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.

2011 will see the annual average price of crude oil the highest in history. Brent is expected to average about $111 for the year at the end of 2011, well above its previous high of about $97 in 2008. Despite record high oil prices, global oil supplies are defying standard economic theory and stubbornly refusing to grow.

The chart above, posted by Stuart Staniford at Early Warning, shows production of crude plus condensate has been basically flat since 2005. The meager increase over the last seven years in total liquids is largely coming from increases in NGPLs (hydrocarbons larger than methane removed from the natural gas stream), “other liquids” (biofuels, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, etc), and “refinery processing gains” (volume gains which occur in the refinery as heavier oils are cracked to lighter fuel products).

One economic consequence of stubbornly high oil prices in the U.S. is that people are driving less and less. Petroleum (gasoline and diesel fuel) consumption is well off peak 2007 levels, as seen in this chart posted by Mish Shedlock.

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the U.S. has been in a down trend now for almost four years – an unprecedented occurrence.

Mish offers an explanation of what’s happening:

The best explanation for declining gasoline usage is that millions have dropped out of the labor force.

* * *

People have given up looking for work, entered forced retirement collecting social security, ran out of unemployment benefits, do more shopping online, or are simply too broke (or have less desire) to travel than before.

Don’t expect the economic exhaustion that is a consequence of peak oil to end any time soon. John Michael Greer this week warns that already, the future can’t pay its bills.

Over the last decade . . . crude oil prices have more than tripled; over the last decade, behind a froth of speculative booms and busts, the world’s industrial economies have lurched deeper into depression. Peak oil researchers have pointed out for years that the former trend would bring about the latter, but long after events proved them right, the connection still remains unnoticed by most people.

Given the reality of a collapsing economic superstructure, a quite rational response is to begin to ease your way out and re-engage in the household economy, where wealth is unreported and untaxed and cannot be siphoned off.

Last spring you planted cabbage seeds; then transplanted the seedlings out to the garden; watered and tended the cabbage plants all summer; harvested the cabbage heads in the fall; shredded and salted the cabbage and pressed it in a big crock.

It’s December, you’ve got a hundred pounds of sauerkraut sitting in the cellar. Now what? How often can you stomach sauerkraut with sausage?

We’ve found that we really like sauerkraut prepared with a variety of meats: pork belly, sausage, ribs of all kinds – pork, beef, lamb – and poultry, especially duck. Duck hindquarters work well, as they are best braised. The other day non-pork eating friends visitd. Sauerkraut with our own Muscovy duck seemed the perfect treat.

Since there were to be eight of us, we used the wings as well as the hindquarters, to ensure we had enough meat to go around.

Sauerkraut with Muscovy Duck

1.5 liters sauerkraut
2 Muscovy ducks
2  medium onions, diced (we substituted leeks)
1 apple, peeled and diced
12 juniper berries, crushed
2 whole cloves
1 small bit nutmeg, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 C duck stock (chicken stock, if you don’t have duck stock)
1 C white wine
Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse sauerkraut well (three times in fresh water) and drain.
Cut wings and hindquarters off carcass. Remove duck breasts and save for another meal. Reserve duck carcass for stock or soup. Trim duck fat and save.
Trim upper part of wing from lower 2/3, reserving middle part and wing tip for soup or stock. Separate leg from thigh; chop thigh into two pieces.
Render duck fat.
Brown duck pieces; when browned, remove.
Add diced onions and cook, stirring, until softened.
Add apple and cook a bit, then sauerkraut. Cook for  a few minutes, stirring.
Splash with white wine; add stock, then browned duck pieces, bay leaf, juniper berries, cloves and nutmeg.
Bring to simmer and cook, covered, for 1½ hours or until duck is tender. Season to taste.
Serve with mashed potatoes and a nice little pinot noir.

Here’s the finished product.

This recipe would work equally well with a stewing chicken, game hens, or a small turkey, and would be even tastier with the addition of some pork or sausage. The possible permutations are endless, offering myriad ways to enjoy your summer garden all winter long.

