the trash, but opted to toss it on the snow-covered compost pile instead.  

Of course this violates the 'no meat' rule of composting- but if it's in the middle of winter, in sub-zero weather, I wonder if it freeze-dries enough not be too stinky when it thaws out.  I guess I'll find out some time in mid-March.  My compost needs some extra nitrogen anyway- I've had lots of 'browns'- that is, the dry, high-carbon stuff like sticks and leaves and sawdust, and a general lack of 'greens'- high nitrogen stuff- this fall.  A dead squirrel is definitely a high-nitrogen score, so I'll keep it and maybe tuck it under some leaves in the spring if I can.

the frozen garden gate

One positive thing I can say for these Minnesota deep freezes.  It  might take care of the Emerald Ash Borer problem, at least for a while.  Somebody did some research somewhere that showed that 98% of borers are killed off by a -30F deep freeze, and a good number are also killed off by a -20F freeze.  

We have a big ash tree at our rental place in Minneapolis, and I've been watching it for signs.  The borers have been found less than a mile away, and it's probably only a matter of time before they take it down.  I'm hoping this will buy our ash- a beautiful tree- a few years of life.  Maybe.

Another thing the deep freeze brings out is climate change deniers.  The Weather Underground and Updraft blogs seem to be troll magnets whenever this happens.  I don't know if anyone else is sick of seeing the "Where's Al Gore?" comments every time it gets cold somewhere.  I am.  As if a cold couple of days negates years of climate science.  Are these people paid by BP to comment on this stuff?  Because that's kind of what it sounds like.

Where is Al Gore, indeed.  Somewhere in Tennessee in a very large house.  A hypocrite?  Maybe.  But that doesn't negate the pile of evidence in favor of a changing climate.   Killing the messenger doesn't negate the message.  And where were the deniers when the temps were over 100F in Minnesota this summer?  And last summer?  I should call them to come and help me install my window A/C units in May when the temps are over 90 and the air is thick enough to cut with a knife.  It might be good for them to get out and do something useful for a change.

apricot tree on the left, plum on the right

I will, by the way, post some pictures of our renovated kitchen next time, I promise.  Thank you for asking about it.  It's almost to the finish point, but not quite, and I'd like to wait until the countertops are in before I go and put it on display for the whole world. 

It's looking pretty good.  I'll say that.  It's been way too much work, and not a lot of fun going without a kitchen for months on end, but the end is in sight and the change is good.

Cheers,

Jeff

a merry solstice to all and to all a good night

It's been a while.  Not because I don't like blogging.  It's been a while because there has been so much happening- good, bad and in between.

I'm home tonight, with the kids fast asleep in their beds.  I am somewhat doubtful that there are visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, since they've never seen a sugarplum in their lives, and honestly, I haven't either.

Gita has gone to an anniversary party for some friends of hers.  The kids both have strep throat, and I volunteered to stay home with them and put them to bed early.  This works out pretty well for me, since I'd be sitting in the corner at the party with the kids, watching the Disney channel, while all the other guests speak animatedly in a different  language and I try to make polite but awkward conversation when people come to sit near me.  I've been to many of these already.  Better to stay home and catch up on all the things I haven't done in a while.

I talk a lot about gardening here, and you may be checking in because you're also a gardener.  I have to say, with a small amount of shame, that I was glad to see the gardening season end this year.  Part of it was the weird weather.  Part of it was my stepping down as head of the community garden that I helped to start.  Part of it was just the sheer exhaustion of trying to do too much and not doing any of those things well, and being relieved that mother nature stepped in to take one task off of my plate.

My carrots froze into the ground before I could dig them out.  Usually it's one of my favorite jobs of the season- pulling up  a bucketload of super-sweet post-frost carrots and root cellaring them or making a batch of carrot wine.  This year, they've turned into green manure for next spring's garden.  My potatoes froze into the garden too.  Granted, the freeze came earlier than average, at least for as long as I've been gardening- and it came on quick.   They might re-sprout in the spring.  At least that's what I tell myself.

