A little medieval farm

You can't see it from the road, but if you follow the grassy laneway through the woods, you'll come across a little medieval farm tucked away in the trees. There's a horse, two dexter cows, a few pigs, and lots of chickens and roosters, as well as a small row garden, a larger permaculture garden, and a little house.

This is entirely Bryce and Misty's creation. They live there with their 1-year-old daughter Sage, and call it Ultima Thule. According to Wikipedia:

The term ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world."

 According to me, it translates to Land of What If or Realm of Possibilities.
 
Bryce and Misty bought the land almost 7 years ago and began creating a farm and a home - from scratch. Initially, the house was 200 square feet - a 100-square-foot kitchen and stairs going up to the 100-square-foot bedroom. And because most of the materials were from salvage, the house cost them $600 - including the wood stove in the kitchen which was $150. A couple of solar panels power the pump for water, a few low-wattage lights, and their cell phones. This is no flight of fancy. It's a lifetime commitment to this way of life.

The house from the south side

Michelle, a dear friend and former city dweller, introduced us. I remember the first time Mike and I went there. It was during their Renaissance Faire in the spring. I spent an hour or so wandering around overwhelmed, open-mouthed, speechless - and delighted!

Although it's not clear in the photo, all the wood in the kitchen looks old and rustic. Bryce explained they boiled walnut shells and used the dye to stain the wood. The rafters are hung with drying herbs and more cast iron pots and pans than I've ever seen - and I have quite a collection! And the wood stove not only heats the house but is used for cooking.

The Kitchen

The living room was added on later. It has a dirt floor and a Rumford-esque fire place made of cob. The mosaic around the flue is lovely, as is the wonderful mermaid-fairy statue that Misty sculpted. This is the room where Misty delivered Sage a year or so ago.

The living room

The shower is ingenious!The shower head is attached to a coiled black hose on the roof which is gravity-fed by a rain barrel, also on the roof, and old bottles moulded into the cob let in light.

The shower

And this is a gathering area. The white drum is as a fire pit, and even though it was a chilly day, there's a warmth and welcome about it.

Sitting area

Below are a couple of photos from the Renaissance Faire:

Bryce and Misty

Michelle and Zoe in front of the firepit

 There will be much more to write about this in future posts. I'm looking forward to visiting Ultima Thule in the summer and getting some photos of the chaotic lushness of it all!

The first snowfall

This is what I woke up to this morning.

I still delight in the first snowfall.

Sadly, not everyone shares this sentiment!

The s**t machine

(Don't look at me. I didn't name it!)

That first summer, we filled 2 dumpsters - one large, one small - with garbage out of the top of the barn. I suspect that barn hadn't been used for its intended purpose in a very long time and had been a dumping ground for years.

Then we turned out sights towards the lower part of the barn - lots more garbage and lots of composted cow manure mixed in with rusty nails and a mish-mash of debris. Unusuable - or so we assumed.

Martin was appalled to learn that we intended to dump all that gorgeous manure that our garden so desperately needed. And so he conceived of, designed, built, used, and modified what he referred to matter-of-factly as a shit machine. I call it a soil tumbler or a soil sifter. Call it what you will.

As he worked with it in the barn, he added to it: a handle to turn it more easily, larger chicken wire to sift better, sharp metal pieces inside to break up the clumps, wheels and a rope for mobility.

We still use it for sifting maure, but we also use it to clear out rows in the garden. It gets out rocks and weeds like nobody's business, and leaves beautiful, loose soil behind. Takes 3-4 hours to go through a row, and we're hoping to sift the entire garden with it next year. We'll see how it goes!

Radishes

There's nothing complicated about growing radishes. You just put them in the ground and let them grow. They prefer cooler weather, so they're best planted in the spring and fall. For me, the trick is remembering to plant them at all! Oh, and they're best done in staggered plantings, because unless you plan on pickling or ferementing them, there are only so many radishes you can eat in a week.

I did finally get some into the ground this year around mid-August. I didn't plant many, but they were quite delicious. And I decided to leave two of them in the ground to go to seed. (I'm all about the seeds this year.)

Well, they far exceeded my wildest expectations. Here's what they looked like a couple of weeks ago:

You can't tell from this photo, but each of these two plants has at least a hundred seed pods, and each of those pods has about 5 seeds.

One of them finally died off and is hanging in the basement to finish drying. The other is thriving - vibrant green and still flowering - despite several hard frosts and a sprinkling of snow. I may have enough seeds to last the next 5 years!