My sister complained that last week’s missive didn’t have any Thanksgiving photos. Hey, gimme a break – I was trying to get the newsletter out before the event. Anyhow, here you go, Peg!

Here’s the noble bird, before being sliced and served.

That’s a 20 pound, free range turkey from Joe and Karen’s Rain Shadow El Rancho, processed right on site at their own facility that does poultry other area producers as well (including our ducks). The turkey was Joe and Karen’s contribution to the dinner. Isn’t it wonderful to be part of a great community?

The photo shows the beer drinkers’ table. As you can see the beer is pretty local – Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter from just over the hill in Bend, smooth and creamy, perfect on a cold day while relaxing snug and toasty by the wood stove. Never fear, the La Ferme Noire Pinot Noir was flowing freely as well.

Each of the 20 guests brought something – in particular, I thought Kim’s chocolate chili was killer, even if it’s not what one might associate with Thanksgiving. It deserves to become a La Ferme Noire tradition – we’ll have to ask Kim for the recipe.

Irina made the beautiful orange soup in the photo.

AUTUMN SQUASH BISQUE WITH GINGER

Ingredients

2 tsp vegetable oil
2 cups sliced onion or leek
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 2 inch cubes (= 4 generous cups)
2 pears peeled, cored & diced
2 gloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped (or 1 tsp powdered ginger)
½ tsp thyme
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ cup plain non-fat yogurt (Greek yogurt is best)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat
2. Add onions (leeks) and garlic and cook, stirring constantly until softened, 3-4 minutes
3. Add squash, pears, ginger and thyme, cook for 1 minute, stirring
4. Add broth and water; bring to a simmer
5. Reduce heat to low, cover pot and simmer until squash is tender, 35-45 minutes
6. Purée soup, if necessary in batches, in a food processor or blender
7. Return soup to pot and heat through. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice; stir
8. Garnish each serving with a spoonful of yogurt

My contribution was to cook the turkey. Here’s how:

 Two or three days before cooking:

1. Trim off wing tips, the neck, and Pope’s nose.
2. Dry  turkey inside and out and rub skin and cavity with a mixture of about 2 T coarse sea salt and 1 T of freshly crushed black peppercorns.
3. Put turkey on a rack inside a pan and then uncovered into the refrigerator to dry (this helps the skin to turn crispy during roasting).
4. Right then make the sauce. Throw turkey trimmings and giblets into a roasting pan, along with coarsely chopped carrots, celery, and onion.
5. Roast in a hot (~400°) oven until well browned and caramelized.
6. When turkey bits and vegetables are all well browned, removes from oven and place roasting pan on a burner. Splash in about a quarter bottle of dry white wine (an open bottle of pinot gris was handy) and scrape brown bits off the bottom of the pan with wooden spoon until they are dissolved in liquid.
7. Add chicken or other poultry stock (we had a couple of containers of chicken and duck stock in the freezer – a good quality store-bought stock such as Kirkland is okay, too) until turkey parts and vegetables are immersed and you have enough liquid for your sauce.
8. Add herbs and spices:  parsley, thyme, and bay leaf from the garden, a couple of whole cloves, perhaps a piece of star anise.
9. Bring to a boil and simmer for three hours or so.
10. Strain through a colander into another container and let cool.
11. When settled, spoon off the fat layer on top.
12. Refrigerate stock until ready to use. Having the stock finished on Monday means a lot less fussing when company is around on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day:

1. Take turkey out of the refrigerator in the morning to warm to room temperature before going into the oven.
2. About two hours before serving place turkey, breast-down, on a rack in a roasting pan. Add ~two cups of prepared stock. Put into a pre-heated 450° oven, immediately reducing heat to 375°.
3. 45 minutes later, flip the turkey so it’s breast-side up.
4. About an hour and a half after going into the oven, the turkey will be done. An instant reading thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the flesh where the thigh connects with the body should register 150°. The result: a beautifully browned, tender, moist, and juicy bird.
5. Remove turkey to a warm platter and cover loosely.
6. While the bird rests a bit before slicing, bring the prepared stock and juices from roasting pan to a simmer.
7. Thicken sauce (I like to thicken with corn starch rather than flour – it’s easier to control and I think results in a more refined texture). Put a couple of heaping fork fulls of corn starch into a small container, add cold water, whisk with a fork until dissolved, then drizzle into the simmering stock while stirring. Let cook a couple of minutes until stock thickens.  Repeat until you get the texture you want.
8. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For ease of carving and serving I first remove the hindquarters from the carcass, and then each breast in one piece.

