Category Archives: permaculture

Cooking, Garden, Great Work, permaculture

Healthy, Huh?

March 30, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Mostly Full Awakening Moon

Drove out to Hopkins, through it on Excelsior, then made a left on Shady Oak Road and apparently crossed the line just into Minnetonka. Rothburg Distributing, who are the manufacturer’s rep for Sub-Zero, Asko and Wolf kitchen appliances, open their kitchen classroom up to the UofM once a year and Brenda Langston teaches a three evening course on healthy eating. This is fancy digs for quinoa, tofu and various other healthy dishes, but there they were, boiling and getting chopped and sauteed by none other than the proprietor of (formerly) Brenda’s and now Spoonriver. (pic: Brenda cooking at Spoonriver)

40 + of us sat in tiered seating watching Brenda work, assisted by the chef who has worked with her for 23 years. She says, Oh my gosh a lot, usually when referring to some food horror, like the genetically modified grapeseed used to make canola oil or the quality of non-grass fed, non-free range beef. Her cooking approach is pretty pragmatic, though it leans toward ingredients that most Americans don’t use often. Tonight’s examples: quinoa, tofu, sesame oil, parsnips, a huge radish (tender heart?), burdock and Arrowhead pancake mix.

She suggests making a particular dish, like a pot of grains, early in the week, then using them as an entree by themselves, the next night with pasta and the third night in a soup. A good idea. She also makes up items ahead like croquettes of tofu, walnut, garlic, green onion. Surprisingly good.

This course costs $285 for three nights. It includes a cookbook, the presence of Brenda, a breakfast, lunch and dinner with menus prepared in front of your very eyes and the inspiration that comes from being with other upper middle class people who can afford the course, probably know how to eat healthy but have a tough time doing like you do.

Definitely worthwhile. Will there be a sea change at Chez Ellis-Olson because of it? Stay tuned.

Here’s a few items from the dinner menu at Spoonriver:

entree
Fresh Seafood • Vegetarian Specials
Sunshine Harvest Grass-Fed Beef • Daily Special, Vegetable Open
Broiled Salmon Okisuki • Savory Japanese Ginger Broth, Fresh Udon Noodles, Vegetarian Option with Tofu 22 / 15
Slow Roasted Minnesota Lamb & Vegetable Stew • Cous Cous Pilaf, Minted Yogurt 22
House Made Ravioli • Indian Spiced Potato & Sweet Pea Ravioli, Thai Green Curry, Vegetables. Vegan Option 16.5
Warm Duck Confit • Salad Greens • Fruit, Stewed White Beans • Fennel 15.5
salads and light entrees
Udon Chicken Salad • Sliced Free Range Chicken, Udon Noodles, Greens, Vegetables, 15
Peanut • Lemongrass Dressing. Vegetarian Option with Mock Duck
Greek Salad • Greens, Cucumber, Olives, Tomato’s, Pepperoncini, French Sheep Feta, Red Onion 9 / 12
Greek or Caesar available with Free Range Chicken Breast + 5
Caesar Salad 9 / 12
Local Charcuterie Plate • Bison Sausage, Fischer Farms Ham, Wild Acres Duck & Chicken Liver Paté, 15
Prairie Breeze Cheddar, Pickled Vegetables
Spoon Burger • Minnesota Farm Lamb, House Ketchup, Corn Chips / or substitute salad + 2 13
Mahi Mahi Sandwich • House Tartar, Lettuce, Tomato on Bun. Corn Chips / or substitute salad + 2 13
Bread

Art and Culture, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Birds Sing, Sun Shines

March 16, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Moon (Awakening)

Since last Friday when I had two tours through this afternoon around 5 (when I got stung), I’ve been on high intellectual alert touring museum goers, learning about Apis mellifera, doing Latin homework, going over the Latin with Kate, teeth cleaning (OK, that’s anti-intellectual), having a tutoring session and using all the faculties I possessed to fend off various small creatures intent on driving a food bearer away from their home. I’m tired.

But. Boy, I’d rather have this kind of exhaustion in my life than be sagging toward 75 with a remote in one hand and my putter in the other. So to speak.

