That was a test done with the PlantCam, a time-lapse cam I picked up because I’ve always found time-lapse photography fascinating. This is a very simple version of more extensive setups, of course, but really all I want is to be able to capture certain things without a giant, elaborate system – because of course, most of my attention will be focused on the actual growing and tending of things, not with fiddling with equipment. I get enough of that sort of activity in my day job.
I decided after the ice test to try capturing the sunset.
If you watch closely, you’ll see a bird appear and disappear from one of the tree limbs.
The first video is composed of images taken every minute for right around an hour. The second is from images taken every five minutes for almost two hours. Both were put together with Windows MovieMaker rather than the onboard video converter, as it appears the onboard converter will only do low-res output.
I can’t wait to put this among the seed flats and then out in the garden proper, especially on something like okra, which can grow insanely quickly. Who knows, maybe we’ll have several cams scattered about, capturing life on the ranch when we’re not looking.
I should say hunting and gathering, as technically I have been hunting through seed catalogs and gathering all the info into a spreadsheet for the things I want – yes, I am a geek, but it was really the only way to keep track of the things I’m ordering for this year from eight different vendors. So far, I’ve placed six of the orders, with two more to polish off this evening.
Why so many? Simple: there is no single vendor who carries (or has in stock) the things I’d like to have. The pricing can also wildly fluctuate across vendors, particularly for certified organic seed, which I order as often as practical.
Now with the bulk of the ordering out of the way, it’s time to start plotting – not an easy task. I had planned to work a bit outside today, but with the temperature not getting out of the 40s here and the windchills never leaving the 30s, I elected to stay inside instead. When I went out to put the chickens up in their coop and turn on the water by their run, there was still ice on the ground from last night’s running of the taps. Tonight we should be down in the teens, which is getting a bit overboard, I think. Mother Nature is apparently trying to shake off a few inhabitants here before releasing us into spring.
With some puppies and some homemade potato-broccoli-cheese soup, it will be nice and toasty inside, and perfect for dreams of spring.
Once again, we’ve cycled through another year. This past year is – like any other – not one to forget, but not one especially grand. I suppose in the overall balance, the good and bad canceled each other out and we’re left with another year that is fairly normal, and usual for anyone simply living their lives in the best way they possibly can. A lengthy illness followed by a death, another completely unexpected illness followed by surgery and extended recuperation, a couple of new additions to the extended family, and in between all of that the constants in our lives: food, family, work, gardening, animals, and moving forward.
Many people find nothing in particular to be optimistic about in winter. After all, it is generally bleak, cold, and there isn’t a huge amount of activity going on in the garden. The snow peas are hanging tough against the wildly fluctuating weather we’ve had (going from teens overnight and the next night in the 40s, which must be terribly confusing), and the almost fifty pounds of garlic we planted doesn’t seem to care one way or the other what’s happening, snuggled under its blanket of hay. Beyond that, nothing is growing – not in the garden, at least.
In my head, it’s a different story. The best thing about winter is that the seed catalogs begin to arrive, until I have a nice large stack of them by my side. By far, my favorite for actual reading is the Fedco catalog simply because of the commentary and stories scattered about the listings. I’ve also received Johnny’s (another favorite, and from whom I tend to order a great deal), RH Shumway (from whom I’ve already ordered up 200 June bearing strawberry plants, as the old everbearing we had ordered from somewhere else a couple of years ago never gave us enough at any one time to be satisfying), Gurney’s (already ordered a couple of almond trees for mom), Vesey’s (a Canadian favorite – or should that be favourite? – from last year, due to exceptional germination rates on the things I ordered), Bountiful Gardens and Territorial Seed (who always have some fascinating items in addition to things I see in most catalogs), Totally Tomatoes (which is not, despite the name, only tomatoes), and of course, Burpee (who always have some interesting hybrids). It’s fun to spread out nine catalogs, all open to tomatoes, and figure out what I want to plant. Ditto for beans or peppers or brassicas or anything else: there is much fun in the initial kid-at-Christmastime looking.
From there, it’s a matter of paring down and when two or more have the same thing, picking one to get that item in my order. I figured it up a few days ago, and I have about 2200 square feet, not including the garlic area, for planting. The past couple of years I’ve never really filled out the space that was available completely, and of course last summer was a complete bust with everything going to hell because of my surgery. This year, though, I intend to fully utilize all the space out there in some fashion.