Then the turkey is a snap to slice. You had to be quick: all the dark meat disappeared first.

And of course we had plenty of Irina’s famous bread, fresh, warm, and crusty from the oven.

Party animals that we all are these days, we had cleaned up and were in bed by nine.

The next day, the turkey carcass and all the leftover bones and trimmings went into the stock pot, along with aromatic vegetables (carrots, onions, and celery), fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, bay leaf), and a couple of whole cloves. A couple or three hours later, I strained the stock, set the bones aside to cool a bit, and put the stock back on the stove. I added a handful of barley (grown by our friends Paul and Nonie), sliced leeks, and diced carrots and turnips, all from the garden. When the turkey bones had cooled enough, I picked off the meat and added that to the pot, and then some diced potatoes. Simmer a bit more, until the potatoes are tender. Et voila! Turkey soup!

We’re now in to December, and we’re still harvesting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower from the garden – in fact, we have a new crop coming on, from the seedlings we transplanted out in August.

It’s pretty nice not to be dependent on the supermarket for vegetables, even in December. And really nice not to have to drive, or to travel at all, to get them. They’re right outside the door, fresh as can be.

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.

A study by Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Fleming at the U.S. Army War College concludes the volatility we’ve seen in oil prices and the lack of increased production as a response to high prices is evidence that we’re hitting geological limits to global oil production.

The excerpt below is from the abstract of the study “Considering oil production variance as an indicator of peak production“:

The primary finding was unprecedented statistical variance in oil production rates as well as in oil prices beginning approximately 2005 to 2010. In the case of oil production rates, variance is at historically low levels. In the case of oil prices, variance is at historically high levels. The data indicate a new higher order of inelasticity between oil price and oil production.

These findings support peak oil forecasts in the range of 2005 to 2010 and together provide strong evidence that geological factors could presently be limiting world oil production.

The inelasticity between oil price and oil production Fleming talks about is evidenced by the wild swings in oil prices over the last six years, as seen in this graph posted by Stuart Staniford at Early Warning . . .

. . . while the lack of response from oil producers can be seen in this graph posted by Gail Tverberg at Our Finite World showing production from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since 1965.

MENA Monthly crude oil production, based on EIA data.

MENA’s oil consumption is rising, so even if MENA’s oil production could rise, that does not mean that oil exports would rise. For example, Saudi Aramco projects Saudi Arabia’s domestic consumption will reach an equivalent of 8.3 million barrels by 2028, more than double the 3.4 million barrels equivalent in 2009 – leaving precious little for export.

Ecological economist David Stern recently published a paper on the essential role of energy in economic growth, aptly titled ‘The Role of Energy in Economic Growth“. Stern observes that mainstream economic theory pays no attention to the role of energy; however, physics shows that energy is necessary for economic production and, therefore, economic growth. The “synthesis” model proposed by Stern explains the industrial revolution as a releasing of the constraints on economic growth due to the development of methods of using coal and the discovery of new fossil fuel resources.

Climate considerations aside, for business as usual – the continuation of economic growth – it’s bad enough that the world is bumping up against limits to oil production volume; however, the energy returned on energy investmen (EROI) is dropping, too – it’s costing more and more energy to produce the same amount of oil. A new study titled “A New Long Term Assessment of Energy Return on Investment (EROI) for U.S. Oil and Gas Discovery and Production” finds:

EROI for finding oil and gas decreased exponentially from 1200:1 in 1919 to 5:1 in 2007. The EROI for production of the oil and gas industry was about 20:1 from 1919 to 1972, declined to about 8:1 in 1982 when peak drilling occurred, recovered to about 17:1 from 1986–2002 and declined sharply to about 11:1 in the mid to late 2000s. The slowly declining secular trend has been partly masked by changing effort: the lower the intensity of drilling, the higher the EROI compared to the secular trend. Fuel consumption within the oil and gas industry grew continuously from 1919 through the early 1980s, declined in the mid-1990s, and has increased recently, not surprisingly linked to the increased cost of finding and extracting oil.

