We are fortunate that nearby Eugene has three home shows each year. The spring show focuses on gardens, the fall show on homes, and the winter show on green living. This past weekend we visited the winter Good Earth show, attended one of their free seminars, and browsed the vendors. I thought it might be interesting to report on some of the highlights for us.

• Passivhaus Seminar – Peter Reppe, a local Passivhaus certified engineer gave a presentation on the goals and basic technology behind Passivhaus. I was interested in this seminar for two reasons. I wanted to see if the free classes were going to be really commercially oriented (this one was not), and I was curious what was going on with Passivhaus in Oregon. In short, Passivhaus is a German standard for building extremely air-tight energy efficient homes. There are perhaps 15,000 such homes in Germany, and only 1 in Oregon. Our own plans for a superinsulated remodel are partly based on Passivhaus. Robin was reassured to see that there are other crazy people working on this sort of thing, and I got a chance to talk with the presenter after the seminar about his own remodel. He pointed me toward WUFI, which is a free program for modeling the moisture performance of a wall system. I’m running it right now on our wall design.
• Lane County Beekeepers Association — The LCBA had a booth at the show and we stopped in to talk about pollination. Robin and I are convinced that some of our garden productivity problems last year were due to poor pollination, so we wanted to see if there was an “easy” solution without diving head first into honey production. The short answer is no. If we just wanted fruit tree pollination (Cherry trees for example), then mason bees are a great low-maintenance solution. However, their life cycle wraps up in June. For a vegetable garden, you need honey bees. The person we talked to raised wild swarms of honey bees and believed in minimal intervention. This seems to indicate that the local association supports a variety of opinions — if we are going to raise bees, I don’t want to be dousing them in medications. Robin and I have put the next LCBA meeting on our calendar. I’m usually a “I’ll read the book” sort of guy, but why not learn from people who are already successful beekeepers in our climate?
• Columbia Gorge Winery — Who passes up free wine samples? We bought a bottle of wine from this small batch winery which makes organically processed sulfite-free wine. Sulfites are a relatively new addition to wine making used to kill the yeast and stabilize the product, but with questionable health effects. Columbia Gorge isn’t unique in their sulfite-free production, but it was nice to be able to ask them some questions. Here’s one I’ve wondered a long time: can you make sulfite-free sweet wine? Answer: No. To stop fermentation when there are still residual sugars in the wine requires using sulfites to kill the yeast.
• Oakshire Brewing — Beer samples? Is this a great home show or what? Oakshire is the small local brewery responsible for my current favorite beer: Overcast Espresso Stout. It’s made with organic espresso, if you’re wondering about the “green” connection. Oakshire will be at the upcoming KLCC Brew Fest (an NPR charity event), and will be one of 11 local breweries creating their own collaboration rendition of a Belgian Style Cascadian Dark Rye Ale. I’m still not sure what that will taste like, but living in the northwest is great!
• Rags to Rugs & Stuff — This small booth caught our attention. An older couple from Lincoln City, Oregon make wool rugs woven out of the scrap end cuttings from Pendleton blankets. The rugs are heavy, well made, and very reasonably priced for solid wool fiber. Robin wanted to buy one on the spot, but couldn’t select a color. When we get a room sufficiently complete, we’ll definitely be tracking down one of these rugs.

Jake has never laid an egg. Jake and Elwood are our two Araucana hens. Elwood only started laying November 5th, which was a month and a half late compared to all our other hens. As the months went on Lee started calling Jake, “Jake ala king” because he said he was going to butcher her in the spring. Might as well eat her instead of feeding her fat little butt. My mom laughed and said, “No, wait a little longer. Some chickens are just late egg layers.” She also said, “You know some chickens never do lay and are just duds.” So Lee really was set on “Jake ala king”.

Remember, we got our chicks April 29th so in just three months we will have had them a full year. Well guess what?! “Worthless Jake”, “Jake ala King”, “That Dumb Chicken”, finally laid an egg. You can tell Lee isn’t really thrilled with Jake. Even though Lee thinks Elwood is dumb as a box of rocks, her crazy appearance makes Lee giggle so he’s okay with having her in the flock. Poor Jake had nothing going for her, until now.

