Drying Fruit

Now that it's harvest time in our orchard, it was time to bring out our fruit dryer, another left-behind gift from the Clausens. It's basically just a set of 9 screen shelves with an electric heater and a fan to blow the hot air over the fruit.


Plums in the dryer. The plums took about 24 hours to fully dry into chewy goodness.


Granny Smith apples in the dryer. The apples only took 6-8 hours before they were ready.


Plums on a rack, before going into the dryer. We split the plums in half, removed the stone, and pushed the flesh inside out so that the skin was concave. I estimate that we dried somewhere around 300 plums (600 halves)!


Dried plums. They sure do lose a lot of their volume in the drying process, but that is what helps to concentrate their flavor. Yes, you could call these prunes and not dried plums, but then the California Dried Plum Board might come knocking on your door.

Oh, and one last thing: Dried fruit gives you gas. Bad gas. Particularly the plums. But it's kinda like eating lots of garlic... as long as everyone around partakes, it's okay.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Last Mow of the Season

Now that the weather is getting colder, we had time to get in one final mow of the season. We managed to get away with only mowing 4 times this year! (But when we did mow it, boy was it long.)


Mowing down the weeds. This section is unirrigated, and as such hasn't seen much water since June. It's been crispy brown for some time.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Orchard Harvest

We haven't made a lot of mention of our orchard on this blog. The main reason for that is that we haven't spent much time thinking about - or working with - our orchard.

Consisting of 17 trees, the orchard was planted by the Clausens (obviously) and contains a combination of young trees, mature trees and "retired" trees (that no longer produce much fruit). We have an assortment of Italian plum, Green plum, Granny Smith apple, Asian pear, Cherry (retired), Filbert (forced retirement - no mate to pollinate), Jonagold apple, etc.

Now is the time when most of the trees are ready to harvest. Some are actually a little bit beyond that stage, but we'll know better for next year. We've concentrated on the plums, Jonagold and Granny apples, making some tarts, jams and dried fruit - more on that in a later post (when I get some photos.)

Meanwhile, enjoy these photos from our orchard harvesting. We probably spent as much time taking photos as we did actually picking fruit. ;)


Jonagold apples


Mt Adams over the "arboretum"


Autumn leaves


Trees full of plums!


Italian plums (closeup)


Corinne with wormy apple


Jonagolds

- Mike (& Corinne)

Alton Brown Dinner Party

Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with us knows that we're huge fans of Alton Brown and Good Eats. So when we discovered that there were other fellow fans lurking around at work, Corinne had the idea of an Alton Brown Dinner Party. Each person was instructed to make an Alton recipe of their choosing, either from an episode of Good Eats or from one of his several cookbooks.

We decided to have everyone's dishes be a surprise, so we did NOT coordinate what people were bringing. Whatever mix we got, we got. When everyone arrived with their creations, it was like a cooking geek's Christmas: everyone opening their packages and sharing their food, and recalling the episode from which the recipe came.

Appetizers:
Baba Ghannouj from Deep Purple [Ken & Rita]
Wheat Berry Tapenade from Ill Gotten Grains [Phil & Paul]

Main Courses:
Fried Chicken from Fry Hard 2: The Chicken [Jeff]
Braciole from Fit to be Tied with Tomato Sauce from Tomato Envy [Mike]
Potato/Portobello Gratin from This Spud's For You [Ken & Rita]
Swedish Meatballs from Great Balls Of Meat [Rat]
Mushroom Wheat Berry Pilaf from Ill Gotten Grains [Phil & Paul]

Desserts:
Berry Crisp from Cobbled Together [Anna]
Bananas Brule from Citizen Cane [Anna]
Cherry Couscous Pudding from Ill Gotten Grains [Phil & Paul]
Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies from The Cookie Clause [Corinne]
Coffee from True Brew [Jeff]

Considering that it wasn't coordinated, I think we got a pretty good mix. Not enough greens (actually, nothing was green...), but we half expected that.

Everything was great and we all had lots of fun! We even had some informal "judging" from Phil's 6 year-old son, Paul. As he ate each dish, he ranked it and gave some very astute reviews, particularly for a 6-year-old. See, watching Good Eats makes you smart!

We're hoping to not make this a once in a lifetime event!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden Update: Frost Watch!

