Harvest Home

Picture this (because I don't know where to find a camera with batteries charged up):

• onions and beets spread to dry on newsprint
• cardboard boxes brimming with carrots, potatoes, and squashes
• bags of dry beans, with the sides rolled down to let the beans dry a little more

This week I'll be storing things away a little better: tucking the onions into old nylons and hanging them on nails on the floor joists in the basement; cleaning up some of the carrots and beets and finding some room for them in the fridge, freezing some others, and maybe drying some for soups, too; and clearing some room in a not-too-cool spot for the squashes to sit with some air spaces between them. The dry beans are experiments. I have been growing Windsor broad (or fava) beans for several years, but never understood what they should look like when mature. Finally I read somewhere that they can be picked when the pods start to turn black, and realized that this was not a sign of disease! I let them dry on the vines, and today we gathered them. Also, as a sort of accidental experiment, we gathered the dry wax beans that we didn't get eaten as fresh beans in the summer. We eat a lot of kidney beans and some chickpeas, lentils, and pinto beans, but all of these are tricky to grow in our short summers, so I want to experiment with some other dry legumes. We'll see!

I am very tired, and very happy. I let myself be led away from the garden path for most of the summer and early fall, and when I heard the word "snow" in the forecast I feared I had left it too long, but the rain and snow held off and we got it all in.

Happy thanksgiving!

The Million-Dollar Rain

At last. I haven't replaced my frost-cracked rain gauge yet, and I haven't found the charger for the camera batteries so I didn't get pictures of the puddles, but all three of my rain barrels overflowed, and that grim look on many faces has been replaced with quiet joy and relief. I heard that many places around here got well over an inch. That was the first significant rain we've had this spring, and coming after a winter with very little snow, and a dry fall before that, it was desperately needed. We had used the rototiller on the garden plot at Brian's, for the potatoes, but in my own garden I was careful not to turn the soil at all; I just knifed the shovel blade down in to lift and loosen where the beds had packed down too much. I could see a little bit of moisture in the deeper soil but the top few inches were hard clods and dust. Hoping still, I put all the early stuff in and right after I finished, it rained softly off and on all weekend. Beautiful. We won't get the eavestrough on the house for a while, but we propped up bits of it to catch some of the drips and filled two of our barrels with wonderfully clean water from that new steel roof.

I took a contract doing assessments of the health of native pasture and wetland areas this summer, so you probably won't be hearing much from me for a while yet.

Was that Only Last Summer?

I've been promising pictures of the sunroom building project for several moons now. Tonight, on the full moon just after the winter solstice, many are gathered under old family roofs, but I stay on alone under my own roof. I am waiting until my church duties are completed before I too gather to the chosen family roof of this fast-passing year, and meanwhile, I am enjoying some quiet and tidying up some loose ends. Thanks to a nudge from Jim, I got browsing through pictures from the days when the newest part of our roof was only an idea awaiting a foundation.

It feels like these must have been taken more than just moons ago - feels more like several turns around the sun ago.

It was June 23rd. Garth and James were off in Calgary, having gathered with family by chartered coach to help celebrate his aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. I woke to the siren of the town fire truck, cheerily summoning the folk to the pancake breakfast. It was Fair Day in Arcola.

I burrowed back into my pillow, but something nagged at me. I tried to deny it, to pretend it could be something other than what I knew it must be, but finally I sprang from the bed with the mental admission that I was hearing thunder. Fair Day, indeed.

There was a huge round tarp in the garage, left by my Dad in case of just this circumstance. I dragged a rickety wooden ladder from behind the garage and propped it against the eave of the house where the porch used to be, forming a ridge pole for a makeshift tent over the exposed basement stairs. Then I looked at the partly rotted ladder rails, considered trusting them for a climb, but decided a sturdier second ladder was in order.

As I placed it, the thunder was getting louder, and I could see that the black cloud to the southwest was right on track for a direct hit.

Hammer, spikes, and tarp edges in hand, I started the climb.

The higher I climbed, the more weight of the tarp came up off the ground and into reaction against my effort.

Raindrops started slicking the aluminum ladder rungs. Lightning flashed closer.

I pounded on the wall and yelled at my sleeping daughter to come help. With the hammer and nails out of my hands, and both of us tugging, the tarp finally relented and rose the last few feet I needed. I spiked the top in place under the eave, added some spikes lower on the wall to hold the tarp out to the sides, weighted down the bottom edges with concrete blocks borrowed from the nearby fire pit, and retreated inside.

Then I looked out to see how the tarp was doing, and saw all the water from the garage roof pouring, not into the rain barrel that used to sit behind the garage, but instead into the gravel-filled base we had excavated for a new concrete slab there.


It's amazing what functional structures a person can concoct under pressure. That's a sawhorse supporting a piece of plywood, with various bits of recently removed eavestrough and downspout and connectors balanced and wedged until they conducted the bulk of the water away from the slab base... and into the hole where the chokecherry bush (seen lying in the background) had been removed to make way for the coming concrete truck. I bailed that hole out later. More than once.

