It was inevitable, following my reprehensible actions. Late last week I expressed dismay (? well, at least disbelief) that I had not once this winter shoveled our driveway. It was very shortly thereafter that the first inklings of the latest (last night’s) snowstorm started to hit the weather predictions. Then over the weekend I found opportunity again, and repeated my proclamation, thus sealing today’s “snow day” for schools all over the midwest, and adding another X inches of in the east and northeast today. To all who feel inconvenienced by my actions, I apologize. To those who get out and enjoy this snow, You’re Welcome!

I was up last night around 2am, helping Mandy get out the door and on the road, in the middle of the snowfall. Actually, near the end. We already had 8-10″ on the ground and only a couple more inches fell after that. It was beautiful outside, and the snow was perfect powder, light and fluffy… a joy to shovel, or even to sweep.

my winter friend Tippy

This morning though, it was worktime. After coffee and some early emails, I headed outside with water and feed for the chickens. First I shoveled out to the west flock (not so far) and shoveled out a circular path for them in their yard. Then I invited them out and sprinkled scratch grains all along the circular drive… half of them joined me. Changed water, collected eggs, added feed, chatted up the peeps (6 little ones, three months old, have their own little corral in the coop) and headed back to restock.

Tippy joined me then, stretching as he came out of the garage… the other cats (Caprica 6, Georgina and Sassy - our three polydactyls) had been across at the east flock last night, so I hadn’t expected to see anyone this morning here. Tippy rides my shoulder all winter long whenever he’s around, and he mewed to jump up.

As we trudged across to the east flock through the drifts (not quite knee high), I found I was following Tippy’s footpath. Obviously it was the footpath we use every day, but the 6″ of snow that had fallen since yesterday’s trip to close up the east flock and the blowing powder should have obliterated the path… but here it was, freshly marked by Tippyprints only partially reclaimed by the drifts.

Tippy's trackway, 10" powder

O Intrepid Cat! O Noisome Traveler! (I could say noisy, but sometimes this field cat is more noisome than noisy). After following his path, I could see that he went from the east coop barn overnight, over to the nearby garage, then back to the usual path and over to find me. He had leapt through the deepest snow in several places, but mostly trudged through the powder dragging his belly. I was proud of him then. He is a fine companion cat for the out of doors.

The chickens are all fine this morning. I used my boots to scuffle out a smaller circlepath for the east flock and scattered their scratch grains outside too. The roosters deigned to join the hens this morning, as seems their fair-weather prerogative. But everyone seemed happy. And I was too.

I keep thinking of joining the Dark Days Challenge, but don’t quite. We make locally produced food (much of it our own) a feature of most meals already, rather than a feature once a week. I think our general approach is to eat mostly local food, and most of that is grown by ourselves, or someone closeby we know. But our effort seems to be put into having a significant part of almost every meal be local… rather than having limited times of being completely local.

Brunch today: (A sub-average one for us actually - it’s rare not to have some kind of homegrown vegetable, either in an omolette, or a side of cabbage or brussels sprouts…)

Sourdough bread using the recipe from Jeff Hertzberg, published in Mother Earth News, and using local flour. Eggs produced here at home; quince jelly we made from quinces that grew here. Butter, salt&pepper, and coffee were not local. Milk in coffee from a local source.

It fascinates me to see how many people are photographing their food, and their cooking processes in the kitchen. I feel drawn to do the same thing. When you grow and cook your own food, there is such wholeness to it, such wonder in it. I think it shows what a rediscovery it is, to want to document it.

Someone commented to me last night, “Well, so the garden is finished now, right? You’re not getting anything much out of it anymore?”

There is so much. We are so fortunate to still be pulling so much fresh food out of the garden for most meals. I guess, sometimes it’s hard to see beyond tomatoes, basil, potatoes, and zucchini, and recognize what’s still there when they’re gone.

So here’s what we’re still harvesting:

Brussels Sprouts… my favorite at this time of year. They are so good after a couple frosts, and just very lightly cooked until they are bright green. Dress with butter, some chopped chervil, parsley or dill, or balsamic vinegar.

Oh, the chervil, parsley and dill come from the garden still. And green onions. And thyme and sage.

Broccoli (little tiny florets “pre-cut”).

Celery. Beets.   Leeks…tons of leeks.  Radiccio.  Cabbage.  Carrots. Still have some potatoes to dig, just a few.

Parsnips and Rutabega. There are some Turnips there, but have been harvesting greens from them more than liking the roots.

Greens: (Our house salad mix is currently lettuce-free, as the voles ate ALL of several plantings of lettuce)…Mizuna, Chard, Kale of several types, Mustard greens, Arugula, Spinach, Beet greens

Corn salad is coming along, not ready quite yet.    Found a couple self-seeded Radishes.

There is still so much in the garden.

