To The Surbiton Manor Born

  Will Two Cords of Wood Heat Steepmeadow All Winter? We got a whole lotta wood . Two cords seasoned cut and split yesterday. It did leave us the not inconsiderable task of stacking. As darkness fell last Thursday, we had to resort to hurling the wood into wheelbarrows and just dumping in the back yard to get it put out of sight for the night. Whew. It is a relief to have this supply laid in. (Here is a video showing what two cords of firewood look like stacked. Last spring when we saw natural gas prices rise precipitously, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to convert the then unusable fireplace on our lower level into a functioning heating appliance. I have long wanted to be able to heat the house without relying on the power grid. So we purchased and had installed a modern fireplace insert . These burn efficiently enough to - hopefully - qualify for a 26% tax credit for heating with renewable biomass (on both the fireplace and the professional installation). 75% is the I

Chiles Rellenos Next year, Steepmeadow will not be producing ancho/poblano peppers in any quantity, given the nightmare of this past Saturday afternoon. Neither will new flower bulbs be purchased and planted. Certain Sisyphean tasks need to be completed in the garden/yard in the fall.  A steady plod through the earlier part of the month has got us pretty close to complete in preparing the beds (so many beds...) for next year.    It is a good thing we started early, as the temperatures have plummeted. As I type this on an early Monday morning, it is 28 degrees and feels like 17, with a light, 13 mph gale-force zephyr blasting from the NNW.  Yesterday (Sunday) and Saturday were not much better, but necessitated a lot of time outside.  Kiki spent the better part of Saturday morning in the bitter cold sinking bulbs into the rock hard ground, breaking a dibber at one point. We've been here three years, and for three years bulb planting has happened on a bitter cold day in October. No ma

The Teeny Weenie Free Zucchini Garden in the front yard near the street was a great success this year. Kirstin's students (a.k.a. "the girl posse") enjoyed planting it with her and coming over to chat w/ Mrs. Olson and water it all summer. We got the lovely note above in the mailbox the other day, confirming that other folks had fun with it too. We'll be repeating it next year.  

Ready for Next Year The blog has suffered from some neglect, but actions speak much louder than words , or so it is said.  There's a lot to do to close down the garden and the yard, and there never seems like there's enough time to do it in. While pulling the wilted vines and flowering lettuce and herbs, I discovered that the soil in the beds had devolved into something resembling concrete. Our soil has a lot of clay, but I thought we'd mitigated that by importing black dirt. Not enough, apparently. This is compounded by this past September being the driest on record. So here's the process:  Rip out the old plants Dig up the weeds Rake the leaves and rotted veg off the surface Stick a fork into the soil about a foot deep and a few inches at a time and wiggle it around to loosen things up - but not, importantly, to turn over. We don't want to disrupt the microbial communities working away down there. Add 80 lbs. of rotted cow manure compost to each 8x4 bed. (This is