And so, I was the first one up. I reached in and after a little bit of shuffling around managed to get ahold of one of the hens. We decided to do the rooster last, since he would likely be the hardest to kill and we wanted to refine our method. I walked over near the table and began swinging the chicken. Then as I contemplated bringing the chicken’s head down on the table, I realized that I was swinging it underhanded, so I was going the wrong way. Stop and try again, swinging overhand. Around ... around ... around ... bring it closer to the table ... miss ... around ... closer still ... smack!
Wings flapping wildly ... look at it ... eyes still open ... struggling ... around ... smack!! ... still fluttering ... around ... smack!!!
Get it on the table ... still flopping a little ... grab cleaver ... what do I do now? ... get knife under the feathers ... cut? no ... pull cleaver back and bring it down hard ... hit with the heel of the blade, draw blood, but little else ... is it going to spurt? ... put the cleaver on its neck ... push hard ... nothing happens ... pull the cleaver back again ... aim is good, hit the neck with the front of the blade ... goes through most of the neck ... it’s bleeding, but slowly ... there are three or four splatters on the table ... bring the knife back for another blow ... there’s blood on the knife ... Oh My God!, There’s Blood On The Knife ... bring it down again ... no effect ... the head is off except for the skin of the other side ... set the knife in the gap ... there’s a gap between its neck and its head! ... slice and they’re completely separated ... push the head away from the body with the knife ... set the knife down next to the head ... I’m done ... step away from the table.
I remember stepping away and everyone coming down to the table. At some point I picked it back up and there was discussion about how to drain the blood. In the end I just put it feet up in a bucket.
Then I realized that I was breathing heavy and fast. My heart was beating fast. I as giddy, maybe hyper-ventilating. I don’t really know what I was feeling. It wasn’t triumph or exultation. I didn’t feel particularly accomplished. It hadn’t been difficult, either physically or emotionally. I hadn’t felt bad for the chicken or like I was doing something cruel. But I definitely felt _something_. And pretty strongly.
Kelsey was up next. She had a little trouble getting the chicken up and around, but she did it. It took a couple of tries to stun the bird, but she eventually got it. The video shows me helping her cut off its head, but I do not remember that at all.
Layla took the third one and it (or maybe it was Kelsey’s, I don’t remember now) was really active even without its head, managing even to flop its way off of the table.
The rooster was last, and Doug decided that he would take on that beast. He had a little trouble getting out of the dog carrier and the only way he could get it was to grab it by the neck. I guess that gave him an idea because then on the walk over the to table he suddenly, to everyone’s surprise, just wrenched the rooster’s neck around, first one way then the other. It was over very quickly and with a minimal amount of kicking and flopping around. It bled a bit more than the others, but still there was very little blood, even once we started cutting them open.
Once all four had been killed there was a definite party atmosphere. The spectators came down and got a close look at the birds. They took pictures and got close up looks at the bloody tools and table. We talked. We laughed and joked. We reminisced. It was a lot of fun. There was a certain amount of closeness and togetherness among us that I have rarely felt. Maybe this is why people go out on team-building events. But the emotions going through me (whatever emotions they were) really made me feel something special with everyone there. It was especially true with the Portland folks, Doug, Jon and Gwynn, who I didn’t know nearly as well, but by the end of the day I knew we would all be lifelong friends.
Still flush with our victory over chicken-kind it was time to butcher them up and turn them into meat. The first step was the de-feathering. We dunked them into hot water to loosen them up and then began that messy job. The smaller feathers came out very easily, but the larger ones on the tail and the wings were stuck on there good. Many of mine broke before coming out and had to be pulled out with tweezers later. The process was easier, work-wise, than I had expected, but more tedious and time consuming than I had thought.
The real time consuming part was the butchering. Doug, Gwynn and I (and maybe someone else, my memory is a bit hazy already) did this part. Kelsey was there helping, because she had at least seen it done before, while Chris stood on the porch with her laptop giving us unstructions (that was a typo, but after seeing it and remembering how not helpful they were, I decided to keep it) off of the internet.
The first step was to get the neck and crop out. The crop, I guess, is some sort of second stomach in the chicken’s neck or high up in its chest. The goal was to get it out without piercing it so all of that half-digested glump didn’t get all over the bird. These birds had recently fed, so the crop was full of grass and grain. There was a lot of slow going and being extra careful with the knife, trying our best not to puncture it. I wound up cutting into mine, but it was near the top and containable.
The next step was cleaning out the intestinal cavity and that wound up being a lot of work. It started with cutting ope a large hole in the bird’s abdomen, all the while being very careful not to cut too deep and puncture the intestines. So once again, not really knowing what we could and could not cut deeply into, we cut very slowly. Our knives too, were not the sharpest. These chickens had a ton of fat on them, especially in their bellies that we were cutting through.
Once the hole was made, we had to insert our hands into the cavity and separate the internal organs from the walls of the cavity. The worst thing about it? They were still warm inside. It was a very disconcerting reminder that this bird had been alive two hours ago. Once the guts were out, a few quick knife cuts removed the whole kit and caboodle from the chicken. And there you could see everything, much clearer and more obvious than in 10th Grade Biology class frog. Liver, heart, intestines, kidneys.
Meanwhile, it was starting to get cold. The sun had gone down behind the house and the wind had picked up. Most folks had gone inside, both in search of warmth and there were things to do in there. Christine cleaned and did some of the detail de-feathering that we hadn’t. Kelsey and Layla finished up the bread and got it into the oven. Kelsey get her Rosemary Chicken all prepped and ready to go. I’m sure other stuff happened in there too, but Doug and I were outside and didn’t see most of it.
I got a second chicken that had been cut open, but nothing removed, and knowing what I could and couldn’t do a lot better, made quick work of getting those guts out. Doug, meanwhile, had gone to work on the rooster. Now he turned out to be quite a bit different on the inside than the hens had been. His breastbone was a lot longer meaning that the opening to his internal cavity was smaller, which we were initially worried about, but wound up only being difficult because Doug has big hands. Why? Because he had practically no fat on him. The hens had been covered in fat, both under their skin and surrounding their intestines. Bright yellow, shiny masses of it. But the rooster must have been a lot more active because he had none of that and once Doug was able to get his hand in there to loosen everything up, his guts came right out.
And there we had it. Four chickens looking much like they would have in the store. Not exactly, as I realized as I began chopping them up into pieces to go in the various dishes. The breasts were very small. The skin was tougher and more yellow in color. The dark meat was much darker in color. And they were a lot fattier, at least the three hens.
One went in the soup pot. One went into a baking pan whole, flavored with rosemary. One went separated into a baking pan covered in white wine and apricot preserves. And the rooster went into a ziplock bag and into the freezer. After all, we’d only expected three chickens for dinner.
There was some time for hanging out and talking while the chickens cooked. The mulled mead, my regular mean, watered down and with cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, whole allspice berries and nutmeg mixed in and heated, was a big hit, so we made another batch of that. There was some playing of Rock Band.
I was just glad to have my hands washed and be warm. By the end there, it had gotten bitchly cold outside and I had disembowelled two chickens and chopped into bits three more. I’ll be happy not to have to do that again for a couple of weeks. I was a little disappointed that we hadn’t been able to get to the planting of the grains, but that was pretty minor. We’d been busy!
The chickens cooked for an hour and we had two more people arrive -- Ali and Erik, friends of mine. The chickens were all done at that point, but I realized that I’d forgotten to make noodles to go along with the one dish, so we whipped those up quickly. We also hadn’t made any plans for what we were going to eat off of, but at last I found some old paper plates, two more than we needed.
We all stuck in and ate. The chicken was ... disappointing. It was very tough. This had been a concern of mine. Several websites had said that the chicken needed to be aged for 48 hours after killing to let the rigor mortis and other death processes run their course. Other websites and forum posts had said that it wouldn’t be a problem. Well, it was, or at least something was. Even the chicken in the soup was tough, so we decided to forgo the soup and just keep cooking it, and see if it would soften up. It eventually did, but not until the next morning.
Also, the chicken did really taste different to me. Some people said it was “gamey” but I didn’t taste it. It’s one of those things: people go on and on about how much better fresh food is and how it’s worth the extra price, but you know, to me, it just tastes the same.
But the bread was a big hit and there was enough food for everyone to get their fill. We sat around a talked for another hour or two, split up into two groups. Eventually the Seattle people had to leave, so we said our goodbyes. But the Portland crew was staying the night on our couches and they were up for some TV, so we watched quite a few episodes of Black Books and had Cake Martinis. And that was the Fertility Festival.
I did actually forget a couple of things. At some point before dinner, Doug and I were cleaning up. It was after dark and there was still a big tub of water in the yard with the guts of one of the chickens (my second one) which had accidentally fallen in the tub while I was cutting it free from the chicken. We looked at each other, wondering what to do with it, and then Doug suggested we bury it in the field. Christine, earlier, had emptied one of our bowls of knife cleaning water into the field, with a brief invocation to Demeter. Both of these remembrances of the field meant a lot to me.
My daughter, Becca, had left the party after the killings were over, because she had a big school event going on, but before she left she said that she wanted one of the heads so that we could render down the flesh and get a chicken skull out of it. Now, we all knew that by ‘we’ she actually meant someone who was not her, more than likely me. But we took the rooster head, since it hadn’t been smashed against anything and put it in a pot on the barbeque’s stove. We wound up throwing the other three heads in as well, because ... why not? They simmered there all through dinner with no change in fleshiness and wound up stinking pretty bad (maybe because they still had some feathers on them?) We quizzed Becca the next day about whether she would help out to get her skull, and she vehemently declined. So, I decided to take them and bury one in each corner of the field, my little sacrifice to the grain spirits.
So what did I learn? I don’t really know. I picked up some skills. I could probably butcher a chicken in half the time it took that first time. Medievally, I guess I learned that there isn’t really that much meat on a regular, somewhat natural bird, but there can be a lot of fat, which in the medieval/iron age mind is a big thing. I gained some new respect for butchering a bird like that. I mean, our knives weren’t very good modern ones, how hard would it be with an iron one? But I can certainly see that a couple eggs a week would be a lot more valuable than the meat off of the chicken.
What did I learn about myself? Share more. Invite people into my world. Everyone had a great time. Not because I kept to myself and expressed the interests of the herd. But because I shared what I was truly interested in and it turned out that other people were too. Several of us commented afterwards that we’d remember that day for the rest of our lives. Does that happen by being boring? By doing what everyone else does? By keeping those ideas hidden away inside? Nope, only by sharing them and making them happen.
