The Dog Days

I've recently stumbled across a couple quotes about August.

The first one was shared with me by an Of Woods and Words fan: 

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color." — Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting 

The second quote I found while leafing through the latest issue of Minnesota Monthly:

"If the calendar were a family, August would be the great, bosomy aunt who turned down her first proposal and never again had the chance to marry. Here she comes, all smothering warmth, smelling of Aqua Net, and accompanied by a slight sense of sadness for opportunities missed." -- Shannon Olson.

I found the second quote last night when I'd finally put my feet up after an afternoon and evening of what some people might call homesteading and what I prefer to refer to as "fridge damage control."  It all started when I went out to survey the gardens and came back with four more large zucchinis in my hands. Which brought our total of harvested zucchinis and yellow summer squash that had not been transformed into anything edible and delicious up to eight. EIGHT. 

Too much zucchini

"Okay," I said to Andy, holding up the latest zucchini harvest, "who can we plant bomb?" It's that awful time of year when everyone has zucchinis (too many zucchinis) and there's no one out there to accept the (gracious, selfless) gifts of zucchini. And so, instead of setting up a "free zucchini (!!!)" stand on the side of the road, I turned on the oven, and got busy. I cranked out a double batch of both zucchini lemon muffins and chocolate zucchini bread, and chopped up two of the larger zucchini to dehydrate for later use in soups and chilis. Before I dealt with the zucchini, I had to do some reorganizing in the fridge, which resulted in a vat of fruit salad and another cold savory salad. 

"Congratulations," Andy said as I worked to get the water bath canner up to a boil to seal four quarts of blueberry pie filling. "You've successfully made it 20 degrees warmer in the cabin than it is outside."  

At the time, the thermometer in the kitchen said the indoor temp was 87, while the outdoor temp was down to 73. (Thanks for exaggerating, Andy.)

Steamy stuff

I'm not going to lie. When I looked at all those zucchinis piled on my counter, my first thought wasn't a prideful "we totally grew that." Nope, it was a feeling of sheer, body-surging horror: "What the heck am I going to do with all of these." By the time I got around to the blueberry pie filling (which had really been my sole ambition for the day), I stood over the pot, stirring the 25 cups of steaming berries and muttering under my breath "just fucking boil already." I think I lost points off my "happy homemaker ala1950s image" for the profanity. C'est la vie. 

So yes, the first week of August is certainly hanging hot and heavy in these parts. Thank goodness there's a lake 20 paces or so from the sweltering stove to provide instant heat relief.

As for the sense of missed opportunities, already Andy and I are heading out to the gardens to survey both the successes and failures and saying those fateful words: "Next year . . ."

Next year? Already the kohlrabi and broccoli have had their time in the sun. The evenings are becoming noticeably shorter. The first load of winter firewood has been ordered. It won't be long until that autumn crispness starts to sneak into the air.

But for now I'm planning to enjoy this first week of August, with all its warmth, all its sunshine, and all its zucchini.

Read more ...

Call Me Audrey

I have a hard time thinking of vegetables as scary or intimidating. I grew up with a huge vegetable garden in the backyard and tend to view vegetable plants as pretty innocuous and even, kind of friendly. So I was surprised last month when the neighbors expressed fear that our tomato and broccoli plants might "eat them."

But as time goes by, I have to admit, the tomato and squash plants are looking rather bad-ass. I've taken to calling them "Audrey", ala Little Shop of Horrors.

I oblige their cries of "Feed me" with plenty of water and a little plant food every couple weeks. But not too much plant food. Andy devoted a portion of yesterday to tying back the rambunctious tomato plants so we can actually pass them on the deck walkway and get in and out of our cabin. We still have to kind of angle ourselves sideways to get around them.

Meanwhile, over in the new raised bed, things are progressing at a similarly "wild" pace. We've been harvesting broccoli and kohlrabi for the last week and a half now. I'm letting the cabbage get huge though. Just because I can. 

Visions of sauerkraut danced through their heads

The zucchini, yellow squash, and pumpkin plants are taking over one half of the raised bed and exceeding expectations. I had little hopes when I planted the pumpkins. I picked the package of seeds up on a whim when the Gold Nugget winter squash seed I'd ordered didn't arrive due to crop failure last year. Now the pumpkin is climbing the fence, sending tendrils willy-nilly, and bearing teeny-tiny pumpkins. Exciting!

