There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

I recall one delightful autumn evening last year at Ravenna, sitting by the creek side with a beer and my pipe, weary from a day of clearing brush in the sun with my scythe and playing with my brand new broad axe.  If you could do anything right now, be anywhere, be anyone, what would you choose?  The water, framed on both sides by steeply forested hills, trickled by, bearing yellow and orange leaves south towards the Potomac.  The air was slightly crisp with an occasional gentle breeze.  The only other sound besides the creek was the distant yips of a coyote pack.  This, I felt.  This.

So Google Reader is dead.  In looking for alternative ways to read my subscriptions of personal blogs, I’d forgotten I had one myself.  Then I asked myself what the purpose of a blog is for someone who is not inclined to be the focus of attention.  Then I remembered.

A running chronicle helps the author remember and take stock of how much has been learned through trial, error and experience.

With my food production exploits in the garden, every year my “agricultural laboratory” has yielded more and more crops and required less toil.  Though, for the life of me, I still can’t get peas to thrive.

The Ravenna orchard has expanded.  The two apple trees have miraculously never been mauled by the deer, which are everywhere here until muzzleloader season starts in October.  Then, to the frustration of my friends who hunt, they disappear.  Completely.  Even from the neighboring state forest.  Amazing adaptive quality, like the cicadas which stay in the earth for a specific prime number of years in order to confuse their predators.  So this year, I planted a sour cherry, sweet cherry and a pear tree in the same area.  I have also been bringing up raspberry plants as they expand from the original shrub I bought for $20 something like seven years ago.

But there are new lessons to be learned, construction being the most immediate.  My current shelter, a rusting old trailer, is impossible to heat up in the dead of winter.  I’ve spent too many mornings unwilling to do anything because it required exiting the sleeping bag and all the blankets I could get my hands on in the dark.  I need a place where I can use a wood burning stove, with room for a bed and a table.

The plan is already in my head.  Like gardening, this will be a prolonged class taught by those two exacting professors: Nature and experience.

post-summer solstice update

It's damn hot out there. Here's an update on how things are faring in the fertile food factory:

Spinach has long since shot up to go to seed, so I'm waiting to collect the seeds for a fall and/or spring crop. Lettuce is not far behind. Cilantro is going to seed as well, but it is still keeping plenty of leaves at the base.

I'm still getting a few raspberries. I'm pretty sure we've passed the peak though. Corn and beans are growing well, and my zucchini plants are huge and starting to produce a lot.

Small green tomatoes are forming on my Early Girl variety and a few of my volunteer cherry tomato plants. Thanks to some trading with the neighbors, I have a new plant in my plot: callaloo (apparently a.k.a. amaranth). Many of my neighbors are from the Caribbean islands, and just as I gift my volunteer tomatoes, dill and fennel plants, in return I've received okra, black eyed peas, and now callaloo. I was told I could eat it raw, which would be great since then I'd have something leafy for my salads during the summer. But I'd also like to veganize the famous Calaloo soup.

This spring I learned two important gardening lessons.

1. The "last spring frost" date cannot be trusted. As soon as I put tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant out, it turned really cold a couple of nights. While it didn't kill all the plants, they've never quite recovered and are still short, stunted, and for the most part, not producing. I was in a rush to put everything out April 15 because things were quite crowded under my set of indoor grow lights. Next year I either need to start fewer plants indoors or find a better way to prioritize what can go out and what probably should stay in another week or two.

2. The bicycle is the community gardener's best friend. Seriously, that's the case for me, living about a half to 3/4 mile away from the plot. In previous years, I only had time to stop by maybe once a week since I was either walking or driving, which meant not only that weeds quickly got out of hand and I didn't water as much as I needed to, but I missed out on peak times to harvest. Now that I'm regularly biking to work, I'm there 2-3 times a week in the mornings. Raspberries get ripe every couple of days and 1 ft. zucchinis appear out of nowhere. It's good to stop by every two days to keep the machine slowly smoothly. Plus the mosquitos don't seem quite as bad in the mornings.