It’s pretty cool having a few colored eggs in the mix, but having them lay so much later is not very practical from a money sense. I also wish our Araucanas were friendlier and not so skittish. They really are our least favorite chickens for these reasons. I would like to try out one of the chocolate colored egg laying hens later on. Maybe they will lay sooner and be friendlier for us. I’m am happy though. All of our hens are finally on line!

A little over a week ago I mentioned that the ground was disgorging trash again. Since today was pretty nice, I went around with my bucket and picked up trash until my back got tired. There are a few things that I always seem to find when I do this. So, I thought it would be funny to dissect for you the set of items I always seem to pick up.

When we bought our place we had piles of trash to contend with. While almost all of that is gone we are still finding lots of small things that work their way up to the surface. Eeks, I am making myself shudder just looking at that picture. I forget sometimes how much trash we have hauled off this place.

Here is a shot of the bucket with everything that I picked up today. I took most everything out of it for the pictures. Yes, you read that right. I picked it up, and then put it back on the ground. (Then picked it up again.)

It is a given that I will find a handful of match box cars. I found 4 1/2 this time. I will find at least one kind of ball (if not more, remember the ball grave yard?). This time it was a tennis ball. Along with that I will find random sorts of small happy meal toys, Disney toys, and other miscellaneous ones. There is always a funny/odd sort of find that I will pick up. One of todays was a pocket knife.

There will also be a pile of roofing pieces in my trash bucket. These seem to be scattered all around as I will find them back in the chicken pen, by the house, and around the shack.

Probably the bulk of what I pick up will be pieces of candy wrappers, shreds of rotting plastic tarps (that were used in covering the previous tenant’s stuff), broken hard shards of plastic, and various other plastic things. In the left of the picture you will see some Lego’s. We find those scattered everywhere. Another odd find for the day was a syringe. That is in the upper right of the picture.

Finally, there will be a few random metal objects. Not too much on that front, as most if it seems to be plastic bits. So there you go! You have now seen into the bucket of trash. Give it a couple of months and I will have new things that will have been uncovered. Then a trash treasure hunt will commence again.

In physics, quantum entanglement is a property of a pair of particles derived from the decay of a single particle, whereby they develop interconnected states. In other words, if one particle is altered by an external force, the other will respond as if it had also been so altered. This instantaneous correlation can occur across great distances and at many times the speed of light. Einstein called this property spooky action at a distance.

So, why am I talking about particle physics? Because, I have recently become suspicious that my well system and my brother’s well system (about 16 miles away) have somehow become quantumly entangled. If this could be proved, it would be the first case of quantum entanglement at the macro level. What is my evidence you ask? The best kind — anecdotal! It all started about a month ago. During an unusually cold spell our well pressure switch froze and I had to heat the riser with a torch until it thawed out. We proceeded to cover the tank and switch with a tarp and hay, and it survived the rest of the freeze without incident. A few days later, my brother mentioned that their water had also stopped, and he had found their well switch frozen and proceeded to thaw it with a torch. This was the first time their switch had frozen in 10 years.

Okay, switches freeze during a cold snap. That’s hardly anomalous. Wait, it gets better!

Last week my brother’s well went out again. He traced the problem to a pump controller with a corroded capacitor. He called out a well guy the next morning who replaced the capacitor and it started back up without a problem. I didn’t think too much about the story, until …

“Lee, the water’s out again,” Robin said about 2 minutes after we got home tonight. “Oh crap!” I replied. (This has indeed become a typical reply around our house.) I went outside. It was too warm to be frozen. I checked the switch. It clicked normally for the off, prime, and auto positions, but the only response was a buzz from the controller. I opened up the controller and looked it over. “Wait a second, does this capacitor look corroded to you?” Spooky indeed Mr. Einstein.

So, are the laws of physics being bent here?

Nah, it’s more likely a case of synchronicity — the human tendency to perceive patterns and causation between random events.

Then again … next time my brother starts talking about a well problem, I just might take notes!

From our website metrics, we’ve noticed that one of our most popular older posts is about our first attempts at cooking on a woodstove. People arrive at that page seeking cooking tips, but we were just getting started at the time. Now, a year later, we are more qualified to offer some useful advice about this most esoteric of tasks.

