Socialization across species? A brief encounter

The bee flew past my head. I heard it go by, recognized the honey bee sound and for a brief part of a second, thought that I saw it in the air flying. It was definitely heading north, up the hill and away from me and our farm. it was May, 2011 and the day was warming up. I so wanted to fly with that bee right then and even briefly thought about flapping my arms, just in case the outcome was different now that I was in my 60's. It had been a while since I had tried flying by flapping my arms and you never really know what is going to change next.
As you probably guessed, I did not fly. In fact, I totally lost track of the bee except within my mind. I stood and felt frustrated. It was so hard to understand why I couldn't cross the border between my species and the bees. I wanted to, I had a reason, there was time; surely this problem was not so hard. I actually wanted to be the bee's friend and enjoy their enjoyments, anguish with them in their frustrations and marvel at their abilities, loves and beauty. I wanted a bee friend and I wanted to be a friend to that bee. If you see a lonely bee and they appear to welcome human companions, send him our way please.
It was not hard to imagine the flight the bee was on. They must have passed right through the hazelnut orchard to the north of us, without even pausing. This orchard is barren of flowers, food, nectar, pollens and other bees enticements in May. The ground had been mowed clear of all life, the hazelnut blooms had dried up in March and the hazelnut fruit was just beginning to wake up and form into a seed. There was nothing here for a bee that I could think of, except maybe some place to land and take a break. Bees take breaks, right?
Perhaps the bee paused among the Dome's 200 year old Oregon white oaks, just a little north of the orchard. There were plenty of flowers that would welcome a bee under these giants. The blackberries were not blooming yet but there were usually some wild flowers there in the spring. Yea, I could see my bee buddy stopping in there to see what was happening.
Or perhaps the bee was on a long distance run to the Bonnet's blueberry patches. There were many acres of blueberries packed together and they were in full bloom. There was always room for another bee. Yes, I bet that was where my new bee buddy and pal was going. He was flying pretty darn fast for going a short distance. I wonder how long before the bee returns to his friends.
Oh, there goes another one.

Phone lost, damn it; wait, we have "find my iphone". Phone found

Recently I was in a very uncomfortable situation.  You can skip down a few paragraphs to read about how the phone was found or read on for a short story on hole digging and how it related to phone finding.

I left the house around 8am on a February, 2011 morning in the pouring rain and snow mix, temperature about 33 degrees, wind blowing, miserable, etc.  It appeared I had every piece of rain and cold weather gear I owned in my pickup, based on the pile of clothes, boots, coats and gloves taking up the double cab pickup.  My job was to either run a backhoe, or help the backhoe operator, and dig 25 holes at the Polk County Fairgrounds for some donated large trees.  The backhoe was being provided at no cost by Rickreall Farm Supply.  Thank you, Farm Supply people!

Once we found the tractor and learned how to operate it, Joe Bourson arrived and volunteered to drive the 1/4 mile to the fairgrounds and dig the first hole.  He had owned a backhoe and was my volunteer expert.  Once we got to the fairgrounds, I added a layer of clothes and boots and gloves and proceded to point and get wet.  Joe's first hole was awesome, my first hole was a catastrophe and took forever and we almost lost Joe due to my widely swinging boom.  He decided the quickest way to get this job done was for him to dig the holes and me to do anything else that needed doing.

Away we went, like a herd of turtles. Turns out this type of tractor was not designed for digging, moving and digging more.  Each time we finished a hole, Joe had to get out of the seat, lift it up, spin it around and then sit back down, drive forward, get off, lift up the seat, spin it around, climb back up and start digging again.  Sigh.  My insulated coveralls, two pairs of gloves, jeans, undershirt, flannel shirt, hooded sweat shirt, rain hat and rain jacket kept me tolerable but I just got wetter as the morning rolled on.  Somewhere around 10am, Joe had to change jackets (he was mainly under a canopy of sorts) and I dug another hole.  Since I had been watching his every move, I didn't do so bad this time but nowhere near as good as Joe.  Perhaps I could be a backhoe operator when I grow up?  Joe got back in the seat and began to dig another hole.  We 'sped' through the remaining holes and then returned to our pickups.

