a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Reflections

Art in the Woods

Wood is a good medium for making art. To work with wood, a chainsaw comes in handy.

The pieces are cut and stacked. What’s left behind is the flattened grass where the tree used to lie. Eventually there will be rows of salad greens, garlic, shallots, potatoes, beans, and other produce growing here.

The wood is split and stacked. The art installation is complete. This piece is about a quarter of a cord. By spring it will have vanished, used to keep the house warm in the middle of winter.

Lucky isn’t impressed with the art installation. She just walks by without so much as pausing and pondering what the artist is trying to convey.

July 12, 2014
Impatience Rewarded
For nearly a year I have been waiting for this recipe to finish. Last August I made my first batch of miso and set it in the pantry to age. I meant to wait until August, but now that it almost mid July, my curiosity got the best of me. I brought the crock out of the panty.

Lifting the lid, it certainly smelled like miso. I made my miso with soy beans, brown rice, barley and salt. What transforms this mixture into miso is koji, or Aspergillus oryzae, a fungus used to ferment a number of food products. Humans have been using Aspergillus oryzae for some 2,000 years.

Lifting the parchment paper I used to seal the fermenting miso, I am face to face with my home made miso.

Opening it a few weeks early was worth it. My impatience was rewarded with some of the best miso I’ve ever had. There really is something to making some foods yourself in small batches. Now I can start making a batch every three months. One of the places I researched said that if you let it ferment for two years, it tastes even better. If I make enough batches, I will have the patience to let some ferment that long.
- Miso ~ Wikipedia
- Miso ~ The World’s Healthiest Foods
- Miso Basics: A Japanese miso primer, looking at different types of miso ~ Just Hungry
- Mastering Miso’s Mysteries ~ NPR
- Rice and Miso Every Day
- 手作り味噌の作り方 ~ Youtube video on making miso – in Japanese but worth watching
- 味噌屋が教える手作り味噌の作り方 ~ Youtube video on making miso – in Japanese but the enthusiasm of the miso maker will make your day
July 12, 2014
Swift Forktails
One of the hoop houses has a healthy population of Swift Forktails, a type of damselfly. Swift Forktails are black with dabs of turquoise on the tips of their tails and their sides. They float through the air looking like flying gems.

Related to dragonflies, damselflies eat many harmful insects and keep their numbers under control. And unlike pesticides, they don’t leave behind any chemicals that can harm you. You don’t have to worry about inhaling any harmful dust. You don’t have to worry about reapplying poisons. The damselflies will keep working all summer long and into the fall.
- Photos of Ischnura erratica — Swift Forktail
- Damselfly ~ Beneficial Bugs
July 8, 2014
Picked Today

It’s Thursday, time to deliver eggs and produce picked this morning to Tweets Café. This week I have three cartons of Ruby Streaks, a carton of kale and chard, and some shallots, and of course eggs. In few weeks I’ll start making an extra delivery of fresh salad greens to Tweets on Saturday. Eventually, I plan on delivering fresh salad greens every day they are open and expanding my service to other restaurants which want to serve their customers produce picked that day.

On the way home, I dropped by Bow Little Market, a country market held on Thursdays in Belfast, Washington. This is the fifth year for the market and it has grown a lot since it first began.

Bow Little Market was started by Chuckanut Transition, “a group of rural, independent and capable people learning to live cooperatively with each other and our natural world.”

Bow Little Market is held next to Belfast Feed Store, on North Green Road near the intersection of Old Highway 99 and Bow Hill Road. The nearest freeway exit is exit 236 on I-5 north of Burlington, WA.

July 3, 2014
Summer Heat

It’s a new month and the first egg of the month is from Lucky. That’s a good way to begin a month.

July starts with a heat wave. It’s almost three in the afternoon and it is 78ºF – 25.5ºC, the hottest day so far this year. It will be even hotter before it starts to cool down. This may be our first day over 80ºF – almost 27ºC. For many readers this probably makes you laugh. Some of you live in places where it doesn’t get that cold at night. Growing up, I didn’t feel like it was a summer day unless it got over 30ºC – 86ºF.

The chickens are in the shade, the cherries are ripening fast, the lavender is in full bloom, the apples are growing, and the garlic is being whimsical. What more could I want?

July 1, 2014