 To be honest- we did do a lot of putting stuff away for the winter this year.  We canned almost 30 jars of applesauce from foraged apples this fall, and a half dozen jars of apple butter from the peels.  We made a dozen or more quart jars of salsa from our tomatoes and more than a dozen jars of marinara sauce.  I made a big batch of pickles from a bunch of cucumbers I picked up from the farmers market.  And we have 3 5-gallon carboys of dandelion wine and applejack fermenting away in the basement. 

The competing use of time is our kitchen renovation.  In mid-November I tore out all of our existing kitchen cabinets, the floor, parts of the walls, all of the lighting, and with some help from WHD of Off the Grid in Minneapolis, I am rebuilding the whole mess.  The previous kitchen was a slapped-together 1980's remodel and was a non-salvageable mess of particle board and laminate.   Everything is now being done with quality materials and to code.   I've hired out the plumbing, but otherwise between myself and WHD, we've done it all and have done a pretty good job if I do say so myself.

Also competing for my time is an opportunity which involves fermentation, and which also involves getting lots of licenses and certificates at the city, state and federal level, which I am in the thick of at the moment.  I'll elaborate at a later time, but if you're interested in imagining what that might be, I'll refer you to a couple of previous blog posts:  'how to make homemade wine'  and 'carrot wine?  why not?'

Of course being a good dad and husband is a lot of work too.  It takes a lot of time.  But I love that job. 

So it's the winter solstice today and I'd like to be making a bonfire in the back yard, but instead I'll stay inside.  It's warmer in here, and if the kids wake up, I'll hear them.

So, being the end of a solar year, I'm thinking through where we are and taking stock.  Here are a few things that have happened lately that I'd like to think through and hope you'll have the patience to think through them with me.

One is the appearance of 'crazy ants' in Texas, that has come out of virtually nowhere, and which is making life on the American Gulf coast difficult.   If there's a story which embodies the maxim that "Mother nature always bats last"  this is it.  These ants swarm over things made my people, and are so prolific, their bodies pile up to the point that they create obstructions to human habitation.  They also seem to be drawn to electrical gadgets, frequently invading them and short-circuiting things such as electrical outlets or computers, and rendering them worthless. 

But this is a cold climate, here in Minnesota, and it's unlikely crazy ants will make it this far north.  Except that  a far more subtle and sneaky mutation in the world of small things hit much closer to home this morning.

I mentioned that both of my kids have strep throat at the moment.  They first had it around Thanksgiving.  We took them to the doctor and they were, as is pretty common, prescribed Amoxicillin, an antibiotic that has been shown to be effective against strep.  They both took it for the recommended 10 days and we figured it would be done with. Except that it wasn't.

The sniffly, sore throat lived on, and we took our daughter in again on Thursday- to a clinic full to the gills with kids with similar symptoms.  I had really never seen it so full- the parking lot where we had always parked was completely full, the overflow parking was full, and I ended up parking on the street and walking with my sick daughter to the clinic, a little further than I had expected (but glad to be in the city where they at least allow parking on the street).

So we did our thing there, and I asked the doctor about the possibility of antibiotic-resistant strep, and she glibly blew it off saying 'we haven't seen resistant strep around here- they probably re-infected themselves with their toothbrushes, etc.'  Which I took at face value, since, after all, she was a doctor.

Then last night our son started having the same symptoms.  So this morning, I took him to the little cheapo clinic in the department store, since our regular clinic wasn't open on Saturdays.  There he was seen by a very friendly nurse practitioner who had seen him 3 or 4 weeks before when we were dealing with our first round of strep.  She was less glib.  "I've seen a lot of this lately"  she said.  She told me that she had stopped prescribing Amoxicillin for strep throat not long after we had last been there because she had seen a number of kids on whom it didn't seem to be working- one of whom went to the same school as my kids.  She also said she was going to send an email to the other practitioners at the other clinics at the big box to be watching for non-responsive strep.  And she prescribed him a different, more powerful antibiotic.