It was 11am when we ran out of holes to dig and we agreed I would drive the backhoe tractor back to the dealer.  Joe ferried me to leave my pickup at the dealers and we said goodbye as he dropped me by the tractor, back at the fairgrounds.  Thanks Joe, for all the volunteer help!

It was on the trip back to the fairgrounds that I reached for my phone to tell Karen we were done.  Ooops, no phone.  Joe called my number from his phone, thinking it could well be stuck between the many layers of clothing I was wearing.  It could be in one of my boots and I might not have sensed it, due to the numbness of my body.  No sounds came.  I then called Karen on Joe's phone to tell her my phone was lost, but no answer.  Shoot!  I got on the tractor and drove it back to the dealer, fretting about my lost iphone and how this was not a good time to loose it (is it ever?) and how was I ever going to find it amongst the holes, piles of dirt, snow, deep puddles and mud.   The 25 holes were 23 feet apart and spanned the length of the fairgrounds.  A lot of space to cover looking for a 2x4" black thing.  I was so upset by the lost phone, I failed to ask about washing the backhoe and the dealer was kind enough not to mention it.  Sorry Rickreall Farm Supply!  And yes, the weather had not stopped raining or snowing since before 8am.

Returning home, I remembered we had registered this phone with Apple's MobileMe services and I could use Karen's phone to locate it through the GPS signal.  Yea, perhaps a solution was at hand!  Now to wait for Karen, change my clothes and hope for feeling to return to my outer limbs.  Karen returned home before noon and we turned on the 'find my iphone' service and in a few minutes, there my phone was, beaconing from the fairgrounds.  It looked to be about 30 feet from where I had parked the pickup and possibly could be visible from the surface, based on where it appeared to be.  Once again, Yea!

We headed back the five miles to the fairgrounds with her phone still getting the signal.  We parked a little ways from where the signal was emanating, not wanting to run over the poor thing.   The rain had stopped and the sun was peaking through the flying clouds.   We walked towards where the signal was coming from and Karen reached down and picked up my phone.  I must have walked by it a dozen times.  It was not dry by any means (nothing was that day) but it was still working and still in its case and I still had my $200.00 in my pocket that would have been used to buy the replacement phone.  The wonderful 'find my iphone' service is free now.  Life was great again and as we drove home through the sunshine and the melting snow and the ditches running full of runoff, we felt strongly that something had just happened that did not seem even possible.

So next time you find yourself at the fairgrounds in Polk County Oregon, wander over to the south boundary where the tractor pulls and lawn tractor races are held. Gaze upon the 25 Scanlon Maples lining the south boundary and know that these were donated trees, all labor was volunteer to get them in the ground and there might have been an iphone buried amongst them.

Putting aside Food in 2010 (pt 1 of 2)

It has been a few years since we started, oh say maybe 35,  but sometimes it feels like we are still beginning to understand how to put food by and how to have enough fresh food for year around meals from the garden.  So this post is to remind us what we did in 2010.

[Note: if you are viewing this on Facebook, please consider scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking "View Original Post" - it looks better]

We have a freezer, a canning pot, a pressure canner, canning tools, an apple peeler/corer/slicer, knives, chopping blocks, a mandolin slicer, a pressure cooker, jars of various sizes including wide-mouth quart jars and sealing lids, a kitchen stove, a barbecue, a dehydrator, a pantry, dry, dark, cool drawers, a compost pile, sealable plastic sacks and a vacuum packaging device.  All of these things have been used this summer to put food away.  The mention of the barbecue reminds me of the amusing sign we found in a Gold Beach motel patio.

We don't have an outdoor kitchen (yet), we still need more understanding about pressure canners and one day we will have a root cellar.   We do have lots of food growing around us and find it has become a daily opportunity to either plant, tend, harvest or put food by.  So what foods have been put away this summer and in what form?  Time to make a list, perhaps in no particular order but organized by food family.