The other thing that I ‘learned’ or may yet learn from is that emotion I felt after the killing. I’ve been thinking about it all day as I write this and I still don’t have a good explanation or description for it. I guess it feels like exhilaration, except that I had no expectation of feeling that way, no ramp up ‘this is going to be so exciting’ feeling before hand. And so it doesn’t quite feel right to call it a thrill. (It’s also mildly disturbing to call it exhilarating when it was murdering a living thing.) I would expect that such a feeling would dissipate as I did it more and it would become mundane, which was how I was expecting it to feel.
And everyone had a great time. It was a memorable experience that brought us all together. I think the lot of us that killed and gutted those chickens in some way bonded over that experience, and that feeling, that effect doesn’t need anything else. Even if we hadn’t learned anything, or felt anything, that bonding was enough to make it a wonderful day. Thank you, everyone, for being there and sharing it with the rest of us.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Autumn Planting Festival, or What I Learned From Killing a Chicken (part 2)
We got to sleep late that night and there was a little bit of panic when I woke up and realized that I had slept in by a few hours. I got out my laptop with the intention of writing myself a script of what I would say later on and then wound up taking to Chris and then Doug and Jon and Gwynn as they woke up. Before I knew it, it was 9:40 am and time to get the chickens.
I had borrowed a small dog carrier from Kelsey a few days before, so I loaded that up in the car and drove down to get the chickens. Google maps had suggested one route, but it had seemed to go in circles, so after a bit of futzing with waypoints I got it to give me a route that looked much more direct. Except that it wound up taking me through the parking lot of a huge apartment complex which would have actually worked, except that the back entrance/exit to the parking lot was blocked off with a locked gate. Fifteen minutes later, I finally found the place.
I was met by a very nice Transylvanian lady (I kid you not) who took me over to a small coop containing four chickens. We talked for a bit, her pronunciation of words was excellent, but her grammar was not so good, and wound up coming out sounding like someone doing a bad Romanian accent. Her best line was, “Planning trip back to old country soon. Be gone six months, maybe more. Men, they cannot be trusted to keep care of chickens. Must sell them before.”
She also said that her husband had said to give me a good deal, so she was throwing in a rooster along with the three hens. Four birds for $60. Seems like a lot to me, but Gwynn thought that the hens at least were some pretty prime poultry. She tried to talk me into buying some ducks too, which were quacking up up a storm, but I begged off of those. They were pretty mellow birds and were easy to corral into the dog carrier. It was probably just as well that I hadn’t noticed the huge, mean-looking bone spur on the rooster’s legs until near the end.
I got them home with no problems; they barely made a cluck on the drive.
Once home, there was a bunch of work to be done. I got the bread started rising. I got all of our buckets and filled a big tub with water. Pulled around a big wooden table into the back yard. Got the gas burner on our barbecue working so we could have hot water to help with the feather plucking. Chris made the cheese and meat plate. We put the others to work as wee needed them, but Becca was getting them in the historical mood by showing them the video game Brütal Legend.
When we first came up with this idea, Kelsey and I had decided that we were going to do it in costume. So, a little after 1:00 pm (as the others were going to be arriving about 2:00 pm), I locked myself in the bedroom and got into my Anglo-Saxon garb. Which, I have to say, looks pretty damn good. I still need a few things. I could use an undertunic and shoes and maybe a cap. I love the woolen leg wraps, though between those and the long tunic, you can barely see the trousers. I got it together just as Layla and Kelsey arrived (both of their boyfriends were forced to go into work, so neither of them made it). We hung around and chatted for a bit, and nommed our way through the cheese and meat platter. By about 2:30 pm, we were ready to get down to business.
Gwynn was the only other person who donned a costume, although Doug made himself a blood-splatter tunic by cutting holes in a black plastic garbage bag. So I was feeling a little exposed and embarrassed, but it wasn’t to bad.
We went out into the backyard. The weather had turned out to be great -- sunny, but cool with a bit of a breeze -- which is a lot better than the dark grey with scattered showers they had been forecasting earlier in the week. I gathered everyone around and told them I had a few words to say. Becca and Jon videoed.
This was the moment that I had been working up to all week, even more than the actual chicken killing itself. There was a brief moment of panic just before I started and then again about half a minute in where I forgot how to speak for a couple of seconds. But I got my focus back. I got into character and said what I had wanted to say.
The gist of the speech was to ask everyone to imagine that we were in the 6th Century. Once there, I got into character as the Germanic head of household of a small farm. I went on to explain that my son had traded our last cow for some magic grain that was supposed to grow through the winter (I haven’t been able to get a good handle on when these strains actually came into use in Europe. Are they modern? Not sure.) and that he didn’t know what kind of ceremony to use to bless his field with the strange wheat. He gave a brief overview of the ceremonies that his people would have used for summer grains, and then asked for help in extrapolating out to the winter grains.
I thought it went well, that I said what I had wanted to say and that it had come out in an entertaining and interesting manner. I delivered it well enough and didn’t make a complete fool out of myself. So that was all good. I invited everyone into my head for 13 minutes.
Then our attention turned to the chickens. Now, one of our Portland friends, one who hadn’t been able to come, had sent us a link to a how-to website that had given very good and explicit instructions on one method of killing the chicken and instructions on gutting it as well. I had found a YouTube video that did much the same thing, though with a different killing method. Another website had offered an outrageous sounding procedure. And the good Transylvanian woman had suggested a different method. So we had five basic methods to choose from:
1. Hit it on the head to knock it out. Then either take it’s head off or bleed it out. (Website #1)
2. Find it’s jugular vein just under its chin and slice it. (YouTube video)
3. With the chicken on your lap, grab it by the head and yank hard, dislocating its neck. (Outrageous website)
4. Pinch the carotid artery in its neck until it fell unconscious, and then chop. (Transylvanian lady)
5. While still alive, chop its head off. (Commonly known, that’s what everyone knows about chicken killing method)
We had all looked at the website of #1, so we decided to go with that method.
I guess that I’m being a little inexact with that method decription though. Hit it on the head needs a little more detail. You can’t just hit it with a hammer. They move too much and there would be a real chance of hitting yourself or the other person holding the chicken. So, this method had you grasp the chicken by the feet, twirl it around at full force and then bring the chicken’s head down on something solid, like the edge of our table.
I had borrowed a small dog carrier from Kelsey a few days before, so I loaded that up in the car and drove down to get the chickens. Google maps had suggested one route, but it had seemed to go in circles, so after a bit of futzing with waypoints I got it to give me a route that looked much more direct. Except that it wound up taking me through the parking lot of a huge apartment complex which would have actually worked, except that the back entrance/exit to the parking lot was blocked off with a locked gate. Fifteen minutes later, I finally found the place.
I was met by a very nice Transylvanian lady (I kid you not) who took me over to a small coop containing four chickens. We talked for a bit, her pronunciation of words was excellent, but her grammar was not so good, and wound up coming out sounding like someone doing a bad Romanian accent. Her best line was, “Planning trip back to old country soon. Be gone six months, maybe more. Men, they cannot be trusted to keep care of chickens. Must sell them before.”
She also said that her husband had said to give me a good deal, so she was throwing in a rooster along with the three hens. Four birds for $60. Seems like a lot to me, but Gwynn thought that the hens at least were some pretty prime poultry. She tried to talk me into buying some ducks too, which were quacking up up a storm, but I begged off of those. They were pretty mellow birds and were easy to corral into the dog carrier. It was probably just as well that I hadn’t noticed the huge, mean-looking bone spur on the rooster’s legs until near the end.
I got them home with no problems; they barely made a cluck on the drive.
Once home, there was a bunch of work to be done. I got the bread started rising. I got all of our buckets and filled a big tub with water. Pulled around a big wooden table into the back yard. Got the gas burner on our barbecue working so we could have hot water to help with the feather plucking. Chris made the cheese and meat plate. We put the others to work as wee needed them, but Becca was getting them in the historical mood by showing them the video game Brütal Legend.
When we first came up with this idea, Kelsey and I had decided that we were going to do it in costume. So, a little after 1:00 pm (as the others were going to be arriving about 2:00 pm), I locked myself in the bedroom and got into my Anglo-Saxon garb. Which, I have to say, looks pretty damn good. I still need a few things. I could use an undertunic and shoes and maybe a cap. I love the woolen leg wraps, though between those and the long tunic, you can barely see the trousers. I got it together just as Layla and Kelsey arrived (both of their boyfriends were forced to go into work, so neither of them made it). We hung around and chatted for a bit, and nommed our way through the cheese and meat platter. By about 2:30 pm, we were ready to get down to business.
Gwynn was the only other person who donned a costume, although Doug made himself a blood-splatter tunic by cutting holes in a black plastic garbage bag. So I was feeling a little exposed and embarrassed, but it wasn’t to bad.
We went out into the backyard. The weather had turned out to be great -- sunny, but cool with a bit of a breeze -- which is a lot better than the dark grey with scattered showers they had been forecasting earlier in the week. I gathered everyone around and told them I had a few words to say. Becca and Jon videoed.
This was the moment that I had been working up to all week, even more than the actual chicken killing itself. There was a brief moment of panic just before I started and then again about half a minute in where I forgot how to speak for a couple of seconds. But I got my focus back. I got into character and said what I had wanted to say.
The gist of the speech was to ask everyone to imagine that we were in the 6th Century. Once there, I got into character as the Germanic head of household of a small farm. I went on to explain that my son had traded our last cow for some magic grain that was supposed to grow through the winter (I haven’t been able to get a good handle on when these strains actually came into use in Europe. Are they modern? Not sure.) and that he didn’t know what kind of ceremony to use to bless his field with the strange wheat. He gave a brief overview of the ceremonies that his people would have used for summer grains, and then asked for help in extrapolating out to the winter grains.
I thought it went well, that I said what I had wanted to say and that it had come out in an entertaining and interesting manner. I delivered it well enough and didn’t make a complete fool out of myself. So that was all good. I invited everyone into my head for 13 minutes.
Then our attention turned to the chickens. Now, one of our Portland friends, one who hadn’t been able to come, had sent us a link to a how-to website that had given very good and explicit instructions on one method of killing the chicken and instructions on gutting it as well. I had found a YouTube video that did much the same thing, though with a different killing method. Another website had offered an outrageous sounding procedure. And the good Transylvanian woman had suggested a different method. So we had five basic methods to choose from:
1. Hit it on the head to knock it out. Then either take it’s head off or bleed it out. (Website #1)
2. Find it’s jugular vein just under its chin and slice it. (YouTube video)
3. With the chicken on your lap, grab it by the head and yank hard, dislocating its neck. (Outrageous website)
4. Pinch the carotid artery in its neck until it fell unconscious, and then chop. (Transylvanian lady)
5. While still alive, chop its head off. (Commonly known, that’s what everyone knows about chicken killing method)
We had all looked at the website of #1, so we decided to go with that method.
