a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: September 2019

  • Barefoot Gardening


    The clouds and rain come nearly every day now. The rain held off for yesterday’s farmers market. When I checked the forecast for next week’s Saturday market, it showed rain all week except Wednesday, and rain on into the following week. This morning the forecast has changed and the rain ends Tuesday with sun and clouds through Saturday. Which will it be, rain or sun? I’ll know for sure on Saturday when I set off for the market. Until then, there’s no point worrying about it.

    The moist earth beckons me to work barefoot. Shoes have no place in the home. Maybe they have no place in a garden either. If the earth feels lovely on your toes, you know it’s a perfect bed for potatoes.


    This year’s grapes are so delightful. With the skies gray and the sun off to its wintering grounds, the grapes are a reminder of summer’s blue skies.


    I took the seal off the white miso I put up in February. It turned out better than I imagined. You make a whiter miso by adding barley or rice to the soybeans. It’s time to put up next year’s miso. How much red? How much white? Barley or rice? If I make a batch and try some corn, will that be the first time anyone in all of history has made miso with corn?

    A quick check to see if there was such a thing as miso made from corn resulted in me stumbling on a blog that talked about the wondrous cooling power of corn silk. Evidently, it cools the body and is great for when you have a fever or hot flash. One site claims, “Corn silk is used for bladder infections, inflammation of the urinary system, inflammation of the prostate, kidney stones, and bedwetting. It is also used to treat congestive heart failure, diabetes, high blood pressure, fatigue, and high cholesterol levels.” It sounds like you could chuck your entire medicine cabinet and cure all your ills with corn silk. Odd that I’ve never heard of a doctor telling a patient to eat more corn silk.


    Happy has become quite the stately rooster. He has his admirers, and some of the young white roosters I unintentionally acquired this spring when I ordered Welsummer hens, look up to him and follow him around.



    Even with fall deepening, the maples keep unfolding new leaves. In the wet, soothing fall air, their new-leaf red will barely turn green before they turn red from the first frost.

  • No Remorse


    Friday, September 6, was our last day of summer. In many places summer dawdles on with no clarity as to when its last day was. Not here. As the temperature soared on Friday, there was no doubt that once the cool Pacific air moved in on Saturday, that in this neck of the woods, summer was finished for this year. Saturday night’s thunder and lightning, accompanied by drenching rains, kicked summer to the curb. With this morning’s steady rain, fall has settled in for good.


    With the grass wet, the slugs stay out long past sunrise. I have no remorse collecting them by the bushel, or so it seems, for Emma and her large ducklings to eat. Each time I pick one up, it’s a death sentence for that slug. Ducks have no remorse either about eating them. Is it wrong not to feel some sense of loss? No slug has ever apologized to me for mowing down seedlings I was tending. Perhaps being eaten by a duck is a slug’s highest calling. If you’re going to be eaten, you might as well be eaten by a creature that gets great joy out of eating you.


    It is the season for 小松菜 Komatsuna. I’ll keep planting them until they cease sprouting. Picked fresh and dragged through simmering water for just three to five seconds, you can’t ask for a better green to eat.



    With summer over, it’s time to open up the fermenting crocks of miso and pour off the 溜り tamari which has puddled on the surface. As the miso ferments, it weeps salty black tears which collect on the top of the crocks.


    Tamari 溜り, the precursor to soy sauce 醤油, comes from the verb 溜まる tamaru, which means to collect little by little over time. When fermenting miso, the black salty tears collect drop by drop over many months until you have a little puddle of them. Three crocks of miso yielded maybe a cup of tamari. I will have no remorse savoring this precious miso-tamari.


  • September or May?


    The cool mornings are more like fall than summer now. The ducks have settled into their new digs at the pond, swimming much of the day, and coming out of the water to forage on the grass. Emma, living in the garden with her ducklings, is back to laying eggs. I wouldn’t be surprised if Snow isn’t laying eggs too, but where? It’s going to be hard finding her nest in the dense cattails around the pond.




    Today’s surprise was finding an apple tree in bloom. Is it September or is it May? The same tree is full of almost ripe apples.