Category: Farming

The Would-Be Farm: Fruit!

1/15/2019

In 2014, Mr. Linton and I started planting fruiting trees on the Would-Be Farm.

Yes, we found two hilltops full of mature old apple trees on the land, but was that enough for my agricultural ambitions?

Nope.

And like so many would-be farmers, I chose the wrong spot for plants first.

The Empire apple tree didn't survive the first winter. Both of those first pear trees frosted back to their wild roots. Of course, they were ordinary trees imported in for the local nurseries, and I put them in the ground RIGHT where the wind howls through the valley.

Some of my orchard notes.

I've since became an enthusiastic customer of St. Lawrence Nurseries, where the trees are bred to survive the harshest of North Country weather. We made sheltered havens where we've planted heirloom apples, pears, hazelnuts, elderberries, basket willows, and, the point of the blog: aronia berries.

Aronia is the formal name for what is sometimes known as a "chokeberry." (NOT a "chokecherry," btw) It's a small, hardy, brushy tree that bears dark little fruits. They are quite astringent until ripe.

Scientific studies show that it's bursting with super-fruit power, and I'm hoping for an aronia cordial or a mixed berry pie next fall.

It's not an easy lot, trying to be a good sapling on the Would-Be Farm. You'll have to survive lots of rain, or not enough rain, plus biblical-level plagues of insects and marauding deer. You'll get ignored and crowded by weeds for months at a time.

But when fruit arrives, as this aronia did this past autumn, a young sapling can expect a bit of a party.

Hurrah the Aronia! Nice work, little fella!

Hope you are having a decent winter up there! You'll be getting a birthday cake of fertilizer in April! Yay you!

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The Would-Be Farm: Success!

11/26/2018

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I'm kind of proud of the asparagus.

The roots went into the ground in 2015. Of course I wrote about it.

Lo and behold, up they came. And up. And up.

So lush that the well-drilling guy stopped and marveled.

So enormous that my gardening neighbors ask –– with palpable envy –– how do we make them thrive?

So thick that I no longer have a view of the cool half-plough that Mr. Linton found for me.

Uncontested success is rare on the farm. So when it arrives, we like to recognize and celebrate it.

All hail kale?
Nu-uh: Rush lush Asparagus!

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Open Banditry on the Would-Be Farm

10/16/2018

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When the sun sets on the Would-Be Farm, the local population gets a little wilder and more lively.

Mice wake up and start scampering about.

Skunks and porcupines saunter through the camp.

Coyotes slope along, sniffing at the traces of our dinner.

Deer graze their way through, and raccoons ––well, the raccoons are kind of freaking me out.

Half asleep in our narrow berth inside Base Camp, we are roused by sound: a crunching, rattling, scratching assault on the recycling container, a lengthy effort to unsnap the cooler, a hissing dust-up over a piece of aluminum foil that once held roasted chicken.

Eventually, Mr. Linton or I will have had Just About Enough and shout at the intruders. Angry-Daddo-Voice invective, which sometimes works, but does require warning the other person. ("Hey, I'm going to yell." "All right." "GERRROUT OF IT!")

Scamper scamper scamper.

If I can manage to get the door open and the flashlight on (assuming the game camera is NOT likely to catch the maniacal image) I sometimes burst out onto the porch and chase the raccoons.

But they tend to hear me coming and vanish into the underbrush before I have the satisfaction of frightening them.

As it happens, raccoons are determined creatures with pretty good memories.

They had a single night of access into the cooler last spring when someone (me) failed to fully snap the lid closure.

For the rest of the season, they proved quite willing to chew their way back in.

We ended up putting one cooler on top of another and setting out an array of hair-trigger mousetraps to dissuade them.

We kept them from destroying the cooler, but they haven't yet given up.

Raccoons will chew through a cooler.

This autumn, they discovered both suet and the bird feeders.

As Jeff put it: they ate a whole LOAF of suet.

Naturally, they knocked a bird feeder over and emptied it also.

I'm as judgmental as the next person. Probably more (said she, snortling in a juvenile way at the irony.)

I do make a moral judgement about "good birds" and "bad birds" at my bird feeder, and without the shadow of moral doubt, raccoons are no-good birds.

I decided on a new routine: every evening, I stow the feeders out of reach of raccoons (as well as beyond the stretch of bears, rats, the neighbor's cat, squirrels, et cetera).