So there we were- at the forefront of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria outbreak.  No mention of it in the news just yet.  Spread the word if you are able.   I am hoping that the new (and much fouler-tasting) antibiotic she prescribed will work for my poor little worn-out sore-throat kids.   I like home remedies, but know that strep is no small thing to deal with- having had it many times as a kid myself.  I don't want to have to rely solely on honey and cayenne pepper if I can help it.  For myself, OK, but my kids-- I just want the sickness gone.

So mother nature bats last.  Strep bacteria can number in the billions in one human body.  It has a doubling time of 20-30 minutes, meaning, even at the 30 minute rate, it can have 24 generations within a day.  Meaning, you can multiply 24 generations by a few billion, and that is the number of opportunities that strep bacteria has to develop a mutation that will allow it to resist an antibiotic in every infected person, every day the infection lasts.  It's amazing this resistance didn't develop sooner. 

So do we really want to feed this stuff to animals, and multiply that risk by the billions of domestic meat animals kept worldwide?  Which we're pretty much already doing, at least on the majority of farms in the United States.    Risking losing one the best weapon against bacterial disease in order to fatten the profit margin of feedlots?   Not worth it in my  book.  But inevitable given the lack of backbone amongst regulators in this country.   And of course by the overprescribing of antibiotics for things such as the common cold, by the medical profession. 

So that's no bright ray of sunshine.

But it's the darkest day of the year, at least here in the northern hemisphere, and if I'm going to discuss dark things, it may as well be today.

Which brings me to sulfide mining.  Which, unlike crazy ants and antibiotic resistant bacteria, you can actually do something about. 

The state of Minnesota is right now deliberating whether or not to allow mining of copper and nickel in northern Minnesota- in one of the most pristine areas of the lower 48 states.  This is an area which has been mined for iron ore, but not for copper and nickel, and not using the methods proposed.  The process they would like to use would likely end up sending acidic waste to Lake Superior, the second-largest body of fresh water in the world, and one of the cleanest. 

Yes, there are people who would like to see this mine developed for the jobs it would bring to the northern part of the state.  There are always people who will trade a paycheck today for the health of their children, grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren.  That's a decision that is considered rational in current economic thought, but personally I'd like to err on the side of the health of future generations.  I hope to have great-great-great-grandchildren, and I know that the choices that my generation and a number of generations before me are going to leave legacies that are less than stellar.  I'd like  to see that mistake not made again.  I don't want to be responsible for leaving the largest body of water on the continent undrinkable in a future age of heat and desertification.   We are leaving them that, yes, so we may at least leave them clean water to drink. 

See here to send a comment to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources about sulfide mining.  If you expect your offspring at some point in the next 500 years to depend in some way on Great Lakes water, you have an interest in the quality of that water.   You don't have to be a Minnesotan to care about such things.

Cheers,

Jeff

creating kid habitat

You learn a lot of interesting things when you do landscape design for a living.

I get to call myself a landscape architect now after running the gauntlet of higher ed, board exams and internships.  As a result I get to design parking lots and ballfields and sidewalks and other projects which, while not all that interesting, pay the bills and keep me out of trouble.

today I love my city: Saint Paul's Urban Oasis

artist's rendering of the proposed urban oasis food center in saint paul

Saint Paul is not my home town, but I've lived here for  11 years now- about as long as I've lived anywhere at this point in my life.  Almost exactly as long as I lived in the other, very nice city across the river, Minneapolis.  I love them both, the way I love both of my kids.  They're different, but both good in different ways.  One is more chatty and talkative, with a better art and music scene, always recreating itself and following the newest trend and trying to keep up with Portland and Austin and Seattle and Boston.

That would be Minneapolis, for those of you not familiar with Minnesota.

2013: the fruit trees are bare

red and white currants- the only fruit from our yard this year.

