Tue 15 March, 2011
but today it is…
…as of 3/12/2011, the house is too quiet, the couch is too big, no one in the backyard cares that I’m “goin’ in”, there’s no dancing when we put on our jackets or visit the hall closet, and the worst of the worst is the conspicuous absence of that magnificent head in [...]
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add to furlFri 29 October, 2010
So, I didn’t get back to my rant about our Senate Election here in Washington, and all the steam I had built up in the sleepless night that preceded the last entry has pretty much disappated. The general malaise I found myself in regarding the Senate Election centered around the fact that despite all of [...]
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add to furlSat 02 October, 2010
Well over a year has passed since I’ve written anything here, but according to google analytics somebody still arrives here on occassion. Whether they be lost or found when they arrive is unclear from search terms like “saturn wagon”, “1995 f250″, “shitsu” or “pie transportation”. Maybe on the last item a conclusion can be drawn [...]
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add to furlTue 01 December, 2009
The Thanksgiving contribution…
We always celebrate Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s house. It is usually a pretty big crowd and everyone pitches in by bringing a dish or two. This year was no different, except I decided to branch out a bit with one of the dishes. This year our compost volunteered many things, but [...]
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add to furlFri 20 November, 2009
Despite my best intentions of increasing my posting frequency this summer, it seems the year got away from me. However, I resolve to do better over the dark days of winter and part of that entailed signing up once gain for (not so) Urban Hennery’s Dark Days challenge. For those unfamiliar - a quick synopsis [...]
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add to furlTue 03 November, 2009
Fri 11 September, 2009
At long last I finally got around to uploading some of the pictures from our visit to the Bullock Brothers homestead on Orcas Island at the end of August. It was a veritable wonderland of food laden forests, millions of projects and experiments in process. The majority of thier land occupies a southfacing slope that [...]
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add to furlSat 29 August, 2009
er… Bullocks I mean - as in the Bullock Brothers permaculture homestead on Orcas Island.
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add to furlFri 28 August, 2009
26 pounds of fresh hot Hatch green chile from New Mexico. I was born in New Mexico and although it has been almost 24 years now since we moved away, there is little that can compete with a big bowl of green chile as the ultimate grounding and centering meal. No - this is most [...]
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add to furlWed 26 August, 2009
Masanobu Fukuoka, in The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming describes using daikon radishes to (almost) passively aerate and amend his soil. The daikon tills deep into the ground under its own steam and when the growing top is lopped off, it composts in place - providing food for the soil critters and improving [...]
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add to furlThu 20 August, 2009
Canning season is upon us. In this house it actually never really ends since I find myself canning up big batches of chicken stock every couple months from the trimmings and bone I hide away in the freezer after we roast a chicken. But the preservation of summer’s gifts has officially begun. It all started [...]
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add to furlThu 13 August, 2009
Sun 09 August, 2009
Wow, 1 day short of a month without posting. Sorry about that! This has turned in to a bit of a whirlwind summer with extreme temperatures (and an extreme lack of water). I also recently upgraded computers and am still working on getting all of the necessary drivers and software installed to set me back [...]
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add to furlFri 10 July, 2009
I’ll be in class all weekend so there won’t be any new posts. Look who I caught outside the bathroom window the other day, just chilling and contemplating the peas…
I hope you all have a relaxing weekend.
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Pardon the poor picture quality, but I was hungry and there wasn’t much light left so the camera flash left everything a bit overexposed. It occurred to me that I have all but stopped cataloging some of our meals. With canning and growing season well upon us, the daily food preparation takes a backseat. Add [...]
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add to furlMon 06 July, 2009
That earlier picture of the sunflower bud? It is no longer just a promise
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add to furlWed 01 July, 2009
The Friday before last, we went to a local u-pick strawberry field and walked away an hour later with 28 pounds of strawberries. I froze several bags for use later in the winter and I also immediately baked up some shortcake for dessert that evening (real shortcake, not that angels food sponge-like substance you get [...]
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add to furlSat 27 June, 2009
Sunflowers full of promise
Borage
Boy in the garden, planting lettuce in the shade.
A bee with deformed wings. The result of mites, or simply worn out?
A theme apparently developed here, this concludes the furry section of our picture show
A garden intruder, looks like your standard cabbage looper - but check out that red racing stripe along its [...]
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add to furlThu 25 June, 2009
I am letting several bright lights chard plants go to seed this year. These particular plants survived our insanely cold and snowy winter without any protection, so in my book they are survivors and it would be well worth keeping thier progeny around. We save some other seeds around here each year. Obviously the simple [...]