Our wood stove is shown on the right. It’s a steel stove with a step top. This gives it two natural temperature zones and makes it more flexible than a single surface stove or a cast iron stove with a burner surface. Your other option for indoor wood cooking is a cook stove. The skills required to use an actual cook stove move up the scale from esoteric to arcane, and I recommend you look elsewhere for details.

The Tools

In addition to a wood stove (and wood), there are a few tools that make cooking much easier. These include:

• Flue Thermometer – A useful device (shown on the right) to ensure that high efficiency stoves are running optimally, the chimney thermometer becomes essential to monitor and keep the stove at a constant temperature while cooking.
• Cast Iron Cookware – Most cookware will work, but cast iron or high quality stainless is the best. Light metal cookware is more likely to cause burning, and non-stick is probably an even greater health risk on a cook surface that can exceed 600°F. We like our Lodge Cast Iron a lot. It’s reasonably priced, easy to maintain, and naturally non-stick.

• Cast Iron Trivet – A heavy trivet (shown on the right) isn’t required, but it creates one additional temperature zone. We keep a Lodge trivet sitting on the hotter lower surface at all times. The trivet allows us to heat food more quickly while reducing the risk of burning the bottom surface.
• Gloves – It’s probably obvious, but everything about a woodstove is hot. I burned myself at least a dozen times the first year just feeding wood into the stove. I’m more careful now, but hot pads or gloves are still required to rearrange pots on the cook surface.

Temperature Zones

The various temperature zones for our stove at optimal temperature are shown on the right. Most sources suggest that flue temperature should be at least 250°F for an efficient burn and to prevent creosote deposits. We have a double wall chimney, so when the outside reads slightly above 200°F the inner wall is actually about 350°F. This is our goal temperature. We use fuel additions and air control to keep it constant as much as possible, especially when cooking.

For a given flue temperature, the other surfaces have fixed temperatures. The upper surface of the stove tracks the inner flue temperature at 350°F. The lower surface is a blistering 500°F. Adding a trivet to this surface creates a slightly cooler 400°F area. The trivet gets the most use of any surface. It captures the greater heat output of the lower surface, while having much of the burn-resistance of the upper one. Even if we want to bring something up to temperature quickly, we’ll use the trivet to remove any initial chill. Setting cold pots on hot stoves is bad for both pots and stoves.

Cooking

What follows is a summary of our experience with different types of cooking:

• Boil – “A watched pot never boils.” The first time we tried to boil pasta we probably waited an hour for the water to heat. It turns out that adding a lid solves this problem. (No escaping steam to bleed off the heat.) We quickly boil water for coffee, tea, pasta, etc. in a stainless steel pot with lid directly on the lower surface. Boiling sauces or soups is safer on the trivet.
• Simmer – A slow simmer can be achieved on the upper surface with the lid on, and a fast simmer on the trivet (lower surface) with the lid off. Boiling and simmering are somewhat dependent on the size of the pot and the quantity of liquid.
• Fry – Fresh eggs fried with lard in a cast iron skillet on a wood stove–now there’s a dose of country living nirvana. Cast iron is great for frying as it holds the heat and evens it out. The trivet on the lower surface is just about the perfect temperature for frying. As long as the oil has heated sufficiently, nothing sticks to the cast iron and the cure improves with each use.
• Dutch Oven – Dutch oven cooking is particularly well suited for wood stoves and you can find a lot of nice recipes online. Flat bottom cast iron Dutch ovens are essential, and a bail (wire loop handle) makes them much easier to move. We can slow cook in the Dutch oven on the upper surface, or roast things on the trivet. One of my new favorite dishes includes ham and sweet potatoes cooked in a Dutch oven on the lower trivet for about an hour.
• Bake – Baking on a wood stove has been challenging (translation: charcoal cake). While cast iron shines for other cooking, it suffers from several flaws when used for baking. It heats from the bottom up, so when those biscuits or cookies are done on the top they are charred on the bottom. Also, it retains heat, thus allowing it to thoroughly burn that cake you removed from the heat at the perfect time and then left on the counter to cool. Immediate removal from the cookware is required. We’ve found that thin crust pizzas can be baked just fine on the upper surface in a cast iron frying pan. Cookies can often be baked similarly. We’ve also had limited success with biscuits and cake through a more complicated process. We put them in a light metal pan, suspended (using a spacer of some type) within a preheated Dutch oven, sitting on a trivet on the lower surface. The idea is to provide a hot air environment while buffering the bottom of the cooking container from excesses of heat. For biscuits, we’ve found that periodically removing the lid (while keeping it hot) is required to allow them to dry correctly. I’m under the impression that many of the issues we’ve encountered can be solved by using a stove-top portable oven. To be honest, I’m not sure why we haven’t bought one.
• Popcorn – Popcorn was our first great success on the wood stove! A hand-cranked popper saves your stove from scratches caused by shaking a pot. We set the popper directly on the lower surface and crank away. It’s usually done in 2 minutes or so. Popcorn absolutely won’t pop for us if the flue temp falls below our 200°F minimum.