I have, admittedly, been a bad steward of our little pieces of the earth this summer.  Our yard, our community garden plot, the yard at our little rental place- the weeds at all of them are growing faster than I can manage to pull them out.   We are, as usual, crazy busy in the summer so that hasn't helped.  But I still don't feel good about it.

In addition to the kids- who always want me to play with them (which I don't really mind), work is really busy again this year for some reason, the rental place needs lots of little repairs- and we have another project to work on- which I will get into in future posts- but for now I won't.  But it's eating up just about all of the time I would have spent gardening in a normal summer.  And the garden looks it.

mother nature is not amused

our roof- after a big branch went through it early friday morning

I haven't been here for a few weeks, but the time has been anything but uneventful.

We've had a series of big nightime thunderstorms over the last few days, which have dropped large, heavy tree branches on our house and in our yard.  One of those branches cut a nice sized notch in our roof and took out most of the soffit on that side.

So we're now working through the process of finding a roofer and of making an insurance claim- the first one ever on our homeowners insurance- and waiting to find out what will happen.

This isn't something I enjoy, and really don't want yet another project to work on, but there it is.  There's no way around it.

some thoughts on neonicotinoids

 I was sitting down to lunch on Friday, and had a rare treat- somebody had left behind a pile of newspapers in the skyway food court where I eat my lunch on the days I don't bring my own.

Though this is downtown St. Paul, in the pile was a copy of Minneapolis' Star-Tribune.  I love the Strib, and in general love reading an analog newspaper, though I've never gotten into the habit of subscribing to one.  Mainly because I'm a cheapskate, but also because they have an army of telemarketers who will harangue you into submission if you ever let your subscription expire. 

So I was eating a burrito and paging through the Star-Trib and found an article on neonicotinoids that, I'm sure most people breezed by, but which nearly made me choke on my lunch.

winter to summer in sixty seconds

Our street- April 23rd 

 The picture above is from Tuesday morning.   Fresh snow, broken tree branches, another day of extended winter.  That was April 23rd and we had 4 or 5 fresh inches of heavy, wet slushy snow blanketing the ground. I, along with most of the population of Minnesota was ready to scream.

This has been a long, painful winter.  Not super cold, just super long.  The Arctic Oscillation decided to go negative at just the wrong time and the cold got stuck over us.  The days were getting longer- the light lasts until after eight o'clock now, but outside- snow, grey skies, bare trees, and brown grass when you could see it at all.

raising kids in a time of uncertainty

Gita and our two kids- the three people I love most

I'll call it a time of uncertainty- though every time is a time of uncertainty.  Nobody knows for sure what's coming from one day to the next.  You can have a pretty good idea, but you never really know  for sure.

What is fairly certain, is that the next generation is probably not going to live as well as the current one- the one I'm a member of.  And the next will probably have it even harder.

searching for a cure (to cabin fever)

light starved seedlings- just recently moved to the south-facing window

So the St. Louis winter in St. Paul is less cold, but is clearly still a real winter.  The couple of inches of snow I cleared off the sidewalk this morning is now blowing back onto the sidewalk in a 30 to 40 mile per hour wind.  I walked to the bus stop after shoveling, slipping on the thin layer of powdery snow on top of a layer of glare ice every few steps.  I almost fell on my butt, and a car slowed down as if to ask if I needed help, but I looked away, not wanting to let go of the little bit of pride I still had.  I do know how to walk in snow, thanks.

another St. Louis winter in St. Paul

This year's low temperature: -13F on February 1st.  Image courtesy of wunderground.com

Now, thirteen degrees below zero may sound awfully cold, and it sure feels that way when you have to get up early in the morning, go out into the dark and catch a bus in the blowing wind.  Thirteen below is no picnic.  But it's not the historical norm for the Twin Cities.

 -13F was where our temperature  bottomed out on February 1st this year, and I'm going to be the first one to call it the low for the winter, as we're pretty unlikely to get that cold again at this  point in March.  The 10 day forecast is calling for highs above freezing, so I think that's about it for old man winter.

propagating roses in the winter

winnipeg parks and morden blush roses- in july.  not now.

