What’s Happening

EmetteJep:

Thanks for your comment. I hope to post more but I am not sure when that will be. I have more insect photos waiting in the wings.

Lately I have been experimenting with efficient twig-fueled cooking stoves. I am very pleased with the results. Anyone interested can find what I did by doing a search on “rocket stoves”.

I have also been experimenting with regenerative radios, trying to find the one that uses the least power and fewest number of active devices (read: “transistors”) yet performs with sensitivity, selectivity, stability and covering a wide tuning range that includes short wave as well as AM broadcast. Someday I may publish my results. So far, it seems to me that three transistors are the minimum needed for a practical radio. I have been able to get one to run a long time on the power left in a battery that, for other purposes, is essentially dead.

From my organic garden I have been eating strawberries. Also: peppermint, curly dock, dandelion leaves, wild grape twigs and leaves, lambsquarters, winter savory, sorrel, garlic chives, common chives, wild lettuce and green onions. I typically collect a bowl full of an assortment of the above, wash it, chop it up fine, mix it with a bit of mayo, and eat it with biscuits, along with a tea from roasted dandelion roots.

I also love poke. It is very tender and has a delicate flavor. I do not include it in the above mix because it needs to be boiled twice before eating (or so I have heard; being one never to doubt authority, I always boil my poke twice).

I have a potato plant I transplanted when it volunteered in an inconvenient spot. Sweet potato slips are sprouting in the kitchen window. I also have carrots raising their heads in the garden. Carrots are all I deliberately started from seed this year (so far). They are slow growers, but I am faithfully keeping them watered and weeded.

I recently dumped a good bit of compost on the raised bed garden. The compost came from worm bins kept in the basement and an outside compost pile.

I still collect rainwater and filter it with a slow sand filter. I use the filtered water to hydrate the basement worm bins. I use unfiltered water to hydrate the outside bins and keep the seedlings from wilting.

I am still eating last years’ sour kraut from a jar in the refrigerator. It has been several months since I checked what is growing in the crocks kept in the basement. Reluctance to look comes from a little fear about what I might find.

I have not baked sour-dough bread for a while but I know how easy it is to create another starter from whole wheat flower should I ever need to.

I recently learned that the secret to soft biscuits is adding sugar to the dough.

I have not used the solar oven yet this year, mostly due to a sparsity of sunny days. It looks like summer is about to put an end to our rainy season soon, though.

It has been a good spring for wild mushrooms, but I have not found any that I could identify well enough to eat.

I am still convinced we need to take a serious look at true socialism. Obamanomics, the hysteria of media lick-spittles aside, is not socialism.

I might take up oil painting again soon. I did that a bit a very long time ago but have some new ideas about mixing paint that I want to try.

As you see, I keep very busy. Blogging frequently sits on the back burner. Thanks, again, for your interest.

Curlydock

Winter Window Garden

by Curlydock

Some months back, in November / December of 2006, I wrote several installments dealing with seedling identification. I sprouted seedlings and tried to keep a webcam record of them for future reference. The seedlings became spindly and were growing slowly because, I believe, of short winter days and little light.

I did not want to burn energy in lights and timers, so I left the mini-garden in the southern window to fend for itself. I did keep it watered with rain-water that had been slow-sand filtered. I also warmed the water a bit by storing a gallon or so of it by a furnace duct.

As the days got longer I noticed the plants began to grow more rapidly. A few weeks ago I harvested and ate a head and some leaves from the rapini. It was delicious.

Today, before I harvested and ate the radish I took some webcam shots of the radish and the chard. Someone frequently visits this blog looking for pictures of the plants. So, here are a few more plant pictures.

Above is the white hailstone radish. It has been 110 days since the seed was planted. Below is the rhubarb chard. It was planted 82 days ago.

The pots they grow in are about 3 inches cubed. The potting medium in each is half peat moss and half my vermicompost. Each pot also has about 2 tablespoons of crushed eggshell.

The plants are very delicate. They don’t get strong breezes so their stems have not grown stiff. When I moved the chard to photograph it, it fell over. I propped it up a with a ball of tissue.

When I removed the tissue I noticed the tissue was damp, and the odor I cannot describe except to say it was heavenly.

Drinking in that odor of healthy organic compost in communion with the chard roots reminded me powerfully of what we have lost in our culture. This is the odor of a small organic farm. It is the odor many more of us should be familiar with. It is the odor more of us must become familiar with if there is to be a future for us on this planet.

This odor energizes an intuition of what is right and what is wrong. It puts me out of reach of the propoganda of pundits, thinktanks, preachers, bad teachers, blustering talk show bloviators, and all apologists for greed who seek to influence and control us. It puts my mind and heart on a firm foundation. Let them spin and grin, with their fingers crossed. I know which side I’m on. They won’t fool me again.