Greenstorm's Journal

Ok, let's talk about something nicer. About corn.

Last year I grew several varieties of corn, and the ones that gave any sort of yield were Gaspe (flint) and Magic Mana / Magic Mana starburst (flour). The latter was pretty late-yielding but I suspect the seeds will sprout ok?

Lavender mandan parching corn did not do well. Cascade Ruby-Gold did not do well but it was in a bed that had a ton of aspen root which may have drunk all the water.

There's some daylength interference in corn, but for the most part I have a benchmark now. Gaspe is more-or-less the earliest known corn in the world. Something called Morden (of course: there was a Morden research station that turned out a tom of short season varieties) is maybe almost as quick as Gaspe but is basically impossible to find (it used to be maybe offered through Sherck seeds, which closed down last year). Saskatoon White (not to be confused with Saskatchewan White) is probably one of the next on the list, I should be able to get that from Adaptive Seeds. Other contenders may be Pima 60 days (ki:kam hu:n) from Native Seed Search, Alberta Clipper which may be available from Oikos when they reopen for the year, maaaaaaaybe unlikely Darwin John flint from Oikos as well, maaaaaaybe Baxter's Yellow from Sandhill, there's apparently a tiny blue early corn sold in a natural history museum(?) gift shop in the states that I might be able to track down, and I'd like to get a more robust gene pool for my Gaspe from Great Lakes Seeds.

I also have to figure out where things go. This will be contingent on which aspens I cut down to keep shade off the fields.

But, in the meantime, a sleuthing exercise to find all this stuff (and whatever I've currently missed).

Brought the squashes in over the last few days. They didn't cure on the vine, the leaves of the vines were killed by frost but the vines themselves were still green, they hadn't dried up.

North Georgia Candy Roaster was the most prolific.

Red kuri and sundream were pretty good, sundream maybe a touch earlier?

Burgess buttercup had nice large squash and were good and early.

The lofthouse squash produced excellent small-sized squash that ripened ok, but not many per vine.

Gete Oksomin did several squash, I'm curious about how they cross pollinated or not with all the others.

Potimarron only did a couple but was in some shade.

Little gem did well.

Candystick delicata, algonquin pumpkin, sweet mama, and blue kuri didn't produce but they weren't in the main patch so who knows.

Gold nugget did great in the corn patch and produced a bunch of tiny ones.

Sweet meat produced 2 squash and I don't know how ripe they are, we'll see how they go. Pretty squash though.

Now for something actually super great.

The guy came and killed/skinned/gutted 5 pigs last Saturday. I tossed a bunch of primals in the bathtub in ice to get the heat out, put some in the freezers (meat is insulative, so you can't pack too much in a freezer), and got to work. There are still maybe a dozen primals in the freezer -- mostly hams -- and there was a bunch of extra waste of bones and fat trim because I figure I had enough of some things for now. So:

Two dozen jars of concentrated tonkotsu stock
A dozen jars of Ellen's carnitas recipe, likely to make more
A bunch of thin-sliced ramen pork, maybe an oz or two per pkg
Several boxes of chops, mostly loin chops with about an inch to an inch and a half fatcap left on them but some leg steaks and sirlion chops
Many roasts, primarily picnic and leg roasts
A couple boxes of belly, uncured as yet
About ten pounds of ground in 1lb packages, likely to be added to
A box and a half of coppa and prosciuttini and three slabs of bacon in cure with sichuan peppercorn, juniper, whisky, and seville orange in varying amounts
A kilo and a half of "crack pork jerky" waiting for the dehydrator
A bunch of odd bits, ribs, tongues, kidneys, hearts, cheeks
Two jowls in cure and the rest untrimmed in the freezer waiting (those things take a lot of trimming, there are so many salivary glands in there)
A full 5-gallon bucket of soapmaking lard <3
40 or so portions of rendered leaf lard in single packages plus more to be packaged
10 kilos or so of sausage either in process (ground and waiting for casing) or in chunks waiting for grind
5 smoked and a couple unsmoked/uncured hocks

Additionally we smoked a bunch of bacon from the last butcher which had been in cure for long enough, and three prosciuttos and one lonzino. I need to drop my salt percentage a bit for the bacon, since it's eaten hot-- it's good for bacon sandwiches but a little too intense to eat on its own.

Plus we harvested most of the wheat, and I'd previously harvested my beauregarde soup peas. Although the peas were primarily a seed multiplication exercise, I have enough to make a small pot of pea soup from my hocks and my peas and my chive or onions. How amazing.

Some of my pepper plants are inside awaiting frost. I've been picking smallest unripe winter squash and eating them which: makes up for the bad zucchini year, encourages the remaining squash to grow better, and keeps them from being wasted by frost. Plus they're very dense and tasty, unlike zucchini which can sometimes be a bit squishy.

Mikado Black tomato is my new go-to black tomato. Very smoky tasting and it ripened!

Jory is starting to ripen, it's got nice big fruits. Unexpected and I'm interested to taste it.

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.

Seems like it's easier to write daily during the week, and when I'm at work. Makes sense. I'm lucky to have that spaciousness at work. It does mean I'm not going to the field, but my excuse is that a little fire showed up on the wildfire map across the road I was going to take into the bush today. We've had some rain, but fires have been moving very quickly and being out of contact along or past a road with a fire on it makes me twitchy. If it did blow up there'd be no way to let me know.

We have a safety system when we're in the field but it's missing the crucial component of being able to be contacted while I'm out there-- I can always call out but there's no agreement on, for instance, always running on a certain radio channel so they can get me.

The province lost another little community last night. It lost Lytton awhile back now, a train wheel against the track sparked a fire fight near the town, and it seems like within half an hour after the spark the town was gone. That was the day after Lytton had hit the "hottest spot in Canada ever" record two days in a row. Last night was Monte Creek, a little outlier town west of Kamloops. A big fire had been building in the mountain for days but a big wind drove it downhill, across the highway, and through the town.

A lot of the province is on fire.

Meanwhile I see damp grey clouds and patches of blue sky outside and it sprinkled rain twice yesterday. The apples are swelling and swelling; I keep the duck pools under them so they get several dozen gallons of water each per day, plus some fertilizer.

Tomatoes are starting to roll in.

The tomato trial has basically two parts: one is to gather information, and the other is to choose and collect seed from the ones that will continue on into next year.

Gathering information about plants and earliness is lovely. I walk along the rows, I count clusters of green tomatoes, I observe the plant growth form, I poke around looking for buried ripe fruit.

Continuation is more complicated. I'm still saving seed from everything that ripens, but. The panamorous row is a truly random collection of mixed wild and domestic genetics and it is producing a lot. What it produces is... fascinating. There are a couple cherry sized tomatoes, lots of saladette-ish size, and I just got my first beefsteak of the whole garden from that row (though Maya & Sion is coming right along behind, and maybe Taiga too).

Before I put seeds in to ferment, especially from the panamorous row, I taste the fruit. The panamorous tomatoes get sorted into A (tastes quite good), B (insipid, mealy, or has a weird acrid aftertaste that I associate with certain wild genes), and I have a tiny pile of Wow! Unfortunately the best panamorous tomato so far was densely fleshy with only 2 seeds. That might indicate an obligate outcrosser -- some of these have genes which prevent them from self-pollinating, so it's possible that ones with fewer seeds are obligate outcrossers which didn't get well-pollinated because our weird weather is hard on bees this year. It's possible that something else is going on. There certainly seem to be more seeds in the less tasty ones, sadly.

I'm keeping the B pile because any of these plants may themselves be hybrids so the offspring will be different than the parent, and/or they may have crossed with the garden tomatoes I planted in a ring around them. Any single one of those seeds may hold something amazing. And by increasing my seed supply in this way, and to this extent -- I'll have tens of thousands of seeds by the end of the year at minimum -- I can start hard selection for direct seeding and eventually self-seeding into an animal disturbance soil seedbank.

Basically-- I can plant lots and lots of seed and not too many plants will survive. The ones that survive will be the ones I want, and once I have enough survivors in that situation I can start tasting the first fruit of each and pull out the unpleasant ones so they don't contribute. Eventually, after a couple or a dozen years, I should have enough early tomatoes that I can pick some and others can drop to the ground and self-seed that way. As long as I keep removing the unpleasant ones there will be seed accumulated in the soil that will express itself over several years and the fruit should get tastier and tastier.

It's a multi-year project! There are a series of goals -- first, plants that ripen from transplants. Then, plants that ripen from seed. Then, plants that taste good. Then, plants that can seed themselves.

In the end the idea is to seedbank like this for many species. Bare land sprouts plants, it just does. If I can shift the seeds in the soil, it will mostly sprout plants that I want. Everything will sprout earlier than if I'd planted it after the soil warmed. There should be selection only for what doesn't sprout early enough that the cold kills it; I don't need to do anything for that to happen. This should allow me to get a really good early crop to work return out of the garden.

Gardening in this environment requires some knowledge; I need to have a good visual grasp of what all my desired plants look like when young. Then if I want an area to be only tomatoes, or only brassicae, I'll leave those sprouts there and weed everything else out. For warm crops, weeding everything else out might look like harvesting well-developed chard or lettuce or broccoli raab or lamb's quarters that started much earlier, leaving a patch somewhere to go to seed and replenish the soil seedbank.

Precisely what seed replenishing rotation looks like depends on how long a sufficiency of seed remains viable in the soil. We've mostly bred multi-year dormancy out of domestic crops without even trying; our seed is basically always saved from what we planted this year so it's a strong selection for most of the history of domestication. But. I bet you that with the quantities of seed that can be pumped into the soil when I let several lettuce plants go to seed (hundreds of thousands at least) or even tomatoes and tens of thousands, that it'll come along on its own.

So, yeah. I'm basically tasting a widening trickle of tomatoes and making decisions and occasionally wrinkling my nose or grinning. I'm walking a path that leads far into the future and may never arrive there. I'm using my sense of discernment and consequence. And I'm having a lot of fun.

Yesterday was another appointment with the trauma therapist provided through work. The previous time I'd spoken with her it was pretty useful but this time was, if I'm honest, a bit of a shit-show.

I used the term partner. She talked about my "husband".

She lectured extensively about how women "like us" think about many eventualities at once, whereas men like my husband usually only take one thing into consideration when they're making a decision. Oh, and men are always more worried about financial things.

It honestly was too much energy to deal with it all so I agreed along but it was not comfortable even a little.

By the time she was shocked and worried that if I was thinking about buying property with someone I might want to discuss the exit plan before we signed anything it barely even registered.

The gist of what she's saying is, concentrate on actionable things and take actions, and basically don't think about things where actions can't be taken. Additionally maybe be creative about what actions can be taken because there's usually something.

We also got our "post-covid" flex info from work, we've known for awhile they'd be calling us back to the office Sept 7th but that something was in the works for some kind of remote flexibility.

Turns out their plan is-- I get it, but I don't think it's super well thought out. Basically there's room to work remotely 1-2 days per week for normal folks, then for folks who want to work 3-5 days remote there's a more rigorous process with approval from higher-ups (not that we have any higher ups right now, different story) and you are likely to lose your permanent office/desk.

On the surface that makes sense, right? Not using the desk much, might as well not pay for the space to keep it, and as I've noticed this year it's not really feasible to ride the middle line of a couple days from work and a couple days from home per week without paying for a second set of equipment out of pocket. But it super disincentivizes folks from coming in for a day a week to keep in touch with the rest of the folks in the office and I'm a little concerned about that. Forestry is 10000000% politics and relationships and maybe 2% science.

On the other hand it's probably not as bad for me: my town is in the bust part of the boom-bust cycle so our office is empty on the best of days. I don't think anyone's going to remove my name from my cubicle. And I suppose that in the summer folks are taking a lot of vacation (lifers can have 8 weeks or so of vacation, or sometimes more) and also a bunch of us are in the field pretty often. For relationship-building it might make sense to try to go to the field once a year with almost everyone rather than keep abreast of them in the office. But still.

Speaking of in-person, the parade of summer students is occurring. I took one out two weeks ago (I think?), another one last week, the same one this week, and each in succession next week. I think the following week or two I also will take out the third summer student. The first two haven't been in the bush before and-- I'm glad I checked before we left the office because the second one didn't have any water with him. He also didn't bring the water to the block, so we walked a kilometer and a half back for lunch and to the block again, but I think he's getting sorted out. They are both enthusiastic, polite, and friendly kids.

My ex-previous-job friends were talking about how much energy summer students bring into the office, especially back in the days when there would be 40 of them (I think our whole office is 30 people nowadays, and in the office they were speaking of there were 12 by the end?). I think it's true. Supervising or managing folks who have never had a professional job before, or who have never been to the bush, is sure different than handling someone who has some idea of what they're doing.

