Greenstorm's Journal

Talked with Tucker most of the weekend about relationship stuff. Seems like his trip broke a depression, or something. The talks are ongoing but have been really good. I feel like I'm talking with a person again in so many ways.

I took a break from talking with Tucker to talk with Kelsey and that was really lovely. The real North is rough and she's in a profession supposed to help the most disadvantaged people up there so she's having a rough time, as is everyone around her I think. On the other hand she's just really good to talk to. I briefly explained the Tucker situation to her and she asked "what's the best case scenario" which is what I needed to be asked.

I had today off work too, an extra long weekend for me, so I was able to spend the day doing farm stuff and re-centering from the weekend's talks. I combed through my tomato trial and picked and labelled ripe fruits (and trimmed back some extra growth, I'm probably still missing some fruits though), picked the gaspe corn (ripe enough to dry indoors where it won't get eaten), picked a bunch of pickling cukes, and finally finished butchering the last few primals from the kill two weeks ago since they finally thawed enough to work on today.

Right now both crockpots are rendering down soap lard, my soap pan is full of lard waiting to be turned into more soap, the pressure cooker is cooling down with dog food in it, the stockpot is simmering some tonkotsu broth, the canner is cooling down full of carnitas, my freezer is chilling down thickish pork belly slices to be eaten with ssamjang, and there's thin-sliced meat waiting for jerky marinade in the fridge. Oregano is currently in the dehydrator. My chimney is supposed to be replaced next weekend and today, at least, I'm not feeling the lack of heat.

My house feels alive.

I've moved back up out of the basement to the loft room. I get more light in the mornings up there for the next little while, before there's no more morning light. It's warmer up there and the bed is better, though it's much louder. I can't ignore the dogs barking much at all.

Two mornings ago Thea was barking seriously for a long time so I stuck my head out, didn't see anything, went downstairs and put on my boots, stepped out the door, and saw the fattest black bear you can imagine down by the chicken coop. I popped back inside and got the gun and went back outside; Avallu had stirred himself because I was out, and he and Thea chased the bear back over the fence. So there I am standing in giant insulated gumboots and underwear, holding a gun, clomping around in the back of the house to make sure everything was ok. Pretty funny, honestly. I didn't see the bear again this morning and it doesn't seem to have hurt anything or got into any feed, which is good. That was a very, very fat bear and he would not have fit in my freezer, nor would I have had the energy to process him properly.

Tucker and I watched the Brothers Bloom and I thought about mononormativity being strong enough that it needs to get rid of even siblings, not just other romantic relationships. I thought about how personal development happens outside longstanding relationships, you can't maintain a longstanding relationship in those stories and still do personal growth. I thought about how when someone needs to do personal growth they find a girl who has the qualities they need and then date her until the qualities rub off. Then the narrative discards the girl, she probably didn't have interiority or an arc of her own anyhow.

I thought about someone knowing me enough to know what I want.

I'm turning over and over what I want from a relationship, what I need from it, what isn't good for me and what is. I'm turning over and over what I need to trust and what I don't, and what it looks like to trust Tucker to be himself and where that self fits best in position to me.

I will say that I've been doing distance relationships for a long time, since Jan in Germany in my early twenties, and nearly two decades later I may be better at them but I have plenty of them. Distance is for talky relationships.

I feel the need to come at what I need from a values perspective. What does that look like?

( Rough stab at relationship values )

Counseling yesterday, with some epiphanies:

( I think I figured out what's happening when Tucker is gone and I have a rough time. )

This makes sense, and it's a relief to begin to understand the mechanisms at work here.

Anyhow, today I went to the bush alone and hung out measuring small trees and listening to a podcast on sour beer on my phone. It was sunny and warm-but-not-too-warm and I got a bunch of work done (though it turns out maybe the work didn't need to be done?). I got a picture of the little hills in the Inzana I had lunch on the other day, from a different little hill. I will do similar work tomorrow. It was really nice, and I snagged the little Chevy Colorado from work through pure good fortune so I didn't have to drive the enormous and annoying 2021 F250 with a front grille taller than I am. I do not enjoy the big trucks.