I guess that I’m being a little inexact with that method decription though. Hit it on the head needs a little more detail. You can’t just hit it with a hammer. They move too much and there would be a real chance of hitting yourself or the other person holding the chicken. So, this method had you grasp the chicken by the feet, twirl it around at full force and then bring the chicken’s head down on something solid, like the edge of our table.
Autumn Planting Festival, or What I Learned From Killing a Chicken (part 1)
This is the first time I’ve done this, and I not going to make a habit out of it, but in this case, I think it’s appropriate. I’m crossposting this post to both my personal blog and my historical recreation blog. Just so you know....
Remember a few posts ago when I talked about reading the Golden Bough ( link ) and mentioned that it was listed in the Call of Cthulhu RPG book as causing a loss of sanity? That’s silly, right? Books don’t drive you crazy. They don’t make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Right?
Oh, but that is the power of books, isn’t it? To teach. To inspire. And that is exactly what it did. Inspire me. ::insert maniacal laughter::
But, back to beginning of the story. I finished pulling all of the weeds -- my nemeses, the ivy, the dandelions, and especially the European Buttercups --
and was thinking I was done preparing the field. But then I realized two things, that the ground was a little hard and that the weeds were coming back very fast. So, instead of just going after the weeds as they pooped up, I decided to take the shovel to the whole field again.
Not double digging this time. That took too long and was too much work to do every year. And plus, it may have made my weed problem worse. No, this time my bright idea was to single dig -- just scoop up dirt, turn it over and rake it back in the hole. But as I raked, I made a strong effort to pull out any roots or creeper vines that were in there. The raking actually wound up being the hard and time-consuming part of the operation. I pulled out tons of roots and vines, at least 6 wheelbarrow loads of them. It took just about a month, working in 1-2 hour sessions, 2-4 sessions per week. Estimate it at about 18 hours for my 750 sq. feet.
I also soil-tested the ground, and it came back as being very low on nitrogen. So I added some fertilizer. Anyone who’s interested about the fertilizer, I’ll make that a sperate post.
And I picked a crop. I decided on winter red wheat and winter spelt. They both recommended being planted by October 15th. The 15th happened to be a Saturday, so I aimed for that day as my planting day. So far so good.
But then a friend of mine, Kelsey, started talking to me about The Golden Bough, especially about the animal sacrifices. We had talked before about wanting to go through the process of killing an animal, butchering it and eating it, and so, one thing led to another and we decided that the two of us (and probably my wife, but she hadn’t actually been asked at this point) would get together on Oct. 15th and have a little planting festival. We’d kill a chicken, plant some wheat and spelt, cook, and probably drink a lot of mead.
And we’d probably dribble the chicken blood in the field and say a few words to the grain spirits about giving us a good harvest.
Now, I’m not religious, not religious at all. I don’t really believe that there are grain spirits or that Jupiter or Ceres or Horus are looking after my field or the fertility of my field. But, perhaps just because of that, I am very curious about religion, about feeling some connection with the absolute or the hugeness of the universe. My roleplaying game is largely about playing immoral characters in a moral world and the paradoxes and punishments that go along with that. I’m also very interested and respectful of traditions and rituals. So I wanted to try and get a little of that from this planting party.
And then Kelsey and I told another friend, Layla, about our little get together and she wanted to come. And then Kelsey’s boyfriend wanted to come. And then Layla’s boyfriend and another mutual friend. And my wife thought it would be a hoot. She mentioned it to some of her friends in Portland (200 miles away) and they thought it sounded like fun, so three of them made plans to drive up. Before I knew what hit me, my little 2-3 person get-together and mushroomed into a nine or ten person party.
And it totally stressed me out. The entire week leading up to it I was a basket case, just going over the plan, marshaling all of the little details of food, snacks, prep work and that kind of thing. But also, what was I going to say. What kind of a little ritual was I going to put on over my field. That was where the major anxiety was.
Thursday morning, I realized what I was really stressing over. It wasn’t so much the performance anxiety of getting in front of all of those people and talking. It wasn’t that I was worried about my talk being inaccurate. Messing up the logistics wasn’t really the thing that was bothering me. Oh sure, all of those things were on my mind, but they weren’t what was causing the lion’s share of the stress.
It was the the idea of opening myself up to these people. Of coming right out and saying, “This is the crazy stuff that interests me and this is what I think about it. This is where I am when my eyes glaze over and I’m spacing out. This is the special place I go when the real world is being too difficult to take and I need a few minute vacation. I go to a 6th Century, Northern European farm.”
And once I realized that thoughts such as these were the ones getting me all anxious, it was a lot easier to deal with and the stress greatly decreased. And that was good.
Kelsey and I came up with the basic menu for the day. We’d get three chickens and turn one into soup, bake one fairly simply with rosemary and oil packed in under its skin and the third would have a wine and apricot glaze and be served over pasta. Yes, I know, not 6th Century, but the purpose of the day wasn’t to be perfectly realistic. It was to have fun first, and then to get a glimpse into what life might of been like a millennia ago in Europe, or even just get an idea what life would be like in rural parts of the world today.
Christine, my wife, added a summer sausage, cold-cuts and cheese platter to the menu while we were getting set up and that was a great addition. I made two different kinds of bread. There was mulled mead and raspberry wine. There was supposed to be a wheat berry salad, but that got canceled. There was a green salad planned, but we forgot about it in the heat of the moment and it’s still in our fridge. Gwynn and Jon from Portland brought sour apple cupcakes which were a big hit. I think we went through something like three dozen of them.
None of us had any idea how or where to get live chickens, so I made a posting on Craigslist. I only got one response, but it was from a nice enough sounding Eastern European immigrant family not too far away from our house here in the suburbs. I made an appointment to meet them Saturday morning at 10:00 am.
I took most of Friday off of work. There was still a lot of work to be done. There was still a 3’ x 8’ section of the field that hadn’t been turned over. I hadn’t fertilized yet, or made furrows (I decided that I would try to plant the wheat and spelt in rows this year, to make the continued weeding and harvesting a little easier). I needed to grind grain into flour for the bread. There was last minute cleaning to be done. My daughter, Becca, had an appointment to take her driving test in order to get her driver’s license. The Portland folks would be arriving. I still had to figure out what I was going to say in front of the field and the chickens. And my desktop computer, the one that I was doing all of the layout of Ellis on, had died the week before, and the replacement was due to arrive on that Friday. So, it was a busy day.
We managed to get nearly everything done. Furrows didn’t get made and only about half of the flour got ground. Becca failed her driving test and was extremely disappointed about it, but handled it very well. There was a lot of “Just let me do one more thing involved in setting up the new computer, and while it’s processing, I’ll do other work.” But even with that nearly everything got done.
Doug, Jon and Gwynn arrive a little after 8:00 pm and we ran out to our favorite Mongolian grill for dinner before they closed. There was much joking about the day-to-come’s festivities and everyone seemed to be looking forward to it.
Which I guess still surprises me. I suppose it shouldn’t. Maybe that’s the lesson that I really need to take away from this whole experience is that I’m not as alone as I think I am and that if I was actually to share what I think and feel, other people would actually find it interesting. .....
Actually, that is the lesson I’m going to take away from this and do my best to keep it to heart, because it is a valuable and important lesson.
Remember a few posts ago when I talked about reading the Golden Bough ( link ) and mentioned that it was listed in the Call of Cthulhu RPG book as causing a loss of sanity? That’s silly, right? Books don’t drive you crazy. They don’t make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Right?
Oh, but that is the power of books, isn’t it? To teach. To inspire. And that is exactly what it did. Inspire me. ::insert maniacal laughter::
But, back to beginning of the story. I finished pulling all of the weeds -- my nemeses, the ivy, the dandelions, and especially the European Buttercups --
and was thinking I was done preparing the field. But then I realized two things, that the ground was a little hard and that the weeds were coming back very fast. So, instead of just going after the weeds as they pooped up, I decided to take the shovel to the whole field again.
Not double digging this time. That took too long and was too much work to do every year. And plus, it may have made my weed problem worse. No, this time my bright idea was to single dig -- just scoop up dirt, turn it over and rake it back in the hole. But as I raked, I made a strong effort to pull out any roots or creeper vines that were in there. The raking actually wound up being the hard and time-consuming part of the operation. I pulled out tons of roots and vines, at least 6 wheelbarrow loads of them. It took just about a month, working in 1-2 hour sessions, 2-4 sessions per week. Estimate it at about 18 hours for my 750 sq. feet.
I also soil-tested the ground, and it came back as being very low on nitrogen. So I added some fertilizer. Anyone who’s interested about the fertilizer, I’ll make that a sperate post.
And I picked a crop. I decided on winter red wheat and winter spelt. They both recommended being planted by October 15th. The 15th happened to be a Saturday, so I aimed for that day as my planting day. So far so good.
But then a friend of mine, Kelsey, started talking to me about The Golden Bough, especially about the animal sacrifices. We had talked before about wanting to go through the process of killing an animal, butchering it and eating it, and so, one thing led to another and we decided that the two of us (and probably my wife, but she hadn’t actually been asked at this point) would get together on Oct. 15th and have a little planting festival. We’d kill a chicken, plant some wheat and spelt, cook, and probably drink a lot of mead.
And we’d probably dribble the chicken blood in the field and say a few words to the grain spirits about giving us a good harvest.
Now, I’m not religious, not religious at all. I don’t really believe that there are grain spirits or that Jupiter or Ceres or Horus are looking after my field or the fertility of my field. But, perhaps just because of that, I am very curious about religion, about feeling some connection with the absolute or the hugeness of the universe. My roleplaying game is largely about playing immoral characters in a moral world and the paradoxes and punishments that go along with that. I’m also very interested and respectful of traditions and rituals. So I wanted to try and get a little of that from this planting party.
And then Kelsey and I told another friend, Layla, about our little get together and she wanted to come. And then Kelsey’s boyfriend wanted to come. And then Layla’s boyfriend and another mutual friend. And my wife thought it would be a hoot. She mentioned it to some of her friends in Portland (200 miles away) and they thought it sounded like fun, so three of them made plans to drive up. Before I knew what hit me, my little 2-3 person get-together and mushroomed into a nine or ten person party.
And it totally stressed me out. The entire week leading up to it I was a basket case, just going over the plan, marshaling all of the little details of food, snacks, prep work and that kind of thing. But also, what was I going to say. What kind of a little ritual was I going to put on over my field. That was where the major anxiety was.
