The One Old Apple Tree: A Love Story

I just wrote this long, sad message to some girlfriends of mine. I share it here as I sent it. If anyone reads this please add your answers/suggestions to my last question.

Woke up to devastating happens around our property. We've had a mild winter in the Finger Lakes but last night we had rain then wet snow that knocked out power (that meant no hot water to bathe, ugh.) AND snapped tree limbs and trees. Here's a little tally of what I found as a walked around our little place in the countryside.
Forsythia: Crushed. It was huge and a beautiful screen between our propane tank and the rest of the yard.

Red Bud Tree: Limbs snapped. Blossoms had just started opening. It was lovely.

Blueberry Bush: Buried and Crushed. My Sweetie had just planted it last week, we plan to get more, but, so sad to see.

My lettuce, cabbage arugula transplants into hoop house: Buried and Gone! :( They were super tiny little seedlings but we had been having such perfect Spring cool weather, I put them out last week.

Peas: Not yet sprouted but now Buried under 4" of wet snow. I direct planted these just outside our bedroom window to create an edible, green trellis as they grew.

My Hoop House: Half Crushed, Some Seeds Buried. It's little only about 15 ft. long, 4 ft. high, 5 hoops. I'd finally turned the clover cover crop, dug out some little planting spaces and transplanted the lettuce, etc. seedlings and cover with plastic 2 weekends ago. Ive left the transplants uncovered and only the last 'bay' was covered. Under it I'd direct seeded Detroit Red beets and brussel sprouts. Keeping that part was making a nice constant wet area for the seeds to sprout. Now the hoops are broken at their support line and the seeds are buried the plastic which is covered in 2" of heavy (I tried to lift it), wet snow.

I've saved the WORST for last. THE APPLE TREE: UPROOTED. BLOSSOMS FROZEN. IT'S DONE FOR. Now, ladies, Prop. Me. Up. Our house is shabby. It's what he could afford with me unemployed over a year. It has great potential and 4 acres, mostly trees. One of these trees is next to the garage. An Old apple tree. When we moved in last Autumn it had already been bearing fruit for a while so we only got a few. Couldn't figure out what variety it is.

Gurrrls, they were DELICIOUS! I don't mean the variety you can get in every store in any city across the country. I mean, JUICY, NOT TOO SWEET, PERFECT FOR PIE, HOMEMADE APPLE SAUCE, OR STRAIGHT. OFF. THE. TREE.

Schatzi trimmed back some of the dead limbs, raked up all the leaves underneath (which were lovingly added to my growing compost pile). Just yesterday when it was only raining I thought to myself, "Self, that soil must be rich by now. That would be a lovely, protected place to try growing some more lettuces and peas under that beautiful, just starting to bloom Old Apple Tree." I was going to do it today. And now it's gone.

We were so looking forward to those apples this year. After all, this was our first year in the house. We only had The. One. Old. Apple. Tree. The snow was so wet & heavy that it bowed the branches full of beautiful, new blossoms to the ground. I imagine the whole tree held on so strongly until it couldn't any longer and the big main root literally snapped and heaved out of the ground and the tree, intact toppled over.

I must mourn it.

Then I must honor her by do good things with that apple tree wood. What shall I cook, smoke, dry with it's fire and smoke? Any suggestions?

To-Do Lists

We all have them -- to-do lists. Whether written on scraps of paper or kept in our heads, or neatly noted in a book. They accompany us through the day, the week, life. Today was a "to-do" day. One of those days when I got a bunch of relatively little things done. Some have been on my list for weeks, one over a year, and a few for just a day or two. From a distance it might have look as if I was just pottering about but things got done. This might sound trivial but when you're unemployed "getting things done" helps preserve a feeling of --- normalcy, no, competency. It feels good

Making dinner doesn't do it nor does sending in letters and resumes for jobs. It's doing the other things, the "projects". So what did I accomplish that has me ruminating about "doing"? It started yesterday actually.
I seasoned a large clay cooking pot we got in a trip to Costa Rica over a year ago. First it had to soak in water 12+ hours. Today, I oiled and baked the pot & lid for 3 hours.