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add to furlWed 24 June, 2009
Despite my promise to post more frequently I’ve failed. You see, I’ve been busy making pie. In fact, the whole household got wrapped up in the pie making for a day or two. You can see Gary’s documentation and newly developed (soon to be patented) pie holder for all this pie here. These pies above [...]
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add to furlTue 23 June, 2009
Gary made this sweet little birdhouse a few years ago from our old fence boards. The first year we set it close to the patio and a pair of chicadees moved in and set up house. We watched thier comings and goings all spring until one day we woke up to a massacre. Nin had [...]
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add to furlTue 16 June, 2009
Pile O’ $h!t:
Apparently it has been 2 months since I wrote the Homeresque blog post about the truck designed to rival Tolstoi in verbosity. You can imagine I needed a long hard rest after that blogging odyssey, and honestly, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten that long hard rest, but alas, I will blog again regardless. [...]
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add to furlThu 04 June, 2009
Unseasonably warm weather has our fair city projected to hit 90 degrees this afternoon. Thats right, 90 degrees, in the first week of June. The last 3 weeks have been noting short of remarkable in the heights of temperature reached and lack of precipitation. After whining all winter, I was more than happy to don [...]
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add to furlThu 28 May, 2009
“Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating…”
Go here to read the entire text of Paul Hawkens address to the University of Portland.
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add to furlWed 20 May, 2009
I know, posts have been few and far between lately. And this post is mostly to say that I won’t be posting for the next few days. We are actually leaving town to get some camping and exploration in. We will be camping in western Montana with friends for a few days but plan on [...]
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add to furlThu 14 May, 2009
This winter I purchased a one pound package of “chicken lettuce” from Wild Garden Seeds. This mix is made up of seed that was passed over for inclusion in regular seed packets due to rain stains, excessive chaff or lower germination rates. But it is cheap - a one pound package was $19 (do you [...]
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add to furlThu 07 May, 2009
Just a quick note in case any local people were unaware of the recently created Seattle Urban Farm Co-op. In their own words…
The Seattle Urban Farm Co-op is a community-based project to start a co-op to purchase supplies for urban farmers in the Seattle area.
Our focus will be on obtaining supplies such as animal feed, [...]
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The first of this month was my birthday. Our dogwood in the backyard always tends to bloom within a week or two of my birthday every year and puts on a chorus of color with the emerging lilacs, tulips and iris. Although May tends to be a generally soggy month in this part of the [...]
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add to furlTue 05 May, 2009
Meet my new love, the Weed Wrench. No, this little hottie hasn’t replaced Gary - in fact I am pretty sure that Gary is ok with my new relationship. At the end of last week I drove downtown to visit the fine folks at King County’s Noxious Weed Division and they kindly loaded me up [...]
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add to furlFri 01 May, 2009
The spinach I planted in the cold frame way back in February has turned into a bumper crop. In addition the girls have had numerous 3 egg days recently so this household has been rolling in the greens and eggs. What better way to celebrate the emergence of true spring than Spinach pasta?
Tuesday night we [...]
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add to furlThu 23 April, 2009
In my earlier posts this week I forgot to mention that I had a minor Wordpress freakout earlier this month which resulted in many of your comments (and my replies) being sent to the WP spam folder. Due to the insane amount of spam comments I get each day it is going to take some [...]
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add to furlWed 22 April, 2009
I’ve been reluctant to write about this until it all actually came to fruition for fear of something going wrong. But as everything seems to be in the clear now I’ll go ahead. As many of you know (by virtue of the title of this blog) we are on a very small city lot here. [...]
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add to furlTue 21 April, 2009
The bees have been enjoying the nice weather as much as we have lately. We checked them last Thursday (1 full week after installing the package) to both confirm that the queen was still there, and ideally to confirm that she was laying. Well, we found the queen but could not find any eggs (this [...]
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add to furlWed 15 April, 2009
Yesterday, I received the Tilth email newsletter and in it, about halfway down the page there was a quick blurb for a 6 month Permaculture Design class put on by Seattle Tilth and taught by Toby Hemenway (author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture). The class is from 9-5:30, Saturday and Sunday every [...]
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add to furlSat 11 April, 2009
Late Wednesday night we got the call that the bees would be in early and available on Thursday after 11. The two day early arrival of the package was actually a case of very good timing as Thursday was apparently the last somewhat sunny day we are scheduled to have for a while. We drove [...]
