The worst of the cold weather is probably behind us, as spring approaches. The sun is out, and thoughts once again turn to the garden. It’s timely to review: how did our solarium perform over the short days and freezing nights of winter?

Adding thermal mass proved not to be enough to protect tender plants if outside temperatures dropped below ~25°. For the coldest nights, we needed to come up with a supplementary heat source. We use brooder lamps for ducklings. Why wouldn’t the same concept work for plants?

Electricity was the primary problem: a source wasn’t readily available, and providing a permanent hookup didn’t seem worth the cost or effort since power was needed only a few nights out of the year. So I wired an outlet at the solarium ceiling for two heat lamps to hang above our most sensitive citrus, an Improved Meyer Lemon and an Owari Satsuma Mandarin from One Green World that we planted right in the ground.

Power is provided when needed by plugging as extension cord into a male receptacle in a weatherproof exterior “inlet”.

This system works so well that we’ve moved into the solarium all of the cold-sensitive plants that we previously overwintered in the greenhouse. Space is at a premium in this 7′ x 7′ structure, so we’ve had to be inventive. Around the Yuzu Ichandrin, we installed shelving for pots . . .

. . . and above, a piece of ¾” pipe serves to hang containers.

Staggering the height of the plants allows more to be squeezed in along the pipe.

In the ground within the solarium, we’ve been growing herbs all winter long, herbs that otherwise wouldn’t grow in winter: cilantro, parsley, and an herb form of celery.

Fresh “cutting” or “soup” celery is great to have in the garden as celery, along with carrots and onions, are the three essential aromatic vegetables used in making stocks and sauces. Buying a whole head of celery in the store is wasteful. Although a good market will let you buy one stalk at a time, we’re a long way from a market. So keeping fresh celery on hand would otherwise be a challenge. Now all we have to do when celery is called for is wander outside -  with the solarium, any time of the year – pluck a few stalks, and tie them together with other herbs in a bouquet garni. Nichols has the seeds: VCE185, Afina. Plant seeds once, and from then on the celery will self-seed prolifically.

An added benefit: as long as I was wiring the solarium, I installed an outlet in the adjacent greenhouse to provide power for a heat mat. A heat mat will enable us to begin sprouting seeds in early February, a month earlier than would otherwise be possible. So it’s now time to begin perusing the seed catalogs and planning for spring plantings. Nichols and Territorial, here we come!

After a barren spell in November, our Muscovy ducks are laying again. Keeping a light on in the duck shed until 10:00 every night seems to have made a difference, as they began laying again shortly after we began that regimen.

Some of the ducks are content to lay in the duck shed. When we open the doors to let the ducks out in the morning (having been shut in over night to protect them from predators) there the eggs are, in the nests the ducks nestle into the straw in the corners of the shed. All we have to do is bend down and pick them up.

For other ducks, laying their eggs in the duck shed simply won’t do. So they seek out less convenient places. Some locations become semi-permanent, and they revisit them regularly: underneath the outdoor workbench behind the potting soil containers, behind the garbage and recycling cans, underneath the tarp covering the compost pile.

A few hens, however, are really secretive. They don’t want you to know where they are laying their eggs, and if you discover one location they tend to abandon it and find yet another. When the duck shed door is opened in the morning these secretive hens set off: alone, determined, and with a purpose. If you want to find their eggs, you have to follow them, and do so carefully and innocuously.  If they see they’re being followed, they will abort their clandestine mission. And if you divert your attention for just a moment they can vanish, disappearing into the brush.

Meet one of our surreptitious hens.

After watching this hen for several mornings I finally succeeded in tracing her to her nest right in the middle of a pile of brush and prunings waiting to be burned. And I do mean right in the middle. I had to carve my way in, using hand shears to tunnel a passageway through the bramble. Stretched out flat on my belly with only my ankles hanging out, I retrieved eight eggs.

Crawling on my belly like a reptile to find eggs simply wouldn’t do. I set a torch to that pile. She’ll never use that nest again.

The next day, that hen once more set out for her burn pile. What few coals remained of that pile were still smoldering. She circled it again and again, repeatedly coming back to and stopping at what had been her entrance. You could almost see her scratching her head: what the hell happened here?

Still, every morning she’s setting off towards where her burn pile used to be. There’s got to be a new nest. One morning I’m trying to follow two hens. Our burn pile hen disappears behind a copse of trees and brush. I rush to see where she’s gone. Damn, lost them both!

This morning, she’s off again. I’m keeping a loose tail. When I see her round that copse, I high-tail it over there. She sees me, pretends she’s just out on a stroll. But I’ve seen where she’s been looking, where she was headed.

That’s an abandoned wood rat mound, next to an old, rotting Douglas-fir stump. A little searching, and there it is, nestled under and inside the wood rat mound: her latest nest, containing a half a dozen eggs.

Another victory, albeit temporary. Tomorrow the game begins anew.

Thursday morning (January 5), our first lambs of the season were born, twins – a male and a female. At first, things looked to be going fine. Each was strong and healthy, although the male was a bit bigger than the female; and mama was feeding both. But Friday evening, we noticed that mama was no longer holding still for the female to let her feed. She was now markedly smaller than the male, who had been growing and putting on weight. She was looking weak. If we didn’t do something, she wasn’t going to make it.

Irina fixed a self-feeding bottle for her, but milk replacer is not a satisfactory solution. Even if you can get the lamb to drink from the bottle and feed itself, formula just isn’t nearly as good as mother’s milk. Lambs don’t grow as much or as fast, and they never catch up from a slow start to become big, healthy adult sheep.

That night, I dreamt of sheep grooming stands. The headpiece would hold mama still while our little black lamb snuck in and suckled to her heart’s content. Next morning, I went straight to the computer and googled “sheep grooming stand”, looking for inspiration. This design I found promising:

The concept is simple, the device quick and easy to use, and effective. Kind of like “stocks” for recalcitrant livestock.

So first thing Saturday morning I went to work, using scrap lumber and remnants of a dismantled dish antenna. The device was designed to be installed in the railings separating the two pens so as to be usable from either pen. It was ready to be put into service right after lunch.

Mama may not be happy, but baby sure is. Five times a day, Malingering Mama is in lockdown for nursing.

Results were immediate. She’s strong and healthy again, and quickly catching up to her brother.

Sunday morning, we woke up to a bit of a hullabaloo. Four new lambs were scattered about the yard, two white and two black. Lambs were bawling, mamas were baaing. We gathered up the lambs from the mud, cleaned them up, then set out to sort things out, figure out who belonged to whom.

Finding the mamas was pretty straightforward. Pick up the lambs, put them in the lambing pens, and the mamas should follow. That part went smoothly. Problem was, we only had one open lambing pen. The other was occupied by Malingering Mama – if she was minding her young ones properly, she could instead be let out with the flock. Crammed into a single pen, the new mamas were butting each other. Little lambs were flying. So we had to quickly erect an emergency, auxiliary pen and separate the combatants. Then came the hard part: which lambs belonged with which mama? After careful watching, seeing who was being fed by whom, Irina finally figured out the highly improbable solution: one mama had had triplets, all female, two white and one black; the other, a single female.

So at the moment, all is calm in the sheep shed.

This morning (January 10), Malingering Mama was observed freely feeding her female lamb, without being restrained. Maybe she was just suffering from a bout of post-partum depression. A release date is pending, depending on continued good behavior.

The grape harvest is in . . .

Niko, harvest crew foreman

. . . thanks to the noble efforts of our volunteer pickers.

Pickers, hard at work

The picked grapes were immediately dumped into the stemmer-crusher, the juice and pulp falling directly into fermentation tanks (32-gallon food-grade plastic containers).

George ensures everything is done right.

The picking was done before noon, culminating in the harvest celebration.

Yield was about 1800 pounds, pretty light for our acre of Pinot Noir – but not bad, considering the weird weather this year. Sugars came in a little under 19° Brix – the lowest we’ve ever seen, but we were thankful to get any grapes at all. About 25 pounds of sugar brought the Brix up to ~21°. The grapes are now bubbling away in the shop (which temporarily serves as the fermentation room).

Punching down the cap

The cap, formed of skins and pulp, must be punched down twice a day, to maximize color and flavor extraction (the red color of almost all red wines comes from the skins, not the pulp) and to minimize the risk of oxidation. Fermentation will take three to four weeks. Six fermentation tanks holding ~25 gallons each will yield enough wine to fill two 60-gallon oak barrels. That should get us through a couple more years.

Once the grapes were in, attention turned to other essential farm tasks – like managing manure. The sheep shed needed to be cleaned out in preparation for winter.

From foreman to shit shoveler

The manure-infused straw is piled high to begin composting.

Ducks feast on unearthed worms and insects.

After about six months, the compost pile is ready to be moved and in the process, turned. The pile below was started about six months ago.

This pile will now be covered with a tarp to keep it from getting soggy during the winter months. By next spring, the straw and manure will have transformed into rich and beautifully textured soil, ready to be worked into the garden beds.

Then we start all over again.