That, my friends, is where the optimism of winter comes in. It is at this time that all avenues are open to the gardener, that no possibility is off the table, and that the grand dreams about growing things that have failed in the past still take root (so to speak), holding you with the force of the promise of what could be. When the wind is whipping around, and you’re out turning on the taps and covering the wellhead and bladder against freezing, you can look at the rows of empty frames and picture five foot high okra, beds of luscious tomato plants, cucumber vines meandering up trellises, mirrored by beans doing the same in another area of the garden, sprawling squash plants and zucchini that hide until they’re big as baseball bats and know that the winter will eventually end, moving aside for the sake of spring and summer.
The turf on the field at Eastern Washington is red. Blood red. Or, if I were in a jollier frame of mind instead of becoming more miserable by the second because I feel like total crap, a holiday-flavored red. It isn’t enough that I’m watching FCS football on a Friday night while fixing someone’s photo gallery that they’re completely hosed, but my eyeballs have to be bleeding as well? I thought the Smurf Turf at Boise was bad, but this is even worse. Too bad it isn’t snowing out there to cover it up a bit.
The late-round attempt at tomatoes and peppers was a failure, unfortunately. Things were going fairly well, but then we went to Disney for the day, and although I’d left the ends of the hoops open to get some airflow, but keep things toasty inside, the winds were horrendous and picked up the (weighted down) plastic and flung it up and off the hoops. By the time we arrived back at the ranch, it had already been freezing for several hours, and the unprotected plants were history. The sugar snaps seems to be hanging in there, and I pulled up all the peanuts yesterday and today – a fine crop of late round peanuts, too, it appears.
For the rest: the garden has been put mostly to bed for winter, such as it is. We’ve had several weeks now where we’ve had at least three straight nights of freezing weather – the last round took us into the mid-teens, in fact – and experimentation for the season is over. The garlic is fine beneath its cover of hay, and the sugar snaps we may begin harvesting in the next ten days or so. Other than that, there are some leeks and carrots in the ground, and a few stay cabbage or broccoli plants (I’m not quite sure what those tiny plants are and I’m too lazy to dig out my planting roster). I’m debating whether to start some more cabbage and broc and cauliflower, but I know one thing I must do is get the parsnips in before the real winter blast comes in late January/early February here, as the frosty weather will make them sweeter than they usually are.
An aside here…I know the most overused/overrated word this year was “whatever”, which for my money only narrowly beats out “Palin”, but could we vote “Are you kidding me?” as the most overused/overrated phrase? Perhaps as a tie with “I know, right?” as a top annoyance? Thanks.
No progress on the garlic steppes as yet, but there’s still almost an entire year to get that put together for next year’s garlic season. Right now I’d like to get the remaining frames built out and filled so things will be ready to go as immediately as possible for spring. I’m planning more sweet potatoes next year, fewer varieties of tomatoes, just a handful of pepper varieties, and only a couple of varieties of cukes – all things that performed well and tasted better than others, and in many cases, varieties that took tops in both categories. I’m ever hopeful that there will be no disasters (deaths, cancers, surgeries, etc.) to knock another season out of whack, so in addition to my please regarding overused words or phrases, how about we add a little cooperation from the universe to that?
I just noticed that last post is number 500 on this incarnation of the blog.
A reprieve from winter today: glorious, spring-like day, with a light breeze, a clear sky, and the scent of air that makes you want to draw in breath after breath, deeply inhaling some of the best Mother Nature has to offer. It was me and the boys today, traipsing out to turn off the taps and uncover everything so the plants could enjoy our one day stay of winter weather. We’ll start up again tomorrow in our quest to get summer loving plants to survive through what will be a brutal week here on the ranch: we expect to get into the upper teens here around mid-week, which will be a challenge in protection under the covered wagons. I have no idea if things will make it through, but that’s sort of the point in all this, isn’t it (until I can build a real greenhouse, that is): experimenting.
