Tuesday Happenings

Tuesday 2-Do

  • Put the garden to bed: this year we are going to start a new ‘no-till raised bed’ sort of scenario to build up some good nutrients. We’ll rake all the current (and still emptying beds, need to pull the carrots still, let the calendula finish, leave the late radish blooms for the bees) beds, compost them and then cover them with cardboard or tarp. If we have enough time we may cover crop them with rye, let it grow, mow, then cover with cardboard or tarp. Weed and mulch the strawberries for Winter. With the great local CSA’s (this year we’ve subscribed to Farmer Kev’s and the Andrews Farm – both fantastic) and the Farmer’s Market at Mill Park (Augusta), we are going to focus on the specifics of what we like to grow (dry beans, pumpkins/squash/melons, and a little kitchen garden bed of lettuce/peppers/cherry tom’s, etc). I’m only sad that I am going to take a year off potatoes – our harvest was partially eaten by voles this year so I need to address that (with a lot of castor oil, which will also dissuade the moles that we are also dealing with, getting nematodes – to kill the grubs that they eat) but maybe I’ll grow fingerlings in grow bags.
  • Forage for mushrooms, pick ripe rose hips (for wine, flour, and tea), keep up with ripening juniper berries. Hang and dry late herbs and collect seed. I might be lucky enough to get another batch of cleavers, goldenrod, and yarrow to dry for teas.
  • Plant bulbs – garlic (usually we line garden beds with garlic as a companion plant but this year we will also do a full bed of garlic – we have garlic needs), narcissus, and a few Spring friends like crocus and early Summer little iris, windflower in the orchard.
  • We still have to paint the chicken coop (will help it Winter and make it purty), and fix some garden gates. Cage and mulch the younger fruit trees (elderberry, blueberry bush, hazelnut, apples, cornelian cherry). Duende is voting for a ‘blinding barn red’ while I’m hoping more for a ‘mellow yellow’ (it has a green metal roof), Josh doesn’t really care as long as it gets painted. Until then D has been chalking graffiti and witchy protection spells on it.
  • We put in our Fedco tree order (a couple more apples, pears, elderberry, and medicinal/ornamental/orchard companion like pussy willow, comfrey, boneset, lavender, blue false indigo, perennial hollyhock, purple asparagus, rugosa, beach plums, wormwood, and wild bergamot), but still have to put in the seed order (which will be heavy in flowers and medicinals this year).
  • We’ve updated a logo that we are excited about – low maintenance as a minimum of branding (if you know us, branding is not our thing, and since this is a very lowbrow scenario, we want it to match our ethos). Deliveries have been going nicely and it seems our new order form is catching on. Let us know if you want to be on the list, or know someone who enjoys Cottage foods. Working with Olde Haven Farm has been lovely – do check them out and try their amazing goods (especially the sausages! they have a Facebook, too).
  • Meanwhile, we also have a birthday to prepare for in another week or so- yay, Josh! More dissertation to write. And some new Fall/Winter plans to work on baskets/wreaths, charcuterie/cheese, and blueberry bonsai!

Get to it! May your 2-Do list invigorate you!

Monday Monday

We want there to be a reason to get up in the morning. We want the moon and the sun and the earth to continue their dance around us and us equally around them. We want the seeds to sprout, the flowers to bloom, the leaves to fall, and the dormant time to rest. We want the sun to set and rise again, and to know that it will. How do we know what we know and want what we want? Do we do it in kindness, in care, in consideration – or out of habit where we assume or presume that it will happen? What do we do to help what we know and what we want to happen? And do we do it with kindness, in care, and in consideration of others (all others)? The leaves are changing once again, are we?

Monday & a Muse

Perhaps the World Ends Here
BY JOY HARJO


The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Duendesday is for Movers and Shakers

{life with a curious and crazy 10 yr old}

How is our little peach these days? She is counting her chickens, hunting for mushrooms, and driving the tractor-mower (again). She takes her mower-driving very seriously – she concentrates on all the steps and learns new tips. It really gave her a kick to tow the cart with Josh in it (as he does for her sometimes).

Autumn announced itself with a bit of a bang this year (killing frost earlier in the week) but is mellowing out to an Indian Summer at least for the next week or two. We all wish we could go camping (hot days and cool nights make great camping) but with the world as it is, and our lack of animal sitters, it is not to be. Our mantra lately is, ‘maybe next year’, which for a kid is the worst thing to hear.