Then I found out from Bryce that you can eat the pods when they're young and tender, and they taste just like radishes. Looking forward to that next spring! I'll also try fermenting the young pods. Bet they'd be a lot like capers.

And for scale, here's Mike in the kitchen holding up one plant by the root:

Surprised by joy

It's not about how it begins. It's about how it ends.

In 2012, what with disturbing news from friends and the media - political, social, economic - I decided to leave the city and go where we could be a bit more self-sufficient, a bit more off the grid. There was a sense of urgency in that decision to leave, and it was a relief when we'd finally settled in.

This was not running to. This was running from. And those are very different things. Running from is about avoiding. Running to is about creating.  Running from is about fear. Running to is about love. Running from is contraction. Running to is expansion.

That first year was pretty hectic. Get a wood stove! Buy firewood! Get a new line put in from the well! Get the roof done! Order seeds! Plant a garden! Buy more books! Get a generator - just in case!

My past life disappeared in the mist - not gone, but forgotten, temporarily abandoned: workshops, parent group, writing. Work and adjusting to life here took up all my time.

In late winter, I planted seeds in trays and put them in the sun in my bedroom window. And those tiny seeds sprouted and became little plants - tomatoes and peppers and squash - that went into the garden and grew with varying degrees of success. All from tiny seeds.

Towards the end of March that first year, I went outside when the snow was almost gone and saw snowdrops coming up. One of the loveliest things I've ever seen.

 When we'd moved into the house, Mary, the former owner, had said, "Please don't dig up the flower beds until you see what's in them." And the spring, summer, and fall brought a kaleidoscope of flowers and colours and textures: tulips, lilies of every size and colour, star of bethlehem, honeysuckle, mock orange, morning glories, lupins, roses, hollihocks, clematis, hostas - and others I have yet to identify.

There's a song I remember from my childhood:

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
In an English country garden?
We'll tell you now of some that we know
Those we miss you'll surely pardon.
Daffodils, heart's ease and flox,
Meadowsweet and lady smocks,
Gentian, lupine and tall hollihocks
Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops,
Blue forget-me-nots
In an English country garden.

And we have almost all of them!

Grass-fed beef, pastured pork, and free-range chicken had been almost impossible to find in the city. Here, they was plentiful. There were three farms a short distance away, and we began buying all our meat from them. Organic produce in the city at a reasonable price was hard to come by. But here, what we don't grow ourselves we buy at the market - as much as we can eat for less than $20 a week. I felt truly blessed.

The weeding was never ending, and there seemed no way to keep up with it. But I began walking through the vegetable garden in the mornings with my coffee, eager to see what else had come up and how everything was coming along. I didn't notice it at the time, but the anxiety was being replaced by ... wonder.

Harvesting was a delight. Not everything grew as well as we'd hoped or produced as much as we'd wanted, but still we were reaping the bounty of our efforts. There was canning to be done - tomatoes, peaches, pears, beans, beets, pickles, and relishes. The kitchen was a perpetual steam bath, and it was all good. The shelves filled up with beautiful jars of summer's bounty, and life was good. I felt very content, and very grateful.

That winter, Kathy got me hooked on Louise Penny's novels, and there were three words that struck a chord with me: Surprised by joy. Yes, that's what had happened. When I wasn't looking, while I was absorbed in learning and exploring and creating a new chapter of my life, curiosity and wonder crept up on me, and I was ... surprised by joy! And that's when I realized I was running to - with arms wide open.

An extraordinary diagnosis

When I went to the bathroom that morning, the water in the toilet was pink. Blood. No doubt about it. I pushed it to the back of my mind, willing it away, and got on with my day.

A while later, when I returned to the bathroom, my stool was red. Blood. No ignoring this now. This could be serious. As distasteful as it was, I put a sample in a Ziploc bag and headed to the hospital.

The hospital here is seldom busy, and this was no exception. I told the nurse at the desk what I was there for, and I was seen a short time later. I don't remember the doctor's name, just that he looked like a cross between a farmer and a lumberjack: a fairly tall and sturdy fellow with a black beard and black curly hair, probably in his 40s.

I told him what I'd observed, and waited for the worst.

"Any pain?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Cramping?"

"No."

"Nausea?"

"No,"

"Difficulty going to the bathroom?"

"No."

"Fever?"

"No."

"General unwellness?"

"No, not at all. In fact, I feel perfectly fine."

Oddly, he seemed amused.