Last night I hung out with Tucker sorta spontaneously and that was really nice too. It was a connecty thing, not a relationship figuring-out thing, and if we're going to figure anything out we need that connection. I was reminded that the good part is when we're together in person. I was in town and just stopped by to pick stuff up and ended up staying the night, which meant when I stopped by home in the morning to get work stuff I'd left the porch door open overnight and the heat on and it was very cold and likely also very expensive.

Oh well. I had put the pork primals in the fridge at least.

Today will be a little butchering, a little picking tomatoes, and potentially receiving some vanilla. I joined a group called the vanilla bean co-op on facebook, which is what it says on the cover. I can get vanilla for roughly $11/oz US, and they have a bunch of different kinds. I've been getting a little of different ones and have found the Ugandan are DEFINITELY the best -- like brownie batter. Very fun. Now I need to figure out how to extract the flavour into mead.

I'm also giving some thought to taking a truckload of meat down to the city and selling it to my friends. The logistics of travelling 12-15 hours with a bunch of frozen meat seem a little steep, but less steep than meeting folks piecemeal from surrounding towns to sell them ducks. Plus I know my city friends would appreciate them. I'd feel a little better connected and I'd get some money back and empty some freezers. I'd primarily thought to sell ducks but people are very intrigued by my dark red pork. I'm considering taking a pig to the... well, you can get it slaughtered on farm and bring it in to the abattoir and they'll butcher it and that's a little more legal than me home butchering and distributing. I don't think the butchers will know how to handle the fatty pork though.

While I'm talking about borderline-to-very-illegal meat processing, I smoked my first lardo (cured pork backfat) the other day. It's traditionally eaten thinly sliced on toast, basically in place of butter or cream cheese. This one is rosemary and bay leaf scented too. Home curing is completely beyond the pale for sales, but it seems like a pretty good way to handle the backfat on these older sows.

I suspect I didn't mention that Black Chunk had her babies two weeks ago, Penny did about five days ago, and Hooligan (daughter of Rapunzel, I just put Rapunzel into the freezer) did about three days ago. Chunk had three that I found, she made her nest in a slightly odd spot. Penny had at least 5, but at least 2 got crushed because she had insufficient bedding and it was a cold night. Once I loaded her up with bedding she shacked up with black Chunk to co-parent; both have 2 males and 3 females. Hooligan nested where I wanted her to, far from everyone, and she's got three males and two females. I don't know if I'm up for castrating that many myself, my willpower is not where it should be, so I may try and take them into the vet. I should call the vet. All the piglets are great and frolicking and happy looking.

Anyhow, a day in the field has definitely been good for me. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Yesterday we pretty much finished rendering the soap lard, and I have a 5 gallon bucket full of it. It's a good thing I love making soap; also what an amazing object to have! Overnight last night/tonight the cooking lard from leaf fat is rendering.

21 500ml and 8 750ml jars of stock are done and in the pantry.

Cheryl has been given her meat for the chicken trade; Ron has not yet.

Tomorrow the coppas actually go into cure and 3 more primals get broken down. The pace is slowing.

The chickens hopped the fence yesterday and were in the grain trial so I chased them out, then we harvested eveything that was ripe. That means amolinka, bishop, Ble de arcour einkorn, blue durum, ceres, marquis (pr seeds planted May 6 but not the cedar isle stuff planted may 11), pelisser, pembina, reward, and white sonora. Pelissier and blue durum are exceptionally beautiful: almost lavender coloured heads with dark awns. The einkorn was green long after the other wheats started to go golden, but it was as ready as the rest of them yesterday.

Still remaining in the grain trial is rivet (which I love and really want to ripen), rouge de bordeaux, braveheart triticale, and khamut from salt spring seeds. Also the two cedar isle patches, AC andrews and marquis, are still unripe.