But we will continue to celebrate the Harvest all week and into next week, having our lovely friend and his similarly aged ‘Pear’ of a child (get it, a peach and a pear?! love our baby fruits!) come to play outside [I don’t know if they have realized but it’s likely we will try and convince them to join us in harvesting the last of the potatoes and/or the grapes] and make some lovely food in the fire (though we do have a new ‘cauldron’ grill we need to try out). I think it will be lovely. Little by little, we are all finding creative ways to be together and make a better world (less is more, local is best, concentrated efforts reward).

Meanwhile, our hurdles are how to get a 10 year old to clean her room and brush her hair? Though she was very excited to clean the car for $5. which she spent at the Farmer’s Market on honey sticks and a goat milk berry smoothie. We went a little early yesterday so she could ride her scooter in the park where the market is – she is quite the savvy scooter-child! She’s requesting a skateboard for Solstice – oh, my mama heart patters with joy and just a bit of trepidation.

To be young and yearn for speed.

Tuesday Happenings

Happy Autumnal Equinox! A time to honor the passing of time, of good relations, in the presence of responsible processes of living and dying. It is a gift, especially in these times, to be able to celebrate with love and care and compassion. We, here at Rock Bottom Homestead, are enjoying our time together. We’ll be hanging some celebratory bunting and tomatillo garland (D’s big projekt this year – adorable), heading to the Farmer’s Market and making a lovely dinner of seasonal goods.

We’ve already been stretching the celebrations – we went for our ‘change of the seasons’ walk in the woods: spotted an American Woodcock and were followed by a Red-Breasted Nuthatch and a Black-capped Chickadee. It’s been so dry that there weren’t a lot of mushrooms to be found but we did find a large patch of spent Chicken Mushroom, and collected some medicinal Birch Polypore. It’s been cool and crisp the last couple of days, the extra blankets are already back on the beds but we’re holding out until at least October 1st for a fire in the woodstove, it’s the principle of the thing – ha! We will continue to celebrate this week – taking it easy – reading and playing games (our favorites right now are Evolution, Ratatat, and Parcheesi, though I am always up for Trellis and Tsuro), attending to putting some of the gardens to bed, finishing touches on homestead projekts (like coldframes, caging the young trees, saving seeds), collecting apples to press, putting up more jams/pickles (like grape for the former, and jardiniere for the latter), making handpies and parmesan sourdough rolls, and revamping our business ideals.

To celebrate the seasonal shifts we have themed family gifts (Spring is Art, Summer is Music, Fall is Books, and Winter is Handmade): for our family gift this year we got Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’ book ‘Lost Words‘. It’s a gorgeous large format hardcover book with lovely nature pictures and poetry to conjure back words of nature into our story lexicon. We highly recommend it.

Enjoy the changes, enjoy each other.

Monday’s Musing

Another fallacy comes creeping in whose errors you should be meticulous in trying to avoid. Don’t think our eyes, our bright and shining eyes, were made for us to look ahead with. Don’t suppose our thigh bones fitted our shin bones and our shins our ankles so that we might take steps. Don’t think that arms dangled from shoulders and branched out in hands with fingers at their ends, both right and left, for us to do whatever need required for our survival. All such argument, all such interpretation is perverse, fallacious, puts the cart before the horse.

No bodily thing was born for us to use. Nature had no such aim, but what was born creates the use. There could be no such thing as sight before the eyes were formed. No speech before the tongue was made, but tongues began long before speech were uttered. and the ears were fashioned long before a sound was heard. And all the organs I feel sure, were there before their use developed. They could not evolve for the sake of use be so designed. But battling hand to hand and slashing limbs, fouling the foe in blood, these antedate the flight of shining javelins. Nature taught men out to dodge a wound before they learned the fit of shield to arm. Rest certainly is older in the history of man than coverlets or mattresses, and thirst was quenched before the days of cups or goblets.

Need has created use as man contrives device for his comfort. but all these cunning inventions are far different from all those things much older, which supply their function from their form. The limbs, the sense, came first, their usage afterwards. Never think they could have been created for the sake of being used. ~ Lucretius

Recipe Thursday: Obsessed with Bananas

It may be because I can’t really get bananas right now, and when I do, I specifically get organic because the certification helps assess the Cavendish banana tree health and plantation soil health, which is in detrimental decline (the Cavendish being the kind that Americans typically eat, though there are many other worldwide kinds, and even cultivars of Cavendish – but undergoing some sort of fungal pathogen blight, and I get organic because other bananas aren’t sprayed but are wrapped in chemical bags to deter friends and artificially ripen – anything we do to lessen monocropping/monoculture of our food and soil, the better). Our friend apparently has a banana tree growing in his yard here in Maine which excites me greatly! I wish that banana tree very much luck and growth and future bananas! It is an amazing rhizomatic plant that grows essentially as layers of leaves with a shooting flower stalk that could (unlikely here in Maine unless inside, in a greenhouse) bloom and then fruit into a little bunch of bananas that look (to many of our ignorant eyes) upside down!