"Well," he said, "I can check the sample you brought in, but I think I know what the problem is."

I waited.

"Beets."

I jolted. "Beets?"

He nodded. "Have you been eating beets?"

I thought about it. "Yes. Quite a lot, actually. Night before last. I roasted them, and they were delicious."

Now he grinned. "Okay. Give me the sample and I'll check it anyway, but I don't think you have anything to worry about."

He was back in less than two minutes. "All good. Beets it is!"

On my way out, I stopped at the nurse's desk and leaned in conspiratorially. "I got a diagnosis," I said quietly. "Beets."

It took her a moment to catch on, but she was still laughing as I sashayed out the front door.

Hot sauce

This year, for the first time, I was able to make hot sauce with peppers from my garden.

Here's how I made it:

• 12 red chili peppers
• 3 red jalapenos (found out they aren't ripe until they're red)
• 2 habaneros
• 1 red bell pepper
• 2 cheese peppers (really! they look like little gouda cheeses)
• 1/2 Hungarian sweet pepper
• 5 cloves garlic, pressed
• salt
• 1/2 c. vinegar
• 1/2 c. water

Because this wasn't intended to be suicide sauce, I removed the seeds and membranes and chopped the peppers. (I like hot sauce to be hot, but not so hot that I can't use enough of it to fully enjoy the flavour.) And if you're more prudent than I was, you'll wear vinyl gloves!

I simmered it all together for about 15 minutes to thoroughly soften the peppers, then blended until smooth. This is what it looks like (it made one more small jar than what you see here):

And it wasn't quite right. I'm rethinking the bell and cheese peppers. But it also seemed to be missing something. So I added:

• 3 small red onions

I minced them and sauteed them in a bit of olive oil until they caramelized. Then I added the hot sauce to the onion, blended again, and poured into jars. I have no hopes of it lasting because I'm putting it on everything - especially scrambled eggs.

Bon appetit!

Garlic

November 10th. Garlic should have been in already, but there it is.

I'd hoped to plant today, but the forecast was for rain all day.

So when I got up, I was pleasantly surprised to see clouds, yes, but rain, no.

Mike brought the garlic up from the basement, this year's harvest - or what was left of it - and we looked sadly at it and at each other. Not as much as we'd hoped for. (We need to research curing and storing.) I'd wanted to plant 300 cloves this year, and we certainly didn't have that much.

Once the heads were separated into cloves and the shrivelled and mouldy ones discarded, we had 175 cloves left. (The damaged ones were pressed and stored in olive oil in the fridge.) It'll have to do. Better than nothing.

Then we remembered the wild garlic. There were a few large heads with good-sized cloves. The rest were small but plentiful, and there was no waste at all. They had kept remarkably well - and we had 185 cloves!

This is what 360 cloves of garlic looks like (regular garlic in the green basket, wild garlic in the bowl):

The regular garlic cloves are now planted 2" down in a bed 18' x 2', and the wild garlic is planted in a bed 10' x 4'. Oh, and I found about 15 more garlic cloves near the bed that had been pulled earlier and left on the ground. They already had roots and most had sprouted. Into the ground you go. I know where I planted them, and I'll be looking for them in the spring!

If they all do well, we'll have more than enough for storing and planting next fall.

The rain started this afternoon. And I don't care. The garlic's in!

Hot Peppers: A cautionary tale - and a remedy

Miraculously, our pepper plants survived a few hard frosts under a sheet of heavy plastic weighted down with rocks. I'd half expected the bell peppers to hang on, but was astonished that the frost hadn't killed off my hot peppers. The leaves are all pretty much gone, but the stems and stalks are still green, so I'm hopeful that the last handful will ripen in this glorious Indian summer weather.

And so this afternoon I made hot sauce with a dozen red chilis, half a dozen jalapenos, and two habaneros. But I didn't just cut up the peppers. I also lovingly and meticulously took out every last seed and separated each one from the membranes to dry on waxed paper for planting next year. (More about that in another post.)

I always use vinyl gloves when I'm working with hot peppers.

Oh, not true! I didn't today. I know they're hot, and I know how hot they are, so I'm careful - very careful. I washed my hands in OCD fashion most of the afternoon - repeatedly and thoroughly - with lots of hot, soapy water, and kept my hands away from my eyes.