But I didn't think about the large glass pickle-jar that holds the seed before it's dispensed to birds good or bad.

However, the raccoons did.

The first morning, I found the jar tipped over, the lid unscrewed and a small, tidy spill of seeds on the porch.

Huh, I thought. I better tighten that lid.

The next night I heard the jar tip over.

Wakeful under my cozy quilt, I gloated over the thought of the raccoon. He'd be bent over the jar, tiny ebony hand spread flat on the metal lid, a grimace and a grunt accompanying the futile effort to unscrew the lid.

Hope he busts a gut, I thought.

Then I thought, I sure hope he doesn't bust a jar. Damnit.

In the morning, the birdseed was not on my mind. I was blithely drinking my coffee and being all China-to-Peru about the dew-laden field opposite the porch.

Mr. Linton has a somewhat alarming way of striding off vigorously early in the morning at the Farm. Coffee is nothing to him, giving him a considerable head start on the day.

As is his wont, he strode back presently, asking without preamble, "Do you know what I found halfway up the hill?!"

I turned to look, and lo, he was carrying the jar –– blessedly intact –– full of birdseed.

"They got it nearly all the way UP the hill," he reiterated, annoyance at war with disbelief.

"Heading for their lair."

We gazed at the object.

Raccoons hadn't learned yet how to break the glass. They hadn't gotten the lid off with their odd little hands or their sharp teeth.

But who could say what resources they had back at Raccoon Headquarters?

What sharp teethesies you have.

I changed lids and put the jar inside. Thin the tin walls of Base Camp may be, and permeable as sponge, but there is a geographical limit to transgression.

You'd think, anyhow.

When the light slants just right, a distinct handprint can be seen on the window that looks into the sleeping nook at Base Camp. Maybe two inches across, the little handprint is smeared on the window that stands a good three feet off the ground.

I try not to imagine why a raccoon climbed up and appears to have pushed –– pushed!–– on the window that looks into our sleeping quarters.

Nevertheless, I find myself weighing a few options:

an electric fence,
a wider perimeter of hair-trigger mouse-trips
–– rat-traps even! ––
the lend of a noisy dog,
buckets of water and Rube Goldbergian trip-lines,
noise-making contraptions,
firecrackers,
preemptive strikes,
firepower,
becoming the new sheriff with a fast draw ("Names Spackler, Carl Spackler, ma'm.")

via GIPHY

Which is where I hit pause. The bandits were here first. They raid for a living.

I'll start by making it prohibitively difficult for them to get satisfaction around Base Camp before taking lethal steps. Muah ha ha.

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Life and Death on the Would-Be Farm

9/28/2018

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The summer of 2018 was a big one for mice at the Would-Be Farm.

Since we left in April, they set up a series of wee discotheques and squalid flophouses throughout Base Camp.

Let the record show: They did a little dance, made a little love. They got down that night.

But in shadows? As with every happening hotspot in the known world, predators are just waiting for the opportunity to prey.

It might be a small life-and-death drama, but at the Farm, we are talking actual life and death.

The scene: a moonlit night deep in the cupboard...The cupboard in the back of the rickety little camper.

The night is sultry. Crickets are singing. Wait. No, actually, cue Tom Waits.

Things have been getting romantic in the little love nest.

Maybe things have progressed to post-coital pillow-talk –– be it as it may, I think we need not peep too closely.

Along comes the big bad. Slithering. Licking the air with a forked tongue for the scent of mousey love. Perhaps the big bad has developed a taste for these tender morsels in their nuptial bower. Or wants to.

In a moment comes a squeaking in the humid dark. A thump perhaps, and a scrabble...A fierce little battle that no diminutive St. George can hope to win.

A final squeak and silence fills Base Camp.

The big bad curls around a full tummy and snoozes for a day or a week, and wakes to the delightfully stretchy feeling of impending shed. The nuptial bower now a spa room. Exfoliation and microderm abrasion. Buffed. Polished.

And then vamoosed.

Leaving the mess for the maid.

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The Would-Be farm: Who's been wandering through the woods?

9/9/2018

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The modern game-trail camera is an enduring pleasure. Eight lithium batteries and a 16-gig card about doubles the price for one of these sturdy little gizmos, but it's still an bargain peep into the wildlife show at the Farm.