•    Fruit and Berries:

1. Strawberries were made into jam that we had leftover from last year in the freezer.  They were ready for the last steps in the jam making process.  The sack of frozen strawberries, already partially processed, were like found gold, they were so valuable.
2. Raspberries were made into jam from the bushes out back.  We ate most of the berries fresh or in our summer breakfasts, so only a tiny amount got into jam this year.
3. Blueberries were found in the neighborhood, picked, washed, sorted and frozen on trays and then placed in quart bags in the freezer.  They are so good for breakfast and snacks and we put up 40# but I don't know if they will last!  Blueberries were also dried in the food dehydrator and seemed to have lost their flavor.  Freezing is better for us this year.
4. Peaches were purchased from a neighbor and once fully ripened, pits came out, skins off and cut into quarters to be canned in the pressure canner without the pressure gauge.  These 21 quarts will be appreciated over the next 11 months.
5. Pears were picked from our tree and individually wrapped in paper and stored in a dry, dark box in the pantry.
6. Apples were harvested from our trees, peeled, cored and sliced and cooked down into applesauce and frozen in jars.  We still need more apples and perhaps some apple butter.  We still have some jars of dried apples from last year in the cupboard.
7. Our Asian pears are still not quite ripe and we still wonder what is the best thing to do with them.  Last year we gave them all away but recently we learned that they can make a good sauce.  Hmmm.
8. Our table grapes are ripening fast and last year we froze some and they are enjoyable over the winter.  More will be washed, frozen on trays and then placed in quart bags next month, once they get their sugars up.

• Vegetables

1. Zucchini seemed to never end this summer and it started early.  Almost every day we picked zucchini and once we had enough for processing, we began.  Sometimes we sliced them the long way, oiled and salted them, put on barbecue for 10 minutes, placed them individually on trays in the freezer and then in quart bags in the freezer once frozen.  Other times we filled the dehydrator and ran it for hours in the sun and then put the almost paper dry chips into jars.  We usually choose to suck the air out of the jars after putting the dried zucchini inside.  Sometimes we put them in plastic sacks and vacuumed the air out.  Sometimes we just eat them... heheheh.
2. Eggplants came this year with a vengeance.  Thanks to our new ColdFrame (which is more of a hotframe in the summer) we got Asian Eggplant to set fruit in early September.  We treated it just like the zucchini.
3. Tomatoes are going mainly for sauces this year and how the sauces are made depends on the variety of tomato and how we want to work in the kitchen.  To me, the tomatoes take a lot of work and they, as with most of this work, have been Karen's speciality.
4. Peppers are still ripening and I expect we will harvest them, cut out the centers, cut into strips, dip in olive oil and barbecue them before freezing.  This worked great last year.
5. Squashes are still ripening but we have a dry, dark drawer (or two) waiting for their harvest in October.  We have butternut, acorn and delicato for sure (maybe others?)
6. Cauliflower was harvested, washed, cut up and dried in the dehydrator and also it was blanched, placed on trays in the freezer to freeze separately and then put into quart bags in the freezer.
7. Broccoli was harvested, cut up and blanched, frozen on trays and put into quart bags in freezer.

• Root Crops

1. Onions are drying in the shed and some are still in the ground.  I am not sure how we are going to process them - perhaps dry them separately, and then store in porous sacks somewhere dry, away from mice.
2. Shallots are still in the ground and probably will go into dry storage after we dry them and wipe off the dirt.
3. Leeks are still in the ground and will go the route of shallots and onions I believe.
4. Potatoes have been dug and eaten all summer.  New, fresh, baby potatoes are so awesome with the translucent skins and creamy taste.  Butter just confuses the lushness of these powerhouses.  The rest of the crop will be dug in October and put into dry storage.  We had trouble last year keeping them from sprouting and gave away a fair amount of our harvest.  We need to start digging on the root celler any day now!  Oh yes, we also sliced potatoes with the mandolin, placed on cookie sheets to freeze and then bagged them last year, no cooking.  These slices made great potato dishes with lots of fresh flavor and I bet we do something that again in mid-winter as they start to sprout again.. sigh.

Next post will cover leafy greens, herbs, nuts, meats and other things left out above.  This posting may be edited because I need Karen to check it to see if it is accurate.  Now that the list is on the screen, it is easy to see why we are so busy putting aside food in 2010.