There were a couple stray bits of ergot in a couple of the wheats, and also in one barley. The triticale has a bunch. It seems to be easy to pick out since it replaces the grain with a huge black fungal body, and I'm further told that it floats where the rest of the grain will sink.

I brought in a bunch of broccoli raab seeds from the sorrento from William Dam seeds. I made no effort to keep it from cross-pollinating with other brassicae but I think only radishes were also blooming at that time, if anything. It'll be interesting to see. The ones I let go to seed in the greenhouse have dropped their seeds and are trying to grow me some of a fall crop already, though it may be too late for that.

The crock got half-filled with cucumber pickles. I'm pretty happy with the way the cucumbers turned out. They're very sweet compared to bought ones, except for a single bitter one (we cut off the very end and tasted them all out of curiosity). I grew boston, national, and morden pickling cukes this year. National produced first, morden and national were similar in production. Boston started later but seems to be ripening more all at once; Aug 23 or so was the first serious pick from it so it might not make it in a cooler summer.

I brought in several lovely ripe mikado black tomatoes the other day from both deck and field. I think it's in the lead as the best black tomato here this year. The tomatoes are fairly sizeable, slicers, and have great form. I will be tasting them soon. Meanwhile cabot, glacier, minsk early (the most productive) and moravsky div have set and will ripen large quantities of fruit each. Matt's wild cherry is finally hitting its stride. Katja probably will, as likely will silvery fir tree and a couple others. I think the trial can be considered a success: I learned a lot a lot a lot. The chickens have discovered the garden and are helping me eat tomatoes. Boo.

I harvested several unripe North Georgia Candy roaster squash from the vines and ate them like zucchini in a pasta sauce the other day. That was really good. I also tucked some into the pickling crock and am curious how that goes down. A lot of the squash look pretty immature, we'll see how much more heat we get this year to ripen. In future I might try to grow them up a trellis on the inside of the greenhouse/woodshed. Of the squash trials, burgess buttercup started putting out female fruit and squash earliest. Several of the kuris and the lofthouse squash are catching up, and gete oksomin and north georgia candy roaster seem to be doing ok. Fingers crossed I get some seed from something to plant next year. Again no attempt to keep things from pollinating each other; it was a hard pollinator year I think too. Likely that's because it was so warm then so cold then so warm over and over.

Though maybe bees should be in my three year plan. I'm getting some honey from a friend who has bees in town. I bet she could teach me.

I need to remember to call the bird butcher in Smithers to set a time for ducks and geese.

Ok. I made it through the last couple days. Cautiously, hopefully, the last week might have been the worst. It was that acute shock/loss thing where my emotional self just felt like TV static turned on extra loud all the time and I numbly went through the motions -- there were lots of motions, because a LOT of pig processing to do -- and I couldn't sleep well and I couldn't think about anything else and everything felt like numb exhaustion and pain. I mostly forgot the ends of sentences before I was done the beginning and I had no nouns.

Last night I slept 8 hours with only one brief waking, and instead of zombie-ing up to get back to work on pork I hung out and snuggled an chatted with Josh a bit. I still feel completely exhausted but I can think again and I have a self. It will at some point be ok. I may even get to actually connect with Josh rather than just do stuff beside him, that would be nice.

Frost was forecast for the garden last night and it didn't come, which is good because I didn't take in all the beans and tomatoes. I did bring in a couple potted peppers. We should have another clear week at least. Fall is coming fast. The dew was so heavy and chilly. Grasses are going golden.

Most of the primals are processed. I did a lot of chops and boneless tied roasts this time -- well, Josh ties the roasts -- and a bunch of canned tonkotsu stock. By the end of it I should have a 5 gallon bucket of lard rendered for soap, and a bunch of leaf/cooking lard too. The last couple pieces I want to break down for jerky and sausage. I'd really like to try making hot dogs, emulsified sausages are not something I've tried before and they're challenging. Also I want some more snacking cooked sausage, like garlic sausage, and I have a ton of bacon and a couple coppas and prosciuttinis to get in cure. So basically the play part begins.