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add to furlThu 09 April, 2009
Right around the time we started the new bed and hauled the cottonwood rounds, I ran across a post I could not refuse during one of my frequent “diesel < 3000″ Craig’s List searches (don’t ask me why, I’m not really shopping for anything particular, but I like to see what’s out there and am [...]
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add to furlTue 07 April, 2009
Whew, 7 whole days and not a peep! Sorry bout that, I don’t believe I’m alone though. We have had a spate of beautiful days here, starting on Friday and continuing clear through today. A large portion of the PNW blogs I have on my reader have been strangely silent as well. When we actually [...]
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add to furlMon 30 March, 2009
We finally had a bit of a sunny day yesterday, allowing me to tromp around and get pictures of all the promise out there. The ground is still completely soggy, so not a lot of cultivating I can do until we get a few sunny days in a row to dry things out a bit.
I’ve [...]
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add to furlFri 27 March, 2009
So this is the post where I expose my ignorance. My plant identification skills suck for the most part. This little green thing above showed up last year in what was originally to be our strawberry bed (poor siting and the strawberries, erm… failed to thrive?). I have no idea what this is and am [...]
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add to furlSat 21 March, 2009
Novella, over at Ghost Town Farm, posted the other week offering up seeds she had saved from her largest Triamble winter squash. I excitedly took her up on her offer and received an envelope in the mail not too long after with several beautiful seeds. I’m thrilled to have a new variety to try this [...]
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add to furlFri 20 March, 2009
Happy first day of spring! I sit here this morning silently hoping that the rain doesn’t start up again so I can celebrate by putting my Pac Choi, leek and Cabbage seedlings in the ground. I can already feel the warmth converging a bit. We haven’t had a 30 some degree day in over a [...]
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add to furlThu 19 March, 2009
Strangely I haven’t been able to come up with a single thing to write about this week. Not that there aren’t things going on - I just lack inspiration. Here is hoping the weekend brings some new projects or ideas to blather on about.
In the interim, consider this
Turn off the television, radio, lights, ipod, microwave [...]
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add to furlSun 15 March, 2009
This week brings us to the end of the Dark Days challenge. Time to look ahead to the crisp greens of spring and the tang of a summer tomato dribbling down your chin. Participating in the weekly write up this year has been a good exercise for me. We prepared well last summer and didn’t [...]
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add to furlSat 14 March, 2009
Despite the snow/rain/snow/hail/freezing temperature merry-go-round we’ve been on lateley there are still signs of life in the garden. The cold frames I built last month are serving the little seedlings well, protecting them from the below freezing temperatures we’ve had. The pic above is one of the cold frames that I planted first. This box [...]
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add to furlSun 08 March, 2009
AKA the great offal experiment.
As I’ve mentioned before, we ordered half a pig from a local farm a mere 15 minutes from our house this year. In the course of making the cut arrangements with the farm I inquired about the offal. You see, I am a bit preoccupied with using everything. Especially when an [...]
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This past week has been pretty busy. So busy that I never got to read the book I was supposed to by this afternoon, I haven’t kept up at all with posting this week and here we are staring down a rapidly approaching Monday. Saturday was another busy day, full of meat grinding and mixing [...]
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add to furlTue 03 March, 2009
We’re working on a new raised bed (as previously mentioned), honey bees are coming soon, and I just acquired almost 200 gallons of used vegetable oil that I’d like to brew into biodiesel (most of the oil is in JnX’s garage at present)…More on this soon, and I mean soon, not a month and a [...]
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add to furlSun 01 March, 2009
Fri 27 February, 2009
Pretty amazing that we are now in week 15 of the Dark Days Challenge, that means spring must be just around the bend! In keeping with a theme that seems to have sprung up among a good portion of the Dark Days bloggers, this weeks meal is once again focused on BEANS! Another bean soup [...]
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add to furlThu 26 February, 2009
Yep - this is what I woke up to today. All of the seed planting and gardening glory of last week buried under a couple inches of snow. I know for those readers in the Northeast you are probably tired of listening to me whine about the miniscule amounts of snow that drop upon us [...]
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add to furlWed 25 February, 2009
No - this isn’t one of ours. This is a picture from last May when our rhody bloomed. For living on a small city lot we actually get our fair share of wildlife. The herons seem to have established their migratory pattern right over our house so during the summer we see them cruising by [...]
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add to furlSun 22 February, 2009
Yes, this is yet another Dark Days post sans pictures. I can’t seem to pick up the camera lately when I am cooking. Add to that the fact that we’ve been pretty active with projects this week so by the time dinner is ready we fall upon it ravenously - no time for a photo [...]