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Edited January 23, 2014-   to follow up this posting from winter 2013, I have to report that this method didn't work for me.  Most of the cuttings rooted, but did not transfer to the growing media afterward.  I didn't get a single viable rose out of the almost 150 cuttings I tried to root.  If you try this method and are able to make it work- please leave me a comment and describe how you did it.
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So of course I live in Minnesota and of course the winters are long and cold here.  That is not a surprise.  It's expected, and what is a surprise is the brevity and warmth of recent winters.  This one is fairly true to what the historic record shows, though not as harsh as the USDA plant hardiness zone map would indicate.

One very good thing about long and cold winters is that people who love gardening have time to do eccentric stuff like propagate roses from hardwood cuttings.  For fun.  Because there isn't much else to do, unless you like to ice fish or watch TV.  Which I don't.

 And I wanted to get an early start on raising something to sell at our community garden's spring plant sale.  I was fishing around and found some interesting articles on propagating roses from hardwood rose cuttings.  This video illustrates it pretty well and these two linked sources are what I used to figure out how to make a whole bunch of new rose plants from cuttings I'd normally end up composting.

I'll post some info on the plant sale later, by the way.  If you are in the Twin Cities, feel free to stop by Merriam Park on May 4th.  I'll elaborate on another day.

freshly cut stems- still had some leaves in january!

For my cuttings, I took a bunch of  one to two foot trimmings off of my Winnipeg Parks, Morden Blush and Bonica roses in the yard.  These are some cold-hardy and mostly disease-resistant roses that I've had in my yard for four seasons now, and which I feel fairly comfortable with.  I've never sprayed them with anything, and have never fed them fertilizer, except for once on the day that I planted them.  They're the only thing in my yard  (besides the  rescued azaleas) that I've ever given chemical fertilizer to.

They've all done pretty well, if you take into consideration the advice that's usually given when you raise roses (spray, spray, spray, feed, feed, feed).  I even get some pretty decent rose hips from them (which taste pretty good when they're not full of fungicide).

Not all roses have done so well.  I planted a 'hardy' variety of tea rose at the same time as these- 'Lily Pons' was the name if I recall  correctly.  It didn't make it through a single Minnesota winter.  That was my first and last attempt at planting high-maintenance roses.  If it can't survive winter on its own and summer without chemicals, then it's not worthy of a place in the limited space of the eighth acre farm.

stems after cleaning-

I did a little research, and found that all three varieties- which were once patented- are no longer.  Morden Blush just went out of patent last year, in fact.  And it's a gorgeous rose.

This is not to say I am a great believer in plant patents.  I'm not.  But I want to give some respect (and revenue) to breeding programs like that at the Morden Research Center in Manitoba that brought us a whole slew of roses fit to the difficult conditions of an Upper Midwestern (and Canadian prairie state) winter.

Unfortunately, the Morden rose breeding program has been discontinued, and even more unfortunately, some of their roses are already becoming harder to find.  Winnepeg Parks is now out of most catalogs, which is a sad thing because it's a fantastic rose for organic gardeners.

So I'll do my small part in continuing the spread of some good and out-of-patent roses. 

So once I had taken all of my trimmings in early January, I trimmed them down to about 5 to 8 inches long, removing the bottom few buds, and leaving two or three at the top.  I scored the bottom inch of the cutting with a paring knife, and dipped each cutting in water, shook it off, then dipped it in some rooting hormone.

Rooting hormone is something I've never used before and was a bit apprehensive about getting.  I've heard that agar works in much the same way, but didn't know if it would get moldy over such a long time, and besides didn't know where to find it.  So I took the easy way out and used IBA, which as it turns out, was not as much of an all-synthetic thing as I had assumed.