Bananas are a tricky bit for me, though. I am particular about its stage of texture – I prefer just ripe (still firm with bright flavor) but I can deal with them ripe (mostly because I feel they are good for me so I just get them into my body). Eventually, one escapes the morning routine and gets past its prime. You can freeze them (cut into thick rounds, freeze on tray before bagging up – use later for banana bread or desserts or smoothies), and even if they are dark – their flavor and nutritional content are the same, they have just reacted to the air (not as attractive but still usable!).

We used to go on dates (obviously before parenting – ha! Parents who still get to go on dates are blessed, you have no idea how blessed you are…) just for dessert. Way back when in our Burlington days, we would go out to find the best desserts in town (and it was such a good food town, yet still up and coming…). One of them that we remember fondly was a Mexican restaurant on lower Church St (Cactus Cafe, I think) with Talavera tiles and delicious food. And this dessert pleased us so much, we started making a version of it at home.

This other recipe I’m throwing in because I keep coming across it (from ‘fit foodie’), and I want to make it – I’m having banana cravings. And if we do lose the Cavendish, I think these recipes will do just fine with other bananas. Here’s to cravings!

Bananas (mmm) rollson
Serves 4

  • 4 ripe to really ripe Bananas, peeled and cut in half lengthwise
  • 1 can whole Coconut Milk (shake well or open and stir vigorously, working the cream back into the milk before using)
  • 2 tsp ground Ginger
  • 3 Tbsp Dark Brown Sugar (or 2 Tbsp Cane Sugar and 1 Tbsp Molasses
  • 1 ‘brick’ Graham Crackers (a full stack of grahams, or to taste)
  • Vanilla Ice Cream/Frozen Yogurt/Frozen Coconut Milk, etc.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place Bananas in small casserole and cover with Coconut Milk, sprinkle with Ginger and Brown Sugar. Bake until bubbly and thick (about 20-25min). Serve over Graham Crackers and/or Vanilla Ice Cream.

Peanut Butter/ Chocolate Chip/Banana Nice Cream
Serves 6ish

  • 4 cups of frozen Banana slices (lay on parchment covered tray and place in freezer, then bag if left over or for later)
  • 1/4 all natural Peanut Butter (or Sunflower, Almond, Cashew, etc)
  • 1/2 – 3/4 cup unsweetened Almond Milk (or other happy creamy product, Oat, Soy, Dairy, Nut, etc)
  • 1/3 cup mini Chocolate (or Carob) Chips, optional

Place frozen banana slices, peanut butter, and 1/2 cup almond milk into a food processor or high-speed blender. Blend on high until a smooth consistency has formed. If things are too thick, add a little bit more almond milk.

Add in mini chocolate chips and pulse to combine.

Option to eat immediately for a “soft-serve-like” consistency or to transfer into a parchment-lined bread pan to freeze for a more “ice cream-like” consistency. Freeze for about 2 hours. If you freeze for longer, it will become solid and hard to scoop, so you will need to thaw!

Serve with more chocolate chips and a drizzle of peanut butter and honey, if feeling decadent.

Duendesday from Duende

{life with a curious and crazy 10 yr old}

HI PEEPS, IT’S ME, DUENDE! A NEW TREAT FOR FALL IS HERE AND THEY’RE APPLE CHIPS. IF YOU DON’T TRY THEM THIS FALL THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT FALL. THEY DON’T GROW ON TREES! OH YEAH, YES THEY DO. THEY’RE YUMMY LITTLE HOMEMADE APPLE BITS. THE APPLES ARE LOCALLY GROWN AND WE MAKE THEM AT D CORP! THEY’RE FREE IF YOU GIVE US APPLES IN RETURN! OTHERWISE THEY’RE $3.00 FOR 8 OZ.TRY SOME! 

MAKE SURE TO JOIN MY BOOK CLUB “BOOKIES”, TOO – WE COULD MEET ONLINE ONCE A MONTH (DATE TBD). I LIKE THE DIARY OF A WIMPY KID BOOKS, DOG MAN AND CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS BOOKS, BIG NATE, GREEK AND NORSE MYTHS, BOOKS BY ROALD DAHL, NATURAL DOG & CAT HEALTH BOOKS, AND DC SUPERHERO GIRLS COMICS. CONTACT ME HERE AND I’LL GET BACK TO YOU.