Alas, summer can't last forever. The nighttime temperatures are dropping pretty low, routinely into the low 40s and sometimes into the 30s as well. Earlier this week we actually had a mild frost which caught me a bit by surprise! Thankfully everything survived, but the tips on some of the leaves on the tomatoes and zucchini were affected by the frost.


Frost damage on zucchini leaves

I've been paying close attention to the weather forecast, but even that isn't enough. The Trout Lake Valley is prone to frost pockets, since the surrounding cold air sinks into the valley. As if 1700' elevation didn't make the growing season short enough! Hopefully we can get another few weeks out of the season; there are still an awful lot of green tomatoes on those plants...

Since the weather has turned colder, we actually lit our first fire of the season in our wood stove. We are going to hold out as long as we can before turning the furnace on, though. Summer can't be over yet!

- Mike (& Corinne)

We Voted Republican. And It Rained.

Yes, it's true. We checked the "Republican" box on today's Washington Primary Ballots. But it's not our fault!

In 2004, the state of Washington adopted new rules for primary elections that REQUIRE a voter to only vote for either Republican or Democratic candidates in the primary election. And in this years election, there are several local positions that only have Republican candidates running, so in effect the primary election determines the winner of the general election. So the only way to make our voices heard for those offices is to vote Republican! The races with multiple Democratic candidates are relatively pre-determined, so it made more sense for us to cross the lines. Thankfully the party choice is not preserved, so there will be no permanent record of our transgressions. :) (Except here, I guess.)

Coincidentally (or is it?), today also marked the first real rain since June. It has rained on and off for the entire morning, and the sky is completely overcast. But we also noticed that the snow on the mountains is starting to return! Snowboarding is just around the corner...

- Mike (& Corinne)

Forest Owners Field Day

We recently attended a "Forest Owners Field Day" north of Seattle. Sponsored by the Family Forest Foundation and a host of other organizations, this "out in the woods," all-day event offered 1-hour seminars on all sorts of topics; there were so many topics, in fact, that Corinne and I decided that we needed to split up so that we could attend as many as possible!

All of the seminars we attended were great:

• Protecting Your Forest From Wildfire
  
• Small Scale Forestry Equipment
  
• Special Forest Products
  
• Field and Pasture Afforestation
  
• Wildlife Damage Control
  
• Red Alder Management
  
• Pruning Trees
  
• Identifying and Managing Tree Root Rots
  
• Site Preparation and Reforestation
  
• Early Plantation Care and Pre-Commercial Thinning
  
• Chainsaw Safety and Maintenance
  
• Forestry Taxes - Current Use Property Taxation and Timber Excise Taxes

...and believe it or not, there were even more that we wanted to attend but just couldn't fit in!

The small scale forestry equipment one was particularly exciting. Presented by the owner of Future Forestry Products, this class included demonstrations of all sorts of cool equipment specially and intelligently designed for the small-scale forester. Such cool toys!

Events like this one really energize us about working on our forest. There were probably 200 other small forest owners in attendance. In the near future, we hope to: buy several products from FFP; buy a new chainsaw (with more safety features and a smaller bar) and safety equipment like chaps, etc.; and we're going to try our hand at doing some thinning of trees ourselves.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Anniversary Weekend in Portland

Even though we live only ~80 miles from Portland, we rarely make the trek. And when we do, we typically have a long list of stop to make and errands to run. As a result, our typical Portland trip is busy, but we don't get to really enjoy the city.

For our 6th wedding anniversary, we decided (last minute) to spend a weekend in Portland with no agenda whatsoever. We got a hotel room downtown for Saturday night and just spent the weekend walking around, eating, and enjoying the city.

Some of the highlights:

• White Salmon Jazz at the Bingen Huckleberry Festival, on our way out of town
  
• Hedge House for dinner - twice
  
• Dessert at Pix Patisserie
  
• Stumptown for coffee - THE best coffee in the Northwest
  
• Besaw's Cafe for brunch of omelette and crab cakes benedict
  
• ...not to mention the tempur-pedic bed at The Benson Hotel

All in all, a relaxing, enjoyable weekend!

- Mike (& Corinne)

A Weekend of Entertaining

Over the Labor Day weekend, we entertained several different visitors.

Our realtor Denise and her family purchased some wood from the previous owners of our place and left it stored in our machine shop until they had a chance to pick it up, so she and the rest of her family came by to load it up onto their truck. They stayed for a lovely dinner of grilled butterflied chicken, and her 7 year old son entertained us with his fiddle after dinner.