Friday the 13th:  We know now that we’ve been losing chickens this week.  About 10.  About one a day, since about when the leaves fell.  We’ve seen the hawk several times.  This morning I got up early and when it was light walked out in the morning mist.  The weeds and branches were softer in the fine rain, and didn’t cling to me so much as yesterday.  I found three spots, as though visiting shrines on a pilgrimage, where a sad soft cloud of feathers on the ground marked a chicken loss.  The cobwebs dripped teardrops when I brushed them.  And the complicated interwoven circle of life goes on.

I do enjoy splitting wood.  I do, I do, I do believe.  It’s good for me physically — it takes about an hour average to split enough for two winter days.  It’s good for the environment, too.  Our use of the wood stove probably saves us about two tanks’ worth of propane each winter, about 5-600 gallons.  That’s a fair bit of fossil carbon not going into the atmosphere, replaced by a renewable biofuel.  Good for our pocketbook… that propane costs real dollars.  Our cost is about 1-2 gallons of gasoline for the chain saw, plus another gallon or so of chain bar oil.  So I like everything about burning our own locally gathered wood.

But this is about splitting wood.  I have a friend who avoids splitting wood if he can.  His woodpile is neatly stacked with thousands of pieces of wood no more than 4 inches in diameter, 16″ or so long, just right for shoving into his little stove.  If it’s big enough to require splitting he just doesn’t bother with it.  Or rarely, at least.  His philosophy is simple:  “Work less”.  Splitting is work, no doubt.  And he avoids it.  To be fair, we’ve worked together at family ash tree fellings, and he surprised me with the fervor of his swinging of the maul and working around the edges of huge ash slices (3-4 feet diameter, 18″ thick), slabbing off wonderful broad wedges of the ash, just right for the stove (some require resplitting they’re so wide, but only 2-3 inches thick).  So it’s not that he isn’t good at splitting, he just prefers not to.

What I really like about splitting is what my friend avoids:  the challenge.  Some days I just want to get some wood split and onto the rack, but other days I savor the challenge.  On the savory days, I start with some easier logs to get warmed up and build my confidence.  Then I move into the knottier pieces that I know will give me trouble.

Obstreperous ash and elm splits.

Yesterday was a savory day splitting wood.  I currently have a small pile of logs ready for splitting next to my splitting stump, collected from an ash tree we felled a couple weeks ago and some elms I sliced up just after that.  I set the biggest and knottiest ones at the bottom of the pile then, and have been slowly working down to them since.

So I started with some of the elm.  These are elms that have been dead for several years, dead of Dutch elm fungus but still standing.  When they fall down, or are leaners in the forest, I take them down the rest of the way.  Elms are great, they give you lots of 3-5″ sticks that don’t need splitting from their long tapering branches, and the wood is strong and stiff.  My friend would approve.  But when elm needs splitting, you’re in trouble.  Elm has an incredibly twisty grain, where one strand will wrap 30 or 40 or even 60 degrees around inside a 16″ piece.  The strands almost seem to weave a 3D fabric-like interior, making them terrible to split with a maul.

But if you let elm season in the forest before you harvest, it gets wormy.  Elm perfectly seasoned this way has just enough worm/larva trails running through the wood to make it split really nicely, but the wood is still quite hard and ready to burn. Less seasoning than this, and you’re in trouble trying to split it by hand.

So I started out with a couple elm pieces that were more than seasoned.  In fact, the first one had a wormy core that was a goner.  I kept the nicely seasoned outer couple inches, but the core was light and falling apart, so I tossed it over the fence.  The second one was smaller and just about perfect, with some incipient splitting already apparent on the log end.  Snick!  One stroke splits it in two.  Snick! Snick!  Four perfect quarters, and a warm spot in my heart.

That was the end of the easy logs… I’m nearing the bottom of my pile.  So next I went for two 12 inch diameter ash logs.  The other ash logs of this size had been near the top of my pile and had split easily early.  These went to the bottom because they were knotty, at least three good knots on each.  You can’t just go through the middle of fresh ash this size (or bigger).  My friend’s ash splitting technique of working around the edge is the only way, and makes an impossible job fun.  But with knotty ash, the edges are no more fun than the middle.  The grain weaves elm-like around the knots, and refuses to yield.  Our ash is not well seasoned, of course… the Emerald Ash Borer beetles went through our stand just a year or two before we moved into Dragonwood, killing all the ashes bigger than 3″ diameter.  And this ash was 60 feet tall and still standing strong until a couple weeks ago.  No leaves at all this summer, so it’s finally fully dead, but not seasoned in the least.

I line up and pause for zen centering, envisioning the Snick! as my maul dives through the log.  I see the maul traveling all the way through the ash, knocking a nice spall off from the edge.  I wiggle my toes and settle my stance once more, then swing my 6 pound splitting maul back, and around and down hard and fast on the log.  The log is upright about 16″ above ground level, perched on my splitting stump, and inside an old tire.  The stump puts my ash log just about at waist level, perfect for my swing, and the tire helps steady the ash.