A new paper by economist James Hamilton titled Oil Prices, Exhaustible Resources, and Economic Growth documents that a key feature of the historical growth in production has been exploitation of new geographic areas rather than application of better technology to existing sources, and suggests that the end of that era is nigh. Hamilton shows that economic dislocations have historically followed temporary oil supply disruptions.  He concludes:

If the peaking of global production results in further big increases in the price of oil . . . the economic consequences of reduced energy use would have to be significant.

* * *

If the future decades look like the last 5 years, we are in for a rough time.

Most economists view the economic growth of the last century and a half as being fueled by ongoing technological progress. Without question, that progress has been most impressive. But there may also have been an important component of luck in terms of finding and exploiting a resource that was extremely valuable and useful but ultimately finite and exhaustible. It is not clear how easy it will be to adapt to the end of that era of good fortune.

Tom Murphy writes that we now find ourselves in an energy trap.

In brief, the idea is that once we enter a decline phase in fossil fuel availability—first in petroleum—our growth-based economic system will struggle to cope with a contraction of its very lifeblood. Fuel prices will skyrocket, some individuals and exporting nations will react by hoarding, and energy scarcity will quickly become the new norm. The invisible hand of the market will slap us silly demanding a new energy infrastructure based on non-fossil solutions. But here’s the rub. The construction of that shiny new infrastructure requires not just money, but . . . energy. And that’s the very commodity in short supply. Will we really be willing to sacrifice additional energy in the short term—effectively steepening the decline—for a long-term energy plan? It’s a trap!

A rough time, indeed. Effectively coming to grips with this new reality won’t be from the top down; it’s futile to look for or expect political solutions. Rather, doing so will require the kind of “magic” that begins with the individual, and works outward from there. It’s not the destination that matters, but rather the journey. And anybody can take that first step.

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.

IEAs chief economist Fatih Birol, speaking at a conference in London, said that the oil import bill in Europe, the U.S. and Japan is close to the level hit in 2008, when high prices were a contributing factor in the severe recession. Birol noted that when expenditures on oil rise to around 5% of gross domestic product, it has historically caused economic problems. He then warned:

Today with a more than $100 oil price, we are close to that 5% hurdle.

Birol said that of all the economies in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. is most vulnerable to high oil prices.

Although oil prices have not yet approached the $147/barrel mark hit briefly in 2008, the total OECD oil import bill for 2011 is close to that of 2008. Brent crude is up again, hitting $113/barrel earlier this week, an increase of nearly $14 a barrel over last week’s lows. WTI prices have recently been hovering around $86 a barrel. The spread between Brent and WTI this week widened again to $25.79 a barrel, only a dollar below the record high of $26.87 set on September 26th.

One sign that global oil production has hit a plateau is that crude oil production is no longer responsive to price signals, as seen in this chart posted by Gail Tverberg at Our Finite World.

Robert Hirsch (of Hirsch Report fame) observes that global oil production has been on a plateau for the last seven years, fluctuating within a 6% range. He expects production to continue to fluctuate within a narrow range for another 1-4 years, and then to transition into decline.

Tom Whipple at the Falls Church News-Press writes that the ongoing and intractable European debt crisis is a symptom of the depletion of cheap oil. The European economies – and economies of the rest of the OECD, and especially the U.S. – are, for the foreseeable future, likely to contract under the weight of expensive energy. Bailouts and recapitalizations will prove futile, serving only to transfer more wealth from taxpayers to the rich and powerful, especially the banksters.