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add to furlSat 21 February, 2009
We’ve had a spate of sunny days this week and they are beginning to show their effect in the garden. I’ve got several volunteer and overwintered violas popping up in the main bed, flashing their colors underneath the straw mulch we left on the bed for the winter.
Out front, the first primrose peeked out this [...]
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add to furlTue 17 February, 2009
We don’t ever celebrate Valentines day around here. In fact, to be honest we are hard pressed to celebrate many holidays. If it weren’t for family events around Christmas and Thanksgiving we might just forget about it all. Birthdays usually warrant a cake and having friends/family over - but that is the height of our [...]
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add to furlI’m a bit late in making my dark days post this week. Also - no pictures. We were out of town for most of the weekend (details to be posted shortly) and spent most of Sunday constructing another cold frame and building the long anticipated chicken gate.
Our featured dinner this week was a relatively simple [...]
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add to furlThu 12 February, 2009
Or…maybe it can. How do I tell this little chicken there isn’t a chance in hell that her eggs will hatch?
Dahl has been sitting for over a week now. At first (once again for those loyal readers who have followed the saga of Dahl since last spring) we thought she might be eggbound. She hadn’t [...]
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add to furlMon 09 February, 2009
I’ve been searching around lately for a 100% whole wheat pizza dough recipe. Most recipes that purport to be whole wheat dough are in actuality somewhere between 30-50% whole wheat with the remainder being either bread flour or all purpose. Now I’m not going to claim that I don’t like white pizza dough - but [...]
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add to furlWed 04 February, 2009
Today was an absolutely beautiful day. The sun came out to play and the temp was up in the 50’s. Both Gary and I were not willing to let another day like this pass without getting some quality time in the yard so we knocked off around 1pm and went out to play.
I’ve been itching [...]
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add to furlThu 29 January, 2009
This past weekend while at the West Seattle Farmers Market I picked up a small package of dried beans. The name of the beans was written in thick felt tip and not all that discernible, but they were the most unfamiliar of the three dried bean varieties that Full Circle had on their table. A [...]
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add to furlWed 28 January, 2009
Who is that in my leeks?
In our failure to complete the upgraded fencing in of the chickens last weekend Blume and Dahl regularly go on walkabout during the day. We got a bit of sunshine this afternoon and as I scooted outside to absorb the last rays before the sun dropped down over the hills [...]
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add to furlSun 25 January, 2009
As I mentioned below, I missed last weeks Dark Days post so this one will cover two meals. First up was this weeks meal, a variation on keftedes as learned from a Moroccan friend.
I took a pound of beef from our quarter of grass-fed beef (Prairie Springs Ranch) and mixed it with a bunch of [...]
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add to furlWell once again I ended up taking a unintended week off from blogging (aside from my little post on Tuesday when I just had to express my delight at seeing that helicopter take off from the capital). I went down to Oregon to visit my grandparents last weekend and had a good time catching up. [...]
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add to furlTue 20 January, 2009
Sat 17 January, 2009
More to come on this soon… (written 1/17/2009)
Ok, well, soon is a relative term…it is now March 3rd and Maya has seen fit to comment on how terribly out of date this post is (in addition to threatening to blog about the new raised bed, not that I’d mind, but she gave me a deadline, [...]
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add to furlbut only in the left half of our front yard. Minor freak out this afternoon when I stepped out front to check the mail (after having been in the backyard for a bit) and found the left half of the front yard damp and rain drops falling solely in that half of the yard. It [...]
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add to furlSun 11 January, 2009
This weeks meal is essentially the same as last weeks featured meal - with a few additions. The truth is that the farmers markets have been pretty scarce lately and the main output from our own garden after the snow has consisted mainly of Leeks and Eggs. That, coupled with the fact that I am [...]
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add to furlSun 04 January, 2009
Gary has been out of town since Friday, celebrating a belated Christmas with his family. I’ve been here, holding down the fort - cuddling with cats and dog and letting the chickens in and out as they please. With only one person to cook for, meals have been pretty simple around here consisting mainly of [...]
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add to furlSat 03 January, 2009
I came across this recently and thought it appropriate to ponder going into a new year. George Carlin wrote this shortly after his wife died.
A Message by George Carlin:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; [...]
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add to furlFri 02 January, 2009
My Dad dropped by yesterday with a big surprise. For any of you who have been reading for a while, you have already listened to me whining and complaining about the price and rarity of stoneware crocks. Big crocks are the most useful tool for many of the lactic fermentation projects I want to start. [...]
