Rain Total

Rain over the past nine days is 3 inches.

Total for the season:  7 inches.

Mandarins

Harvested 30 pounds of fruit from the sunny side of one of our two mandarin trees.  It was not even a quarter of the potential harvest of the tree.  The rest of the fruit still need some ripening.  You can feel whether they are ripe enough to pick as you touch them on this tree.  Sunny side has the highest vitamin C amount per fruit throughout the harvest and ripen first.

30 pounds of fruit yield about a pint over 5 quarts of juice when processed through a Champion juicer.  The fruit peels easily.  Took about two hours to process and juice.  The other tree is not so forthcoming in ease of peeling even though it is supposedly identical.

One gallon was frozen, one quart put in the fridge, a pint sent to Davis with the daughter on the train.  Good thing it went with her, too, because she has a nasty cold.

Made a "pumpkin" pie with an orange turban squash for the first time.  May be one of the very best of that type of pie I have ever had.  We are definitely growing turban squash somewhere in this packed-to-the-edges-with-comestible-plants yard this year.  Those are the type of squash that look like Cinderella's coach before it was a coach and the mice were not yet horses.  The Australian Blue squash make equally tasty pies and are also "turban" squash but are blue until they turn orange, if you keep them long enough.  These things save for a long time outside under the eaves.  

All the detritus goes back into the yard somewhere; into the soil or to the chickens.  Nothing goes into the trash.

75F today at the ocean.  This is obscenely warm for this time of year and for far to long.  No bud break yet but they are moving on several fruit varieties.  This could be a tragedy in the making for fruit trees.  Apparently, a La Nina effect off the coast is happening.  Makes Sierra skiing ice/mush, with a bit of good snow between those conditions for less than an hour, at best.  Been there in a prior La Nina at unnecessary expense and unsatisfactory experience.  Best to take a trip along the coast, instead.  You'll enjoy it more for it's intrinsic value.

Rain season:

Total rain for the year is at 4 inches.

Watering the yard has not yet been necessary.  Soil is holding moisture, so far.  During the last La Nina we had to water during the winter but we had a much different plant structure then.  It was mostly annuals.  Now it is almost exclusively perennials with the few annuals being mulched.

We received 1.5 inches during the last storm.  Average annual rainfall is 30 inches per year with all but an inch of that occuring between October through April.  We are over half way through that period with roughly about 1/8 of the usual total rainfall or 1/4 of the usual rainfall to date.  Yikes.

Raspberry Time in January

Moved the raspberries out of an old bed and into a new one.  It is time to refurbish the old bed and then use it for something else for a while.  Raspberries can use up the soil in one spot if it is not composted or fertilized regularly.  It doesn't hurt to change the crop every couple of years to give the soil a rest from mono cropping.  For that reason we move ours around the yard much like walking a very, very, old dog slowly and patiently.  If you had a movie of our yard over time the raspberries would be in constant motion.  If you want a metric to use for bed change try this:  when you notice the next years canes being smaller than last it is time to move on.  You can just move some chickens into it during the winter, if you don't want to move it around.  That works well.  Of course, there is always the mega-farm methodology but to do that you have to go buy something.

If this heat/dry spell doesn't change soon, the fruit trees are going to break bud and potentially cause all sorts of timing trouble which could culminate in a poor fruit set.  Hoping for a wet, cold February.  So are the California Tree Frogs which are making a very large noise for their diminutive size in various places around the yard.  The one inside the hollow, ceramic elephant sounds like a bull frog.  He must be pleased.

Put some more potatoes into the bed last weekend because I found some at the market I liked for making mashed potatoes.  First leaves are coming up from the prior planting.  Had a fantastic dinner of smoked Alpers trout caught at Saddlebag Lake last September and grill seared (60 seconds per side) Tombo tuna with the potatoes and a salad of baby greens. 

Garlic is about six inches tall.  

Found a peanut trying to grow that a scrub jay had planted.  Never have grown one of those before but, apparently, the birds think I should.