Thursday morning, I realized what I was really stressing over. It wasn’t so much the performance anxiety of getting in front of all of those people and talking. It wasn’t that I was worried about my talk being inaccurate. Messing up the logistics wasn’t really the thing that was bothering me. Oh sure, all of those things were on my mind, but they weren’t what was causing the lion’s share of the stress.
It was the the idea of opening myself up to these people. Of coming right out and saying, “This is the crazy stuff that interests me and this is what I think about it. This is where I am when my eyes glaze over and I’m spacing out. This is the special place I go when the real world is being too difficult to take and I need a few minute vacation. I go to a 6th Century, Northern European farm.”
And once I realized that thoughts such as these were the ones getting me all anxious, it was a lot easier to deal with and the stress greatly decreased. And that was good.
Kelsey and I came up with the basic menu for the day. We’d get three chickens and turn one into soup, bake one fairly simply with rosemary and oil packed in under its skin and the third would have a wine and apricot glaze and be served over pasta. Yes, I know, not 6th Century, but the purpose of the day wasn’t to be perfectly realistic. It was to have fun first, and then to get a glimpse into what life might of been like a millennia ago in Europe, or even just get an idea what life would be like in rural parts of the world today.
Christine, my wife, added a summer sausage, cold-cuts and cheese platter to the menu while we were getting set up and that was a great addition. I made two different kinds of bread. There was mulled mead and raspberry wine. There was supposed to be a wheat berry salad, but that got canceled. There was a green salad planned, but we forgot about it in the heat of the moment and it’s still in our fridge. Gwynn and Jon from Portland brought sour apple cupcakes which were a big hit. I think we went through something like three dozen of them.
None of us had any idea how or where to get live chickens, so I made a posting on Craigslist. I only got one response, but it was from a nice enough sounding Eastern European immigrant family not too far away from our house here in the suburbs. I made an appointment to meet them Saturday morning at 10:00 am.
I took most of Friday off of work. There was still a lot of work to be done. There was still a 3’ x 8’ section of the field that hadn’t been turned over. I hadn’t fertilized yet, or made furrows (I decided that I would try to plant the wheat and spelt in rows this year, to make the continued weeding and harvesting a little easier). I needed to grind grain into flour for the bread. There was last minute cleaning to be done. My daughter, Becca, had an appointment to take her driving test in order to get her driver’s license. The Portland folks would be arriving. I still had to figure out what I was going to say in front of the field and the chickens. And my desktop computer, the one that I was doing all of the layout of Ellis on, had died the week before, and the replacement was due to arrive on that Friday. So, it was a busy day.
We managed to get nearly everything done. Furrows didn’t get made and only about half of the flour got ground. Becca failed her driving test and was extremely disappointed about it, but handled it very well. There was a lot of “Just let me do one more thing involved in setting up the new computer, and while it’s processing, I’ll do other work.” But even with that nearly everything got done.
Doug, Jon and Gwynn arrive a little after 8:00 pm and we ran out to our favorite Mongolian grill for dinner before they closed. There was much joking about the day-to-come’s festivities and everyone seemed to be looking forward to it.
Which I guess still surprises me. I suppose it shouldn’t. Maybe that’s the lesson that I really need to take away from this whole experience is that I’m not as alone as I think I am and that if I was actually to share what I think and feel, other people would actually find it interesting. .....
Actually, that is the lesson I’m going to take away from this and do my best to keep it to heart, because it is a valuable and important lesson.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Soil Testing
The other day, I went out and bought a soil testing kit from my local garden supply mega-store. I was curious, because there had been that crop circle in last year’s wheat crop, and I wondered if the soil wasn’t in poor condition, especially since those damned European Buttercups are supposed to really eat up the nitrogen in the soil.
So I bought a testing kit and on Wednesday I used it. It came with four plastic test tubes, each for testing a different aspect of the soil -- ph, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. For each of them, with small amounts of variation, you put some soil in a tube, add in some water, drop a chemical pill into the water and shake for a long time. Then compare the color of the water to the laminated color chart and read the results.
I took four samples from around my field and it took about 90 minutes to run through it four times, and by the third time through I had streamlined the process pretty well. My results were:
PH: between 6-7 across the field.
Nitrogen: no reading. Either my chemical were bad or there was no nitrogen anywhere in that field.
Phosphorus: Medium.
Potassium: Medium.
So what does that mean? According to _Small-Scale Grain Raising_ wheat likes a ph of 6.4, so that’s not too bad. It needs nitrogen, certainly, but how much I don’t know. SSGR says a “typical” nitrogen supplement would be 30 lbs. of nitrogen per acre or 3+ tons of manure per acre. After some quick math that would be 0.017 x 30 = 0.51 pounds of nitrogen or 0.017 x 6000 = 102 pounds of manure. But that’s only “typical” and I think I am “desperate”. So I think a trip to my local garden store or coop is in order.
SSGR gives advice on adding phosphorus to a regular rotation of wheat, but doesn’t say what it wants, so I’m going to assume I’m okay. And it says that wheat doesn’t see to respond to artificial additions of potassium, but I’m probably good on that anyway.
So the big problem is nitrogen, which could be fixed by crop rotation (SSGR suggests rotating it with soybeans) but I’d really like to at least get a good harvest of grain before growing the peas or lentils.
So, off to get advice!
So I bought a testing kit and on Wednesday I used it. It came with four plastic test tubes, each for testing a different aspect of the soil -- ph, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. For each of them, with small amounts of variation, you put some soil in a tube, add in some water, drop a chemical pill into the water and shake for a long time. Then compare the color of the water to the laminated color chart and read the results.
I took four samples from around my field and it took about 90 minutes to run through it four times, and by the third time through I had streamlined the process pretty well. My results were:
PH: between 6-7 across the field.
Nitrogen: no reading. Either my chemical were bad or there was no nitrogen anywhere in that field.
Phosphorus: Medium.
Potassium: Medium.
So what does that mean? According to _Small-Scale Grain Raising_ wheat likes a ph of 6.4, so that’s not too bad. It needs nitrogen, certainly, but how much I don’t know. SSGR says a “typical” nitrogen supplement would be 30 lbs. of nitrogen per acre or 3+ tons of manure per acre. After some quick math that would be 0.017 x 30 = 0.51 pounds of nitrogen or 0.017 x 6000 = 102 pounds of manure. But that’s only “typical” and I think I am “desperate”. So I think a trip to my local garden store or coop is in order.
SSGR gives advice on adding phosphorus to a regular rotation of wheat, but doesn’t say what it wants, so I’m going to assume I’m okay. And it says that wheat doesn’t see to respond to artificial additions of potassium, but I’m probably good on that anyway.
So the big problem is nitrogen, which could be fixed by crop rotation (SSGR suggests rotating it with soybeans) but I’d really like to at least get a good harvest of grain before growing the peas or lentils.
So, off to get advice!
Monday, September 5, 2011
A Long Overdue Post
Well now. How long has it been? Over a year? Damn, that’s terrible!
Did I really not post any harvest pictures? Or say anything about it?
So what happened? Well, at this point, I’m sure no one’s wondering. But I do feel like I owe an explanation, and a recap of what did actually happen.
The why is easy, I got a second job to help pay for a really expensive, emergency home repair (a new roof). Plus I was selling a bunch of stuff on eBay, so I was really working two-and-a-half jobs. I kept up with the field as best as I could, but in the end, somethings had to get neglected and the wheat was one of them. Unfortunately my family life was another of them, but that is more in the present than it was (at least in the front of my mind) last summer/fall.
But I quit that job back in June of 2011, and after a long vacation to Europe (including some medieval farming related stops) and some time off to rest and much time spent finishing my roleplaying game (I really do have a bad habit of biting off more than I can chew!), I finally have time to get back to my wheat field.
What happened? The bald spot continued to stay bald. I didn’t have the time to properly weed, and the ivy, THE DAMN IVY, got into the field and took over. It didn’t look too bad at a casual glance -- it didn’t seem to be hurting the wheat, strangling it or dragging it down, but when it came to harvesting, the ivy was so intertwined and wrapped around the individual stalks that you had to pull the stalks out of the icy one at a time.
Harvesting in the ivy free portions went well. I used an electric hedge trimmer as my scythe, and it worked quite well, though it was hard on my arm, using one hand to grab a clump of wheat and the other hand to hold the heavy trimmer and bring it under the clump. But I got help from my wonderful wife and had a good time doing it.
A few days later I bound the stalks into sheaves and stacked them out to age, dry and harden in the sun. But maybe I waited to late in the season, or maybe it was just a wet season, because a day later it started raining. We moved the sheaves into the shed (actually my daughter did it, on her own initiative, even though she hates the whole garden/wheat field. Thanks again Becca!), but it never got warm again that year, and the grains quickly became speckled with black mold.
Perhaps if I’d paid more attention to it, spent more time fussing and watching it, it wouldn’t have come to that, but there it is. I was disappointed, but not beaten, and told myself I would try again.
By Spring, we had mice living in the sheaves and when we drug the wheat back out into the field, we disturbed the mouse nest and killed a bunch of newborns. It was actually very sad.
And so there the field sat. The ivy grew. The dandelions grew. But mostly the buttercups grew. I still had fantasies of planting a new crop, but I was exhausted, the family problems were erupting and I just didn’t have the time or energy. Everyone once in a while I would buy a book, or read some webpages, but that was about it.
From one of those pages, I did learn that Washington State considers the European Buttercup to be one of the 10 most dangerous invasive, non-native species of plants. They are very fast spreading, nearly impossible to kill and the worst thing to do with them is to till them under, either mechanically or by hand, because every little bit of one can regrow itself into a brand new plant. And guess what I had done...
But finally, I got some time. I had also been re-inspired my my visit to the Ullandhaug Iron Age Farm in Norway (more on that another time) and really wanted to get some grain going.
So I started pulling those weeds. Hard back-breaking work. Grab handfuls of leafy greens and yank until you can see the ground. Then scrape your fingertips along the ground, trying to get under those ivy and buttercup creepers. Then pull -- not with your arms, because your handful has enough resistance that you need your legs. Repeat. Over and over again. I figure it took about 16 hours all told for my 750 sq. feet.
And then I cheated. I got some Roundup and sprayed it. Actually I sprayed it as I went, so now the early portions are very vegetation clear and the recently cleared parts still have green shoots poking out of the ground. I’ll go after them more as the days go on. Put here’s a picture of how things looked yesterday, when I finished the “weeding”.
