Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

SISU! wrote:

> Bill Jones wrote:
>
>  
>
> > Finally a few pimentos are ripening, so I made machaca from them.
> >    
>
> What's that?
>  
It's a mixture of shredded beef, fried peppers and onions, and scrambled 
egg, seasoned with black pepper.

> There's no choice but to deal with squash,
>  
>
> > so I made a giant pot of Italian-style zucchini in tomato sauce and 
> > canned 14 pints of it.
> >    
>
> Recipe, please...
> I make lots of zucchini bread and squash casseroles and freeze them.
>  
I didn't measure.  I peeled and skinned and seeded about 2 gallons of 
tomatoes, and added them to a mixture of one bulb of sauteed garlic, 2 
onions, and a pimento.  I simmered this until the tomatoes fell apart, 
then added just one large can of tomato paste, to thicken it up.  Then I 
seasoned it liberally with salt, pepper, and oregano.  You can do this 
days ahead.  When I added the squash, I sauteed it first in very little 
olive oil in a wide cast-iron pan, to sweat out the water, then added it 
to the tomato sauce.  Usually it works according to the Pickle 
Principle: one volume of sauce or brine is required for 2 volumes of 
solid chunks.  But this time there's more sauce than squash, which is 
fine, since I always have it with noodles.  I sealed the jars in boiling 
water, although I'm not sure if its pH quite matches the 4.2 value 
recommended for water bath canning.  In Mexico squash is often cooked in 
tomatillo sauce flavored with cilantro.  That makes a nice change of 
pace, and tomatillos are more acidic than tomatoes.

>  
>
> > The filberts bore a quantity of nuts for the first time, and for some
> > reason the squirrels are incompetent this year, so I cured several
> > dozen of them.
> >    
>
> How old are your filberts?
>
> I planted 3 Hazelnuts this year.
>  
I think they're almost 10 years old now.  They were tiny whips.  They 
didn't really get enough fertilizer during their early years, and almost 
no water.  Lately the lambs' manure seems to have energized the entire 
orchard.

>  We put lots of them into the rumpot, along
>  
>
> > with many other early berries.  And the grape harvest is more
> > enormous than ever, with 3 kinds of table grapes (Canadice,
> > Interlaken Seedless, and Himrod)
> >    
>
> How do you like the Interlaken?
>
>
>  
I'm starting to wonder whether that's really it, after I went online to 
look at picture of grape varieties.  How do I tell Interlaken from 
Himrod?  The red one is definitely Canadice, but there's another that 
doesn't look like any of the table grapes I mentioned.  It ripens to a 
much lighter red than Canadice.  In any case, the Interlaken/Himrod vine 
than I have has wonderful grapes.  All fruit is better if it just is 
allowed to ripen, something that never happens commercially.

> > Speaking of dry weather, it rained about a half-inch over about one 
> > week's time.  That brings our total for the rain year to 71.42",
> > which will probably be the final total, since no more is expected
> > until after October 1.
> >    
>
>
> Wow.  We only get about 54" here..
>  
It's a shame it was all in November and March.

> > I'm happy to have finished Step 0 (deciding what it is you need/want)
> > on several building projects.  In the front yard we're converting the
> > old lamp tower to an obelisk, and building a trapezoidal arch to walk
> > under, for an Incan theme.  To discourage people from going around
> > the archway, there'll be a low trapezoidal sundial to the side.  It's
> > design will be truly unique.  The gnomon will be a smaller replica of
> > the obelisk, standing apart from the trapezoidal face.  An ordinary
> > sundial makes a great calendar in winter and fall, but in spring and
> > summer the shadow is so short that you can't easily resolve what date
> > it is.  So I had a great idea to position things so that the shadow
> > falls in the normal way onto the flat face only in fall and winter.
> > In spring and summer the shadow will fall onto the side of the
> > trapezoidal block.  Conveniently, the side pattern will resemble a
> > plant stem, to go with the flower motif that will appear on the top
> > (actually the mathematical curves for each hour of the day that
> > resemble flower petals).
> >    
>
> I'd love to see pictures of this.  I've been batting around the idea of
> a inground sundial and a labyrinth for the garden.  I have several pages
> bookmarked, but can't decide on exactly what I want.
>
>  
One thing I've learned is to allow your mind to run free when I comes to 
sundial design.  Literally anything that casts a definite point shadow 
can be both a sundial and a calendar.  An entire garden can become a 
sundial.  There are sundials where the entire face is vertical.  So I'd 
recommend starting with your own vision that reflects your personality.

I don't know if attachments are allowed, but I'll try to send the 
pattern for my latitude and longitude.  Each infinity shape (they're 
called analemmas) represents one particular hour of the day, tracked 
over the course of a year.  The long part of the analemma describes the 
position of the shadow in winter and fall, the place where the curve 
crosses itself shows the shadow at the equinoxes, and the stubby part 
near the center is for spring and summer.  Can you believe I was 
actually able to find the formulas for making these curves online?  But 
I'll be using the actual shadow position, not the predicted one, to 
ensure accuracy.

Bill
S. Oregon coast