Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

My motorcycle helmet gets used more to protect from wild animals than for riding these days (though I’ve picked up a nice Yamaha 400 that should be on the road soon!).

Two weeks ago we had a rabid bat doing his rabid bat thing - coming out into the light and viciously hissing and snapping at everything and nothing, not really flying much but getting around a bit. I put on my helmet and gauntlets and dispatched him with an arrow through the head. Later I read that you should always preserve the brain intact for rabies testing. Oops - but I couldn’t leave him around our goats, not to mention us.

Just a few minutes ago I heard Teri shouting to Daks that “it’s OK”…he was out on his line, but wrapped around a big fir tree and pretty much stuck in one place, totally freaking out. Assuming that he was just upset at being confined, I went to free him. The yellowjackets got me in the head and face, and I retreated quickly, but hadn’t gotten the leash off Daks. I ran and put on my motorcycle helmet and gauntlets and freed the dog.

We brought him in, but he was still freaking out, and we found that there were yellowjackets in his fur, apparently still stinging away. We removed about five of them, and I swatted a few more flying ones. Then he found the “secret passageway” from the mud room to the space under the house, and wouldn’t come out. Once again I donned protective gear (cornered, terrified dog in pain = chomp) and crawled under the house. I managed to lure him out, and now he’s in his crate, very agitated and biting at his butt.

To top it off, one of the little #$%ers was still on the back of my head, tangled in my hair and stinging away. He got me a few times in the same spot before I realized it and whacked him, and there’s a big, aching lump growing there.

And oh, yeah - our refrigerator seems to have died this morning, and I’m tethered to the computer for work so I can’t go get a new one. The van’s little frig is saving our dairy products.

I think I’ve about worked up an appetite for breakfast now.

We’re still adjusting to the rhythms of sowing and harvesting. Food comes in bunches, from our garden and our CSA, and sometimes we just don’t get around to canning/drying/freezing/eating it in time.

This tomato got soft in our hanging basket, and was almost on its way to the compost bin when we noticed something funny…seeds sprouting right through the skin! No waiting till next year for this one:

Impressed by its determination, we decided to stick it in a pot and see what happens. I don’t know if a tomato plant can really survive in the see-saw climate of a rickety old cottage with woodstove heat, but we’ll see…who knows? We haven’t thinned the seedlings; it’s become a bit of a natural selection experiment:

I thought I blew it with the potatoes. Everyone warned not to use supermarket ones as seed, and I ignored them. When the plants suddenly started dying a month ago after an unseasonal 3 days of cool, rainy weather, I figured I’d learned my lesson.

Yesterday, I thought I’d better deal with the mess. I raked aside the mounded straw, too deep and wet with hot compost action on the bottom, and the spading fork touched something soft. I bent down and dug with my hands; it was a large, mushy, foul-smelling potato. I made plans to drag all the straw away to the burn pile so as not to spread the fungal blight I was sure had taken our tubers.

Then I spied a tiny but healthy-looking spud peeking up at me. No more than 1/2″ long, but perfectly shaped. I put it in my pocket as a memento to show Teri later, and kept digging.

When I had two one-gallon buckets almost full, I decided to leave the rest there, so Teri could enjoy uncovering a few. It was so unexpected; I’d been sad about the sudden departure of those formerly vigorous plants.

Tonight, we had fried potatoes (ours!) with onion (Wintergreen Farm, about five minutes down the road):

Also had a salad - romaine from Wintergreen with our own heirloom tomatoes and the one very-non-local ingredient: Danish blue cheese

…and for dessert, our very own homegrown watermelon, another first for us:

It wasn’t by far our most homegrown meal, but the potatoes were a big deal…they can be a really significant part of our diet for fairly little work, and like almost everything we’ve grown here they tasted incomparably better than those things at the supermarket.

The more we eat this way, and the more I learn about food production, the more it seems that most other human foolishness pales in comparison to the way we’ve transformed our food into poisonous, flavorless garbage that leaves a wasteland behind after harvest.