The today, partially because it sounded like fun, partially because I really want to kill those bastards, I went out and bought one of those propane-powered, weed-killing flamethrowers. It wasn’t hard, though once again there was a lot of using a heavy implement one-handed, but I’m not convinced how well it worked. Plus, I was pretty paranoid about setting the yard or the fence on fire. According to the websites I’ve read, you don’t actually have to burn the weeds to a crisp, you just have to get the 500,000 BTU exhaust over the weed to scald it, and that will kill it. So we’ll see how it looks in a few days. Here’s a pic of the field after the torching.
And I smell like I’ve been roasting marshmallows in a brush fire.
More about my plans and the next steps in a future (yes there will be a future) post.
Did I really not post any harvest pictures? Or say anything about it?
So what happened? Well, at this point, I’m sure no one’s wondering. But I do feel like I owe an explanation, and a recap of what did actually happen.
The why is easy, I got a second job to help pay for a really expensive, emergency home repair (a new roof). Plus I was selling a bunch of stuff on eBay, so I was really working two-and-a-half jobs. I kept up with the field as best as I could, but in the end, somethings had to get neglected and the wheat was one of them. Unfortunately my family life was another of them, but that is more in the present than it was (at least in the front of my mind) last summer/fall.
But I quit that job back in June of 2011, and after a long vacation to Europe (including some medieval farming related stops) and some time off to rest and much time spent finishing my roleplaying game (I really do have a bad habit of biting off more than I can chew!), I finally have time to get back to my wheat field.
What happened? The bald spot continued to stay bald. I didn’t have the time to properly weed, and the ivy, THE DAMN IVY, got into the field and took over. It didn’t look too bad at a casual glance -- it didn’t seem to be hurting the wheat, strangling it or dragging it down, but when it came to harvesting, the ivy was so intertwined and wrapped around the individual stalks that you had to pull the stalks out of the icy one at a time.
Harvesting in the ivy free portions went well. I used an electric hedge trimmer as my scythe, and it worked quite well, though it was hard on my arm, using one hand to grab a clump of wheat and the other hand to hold the heavy trimmer and bring it under the clump. But I got help from my wonderful wife and had a good time doing it.
A few days later I bound the stalks into sheaves and stacked them out to age, dry and harden in the sun. But maybe I waited to late in the season, or maybe it was just a wet season, because a day later it started raining. We moved the sheaves into the shed (actually my daughter did it, on her own initiative, even though she hates the whole garden/wheat field. Thanks again Becca!), but it never got warm again that year, and the grains quickly became speckled with black mold.
Perhaps if I’d paid more attention to it, spent more time fussing and watching it, it wouldn’t have come to that, but there it is. I was disappointed, but not beaten, and told myself I would try again.
By Spring, we had mice living in the sheaves and when we drug the wheat back out into the field, we disturbed the mouse nest and killed a bunch of newborns. It was actually very sad.
And so there the field sat. The ivy grew. The dandelions grew. But mostly the buttercups grew. I still had fantasies of planting a new crop, but I was exhausted, the family problems were erupting and I just didn’t have the time or energy. Everyone once in a while I would buy a book, or read some webpages, but that was about it.
From one of those pages, I did learn that Washington State considers the European Buttercup to be one of the 10 most dangerous invasive, non-native species of plants. They are very fast spreading, nearly impossible to kill and the worst thing to do with them is to till them under, either mechanically or by hand, because every little bit of one can regrow itself into a brand new plant. And guess what I had done...
But finally, I got some time. I had also been re-inspired my my visit to the Ullandhaug Iron Age Farm in Norway (more on that another time) and really wanted to get some grain going.
So I started pulling those weeds. Hard back-breaking work. Grab handfuls of leafy greens and yank until you can see the ground. Then scrape your fingertips along the ground, trying to get under those ivy and buttercup creepers. Then pull -- not with your arms, because your handful has enough resistance that you need your legs. Repeat. Over and over again. I figure it took about 16 hours all told for my 750 sq. feet.
And then I cheated. I got some Roundup and sprayed it. Actually I sprayed it as I went, so now the early portions are very vegetation clear and the recently cleared parts still have green shoots poking out of the ground. I’ll go after them more as the days go on. Put here’s a picture of how things looked yesterday, when I finished the “weeding”.
The today, partially because it sounded like fun, partially because I really want to kill those bastards, I went out and bought one of those propane-powered, weed-killing flamethrowers. It wasn’t hard, though once again there was a lot of using a heavy implement one-handed, but I’m not convinced how well it worked. Plus, I was pretty paranoid about setting the yard or the fence on fire. According to the websites I’ve read, you don’t actually have to burn the weeds to a crisp, you just have to get the 500,000 BTU exhaust over the weed to scald it, and that will kill it. So we’ll see how it looks in a few days. Here’s a pic of the field after the torching.
And I smell like I’ve been roasting marshmallows in a brush fire.
More about my plans and the next steps in a future (yes there will be a future) post.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Planting Day: 9 Weeks in
Or, are those crop circles?
As a general statement, the wheat is growing great. It’s about knee high with wide blades of healthy green leaves.
The problem is that it’s not growing like that everywhere. In the center of the field, growth is stunted, the seeds inconsistently sprouted and some are turning yellow. But only in the center which seems strange to me. I’ve just been doing some research on the interwebs and found this pdf from Kanasas State University. The paper is specifically about winter wheat rather than spring, but the nitrogen deficiency pictures look like my problem, so a trip to the garden store for some fertilizer might be in order.
I think if I do get some, I’ll just try it in one area and see if it helps, that way I’ll know that it is truely the problem and I can try some other ways to increase the nitrogen in the soil (like legumes).
As a general statement, the wheat is growing great. It’s about knee high with wide blades of healthy green leaves.
The problem is that it’s not growing like that everywhere. In the center of the field, growth is stunted, the seeds inconsistently sprouted and some are turning yellow. But only in the center which seems strange to me. I’ve just been doing some research on the interwebs and found this pdf from Kanasas State University. The paper is specifically about winter wheat rather than spring, but the nitrogen deficiency pictures look like my problem, so a trip to the garden store for some fertilizer might be in order.
I think if I do get some, I’ll just try it in one area and see if it helps, that way I’ll know that it is truely the problem and I can try some other ways to increase the nitrogen in the soil (like legumes).
Friday, April 16, 2010
Planting Day -- 2 Weeks later
Two weeks and a lot of days of scattered showers and sunbreaks, I have remarkable results in the wheat fields:
All of that green there is my new wheat, roughly in the rows I made. I had thought that the raking I did to cover the rows had horribly upset them and dragged them around, but obviously not.
In other news, my parents are visiting this week and I told them I'd break open the cheddar cheese I made last October. I'll post a full report of that after we do it.
All of that green there is my new wheat, roughly in the rows I made. I had thought that the raking I did to cover the rows had horribly upset them and dragged them around, but obviously not.
In other news, my parents are visiting this week and I told them I'd break open the cheddar cheese I made last October. I'll post a full report of that after we do it.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Planting Day, March 27th 2010
After I last posted about my double digging being done, I went out to the hardware store and bought some 2x6s and built a little frame around the garden. I figured having a real border would help me know where (and where not) to weed and would keep me from straying into the wheat with the lawn mower. They went in without major issue, although my border lines were not very straight and needed to be trimmed up a bit.
My next free day, Saturday the 27th of March, I got ready for planting. My Hard Red Spring Wheat had arrived from Howe Seeds and I was ready. I started off by leveling the plot a bit. In my double digging there were sections that were higher and lower than others. I’m not sure what caused it exactly, but I used my birthday hoe (thanks Layla!) and got it fairly level. There were quite a few weeds too, but they were easy to pull up with the use of the hoe.
That also loosened up the top layer of the soil and made it easy to make little furrows. I wasn’t sure exactly how to make them, and wound up just using an old piece of scrap 1x4 fencing and dragging it along the soil. I tried to space them about 3-4” apart, but it was pretty hard to control the board. I also marked out for myself where the walkways through the plot would be, so that I could reach everywhere with the hoe at least, while still using as much of the area as possible.
Then I distributed the seed. I really had no idea how heavy to lay it on, so I just did it until it looked good. I tried to get most of the seed in the furrows, but especially where they had strayed apart from each other, I threw the seeds down where ever. I did it by hand, just taking large pinches of the grain and throwing them where I wanted them to go, often parallel with the furrows. By the time I had spread 5 cups, I still had a bit that I hadn’t covered yet, so in the end I used about 6 cups (which worked out to about 3.5 lbs.).
The last step was to rake. I pulled dirt into the furrows and generally spread things out. A lot of the seeds ended up on the surface, which disappointed me. I finished it off with a spray from the hose and called it a day.
I'll post pictures in a few days . . .
My next free day, Saturday the 27th of March, I got ready for planting. My Hard Red Spring Wheat had arrived from Howe Seeds and I was ready. I started off by leveling the plot a bit. In my double digging there were sections that were higher and lower than others. I’m not sure what caused it exactly, but I used my birthday hoe (thanks Layla!) and got it fairly level. There were quite a few weeds too, but they were easy to pull up with the use of the hoe.
That also loosened up the top layer of the soil and made it easy to make little furrows. I wasn’t sure exactly how to make them, and wound up just using an old piece of scrap 1x4 fencing and dragging it along the soil. I tried to space them about 3-4” apart, but it was pretty hard to control the board. I also marked out for myself where the walkways through the plot would be, so that I could reach everywhere with the hoe at least, while still using as much of the area as possible.
Then I distributed the seed. I really had no idea how heavy to lay it on, so I just did it until it looked good. I tried to get most of the seed in the furrows, but especially where they had strayed apart from each other, I threw the seeds down where ever. I did it by hand, just taking large pinches of the grain and throwing them where I wanted them to go, often parallel with the furrows. By the time I had spread 5 cups, I still had a bit that I hadn’t covered yet, so in the end I used about 6 cups (which worked out to about 3.5 lbs.).
The last step was to rake. I pulled dirt into the furrows and generally spread things out. A lot of the seeds ended up on the surface, which disappointed me. I finished it off with a spray from the hose and called it a day.
I'll post pictures in a few days . . .
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Realizations from the reading
So I’ve been reading the two books I mentioned last time. Grow Your Own Grains is not much of a book, it’s a self-described white paper. But it has some very useful information, especially the large table in the back that lists the properties of some 20 or so different grains, including planting times, growing times, how much to plant, yields, and that sort of thing.
One of the interesting things I got out of that was that it suggested planting 6 1/3 Tablespoons of wheat per 100 square feet of garden space. At first consideration, that didn’t seem too bad. Tablespoons are pretty small, right?
Small Scale Grain Raising is a pretty neat book too, although it’s a bit . . . larger scale than I thought it would be. It’s written by a farmer with a great deal of experience doing commercial farming. It gives good advice, but to find it you have to read around all of the instructions about how to use tractors, combines, seed drills and the like. The book is written very casually and has a very unintimidating style (except when talking about big machines). It’s full of anecdotes and asides, as well as recipes for the produce of the various crops.
It too, makes recommendations for broadcasting wheat seeds -- 1-2 bushels per acre. That requires a little math.
Well, that’s in the same neighborhood, 5.5 T to 11 T. But I started thinking: Especially if I err on the high side and plant 11 T per 100 sq. ft, I’m going to plant 750 sq. feet, which would be 82.5 T . . . which is . . . just over 5 cups. (Who would have thought there was this much math in agriculture?)
Hmm. My harvest from last year was only 5.5 oz. Did I even have 5 cups? So I went and measured -- it was only 7 Tablespoons.
This was a huge surprise. So I had planted 115 sq. feet and only gotten 7 T? But, I knew I had harvested much more than I had planted. But I had only harvested as much as I should have planted. That meant that I didn’t plant nearly enough last spring.
As you can read here, I planted 2 little envelopes of spring wheat in 2009. The package said that it was more than enough for that amount of space . . . if you started them inside and transplanted them when they were 5” tall. Oh. At the time I hadn’t thought it would really matter, but obviously it does.
So I didn’t have enough seed. I needed more and I wanted it fast, because I was nearly done with my stupid, @#$% double digging. After trying and failing at two local coops, I found Howe Seeds online and ordered 6 lbs. of Spring Wheat. I paid by Paypal and they shipped within 12 hours.
One of the interesting things I got out of that was that it suggested planting 6 1/3 Tablespoons of wheat per 100 square feet of garden space. At first consideration, that didn’t seem too bad. Tablespoons are pretty small, right?
Small Scale Grain Raising is a pretty neat book too, although it’s a bit . . . larger scale than I thought it would be. It’s written by a farmer with a great deal of experience doing commercial farming. It gives good advice, but to find it you have to read around all of the instructions about how to use tractors, combines, seed drills and the like. The book is written very casually and has a very unintimidating style (except when talking about big machines). It’s full of anecdotes and asides, as well as recipes for the produce of the various crops.
It too, makes recommendations for broadcasting wheat seeds -- 1-2 bushels per acre. That requires a little math.
- There are 43,560 square feet in an acre
- There are 2,383 tablespoons in a bushel (isn’t the internet wonderful?)
- So, 2 bushels is 4766 T over 43,560 sq. ft is 10.95 T per 100 square feet.
Well, that’s in the same neighborhood, 5.5 T to 11 T. But I started thinking: Especially if I err on the high side and plant 11 T per 100 sq. ft, I’m going to plant 750 sq. feet, which would be 82.5 T . . . which is . . . just over 5 cups. (Who would have thought there was this much math in agriculture?)
Hmm. My harvest from last year was only 5.5 oz. Did I even have 5 cups? So I went and measured -- it was only 7 Tablespoons.
This was a huge surprise. So I had planted 115 sq. feet and only gotten 7 T? But, I knew I had harvested much more than I had planted. But I had only harvested as much as I should have planted. That meant that I didn’t plant nearly enough last spring.
As you can read here, I planted 2 little envelopes of spring wheat in 2009. The package said that it was more than enough for that amount of space . . . if you started them inside and transplanted them when they were 5” tall. Oh. At the time I hadn’t thought it would really matter, but obviously it does.
So I didn’t have enough seed. I needed more and I wanted it fast, because I was nearly done with my stupid, @#$% double digging. After trying and failing at two local coops, I found Howe Seeds online and ordered 6 lbs. of Spring Wheat. I paid by Paypal and they shipped within 12 hours.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Seeds!
I ordered the seeds that I plan to plant this spring. I got them from Bountiful Gardens again and they are:
Scarlet Emperor Bean, Runner
They didn’t list any heirloom varieties of beans, so I just had to pick one. This one sounded tasty.
Laxton’s Progress #9 Bush Pea, Shelling
Although they don’t call it an heirloom variety, the description calls it a “standard old variety” which sounded good.
Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea
This one is an heirloom, dating back to 1773.
Belgian White Carrot
Another heirloom variety, this one dating to 1885.
Carrot Mix
These are modern orange carrots, that I decided to get to please my daughter. I’m sure she won’t want to come anywhere close to a ‘mutant’ white carrot, so these are going in the garden for her.
EA Special Strain Celery
We use a lot of celery in our cooking (I absolutely love celery) and this one is here more for our table than for anything period.
Green French Lentil
Roman authors call them “poor man’s meat” and while I was never fed them while growing up, I have come to like them very much. And they are very period.
Cereal Rye
They sell this seed mainly as a cover crop, to help fight back erosion during the winter and then be plowed under in the spring. I’ve been intimidated for most of my life by dark rye breads, but have recently found some good recipes that I really like (I really need to post some here!).
Rye is not the highest yielding of the grains, but it will grow well on poor soil and is tolerant of cold conditions that wheat and other grains cannot stand.
Kamut Wheat, Ancient
A spring-planted wheat with a very old heritage. It is high in protein and has large grains of silvery-blue color.
Early Stone Age Wheat, Ancient
This heirloom variety of wheat is perhaps 12,000 years old. It is spring planted, hard to thresh and very high in protein and other vitamins.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with these last two. I may plant a little and see what happens, or I may hold off another year.
I also bought two books:
Booklet 33: Grow Your Own Grains
Small Scale Grain Raising
I’ll post book reviews shortly.
Scarlet Emperor Bean, Runner
They didn’t list any heirloom varieties of beans, so I just had to pick one. This one sounded tasty.
Laxton’s Progress #9 Bush Pea, Shelling
Although they don’t call it an heirloom variety, the description calls it a “standard old variety” which sounded good.
Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea
This one is an heirloom, dating back to 1773.
Belgian White Carrot
Another heirloom variety, this one dating to 1885.
Carrot Mix
These are modern orange carrots, that I decided to get to please my daughter. I’m sure she won’t want to come anywhere close to a ‘mutant’ white carrot, so these are going in the garden for her.
EA Special Strain Celery
We use a lot of celery in our cooking (I absolutely love celery) and this one is here more for our table than for anything period.
Green French Lentil
Roman authors call them “poor man’s meat” and while I was never fed them while growing up, I have come to like them very much. And they are very period.
Cereal Rye
They sell this seed mainly as a cover crop, to help fight back erosion during the winter and then be plowed under in the spring. I’ve been intimidated for most of my life by dark rye breads, but have recently found some good recipes that I really like (I really need to post some here!).
Rye is not the highest yielding of the grains, but it will grow well on poor soil and is tolerant of cold conditions that wheat and other grains cannot stand.
Kamut Wheat, Ancient
A spring-planted wheat with a very old heritage. It is high in protein and has large grains of silvery-blue color.
Early Stone Age Wheat, Ancient
This heirloom variety of wheat is perhaps 12,000 years old. It is spring planted, hard to thresh and very high in protein and other vitamins.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with these last two. I may plant a little and see what happens, or I may hold off another year.
I also bought two books:
Booklet 33: Grow Your Own Grains
Small Scale Grain Raising
I’ll post book reviews shortly.
Monday, March 22, 2010
I did it!
It took way too long and was a ton of work, but I finally did it.
I overdid it trying to finish up last night. My arms and back ache, but in a good way.
The new garden plot has been entirely double dug. 25 feet by 30 feet. 750 square feet.
Here are a few pictures. The dark patch in the upper right was the part that I actually worked on today. The patch of white near the bottom right is where I had a tarp laid out with the dirt of the first trench, so the grass that was under it has been dying.
I think tomorrow I’ll hit the hardware store and buy some 2x6 boards and put a border around it, to make it easier to mow around if nothing else. Then I need to actually decide what to plant!
It was a good experience that I will never forget, but a rototiller is looking awfully good right now.
I overdid it trying to finish up last night. My arms and back ache, but in a good way.
The new garden plot has been entirely double dug. 25 feet by 30 feet. 750 square feet.
Here are a few pictures. The dark patch in the upper right was the part that I actually worked on today. The patch of white near the bottom right is where I had a tarp laid out with the dirt of the first trench, so the grass that was under it has been dying.
I think tomorrow I’ll hit the hardware store and buy some 2x6 boards and put a border around it, to make it easier to mow around if nothing else. Then I need to actually decide what to plant!
It was a good experience that I will never forget, but a rototiller is looking awfully good right now.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
A Long Answer to a Simple Question
A friend of a friend, Wade, who responded to my last posting in my personal blog rather than here said: “In regards to your wheat post, you had a comment about wooden tools and double digging. Bear in mind that breaking through sod like you're doing was probably fairly uncommon. They were probably working fields that had been worked for generations. Even if they were kept fallow for one year, that's not going to produce the sort of root system that your lawn has. This is my opinion, no basis in historical fact. :)”
Wade is probably right here, depending on which part of the Middle Ages we’re talking about. My recent interests have really shifted away from the High MA to the early, Dark Ages period. Late Antiquity really. 500-900 AD. This is the period where Germanic, Celtic and Roman practices of settlement and cultivation are co-existing and mingling, and with the decline of the Roman administration, these methods are free to adapt to local conditions, rather than be dictated by Roman fiat. It is a time where people are thinking smaller -- no longer are there massive legions to feed or Imperial cities to maintain; smaller regions are figuring out what resources and manufactured goods they need, who will provide them and how they will be transported.
This period lays the foundation for all that comes after. Here, complex systems are created that have to answer these simple questions:
So, with that in mind, there are a few things to consider. First off, many early communities throughout Northern Europe (in Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries) continued a millennia-old way of life based on mobile settlements, which either packed up and moved along every generation or two, or that gradually shifted their boundaries, and moved, amoeba-like, around their territory. This had been common from the Bronze Age through the Roman Age and, although it was going out of style and the movements decreased in frequency, it continued even into Late Antiquity. The point being, that these people would be breaking new ground.
Secondly, even later in the medieval period, as populations increased, many villages expanded, either by adding new fields to their properties, or by creating dependant communities nearby. Often this new arable land was made from land thought inferior and not worth the trouble only a generation or two before. While these people are more likely to have access to plows and iron tools, it is worth keeping in mind.
Also, my experience is probably special, in that my backyard is completely free from tree roots or any thick vegetation. I can only assume that was was removed a century ago as the neighborhood was forming on the, then, outskirts of the city of Everett. I have noticed a thin layer of charcoal just above a layer of clay about a foot under the current level of the soil. There have also been small pieces of charred wood down there. A forested area would certainly require a mattock or axe to deal with roots.
