A Western Halloween

The hardest part about Halloween is coming up with a good costume idea, so when I had my idea for this years costumes, we both got pretty excited. 90% of Corinne's costume is made up of items she already owns; and my costume would only require a bit of sewing and some simple (and inexpensive) purchases.

We took a lunchtime trip to The Dalles to Tony's Country and Western Store to get a hat for Corinne, then stopped at Joann's Fabric for some felt and shoulder pads for me.

I then spent most of Saturday sewing the felt patches on to an ivory pair of coveralls. The coveralls came from Mark Schultz, who used then when he worked as an engineer for the Seattle Ferry system; we use them when we mow the lawn, to keep the dirt out. But they've never been used quite like this before.

Before heading out to our Halloween party, we took some quick photos:

Cow and Cowgirl, happy together

Once we got to the party, however, that single cowgirl joined with some other cowboys at the party, and suddenly the equal status that the cow once held was gone:

Subservient Cow

- Mike (& Corinne)

Our Deer

Since I mentioned the deer living at our place in the previous post, I thought I'd share a few more photos here.

We've seen two doe and two fawns every week (virtually every day) for the last month, possibly longer. (We didn't realize we should keep track!) We suspect that it is largely the same deer that we saw frequently back in August, though back then they were only a trio.

August: Fawns


October: Doe and young buck (former fawn)


These deer have now gotten so comfortable here that we frequently see them sleeping in the yard when we wake up in the morning. I'm all for man and wildlife living together peacefully, but this is ridiculous!





- Mike (& Corinne)

Grandma Massman Visits

This past weekend we were able to host Grandma Massman (Corinne's grandmother) for a long weekend. This was her first visit out to our new homestead, and we all had a great time.



She particularly liked our machine shop, where she proceeded to ask about almost every piece of equipment there; she was in the shop for quite some time! She isn't as mobile as she used to be, so the usual walking tour of the grounds was instead a driving tour.



Carol and Mark also brought their dog, Chloe, who provided much entertainment throughout the weekend. She seemed so ferocious when she first spotted those deer outside, but as the deer came TOWARDS her, much of that ferocity seemed to fade away.



The deer, having been living here in our yard for basically the last several months, knew they were in no danger.



- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden Update: Results

Our garden "experiment" was definitely a learning experience. I'll try to summarize the experiment here, so will likely be a longer post than most. I give each crop a score from 1 to 10, based on how successful I think we were in growing, harvesting and consuming it.

Tomatoes: 7/10
Our tomatoes did fairly well, and we actually did a good job of choosing varieties for our short growing season. The 2 golden nuggets produced first (and in abundance!), followed by the plums and then the beefsteaks. The latter two were just starting to get into full swing when the frost took them out. We had minimal impact from wildlife (once we put the circular fence around them.)
Lessons Learned: Adding a ground cover of some sort - plastic, etc. - should help to keep the ground warmer and encourage the tomatoes to produce earlier

Lettuce & Spinach: 6/10
Deer like lettuce - particularly when you put the hot pepper spray "salad dressing" on it. Thankfully, most of it came back from the roots in time to harvest before the summer heat.
Lessons Learned: Harvest! Lettuce will bolt fairly quickly once the weather gets warmer. Stagger plantings so that the harvest isn't all at once.

Beets: 2/10
Lost to deer. The beets were growing nicely, and we had protected them from animals by arching some metal fencing over the top of the bed. Unfortunately, the deer eventually figured out the weakness of our defense system: you can step on it. So they crushed the fence underfoot and just plucked the beets out through the fencing by the leaves.
Lessons Learned: Deer like beets. Need more protection.

Zucchini: 5/10
Grows well, wasn't impacted by wildlife. I'm sure the prickly leaves are the primary reason. The biggest problem we had here was confusing the zucchini seedlings with the leeks. The result was a cluster of 5 zucchini bushes planted 6” apart.
Lessons Learned: Once they start producing, check and pick frequently; the fruit will grow quickly and become more bitter, suitable primarily for baking.

Basil: 6/10
We replanted some basil after the worst of the summer heat had passed, so we actually got two crops.
Lessons Learned: Harvest! Lots of basil went to waste because we didn't harvest before either the plant bolted or was killed by frost.

Leeks: 0/10
Yes, zero. Despite planting the ends of several beds with a dozen or so leeks a piece, none were found. Then there was the mix-up with zucchini.
Lessons Learned: Pay better attention when planting seeds and transplanting.