The needed miracle has happened: our grapes are finally ripening.

Although the weather hasn’t exactly been hot and sunny, days have been warm even when overcast, and it hasn’t rained all that much. Persistent cloud cover has kept temperatures up at night.  While we probably won’t end up with the 21° Brix we’d like to see, we should come close and the grapes will be plenty ripe enough to make good wine, even if we have to chapitalize a bit. It’s a good thing, too – all the barrels in our cellar are empty.

Now all that’s left is to fight off the birds and yellowjackets for a few more days. The propane cannon is booming every fifteen minutes or so . . .

and Niko, our house guest from Germany, is on vineyard patrol.

Where’s that wascally wobin?

I’ve been monitoring temperatures inside the solarium since it’s been finished. During the day, temperatures have consistently been 10-15 degrees warmer than outside, even when cloudy. I was surprised to see inside temperatures falling at night to as low as outside temperatures. Since the main objective of the solarium is to provide some frost protection, that was a little troubling. So we added thermal mass, to better hold warmth during the night.

The tubes are 8″ PVC, cut from two 20′ lengths into five approximately 8′ lengths (the shorter pipe is two 4″ lengths glued together, which loses a foot). Caps are glued on the bottom and just slipped over the top. The tubes are filled with water, with Rim Guard added as an anti-freeze (Rim Guard is a non-toxic, agricultural byproduct of sugar beet processing, normally used for ballast in tractor tires – it looks and smells like molasses).

After installation of the tubes, I’ve noted low temperatures inside the solarium remaining 2-3 degrees warmer than outside low temperatures at night, which is getting close to the additional warmth we need to protect our tenderest plants during the coldest of cold spells. Our coldest nights come on clear, crisp days when the sun shines brightly, which should allow the tubes to absorb plenty of heat. This winter will reveal how the solarium performs under those conditions.

Fall has arrived, and our preparations for winter are proceeding apace.

Firewood is cut, split, and stacked. Chimneys are swept and wood stoves cleaned.

We’re processing tomatoes from the garden into salsa, stored in jars in the cellar; and into tomato sauce, for the freezer. This year, for the first time, production of peppers, cilantro, and basil is keeping up with the tomatoes.

Garlic, onions, shallots, and potatoes are already hanging in the cellar. Squash vines are beginning to wither, and we’ll soon gather winter squash to be stored away. We’ve already put up one batch of sauerkraut, and two more are fermenting away.

We’ve been eating lemon cucumbers and summer squash. Corn has been late this year, but is finally coming in. We’ve been harvesting broccoli and cauliflower, and should start harvesting Brussels sprouts soon. As an experiment, this year we started and planted out another crop of broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, to see if we can grow them through the winter and into next spring. Dry beans should soon be ready for picking and shucking. Our green bean crop was a total failure, succumbing to gophers this year.

The solarium is finally finished . . .

. . . and beginning to be planted.

Two years ago – before the solarium was in the works – we planted an Asian pear tree, in a spot which inconveniently turned out to be right front of the solarium door. It will have to be moved to a new home this winter.

With leftover Solexx sheeting, I threw together a row cover . . .

. . . which I think I’ll use to grow mâche this winter. The mâche, along with lettuces and spinach, have been started and are growing in the greenhouse, to be transplanted out when ready.

We’ve been replanting and picking lettuces and spinach all summer long.

In the vineyard, grapes are just now turning color.

I recall that in the late ’90s and early years of this century, veraison happened around mid-August. But the last few years, it seems to be happening later and later. In what turned out to be the great and bounteous vintage of 2008, veraison was around September 8. That was really late; we had resigned ourselves to not making wine that year, until a late and extended warm and dry spell turned dross into gold. 2011 is two weeks behind 2008. We’ll see . . .

A big project for us while the weather holds out is replacing a failed septic system. This involves a new drain field . . .

. . . as well as a new tank.

That’s our friend John Powell doing the work. The puppy – Zephyr – belongs to friends living in town who need a puppy-sitter for a few weeks. She’s really “digging” being a farm dog. Reverting to city life is going to require a tough adjustment.

After a cool start, summer is at last in full swing on the farm.

It’s that time of the year when we almost have more than we can eat, share, put up, give away, or feed to the ducks and sheep.

We’ve already got one batch of sauerkraut fermenting. Our new, stainless steel krauthobel was a joy to work with. Shed one head  into bus tub, add a little salt (1.5 oz per pound of cabbage) and mix, dump into sterilized crock, repeat until done.