So, yes. While the Medieval farmer might not have needed to hack into virgin soil very often, when he did he would need (or be greatly aided by) metal tools.
Wade is probably right here, depending on which part of the Middle Ages we’re talking about. My recent interests have really shifted away from the High MA to the early, Dark Ages period. Late Antiquity really. 500-900 AD. This is the period where Germanic, Celtic and Roman practices of settlement and cultivation are co-existing and mingling, and with the decline of the Roman administration, these methods are free to adapt to local conditions, rather than be dictated by Roman fiat. It is a time where people are thinking smaller -- no longer are there massive legions to feed or Imperial cities to maintain; smaller regions are figuring out what resources and manufactured goods they need, who will provide them and how they will be transported.
This period lays the foundation for all that comes after. Here, complex systems are created that have to answer these simple questions:
- Who are we?
- What do we need to survive?
- How do we make what we need? If we can’t make it, how do we get it?
- What do we want in addition to what we need (and how do we make/get it)?
- How do we all work together to make that happen?
So, with that in mind, there are a few things to consider. First off, many early communities throughout Northern Europe (in Denmark, Germany and the Low Countries) continued a millennia-old way of life based on mobile settlements, which either packed up and moved along every generation or two, or that gradually shifted their boundaries, and moved, amoeba-like, around their territory. This had been common from the Bronze Age through the Roman Age and, although it was going out of style and the movements decreased in frequency, it continued even into Late Antiquity. The point being, that these people would be breaking new ground.
Secondly, even later in the medieval period, as populations increased, many villages expanded, either by adding new fields to their properties, or by creating dependant communities nearby. Often this new arable land was made from land thought inferior and not worth the trouble only a generation or two before. While these people are more likely to have access to plows and iron tools, it is worth keeping in mind.
Also, my experience is probably special, in that my backyard is completely free from tree roots or any thick vegetation. I can only assume that was was removed a century ago as the neighborhood was forming on the, then, outskirts of the city of Everett. I have noticed a thin layer of charcoal just above a layer of clay about a foot under the current level of the soil. There have also been small pieces of charred wood down there. A forested area would certainly require a mattock or axe to deal with roots.
So, yes. While the Medieval farmer might not have needed to hack into virgin soil very often, when he did he would need (or be greatly aided by) metal tools.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Spadeing the yard
So.
The double digging continues apace. At a slow pace. I’d really wanted to finish by the end of February, but here it is and I’m only about 80% done. Between weather and increased job responsibilities, I just haven’t had the time. (And yes, I know that in days of old, rainy days were thought to be best for working in a garden, but I’m a soft modern American, and while I did dig in the drizzle, I wasn’t going to during a full-on rain.)
While out there digging, I have had the opportunity to connect with my neighbor, something I never did while I was a sit-in-front-of-the-computer homebody. He is a Ukranian immigrant, and raises homing pigeons, which is pretty neat. He keeps trying to get me to grow tomatoes and has all sorts of advice on how to do it.
Anyway, one day while I was out there, Alex asked me if I’d like him to sharpen my shovel. Sharpen a shovel? The idea blew my mind. But it makes sense -- less resistance makes for an easier thrust through the dense soil. So I asked him to do it, mostly just to see if I could feel the difference. And boy, quite a bit of difference. It is much easier to make the initial thrust down to cut the sod, but I feel the improvement most when I undercut the sod, jamming the entire shovel horizontally through the roots of lawn.
After I thanked Alex, he also suggested spraying the shovel blade with WD-40 (definitely not a medieval technique, but it did arouse my curiosity), which I tried once but it didn’t seem to make any difference. One morning I went out to dig, only to find the yard covered in frost. It was not the first time that has happened, and it doesn’t have much of an effect on the digging (the sod cuttings seem to stay in one piece a little better). But this time, the caked on dirt from my last session was frozen onto the shovel, giving me maximum resistance and making the digging nearly impossible. The frozen dirt did not want to scrape off either, until I resorted to hosing it off.
But things are moving ahead. I ordered seeds this week, and will post my planting plan later in the week.
The double digging continues apace. At a slow pace. I’d really wanted to finish by the end of February, but here it is and I’m only about 80% done. Between weather and increased job responsibilities, I just haven’t had the time. (And yes, I know that in days of old, rainy days were thought to be best for working in a garden, but I’m a soft modern American, and while I did dig in the drizzle, I wasn’t going to during a full-on rain.)
While out there digging, I have had the opportunity to connect with my neighbor, something I never did while I was a sit-in-front-of-the-computer homebody. He is a Ukranian immigrant, and raises homing pigeons, which is pretty neat. He keeps trying to get me to grow tomatoes and has all sorts of advice on how to do it.
Anyway, one day while I was out there, Alex asked me if I’d like him to sharpen my shovel. Sharpen a shovel? The idea blew my mind. But it makes sense -- less resistance makes for an easier thrust through the dense soil. So I asked him to do it, mostly just to see if I could feel the difference. And boy, quite a bit of difference. It is much easier to make the initial thrust down to cut the sod, but I feel the improvement most when I undercut the sod, jamming the entire shovel horizontally through the roots of lawn.
After I thanked Alex, he also suggested spraying the shovel blade with WD-40 (definitely not a medieval technique, but it did arouse my curiosity), which I tried once but it didn’t seem to make any difference. One morning I went out to dig, only to find the yard covered in frost. It was not the first time that has happened, and it doesn’t have much of an effect on the digging (the sod cuttings seem to stay in one piece a little better). But this time, the caked on dirt from my last session was frozen onto the shovel, giving me maximum resistance and making the digging nearly impossible. The frozen dirt did not want to scrape off either, until I resorted to hosing it off.
But things are moving ahead. I ordered seeds this week, and will post my planting plan later in the week.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Double Digging
When I’m done writing this post, I’ll be going out to “toil in the fields,” the phrase we throw around the house to mean that I’m going to work in the garden.
Last year I planted a small plot, about 115 square feet of red spring wheat. This year, using the fruits of that field, I’m going to plant a much larger plot of about 600 square feet.
The 'before' picture
Last year, I prepared that plot in the spring by mowing the grass short, covering the area with newspaper, spreading manure and topsoil over the paper and planting onto that. That technique was neither historical nor did it work particularly well. The weeds were able to push through the newspaper, the wheat roots were unable to penetrate the newspaper and firmly anchor themselves and a nearby tree seemed to create a shadow over about a third of the plot that little grew in.
So I wanted to try something different. What I wanted to do was to plow, but that was unrealistic because of the small area that I do have and the costs associated. So, I decided to do the next best thing: Double Dig.
What is double digging? Essentially, you’re turning the soil by hand. You dig a trench and set that earth aside. Then you dig another trench the same size, adjacent to the first, filling the first trench with the dirt. You keep doing that over the entire plot until you’re left with just a trench, and then you fill that hole with the dirt you set aside from the very first trench.
The initial trench
It does several things. First it turns the soil. The sod from the top of each fresh trench goes in the bottom of the trench (and I’ve been being very careful to deposit the sod upside down) and is then covered by 8-10 inches of dirt. It loosens the soil and de-compacts it, making it more suitable for planting. And thirdly, it plows under the grass, allowing those nutrients to return to the soil.
The second trench and the filled first trench
Is it historical? I don’t know. Nothing I have read so far has mentioned it, but I have yet to read anything that specifically discusses Medieval or Iron Age agricultural techniques. I suppose that is a huge oversight on my part and I should really do that before next year. But, there is nothing about the technique that couldn’t have been done, since all it requires is a shovel and a strong back. And a lot of time.
It is very slow though, at least for my city-living, unathletic, desk-job of a physique. It tales about an hour to do two trenches, each 18” wide and 15 feet long. The first day I put in four hours straight of work and it left my arms and back aching for several days after. Since then, in between bouts of bad weather and the holidays, I’ve been putting in an hour here or there and today I should get to the halfway point.
Three trenches
My experiences? It’s hard work, but I enjoy it. Maybe it’s the novel aspect of it, but I’d much rather be digging than running on the treadmill. It does strain my 40-year old back, which is probably good for it. I do wonder how historical it might be in this one area: I have read in several places that wooden tools were the norm for the Early Middle Ages. Even if those wooden shovels were iron shod, I am a little dubious that they could withstand the abuse that I throw at my steel one. Stomping on it to cut through the sod, jamming it into the dirt, prying/lifting the heavy, damp soil . . . The wooden handle has survived so far, so maybe, but I don’t know. It does at least make me wonder.
Near the end of that first, four-hour day. Six or seven trenches.
OK, so off to work. But before I go, here’s two pictures of me, in my costume, toiling in the fields.
Last year I planted a small plot, about 115 square feet of red spring wheat. This year, using the fruits of that field, I’m going to plant a much larger plot of about 600 square feet.
The 'before' pictureLast year, I prepared that plot in the spring by mowing the grass short, covering the area with newspaper, spreading manure and topsoil over the paper and planting onto that. That technique was neither historical nor did it work particularly well. The weeds were able to push through the newspaper, the wheat roots were unable to penetrate the newspaper and firmly anchor themselves and a nearby tree seemed to create a shadow over about a third of the plot that little grew in.
So I wanted to try something different. What I wanted to do was to plow, but that was unrealistic because of the small area that I do have and the costs associated. So, I decided to do the next best thing: Double Dig.
What is double digging? Essentially, you’re turning the soil by hand. You dig a trench and set that earth aside. Then you dig another trench the same size, adjacent to the first, filling the first trench with the dirt. You keep doing that over the entire plot until you’re left with just a trench, and then you fill that hole with the dirt you set aside from the very first trench.
The initial trenchIt does several things. First it turns the soil. The sod from the top of each fresh trench goes in the bottom of the trench (and I’ve been being very careful to deposit the sod upside down) and is then covered by 8-10 inches of dirt. It loosens the soil and de-compacts it, making it more suitable for planting. And thirdly, it plows under the grass, allowing those nutrients to return to the soil.
The second trench and the filled first trenchIs it historical? I don’t know. Nothing I have read so far has mentioned it, but I have yet to read anything that specifically discusses Medieval or Iron Age agricultural techniques. I suppose that is a huge oversight on my part and I should really do that before next year. But, there is nothing about the technique that couldn’t have been done, since all it requires is a shovel and a strong back. And a lot of time.
It is very slow though, at least for my city-living, unathletic, desk-job of a physique. It tales about an hour to do two trenches, each 18” wide and 15 feet long. The first day I put in four hours straight of work and it left my arms and back aching for several days after. Since then, in between bouts of bad weather and the holidays, I’ve been putting in an hour here or there and today I should get to the halfway point.
