Real Rain

At last, today, we are having a true rain event. There have certainly been bigger and heavier ones before, but take a look at this radar image from the National Weather Service...



All that yellow and red stuff is HEAVY RAIN falling right on top of us!

After a nice drizzle-y morning, things have turned to earnest rain, allowing our fresh road gravel to get watered in, giving the newly MRC-planted fir trees a drink, and I suspect bringing the water in the creek up. It does make yurt living a little loud, but since I'm going to work in a moment, that doesn't bother me so much. Besides, when it's been so long since we've had the real stuff, I admit to a feeling of excitement when that rain pounds the tent roof we dwell under. Here's to running rivers and happy frogs...

The Secret Life of Meadow Voles

Today was a beautiful day, high popcorn clouds heralding a coming storm, but mostly sunny and a little warmer. After Ella came home from school, I suggested we go on an "adventure" to see if we could find anything interesting. Sometimes Ella is a little hard to enroll in such an undertaking, but today, it didn't take too much influence.

When she stepped out and noticed the clouds, she insisted we bring an umbrella because "I think it's gonna start to rain soon". I obliged, and we set off down the driveway. I offered that we might head out into the grass, and see what we could find. So we ambled freely for a while, following Ella's whims. We sat for a bit by an old scotch broom plant, where Ella peeled old straw stalks to chew on, like Drew does. Then she was drawn to an area she called a pond, which is really just a depression in our land.

When we arrived there, we found several areas of blond, lying-down grass. They made a nice, soft, comfy carpet of grass, and we laid down and remarked that it was kind of like a bed. Then I began digging down to the dirt, because sometimes, in this way, you can find a whole, tiny universe you weren't aware of before: insects, tiny mushrooms, miniature plants. I parted grass here and there, and found an animal runway, and there were droppings in it. Hmmmm....let's follow this and see where it....ACK! I found a mouse carcass. All that remained were its incisors, its spine, and its tail. Well, now I was really intrigued. Who killed the mouse and ate it in such a fashion? Why was it in this runway? Was it the original inhabitant? Or did it just end up there, deposited by the eater? Or had it died of natural causes, and decomposed? So many questions!

Now that my curiosity was piqued, I began uncovering a vast network of tunnels all throughout the grass. Just like our streets, there were crossroads, where the paths lead off in several directions. I found a hole, with some grass and broom branches sticking out. And I also found some cut grass lying in the pathway.

On researching, I find that I am likely uncovering the runs of the Meadow Vole, a grass eating rodent. So that answers that question, but not the wondering about whether the carcass was a vole, a mouse, and in either case, how did it die and who ate it? I had thought there was a carnivorous small mammal that might eat mice, but I'm not finding reference to it. Maybe it's not a mouse but a vole? Maybe I won't ever know...such is the mystery of natural history.

Snow at Sea Level

On Sunday night, Drew and I were awake in bed talking, while Ella snored away beside us. Being in a yurt, we are privy to each and every nuance of precipitation that passes this way, cringing when the winds pepper the sides with rain, and dozing off when the light, wispy, misty rains fall. In our talking, we didn't notice right away, but a moment after it began, Drew said, "That doesn't sound like rain." I agreed, and Drew said he wanted to have a look. So we grabbed flashlights, descended the creaky ladder, and opened the door of the mudroom out to the north.

AH! Our breath caught in our throats, as we saw with our own eyes that it was, indeed, SNOWING. I suppose it's really not such a big deal. It wasn't really more than a light dusting. We definitely see it on the ridges surrounding our home at least once a year. But it is a little unusual (though not unheard of) to have snow down here at our lowly elevation. It's so unusual that I found myself feeling the thrill of the first snow of the season that I remember when I was a kid. For those of you growing up in many snow-free California locales, this won't mean much for you. But for those of you who lived in snow country, the first snowfall was like magic, speaking of exciting things to come: snowed out school days! sled riding! snowmen! mom making hot cocoa! snow boots! ice skating! and white christmas! Bonus points for that.

We are still in our little cold snap here, with lows in the 20's the last several nights, and daytime highs in the 40s. We've had to keep the water running at night to prevent broken pipes and so we can have kitchen water in the morning before the day thaws. I've had to scrape the car windshield to take Ella to school. The cats are very unhappy. And we've been running the woodstove most of the time. But I have to admit that it feels kind of nice, encouraging a cozying up inside the house, drinking tea and reading a good book. Our mild winters here in California kind of cheat us out of the purpose of winter, to hole up and reflect on the year that has just passed. Normally, it's not nasty enough outside to warrant retreating indoors, and we feel guilty snuggling in slippers and scarves, because there is so much to be done. I mean, what about all the stuff we were too busy to handle in the summer?