Oh, not true! When I came into the kitchen to make supper, after working in front of a computer screen for a few hours, I absent-mindedly rubbed my eyes - hard - and felt an immediate, blinding heat. My eyes closed reflexively, and when I tried to open them, there was searing pain, so I kept them closed and sat on the couch. Four thoughts swirled through my mind:

• How do I get the pain to stop?
• Am I going to go blind?
• Now I know how pepper spray works.
• This is going to be a great story!

Mike went online to research "hot peppers" and "eyes". Not surprisingly, I'm not the first person to ever do this.

"Rinse your eyes with milk," he said.

"Not happening," I said. "I can't open my eyes."

"Rinse your eyes with saline solution," he offered.

"I can't open my eyes," I repeated.

Then I remembered what I'd told him that afternoon when he was surprised by the heat in a jalapeno and reached for a glass of water: "No, no, not water. Water just makes it worse. Bread. Eat bread. It absorbs the heat."

Then I remembered my great-great-aunt's solution for everything: bread poultices. Bingo!

Mike took a small piece of bread and dribbled milk on it to soften it. I held the poultice to each eye, and the pain vanished instantly. In less than 10 seconds, my eyes were open and it was as though the whole thing had never happened. Miraculous!

Lessons learned:

To prevent hot pepper burns to your eyes, wear gloves when handling peppers.

To remedy hot pepper burns to your eyes, use a bread-and-milk poultice!

You know you're in the country when...

The grocery store posts which local farm the produce came from.

A neighbour dumps a truckload of horse manure in your backyard - and you're grateful!

A large bull and a cow stroll across your front lawn.

No one is ever too busy for a cup of tea and a chat.

In the spring and fall, you see more farm equipment on the road in front of your house than you see cars.

There are signs on the road reminding you to watch for horses and buggies.









You know where all your meat comes from. You've met the farmers and visited their farms.

You know the fellow you buy your honey from.

You buy all your organic produce at the farmers' market - for about $20 a week.

Your closest neighbour is a quarter of a mile away.

Your real estate agent from a few years back still calls to let you know about things going on in the area that you might be interested in.

Your vegtable garden is bigger than your entire proper was in the city.

You have to drive for 35 minutes to shop at box stores.

The kids don't just pop in for a visit because it's a 2-hour drive one way.

Your son makes a modest income riding/exercising horses - and walks to work.

It takes a commercial snow blower half an hour to clear your driveway after a snowfall.

You can't get into town without passing a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation).

Everyone uses a clothes line. (I don't think anyone here owns a dryer.)

Your friends come to visit in a horse and buggy.

You have a barn - and a pig.

You heat with wood, not natural gas.

The cost of hydro is outrageous!

Your friends plow your garden with a horse and plow.

You take your (free) apples to an Amish fellow to press into cider at $1.10 a gallon.

The 200 acres that surround you on three sides are cash crops - alternately corn, soybeans, and wheat.

You have a colony of bats in your attic.

You buy fresh, free-range eggs from a friend.

You know where the sun rises and sets depending on the time of year.

On a clear night, you can see the stars - all of them!

A hole in the cedar tree

Mike came in looking angry and confused.

"There's a huge hole in the cedar by the Quonset, and I have no idea how it got there."

I pulled on my boots and and headed out to see. Yup, a BIG hole. Looked like this:

Wood chips lay scattered on the ground, and there was this gaping hole. I'd never seen anything like it, and I was baffled.

Mike and I discussed it at length, but got nowhere. We wondered at first if one of the grandkids had taken an axe to the tree, but it looked wrong. Besides, they hadn't been up to visit lately.

So I went online to try to solve the mystery. Clearly it was an animal - but what animal did this?!

Not deer. Not bears. Not raccoons. Not groundhogs, squirrels, or rats. Not wolves or coyotes. And no photos online matched what we had.

Isaac came over a few days later, and Mike took him out to see if he could identify what had done this.

"Woodpecker." Isaac is very matter of fact about these things.

"Problem is people see them pecking at their trees and they shoot them. But the woodpeckers are just after bugs. They can hear them inside the tree."

"Will it kill the tree?"

Isaac shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. People think shooting woodpeckers is a good thing. But if they didn't eat the bugs, the bugs would kill the tree and would spread and kill other trees. You'll have to wait and see."

After Isaac left, I did a search on line for woodpeckers and tree damage. Sure enough. All I know is that must have been a big woodpecker. All that damage - and we didn't hear a thing!

It's been eight months, and the tree is thriving. The hole is still there, oozing a bit of sap from time to time. I wonder if that's helping it heal. I give it a hug whenever I walk by, just in case.