While global economies might take a hit from high oil prices, that won’t do much to postpone the inevitable decline in global oil production. Hirsch calculates that even a decline of a few million barrels per day in world oil consumption would result in a relatively small delay in the onset of world oil production decline.

Kurt Cobb observes it’s hard to imagine a future that is different from the recent past – for most people, perhaps an insuperable task. Even as conditions worsen, people will expect that if governments would just take the right steps, the world will return to the path of exponential economic growth. For a while longer, politicians – Democrat and Republican alike – will get elected promising to do just that. But wish though we might, those dreams are over. Little by little, we’ll have to begin to let go of the dreams we’ve grown up with, and to begin dreaming something altogether new.

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.

At the moment, the world seems to be stuck in “groundhog day” mode. Catastrophes and crises are now the norm. Witness the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March, coupled with the ever-worsening horror of Fukushima that threatens to never end; the epic outbreak of tornadoes in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee and the record-breaking flooding along the Mississippi at the same time Texas is burning in the grip of record-breaking drought. In Europe, the economic crisis embroiling Ireland, Greece, Portugal is  threatening not only to spread, but to bring down the Euro and perhaps the EU itself – and political leaders are at a complete loss for what to do. In the U.S., our politics are consumed with the same endless, repetitive inanities over irrelevancies that have dominated public discourse for decades now, while the real problems that loom over us – peak oil, climate change, ecological devastation, economic collapse, a hopelessly corrupt sick care system, obscene inequality, and corporate domination – go ignored and unaddressed.

Yet still, outside the sun is shining, finally. After a cold and wet spring, thoughts again return to the garden. Some crops are already being picked, like lettuces.

The re-mesh covers keep the deer from getting them before we do. Until a few days ago, a plastic sheet laid over the re-mesh acted as a cold frame, protecting the tender young lettuces from the elements. As you can see, garlic, mache, and spinach are coming along as well.

We’ve been eating fresh asparagus, too.

Our seed potatoes were starting to sprout a couple of weeks ago, so we had to muck them in despite the rain and cold. Now the sprouts are beginning to stick there heads above the ground.

Now that it’s mid-May, we’re finally getting bud break in the vineyard – three weeks at least later than normal.

One big plus to being laid off a couple of weeks ago is that I now have time to do all the work around the farm that was getting neglected while I was watching over events in the legislature – an inevitably disappointing, dispiriting, and ultimately futile exercise. With my time once again my own, I was able to finish the project of relocating our main garden to an area we could fence to keep deer out.

The fence is 8′ high. We had a couple rolls of woven-wire fencing left over from fencing the perimeter of the property when we first purchased it. The gate was a remnant of a long-abandoned kennel we erected for our black lab Pinot when he first arrived (silly us, thinking he would sleep outside rather than share our bedroom). All we had to purchase were the poles, which ran about $10 each, wood and steel alike. We also needed 10 yards of compost to fill the raised beds, much more than we had on hand. John Powell found a local source of organic compost made from cow and sheep manure and straw, and delivered it right where we needed it. Our Holcomb silt loam soil, blended with the compost, is rich and beautiful stuff indeed. I’ve got one bed worked up, now planted with snow peas and sugar snaps. I’ll work up the remainder of the beds and, as the sun becomes more reliable and the soil warms up a bit, direct seed crops like carrots and plant out the starts (cabbages, tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc.) now growing in the greenhouse.

Oregon is a darn good place for subsistence-style farming, for family use or for small-scale trade. First, there are the fertile soils, the amenable weather, and relatively abundant water. Land is relatively inexpensive – especially in east Linn County, which is why we could afford to live here – and many, many properties contain cheap, derelict dwellings, waiting to be rescued and renovated. Farm and forest deferral programs result in property taxes being incredibly low, provided the dwelling is modest. Because Oregon relies on income taxes rather than sales taxes, the state tax burden for subsistence farmers is also low – little or no income, no state income tax. Similarly, limited income means limited or no federal income or employment tax burdens.

Global, national, or even state and local issues may be beyond our reach or control. But we are blessed to be able to survive -nay, thrive – right here.