Three trenchesMy experiences? It’s hard work, but I enjoy it. Maybe it’s the novel aspect of it, but I’d much rather be digging than running on the treadmill. It does strain my 40-year old back, which is probably good for it. I do wonder how historical it might be in this one area: I have read in several places that wooden tools were the norm for the Early Middle Ages. Even if those wooden shovels were iron shod, I am a little dubious that they could withstand the abuse that I throw at my steel one. Stomping on it to cut through the sod, jamming it into the dirt, prying/lifting the heavy, damp soil . . . The wooden handle has survived so far, so maybe, but I don’t know. It does at least make me wonder.
Near the end of that first, four-hour day. Six or seven trenches.OK, so off to work. But before I go, here’s two pictures of me, in my costume, toiling in the fields.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
A New Year
So here it is, 2010. My biggest regret for 2009 is that I let this blog slide into no-use in the last quarter of the year. I will try to do better this year.
So a quick little look back and look forward. I’ll come back to each point eventually, until I’m all the way caught up.
I bottled the batch of mead I was making on Sept. 1st. Tasting at the time made it out to be very sweet and not overly alcoholic. I also started a batch of Blackberry wine (with the donation of blackberries from my neighbor). I know they’re not medieval (Blackberries are a New World plant), but I’ll continue to mention it here because it’s related, at least tangentially, to the other wines.
I went to a meeting/seminar held at the local community garden about planting winter vegetables. They handed out fava bean and kale starters which I planted. The kale didn’t survive the transplanting, and the beans were never able to produce beans before we had an early frost and they immediately turned black and died.
My birthday, a few days off from Michelmas, was wonderful and I was surrounded by the best of friends. They gave me a medieval send off, complete with gifts of gardening implements, a cheese-making kit and and a pair of linen trousers and leg wraps.
[Hmmm. The link for the winningas doesn't seem to work anymore. Maybe they've stopped carrying them? Or maybe it will work again whne they re-stock?]
Decked out in my Anglo-Saxon costume, complete except for shoes and gloves, I started getting the backyard ready for the planting of winter wheat. The plan was to double dig (that subject gets its own post) about 600 sq. feet of the backyard. I got maybe 1/6th of it done before exhausting. After that, rain and life hit very hard and I still haven’t finished (but I’ll go out a bit and work on it more today if the weather holds). So no winter wheat this year. Spring wheat again!
[Pictures will come later. I'm such a tease....]
I tried making cheese twice, with difficulties both times, but I do right now have a very ugly-looking blob a wax wrapped around some proto-cheese sitting in my kitchen. Hopefully it will turn out. I did manage to make some ricotta as well, and used some to make Libum with. I came out very good, a little more sour than with the store-bought cheese.
The plan for 2010 is to make more cheese, more wine/mead/beer, and do a lot more gardening. I will have sextuple the area of wheat planted and last year’s field I want to plant with beans. I’ll try some other veggies as well, but I’ll have to find a way to use them in food that I’ll actually eat. A garden plan will certainly be forthcoming.
So a quick little look back and look forward. I’ll come back to each point eventually, until I’m all the way caught up.
I bottled the batch of mead I was making on Sept. 1st. Tasting at the time made it out to be very sweet and not overly alcoholic. I also started a batch of Blackberry wine (with the donation of blackberries from my neighbor). I know they’re not medieval (Blackberries are a New World plant), but I’ll continue to mention it here because it’s related, at least tangentially, to the other wines.
I went to a meeting/seminar held at the local community garden about planting winter vegetables. They handed out fava bean and kale starters which I planted. The kale didn’t survive the transplanting, and the beans were never able to produce beans before we had an early frost and they immediately turned black and died.
My birthday, a few days off from Michelmas, was wonderful and I was surrounded by the best of friends. They gave me a medieval send off, complete with gifts of gardening implements, a cheese-making kit and and a pair of linen trousers and leg wraps.
[Hmmm. The link for the winningas doesn't seem to work anymore. Maybe they've stopped carrying them? Or maybe it will work again whne they re-stock?]
Decked out in my Anglo-Saxon costume, complete except for shoes and gloves, I started getting the backyard ready for the planting of winter wheat. The plan was to double dig (that subject gets its own post) about 600 sq. feet of the backyard. I got maybe 1/6th of it done before exhausting. After that, rain and life hit very hard and I still haven’t finished (but I’ll go out a bit and work on it more today if the weather holds). So no winter wheat this year. Spring wheat again!
[Pictures will come later. I'm such a tease....]
I tried making cheese twice, with difficulties both times, but I do right now have a very ugly-looking blob a wax wrapped around some proto-cheese sitting in my kitchen. Hopefully it will turn out. I did manage to make some ricotta as well, and used some to make Libum with. I came out very good, a little more sour than with the store-bought cheese.
The plan for 2010 is to make more cheese, more wine/mead/beer, and do a lot more gardening. I will have sextuple the area of wheat planted and last year’s field I want to plant with beans. I’ll try some other veggies as well, but I’ll have to find a way to use them in food that I’ll actually eat. A garden plan will certainly be forthcoming.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Catching Up and Getting Things Off My Chest
It’s been nearly a month since I’ve posted, mostly because I’ve been really busy, but also because I’ve been annoyed at myself for writing my last post. I could go back and change/delete the offending bits, but that strikes me as very ‘trollish’ (the internet kind, not the live under bridges kind). So in the interest of full-disclosure . . .
It’s really just that penultimate sentence, “Neolithic Farming figures that yields of 300 kg/hectare (2.47 acres) were well within reason for pre-historic Europe.” Who cares what Neolithic Farming says about yields? Those are Neolithic, not medieval. They are using techniques not common in the middle ages in Europe (intensive agriculture of small plots, using a variety of crops, entirely by hand; at least that’s the thesis of the book).
Now admittedly, I had Neolithic Farming on my brain since I had just read it, and the post was written pretty quickly one evening, but still. I want to hold myself to a higher standard.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program . . .
It’s really just that penultimate sentence, “Neolithic Farming figures that yields of 300 kg/hectare (2.47 acres) were well within reason for pre-historic Europe.” Who cares what Neolithic Farming says about yields? Those are Neolithic, not medieval. They are using techniques not common in the middle ages in Europe (intensive agriculture of small plots, using a variety of crops, entirely by hand; at least that’s the thesis of the book).
Now admittedly, I had Neolithic Farming on my brain since I had just read it, and the post was written pretty quickly one evening, but still. I want to hold myself to a higher standard.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program . . .
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Planting Day - Supplemental
I harvested what is probably the last of the red, summer wheat today. There is still a little bit of green wheat out there, but I’m expecting the birds to eat it before its mature enough to harvest. We’ll see.
The total is 4.5 ounces of wheat out of 115 sq. feet of garden. So if we follow the math out we get:
1 pound = 16 oz. which would need a garden 3.55 times larger = 409 sq. feet
1 acre = 43,560 sq. feet which would produce 106.5 lbs
These number might be quite a bit off, since we’re dealing with quite a small sample and projecting those numbers very big.
According to Neolithic Farming in Central Europe: An Archaeobotanical Study of Crop Husbandry Practices
a person needs about 660 lbs. (300 kg) of wheat/year or 3300 lbs. (150 kg) for a family of five. That would be 6.2 acres / person or 31 acres for the family.
Which says to me that my yield was pretty low, which is hardly surprising considering my lack of skill, the patch of the garden (maybe one-fifth of it) that didn’t grow anything, probably because it was under the tree, and the poor weather for the season.
Neolithic Farming figures that yields of 300 kg/hectare (2.47 acres) were well within reason for pre-historic Europe.
All in all I’m very pleased and ready to try again and see if I can do better.
The total is 4.5 ounces of wheat out of 115 sq. feet of garden. So if we follow the math out we get:
1 pound = 16 oz. which would need a garden 3.55 times larger = 409 sq. feet
1 acre = 43,560 sq. feet which would produce 106.5 lbs
These number might be quite a bit off, since we’re dealing with quite a small sample and projecting those numbers very big.
According to Neolithic Farming in Central Europe: An Archaeobotanical Study of Crop Husbandry Practices
a person needs about 660 lbs. (300 kg) of wheat/year or 3300 lbs. (150 kg) for a family of five. That would be 6.2 acres / person or 31 acres for the family.Which says to me that my yield was pretty low, which is hardly surprising considering my lack of skill, the patch of the garden (maybe one-fifth of it) that didn’t grow anything, probably because it was under the tree, and the poor weather for the season.
Neolithic Farming figures that yields of 300 kg/hectare (2.47 acres) were well within reason for pre-historic Europe.
All in all I’m very pleased and ready to try again and see if I can do better.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Meadmaking Update - 10 weeks in
The short update is that it’s chugging along slowly but surely. It’s been ten weeks and I’ve racked it twice. Racking is when you transfer the proto-mead from one container to another, leaving behind the dead yeast and other residue. It has continued to bubble steadily, which says that the little yeasts are still doing their thing.
The specific gravity is 1.100, which means it hasn’t changed much. It tastes very good; still quite sweet (even a little too sweet for me) and not very strong. So I’ll let it keep going. I’ll post updates as they develop.
As a non-medieval aside, I’m also making Apricot Wine, which was too bland, so I added apricot juice to it as I bottled it, which then just settled out in the bottom of each bottle. We’ll have to see how that turns out. And I’m about to try making Blackberry Wine, as my neighbor kindly offered the bounty of his bushes for a share of the wine.
The specific gravity is 1.100, which means it hasn’t changed much. It tastes very good; still quite sweet (even a little too sweet for me) and not very strong. So I’ll let it keep going. I’ll post updates as they develop.
As a non-medieval aside, I’m also making Apricot Wine, which was too bland, so I added apricot juice to it as I bottled it, which then just settled out in the bottom of each bottle. We’ll have to see how that turns out. And I’m about to try making Blackberry Wine, as my neighbor kindly offered the bounty of his bushes for a share of the wine.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
New Book - Neolithic Farming
I’ve had the opportunity to look at and flip through Neolithic Farming in Central Europe: An Archaeobotanical Study of Crop Husbandry Practices by Amy Bogaard.
This looks to be a fabulous book full of all sorts of the in-depth, technical information that I have been looking for. It references numerous European experimental farms and the results that they have had using a variety of proposed medieval, ancient and pre-historical techniques. It talks about yields, crops types and methods.
This is definitely one that is going to be read and re-read.
by Amy Bogaard.This looks to be a fabulous book full of all sorts of the in-depth, technical information that I have been looking for. It references numerous European experimental farms and the results that they have had using a variety of proposed medieval, ancient and pre-historical techniques. It talks about yields, crops types and methods.
This is definitely one that is going to be read and re-read.
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