So here's to snow and cold, frosty night, and to each of you who will hibernate a little, and enjoy the memories of your past year.

Giving Great Thanks

Once more, I arrive to this day of reflection on giving thanks. I find every year, I have a much longer list than I thought possible. There are certainly things one could focus on that I feel less than thankful for, but more and more, I find that it is important to remove the spotlight from those things, and to focus instead on all that we want and love. Spending time dwelling on the parts we don't like only seems to attract more of what we don't like.

So an abridged list of what I am grateful for:

Drew and Ella, and all the rest of our family
Our good fortune at being given the opportunity to buy our land
Our unbelievable ability to manifest our amazing house.
The plethora of food we grew this year, and will eat throughout the winter.
A community of helpful, loving, and supportive neighbors and friends, close to home and far and wide, who contribute in more ways than they can imagine.
Good health.
Physical ability to pursue the things we love.
Good music.

It's good to be alive...

On Our Way to Indoor Toilets

Last week, our neighbor-friend-backhoe operator Cedar dug the hole for our septic tank, and we had the tank delivered the next day. The pit seemed quite large, until it was filled with an equally voluminous concrete box. It arrived on a truck, with an intrepid driver who expertly operated the fancy hydraulic arm with great precision, to ease it into the space.

Now this tank can hold a lot of poop. You may ask why we chose such a large tank, especially considering that most of the wastewater from our home will go into a graywater system. The septic will basically handle the three toilets, and the kitchen sink. The answer is not so spectacular. Only that another system was recently installed nearby, and it is the same sized house. Evidently, the tank sizing goes by the number of bedrooms, which stands to reason that it would effect the amount of effluent a household would generate.

At some point, Cedar will return to connect the plumbing, backfill the hole, and dig the leach line trenches so he can install the infiltrator. We are genuinely on the path to becoming a civilized household! Soon, I can invite you over to "do your business" in my flushing toilet. Ahhh, what a day that will be. It's not that I mind the outhouse so much. Well, maybe our roof-less, frigid-seated, insect-infested bucket pooper is kind of a bummer. Outhouses need not be as skanky as ours, but when I consider that I haven't had indoor plumbing to call my own since I moved to the Mattole almost eight years ago, well, let's just say I'm looking forward to not needing to don a polar fleece suit and a headlamp and walk 30 yards if I've got to shit in the middle of the night. It doesn't happen often, but the times it does are enough to remind of the advantages to come.

The Larder

I seem to be having difficulty regularly posting here. It's largely due to the new habits of my three-year-old. She no longer naps in the afternoons, leaving me without my mid-day space out, web-surfing moment, in which I have written a lot of my posts. I also used to write a lot after she went to bed, or even in the evening while she was playing with her dad, but the computer is now occupied with her nightly obsession with Angelina Ballerina, or one of her other DVD's, until we are all dead tired at about 9 PM. That pesky time change leads us all to the barn earlier these days.

Anyhow, back on topic, the subject of my post today is the larder, particularly how excited I am to take stock of the wares I've canned, accumulated, dried, grown or otherwise stashed for our family's consumption between now and April and beyond. The weather of winter has fully and completely arrived, meaning very short days, regular cold, cloudy, and rainy days, and cold nights. I've noted over the years here that all growth of plants basically stops, or progresses painfully slowly, during these months. Even though many of our local plants don't die back as in places where it snows, many do, while others simply pause as if mid-sentence, and wait for longer days and warmer nights to begin to stretch again. Even the grass tends to pause.

While the garden and native plants are stuck in winter limbo, we still have plenty to eat, though not as great a quantity of fresh produce as in the summer. Here is a list of what I've canned up to line our (forthcoming) pantry shelves:
2 cases of tomato
6 tomato paste
10 zucchini relish
35 or so jars of jam (apple ginger jelly, blueberry, strawberry, peach, and blackberry)
16 quarts of apple juice
1.5 cases of red tomato salsa
2 cases green tomatillo salsa
~12 tubs of pesto (frozen)
about 30 winter squash
6-8 cups of dried white beans
dried herbs
two frozen chickens whole
a several month supply of cured garlic
about 8 cups of home grown wheat berries
frozen strawberries
locally-grown frozen beef


I still have yet to can/put up:
pumpkin
green tomato chutney
saurkraut

Even though it's winter outside, we're still eating:
fresh cabbage
fresh carrots
fresh broccoli
fresh greens
fresh beets
the dregs of the tomato, eggplant, and peppers

I don't think our garden produce will last through like I always try to manifest, but it will only be a few months where we won't have anything.

Days left until the first spring planting: About 90.

