a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: October 2017

  • No Robots Needed


    The prescription these days for solving the world’s problems are better robots. Robots to vacuum your floor. Robots to water the garden. Robots to mow your lawn. But I doubt any robot will do as good as job of keeping my garden pest-free as the four Cayuga ducks. Watching them scurrying through the leaves and vegetation in search of bugs and slugs to eat is awe-inspiring. They have more intelligence in their brains than any robot Silicon Valley Millennials can conjure up. Millions of years of evolution have honed the ducks’ senses and drive to scour every bit of the garden. I don’t have to recharge them, and they convert everything they eat into fertilizer in a matter of hours. I don’t have to upgrade them every year or two, no need to call support, and they self-reproduce to boot.

    [wpvideo IWU5YZam]


    While the ducks tend to the garden, I make tofu to deliver to the Anacortes Food Coop on Thursday. There is a pure beauty to soybeans when you soak them overnight under cold, running water. The soft flow of cold water washes away all impurities, leaving plump, pure soybeans.

  • Spring in Fall, or How to Sleep Like a Log


    It feels like a spring day, not the middle of fall. 124 days from the summer solstice, the sun is as bright as a day in late February. Just two more months and the days start getting longer. The ducks have found a dry, sunny spot in a woodshed to dry and preen their feathers. Watching ducks preen melts all your worries away. It’s cheap therapy.


    Bicycling to the post office on a day like today is cheap therapy too. Last week I heard Terri Gross interview sleep scientist Matthew Walker. In the interview she made a comment that made me laugh. When Mr. Walker told her that he tries to get eight hours of sleep every night, she gasped, “Eight hours in bed every night! How in the world do you do it? … Most people don’t have eight hours available to sleep.”

    It made me wonder if that is really true, and if it is true, what sort of mad world have we made that most people don’t have enough time to sleep? I am a very sound sleeper. Once as a child, I fell off a top bunk onto a hard wood floor and didn’t wake up. When I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t figure out why I was sleeping in the lower bunk because I knew I went to bed in the upper bunk.

    Plant rows of garlic, chop wood, clean out the chicken coop, bicycle to the post office and back, rake leaves, watch the ducks preen themselves, take in the beauty of fall, and you will sleep like a log for eight hours without any effort.

  • Bow on Fire


    Bow is on fire this fall, brilliant hues of red, orange, and yellow. This year the fall colors have outdone themselves. The forecast is for plenty of sunshine this next week. The brighter the sun, the brighter the leaves.




    The ducklings are on their own. Friday night I took Claire back to be with the other chickens. She was done mothering the ducklings. I think she’s as amazed at what her babies became as I am. She never dreamed she’d raise chicks who like swimming so much.



    Claire enjoys a freshly picked Asian pear 梨, and spending six weeks alone with the ducklings with me attending to their needs, has made her quite tame. She lets me pet her and feed her out of my hand.


    Fall produce is special. It’s gleaning time, gathering up what’s left and savoring it. Nothing beats an onion plucked out of the ground. Slice through it and the juices flow out like milk.

  • Whole Wheat Sour


    The days are woolly and windy. Leaves are everywhere. Branches, whole trunks at times litter the ground. “Go inside, you old fool,” they yell. “You can sweep us up when the sun comes out.”




    Inside, it’s a chance to experiment. A time to wonder how to give whole wheat that special something. Give whole wheat two full days to rest and rise, and you have Whole Wheat Sour, whole wheat bread with a pleasing kick. A possibility for next year’s farmers markets, or if you’d like to try it, let me know.

  • Fall Madness


    The cooler weather has encouraged the stinging nettles to send out fresh shoots. Their bright green could fool one into thinking it is spring.


    Leeks are in bloom. Before they bloom they spin fantastical caps. Maybe not as amazing as gravitational waves, but mesmerizing still. It wouldn’t surprise me if medieval jesters conjured up many of their costume designs from observing blooming alliums.



    And after they develop their seeds, onion and leek flowerheads sway in the breeze, looking like long-haired professors gone mad.