The following day, Corinne's cousin Andrea and her boyfriend Shane visited from Seattle. We had a good time showing the "city folks" around our country estate: a walk along the river; a picnic under the trees; and after pointing out the bear droppings along the walk, we took them for an invigorating walk through the woods at dusk. Heh heh... ;)

Thank goodness for 3 day weekends!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Life in the Country: Fences and Driveways

Life in the country is full of manual labor. To wit:

Mending Fences
Along the entire north side of our property, between the house and Mt Adams, stands a rail fence. The fence was built sometime in the 80s by the Clausens, and being the perfectionists that they are, each post and rail is perfectly straight and aligned, even after 20+ years.

Of course, the very month we purchased the property, an elk tried to jump the fence and didn't quite make it. Since the posts are buried 3+ feet into the ground, with a layer of concrete at the bottom AND the top of the hole, the only thing the post was able to do to release the pressure was... break.

This was in January. It is now September, and we've finally fixed the fence! Even after some help from the Clausens removing the broken post, replacing the post took way more effort than we had anticipated, primarily because the extra post that we found (in the "boneyard" hidden in the woods) only had holes on one side, and we never did find a source for pre-drilled posts. It took us several different attempts to figure out how to drill a series of 2" holes in solid, pre-treated cedar post. Who thought fixing a fence would be so hard?

Now that we've figured it out, it shouldn't take us 8 months to replace the next broken post. But hopefully we won't have one of those for another 20+ years. I'll have to see if I can dig up some "before" and "after" photos, though we may not have any good before photos...

Free Gravel!

Out in the boonies, most driveways are either dirt or, if they are a bit fancier, crushed gravel. The typical driveway is fairly long, and maintaining a paved driveway would be fairly costly. And hey, dirt is free and sometimes gravel is, too!



One of our co-workers, David, recently finished some landscaping in his house in town that required gravel. When the job was done, he still had a big pile of gravel that he needed to get rid of. We jumped at the offer of free gravel and proceeded to load, haul, and unload two pickup loads of gravel to cover some bare spots in our driveway.



- Mike (& Corinne)

Conference in the Mountains

After our week-long windsurfing camp, Corinne spent the following week in Keystone, CO at an AIAA conference. Being the smart planner that she is, rather than staying in the usual conference lodging, the boring hotel, she decided to take advantage of Keystone's resort location and rent a condo for the week with some of her former Draper pals. Much late-night card playing and YouTube.com watching ensued.


Mike (not me), Fred and Corinne, just before their downhill mountain biking trek. No one was (seriously) injured.


And speaking of mountains... since her flight plan out of Portland flew just south of Mt Hood, she captured some cool shots of the chain of mountains in our area:


- Mike (& Corinne)

Windsurfing Camp

Windsurfing - or "sailing" as it is referred to around here - is a requirement in the Gorge. The Columbia River is one of the great sailing destinations in the United States, and many of the people who live here moved here for the sailing. In fact, our company is located here because the founder was a windsurfer. So I guess you could say that windsurfing even brought us here, if indirectly.

We learned to snowboard this past winter, so we decided that this was the summer when we learned windsurfing.

Rather than try to learn on our own, we decided to go all out and sign up for a week-long windsurfing camp. ABK Board Sports offered 5-day and 3-day camps in a variety of locations, and we opted for the former. Our original plan was to combine the windsurfing camp with a trip to some exotic place - Southern California, The Caribbean, or someplace like that.

Then we bought a house.

So with much less discretionary money than we had before, we determined that we didn't need to go anywhere at all. After all, isn't the Gorge one of the best windsurfing locations in the country? We used some of the money we saved on travelling to buy ourselves wetsuits, made locally by ProMotion Wetsuits.

The class was Monday through Friday from 9:30am-6pm with a two-hour break for lunch, with Wednesday a half-day (of rest!) Since we had never sailed before, we were starting from scratch; they taught us the basics, from the proper "Number 7" position to uphauling, beach starting, tack, fast tack, water starting, and the pivot jibe. Over the course of the week we were at least able to try each of those techniques, even if we weren't able to execute some of the more advanced ones, such as the pivot jibe.

The wind was varied throughout the week: a good light to moderate wind on Monday; extreme winds on Wednesday; and zero wind on Friday, which ended up being a "here's how to rig the gear" day. We would have liked one more good wind day at the end to solidify some of the skills we were just starting to grasp. I guess we can now better appreciate the phrase "praying for wind."