Another experiment we’ll be trying here on the ranch: growing garlic for seed stock, not just for our own use. It occurred to me while chatting with some folks that this would take expansion, but what if we went vertical rather than horizontal, terracing it much like the rice paddies at the feet of mountains in far off lands? There are seven eight foot fence panels at the back of the pool, and over that fence is nothing that’s in use. The failed attempts to grow corn in that area gave way to a massive effort to rebuild the sand/clay into real soil – an effort that has worked, I might add, since I worked to break up the area and then sow it with alfalfa, clover, buckwheat, and other good nutrient-dense vegetation. There is no question there will be no corn planted there in the immediate future, but a series of steppes along the back of the fenceline would provide more area to grow a crop that is tasty, economical, easy both in terms of maintenance and growing, and that yields good prices when sold for seed (especially if grown naturally, without chemicals as we would be doing). With that, of course, will necessarily come some meetings with my accountant and lawyer, as no doubt there are rules about this sort of thing, and why do that research on my own when that’s why I pay them?
I started five horseradish roots a couple of months ago. Someone helpfully dug the holes for me and filled them with a nice mixture of soil and compost to give them a fighting chance. At first, I thought they’d died right off, as the roots had been languishing in the fridge throughout the summer of surgery and recovery. As it turns out, the roots will last practically forever if they’re kept chilled, and they have turned into quite healthy things indeed, with giant leaves soaking up sun and moisture. The boys, though, keep peeing on them, so a fencing adjustment is in order for those and for the berries that we put in along the main fenceline (grapes, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries).
We’re also considering selling seed – organic only, if possible. This and the garlic would be a good starting place for Lazy Dog Ranch branding, I do believe. At least, the dogs don’t seem to be presenting any particular objection.
I knew it was simply a matter of time. After all, between the laws of diminishing returns and the downward creep of the thermometer, it was a given that even the hardiest of summer-loving plants would not survive the onslaught. And so it goes for the okra, finally giving in to the inevitable. They now stand in place, like guardians cursed to remain in one location until relieved by those who never arrive, becoming more gaunt and weary as time passes.
I haven’t pulled them out of the line yet, unlike the jalapenos, from whom I took the last fruits and then took to compost yesterday. I’d like to see how long they can stand before collapsing entirely, but will probably take the shovel and dig them out tomorrow – the shovel is absolutely required, as anyone who has grown okra can vouch for the rather strong roots the plants put down, anchoring them to the earth even as they reach toward the sun they adore. I suppose they could be tested as greenhouse-type growers, but this seems counter-productive, and it would be very difficult to cover them every night and uncover them each day, since they are taller than me at this point. There is also the promise of starting anew next year, planning for which has already begun in conjunction with the arrival of the seed catalogs for next year.
Now, we settle in for what passes for winter here, but which would be laughed off as mild by our counterparts to the north. For us, though, it is no laughing matter to be faced with shorter days and languishing temperatures when for at least some of us, the warmth is what brings us seriously to life.
This afternoon, it was time to break out the plastic once more and create covered wagons everywhere. With a forecast low of 27 at the ranch, and with my continuing quest to have one ripe tomato in the winter here – one that will get to red or purple without cracking – wrestling with plastic to cover for the impending weather is just part of the routine.
I know some people poo-poo the idea of growing tomatoes in winter. “I won’t eat things out of season,”, they say, pointing to the additional environmental issues involved in raising things out of season, like the transport of the item from wherever it’s grown (South America, for instance) to the local market, or to the energy consumed in forcing things to grow outside their usual time. In this case, however, I am not transporting the item anywhere – except potentially to a tasty meal on my table – and we are expending no additional resources to keep the plants alive beyond the human energy necessary to pull out the plastic covers and get them set in place. That particular energy is fairly significant, because I have to say, high mil plastic is rather heavy. But, from an overall standpoint, beyond the initial purchase of the plastic, the environmental impact is pretty much zero, since it can be reused, likely for years with proper storage, without then sending it off to the recycling center.
Thus, the quest for summer vegetables in winter continues here at the ranch. I’m certain the weather will finally kill the okra that has been so productive for us, but that staunchly held up through previous freezes without benefit of protection. It’s a hardy beast, and as of this afternoon, still flowering with beautiful buds signaling another round of fruit. If it is still there in the morning, it will be a most pleasant surprise, although I’m aware there is still the issue of diminishing returns even for what was the star performer of last season.
Earlier this month, while perusing the weather looking at the forecast, the current conditions output was a bit of a shocker. I’m certain we would have noticed this if had in fact been the case.