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add to furlSun 28 December, 2008
I finally sat down today to go through the various seed catalogs I’ve been bookmarking for the past month and put together a seed order for the coming year. I am still searching for a source for Ozette Fingerling seed potatoes, if anyone can point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it! [...]
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add to furlSat 27 December, 2008
Our featured dinner for the dark days challenge this week was actually our Christmas Dinner. A smaller than average group around for Christmas gave me the opportunity to host at our house this year (tiny house). The Menu?
Roasted Leg of Lamb with Fennel Butter and Red Wine Sauce
Glazed Baby Carrots and Parsnips
Sauteed Kale and Spinach [...]
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add to furlSun 21 December, 2008
The snow is still falling here. I’ll pull my boots on soon enough to go check on the girls and maybe snap a picture or two. Our meals have trended toward the comfort food variety with the brisk weather outside, featured this week is the lazy womans version of enchiladas.
A few nights ago I broke [...]
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add to furlThu 18 December, 2008
Check out this opinion piece in the NY Times. I’m posting this bit late as the president elect has already selected a middle of the road candidate who doesn’t seem to show much promise - but I suppose we can hope…
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In an earlier post I mentioned that if it was going to be this cold here, it would be nice to have some real snow to accompany it. Well, it came! A day later than the forecast, but here on Thursday evening I am comfortably snuggled in front of the computer, a jelly jar of [...]
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add to furlWed 17 December, 2008
Well, it wasn’t her own doing this time, but rather our friend Y. with all the many nicknames (mentioned here: Extravagance…with a little help from my friends…) sent Maya a YouTube video that you have to watch. This is, as Maya put it, A Beautiful Thing.
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add to furlMon 15 December, 2008
How could you turn away from those faces just wanting a scruff?
I mentioned in a previous post that we headed down south to farmsit for the weekend for a friend who is currently in Kenya. A stormfront blew in on Friday night and rewarded us with increasing snow flurries on our way down. We took [...]
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add to furlSun 14 December, 2008
Whole Wheat Smoked Eggplant Ravioli with Crispy Jerusalem Artichokes
Apologies in advance for the horrible, overexposed picture. We haven’t quite worked out sufficient lighting in the kitchen yet. But truth be told, this meal just ain’t that pretty even in the best of light. But what it lacks in appearance, it makes up for in flavor.
Earlier [...]
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add to furlI suck…
because I haven’t writen a well thought out post in quite a while. My Dad was in town over Thanksgiving weekend, and that was a blast. It’s the first time he has made it out here from Dead Rock, MT since we bought the house, so it was a long anticipated visit. He spent some [...]
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add to furlWed 10 December, 2008
These two have managed it - but it seems I have little to share lately. I’ve been doing a lot of mental processing and spinning for the coming year and it seems about all I can do to get my Dark Days posts up on time, much less anything else. I’ve been reading garden porn [...]
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add to furlThu 04 December, 2008
We are still working off the Thanksgiving Turkey round here. Many of our meals for the week have incorporated it in some fashion - but this soup, which I’ve made variations on before, always hits the spot. I had two big bunches of collards hanging out in the crisper from the West Seattle Farmers market [...]
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The end of Thanksgiving had us hauling home a giant (29 lbs!!) Diestel Farms Turkey carcass from my relatives who were just going to throw it away, as they were headed out of town the next day. The following day I picked almost a gallon bag worth of meat off the bones before throwing them [...]
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add to furlSun 30 November, 2008
This week was a flurry of inactivity for the most part. So I have no real excuse for the lack of pictures for the highlighted meal. Gary’s Dad has been in town visiting and we had friends over for dinner on Tuesday night to welcome him. The perfect time to pull out the camera, right? [...]
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add to furlSat 22 November, 2008
Fri 21 November, 2008
I threw my name in to take part in (not so) Urban Hennery’s Dark Days challenge this year. Details in full can be found here. Essentially it will be an attempt to once a week catalog our attempt to eat locally when there ain’t nuthin growing by highlighting one of our meals. This appealed to [...]
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add to furlWed 19 November, 2008
We just got back from driving up to Mt. Vernon to pick up the 1/4 beef we ordered from Prairie Springs Ranch. I weighed and counted everything both for my own edification and for anyone else who is considering ordering directly from a farm. In my travels round the blogosphere I have always appreciated when [...]