First Owari Satsuma Mandarin Orange harvest was January 18.  The trees will yield fruit for the next two months.  Harvested from the sunny side of the tree first.  They are the ripest.  Prepped four batches of marmalade and put it in the freezer for canning on a cold, rainy day.  Too hot to do that now.  Juiced the rest of the days harvest.  Yield is slightly more than 50% by volume of the peeled fegs.  Champion juicer makes that part of the process easy.  We have two Mandarin trees.  Same variety for both but the trees produce different fruit.  One trees fruit has a tight skin, is difficult to peel and is noticeably sweeter.  It is much like the difference between Valencia and Navel oranges.  One is better for juicing and the other easier to eat out of hand.  

Last persimmons were dried, bagged and frozen last week.  This last batch was the sweetest and most colorful of them all with the consistency and sweetness of Medjool dates.

Kiwi fruit is ripe enough to begin eating.  It has been in the crisper since harvest at about 38F.

Beneficial insects flower seed varieties were put into the old raspberry bed and a little something for the hummingbirds.  This will help with the pollination and pest control in the spring.  

Trapped two gophers out of the yard last week.  Found their tunnels while moving raspberries.  The varmints don't push up dirt hills in our yard because the soil is so soft they can just push it aside instead of mining out tailings into a gopher mound.  This makes the gopher game a little trickier in that I usually do not know where they are until a plant goes awol or declines unexpectedly.  They are little trouble to established trees and bushes but are hell on garlic, clover and potatoes.  It never hurts to patrol the grounds daily to enjoy, stay in touch with, and keep the peace.

Winter in/out of the garden

Harvest for December:

Absolutely the most beautiful apples to the eye and palate, our last Gala apples were harvested on the Solstice.  Sweetest apples of the year they were with translucent centers and a rich, golden hue throughout.  

On almost a daily basis, we continue to dehydrate Hachiya Persimmons harvested from Gordon's tree in Menlo Park earlier this month.   Have it down to about a box from the five we harvested in the last week of November.  They are an excellent dried fruit in every way and very difficult to find anywhere commercially.  They are my favorite dried fruit and easily a native Amercan equivalent to dates for taste, texture, and sweetness.  The word persimmon is from the Cree and Mohican "pessamin" meaning dried fruit.  The Greeks called it the "fruit of the gods" meaning bundled home loans to be sold en masse to pension funds, hedge funds, school bond funds, and small towns worldwide.  The Greeks may have been the anticedents of present day Banksters, Bernie Made-off-with-yer-money, and Goldman Sachs Fraudster/Fedsters.  But I could be wrong in that translation.  Time will tell.

Kiwis harvested two days after the last apples.  Maybe one hundred of them, all told.  We keep the vine small and easily pruned.  It is more for philosophy as I have had my entertainment with pruning kiwis two or three times per year and having to bury the parts in one or two, two by three by six foot graves each time.  That was too much work for the harvest, in my opinion.  Besides, what does one do with 3,000 kiwis?  It's hard to give them away but I suppose one could sell them to a local organic grocer.  (We never did, back in the day, but times are changing with the coming Depression are they not?)  Kiwis are like pineapple guavas in that there is not much one can do with them but eat them out of hand or in sorbet.  

Last handful of raspberries harvested for the season and year was this past week.  They always throw a small crop at the end of the year.

Next up are the two semi dwarf Satsuma Owari mandarin orange trees in January and February.  These trees are beautiful, produce insanely, and are just the right size for a city lot, especially if they have chickens under them.  There is nothing like a double sink full of mandarin oranges to make the heart feel that all is right with the world.  Especially if you have a Champion juicer next to the sink and a spouse willing and able to make marmalade.

Looking forward:  

Have composted an area for potatoes and planted them into it this month.  Same with an area for garlic.  

Composted an area for raspberries to be planted in January.  