My food’s made of goat poop and old straw (well composted, of course) and it’s way better than anything I paid $30 a plate for in NYC.

I know you come here for the pretty photos, so rest assured there is a big backlog of beautiful plants, animals, recipes, and adventures waiting to be resized and color-corrected, and they will be posted soon.

Apart from working 40+ hours/week at the day job, I’ve just been really busy. Lots of that “busy” is stuff that would be perfect for the blog, but I just haven’t had time to document it in detail.

We’ve been harvesting/canning/fermenting/drying: Oregon Grape, apples, pears, blackberries, zucchini, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, asian pear, dill, kale, and a bunch of other stuff. Planted arugula and carrots for us, and a whole bunch of perennial rye grass for goats. Started blackberry, Oregon Grape, and blueberry wine, and the new batch of chocolate stout is ready. Got a great deal on oak parquet flooring for the kitchen, and the loft area is just a few days of labor from becoming our winter bedroom. A few cords of wood are waiting in a pile for me to find a deal on a used chainsaw, which needs to happen soon if we’re to be warm this winter.

I learned to “process” chickens from live bird to frozen grocery item. I wondered if it would bother me, taking a life with my own hands, but although my reverence for life has grown throughout the years - all life; we escort even the hideous-looking earwigs and vicious wasps outside to continue their lives - it felt nothing but right. I feel like I have much more of a right to eat chicken than I did when it came from a supermarket all prepared and shrink-wrapped.

Next month I’ll be going on my first wild turkey hunt, which I’m very much looking forward to, and somehow that doesn’t clash with the fact that our property is a no-gunfire-except-in-case-of-emergency refuge where a momma turkey and her five babies visit several times a day to eat seed fallen from our bird feeders and the deer who ravage our raspberry plants and chives will be fenced out rather than shot. As I write this sitting at our outside table, the turkeys are pecking and cooing not more than five feet away from me.

Coyote have been howling their eerie chorus in the hills at night, and the days, which were fifteen-plus hours long just a short time ago, are noticeably shorter. Part of me reflexively tenses at the thought of winter’s approach, until I look back at how green things are in the rainy season and remember that December and January are often perfect for BBQs in Western Oregon.

The man who considered CBGBs a holy place of pilgrimage and mourned the “cleanup” of Times Square is now reluctant to visit “the city” (Eugene, a small but vibrant town of 138,000 about half an hour away) more than once a week. If I’d known how much country life would agree with me, I would probably have left years ago - but then I might not have met Teri, who is my glowing inspiration and the anchor of my life.

What a long strange trip it continues to be!

And I promise you lots of pretty photos very very soon.

It’s hard to believe that Ceili has been gone for over half a year. We had so many adventures together and she can never be replaced, but having a place like this without a dog just seems wrong.

I’ve been researching the various breeds that are good with livestock. Heelers (Australian cattle dogs) are popular with ranchers around here, but it sounded like their need for exercise and structured activity might be a bit much for our little homestead, so I started thinking I’d like a mix of heeler and a more common “housepet” breed. That idea solidified into a plan on Sunday, and a quick peek at Craigslist brought up an ad for an 11 month old, obedience trained heeler/German shepherd mix named “Daks” (Australian slang for underwear). I sent off a quick email.

Around 6pm last night I was out defending my country from old beer cans practicing my marksmanship in a gravel pit 10 unpaved miles away and the cellphone rang. It was Teri, calling to tell me that Daks was on his way over to meet us. I rushed back down the logging roads and did my best to make myself presentable, and long story short, Daks ended up staying with us.

We’re already falling in love with this sweet, energetic little mutt. He loves running around our fields chasing thrown apples, and is absolutely crazy about the goats (they’ve only met through the fence so far; introducing them will be a long process). He’s still a bit puppyish, but obeys the main voice commands pretty well, and made it through his first night without any inappropriate chewing or puddles =)

Teri shot a few pictures this morning. Here’s Daks waiting for me to throw an apple that fell off the tree:

Here he is hoping to catch the apple (hasn’t happened yet):

And here he is being VERY excited about the goats: