Greenstorm's Journal

It always starts out utilitarian.

I've approached something sideways. There's something I'd like in my life, to store excess pork, to see how something grows, to wear comfortable clothing that fits.

I can't really afford the easy solution: buy another freezer, hire a gardener or get fancy raised beds built full of groomed soil and irrigation systems, shell out for the kind of high-end clothing that both fits and suits my set of temperatures and activities.

I sit with the lack awhile and live, either in anticipation or in real time, with what happens if I keep on business as usual: half my carefully-loved pork goes bad, the meaning and connection in my life disappear, I don't want to get out of bed and am in varying degrees of discomfort when I do.

The pressure of the unsatisfactory situation builds until a spark manifests in the right place at the right time: an article on old-fashioned meat curing, a post on seed diversity and appropriate variety selection, an ad from somewhere I bought mask-lining fabric a couple years back.

It neither looks nor feels like an explosion. It's not really a spark. It's a seed crystal falling into supersaturated liquid. Is it saturated with discontent at my current situation? Is it saturated with my current knowledge and love of patterning? That's not what it feels like. It feels like I'm suddenly part of a structure, a part of humanity, that has always existed, that I'm being woven into the world one strand of knowledge at a time.

I click on a linked article. A strand of knowledge connects me. Another article is suggested and I read it too. Another piece of crystal forms, another stand in the web patterns me in. Maybe I search for a facebook group and join it. Facts, technologies, methods, approaches, new ways of playing, new ways of engaging with the world: some I see and they pass me by, but others click into my situation. They give me options other than my dissatisfaction.

I can't afford to kit out a charcuterie fridge but there are bags that help regulate humidity and can let a regular old hand-me-down fridge stand in for one. Pink salts (not the himalayan ones) prevent botulism, which grows in the absence of oxygen. Smoke can delay rancidity. It doesn't take much to buy one of those fancy bags and put some meat in it; once I've done that I might as well try a different cut of meat, a different set of spices, a different salt level.

I can't afford to make a conventional controlled garden but there are animals that can dig the soil, mulch that can smother the lawn I can't afford to have tilled under, varieties that will grow without the infrastructure of a greenhouse. If I put pigs on the lawn I can eat them later and their feed cost is basically just paying for fertilizing and rototilling and the eventual meat. Straw is cheap. If I assemble relatively inexpensive seeds from people who have similar environments and do selection on them and their offspring, I can get ripe tomatoes and squash from much more garden than I can afford to cover with greenhouse. Once I'm there I might as well use ducks and chickens for bug control, geese to mow the lawn, and I get such lovely nutrient-enriched straw from them. Once I'm there I might as well select not just for ability to ripen but for flavour and beauty and story since I can grow out so much on my land and don't need to expand greenhouses to do it.

I can't afford to buy expensive fancy fabric straight up but there are misprints, seconds available that have the same function, places that sell weird shapes and amounts and colours more cheaply. I can't afford to buy dozens of patterns and the highest end fabric but I can alter a pattern to accommodate the cheaper fabric, the one that has less stretch but equal warmth and softness so is a significantly less cost. I can't afford a ton of fabric but I can use every last bit of what I have, can make neck warmers and fingerless gloves. And I can sew scraps together, use different types of fabric in one garment so nothing goes to waste, and now I'm colour-blocking and using precious stretch fabric on side panels where I need the most movement and using bits of fabric for pockets on everything and planning out overlapping uses for each garment so I need the fewest different ones without doing too much laundry.

I'm curious, I have an outcome in mind, will I meet that outcome or will I learn something? Either way I get drawn in and meeting my utilitarian goal becomes a way of playing with the rules of the universe, and also of playing with the people who have come before and have worked and frolicked and built knowledge in this same pool. They talk about parallel play and in some ways this is it: people play and they write or video about it, and I take that and alter it and run with it and maybe write about it back. I almost never find people who want to do the thing close to me physically but there's an undeniable closeness from playing the same game as someone else, even if I'm playing it somewhere else.

And that play is pretty much where I find my joy.

I'm not consistent. I do charcuterie a few times a year, I garden a little more than half the year, maybe a little more than that if you count the spreadsheeting that always comes with my interests. And apparently I do sewing every six years or so.

My memories live in these activities and I access my past and future self through doing these things.

I remember my mom and brother helping me put the first batch of pork in cure, and they help me often enough with these things that my brother's handwriting is on a lot of my meat. I remember those first pigs, their noses peeking out of the little house. I remember the long wait to learn what was too salty, the way each spice sparks curiosity: what would juniper taste like in prosciuttini? What about madagascar peppercorn? Homemade absinthe? Berbere? I remember sharing things I'd made and trading them for my old boss's tinctures, opening the way to new explorations in a way that felt like an unobtrusive collaboration.

I remember the scent of the first plant I interacted with, fennel growing out of the paving stones in Las Angeles, and I remember harvesting Lunaria seeds in the side-garden a few years later, and hauling manure in a wheelbarrow up from the barn years after that and so I remember the barn and the texture of the side of the house as I put up nails to strong my tomatoes on. I remember my first greenhouse, built with Juggler, and I remember my first black tomato. I don't have to reach back far to remember the first time I saw hugely varied textures in tomato foliage. My downstairs is still a cornucopia of widely varied squash, one of which my cat hauled to his bed last night.

I remember the month in college (was it more than a month?) where whenever I left home not in a work uniform I had to leave it in a newly-sewn outfit because I couldn't tolerate anything I already owned. I remember the florescent-lit basement of the cheap fabric store where the extra-cheap seconds were. I remember scoring the full rolls of "athletic fabric" I still use for mock-ups, and my skirt, strap-vest, and veiled top-hat ensemble I put together for an event that now escapes me. I remember laying out patterns on Josh's floor before our winter backpacking trip, measuring and checking and measuring and checking to make pairs of pants that would work for me. I remember learning about fabric structures and I remember the sound of my friend the sewing machine and my body remembers how to swoop the thread down and sideways and up and around and down again to settle it into its guides. I still have a few tattered garments that don't set my body off, that don't send pain and electricity down my legs, that don't raise hives on the front of my thighs or the tops of my hips, that let me get out of bed in a cold environment and move freely through it.

The next situations of dissatisfaction are an inability to afford new snowboots (could I really make boots?!) and my inability to afford fresh vegetables (when lettuce is $8/head, hydroponics does seem to be the answer, and that's what kratky was designed for).

All this is to say that I have pork jowls in my freezer that need to go into cure; seeds I crossed this summer in all manner of ways from controlled to insect-and-crossed-fingers and it's good. Then, after spreadsheeting and fabric buying and pattern cutting, last night for the first time in years I felt the clatter of my cheap little sewing machine and the silky hum of Josh's antique Singer. It was, as is everything I do, utilitarian to serve a purpose I could not otherwise afford. I even paused a moment and thought - what would I do with my time if I could just buy these clothes? Would I talk to friends? Spend evenings watching TV and lazily chatting? Take up jigsaw puzzles?

So I'm not writing all this to say it isn't work, and that it doesn't come at many kinds of opportunity cost of time, thought, knowledge acquisition, and energy.

I am writing it to say that this way that I accommodate myself in this world also feels like coming home within it.

Inaugural run of the smoker yesterday and I've pumped a couple things through it today, and that led to some rearranging of the charcuterie fridge. So:

Two 1.6% salt bacons were smoked and are equalizing

A berbere and a spruce bacon are on the smoker right now (cool smoke) and will go into equalization

A guanciale with 2% salt and 1% sugar and some black pepper was cool-smoked and is in umai

A pork shoulder with cure #1, 1.6% salt was smoked and is in umai (but because it has cure #1 it could be fried like shoulder bacon)

A prosciuttini with seville orange, whiskey, and spruce was smoked and put into umai

A prosciuttini with sichuan peppercorn was smoked and put into umai

A lonzino that had previously been smoked and dried down pretty dry got vacuum sealed with some seville orange liqueur to equalize

A coppa seasoned with juniper and sichuan peppercorn that had dried down too far was vacuum sealed with my a nice sake to equalize

I notice I'm building up a bunch of smoked cured meats, when they're ready I hope I like the smoke. That's the challenge with this hobby; if something is neat it takes a couple years to finish so I need to be careful not to let my enthusiasm run away with me and have *everything* smoked when maybe I won't want smoked meat on some of those days.

On the other hand, smoke reduces rancidity so they'll keep longer and I won't have to pare as much/be as careful with light.

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?

I have so much to write about from the last... has it only been a couple days? There's no natural starting point except for the butcher.

So.

My freezers are full, as is my fridge. I have roughly 86lbs of meat into cure, 22lbs of chunks to be made into sausage, 18lbs of ground, many chops and roasts, 8 or 10L of soap lard, 2.5L eating lard plus maybe another half-dozen liters to render, and I'm currently processing stock into bean with bacon soup and chili con carne, which I will can.

A sow's meat is so glorious. Everything is laced through with thin ribbons of far. Nothing - even the loin - was white, or pale pink, or even pink: it was all deep red with use and life. I have never felt the visceral abundance of food or harvest in the way I did with Sparky when I was cutting up her meat. For me -- with commercial food cheap and abundant, and rarely having gone a full day without food without it being my own choice -- I found this a gift worthy of spiritual awe. For someone who is doing hard labour in fields every day, whose living from the soil has no backup? I can't even imagine how holy it would be to see all that food, all those calories, all that security for so many days to come.

This is why animals were sacrificed to gods: because they are such a stuff of life.

I'm glad my family shared it with me. Well, some did: mom and Ben. They helped the whole way through, with skinning and pulling out tenderloin and leaf fat and cutting meat from the bone and bagging and vacuum sealing. Those labels have mom's and Ben's writing on them for me to remember fondly over the next year as I pull them out of the freezer to eat. It's a lovely sharing.

Plus we had scraps fried crispy in lard, tenderloin seared in maple and salt, and a low-roasted shoulder chunk with peach BBQ sauce. We had two kinds of sausage and bacon. We may have had other things but I remember those mostly clearly. It was a good thanksgiving. Tucker even made it back from his trip with a pecan pie he'd made.

Mom is learning to channel her energy in my space. She asked about things, she didn't wreck anything I think (?) and she cleaned a lot in useful ways. She did take my multiple months of garden cardboard to the dump, but you can't have it all. She mentioned maybe coming back after Christmas and I'm looking forward to that a lot -- coming back if she isn't able to fly to New Zealand and help bring her friend's boat back, that is, which is entirely covid and politics dependent.

I taught her how to make sauerkraut, Ben learned different charcuterie cuts by sight ("shouldn't this side have a loin?"), and I had a stockpile of company for the emotional shock I got on the last night.

Ben even stopped snoring as much once I started leaving the upstairs window open at night.

Now we're getting our hard frosts. I haven't pulled the beets yet, but I do need to. I also need to do the winter pigpen.

The leaves are falling still, fallen in some places and tossing back and forth in glittery gold in others. Geese are fattening for winter. The cats are spending most of their time indoors and the woodstove is running full-time.

It's time for turning inwards, for contemplation.

Wow. Well, it's been a bit.

Josh and I didn't get a bear; we went out for a day and then came home and killed a pig (one of Penny's first piglets, Apricot's sister) and made a whole lot of sausage. I'd told him that I do have a lot of meat so I didn't feel the need to spend a lot of time looking for more and he pretty much agreed.

So that was a 13-month Ossabaw: 97kg liveweight, 75kg after skinning and gutting. It was a perfect kill, we put down grain and he dropped her exactly and I got in with a really excellent stick/bleed. She was just the size that we couldn't lift her very high together but we could roll her into the wheelbarrow. Ossabaws really are the perfect size homestead animal.

We scrubbed and washed her a bunch, then strung her up in the new gutting station (it's down by the chicken coop instead of up by the house, it's a good place for it). It was a good gut too: I have the liver in my freezer, and I normally accidentally puncture the liver with my fingers. We harvested the jowls, took the head off, and halved her.

The quail got the head and the chickens got the stomach.

When mom was up we skinned by putting the halves in on the table and skinning each half, washing down the table, and then dealing with the meat: not while hanging, on other words. Pigs are difficult to skin since there's no clear demarcation between their fat and skin; they don't have a hide that can pull off like other animals. This time we lay the halves scrubbed side down on the table and basically cut our primals up off the hide. It worked really, really well. Everything stayed clean, there was high recovery, and it was just very straightforward. I think I might stick with this method.

Granted, we weren't going for nice clean primals because the goal was lots of sausage. We got 22kg, more or less, of a good 75% meat 25% fat sausage mix. I also took off a ton of extra backfat for soap, a ton of leaf lard, kidneys, heart, two coppas and a prosciuttini, the tenderloins, and a LOT of proto-bacon that I need to get into cure. Lungs and spleen (finally) got sliced and dehydrated for dog treats. All the bones went into the stockpot and I've canned 7L of stock and am currently canning another 1.5L of stock. I expect I'll get 10L of lard total. I'm going to start using the leaf lard for cooking, starting to replace butter in my diet, now that I have enough lard to make as much soap as I want.

I really love my pressure canner, this was its first run.

Sausages made were all basically from the Marianski sausage bible, except my Italian hot sausage recipe, except that I went down to 1.5% salt in all cases. Sausages were: hot Italian, Russian, Mexican chorizo, Argentinian(ish) chorizo, merguez, andouille (so good), polish, and mysliwska.

We mass-packaged most of the sausage, I need to break down some of it into smaller packages still and cure the meats. I also want to do a liver sausage so I'm thinking about that.

I feel very food secure right now. It's great.