Currently I may be trading some pork for some laying chickens, some pork for some roofing labour (though that will still be a lot of $$$), and some soap for some super beautiful jewelery a friend of mine makes (northern chickadee studio). That makes me feel a little better. Right now I'm hoarding a ridiculous amount of meat and I want it to make its way into the community.

Counseling shortly. My mind still isn't together enough to know what to say; the ability to think feels like a vastly underused muscle and so I can follow a piece of thought and then an anvil descends to weigh it down, but at least I'm thinking. I'm so, so glad my therapist is deeply poly. I need that perspective as I figure out what to do.

Right now I'm setting down the throughline of the relationship with Tucker, the constantly-in-this feeling. It was really hard to put down. I'm not sure if that's the thing I liked about it so much? What's left if I set it down? What do I want from the remaining relationship? If he's doing these trips a couple-three times a year and they're always this bad, is there a way to incorporate that information into a workable plan? Way back I'd tossed around the idea of having a relationship six months of the year or something, and just... not... the rest of the time. Would that help?

What do I do now?

What I can't do is just sit and wait for other people to change. That doesn't and hasn't worked.

So glad I hunted down this counselor, and so glad I'll get to talk to Kelsey on the weekend too.

Well, time to get at it.

Most of a 5 gallon bucket of soap lard trimmings rendering in the oven, plus two crockpots' worth on the table. Instant pot full of dog scraps. Dehydrator on with bay leaves. Supergiant stock pot with bones on the stove overnight. Dishwasher on. Freezers all stuffed full, with more work to be done tomorrow.

Gonna be a big electricity bill for today, and small grocery bills for awhile.

Can one cook doughnuts in lard?

I'm incredibly tired, and I've been super sad and anxious all day except when I can get completely caught up in deboning a picnic shoulder or something. I don't want to be sad the whole time Josh is here. I want to be present and enjoy his company. He's a wonderful person to project with though.

There's not even any point in discussing my communications with Tucker right now. They go terribly, then really well for a bit, then terribly. Why am I doing them? What do I want to get out of them?

Lots of rain last night and today. Everything is muddy and chilly. Summer is over. Next dry day I'll take in grain and tomatoes I think. A dry day might be a bit if it stays this cool, since I don't think it'll dry quickly.

Demoncat hates the rearrangement of the kitchen for butchering and meowls piteously.

This is going to be my first full week's vacation where I don't have to manage a trip somewhere.

My mind doesn't exist. More tomorrow.

The butcher came yesterday. He slaughtered five pigs, one of which was a foundation herd sow Rapunzel, another of which was Friendly, and then three littler ones. When he came originally a couple months ago the pigs were mostly smaller; I hadn't considered that the delay in finishing the job would result in a lot more meat.

Well, it did.

I was running flat out from 6am until 8 or so. Meat comes off the body hot and you can't dump a lot of it right into a freezer that way: it will bring down the temperature of the freezer fast, and it is also super insulative so where it lies against itself it won't cool down. The temperature of the meat needs to be brought down pretty quick after slaughter, though. Long story short, I was slamming a lot of meat through the vacuum sealer -- both vacuum sealers, since my good chamber sealer is too small to take the primals -- and dumping them in the bathtub. First I ran cold well water through them several times to dump a bunch of heat, then Josh arrived and we tossed a ton of ice on it.

Tomorrow (I guess today, I woke up to write this and add ice to the bathtub and will be going back to bed shortly) the goal is to get the stuff in the bathtub cut down further -- basically take out bones and go from primals or subprimals to actual cuts. Once it's in actual cuts it can go into the freezer slowly, a layer at a time so it freezes. Then the primals loosely set into the freezer and wrapped in garbage bags (from the point in the butcher when I didn't have time to cut everything down small enough for even the larger vacuum sealer) can come into coolers, thaw, and be processed.