Each season brings its surprises past the motion detector. Sometimes a bear. Sometimes a bird –– or squirrel! –– mid-flight. We nearly always have coyotes and deer.

But the surprise this summer was the repeated photo of a free-range Highland Cow (knows in Scotland as the Heeland Coo).

We were rooting for her: she the last of her herd, escaped from the roundup when the neighbor sold off all of his cows in the spring. We heard how she'd jumped the fence and headed for the hills.

When wrangled into an old barn, she leaped through a glass window for freedom. Burst out and was gone with what I imagine was a sassy flick of her blonde tail.

There, we thought, is a cow who knows which side of the fence is which. Cue the music from Born Free.

She looks so at home, as wary as a deer in the woods.

I didn't want to ask the follow-up question in September.

Let's all pretend that she's running free still.

Let's pretend that instead of thinking about whether she irritated the guy with the gun, or how she got packaged by the pound. Or any of her last moments.

Thanks Matt Munro, for the words Andy Williams sings on the dopey movie that gave me an unreasonable penchant for dented old Land Rovers: "Stay free where no walls divide you/You're free as the roaring tide/So there's no need to hide. Born free."

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The Big Parks Trip: Capitol Reef National Park and Pipe Springs National Monument

8/29/2018

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During our 9000-mile trek around the western US, we learned a few things about Utah.

The Fremont in Capitol Reef National Park.

Windsor Castle at Pipe Springs.

First, it's got zillions of acres of dramatic desert scenery and otherworldly rock formations.

One ranger-led evening program included an entertaining slide show where the audience was invited to guess: Mars? Or Utah? It was harder than you might expect.

Second big thing about Utah? Mormonism.

What we don't know about the religion would fill a library. (Just for the record: our ignorance extends to nearly all branches of belief. We are non-denominational like that.)

But thanks to the Big Parks Trip, we do know why there are orchards at Capitol Reef National Park, and why the fort at Pipe Springs was built.

Here's my abbreviated version of the history: Back in the day (mid 1800's), when Mormons were facing persecution in the eastern US, Brigham Young led his followers into the Utah Territory, where they could practice their religion without oversight or interference from the government. Since, naturally, the territory was not yet a state.

Long story short, the conflict between faith and state came to actual war between Young's followers (the Nauvoo Legion) and the US Army.

It's no surprise then, that Young would encourage his people in self-sufficiency and plan for what felt like an inevitable return to open hostilities with the government.

Mormons went into the desert to start farming. Taking advantage of the water in the Waterpocket Fold (that's what the cognoscenti call that 100-mile long wrinkle in the Earth's crust), farmers planted apples, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries, peaches, almonds, and more.

These orchards are part of the "historic landscape" that visitors to the Fruita Campgrounds in Capitol Reef can still enjoy today.

Fruita Campgrounds, Capitol Reef National Park

As in, one can wander around in the orchard and eat apricots to one's heart's content.

3000 or so fruit trees are maintained by the National Parks Service (the last settlers moved out in the 1960's after selling their land to the Park). An earthly paradise.

And likewise, the Mormon ranch at Pipe Springs is a National Monument. Halfway between Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon, Pipe Springs served as a stop-over for early tourists out west.

My historical summary: For time immemorial, local Kaibab Paiute people came here on their annual circuit. At the end of winter, this little oasis was full of rice grass and small game. And for time immemorial, the Paiutes moved along for better hunting and gathering as the seasons changed.

Then the Europeans showed up.

To be fair, according to the story we heard, Mormons settlers arrived in November.

They didn't know someone was already calling the Springs home.

They didn't understand that the rich grazing they found for their cattle might not last forever.

They didn't realize the life-or-death impact their cows' overgrazing would have on the Kaibab Paiutes.

Luckily for the Mormons, these particular natives were not a warlike lot. Between small-pox, TB, and starvation, the local population of natives dwindled pretty rapidly.

By 1905, there may have been something like 90 tribe members left.

So why the fort? And why the telegraph line?

It was, so we heard in our tour, part of Brigham Young's strategic line of retreat in case the US government took up against the Mormons again.

Young would head south to Mexico if things went –– you know –– South for him.

The fortified ranch house ("Windsor Castle" was also a handy spot to hide plural wives when the federal marshals came looking for proof of polygamy.