I had to look around  a fair bit to find it in midwinter.  I went to a suburban garden center and waded through the kitsch and leftover Xmas schwag and unusable purple birdhouses to find it on a sad looking shelf in the back of the store.  It cost about six bucks and the bottle said it could make a thousand cuttings or so.  Good enough for me. 

So I dipped all the cuttings in it, and wrapped them in damp (not wet) newspaper, then put the newspaper in three plastic bags from local stores.

and seven weeks later

And by golly it worked!

The original cuttings went into the bags on January 6th, and I unwrapped them today, 7 weeks later, to find roots and/or callouses on about 3/4ths of the cuttings.  That was way better than I had expected.

I potted them up in some old #1 containers that I washed in the laundry room sink, and put them in a large clear plastic container that will be a temporary greenhouse for the  new rose plants.  If all goes well, I should have a nice little crop of roses for the plant sale.

That is, assuming that I don't accidentally cook them all by leaving the lid on the greenhouse on a hot day, or forget to water them.  I'd probably do that in the summer, but right now my plant deficit disorder is making that unlikely.  Bringing anything to life right now is so deeply satisfying that I will go far, far out of my way to make it happen.  So I'm more likely to water these little things to death before I let them cook.



I ordered seeds last night too.  So many things to do to prepare for the growing season.  I'll be trying long beans  again this year, as well as WHD's rattlesnake beans.   And even though I've had lousy results with hot peppers most years, I've ordered Anaheim peppers to start from seed too.  And more parsnips again even though they make me itchy.

a banyan tree in hong kong

And in a total non-sequitur, I have a couple of travel pictures.  These are from Hong Kong, when we were there almost three and a half years ago on our way to visit Gita's family in Nepal. 

I was looking through travel pictures tonight- and appreciating the green- the life- and the remembering of what it's like relaxing outside next to the water in a short-sleeved shirt.

The picture above is a banyan tree- one of many we saw.  This one was on one of the smaller islands that make up Hong Kong.  It's a fishing village mostly, but a really densely packed one, made up of four-story apartment building and tiny little winding alleys.  The banyan had it's own little stoop among the concrete, and I think it was some sort of shrine, though I'm not completely sure.  

Even if it wasn't a shrine, it said a lot for the Chinese appreciation for nature.  Maybe due to the lack of actual natural space in a place like Hong Kong.

And below- that's us at a noodle house by the boat dock, within smelling distance of the fish market on the same island.  The little guy couldn't get enough of the noodles, even though he hadn't been eating solid food for very long at that point.   Maybe we shouldn't have given him the local street food- but then again, what other choices did we have?

He was perfectly fine by the way.  And is still an adventurous eater for a kid.

noodle shop on the street.  little man demolished the noodle soup at 16 months.

I love looking at pictures of warm places in the winter. 

There's not a lot of it left.  Three cheers for that.

february blue

me.  enjoying the snow.

Oh, to be a kid again.  Not so much because it's fun being bossed around by grownups, or being made to eat food you don't like.  No, because today was a day made for kids, not for grownups.

When you get four or five inches of really wet, heavy snow, a grownup looks at it and sees a lot of work, and a potential car accident.  Kids see potential snowmen and snowballs and snow forts.

I got out with my shovel and dug paths through the snow, flinging it onto the roots of my fruit trees wherever I could- a little extra moisture in case we have a dry spring again.  I stopped to commiserate with the neighbors who were also not happy to be digging out yet again. 

But the kids didn't notice.  They were having a blast.  When I was done with my work, we went to the mini-sledding hill at a nearby church and sledded down a 5-foot slope a bunch of times- making a game out of who could make it to the bottom first.

our kids and the neighbor kid making a snow fort

The neighbor girl came over later and they all worked together to make a snow fort, with a kid-sized snow shovel, a hockey stick, a broken shovel handle and a snow-block maker.  It turned out pretty well, I have to say.

And as much as I complained about having to shovel show once again, I have to admit that I need the exercise and need to get out of the house.  I need to spend a bit less time in front of a computer screen, and a bit more time in nature, even if that nature is my front yard in the city, and I am communing with it by means of a snow shovel.  