These daily writings were supposed to be exploring my emotional landscape but they're coming out pretty much like news bulletins. Well, like news from before the shock and disaster era of news. I guess I haven't felt spacious and energetic enough to really dive back into there. I've been working my way through a pretty great video (youtube https://youtu.be/diE7f6CKj6c ) by Sarah HendrickX called Hiding in plain sight: shining light on women with autism profiles. It's... there's a lot to unpack in it, and I'll no doubt write more about it in the future. It's an odd feeling to be seen in some ways so clearly, but to still have to accept such ill-fitting labels as "woman" to get that info. It's like cutting my arm off to escape a trap, but at the same time once I'm out of the trap I can't drive home without the arm. It's damage.

There are good things in the world too. I got my shipment of Ugandan vanilla beans, which smell truly amazing even compared to other vanilla beans. The tomato trial with seven or eight ripe varieties so far feels like a completion and proper fit of self into the world, more than I can describe it makes me happy. Being happy in that way I wish I had someone to talk about it with, but here we are. It's been cold and raining, below 10C at night and below 20C during the day, so my trial is going to be fairly representative of my conditions and I'm less likely to need to evacuate for a wildfire. The green cherry tomato I got from the grocery store, that I saved seed from, has ripened some fruits so it's early, and they taste amazing even though they're the first fruits off the plant. I am impressed.

I'm just putting off going out into the cold in fuzzy socks to do chores, though, so I'll go get the pigs their bounty of spoiled dairy and their grain and watch the baby geese and maybe harvest some more cucumbers for sunomono. It's definitely sunomono season.

It's good, out there, but it's not enough time to grow back after everything else.

Today I got five new first fruits from the tomato trial: those green cherry tomatoes with seed saved from the grocery store, cole from annapolis seeds, the silvery fir tree from annapolis, sweet apertif from Casey's, the wild cherry thing I got from Corrie which is maybe from salt spring seeds, and a Brad which had ripened still in a transplant pot. Gonna save seeds from everything so I didn't eat them out in the garden.

Noticing the differences, collecting the fruit and the data, seeing everything next to each other and its fitness or lack thereof to my situation: this is the best thing. It's fulfillment and bone-deep joy and whatever happiness looks like.

My life still has other stuff in it that's at issue but my core is happy.

I just wish I could spend some hours talking with someone else who understood.

My old boss somewhat insistently invited me over to his place tomorrow morning along with another friend/ex-coworker. I've been over there once since winter, it was lovely, and I sorta ghosted him after that with a "not doing great" message.

Curious whether this is:

A social call
An intervention
Or a job offer

Especially based on the other person who will be there.

Yesterday I filmed my grain variety trial. Today I recorded some tomato trial data. I posted about the tomato trial on the open-source tomato breeding forum and had a bit of back-and-forth with the person who is doing the most fun and interesting things with tomatoes of anyone. He spontaneously said that Sweet Cherriette was fun, which it totally is.

Having spent all this time in the garden and then a bit of interaction with people who think a particular vegetable cultivar can be "fun" I am having trouble imagining talking to folks over coffee tomorrow morning. What do people talk about? Feelings? Jobs? I mean, he's pretty good to talk to but I just want to garden and maybe talk to people who are looking at my garden about what they're seeing or maybe even just folks who are interested in gardens about how I'm structuring my systems.

I read this, now, as an autistic trait: the desire to immerse myself in the thing I love forever and barely come up for air. It's always been isolating for me, or maybe alienating, because so much of my soul is made of something that other people just don't understand or care about. When I do get to talk about it there's a lot of 101 and I'm also never sure what is common knowledge exactly. When I get to talk with other folks who are super interested (v rare) I have super imposter syndrome and turn quiet with big eyes. So I don't get to do these things together with other folks, and this is the important part of my life.

It does make me pretty happy though.