From a gardening perspective this is a time when the sun and the greening and the weeds returning make working outside seem very attractive, but it’s still about a month early. Even the early veggies normally don’t go in the ground until the first of April or even a bit later. The birds sing, the sun shines, the moist air smells of soil and the bees sting.

The Grout Doctor has replaced the tiles that had become loose over the shower door. Now he has to seal the grout once, then come back and seal it one more time. At some point in here the new door gets installed and then I can get back to my steam baths after my work out. I’ll be glad to have it functional again.

Bees, Faith and Spirituality, permaculture

OUCH!

March 16, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Moon (Awakening)

A virgin no more. I went the whole last season without a single bee sting. Today, when I brought food out to the hive, so they have something to eat until there are blossoms, I got stung. Twice. On the face and neck. OUCH. With the first one I forgot the wisdom from the weekend, threw up my hands, let loose with a few poorly chosen words and danced like ol’ St. Vitus. The second came after I suited up and discovered that I had enclosed a bee inside my veil. She was unhappy and it cost her. When honeybees sting, their abdomen comes out along with the stinger. So they die.

I’m glad it’s finally happened. No more suspense. I didn’t die, so I imagine I’ll react better next time. Maybe.

While I was out there, I cleared the mulch from the garlic. They like this kind of cool, wet weather. We have daffodils breaking the surface. Unfortunately, our magnolia tree thinks it’s mid-April. That’s not good for its blooms.

The Awakening moon finds our land here doing just that.

Here’s something I’m playing around with. I think there’s a difference between living on the land and living with the land. To live on the land means we place our house there, perhaps a swing set, grass, maybe even a few flowers and trees, but our daily life happens on the land or in our dwelling. To live with the land means some engagement with your land’s seasonal changes. There’s something here I think.

Art and Culture, Bees, Garden, permaculture, Weather +Climate

Echoes of Narcissus

March 15, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Moon (Awakening)

An all day Latin day, this time 3rd conjugation verbs, the notorious bad boys of Latin grammar. Due to a weak vowel they got jiggered around by spoken Latin until they’ve become most unusual, irregular in some ways. Got remember the paradigms for present, future and imperfect. Just gotta remember. Latin has become easier and harder, reflecting, I suppose, past learning and present state of ignorance. It is true though that I have begun to be able to read sentences without looking up a single word. That’s pretty exciting.

Ovid here I come. Of course, that’s Owid to English speaker’s ears. I have a plan to put my Latin and my affection for Ovid to good use. When I get closer to its realization, I’ll let you know.

Talked to Mark Nordeen. He has some pollen patties and has agreed to give me one for the live hive. I’m gonna see him tomorrow. Then, in April, I’ll hive the package bees and wait until mid-May to divide the new one, feeding and caring for both of them in the interim. Kate has volunteered to be assistant apiarist. Her first job involves whacking together ten hive boxes, eight supers plus frames and foundations. It will be fun to have help.

All the fruit trees are now visible. No rabbit or vole damage on any of them. That’s a relief because I was exasperated at the end of the last growing season–trying to keep Rigel and Vega in the yard, then out of the gardens. As a result, I didn’t put up the hardware cloth protective barriers around them.

It hit 64 here yesterday and its 56 today. Geez. The sun feels good. When I walked out to pick up the mail today, I felt warmth on my neck. It surprised me.

Bees, Great Work, permaculture

The Dead Live

March 13, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Waning Wild Moon

Big news. The dead live. Or, rather, the bee colony I declared dead last fall turns out to be very much alive. I checked busy-honey-bees_1712 this afternoon. That means the whole bee thing looks more and more rosy here at 7 Oaks. In the second year we can expect honey. And a second hive. Good thing I’m taking this class.

All about bees. Nothing about birds. Marla Spivak is the charismatic professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota who has a lot of knowledge about colony collapse disorder. She runs this weekend program for beginning beekeepers, a tradition at the University of Minnesota since 1922, as well the Bee Lab and the whole Bee program at the U.

You might not think much more about this, but when you realize that, as I learned today, the Upper Midwest is the primary honey producing area in the United States, flanked by California and Florida, and that there is no bee program in any of our surrounding states, Nebraska is the closest, then you understand the significance of her role and the U’s bee program.