Drought and ongoing federal prosecution of polygamy (check out the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 for some stimulating thought on church vs. state) put an end to Mormon ownership of the ranch.

It became a National Monument partly because Pipe Springs offered a way-station between the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park, Today, the water rights are split between the Kaibab Paiute Tribe, the National Parks Service, and a group of descendants of the cattle farmers.

The Kaibab Paiute (now numbering 200 souls) would still like to have the spring back, by the way.

Ironically, of course, when the states came into being, Pipe Springs ended up in Arizona rather than Utah. Which is another thing we learned about Utah.

Additional References

https://www.kaibabpaiute-nsn.gov/KPTCEDS.pdf
https://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Paiutes.html
http://itcaonline.com/?page_id=1166
https://heritage.utah.gov/tag/the-paiute-tribe-of-utah
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865574356/A-visit-to-pioneer-oasis-Arizonas-Pipe-Spring.html

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What's the name of that...Whatsit?

6/7/2018

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Pariediolia is the name for the native human tendency to construct faces out of random patterns. Like Arcimaboldo's work, but by chance rather than art.

The word comes from the Greek for something like "wrong image." Spotting the face of St. Lucia on your flatbread pizza –– mental illness notwithstanding –– is bonus in our evolutionary heritage of pattern recognition.

It's related to the way that when confronted with a paper plate decorated with bull's eyes, a wee bitty baby serves up the same charming goo-goo eyes for the plate as he gives to actual human faces. Survival of the most charming.

Which tells me that the point of imagination is to actually and genuinely save your life.

But what's it called when you spot horses everywhere?

The local osprey population LOVE using scraps of black polyethylene from construction sites for their own building projects. Naturally, it gets away from them. They don't use nearly enough fasteners. We end up picking a bale of this stuff off the lawn –– and out of the trees –– every January.

References
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reality-check/201111/11-11-11-apophenia-and-the-meaning-life

http://www.slate.com/blogs/how_babies_work/2013/04/03/babies_and_the_new_science_of_facial_recognition.html

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The Would-Be Farm: Late Spring This Year

5/21/2018

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A long winter, a late spring.

We arrived at the Would-Be Farm a week or so early this year.

Early by the season, if not the actual calendar.

Not even the hint of buds on the trees, lakes still frozen, plenty of snow still on the ground, and a solid weekend of ice-storm.

The shape of the land shows like the ribs of a hungry animal this early in the spring.

Waiting for the arrival of spring, Mr. Linton and I blazed a couple of new trails. It's easier to make a way without having to part that modesty-drape of leaves and grass.

Naming the trails is surprisingly difficult, for what we end up calling them.

At the risk of self-conscious whimsy, there's The Road that goes all the way to the beaver pond, past Porcupine Falls and Long Meadow.

New Trail leads out the northern end of New Pasture past Hickory Corners to Blueberry Hill.

Loop Trail links New Trail to the Road. Thag creates fire!

Gah. I feel as if I missed some important lesson about place names.

All those jokes about housing developments named for the thing it displaces (Osprey Reach, Dolphin Cove, yadda yadda). Ironic.

Anyway, a few days and a few yellow blazes later, we now we have Dead Possum Trail (named for the skeleton we found, natch) and what I first thought would be Trillium Trail.

Then we noticed this:

So, Broken Wagon Trail it is.

Okay, yes, it's not technically a wagon. Neither is it precisely broken. But Abandoned Hay Rake Trail doesn't have the same ring, does it? Plus Mr. Linton named it, and what he says, goes. Sometimes. This time.

Back to the narrative.

Late spring this year: even the old oaks seemed to be having a hard time waking up.

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The Would-Be Farm: Neat Fort!

4/23/2018

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So there's a tumbledown house at the Would-Be Farm –– a modest wooden structure that's slowly collapsing into its foundation after being abandoned sometime in the 1980's.

It sports an outhouse that has been, up until now, frankly, too horrifying for me to examine.

Mr. Linton, however, is a made of sterner stuff. And thus his courage was rewarded:

The photo begs a caption. Or something.

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Annual Photo Album

4/10/2018

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Each spring, one of the first pleasant chores at the Would-Be Farm is a nice mix of high tech and low mud: we retrieve the game cameras and make our observations of the winter action.