Garden successes so far:

Sweet success cucumber gave me my first cuke today and is loaded
Sweet cherriette was the first ripe tomato, bloody butcher were the first consistently ripe tomatoes, though those were seedling flowers. I'm guessing exserted orange will be the next and the green grocery store cherry is setting lots of fruit.
Amyrilla tomatillo seems to get sunscald more easily than the other types
Sorrento broccoli rabe was an amazing early producer, though it's bolted by now.
Olympia spinach held better than longstanding bloomsdale
This year is bucketing oregano and parsley
Rhubarb was very sweet, mild, and abundant this year
Prelude wheat was first to head.
Gaspe corn was first to silks
Taiga tomato is holding its tomatoes really well through stress and seems like it'll be the first to size up
Wheat and barley are excellent at drought resistance compared to corn
Georgia candy roaster squash is most voluminous right now, while the Lofthouse squashes were first to start running
Starburst magic manna corn is the biggest
Lavender parching corn tillers the most
Russian black fava was first to flower and to set pods
Famosa cabbage looks like the first to head
Groninger blue kale/cabbage is robust and resistant to what ails anything
Copenhagen market cabbage started off slow but has really caught up
Matchbox pepper is, as always, the first to fruit and the most reliable
Paprika from around here is the second most reliable pepper and it looks like doe hill, ace, and black hungarian are thinking about third place
I should always plant more edible chrysanthemum than I think I need
Saxa bean is bulletproof through early germination
Green salad bowl lettuce avoided bolting on my deck through 40C temps (the deck got up to 45 where that pot is) and is still tasty
Borage actually did come back
The grapefruit mint s giant and is taking over

This was supposed to be the last day of the high-level heat. Most places in the province beat their previous all-time heat records, most on two consecutive days; in some cases the new record was over 10C higher than the previous all-time record. Lytton broke both the Canadian all-time high temperature record and was also hotter than Las Vegas has ever been in recorded history. Nowhere hit 50C so at least there's that. Fort has not been spared. With careful curtain and air management I've been able to keep my main floor 8C or so below ambient at the hottest time of day and the basement has stayed 16C below or so. Thank goodness for the basement! But doing the largest possible air exchange at night to cool the place and set up for the next day has brought in hordes of mosquitoes; over dinner I swat enough of them that there's a noticable scatter, not quite a pile, around me. I'll be glad when that's done.

The fire danger rating jumped from moderate to high or, in many-to-most places, extreme in the last few days. As our high temperatures roll out, the edge of the incoming normal summer weather brings thunder and lightning. I, and everyone, hope that it brings some rain with it. I'm here alone; I don't think I have it in me to evacuate all the animals on several fronts.

As I do chores later in the evening to avoid the heat it's clear that the days are getting shorter. The sun was below the horizon by 10:30 and I'm sad about it. This year it feels like summer has actually arrived; we missed it entirely last year.

Today the yarrow started flowering. The air is hot and wet and with that semi-medicinal herbal scent breathing is like drinking hot herbal tea. A haze has settled on the horizon and the sun set through browns and reds. My pigs are quite alright -- they've made two champion wallows and don't seem to have suffered from the weather, maybe related to their origins in Georgia -- and all the other animals seem to have pulled through too. Tomorrow is supposed to be 10 degrees cooler, and I should be able to go outside after work and get some things done. I could also break down all the pork loins and shoulders that have been chilling since Saturday but it's been too hot to butcher them further in the house.

My counselling appointment was very good today, I saw my regular chosen counselor for the first time since before my weird medication/concentration camp breakdown (during which I mixed up my counseling and Dr's appointment and so missed both of them). Talking with her I began the process of knitting up the chaos into narrative, the process of making meaning of the world that allows me to drive forward. As I'd realized before I'm not quite sure where forward is, though, and I suspect I need to sort of learn to be just where I'm at again. Last weekend was a good start, there were hours of sitting on the grass with the dogs and watching cottonwood fluff and crooning to the geese and just existing, which I had not done in quite some time.

From three sources in the last week I've heard I need to learn to inhabit that space at will and I'm not sure how to do it. It's an innately unpeopled and demand-free space. It can't exist in proximity to transitions into and out of the world of humans.

I don't know. It does need to happen though.

Now to shower, and to sleep, and to maybe wake up into a day where I can go into the greenhouse after work and harvest myself a salad without dying. This was a good year to plant cucumbers and melons, they're so happy in there. It was not a good year to do a trial test to find varieties that would grow and fruit in my normally-cool climate. The trial is compelling anyhow. Early evidence supports the Lofthouse and William Schlegel tomatoes, plus stupice and bloody butcher and definitely sweet cheriette. My green grocery-store cherry looks like it was open-pollinated; at least all 8 or so of the plants I grew from it are very uniform, and they seem to be doing well too. Very exciting!

I hope you're both warm enough and cool enough, wherever you are, and that your air also smells like flowers.