Generally speaking, we don’t see wind speeds like that unless we’re seeing a hurricane come through, and I’ve have expected the house to lift off and that evil bitch from the Wizard of Oz go biking by. But there wasn’t, and it didn’t, and she wasn’t. A run of the mill typo to inject some humor into an otherwise round of cursing about freezing weather. Said cursing will be worse tomorrow, as we are expecting the first hard freeze of the season, with lows about 29, and windchills a few degrees under that, followed by another night or two of at freezing temps. This means the plastic most definitely needs to go up, preferably a couple of hours before sunset at the horrid time of around 5:30 PM. In case you’ve not noticed as yet, I’m a bigger fan of summer and long, sunny days than I am of winter. I guess I’m just a sunshine kind of person.
It isn’t often that something like this happens, and I’d wager it is even less likely that anyone will ever see it in person. On this particular day, we were headed into town for yet another one of my followups after the lung surgery – I do believe it was this visit that the doctor told me I could drive myself again, as it happens – and on the way, in the other direction, there was a backup as far as the eye could see. Thanks to modern technology and the inevitable “always there” it brings, we were able to find out that the backup was due to a pilot of a small private plane making an emergency landing just off the interstate in the opposite direction.
Now, to anyone who has ever visited this city, or even had the opportunity to drive through it, it’s well known that some portion of the road system is under construction here, somewhere. In this case, one of those areas was this precise portion of the system, stretching several miles, where the pilot of the plane not only managed to avoid power lines on his way down, but miss the traffic stuffed into two lanes, the barricades on the sides of the road, the construction equipment and personnnel scattered about, and the large fence that would have taken it into the Publix warehousing area. Instead, he took out a few branches of some trees and a temporary fence surrounding some construction materials (but not the materials themselves, it seems) and came to a stop without anyone injured. According to one person who did see it, the pilot managed to come down initially on the road, then bounce back up over at least one car on the way to the far, grassy side. Remarkable, really.
By the time we’d finished with more poking and prodding at the doctor, the backup was gone, but the cleanup continued, with reps from the NTSB coming up from Orlando, and crews deciding the plane had to be sawed into pieces in order to get it out. This is what I managed to capture on the way past the wreck area.
They’d already removed the damaged wing and the tail section, and loaded the plane onto a trailer, ready to be hauled out. Less than a day after this happened, it was hard to tell anything had actually happened, except for the missing piece of fencing that had been up around the construction material. Less than a week later, it was impossible to say, unless you’d seen it, where exactly the plane had come down.
As it turns out, the plane had been recently bought and was being flown in for maintenance – but had not been flown in quite some time, nor had it had maintenance in quite some time. One of the engines failed, and on the pilot’s attempt to return to the local airport, the other engine failed as well, leading to the emergency landing.
It occurred to me this evening, after having a bit of a crash landing myself – sudden dizziness and an immediate need to land myself on my rear on the kitchen floor, leaning up against the cabinets – that I’m probably in need of some maintenance myself. I couldn’t recall what I’d eaten today, which is not terribly surprising, given that as much as I cook, I can’t eat much of what I do cook. I’m guessing that I hadn’t had enough to eat, since I feel better now that I’ve a bit of food and some watered down orange juice (so as not to turn my mouth into a fiery pit due to the acid) in me. I just don’t eat as much as I used to, after being on tube feeding for nine months, and I am not, in general, all that hungry in any case throughout the day. Much like the plane, I suppose it’s time for an overhaul of sorts, with greater attention to the fuel I’m giving myself.In the same manner, I suspect that almost anyone could find some portion of their life that needs a bit of a tuneup.
To kick off, I have some garbanzos soaking in some plain water. Tomorrow, I’ll boil them with the hambone I saved from Thanksgiving dinner, add some spices, toss in some potatoes, onions, and ham from that aforementioned bone to make some spanish bean soup. On the side: freshly made italian bread, with a side experiment of trying to break it into four smaller loaves instead of two large loaves, and freezing two of four: one after the first rise when the loaf is shaped, and one after the loaf is proofed. Then we’ll be able to see which one fares better in the oven after it’s been thawed. The other two, of course, will be baked until golden, brown, and delicious, then slathered with butter and eaten with good soup as we head for several consecutive nights of hard freeze weather.