Apples:  

Toppling two apple trees in late January, Granny Smith (with Pink Pearl appended to it in 2000) and the dwarf Golden Delicious.  The dwarf is at the end of its useful life span of twenty years.  Unless you like very short trees that do not grow well and produce abundantly for only a few years, never plant a dwarf.  The Granny was never thrifty during its 12 years but did produce Pink Pearls well for a few years.  Both of these trees pale in comparison to the Gala or Cox's Orange Pippin for vigorous growth, production, and excellent apple quality.  I will take scions from each toppling to put onto the Cox's Orange Pippin (three years old, 8 feet high, vigorous) to save the varieties on them for decades to come.  The C.O.Pippin will produce heavily next year and will make good fresh, sauce, cider, and wine apples.  Assuming it does not get rained out, of course.  March/April rains can be problematic.  Having bees in the immediate area helps immensely.  Have our "feelers" out for bees in many venues.  Will be acquiring pheromone attractants in the spring, if those feelers don't produce adequately.

Garage saling:

Not happening to our satisfaction.  Slack time of the year is in December and usually into January/February.  We find one, maybe two/three in all of Santa Cruz on a weekend.  It rains out and people are thinking of other things to do.  Last weekend we found one garage sale that was "antiques" which, to me, is overpriced shabby chic.  The same stuff I can find at home for free, lol.  This will change as the economy tanks with the coming Depression and people become desperate to produce money.  On Craigslist search "need money for Christmas" to see the trend shaping up.  I have found, anecdotal evidence only, that people are having success getting Comcast to reduce their monthly bill, if they threaten to cancel.  I haven't tried it yet but January fast approaches.

Rain season:

So far about 2.5 inches total and raining off/on this week.  We did get some ice in the bird bath when it got down to 33F on the max/min a few days ago.  I think a copper bird bath is prone to icing.  The chicken's water was fine but was under a partial roof and in plastic which may have made the difference.  A friend of ours in Ben Lomond had solid ice in the chicken water at about 1,000 feet of altitude.

Wine:

Racked the Cameo carboy once.  Now it abides in stillness in the new carboy until I get around to bottling it in February.  In addition, I now have a gallon jug of Cameo/Gala combo and one gallon Gala that have both tested out at 17% potential alcohol (after adding one cup of sugar to each) bubbling away.  Looking forward to imbibing that at some point when I am needing a soporific.

Can't we talk about something pleasant? Of course, Wine!

 

It is that time of year and the crop came in big.  Apple wine is being made from a variety of Washington State apple developed in 1985 and named Cameo.  A large tree grows in a neighbors yard which we offered to pick clean so they would not have to clean up after the tree dropped them all.  Windfall deal without the fall.  Not using fallen apples is a must so you greatly reduce any potential for contamination.  This is my favorite apple variety for wine making.

Simple process.  Squeeze lots of apples, put juice in big jars, keep out the bugs and bacteria with an air lock, add sugar (1#/gal) and champagne yeast, wait until it quits bubbling.  You need a champagne yeast to kick the alcohol content into the 12-14% range which kills most everything else in there with it.  This alcohol level will not happen with most wild yeasts but it is easy to buy the right kind at a beer making equipment store.  These can be housed in bricks or online. Consider them your pets.  The yeast, I mean.  There are millions of them in there with your wine all reproducing quicker than little rabbits. 

It can be a bit more complex than that but that is a good outline.  Lots of good wine making sites online.   No need to get too complex with the process but a few pieces of equipment are fun to play with around the wine and let you know what's happening in the process.  It is alive  just so you can play doctor.  Enjoy it.    

This particular type of wine is FAR better the second year after it has been made.  It is a gamble saving it that long without sulfites but sometimes you get lucky.

Cider is being made.  There is nothing hard about making hard cider.  Squeeze apples, put juice in jar, keep out the bugs and bacteria with a cocked lid or air lock, if you want to get fancy, drink it when it gets real bubbly and don't be afraid of the scum on top.  Just skim it off and take a drink.  Ah, just like back in the good old days when water could be poison and beer was not yet king of America.