Last year there were 160 people in the beginning bee-keepers class. This year there were 250 with a waiting list of 150. Interest in bee-keeping has taken on the characteristic of a small groundswell. This is great news for bees, not so much for the 250 of us who sat in a theatre today that had little air circulation and 250 human furnaces pumping out BTU’s. It got hot.

Bees, Garden, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Garden Theme for 2010: Consolidation

February 22, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Waxing Wild Moon

At this time of year gardeners begin to develop x-ray vision, seeing through the snow, ice and frozen soil and imaging the greening. Those of us who rely on memory more than paper try to envision what we’ve got in the ground, sort of the botanical base line. Perennial flowers and plants, which make up the bulk of our terraced gardens, have an established presence. We add in some annuals as the spirit moves, sometimes we divide existing plants like hosta, hemerocallis, iris, Siberian iris, liguria, bug bane, dicentra, aster. Once in a while we plant new bulbs. None last fall, for example, but that gardensenscence09 probably means some this fall.

(pic: where we left off last fall)

This part of the garden requires work, but not as much as the vegetables and the orchard. I count it is a known quantity.

The permaculture additions, of which we have made several over the last three years, are still new to us, requiring attention and learning. This year, I’ve decided, will be a consolidation year. Nothing new, making what we have work as well as we can. That means planting vegetables in two categories: kitchen garden for eating throughout the summer and early fall and vegetables for storage over the winter: potatoes, garlic, parsnip, carrots, greens, squash those kind of things.

There is a good bit of work to be done repairing Rigel and Vega’s late fall destruction. That won’t be repeated because we have a small fortune in fencing around the vegetables and the orchard, but I lost heart last fall and didn’t get the netaphim repaired and earth moved back into place. That awaits in the spring.

In mid-March I have the bee-keeping class and this year I have the same consolidation idea for the bees. Establishing the hives as permanent parts of our property.

We do have a couple of smaller non-garden projects that need to get done. I dug the fire-pit two years ago, but with all the fun of the puppy’s last summer never got back around to it. It needs finishing. I also want to turn the former machine shed into a honey house, a place to store bee stuff and to process the honey. Of course, we actually have to produce some first.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, permaculture

Ordinary Time

January 30, 2010 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Full Cold Moon

In just two days those of us who follow the Celtic calendar will celebrate the coming of Imbolc. I’ll write more about it on Monday, but I wanted to note here the difference in timber and resonance between post-Epiphany January and the holiseason just ended. We move now into the ordinary days, days when the sense of expectation and sacred presence relies more on our private rituals, our own holydays.

In my own case, for example, Valentine’s Day lends this time period a certain magic as its pre-birthday spirit invades the present. Also, for me and my fellow Woolly Mammoths, this next week marks our annual retreat, so we get ready for it, this time again at Blue Cloud Monastery in South Dakota. It is, too, for those with any presence in the Chinese world, just a couple of weeks before the beginning of the spring festival, or, as we know it here, Chinese New Years. This year it begins on my birthday.

Imbolc, too, has sacred resonance and its six week period marks the beginning of the growing season here as seeds for certain long growing season vegetables like leeks must get started.

Garden, Great Wheel, permaculture

A Satisfied Mind

October 8, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Waning Blood Moon

Yesterday I dug potatoes. It was the first time I’d done that save for a few new potatoes I dug during the growing season. It was wonderful. You loosen the soil with a spading fork then dig around hunting for buried treasure. Each time I came up with a potato I felt great.

A garden combines several satisfactions. The first is co-creative as you care for the soil and the seeds, then the plants as they mature. As with the bees, it is a mutual endeavor, the gardener and the plant world. The garden itself yields wildgrapes09 intellectual puzzle after intellectual puzzle. What’s going on with that plant? How do I improve the soil? How do I keep the dogs out? (ooops. sorry.) Solving those puzzles is part of the fun.

Then, too, the garden has an aesthetic. Flowers add color, but so does the blue green kale and the purple and green of the egg plant. The beauty has a seasonal dimension, too, as the wonder of germination gives way to maturation. Each plants fruits then add yet another layer: tomatoes in red, yellow, orange and white, potatoes white and covered with soil, purple and white egg plants, beans with purple and yellow pods, graceful carrot and parsnip fronds.