Recent Additions: Interior Walls

Looking down the Hall toward the front door




Kid Bedrooms




Master Bedroom




Kitchen, wall between the kitchen and the master bedroom




Looking down the hall toward the kid bedrooms



I thought I would take a moment to share some photos of the interior walls in the midst of their framing. They've been up for several weeks, but the big rain and roofing project has taken priority, and we are not yet back to framing. However, even at this point, the walls are exciting, because it now allows a visitor (or future occupant) to feel the flow of the rooms, and begin to feel the shape and dimensions of the rooms.

Roof Metal

Maybe I just need to whine a little that it's going slowly to enable a faster rate of progress, because yesterday we made a great push on the metal. We finished the north roof, and most of the carport, and started on the south roof before it got dark last night. Today we are rained out, but we'll get back to it tomorrow. It feels SO great to get so much weathered-in space.

Beyond roof, my house is full of people I love right now, dear friends who come to visit every fall. People are camped out, struggling to stay dry, but we all pile in to the yurt for dinner, collectively cooking, sharing music, laughter, play, and love. I can't wait to have our house available to house everyone under one big embracing roof.

The Painful Slowness of Roofs

I realize I haven't written a lot lately. I'm sure you can all forgive me, once you find out that we had our first true storm of the season beginning last Tuesday morning. And guess which day our roof metal arrived. Yep, Monday. There were two holes in our roof that we couldn't cover until we got two particular pieces of metal. The subsequent trim, detail, and plywood in that spot took the better part of a day, and in the dark, Karl and Drew had to resign themselves to the fact that no more metal, nor tarpaper, would get onto the roof until the storm was over.

So we went into the storm without tarpaper on the north sloping roof. Which, though I've come to see wasn't the end of the world, meant that half of the house behaved rather like a sieve. And though the south roof was tarpapered, and therefore mostly dry, the entire house was wet, dripping down the north walls, through the skylights, and between each gap of plywood. It felt rather like an abandoned warehouse, except for a few glorious moisture eddies, where our remaining windows and our brand new woodstove were stored.

And, as luck would have it, Drew was busy with an aikido workshop this week, so work was slowed yet again. And FINALLY, late this past week, we have resumed laying metal. I've had a few moments to drill sling and feel like I am accomplishing something. We laid the tarpaper on the north roof on Thursday, which feels like a huge relief. It's lightly raining today, and the house is dry. We're pushing again, since we're supposed to have more heavy rains Monday. It appears the winter weather has fully arrived. I am looking forward to getting fully weathered in! After the roof is on, then it's clerestory windows, and doors, and then we're completely dry. I hope that can happen this week.

Finishing the Wheat: A Backlog Post

This post has been on my backlog list for some time now. For convenience, I am linking to previous wheat entries: Walls and Wheat, and Eat Your Wheaties.

Way, way back in July, I harvested my long-awaited crop of hard red winter wheat, which was growing in two long beds inside the garden fence all throughout the winter. It took a long time to ripen, since we had a lot of cool, foggy weather in the late spring/early summer. But at last, I harvested it, and dried the bundles in the mudroom and in the open sun.

Now, this process is one of those lost homesteading arts that everyone in the old days knew how to do, but since no one grows wheat anymore, there isn't anyone around who can tell me what to do. I do have the luck of having a written source that describes how to "flail" the wheat, which basically involves beating it with a stick to get the grains loose from the dry seed heads. The ideal flail is a broom handle with a shorter stick attached to the end with a leather "thong", as the literature puts it, so that it can swing freely. You know, you get a little momentum going and it really whacks the stuff.

But since I haven't grown wheat before, nor has anyone I know, I don't have a flail. So I found a stout piece of redwood, left over from another project, with which to beat my wheat. I assumed it wouldn't be so hard, since the grain was pretty dry, but it actually took quite a bit of beating, and thorough beating at that, to get the maximum wheat grain out. Thoroughness normally wouldn't matter, but since I had such a small harvest, every last grain was VERY important to me!





Once the grain was flailed, I then winnowed the chaff from the grain, which involves a very high tech process of slowly pouring the grain between two containers outdoors where there is the right amount of wind. Pour too quickly, and none of the chaff blows away. Pour too slowly, or when the wind is gusting a little, and the hard earned wheat berries dive into the grass, never to be seen until next winter.


Wheat Berries with Chaff, ready for Winnowing

All told, my dear wheat harvest readers, I collected eight precious cups of wheat berries. Not even enough to make one batch of bread. Nor enough to sow the same amount I planted last year. Certainly, I made some gardening mistakes, which I will remedy this year. But still a bit disappointing. I'm aiming for a better turnout next year. Partly, this involves planting the wheat in the area where the chicken run was, hoping that the chicken poop will feed the wheat, will feed the people, will feed the bucket, will feed the fruit trees, will feed the chickens, will feed the wheat, and so on.

I've got some more work to do to finish closing those loops....