The Great Bush Depression

Here we are entering into the Great Bush Depression.  This time it is a bit more entertaining than the Great Hoover Depression.  Dow has dropped both a greater percentage and in terms of number of points lost over the last year than it dropped during the first year of the Great Hoover Depression.  Housing prices have dropped further, too, over an equivalent time period.  Disturbing start.  The gov't is doing the same things it did last time almost to the letter.  The dollar amount is larger but the problem is larger this time, too.  From what I have read, the problem amounts to a "bit" over $60 Trillion.  $700 Billion Bailout is a rounding error for that amount of trouble.  Can you say, "Doomed to failure"?  I knew you could.

Mortgage derivatives, initially, are the problem this time.  They are based upon home mortgages.  The last time we had a depression it was based upon home mortgages.  This time it is base upon mortgages that have been leveraged at up to 40 to 1 in some cases.  Yikes.   Some say house prices must drop to the equivalent of 2.5 to 3 times the average income, locally, to be back in line with historic home pricing indexed for inflation.  (That makes the "leveraged vehicle" worth less than ten cents on the dollar invested in many cases.  That is why some companies can now not give back the money of some holders of mutual funds that were based on the safest of vehicles other than Treasury bonds, corporate bonds issued by major US banks and insurance companies like Lehman Bros and AIG both of which have cost you and me over $175 Billion to finance so that their bond holders will not go into default.  Confusing?  The details are even more so but it boils down to trust of which there is currently very little among thieves and bankers.  That is what stops lending worldwide.  It is an amazing thing to behold.)    Some say that will be overshot to the downside as owning a home will be viewed as a ball and chain.  When we bought our first home in 1984 it had cash flow over principal, interest, taxes, and insurance.  That is where housing is headed judging by places like the Central Valley where 50%-70% drops in home value are commonplace.

If you are interested in info about how this financial mess began, how it will progress, and possibly how it will end I would recommend reading these, to begin with, and progress from there:

Mr. Mortgage’s Guide 

Excellent behind the scene Cal housing info.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

In depth economic overview.

Dr. Housing Bubble  

This has an interesting set of articles.  Don't read this to your children at night.  It is scary. 

Federal Reserve Bank research article 11/08

 This compares Depressions then and now and gov't response to both.

DryShips Inc. - Daily Market Report

 This shows a global shipping company specialising in the transport of drybulk cargoes.  If they are not moving product, the world is not buying and selling items and, therefore, not manufacturing as readily across the globe.  The chart says it all excpet for the 'why' of it.  See the 11/14/08 entry for that here:  London Banker

THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS
 The banking system has lost over 1 Trillion dollars (dollar amount is outdated as of 11/08, see below), more than was ever made in the history of banking.  It only took them two years.  (That's why they get the big bonuses.)

The Fourth Quadrant is an examination of why and how the banking/lending/brokerage industries made the Great Bush Depression possible and impossible to avoid.  Skip down to the first two charts in the The Fourth Quadrant.  It is about Turkeys.  That much is darkly hilarious.

 FRB: Speech--Kohn, Productivity and Innovation in Financial Services --November 12, 2008

 Paragraph 7 points out the Turkey aspect of banks.  Kohn is a Fed Vice Chairman.

Cost of the Bailout: $3.5T So Far, But Real Cost May Be Much Higher 11/08

Please do take some time to read some of the above info but...  

Fair Warning:  It's a nightmare seemingly come to life.  

Raiding Bees

I had stepped outside to empty the grey water.  The hive sounded different.  It was surrounded by more bees than I had seen since I brought home the old hive box that still had honey comb in it.  That was when our bees raided the unprotected, empty hive.  They had looked like they were going to swarm when they filled the air over the patio but the bees were in an agitated looking flight pattern instead of the smooth flight pattern of the swarm.  They had spent two days emptying the old hive box.  It was then so alive with our bees that at first I thought another swarm had moved into it when I looked inside. ( The picture shows the old hive box on the left that was empty of bees but had honeycomb in it.  On the right is the smoker hive with too many entry ways at bottom and where the lid fits onto the body of the smoker just above the handle.  A pan of water with rocks in it always sits next to the hive.)