These photos, taken on day 2, show the 7 position, so named because of the shape that the arms and body are supposed to make. We had plans to take photos on the last day, to show the progress we had made; but standing on a board in the middle of a glassy lake just didn't make for a good photo. I managed to pick up water-starting this week with about a 25% success rate, which made me pretty happy.





Aside from a fat, sore lip I have as a result of another sailer not paying enough attention to where their sail would flip, we had a great time. And since we actually live here - unlike every other person in our class - we can practice anytime we like!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden: Compost & Tomatoes

We've always loved the idea of compost. It does so many great things for the soil of a vegetable or flower garden. But the reality of creating our own compost just hadn't worked out for us. Either through a dearth of material, or lack of maintenance, I was never able to produce any useable compost.

The gardening classes we took in April of this year definitely helped us to manage our composting better, and now we actually have some output! On Sunday I worked and sifted through our three composting piles, and produced approximately two wheel-barrow full of compost. We haven't used any yet, but we will likely work some into the soil when we plant our fall greens. By spring we should have even more, and we'll gradually be able to build up the organic and nutrient content of our garden soil.



If we were to grow only one crop in our garden, it would be tomatoes. So we were disappointed with how our tomato plants had been progressing; compared with those of some friends, they looked pretty small and scraggly. But now that it is a few weeks later, it is clear that they are going to produce fruit!

These Golden Nugget Tomatoes are the first to ripen; we get about a half dozen to a dozen every couple of days from the two plants we have, and boy are they tasty. It will be another several seeks before any of the larger varieties can be harvested, but they are bearing fruit.




- Mike (& Corinne)

Uncle Uncle Mike & Aunt Aunt Corinne!

We are now officially Uncle Uncle Mike and Aunt Aunt Corinne! My brother Drew and sister in-law Michelle are the proud parents of twins: Katya Beverly Daly and Nadija Cookie Daly were born on August 12th, 2006. Both babies and parents are healthy despite the month-early delivery.


The family, now 100% larger!

Congratulations! We can't wait to meet them!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Dog Sitting

Our friends Ryan and Jenny went on vacation recently, and they asked us to take care of their dog Charlie for part of the time they were away. Corinne has always had a soft spot for Charlie; on "dog Fridays" at work, Charlie is one of her favorites. A border collie & blue healer mix, Charlie is cute, fun and full of energy.

We didn't realize how much energy he had - and how limitless it was - until we had him for the weekend. I recall one instance in particular when we sat on the couch and tried to watch TiVo, while Charlie ran as fast as he could around the couch. And around. And around.


Playing Tug-of-War. This was probably his favorite game. We basically played this game until I got tired; I'm sure Charlie could have kept going for some time.


The softer side of Charlie.

Charlie reminded us of my old (now deceased) family dog, Sam. I think Sam was a bit more mellow than Charlie is; or maybe it's just that the difference in energy between me and the dog when I was 15 is a little different than it is now. I still like to think it's just the dog.

Old photo of Sam, the family dog.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Loren Visits (and brings the Tulsa Heat!)

The weather in the Gorge in the summer is fabulous: virtually no chance of rain, low humidity, and temperatures in the 80s and 90s. However, each summer there are times when it gets a bit too extreme... now, for example.

The outside temperature at our house is currently 105 degrees - and that's at 1700ft elevation. I'm sure it's another 5-10 degrees hotter in White Salmon/Hood River, closer to sea level. Thank goodness for low humidity (currently 12%) or we'd be immobilized. It's hard enough to get motivated to do anything as it is.

Normally, as a result of the low humidity, all you have to do is find a nice shady spot and it will be 10-15 degrees cooler. And at night it will still drop down into the 50s. Our ritual for keeping the house cool is to open all of the windows before we go to bed, then close them all in the morning. No need for AC!

But not today. Even with a 15 degree difference in the shade, that still puts it ~90. Check out this Personal Weather Station in Trout Lake for today's data.

I blame Loren. He arrived a few days ago from Tulsa for a visit, and the weather has been hot ever since. (Actually, it was hot before he got here - but I still blame him.)

