a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: December 2016

  • Shh, the Garden Is Sleeping

    gardensleepsa

    The garden is fast asleep under a blanket of snow softer than down. It’s been four years since we’ve had a snow this thick. It’s not a heavy snow by no means. Eight years ago we measured the snow by the feet, we were snowbound for a week, our well froze, and we survived by melting snow on our wood stove for water until it warmed enough for the well to thaw.

    gardensleepsb

    The garden may seem asleep, but underneath the snow, an army of bacteria and fungi are crunching through the remains of this year’s vegetables, breaking them down and turning them into soil. According to Dr. Elaine Ingham of The Soil Food Web:

    The most rapid rates of decomposition ever recorded on this planet, in any ecosystem, occur in the winter, under the snow, in temperate areas.

    According to her, at the surface of the soil, where there is free water in the interface between the snow and soil, conditions are perfect for bacteria and fungi to thrive. Deeper in the soil, garlic, shallots, and potatoes are sending out roots, preparing for spring, just a few months away.

    On December 21, 2016, at 10:44 Universal Time, 2:44 am Pacific Time, just 12 days away, the northern hemisphere starts to tilt toward the sun again. For gardeners, it is the start of a new year.

    gardensleepsc
    gardensleepsd
    gardensleepse

  • Winter Bites

    winterbitesb

    Winter bites leaving its prickly white teeth everywhere. Step outdoors on a frosty morning, and winter bites your cheeks and nips at your nose. You know you’re alive on a morning so cold.

    winterbitesc
    winterbitesd
    winterbitese
    winterbitesf
    winterbitesa

  • Farewell Green?

    20161204a

    Snowflakes danced in the air off and on today. Will the coming deep freeze mean the end of green? What will be left to pick for fresh salads by the end of the week? The kale and cabbage will survive. The fava beans probably. It takes a long, cold snap to zap them. The arugula and ruby streaks will sprout again as soon as the freeze ends. I’ve let them go to seed throughout the summer and their tiny seeds are in every inch of the garden. Arugula and ruby streaks sprout everywhere.

    20161204g
    20161204h

    But I doubt the beautiful potato plants I found today will make it through the week. But even if they succumb this week, they will be back in the spring more beautiful than ever.

    20161204b

    Takuma 拓真 is a steady companion when I am out tending the grounds. He and his sister are master rodent terminators, and because they will dig, and dig, and dig until they find their prey, I’ve banned them from the vegetable garden. It was looking like a moonscape with craters everywhere.

    Even so, they are so useful, I wonder how people survived before dogs. Somehow we need to train them to bark at the hawks and eagles when they fly overhead. They see them and look up at them. “Don’t just stand there, bark!” we say, and go running around barking ourselves, hoping they will get the hint. So far that has not worked. Becky, Kuma-Hime 熊姫, and Hazel are counting on them.

    20161204c
    20161204d
    20161204e
    20161204f

  • A Remarkable Hen and Her Family

    miasaandchicksa

    MiAsa Hime 美朝姫 is an extraordinary mother. Her chicks are more than three months old and she still spends her days with them and roosts with them at night. I’ve never had a mother hen attend to her chicks for so long. Some of her chicks are nearly as large as she is. Usually, hens raise their chicks for a month to two. For the ten years I’ve had mother hens raise chicks, this is the longest a hen has stayed with her chicks.

    miasaandchicksb
    pumpkina

    This is pumpkin season. It’s impossible to be sad when you’ve got a pumpkin to roast. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, roasted pumpkin salad … well you get the picture.

    pumpkinb

    An ice scream scoop makes a handy tool to eviscerate a pumpkin.

    pumpkinc

    Eviscerated and cut up, it’s on to the pot to roast. I like to keep the skin on. It becomes very soft after a thorough roasting in a dutch oven, and when I make pumpkin pie, I puree the skin along with the meat. It gives pumpkin pie a deep undertone of earthy goodness.

    pumpkind

  • Way Off Topic – a Long Way from Here

    Having grown up in Japan and having hitchhiked, biked, and ridden trains all over the country as a boy, literally, at eleven years old I took to the roads hitchhiking for days at a time, traveling over a thousand miles, giving my parents much to worry about, I’ve always had an interest in the trains and roads of Japan. At fourteen I went on an expedition from the far south where we lived to the northern tip of Japan, traveling alone for three weeks, incommunicado, riding trains, hitchhiking, sleeping in telephone booths, having the time of my life. I think fourteen year old boys need to do that. Explore the world on their own. My parents had no idea where I was. This was in the day before mobile phones and even long distance telephoning wasn’t easy. And when you are having fun, what fourteen year old boy is going to call home?

    Deciding what trains and roads to try out on future trips is easier now. Train buffs and highway aficionados film their journeys and post them on YouTube. You can search any train line or highway and find videos of them to help decide which new route to take. Which led me to discovering some eye-opening facts about the Tokai-Hokuriki Motorway 東海北陸自動車道. It runs south to north from the Pacific side of Japan to the Sea of Japan side, connecting Nagoya and Toyama. It is 115 miles (185 kilometers) long and has 55 tunnels. 44 miles (70 kilometers) of the highway are tunnels, with the longest one 6.6 miles long. Eleven of the tunnels are more than a mile long.

    I patched together a map of the highway. It is the purple line going from the top to the bottom of the image below. Where the purple highway is white indicates a tunnel. There are long stretches where the highway pops out of a tunnel only to pop into one a short time later.

    tokaihokurikujidoshadolarge

    I don’t think a road like this would ever be built in the US. The toll to drive the distance of this highway is a little over $40. If you plan on driving in Japan, take into mind that the average toll on motorways is about 25¢ per mile, which comes to $25 for every hundred miles.

    Below is a recent two hour video posted on YouTube which starts at the northern end of the highway and goes all the way to the southern end.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SeI2oYsOGU&w=560&h=315]