I am ready, very ready, for winter to be over.  I am tired of looking out the window and seeing shades of white and grey and blue.  I am tired of smelling nothing but snow and diesel fumes when I walk down the street.  I'm in need of spring.

Gita is getting edgy too.  I've noticed and this doesn't make for a great deal of domestic tranquility.   She pointed out the obvious the other day- that I'm sitting on my butt in front of the computer too much these days- and of course I didn't like hearing it.  But she's right.  

I'm not really interested in joining a gym and working out.  I've done that before, and my feeling is that, now, I want to work hard, but I want it to serve some sort of a purpose.  Turning the wheel on an orbital machine or lifting a stack of metal plates a foot and a half again and again doesn't count.  I want to have a good honest tired at the end of the day.  But that's not easy to come by this time of year.  

In April or May, yes.  There are beds to dig up, stuff to plant, weeds to pull, things that need painting, stuff to move around the yard.  But in February?  Not much.  I pruned all of our fruit trees last weekend and pulled a bunch of dead Virginia creeper off of the garage.  Not much left to do now in the winter maintenance department.

the back yard today

So I shoveled the walk, and shoveled the roof with my 20-foot 'roof rake'.  Played with the kids some.   Made a batch of cookies with them and hand-printed some valentines for our son's preschool.  Tonight I feel tired.

And I sat down to write, as I try to do most Sunday nights, and set a beer- the first one of the night and last one in the house- and spilled it all over the floor when I turned on the light. 

Being a nice housebroken domestic husband and all, I kept my expletives to a loud whisper, since Gita was putting the kids to bed upstairs, and went to get a paper towel to take care of the mess.  And made a note to keep more beer on hand in the future.    I understand why they drink so much of the stuff in Canada by the way.  This time of year, it feels like the water of life. 

swelling buds on the blueberry bush

 My relationship with winter is more of a love-hate relationship than one of pure dislike though.  I've spent a couple of winters in warm climates and it felt all wrong.  Like I was cheating on winter.  Like I was supposed to be suffering in one way, but was suffering instead in a totally different and unfamiliar way- from the guilt of not facing the winter I was supposed to face.  For not paying the price of the really truly beautiful Minnesota summer I  had just enjoyed, or some such thing.

My first winter in a warm climate was in Puerto Rico.  I was an exchange student at a small college in the southwestern part of the island.  The climate, by most measures, is just about perfect.  It was hot when I got there in August, but the fall and winter months are sunny and mild, with fruit growing on the trees, and the smell of flowers always in the air.  There would be a light rain shower every day in the late afternoon, then sunshine again.  Perfect weather for being outside

After a few months I absolutely hated it.

Part of it was the unfamiliar culture-  but that wasn't all of it.  I had to get out of there by Christmas, and back home to the cold.  I was never so happy to shiver.

I chalked that one up mostly to culture shock- but when I spent a winter, years later, in Austin, Texas, I had the same experience.  I should have been happy to be away from the  cold, but in a perverse way- I missed it.  I had intended to stay there longer but only lasted four months.

In between both of those times, I had gone traveling- to see the world on a shoestring after college- and, through a series of coincidences, ended up spending most of the winter on a kibbutz in Israel.  At least there, they had thunderstorms, so it felt a little bit like winter, but still, I missed the cold.  After all my complaining about it- I missed the cold and misery of a Minnesota winter.

view from the front door

So here I stay.  I don't think I'll make the mistake of trying to cheat on winter again- at least not for longer than a week or two.  That much I can still get away with. 

At least we didn't get two feet of snow, or three  or whatever ungodly amount they got in some of New England this weekend.  At least it's only a few inches.  

Actually- I probably would have enjoyed it to be honest.  Two feet of snow gives you street cred.  Four inches is just a backache.

Now I need to get into my seed catalogs.  Where the hell did I put those?