The garden sure needed the rain. My kitchen floor didn't. (Well, maybe it did.) The porch removal had inadvertently pulled the eavestrough slightly out of position, not enough so you would notice and remember to fix it on a sunny day, but enough so that the roof runoff from a thunderstorm came sheeting down over the kitchen doorway.

Looking out and down from my kitchen doorway, June 23rd.
The black tarp covers the basement stairs.

If there was any south wind with a storm, the water came sheeting into the doorway, and pushing in under the rubber sweep I had added to the bottom of the door, which was only an interior door after all, and was never intended for keeping out such elements. More than once a hapless family member shuffled into the kitchen during or after such a weather event and found the river with their feet. It crossed the whole kitchen and disappeared under the electric stove, but nothing electrifying happened. We tried to remember to keep some rags tucked up against the door when weather threatened, but that was about as successful as our remembering to fix the eavestrough. It did get done, several storms later.

The tarp did remarkably well at keeping the basement dry. Everyone wondered, though, why I had chosen to drag two tarp edges up the ladder, line up the grommets, and spike both edges in place, instead of unfolding the tarp and leaving more of it on the ground. Everyone wondered, including me. I guess I just had it in my head that a half-moon-shaped tarp would be perfect for the job, and didn't realize that a circle would do just as well, with the other half of the moon spread on the ground. Hey, I was about to climb an aluminum ladder in a thunderstorm. I was actively setting aside my intelligence for a while.

It worked, and I got back inside, safe and soggy. I dried myself off and got into my marching band uniform. By the time Ruth and I were on our way to the parade marshalling grounds, maybe six blocks away at the south end of Main Street, the storm was a distant bank of fluffy white in the east, and the sun was softening the pavement. We survived the march to the fairgrounds in our bright blue polyester jackets and felt-look western-style hats, as we always do. This time someone had arranged to have water waiting for us!

Ah, water. We do need it.

And the garage slab base was none the worse for waterlogging. As my Mom said, it's a good thing concrete likes water.



To be continued...

Sibling Friendliness: Only If You're a Plant

Experiments at McMaster University have turned up evidence that plants are more friendly toward their siblings than toward unrelated plants. Fascinating stuff, but I'm not sure I agree with the comments in the article about implications for gardening. If growing near strangers causes plants to grow more root mass, is that a bad thing? I'm thinking a little bit of competition early on (maybe eased by thinning a bit later), might make all the plants more vigorous underground, so they would be better prepared to deal with drought.

You would think, after all these weeks trying to garden in sticky mud, I would quit worrying about drought.

Nope. I'm from Saskatchewan.

We Got Rain!

A big storm went through - six tenths in a hurry. The whole driveway was running half an inch deep. Five miles north in the hills, I hear they got over an inch. Hallelujah! Everything looks better now. That drought was drying out my very soul. Now I feel like singing!

There was a lightning strike very close. Tzz-BANG! B's phone is out across the street, so maybe it was that close. I hear there was also a strike at an oil well south of town. A couple of trucks went tearing out that way. I hope all is well.

In the lull after the first five tenths, I went out to check on things and found hardly any water in the rain barrel. I got up on the stepladder, with all that lightning blasting around, and unclogged the downspout. Now the barrel is mostly full - not quite, but I can't complain. Hallelujah again!

Rain, Rain, Where Did You Go?

When we left town on Friday morning, it was raining. We drove westward, into the weather that we assumed would be heading our way, and it rained and rained, harder and harder. Garth remarked that he hoped it wasn't raining like that at home, or our garden would be flattened. I had more confidence in the plants than that, and I was very glad that they wouldn't want for water while we were away. As we got close to Weyburn, we saw water pooling in the fields from all the rain.

As we drove south from Whitewood this afternoon, we passed through some showers and saw lots of lightning.

When we got home, I glanced at the garden and saw that it definitely hadn't been flattened. The pumpkin plants looked like they had doubled in size. But when I walked into the garden, I noticed that the flour lines on the yang side hadn't been washed away; in fact, they seemed as clear and bright as when we left.

And the ground was dry.

And the rain gauge was empty.

I phoned my mom, out at the farm just five miles north, and she said they got over an inch. They had been to Oxbow on Friday, and it rained all the way. Oxbow is south of us.

I guess the clouds must have parted over Arcola.

Thankful

Yesterday I finished most of the direct seeding in the garden. Today I am staying indoors and watching the rain.

Lake Arcola appears

It rained most of Tuesday. In the late afternoon, a neighbour came to the door and commented on our moat. By Wednesday morning, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. We'd had a total of 1.9 inches, and more runoff than we did from the spring thaw. I took this photo yesterday, from my usual spot on the 604, looking west into the middle of town.