Potatoes: 3/10
This was probably the biggest disappointment. Since the Clausens had specifically mentioned that root crops do best, we planted an entire bed in fingerling potatoes. The plants looked great, and we had high hopes for a good crop. But when we harvested, we discovered a gopher tunnel that spanned the entire length of the bed. We should have harvested ~20# of potatoes, but only ended up with ~2#! Bastards!
Lessons Learned: Gophers are the devil incarnate.

Cucumbers: 0/10
We planted the seedlings, and they promptly disappeared into the weeds.
Lessons Learned: Weeding is important, particularly when the seedlings are small.

Parsley, Oregano, other herbs: 1/10
The parsley came up, and we did use it a few times, but none of the other herbs (besides the basil) survived.
Lessons Learned: Plant more herbs!

Peppers: 2/10
The peppers were close to harvestable when the frost arrived, so we didn't actually get to eat any.  They also suffered from some deer munching.
Lessons Learned: Better protection around the peppers.  Add mulch to increase temperature and speed growth.

Flowers: 9/10
The unsung heroes of our garden!  Sunflowers and 2 varieties of marigolds did great in our garden.  We even harvested lots of seeds from them to plant next year!
Lessons Learned: Choosing a plant variety that the wildlife doesn't like to eat makes all the difference!




Some overall thoughts/plans for next year:

• Add “real” protection from wildlife.
  We're thinking of actually creating raised beds in our garden plot, with several layers of metal screen on the bottom to keep the gophers out. We're also thinking about a fence to keep out the deer.
  
• Plant more flowers.
  The flowers we did plant looked great and survived all manor of wildlife.
  
• Weed early!
  We lost – literally – many of the seedlings that we planted because we didn't mark them well enough, and we waited too long before weeding.
  
• Plant more!
  Our goal was to start small so that we could see what worked, but I think we actually started a little too small.
  
• Harvest!
  That's the ultimate goal of having a garden, isn't it?

I plan to post my "Favorite New Recipes for 2006" sometime before the end of the year, which will include many things harvested from the garden!

- Mike (& Corinne)

From City Cat to Country Cat?

Ever since we moved West, Max has been very interested in going outside. He'll sit on the window sill and meow incessently. Our theory is that when we lived in Somerville, he didn't have many opportunities to see what was out there; and when he did, it was Somerville. Now that we're out in the country with lots of big windows, he can see what he's missing!

After lots of hemming and hawing on our part, we finally decided that we would give it a shot. He got his feline leukemia shots at his last 2 vet appointments, and we bought him a collar with a "nametag". He didn't seem to mind the collar too much - until we tightened it enough so that he couldn't get it off. But since we are only putting his collar on when let him outside, we hoped (and still do) that he will start to associate the collar with going outside and will put up with it.

His most recent experiences outside were rather stressful for him, so we tried to make the re-introduction as natural as possible. We put his collar on, propped opened the front door, and walked outside to wait for him.

He was very cautious as he crept outside.


His first few minutes were spent sniffing the grass outside the front door, followed by eating the grass outside the front door.


He slowly explored further from the house, gradually making his way around. We monitored him from a distance, but always between him and the forest; I don't think any of us are ready for him to get lost in the woods.


After about 45 minutes outside, he had made it all the way around the house. We knew it was about time to take him back in when he started rolling around in the dirt:

From black and white to dark gray and light gray, in only 5 seconds!

Our plan is to continue to let him out under these "controlled" conditions, giving him more and more freedom. We're going to try to train him to come back inside by giving him wet food whenever he does; we don't want him staying outside overnight, since there are plenty of coyotes that would enjoy himn for a snack.

Of course, we soon discovered that once he's been outside, his whining to go outside has gotten MUCH worse.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Garden Update: It's Dead

It's been 3 weeks since we began our Frost Watch, and alas the weather finally got the best of our garden. Last night it dropped into the upper 20s and killed everything left in the garden. That included 6 tomato plants (with quite a few green tomatoes on them), 3 pepper plants, and 2 rows of basil, not to mention lots of marigolds and sunflowers.

Sometime in the next few weeks I'll try to recap the results of our garden experiment. After we've finished mourning, that is.

- Mike (& Corinne)

The Colors of Fall

After spending so long in New England, we've been delighted to see as much fall color in The Gorge as we do. Now we are experiencing our first fall in Trout Lake, and it's just as beautiful.

Below are some shots we took at various spots around our property. We have a number of maples and oaks around the house, and they add beautiful red, orange and yellow colors in fall.









- Mike (& Corinne)

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)