a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Author: theMan

  • 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.


  • Summer’s Waning Days


    Summer’s waning days are full of surprises, such as this bounty of grapes that appeared out of nowhere, on a vine I wasn’t paying any attention to. Another week or two and they will be perfect for picking.



    The magentaspreen is about to bloom. Each tall magentaspreen produces millions of tiny seeds, or so it seems. I haven’t taken the time to count the number of seeds a single magentaspreen produces. I’ve cut down most of the magentaspreen, and have left a few behind to seed next year’s crop.


    Emma is a constant companion whenever I garden. She’s always telling me to do something, “Dig that up,” or, “There are juicier earthworms over there,” or something of the sort.

  • Life Without Rhubarb is No Life At All


    Hard to believe that last spring, the lush row or rhubarb didn’t exist, and were just small, round seeds I pushed into the soil. Life without rhubarb is no life at all.



    Sunday night when I went out to the tofu cabin to soak soybeans, I heard the cries of a chick in distress. It was dark, and using the light of my phone, I found one of the Bielefelder chicks on death’s door, impaled on the thorns of a blackberry, dangling nearly lifeless. After rescuing it, I placed it under its mother in the chicken coop, fearing the little one would not make it through the night. But it did, and yesterday it was scurrying around with all the other little chicks as if nothing had happened.

  • All the Good There Is


    Watching tofu cooling in clear, cold water is so soothing. It’s an opportunity to reflect on all the good there is.


    The marjoram has gone to bloom, dainty pink flowers decorate the path out to the tofu cabin. The chickens walk past these flowers all day long. What do they think of them?


    The latest chicks arrived Wednesday morning, Bielefelder cockerels and Cuckoo Maran pullets. The chicks took to my broody hen right away, and Thursday morning, she had them out exploring the world.

    There are no Bielefelder pullets so I got some cockerels instead. The other roosters don’t know it, but I have sinister plans for them as these Bielefelder grow up, that is if the Bielefelder turn into the grand roosters they are reported to be.

    A mother hen’s devotion to her chicks is evidence that given sufficient billions of years, star dust will turn into kindness.