This time it was not our bees doing the raiding.  It was bees from the neighboring hive 40 feet away and definitely in the agitated flight pattern.  I walked closer to the smoker hive and saw dead bees littering the ground and hundreds of bees attempting to gain, and many gaining, entrance to the smoker hive at a time of day which was not normal for our hive to have bees around it.  Our bees come home between 5:30 and 6:30 every evening.  This was 7:30 and there were far too many bees to be just ours and they looked blacker than our bees.  I watched the flight pattern of the raiders and they were definitely heading over the fence to the neighbors yard after filling up on honey at the smoker hive.  

Not good.  

Raiding happens to a hive that is either weaker than the raiding hive or has too many entrances to the hive to protect efficiently.  The smoker hive had too many entrances.  The hive is strong but indefensible.  Raiding bees are often blacker in appearance than normal bees.  These certainly were.  They get their blackness from battling to get into defended hives which knocks off their hair as other bees bite them.  The stiff hair on an insect is there to keep other insects from biting them easily and the hair on bees give them a golden coloration.  Under the hair their exoskeleton is black.  I walked into the swarming raiders and placed entry closures until just a one inch width of one entrance was all that was available.  They were able to protect the hive at this entrance and the raid stopped after another attempt to gain entry the next morning failed.  

All seems back to normal today but there is not the usual number of bees in the air at any one time and they are not at the right times.   It seems they may have avoided a food storage catastrophe and a very lean winter, if not outright death at the jaws of the marauders.  Tough life being a bee.  If they stay a viable hive into the fall, I will place honey in their hive this winter to be certain they have enough food to make it through until next spring, if I do not see new cells capped off in the currently uncapped comb before this Fall.  If the queen was killed, they are in big trouble and the hive will probably be weakened into next year.  They will have to replace the queen, a five week job before she can begin laying eggs, then another three weeks to get the eggs to bees and that takes them into October with winter staring at them.  Every day fewer bees are replaced until, after about three weeks, no more are replaced until the new queen's eggs mature so their ability to collect food and defend the hive is constantly reduced over the next two months.  Increasing attrition is a nasty situation to overcome.

The clover we grow in the yard is still blooming nicely and the eucalyptus nearby will bloom this Fall so food availability is not a problem.  The problem is how much food storage they lost and whether they have enough time to replenish their stores to a level that will carry them through the winter.  

If anyone is interested, I have not yet been stung even with all this "I walked into the swarming raiders" stuff I have been posting.  Probably, it is just luck but knowing how to move around bugs and other animals so they are not alarmed by having a large mammal so close to them is important.  Also important with bees is that I do not wear cologne or use stong smelling soaps or, in the case of bees, wear any black clothing, leather, or fur (clean, perfumed Goths are in big trouble around bees).  Maybe this all contributes to why I have not yet been stung.  The sting has to happen eventually.  I will post the exact details and my moanings and cursings when it happens.  I am assuming I am not allergic so will not die from it because I do DISTINCTLY remember being stung when in the second grade after stepping on a bee.  That is the only time I have been stung.  Should be interesting when it happens next.  I talked to a beekeeper of many hives that said he had been stung 150 times by July.  Just for this year.  A friend had a bee get into his bonnet as he was collecting a swarm and sting him next to his eye which swelled shut for a day or two.  Not so much fun but it's a good story.  Creeps me out thinking about stinging insects in my clothing.

Over the next few days we realized the bees had fled.  The hive is empty.  I dismantled it.  We have our feelers out for another hive and will probably pick up a swarm early next year when overwintering hives split and move.

I kinda miss those bugs.