Toward the end of the growing season those vegetables planted for storage and preservation then come into the house for canning, freezing and drying. As the snow storms come, they will fill in for the fresh vegetables eaten straight from the garden.

The act of harvesting is so primal I wouldn’t doubt our response to it swims in our genes. Carry in a wicker basket filled with ripe tomatoes, squash, cucumber, carrots, beans, egg plant, greens and the planning and digging and nurturing all makes sense. In a physical, basic way.

Eating of course is the satisfaction most apparent and is nothing to disregard, but it comes late in the process.

For those of us who find decay a fascinating part of the natural process there is another satisfaction. The reduction of the plant bodies themselves to compost returns nutrients to the soil and completes the cycle.

There is too one last satisfaction. As the snow swirls outside and the temperatures are far, far below survivability for any vegetable, I can plan next year’s garden with colorful seed catalogs. This includes the February and March and April sowing of seeds for plants to transplant into that very garden.

So, take that Rolling Stones, I got my satisfaction.

Dogs, Garden, permaculture, Writing

Gnashing of Teeth

October 7, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Waning Blood Moon

Back to the gnashing of teeth. When I went out to plant the garlic this morning, I discovered Vega and Rigel had decided to become gardeners, too. They dug up beds, they dug up around beds. They moved a lot of soil, none of it in a constructive manner.

This almost made me cry. After some unpleasant words and gestures, a bit of stomping around, I called Dan the fence guy and said, “Dan, I need another fence.” When he finishes, this yard will have more fence than many cattle ranches. It will take days just to walk the fence line. And this all inside an acre and a half.

Anyhow, I planted the garlic, covered them with six inches of straw and protected them with left over chain link fence. Later in the day I mulched the parsnips, which will over winter along with the garlic, and the carrots. I’m going to try storing them in the ground with a heavy mulch to protect them. In theory, then, I can go out in the middle of winter and harvest fresh carrots.

The potato harvest is now in, too. I dug up the Viking Purples (no kidding) and the rest of the white potatoes, washed them off and left them in a large plastic boxes to cure. They stay at room temperature for two weeks, then downstairs to the coolest storage we have. That’s outside the house at the bottom of the basement stairs, but still inside the garage.

Got some nice feedback today on my organization skills for the Sierra Club and on my writing from a fellow Docent. Also, a good nap. That all helped.

Big dogs bring big problems and big rewards. Can’t get one without the other.

Bees, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Great Work, permaculture

Fall Clean-up

September 29, 2009 Charles Leave a comment

Fall Waxing Blood Moon

Out in the garden this morning taking down plants that have finished their labors. Large cruciform vegetable plants grew from the seeds I started inside, but they never developed any fruits. They’re in the compost now. All the tomato vines save one have come down. The last tomato harvest went inside today, too. A few straggling yellow and orange tomatoes and a cluster of green tomatoes for a last fried green tomatoes.

A new crop of lettuce, beets and beans are well underway, lending an air of spring to the dying garden. While examining dieback091 carrots I have in the ground awaiting the frost, I discovered golden raspberries large as my thumb. A real treat at this late stage in the year. They await the vanilla ice cream I’m going to buy when I go to the grocery store.

The 49 degree weather made doing these choirs a pleasure. Odd as it may seem, I like the fall clean-up part of gardening as well as I do any other part, perhaps a little bit more. Most of these plants I started as seeds in February, March or April and they have matured under my care, borne their fruits and run through their life cycle. From some of them I have collected seeds to plant for next year. The clean up then represents a completion that goes one step beyond the harvest. It honors these living entities by caring for their spent forms in the most full way possible: helping them return their remaining nutrients back to the soil. I want no less for myself.

Got a new toaster and a new ladder in the mail yesterday from Amazon. Boy, shopping has changed. I rarely go to a big box store anymore, once in a while to Best Buy to check out DVD’s or for some computer accessory. I still go to hardware stores and grocery stores, the things you need weekly or right now or fresh, but everything else I buy online.

The bee guy, Mark Nordeen, had to cancel again today. His wife, Kate’s colleague, got kicked in the head by her brand new black mare. E.R. and a concussion later she’s home off work. Guess I’m gonna have to figure out how to over winter my bees all by myself.