While that was happening I finally did the 1-hour Pilates routine that I will be doing daily. Hopefully it will make my back feel better and make me look better to boot. it was more fun than I'd anticipated and didn't hurt as much either. I have a long ways to go though.

Next, I planted Brussels sprouts & beets outside under the hoop house but left it opened for the day.

Inside, I planted red bell pepper seeds where others have failed to start. I added worm compost to the new seeds.

By then the clay pot was ready to come out of the oven.

Then it dawned on me that since the oven was already warm I should bake the tofu I bought a few days ago. I had yummy baked tofu at dinner with friends last night so I tried her recipe.

While I was looking in the fridge I remembered I'd never brought in the groceries I bought yesterday. Mainly I'd bought ingredients to make homemade deodorant. I found the recipe online a couple of days ago. So, I made deodorant! Smells yummy! I used tea tree essential oil to fragrance it. The other ingredients are organic coconut oil, corn starch and baking soda. Simple and no crazy, unpronounceable chemicals.

Now, I'll make dinner. Just for me, Schatzi is away this week doing sound for the music festival.

Sprouts: real & metaphorical

I've made the important decision to resign from the non-profit board I'm a member of.

I've had two inspiring chats with different people in the past two weeks.

I've bought a domain for a venture I thought up last year.
Now I need to make something of it.

Planted some stuff outside last weekend. No sprouts yet.

Seeds started inside are still growing. More to be started this weekend.

For now, I will be writing mostly about making a year-round vegetable garden at our new place. I've got a small hoop house started and planted a cover crop of clover in that area last autumn. The clover is re-growing now, suppressing the weeds that would be there instead. The lawn is mostly weedy but we mostly tamed it down last autumn, too. Next, I'll be getting a few loads of composted cow poo from a farmer friend and making layered beds of newspaper, straw and the compost. There will be flowers too. Im hoping I can get bees this year and ducks next year. Cayuga ducks. They are a regional heritage breed. Schatzi like duck eggs.

The transformation of the yard into food and beauty is only part of our multi-year effort to restore this house from the nastiness it became while being mis-used by the people who were playing at making bio-diesel. So far, I haven't been able to muster anything more than disgust and contempt for them.

Ths past weekend while I was at my new, part-time weekends-only job this past weekend, Schatzi worked miracles in our kitchen. It took him Saturday and Sunday but got the kitchen stove and oven working by re-connecting the gas line to the house and wiring the electricity into the ovens. This is a huge milestone for me, well, for both of us. Since we moved in seven months ago, I've been cooking with a single-burner camping rig and small, old Black & Decker toaster over. The new cooking stove is an amazing treasure. I bought it for $500 from a baker friend of ours. It's a Viking Professional dual fuel (ovens are electric, stove hobs/burners are gas), 6-burner w/griddle, two stove work of cooking art! Five hundred dollars is a gift! The new cost was ~$8,500-10,000+. And it came with an overhead warming oven, too. One stove is convection the other is smaller and it convection. It's just gorgeous. If I can't learn to make great pies, savory and sweet, with this thing I'm a pie-making lost cause.

About my new part-time weekend job. It came just in the nick of time. My first experience in a job with tips. And the first time in a long, long time that I've been paid minimum wage. If the tips work out as promised it will be worth it, if they are less, this is just an exercise in employment. Which is not without merit at this point.

Almost as exciting as the Viking getting hooked up, our Rocky Ford Musk melon seeds have begun to sprout, as have the San Marzano tomatoes. Both of these surprised me. The melon seeds are from the 2011 season as are the San Marzanos so that might account for their viability. Lots of other things are sprouting too. And some things are not.

Sunday morning the hills around here looked like Chinese calligraphy. Sublime.