During this whole time the house smells like a ramen restaurant: lard will be rendering in crock pots, bones will be cooking down into stock.

I traded some layer ducks for part of the butcher fee, and I'm trading some meat away for some laying chickens. It was a solid day. It was really nice to have Josh show up a couple hours after the butcher left and help-- my side was acting up, and the moral/decision support is always huge. There were no big emergencies that has to be handled, it was just a lot of plugging away at the work. I really appreciated that.

The weather has shifted to a gentle rain that was due yesterday. It didn't materialize during the slaughter, which is excellent, and it also is now keeping it nice and cool out so that when the stove and crock pots are running I'll be grateful for their heat.

( The Daily Breakup )

And the time with Josh is already fun. You can make him eggs hollandaise in the morning and talk through butchery strategies. Good call on keeping the Danforth butchery book out of boxes when the chimney got packed up. Also there's some tomato trial-testing, some apple leather making (thanks yarrowkat!), maybe some box flattening, some experimental cooking (dan dan noodles and mapo tofu at least), maybe moving the birdsheds, likely harvesting grain and spreading it to dry, likely pickling.

These things are my world and I like sharing them. I like the dynamic where I know not to expect from him so I can relax into the joy instead of having to protect myself.

Yesterday was the first field day I've led in awhile at work. I had one of the summer students with me.It got some stuff done but wasn't super productive; we're learning to estimate lengths and diameters from 7.5cm to 50m or so in various configurations which requires lots of guessing then measuring. It's easy enough to just to measure first, but then your eye doesn't get calibrated and you don't get to the much faster accurate estimation stage. I've also never really been a production-speed bush worker, and the summer student is new to the bush.

That is to say, this was not enormously more productive or meaningful than any other day at work. The summer student is a standard gifted young woman who'd eager to please and fast to learn, so pleasant to work with but not a particular connection.

And still at the end of it I felt so happy, and embedded in the world, and so much myself. I think I always doubt this when I'm not on the edge of it because I can't explain it well. Heavy physical work while inside doesn't have the same effect for the most part. Just being outside all day sitting in a chair probably also doesn't, though who can sit for that long outside? But the thing that I need to make me happy is to do physical work outside for several hours on most days.

It doesn't really have to do with the rest of my circumstances much at all.

Noteworthy event of the day: saw a juvenile sandhill crane by the side of the road driving out to the bush. It looked like a young ostrich that happened to be the colour of a fawn, very gangly and non-flighted as it ran along the ditch and scrambled up an embankment. So weird.

The southern interior is basically on fire right now after the heat wave and the ensuing lightning storms. There was at least a brief period where all highways that lead up here were blocked off, though one could still go through Alberta or take a ferry up the coast and drive at the cost of an additional day or two. This is the first time I remember a community being wiped off the map by fire: sounds like a train cast a spark from its wheels and about half an hour later Lytton was gone. Normally our firefighters are pretty amazing about protecting structures but there was barely time for most people to get out... and some did not.

Things are cooling down now so hopefully some of the fires get under control but they are running fast and far right now. Part of working in forestry is basic wildland firefighting training because we're all well-suited to be co-opted into firefighting efforts; there's a government requirement that we're trained and keep basic equipment in our vehicles in case we see and can put out anything while it's small in our extensive travels.

It's good to feel even-keeled again. I have a lot of field time this summer so hopefully I can keep this feeling on tap.

Today will be deboning entire pork shoulders (google the shape of a pig's shoulder blade for a feeling of sympathy), gardening, picking up feed, and doing some duckling things. I should also plan out my cures for the prosciuttos. Sichuan peppercorn? Star anise? It'll take thinking about. I'm also considering jerky-ing some in the liquid from jalapeno carrot pickles, which sounds pretty great, doesn't it?