We came up with four options to cool us down:

1. Go to work. Work has AC. But of course, who wants to work on a weekend?
   
2. Run through the sprinklers. That's would be fun for at least a little while...
   
3. Jump off a bridge. The Hood River has a railroad trestle with fairly deep water below. But the Hood River is 30+ minutes away.
   
4. Wade in our OWN river.

Since the White Salmon River is glacier-fed (along with the vast majority of streams and rivers around here), it is cold all year round. Very cold. Though I don't know what the precise temperature is today, 45 degrees would not be out of the question. So we decided to walk down to our sandy beach on the White Salmon and wade, sit, or dunk ourselves in the river until we cooled down. Believe me, 45 degree water really cools you down fast!

The heat is supposed to break over the next 2 days. But why does it always have to get hot on the weekend?

- Mike (& Corinne)

Rafting down the White Salmon

Our workplace tries pretty hard to try to foster a sense of family and community between employees and their families. To that end, they have off-site afternoon social events, BBQs and other such gatherings. But by far the best event so far was the company-spondered rafting trip down the White Salmon River.

The trip is 7.5 miles of class III & IV rapids, done in a 6-person raft. Since the water is cold and the river is rocky, wetsuits and helmets are provided - and required. The trip was a blast, and a much different experience than the inner-tube floats down the Delaware River that I am used to back East.

The highlight of the trip is Husum Falls, a Class V waterfall with a 10 foot vertical drop. Photographers were on-hand to capture the action over the falls. I'm in the front-left seat, and Corinne is directly behind me...


Heading over....


...and under! Yes, the entire raft and its contents were fully submerged.

Here are the still shots, stitched together into a video:
Hold On!

Mad props to Loren of Clevermill for assembling the video for us!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden Update: 8 weeks

Now that we've weeded the majority of the garden (sans the bed we lost 100% to the weeds...), we decided to try reseeding one of the non-producing beds with herbs and more lettuce & spinach. So far, the re-seeding seems to be fairly successful.

But we have started to have more of a problem with the deer. Either they tired of the buckwheat, or perhaps the buckwheat is past its prime and they have moved on. Either way, the deer have recently discovered the lone uncovered pepper plant, and they really did a job on the potatoes. I'm hopeful that the potatoes have enough root structure below the surface, and greens left above, to continue to recover from the onslaught. Time will tell...

We've also started to encounter another pest in the garden, one we had hoped wouldn't find our little garden patch: gophers. The pocket gophers stayed out of the garden until very recently, either because they hadn't discovered it yet or because they didn't want to tunnel under the hard-packed driveway which surrounds the garden plot. But they have discovered it, and so far we haven't been successful in detering them in any way.

Arggh! I guess we should focus on the "experimental" nature of the garden, and try to make the best of it.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden Update: 5 weeks

It's been quite a while since we started our Trout Lake Garden Experiment, so I thought it might be time for an update. How is our little experiment progressing so far?


Potato beds. The potato look very good from the top, but time will tell if the plant looks as good below the soil.


Peppers. In our haste to finish the garden before our vacation, we only had enough fence material to protect 3 out of the 4 plants. Thankfully it seems nothing has found that fourth plant interesting enough to taste yet.


??? This is what happens when you "plant and forget". There was supposed to be something in this bed, but we waited too long to weed. We never could find any of the things we actually planted.


Greens bed. The lettuce bed actually turned out reasonably well. The far section is a mesclun mix, the middle is romaine lettuce, and the near section is spinach. It's amazing what a difference in appearance weeding makes. Before we weeded, the bed looked like a mess; afterward it looked great. So great, in fact, that the day after we weeded the deer ate EVERY SINGLE ROMAINE PLANT. So far it looks like there's enough root structure remaining to regenerate.


Lettuce bed (closeup)


Tomato. Apparently deer like tomato plants. It took them a while to decide it was good enough to eat; it must not be one of their favorites, though, since the munching has been sporadic.


Beets. The Clausens told us that they had the best luck with root crops, so we have high hopes for these beets.


Basil.

But by far the best success has been with... the cover crop. Of course, the one thing we have great success growing is the one that is "filler".





Despite the additional nutrients that a cover crop will add to the soil when it is incorporated, and despite the wind and soil erosion protection that it provides, by far the best thing that buckwheat did for our garden is give the deer something else to eat!

Single deer in the buckwheat.


"Hey, don't eat it all without me!"


Two deer in the buckwheat.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Iris with Mountain VIew

- Mike (& Corinne)