This is obstreperous wood.  Noisily and defiantly stubborn wood.  I swing fast and hard and my aim is right on, but I am disappointed.  It’s a loud one; the log and the stump reverberate with the stroke… the chickens pause momentarily, having forgotten for a moment that I was splitting wood nearby.  But my modest maul buries only a quarter inch. I have made a small dent, without a hint of the fracturing that is needed for a split.  It is flatly impossible to dent your way through a log… it must split, fracture between the strands of the grain, find its own path of least resistance through the wood.  Your job as splitter is not to force a new path but to find the path that already exists, the one that has grown into the grain, that has been there from the beginning, waiting for you to find it.  I have not.

There is tremendous pleasure in finding the fracture that has been waiting for you all these years.  Tremendous pleasure indeed when it is found on the first stroke.   The seasoned elm gave me that pleasure, and warmed me to this task.

About six noisy, reverberant strokes later, I have one small fracture appear.  It is a splintery mess, looking more elm-like than ash-like, but it is a fracture.  Three more good strokes and I almost have it… a dowdy 4 inch wide spall down the edge of the log, held in place at the bottom by wrapping around a 1″ knot.  That branch stub is stubborn, and I have to work to get this scrawny, 1″ piece of ash loose and into the pile.  But it’s a start.

That log was obstreperous, but I burned some more of it this morning.  I see a split of it here next to me in the wood bucket, a nice split with a centered 2″ knot about half way down.  The top of the split facing me has no fewer than nine minor dents where the log refused to recognize my maul’s annoying tapping.  That ratio seems about right.  That log and the next several that filled my barrow took about 10 maul strokes per split, and the splits are splintery and “ugly” (see pic).  Nothing pretty about them.

My last three logs were my favorites of the day.  The first was an elm that I cut down two years ago, and couldn’t split at that point, so I gave up and set it aside to season.  Last year I tried again, and got no further in our negotiations.  Yesterday it succumbed to my reasoning, with perhaps even less resistance than I expected.  I love burning elm, it catches quickly and heats up the stove fast.

The last two were “Woodies”.  We have a friend Woody who has an enormous wood stove that can burn anything.  Woody shows up with his truck at family tree downing events, and takes all those impossibly resistant forked logs and pieces with 8″ knots that can’t be mauled or wedged or dented.  And welcome to them.  I had four woodies that I had set aside in earlier weeks when I could no longer spall anything off the edges of these knotty pieces, and they were too big for our stove.  But yesterday was special, and after tackling the hard part of the pile, I went after two of the woodies and found the fractures that had been waiting for me these 30 years or more.

Thud!  Thud!  Bonk!  Thud!  Snick!

I love splitting wood.

It rained here, finally, two out of the last three nights. It has barely rained here all summer. Storms go north and south of us, but have missed us over and over again.

There has been just as dry a drought on this blog of ours. Like a dry patch of ground, a fierce writer’s block has stalwartly stood between me and journalling - a writer’s block fueled by some difficult events this summer, and a commanding lack of time.

Once you have let something slide, the hardest part perhaps is picking it up again for the first time in awhile. We’re starting small…..tiny raindrops….. but more is on the way.

Tis August, and I’ve not posted since the first market day.  We’ve gone every week save one, and sold eggs, herbs (dill, basil, tarragon, parsley, cilantro), lettuces of several types, mixed greens of several types (like our Dragonwood Wild Mix), arugula, lamb’s quarters, purslane, garlic, leeks, turnips (ok, so no one has bought any turnips yet, but they look great), cut flowers (every week’s different, of course), nasturium bouquets (either for looking or for eating — about half our customers just want them to look pretty), edible flower mix (nasturtiums, lemon marigolds and arugula flowers last week), and oh I’m sure there’s a few things I’m missing on the list.  Our tomatoes and many other late summer regulars are only just coming in here, so the list will get longer by the end of the season.

The market has been a lot of fun!  We’ve got friendly regular customers that come back for more eggs (and even bring us cartons), or for garlic, or just to stop by and say hello and check us out.  We’ve got helpful neighbors to help tie our rickety sun canopy down when it gets too windy (every week), and a great crew at Zingermans running things smoothly (thanks Corinna and Kristen especially).  I just wanted to write and say ‘Hey!’ to anybody who stops by here, and make sure to come out to the Westside Farmer’s Market soon.

The Westside Farmers’ Market in Ann Arbor opens today, and we’ll be there.  We’re bringing flowers and greens, rhubarb and herbs, and of course some pretty eggs.

Rhubarb, Arugula and Garlic Flowers

We’ve harvested more than we expected, though less than we hoped, but everything looks (tastes!) great and we’re excited for the first day of the market.  Hope to see you there!