Granted, it's only fair if I share our gardening failures too. The onions have once again committed massive hari-kari. I spent last night pulling out all of the spinach and arugula which immediately went to seed after sprouting. We're still figuring out what will and won't grow in our shady terrace gardens. In our extreme heat, one Thai basil plant kicked it when I wasn't looking (or was too hot and miserable to care).

As Andy said yesterday, "Now I know how people have massive, productive gardens."

To which I said, "And why all the people with productive gardens are like 57."

This gardening stuff is most definitely a work in progress. You learn what to do and perhaps more importantly, what not to do, every day.

Read more ...

Knock Yourself Out Mark Zuckerberg

We watched The Social Network the other night and it got me thinking about a lot of things; namely, Mark Zuckerberg. Before watching the movie, I'd heard a statement that Zuckerberg's goal for the year is to eat only things he kills with his own hands. Huh?

Now we all know by now that I'm a little idealistic when it comes to trying to live locally and sustainably. I love the idea of cracking open a can of my own locally grown canned goods or pulling some local cut of meat out of the freezer. I feel that if we all ate a little closer to home, the world just might be a slightly better place.

But I also live in northern Minnesota, where eating locally means some wild rice, a lot of blueberries, and a bit of meat when you can get it. And there's just only so much venison with blueberry sauce that a 21st century palate can take. While we eat a fair amount of meat which Andy has shot, the majority of the meat we consume at the cabin isn't even organic.

Why? Well, it takes a lot of food to feed two people for an entire year.

The venison Andy got last Novemeber was all gone by April and we only used about a pound of the meat a week. During grouse season, Andy and I went out hunting nearly every night and while we managed to get enough poultry to provide one or two weekly dinners, we never even stockpiled enough grouse to have any in the freezer for "later." Believe it or not, all that's left of last year's blueberries is less than a cup of berries, rattling around in a gallon bag in the back of the freezer. Even what, at the time, can appear to be massive amounts of food can disappear quickly.

Then there's the price issue. In a world where time is money, we can't afford to spend every waking moment scrounging for food. And much as I'd like to eat only organic, that ideology is a little rough on my pocketbook.


Just yesterday I came back from the grocery store with a nominal amount of food in my (reusable) bags and one honking total on my receipt. "That's it," I declared. "No more fresh produce for us." Forget the yummy red strawberries at $3.65 a pound; next week I'm just going to pick up some cans of Flavorite fruit cocktail in lieu of all the (expensive) fresh fruit salad ingredients I picked up yesterday.

Now, I'm not sure what Zuckerberg means when he says he's only eating food he shot with his own hands. Is he counting produce too? Because let me tell you, as Andy and I ran around last night covering up the gardens to protect them from the latest frost advisory, I realized even a little garden can demand more of you than you ever expected.

With his unlimited funds, maybe Zuckerberg is in a better position to succeed at this "with your own hands" eating game. But while I may consistently cry "busy", I have a feeling Zuckerberg has a couple more obligations and commitments than I do.

Mark, if you figure out how to do this: 1) You're a better man than me and 2) Let me know how you did it.  

Read more ...

Don't Mind Me: I'm Composting

I’ve been thinking about composting a lot lately. We pulled in the garden a couple weeks back and we’re trying to figure out how we can improve the garden’s productivity next year. As I’ve mentioned, some things did really well in our garden this past summer, but that’s not to say that we had a miraculous vegetable garden our first time out. We were definitely victims of our own limited understanding of gardening. The wind battered the onions to oblivion, the spinach simply refused to go, the squash sat stagnantly all summer long. And the soil? The soil could use some testing and alterations.

Soil has always been a struggle in our neck of the woods and our raised beds by the cabin are filled with a concoction of who-knows-what: bags of black dirt, the naturally occurring sand in the area, whatever came with the nursery plants. Growing up, my parents’ garden was a veritable field of clay. I watched them dump manure and ashes on the soil. And we saved all of our kitchen scraps and took them “out back” to the compost heap.

