Spring

A beautiful, warm Spring day. Just the sort that irresistibly invites you into the garden. Bees droning all about in the sunshine. The Flock of Chickens clucking and scratching somewhere distant under trees. Dog joyously hunting rats in the tall grass.

Just the day for digging beds, getting ready for Spring sowing and planting.
Carrots, Beets and Swiss Chard are already in, sown some weeks ago, the Beets just beginning to show themselves. Carrots will be along in another week or two. Pole beans¹ planted along the edges of the same bed are slow, but I was being pretty optimistic with the timing; the ground is only now really warming up enough for legumes. The beans will tent up over the root veggies, and not really create enough shade to interfere too much with their growth.

Next up is clearing a bed for Bush beans - Hopi Black, my stock drying bean, and the least possible trouble of any vegetable you could wish to encounter - and the large, white, and totally delicious Greek bean I know simply as Big Beans. Because that's what I was told the Greeks call them. Perhaps they'd be better off growing more Big Beans rather than relying EU handouts.

Another high priority is the Salad Bed. The few stray lettuces that made it through Winter won't keep us in green stuff for long, and I have a huge craving for salads lately.

Meanwhile the first Tomatoes are up in their seed trays. Eggplant and Chiles are predictably taking a little longer. Beds for these can be a little lower priority, since they'll be in the trays a little while yet. Those beds will need a good composting, though.

I've managed to be a little more restrained this year in choosing varieties... last year was a bit of a mad dash to try and get at least a few plants of many, many varieties grown in an attempt to refresh my seed stocks after the drought years. This year I can afford to relax a little and focus on those that have a proven track record.

Spring has sprung, the grass is  riz... la, la, la.²

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[1] Rattlesnake and Purple Podded.
[2] I'll stop singing as soon as someone pays me to stop!

Stuck Pickup

Bakkie (local term for a pickup) stuck solidly in the mudbath that was once a lawn. No tractor handy to pull it out. No team of oxen. No bunch of strong friends to help push. Just the two of us. How to get it out of the mud?

It Never Rains, But It Pours

After a particularly wet July the ground is saturated and dams are happily full. And now this...

A small river through the front garden...

...and out back, where beer-bottle cleaning has been brought to a temporary halt...

And Bakkie is stuck, the muddy ground too slippery for it to get moving. We'll have to wait for things to dry out a bit to move it, or get a tractor to pull it out.

And yet memories of drought still haunt us, so we bless the rain (if not so much the cold) and hope that the wonderful rains persist through Summer.

First sowings are already in trays - Chiles, Tomatoes and Eggplants, Cabbages and Lettuce. It's a bit early yet for direct-sown Beans, but they'll come soon enough, and there's plenty to do in preparing beds.

Preparations for Leaving the Grid

We always planned on a solar-power setup. It's a natural and obvious part of our attempt to live a more sustainable, eco-resilient lifestyle without forsaking all the perks of technology. When we designed the house we knew we would be unable to afford a solar-power installation off the bat, but we planned for it anyway. The design of the house reflects these plans -- the roof is pitched at exactly the right angle to optimally support solar panels at our latitude, key parts of the roof, eaves and walls are easily accessible for trunking additional wiring, the electricity distribution board is positioned close to the anticipated charge controllers and associated hardware to make upgrades relatively painless.


It's a pure application of what we software designers call the "Open Closed Principle" -- a design should be "open" for extension, despite being "closed" to internal changes.

The Joy of (Willards) Snacks: GMOs in Big Korn Bites

Not that I'm planning to turn this blog into a GMO-activism sort of thing, but, consonant with the notion that self-sufficiency is inherently anti-corporate (and possibly a bit subversive) here's more follow-up on my comments about the fraud being perpetuated by the pro-GMO lobby.

Brew Day: Belgian Blonde

I've long debated with myself over adding brew-blogging to this blog. After all, the main mission here is self-sufficiency. On the other hand, I often do want to record thoughts and feelings about a brew day beyond the bare facts that I record in my (paper and pencil - terribly old-school, I know, but it works even when the lights are out) brew journal. So I thought to myself, "Let's give it a go!" And I really lack the energy or time to start yet another blog. Four of them is quite enough!
I'll tag all these posts with a "brewing" tag, so those of you who want to stay focussed on self-sufficiency, but have no interest in home brewing, can easily ignore these posts.

My target for today's brew is based on a Belgian Blonde, but a bit more hoppy than would be traditional. A malt-forward beer, not too sweet, and a dry finish. Should end up with a strong, white head atop a golden, fairly fizzy ale. Should play well in all seasons. Not sure how closely this conforms to the style guidelines; don't care.

One of my main reasons for wanting to brew this is to maintain and propagate the Duvel/Maredsous yeast¹ I recently cultured from the dregs of a very delicious Maredsous Trippel given to me by a friend. I am just guessing that, because both Duvel and Maredsous are brewed by the Moortgat Brewery, it is somewhat likely they use the same yeast. Of course it is always possible that they don't, or that the Trippel is re-yeasted upon bottling with a different yeast than is used for primary fermentation, but what are the odds? The first brew I ran with this yeast was an eye-opener. I brewed a Dubbel, and was completely blown away by this yeast's action. Rather than the usual, fairly aggressive fermentation action I have seen from most ale yeasts (including Wyeast 1214, another Belgian Abbey strain, allegedly originating from the Chimay brewery) this yeast had a very soft, gentle and sweet action. I am quite determined to maintain this strain in good condition, since it is one I will not soon be able to replace should I lose it. One trick will be to share it with as many other brewers as I can.

Today's recipe was a very straightforward one - no complications, decoctions, fancy malts or unusual hopping tricks. All-in-all the brew went very routinely. Mash temperature pretty much where I wanted it, starting at about 65C and falling to a finish at around 63C (a little further than I would have expected; one of the places where I need to work more is in these lower temperature mashes - when starting lower, temperature seems to fall off faster.) The sparge went without a hitch, as did the boil. I'm a little uncertain about the cleanliness of the yeast. I'd really like to plate up a bunch of it and select out clean colonies for longer-term storage. Perhaps if I go down to CT in a couple of weeks I can get to a lab-supply shop to acquire the necessary stuff.

Wort colour was suitably pale, with reasonably good clarity. I was a bit surprised (in a good way) at how much liquid I got out of the kettle, today. Usually I leave at least a litre or more behind, but today the trub had a particularly solid character and stayed well back while all the clear liquid went down the chiller-pipe, leaving little more than a half-cup behind.

The only sour note to the day was that I managed to smash my Hydrometer while drying it for storage. Bah!...

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[1] Not linking directly to the Maredsous website, since it is all-Flash, and that just sucks.

New Kid on the Block

An unexpected phone-call from Deborah next door a few mornings ago. "Do you want a Rooster?" A bit of discussion needed, there...

On the one hand our flock really does need a Rooster to look after them after the Tragedy On Honey-Badger Hill that resulted in the loss of our trusty knights. On the other, we've really been enjoying the peaceful mornings undisturbed by the crowing!