Have I made you hungry yet? Good! That’s all for now. I have a cast iron pot of Cuban black beans with olive oil simmering on the upper stove surface, and it’s calling my name.

I’m getting my list ready for this year’s vegetable garden. Seed catalogs are coming in and I swear it’s like drugs for gardeners. Before I could make my new list of things I needed and wanted to try out, I had to go through all of last year’s old seed. I have quite a bit left over, so that is good. Then I went through and made a list of the things I grew (or tried to grow) and what I thought about them. I ended up only getting rid of two seeds packets from last year, as we really didn’t like those particular strains.

I’m also going to order from a couple of new places to try out their seed. I will continue to get most of my seed from Territorial Seed Company just because they are local and have quality seeds. The new places that I am going to order a few seeds from include Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, Abundant Life Seeds, and Nichols Garden Nursery. Are there any seed places that you order from that you would recommend?

Mail order seed companies usually do not produce most of their own seeds. Instead, they resell seeds from a variety of suppliers. When I order from Territorial, I ask for their list of Seminis sourced seeds and cross those off my list. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Seminis, but they were purchased by Monsanto Company in 2005 and I’d rather not send any money to that corporation. Monsanto’s many “contributions” to mankind are summarized by their wikipedia article, or you can refer to some of the many other sources.

We are slowly getting back into our normal routine after this last month. I decided I would write up a post on some random things going on around our house. Nothing too earth shaking.

First off, Jack is going in to the cat shop to get spayed this Thursday. No baby Jacks for us. She spends all her time sleeping in the house, which explains the next picture two pictures.

Since Jack likes spending long lazy days in the house the gophers are declaring war on us. I find it somewhat humorous. She was our only hope on the vermin front, as Lee’s cat Jasper is nonchalant about mice.

It’s about time for me to go around our property again with a bucket as the ground is disgorging trash. I swear it seems to just pop up out of the ground from a place you would be positive that nothing was there before. What bothers me the most is I am always finding broken bits of glass that work it’s way up. I’m assuming that it will be a few years before we find it all.

Today while walking around I discovered an airplane crash and a car wreck. Car wrecks seem to abound here. There have probably been over a hundred on our property.

We are using our wood supply faster then what Lee thought we would. He thought that we would have oak left over for next year but we are thinking that’s not likely. The really cold temps that we got combined with our leaky house made it so we just tore though it.

My Aunt gave me some starts from all her fancy iris’s. They sat on my porch for three months in the summer before I got them planted. I will have to transplant them later to a more sunny spot but I don’t have an area ready for them yet. I was pleased to see that even after all the abuse I gave them they are starting to sprout.

My garlic that I planted this fall seems to be doing well. I hadn’t looked at it for a couple months and a lot more had come up and grown taller. I am very pleased with that as Lee and I LOVE garlic.

When I was walking though the veggie garden I noticed a few of these plants. How they got there I have no idea, as they are growing in the part that got tilled last summer. I think they may be lambs ear, but I am not sure.

Our back fields are still looking like winter is on. Lee needs to mow them so the low growing blackberry brambles are scalped again.

And lastly, when we went to Bend in December we stopped by the Bend Bungalow store and came back with two tiles. The tiles are going to be a focal point in the new bathroom. It will also help decide the colors that will go into the bathroom so they will complement each other. Guess you might as well make something around a piece you like rather then trying to fit things in that you don’t really just because they happen to match. The tiles are adapted from the block print of artist Yoshiko Yamamoto.