The traditional wooden one Cousin Doris sent us last year from Germany was fine for a couple or three heads, but swelled as it became saturated and became more and more difficult to slide. Finally, the joints came unglued and it fell apart.

We picked only half the cabbage in our cabbage patch because that’s all our one crock could accommodate. The second crock that we bought new to use last year seeped – so we returned it as soon as the kraut could be taken out.  But now we’ve got another, pre-owned #10 crock, in great condition, found at the Antiques Mall in Albany. You can count on the old ones not seeping.

It’s been hard to find time to sit at the computer, writing blog posts. This time of the year, there’s more to do on the farm than there is time to do it, and I find myself rather working outside than sitting at my desk. But farm work leaves the mind free for thinking. I’ve been asking myself, what is the purpose of this blog, and why continue to do it?

We’re beyond the point where there’s any hope of inducing the changes we need to make as a society to deal with the realities of peak oil and climate change. The minds of the deniers will remain unpersuaded until the bitter end, and undoubtedly even beyond. To avert climate change, we would have to implement plans to cease burning fossil fuels immediately, bringing the global economy to a grinding halt. That’s just not going to happen, regardless of how catastrophic the consequences of not doing so. The consequence of failing to plan, on a societal level, for the inevitable involuntary halt in the consumption of fossil fuels, is the social and economic disruptions that are beginning to evidence themselves around the globe.

The aim of this blog is to chronicle how peak oil and climate change are playing themselves out. I seek to highlight the economic manifestations of peak oil, putting them in the broader context which most economists fail to see.  I want to communicate the signs of global warming and the climate changes it is inducing, as those signs manifest themselves.

And finally, I want to share with others our personal efforts to effect the change that we do have control over, to reflect on the changes we can make in our own lives that heighten our freedom of action and increase our flexibility to respond to an unknown future. The hope still remains that humans might not screw Earth’s climate up so badly that survival becomes impossible or pointless.

In light of the realization that we need to stop trying to “save the planet” and instead just realize our place in it, I’m thinking of my calling as Lebenskünstler. Life is an art form, to be lived as poetry. Paul Kingsnorth at Dark Mountain Project explains:

This is what [poetry] means: to counter the progressive narrative with all its fixations on expansion and control, on windfarms and transistor radios and electric cars and superstores and growth and measurement by results. To have time on our hands to sink into other ways of seeing. Poetry is the still point, the pole around which the chaos runs and circles, and the duty of the poet is to remain still, to watch, to report back in language which distills the essence of the movements all around her.

I may not have the soul of a poet. But perhaps I can chronicle. We can all sit.  Each of us has the capability to realize the mystery and the beauty within which we find ourselves. We all can do what we can. And that’s all anybody can expect.

Global civilization’s many crises continue to develop, seemingly in slow motion.  Despite the EIA’s decision to tap 60 million barrels of oil from reserves and signs that Saudi Arabia has managed to increase production a bit – at least momentarily – resulting in global production rising, oil prices stubbornly remain high at around $118 (Brent) and just below $100 (WTI) – high enough to threaten whatever “recovery” economists and politicians might hope to see as dozens of countries across the globe experience energy shortages and power outages. Washington European nations, at the moment trying desperately to head off a Greek default that could ruin its banks and put an end to the Euro project, continues lurching from crisis to crisis – Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy – each more serious and more implacable than the last. Arctic sea ice continues in its death spiral. Antarctic ice is melting faster than ever. 2010 was the most extraordinary year for extreme weather events in history, and 2011 is already the most costly for natural disasters – after only half a year. In Washington any action at all, much less the drastic steps necessary to avert global ecological suicide, are proving impossible. Even efforts to return to the “growth” that is responsible for our predicament are gridlocked in a time warp, as Democratic policies which would seem woefully timid to the Roosevelt administration are blocked by Republican insistence on imposing policies  that would seem extreme and vicious to the Hoover administration.

But on the farm, all is not bleak.

Mama duck has been in the duck house, sitting on her clutch of eggs, for 28+ days now, long enough they should be hatching. Yesterday, I noticed that one of the eggs had been pushed out of the nest. Reaching down to pick it up, I found a hole where the egg was partially cracked open. The egg being cold, I expected the duckling to be dead. But then I noticed a slight motion.

From long experience, we have learned that non-intervention is the best policy when it comes to handling farm animals. Interfering takes time, an emotional investment, and sometimes money that equals or even exceeds whatever profits might be realized – and the efforts are usually futile, anyway.

But this time, I couldn’t help myself. I picked off the remainder of the shell imprisoning the duckling (those shells are tough!) and placed it under a heat lamp, close to water and food. A couple of hours later, the little darling was up and about. That night, we let the older ducklings into the brooding room. The new arrival spent the night snuggled up with its older brothers and sisters.