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add to furlMon 17 November, 2008
Katie, over at GardenPunks posted this and after writing a (mini-rant) comment on her post I figured I might as well memorialize it here and pass on the link. This is one of the more eloquent responses to Prop 8 that I have seen from the media/pundits,despite the fact that Oberman and all other tv [...]
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add to furlSun 16 November, 2008
I’ve gotta give props (no pun intended) to Keith Olbermann (who generally just irritates me as much as any of the rest of his ilk on the 24 hour news cycle) for the following:
Generally, I tend to think the more effective (and more accurate) tact is that in a supposedly “free” secular country “marriage” in and of [...]
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add to furlTue 11 November, 2008
Saturday we took advantage of a brief break in the rain and packed up Hux to go down to Dead Horse Canyon, a trail loop at the bottom of our hill and just north of us. We once lived about 10 blocks further north from where we do now and would find ourselves taking this [...]
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add to furlSat 08 November, 2008
As the weather turns and the air takes on a definite chill, I find my self wanting to write more about food than the garden. I suppose it has much to do with the lack of any exciting new going on out there. My spinach I planted toward the end of summer seems to have [...]
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add to furlFri 07 November, 2008
Well the sog is upon us now. There are flood warnings for 7 counties in the state today, including our own. The weatherman reports that the equivalent of one months worth of rain has fallen within the past two days. We are ok, high up on the hill but certainly not dry. The backyard is [...]
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add to furlWed 05 November, 2008
I guess we don’t have to pack up and move to Costa Rica after all. I never thought I’d see it and am beside myself right now. America, you were as close to angelic as I’ve ever seen you yesterday. Thank You.
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add to furlTue 04 November, 2008
first, you have to know that there are 2,532 songs on my iPod (which generally stays in my truck unless I buy or import some songs and need to sync up). You should also know I am a little bit obsessive about keeping it on “Shuffle All”. I enjoy my music, all of it, and [...]
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add to furlMon 03 November, 2008
pre-occuppied with tomorrow that I can hardly stand today…
That’s all I’ve got for now, and tomorrow I will be stationed in front of the TV and the ol’ interweb until the cows come home…
Ok, can’t resist, saw this on FiveThrityEight.com
“And I swore I’d be in Chicago tomorrow, and made sure of that, taking a bus [...]
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add to furlSat 01 November, 2008
The world lost an amazing mind and a kind, sharp witted, sometimes grumpy, thoughtful, irreverent and always sentimental man. Solly will be missed.
http://solsaporta.com/
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add to furlFri 31 October, 2008
Hmmm, not so scary eh…wait
There we go!
So this is our pumpkin, hefted fresh from the fields by Gary last weekend. Almost 60 pounds of pumpkin, in fact. This little endeavor is the first pumpkin I have carved since being all grown up. I honestly can’t recall the last pumpkin I carved as a kid. I’d [...]
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add to furlWed 29 October, 2008
With the aforementioned biggest head of cabbage I decided to give a first go at lactic fermentation. In a previous post I mentioned that last winter I purchased a book all about preserving food without canning or freezing. Among other methods, the book goes over lactic fermentation of numerous vegetables and I decided to start [...]
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add to furlTue 28 October, 2008
Gary and I had a field trip this weekend. We went down to Kent/Auburn to check out a feed store (horrifying political discussion between the clerk and another customer to be related later) and then stopped by a U pick pumpkin farm. I have been thinking about trying to carve a pumpkin again (as an [...]
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add to furlSun 26 October, 2008
Going through my pictures this morning I started looking at all the pictures I took while in Cambodia last year. I haven’t posted any of these, but it seems fitting as we go into winter that this is a little reminder of a warmer place. Apologies in advance for anyone on dial-up. This is by [...]
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add to furlSat 25 October, 2008
6 days later???
Strange that right after we finally posted signs that Bukowski waltzed in the house looking for dinner. Perhaps he can read…
Or, he got himself trapped in someone’s shed or garage…
Or, he has been in someone’s house and instead of calling they just let him go…which is disappointing, but we were sure excited to [...]
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Hows that for a title? Sums up this week pretty good. Our cat Bukowski has gone missing and we are both desperately hoping he turns up fresh from a walkabout. He is chipped and we haven’t received any calls yet. Earlier this week we went down to the Animal Control shelter just to double check [...]
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add to furlThu 23 October, 2008
a cliché, but “clichés, good ways, to say what you mean, mean what you say…” (Jimmy Buffet, Clichés, Havana Daydreamin’).