My rain gauge fell over

It wasn't in the forecast until just before it happened. Sunday morning I looked out at the rain and wished I'd taken the small trouble to set my rain gauge upright again. A little later I looked out and saw mist above the shingles on the garage, telling me it was really coming down. We left town for a day, and there was no rain at Qu'Appelle, but when we got home there were still big puddles around. Mom said they got well over an inch at the farm. With all that rain plus the wet snow last Wednesday, you would think the soil should be saturated.

I was digging in the garden today, planting some asparagus from Garth's mom, and I found the wetting front at about eight inches deep. Below that the soil was dry.

Crop checking

After all the wind and rain yesterday, and seeing the leaf-littered streets and my bedraggled, leaned-over garden, I was afraid to look at the crops. But as I drove out to an oil well site south of Carlyle today, I decided it could have been worse. (Keep in mind that I wasn't raised on a grain farm, so I'm not a good judge of crop condition, especially when I'm just driving by.) A lot of fields have been combined already, and there didn't seem to be many down in swath. I expected to see some lodging, but I only noticed a few small patches that were lying flat. I did see some fields that looked not quite right, as if most of the heads were bent over and only a scattering of them were still standing straight up. I'm wondering if it was hail, or just the cumulative effect of a whole day of gusty wind on a wet crop that's too ripe to straighten up again after.

been away...

...so I haven't been watching the rain gauge. But we got dumped on last night. Check out my rain post.

How much did you get last night?

Ever since I heard the joke at Saskatchewan Conference (of the United Church, held in Arcola back in May), I've been picturing that line as a link on my blog, pointing to a place where you can submit your own rainfall observations and see how much your neighbours got.

Well, now I actually have a blog, and on Thursday I picked up a rain gauge of my own. The instructions said to place the gauge away from tall objects, at least twice their height away, but with the trees along both sides of the yard (and some in the middle too), I'd be almost in the old "brick ponds" if I stuck to that standard. So I settled on a spot in the garden (where the spike goes into the soil easily).

This morning I looked out and saw a little puddle on the driveway. Whee! I rushed out to the garden, but my hopes fell when I saw dry soil under the zucchini leaves. I think there was more rain sticking to the sides of the gauge than puddled in the bottom. Trace, I guess. Estevan is reporting 0.0 mm in the last 24 hours.

I know this isn't very sophisticated, but if you want to add your rainfall observations, just note them in the comments to this post, with the units (mm or inches or the good old "tenths"), the date and a location. Don't get too specific - I don't want people using my blog to find out personal information about my readers - but maybe a land description would be okay, or something like "Arcola (SE)" if you live in town. One of my projects is to learn enough database programming to have a little form where you can plug in the numbers, and a map to display the results.

Rising CO2: more food, less nourishment?

Climate change. It seems to be a standing joke, here in Arcola. Last year people got lots of laughs out of our chilly spring. This year it's the rain; so much for the dire predictions of drought, right?

I usually manage a weak smile in response. Wish I could come back with a witty one-line challenge, but I just feel tired, thinking of the hours and hours I have spent wading through "debates" about climate change, knowing there is no way I can respond in an hour, let alone a line. I've made a sort of hobby of listening to the criticisms of climate change science, and then digging deeper for answers that satisfy me. Truthfully, there have been many times when I have been excited by something suggesting that climate change won't be as bad as predicted. Unfortunately, I've always been disappointed. As far as I can see, it will be bad.

Some say that humans are adaptable, so we should just "adapt as required." What?? And leave many less-adaptable forms of life to disappear? If we're so adaptable, why don't we adapt our civilization to use less fossil fuel?

Yes, I feel strongly about this. But if you differ with me, I'm still happy to listen and discuss. It's a huge subject, with never-ending lively debate amongst the scientists themselves. Nobody knows exactly what will happen to the climate as CO2 levels rise. There's debate about how much CO2 levels will rise, and how fast, and how much of the increase is directly related to human activities.

One thing stands out for me amongst all this discussion: CO2 levels are rising fast. The Vostok ice core data shows no CO2 level above 300 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in over 400,000 years, that is, through the last four major cycles of glaciation and deglaciation. Current CO2 levels are around 360 ppmv, or 20% higher than the maximum level detected over that entire time span. Never mind climate. Who knows what other systems will be thrown out of balance by this change?

How about the food system? There are warning signs already, from researchers following up one of the favourite critiques of climate change science: that elevated CO2 will boost plant growth. Indeed it will, but as Glenn Scherer reports in Grist Magazine, studies are also showing that it will diminish nutrient levels in food.

A particularly disturbing study suggests that the mechanisms of CO2 nutrient depletion may already be causing a decline in the quality of our food supply. Josep Penuelas of the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications in Barcelona, Spain, compared historical plant samples grown at preindustrial levels of atmospheric CO2 with modern equivalents. He found that today's plants had the lowest levels of calcium, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, sodium, sulfur, and zinc than at any time in the last three centuries.

And ruminants will grow slower, because the nitrogen content of grasses will decline, making their microbe-assisted digestion less efficient. Another hit for our cattle industry, but so slow and subtle that we might not even notice.