The next morning, we opened the doors as usual, letting everybody out to roam free. The new duckling soon found its way back to mama.

Sometimes the magic works.

A cautionary note, for anyone thinking of moving to Oregon: here’s the farmer on an Oregon summer day, working in the vineyard.

Recall the heretical, anti-growth words of beloved governor Tom McCall:

Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.

Where is a Tom McCall when we need him?

Summer solstice is approaching, and the new garden is almost completed. The water barrels are in and connected to our water system, water level controlled by a float valve (watering is done by bucket or watering can). Raised beds are almost all readied and planted.

Peas and onions; leeks and shallots; cabbages, carrots and bush beans; first planting of corn and flageolet beans; tomatoes; broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. The bed at the bottom left awaits warmer weather for peppers.

More tomatoes, under the cold frames.

Soil temperature is now 76° in the raised beds, whereas soil temperature in the ground is 67°. In the raised beds, soil temperatures are warm enough to get good germination on warm-weather crops such as beans and corn. I’ve found this chart to be very informative and useful.

The chart explains why we have a tough time germinating lettuce in the ground in the summer. We designed the greenhouse to keep cool in the summer as well as warm in the winter, to better germinate cool-weather crops like lettuces even in hot weather. That way we can replant seedlings in the garden every couple of weeks before the older lettuces bolt, maintaining a constant supply of tender young greens throughout the summer and then into autumn and winter.

The deer fence isn’t keeping gophers out.

Gophers did a number on the roots of that poor cabbage. Luckily we’ve got a few back-up starts left in the greenhouse.

The one bed at the back still needs compost added and working. One mama Muscovy who had made her nest in the compost pile ventured out from under the covering tarp a couple of days ago, five ducklings in tow.

The other mama Muscovy, on a warm & sunny day last weekend, rolled her eggs out from under their protective tarp. This morning, mama and her dozen eggs were gone – nothing left but scattered feathers. I suspect a fox. The mama in the stump is still okay, and another mama is now (wisely) sitting inside the duck shed, where she’s safe.

A sad loss, not only of an adult female Muscovy but of a bevy of incipient ducklings.  That’s life and death on the farm. As consolation, I can now get at the compost pile, finish up the last raised bed, and get the squashes and cucumbers planted.

Here’s where great compost starts, with mucking out the sheep shed.

It’s no job for old men.

Young men seem to be scarce when it comes to this kind of work, and are most certainly not seasoned (or maybe scarred) enough to find joy in it.

Mucking the shed yields a big pile of manure.

A year later, alchemy – shit has transformed into black gold.

The payout continues for years after, in the form of the freshest,  most nutritious, and most delicious of food.

In the Spring a young drake’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love (apologies to Tennyson). Hens don’t seem to share the male’s enthusiasm – but they do begin to feel broody. Here on the farm, some are sitting. The white and black Muscovy in the photo below began to sit three months ago.

After two months sitting with no results, the brown Khaki Campbell hen took pity on her and offered to lend a hand (or more accurately, a breast). There’s at least one chick under there somewhere – but a brown one! Poor mama Muscovy.

Others are now getting into the act, too. Not happy with the duck shed, they find the strangest places to make their nests. There’s a female Muscovy under the blue tarp covering our compost pile.

I hope she has better luck than her compatriot long embedded in the duck shed. We need that compost, soon.

This Muscovy hen has chosen more aesthetically pleasing environs in an old stump.

She’s sitting on three eggs, at the moment.

Here are the proud papas-to-be.

Photo credit: Ken Bolf

We’ve acquired two rescue ducklings who needed a new home because they couldn’t get along with the neighbor’s chickens.

They’ve recently discovered the water trough. But notice that the Pekin (the white one) is sunbathing on the deck. Due to a recent trauma, she may never again go in the water again. A few mornings ago, she was splashing around merrily. Later that afternoon our dog Zooey was sitting patently by the tank, attention focused on the activity. A little while later, I noticed that Zooey hadn’t moved, and the youngster was being still, anchored near the float valve. Very strange. Turns out the poor dear couldn’t get out of the tank. She had become completely saturated, suffering from hypothermia, and almost drowned. I plucked her out, so weak she couldn’t even stand. I dried her off with a towel and set her under a heat lamp in the duck shed. A couple hours later she had stopped shivering, and by the next day was back to normal. Whew – I was afraid she was a goner.

Now there’s a brick in the tank, which the little darlings can step on & then hop out. Lesson learned.