It seems we can’t get through a month without a little drama and disaster around here. Bukowski the cat has now gone missing. We last saw him on Sunday night. Historically this has not been unusual [...]
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add to furlWed 22 October, 2008
I completed what was the last of the tomato sauce canning batches last night - and am I glad! It was frustrating this year having to do small batches, bit by bit waiting for the tomatoes to ripen. The majority ripened in boxes in my office, instead of on the vine. Not my chosen method [...]
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add to furlSun 19 October, 2008
First, you must follow this link.
and a very special thanks to M&M Incremental Updates for making my Sunday morning with that link.
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add to furlSat 18 October, 2008
Early this morning we wrapped up a whirlwind visit with my best friend from high school and her family. She spent Thursday and Friday night with us along with her husband and five year old daughter. Thursday was a mellow day for the most part. A grocery trip (because we were not at all stocked [...]
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add to furlThu 16 October, 2008
Maya has written about and posted pictures of the spoiled girls of the house…
You must visit here.
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add to furl2008-10-18 Update on Joe (not really Joe and not a licensed plumber).
I was reluctant to write this post. I’m not 100% sure why, but I think it might be because I hate to memorialize what I think was one of Barack Obama’s greatest gaffes through the debates. I just don’t think he addressed this Joe [...]
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add to furlWed 15 October, 2008
The two little spoiled Princesses of this household had thier first true faceoff earlier this week. While Nin is undoubtedly the queen of indoors (being the only girl aside from me in a house of boys), Blume is the spoiled princess of the yard. As I mentioned in my earlier post, we have been ranging [...]
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add to furlMon 13 October, 2008
The Republican Party has succeeded in energizing its base, and now we know who that base is…
McCain struggles against his base
Of course, he could have done a better job of addressing the blantant racism and fear mongering, but then he would lose the election for certain.
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add to furlSat 11 October, 2008
Blume layed what could have possibly been the cutest egg in the history of chickenkind…however, it fell out of my pocket as I was creating the concrete buffet and fractured beyond salvage before anyone but I could see it in all its overwhelming adorableness. The egg was even smaller than usual, quite squat and exceptionally [...]
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The changing season is making itself evident in our yard now. The signs have been elsewhere for a while. If the falling leaves and biting cold didn’t convince us already, this morning I saw the evidence of our first frost while going to let the girls out of the coop. It had already warmed a [...]
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add to furlFri 10 October, 2008
Back in April I made some pretty significant life changes. I have had a job since I was 14 years old, which makes that a good 17 years now. Always at a job that necessitated getting up and dressed and going in to the city each day. Over the past two years or so I [...]
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add to furlThu 09 October, 2008
Laura over at (Not so) Urban Hennery posted a pantry expose a few days ago that got me thinking. I dropped out of regularly posting for Independence days and have yet to do a full assessment of what we’ve managed to get from the garden this year. Now I don’t even have a pantry to [...]
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add to furland yes, that is good enough for me.
So, generally, I have to admit…I don’t cook. I suck at it, I don’t enjoy it, I don’t have the motor skills nor memory to keep several things going all at once in the kitchen and quickly get overwhelmed by the simple tasks in front of me. I’m [...]
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add to furlWed 08 October, 2008
Ravioli stuffed with Ricotta, Leeks, Chard and Bacon. Heirloom Tomato salad with Cucumber, Parsely and Fresh Oregano. Skyway Sourdough Bread. Orange Chocolate Cake with Cocoa frosting and Chocolate Stout Ice Cream.
My mom’s birthday was this past week. Birthdays in my family are usually a pretty low-key affair. A good opportunity to get together and catch [...]
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add to furlMon 06 October, 2008
The past week has been pretty busy round here. Cold weather and rain rolled in and I believe it is here to stay. Gary is still stuck on the pipe dream of summer through October and we have a daily battle over whether or not to pull the volunteer tomatillo plant. He gets very attached [...]
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add to furlSun 05 October, 2008
No, really, a mess of beans. Yesterday’s gusts up to 40 mph took out our half-ass bean trellis yesterday (not surprising, I suspected the stinking Skyway winds would take their toll on it eventually). As an aside, one of the things I initially loved about Seattle was how infrequently we experienced hellish winds (unlike my [...]
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add to furlWed 01 October, 2008
This post is long overdue…
As you might recall, August started off with a bang, and not the bang for which we were hoping. I mentioned the middle of the night trip to the emergency vet with Hemingway in this earlier post. Well, he improved somewhat through August, but never regained vision in his left eye. [...]