Frankly, when I was little I thought the compost was disgusting. The pail we threw all the kitchen scraps into always smelled terrible. The pile could attract bears to the yard and it took forever for the decomposition to actually occur.

Now that I’m grown, I’ve come to see the virtue of composting. It only makes sense to save your food waste and turn it into something that can drastically improve your garden’s soil.

On Monday, I went out back to spend some time with our compost pile at the cabin. I separated out the most recent additions to the pile into its own pile and discovered a rich, black soil forming in the pile’s bottom half. It’s pretty amazing. I have my fingers crossed that the latter bit of compost will be ready to be spread over the garden come spring.

It struck me that it’s time for me to turn over my own compost pile. I’ve been spending the last five months wound around an out-of-the-house job. I’ll still be tied to the job throughout the winter as I work a couple days from home, but I’ll have much (much!) more time for writing. Now is the time to delve deep inside the part of me that supposed to have been experiencing a wonderful transformation and rejuvenation during my “otherwise engaged” summer. Now is the time to pull out the neglected writing projects, to re-engage with conversations with editors who have likely forgotten about me, to start querying, and doing ferocious self-promotion.

Compost still isn’t always a “good time.” And I can’t say I’m really looking forward to plunging my elbows into my own compost heap and doing all the grunt work that comes with any sort of writing success.

After all, compost takes some getting used to. But if we refuse to turn our compost, or if we just give up on stuff that looks like waste, we’ll never know what can become of things we’ve let sit for a while. I am looking forward to seeing what blossoms when my compost turns to soil.

Read more ...

I Will Buy You A Garden

“I made you something,” Andy said when I got back to the Shack on Sunday. Cranky from my five-hour drive back from the Twin Cities and feeling (somewhat melodramatically) as though I’d arrived up at the very end of the world, I raised my eyebrow.

“Yeah? What?” I asked.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe, a necklace made out of bubble gum wrappers?

It turned out to be a lot better than a bubble gum wrapper necklace.

While I gallivanted in New York City, Andy constructed a raised garden bed at the cabin where we’ll be spending the summer. My mother gave me some flower seeds for my birthday in March and at the time, I didn’t know quite what to do with the seeds. While I’ve been dreaming of a garden all winter, the Shack is located in a shady valley that doesn’t appear particularly agriculturally viable. But my new summer job has lead to shift in residencies for the summer where the raised bed Andy built as well as the pre-existing terraced beds with warrant plenty of digging in the dirt this summer.

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

Now that the means exist to have a bit of a garden, we’re faced with the dilemma of deciding what to plant. Although it’ll still be awhile before any seedlings can be put out in the garden, we’re a little behind on starting seedlings. I really don’t want to bite off more than we can chew when it comes to garden maintenance, so I want to be as smart about this project as possible. One of my concerns is that the garden is as sustainable as possible.

Gardening seems the ultimate sustainable act, but gardening can generate a ton of largely unusable plastic waste. Just think of all the dinky little plastic 4/6-pack containers you accumulate on a trip to the greenhouse. Molly over at the Snyder 5 has a great idea on how to use egg cartons to start seedlings: Composting for Newbies. That’s so smart! I need to pick up some potting soil from my parents’ house tomorrow and then I plan to start a batch of flowers in an egg carton tomorrow evening.

We plopped a few tulip bulbs – excess favors from coworkers’ wedding last September – in the perennial garden last fall. Like most things you “plop” in the ground, I promptly forgot about them. So it’s fun to see all three tulips poking up now.

I have a cold, probably just travel fatigue catching up with me. We’re also in the process of moving out of the Shack for the summer. Our bedroom currently looks like a suitcase vomited in it and my desk space is a teetering cityscape of notebook towers and paperclip ponds. I should spend the evening organizing, but I’m more keen to plant my sweet pea seeds in the far corner of the raised bed.

I’ve gotten back to work. I have some calls out for an article that needs to be done by the end of the week and as long as I actually get some calls back, I think it has potential to be a really good article. I’m also in the process of setting up some interviews for my radio project and my current priority needs to be hammering out a draft of a commentary.

Speaking of commentaries, here’s my recent effort.

A college colleague got in touch with me yesterday regarding a freelance opportunity for the website he edits. My interest is piqued, but I need more details before I make a commitment to any more work.

Read more ...