To The Surbiton Manor Born

  Helko Werk Nordic Splitting Axe Over the last couple of weeks, I've acquired more than one axe, based on new information. While readers who know about cutting wood may find this a bit dull, like my old fiberglass-handled felling axe from a big box hardware store, if you haven't cut a lot of wood, it may be new to you. I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across one of the folks I follow, Rowdy Claude, the cross-dressing homesteader who gave a wood splitting 101 class. Aha! This was why my axe continually jams in the wood. The "cheeks" of the axe head are the wrong shape. Great for cutting a tree down. Lousy for splitting.  This should not have been news to me. My dad used to heat with wood. This is our third year heating with wood at Steepmeadow. And yet... So I purchased a really good splitting axe. It turns out that there's a whole world of axes. There is the brand with the big recognition, the Gransfors Bruk. There's Helko Werk from Germany. There...

Good night, raised beds.  A good chunk of this afternoon was spent out in the howling winds - gusts reaching a 7 on the Beaufort Scale - prepping the raised beds for winter & spring. Fortunately, it was a pretty mild day, by November standards. 53 degrees. This involves: 1) Removing the detritus of last summer's crops.  2) Loosening the soil. Note that this is NOT turning it as some poor gardening advice columns suggest. When you stick a fork in it and shake it, the soil gets loosened, but it doesn't upset the balance of the bacteria and microorganisms down there. 3) Add about 20 lbs. of our home-made compost. Food scraps, leaves & grass clippings from two years ago 4) Add a sack of commercial raised bed soil. Sack of commercial raised bed soil 5) Rake it smooth. 6) Dump leaves that have been chopped up in the lawnmower on top. Nutrients will leach down into the soil over the winter, and the leaves will act as mulch next spring when we scrape them away from the seeds a...

  Half of our wood for the year Our annual wood deliveries arrived this past week. Two cords on Thursday (which I moved to the back yard myself) and another two cords on Friday (which I stacked, while we got help from one of the kids, currently the Golden Child, and her boyfriend.) It's a satisfying feeling to have it laid in and know that we will be toasty warm, even if fascists attack the power grid post-election. The season has well and truly changed. The last cosmo (and, coincidentally the first cosmo) of the summer bloomed last week. The deck furniture has been eaten by a large chocolate blancmange that has taken up residence outside of our kitchen window. On the positive side, the grass and clover that I started from the end of September through early October has taken over the dirt patch that was our back yard after I'd raked and ripped up the creeping Chalie infestation. Too early to say whether the grand army of nematodes has managed to slaughter the foul invasive whit...

I've been using October 12, 2024 - my annual marathon date - as the end of summer all year long. That marks #15. With age-grading, #5 fastest.  Not terribly surprisingly, it turns out that it truly is the end of summer. Leaves are at full color, and this week we will get a hard freeze. I pulled the last of the vegetables: some tomatoes, the second lettuce crop planted in early September (which produced very well indeed), and, of course, jalapeño peppers (which went berserk and couldn't be stopped). Hopefully the grass / clover seedlings that I planted over the past few weeks after ripping out the creeping Charlie have set. The first part of the lawn that I did this seems to be in good shape. I'm worried about the bits that I only got around to seeding last week. There is a haze of green across all the bits that were laid waste to in the culling. We ate a squash soup for dinner. There's a fire in the fireplace to keep the house warm.  Fall is here.  

  Every living thing is the amazing product of four billion years of slow growth and adaptation. Some would say that every living thing is precious.  I'd make an exception for invasive Asian beetle grubs. Vile, horrible, disgusting and slimy are just a few of the words I'd use to describe these hideous visitors to my yard. Almost as bad as Republicans. They love our apple trees, and have tormented them and stunted the last two seasons of growth. They skeletonized Kirstin's flowers.  They seem to thrive in another unwelcome and invasive thing that grows freely in our yard: creeping Charlie. Horrible stuff that makes the ground spongy and provides haven for the foul grubs.   Now, to clarify: We are not sticklers here at Steepmeadow. We are not striving for some "perfect lawn" full of weak non-native fescues. We won't artificially fertilize. We are loathe to water. We are going after a pollinator lawn, with healthy swaths of hearty clover, red creeping and sheep ...

 And made a very successful batch of ketchup.  Or catsup. The cats were up as I began the messiest of messy tasks, but they grew weary and abandoned me to my red nightmare. If you want to give up most of your morning while handling many containers of very threatening red stuff, make your own condiment!  I had planned to snap a photo of the process but where to even pause and do so? There was no respite once it began. So, all I have in what is left of the final result. Sorry. Terrible let down, really.  As for the artistry of the process, let my words be your eyes... Imagine- a colander heaping over with 5 pounds (about) of bright red tomatoes and three ripe plums. See the onion and garlic gently cooking in olive oil in the bottom of my bright red Dansk enameled pot? Gaze as the tomatoes get added once they have been coarsely chopped. They cook for 15 minutes until all the small cherry tomatoes have burst and the very full pot is bubbling -suddenly, in go the plums! T...