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add to furlwith flexible insulating ducting…
This project finally got started, as most do, fairly unintentionally and following lengthy internal debates about the relative merits of the project in contrast to the associated risks and hassles (which, as usual, were underestimated). I paid a routine visit to the crawlspace in the spring following the historic downpours experienced throughout western [...]
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add to furlIn short, I consider it the most important appliance in the house (well, maybe the furnace is more important, but bear with me for a moment). The dishwasher actually fulfills the promise of modernity. Technology that saves us labor without the technology itself creating much of a hassle. We should have 20 hour work weeks [...]
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add to furlMon 29 September, 2008
is a gaggle of ignorant pidgeon heads…
That’s all I have right now, what a missed opportunity to both salvage the economy and make some progress in the regulation and oversight of the country’s major banking institutions all at once…
Well, we had a second world war…I guess it is time for the second great depression…
Someone on [...]
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add to furlSat 27 September, 2008
Yesterday was a steamy affair in the kitchen. I have finally acknowledged to myself that October is just around the corner and our traditional tomato glut is going to take a lot more coaxing this year. We got the plastic up on the hoop house the other weekend, but a combination of cold days and [...]
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add to furlFri 26 September, 2008
Do you remember the heat? We didn’t have a lot of it this year, but we had some pretty hot days. I mentioned a while ago that we headed down to my friends land towards the end of August. It turned out to be one of the hottest days this year. That morning right before [...]
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add to furlSun 21 September, 2008
I originally sat down to write a long overdue post of what I have been doing (since I certainly haven’t been posting). It quickly became apparent that I had to get something off my chest and my original post needed to be split into two, since I just couldn’t stop typing. The original post was [...]
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add to furlFri 19 September, 2008
Tue 16 September, 2008
So I have been seriously remiss in posting lately. And I don’t really have a valid excuse short of life gets away from you sometimes. That and I have found myself not wanting to be in front of a computer for the remaining free time I have while the sun is still shining. I have [...]
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add to furlMon 15 September, 2008
Mon 01 September, 2008
So, it would be inaccurate to say we were lost…
At any given moment, we knew the way home, we just didn’t know how to get where we wanted to go. As I mentioned previously some horrible crap happened to Maya’s car during a middle of the night hit-and-run (it was parked curbside, more on that [...]
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This entry is late, the weekend got away from me. Yesterday was pretty nice but it is cold and cloudy again today. Right now the temperature outside is a balmy 54 degrees F. I am not ready for fall.
Plant -Ok, so I didn’t plant anything this week. I’m a bit demoralized, it appears summer is [...]
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add to furlFri 29 August, 2008
This guy was huge! I don’t know what variety he (she?) is, but apparently he decided that the recent weather was not at all summerlike and escaped indoors. I found him in my makeshift proofing box over the weekend when I was about to proof bread. I should have put something recognizable in there for [...]
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add to furlSun 24 August, 2008
Fri 22 August, 2008
Sun 17 August, 2008
We were so looking forward to August. The hope being that some assemblance of the normal order would be returned, and that a blanket of calm would settle over the B-Bar-Lazy-B. Since I am the crappiest blogger known to the entire cyber-universe, I’ll have to give you some background before we get into the details [...]
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add to furlTue 05 August, 2008
So…our friend Y. who goes by many nicknames…none of which he would want posted online…gave me a pair of gloves for my birthday this year with a pack of M&M’s stuffed in them. In the flurry of activity (mostly me showing our guests the chickens) I failed to try them on while he was here for [...]
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add to furlSat 02 August, 2008
You have to leave right now and go look at this dirty bee butt…
http://www.eighthacrebounty.com/2008/07/30/bees/
and the fantastic bee head picture that Maya took out in the yard.
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add to furlWed 23 July, 2008
I added a dynamic sidebar to the classic theme. Pretty pedestrian, but hey…ya gotta start somewhere.
If this is boring you to tears, there is more interesting stuff over at Eighth Acre Bounty, you should visit. At present this is where you will find a couple pictures of my holes and piles…
Also for today, Cleary the chicken [...]
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add to furlWed 25 June, 2008
I’m trying to figure out why the image upload over at mayacooks.com is not working right.
So, here is a picture in a post…
(PS: Figured it out, kind of, IE6 weirdness with WP 2.51. Upload was working in IE7 and FF. Advised Maya to just use FF for now, she understandably hates IE7.)
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add to furlSat 07 June, 2008
It was bound to happen, and now it has…
Well, almost…we’ll see when something actually gets written here.
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