Route 117 Commute – gaias-gift.com

Seriously!

On hearing about my last week, a few people have said they couldn’t imagine being five days without power. For me, this was just one day more than our power outage in the ice storm of 2008, but yeah, before that, I couldn’t have imagined it either. A freind said I should share. I was a bit reluctant and tried to figure out why. During 2008 outage, I had just read Solviva, and in my head, developed so many ideas about how I could improve on this old, drafty house. A passive hot water system on the sunny side of the house; augmented by a redesigned fireplace that heats water as it’s used; a more elaborate, covered, outdoor cooking area. Dream on! The truth is that after that storm, I spent thousands of dollars remodling a bathroom in the back of the house where a pipe may have burst in the cold, and life went on. That was a once in a lifetime, right?

So my house is still drafty and energy inefficient, I never use the fireplace so I don’t dare try it in an emergency, even just to get some radiant heat. I don’t have double paned windows or even curtains on some of them. So I guess I should write about this like I write about my garden. How the rest of us do it, those who dream big but never get around to implementing the plan; who manage anyway.

First, I was gifted in 2008 with some of my most important tools: a propane burner and tank and two boxes of votive candles, one with votive holders. (Sister had loaned me her burner in the 2008 storm and I’d used every old candle in my collection.) The ability to make your own coffee or heat up some soup, or just a kettle of water to wash, is key to feeling as if you can cope. The other two important tools were my i-Phone and a battery run indoor/outdoor thermometer. Any PDA that lets you check weather and news and text or call family will do.

The lights went out on Saturday night and on Monday morning, the towns nearby were still closed down tightly. Rumor (text messages) had it that places: groceries, gas stations, had tried to open on battery/generator on Sunday; the fact that they’d given up told me we were in for a long outage. And rumor had it that trees were blocking roads everywhere and had to be removed. So priorities change; give up on getting into work and focus on staying warm and protecting the house. At first the differential between indoor and outdoor heat was enough that I just kept things closed up, and started burning those votives. When I moved to the bedroom for the night, all of the burning candles came with me. As the indoor temps became closer to outdoor temps, afternoons were spent heating water in all my biggest cooking pots to bring inside. I’d fire up the grill and boil water, cooking dinner before the charcoal burned out.

Food was no problem; I ate well. I keep what I call “winter meats” on hand, things like a can of corned beef hash, which includes beans and other protiens but the first days were spent using stuff from the freezer and eggs. It’s a small freezer, fortunately, as everything left in there has to go. And I gave up on the eggs about Tuesday. A yam, baked in foil on the grill, tucked in around the boiling water, was the sweetest I’ve had in ages and I wonder if the higher heat carmelized sugars in a way that the oven would not have done. And I was not cold. Whenever I wasn’t working, I was under a pile of blankets and three cats. The cats came to appreciate me as a source of heat, as well as food and affection. Living bodies generate a lot of heat on their own so preserving it and sharing it goes a long way. The nightime temps got lower every night, but 46 degrees F was the lowest; not that bad. Outside, we had a 26 deg F night that got me worrying about the darn pipes, so running water through that back bathroom periodically became a serious task. Ironically, the plumber did such a good job on the faucets that I couldn’t get them to drip.

But it was not a walk in the park. Between the things I need to do to keep my job and the things I like to do, there never seems to be enough time. So watching the week slip by when I couldn’t make progress on either front was frustrating. And yet there was plenty of time four coulda, shouldas and wouldas. Pergatory for a procrastinator like me. I hadn’t even thought to get cash like my father taught me, although the gas tank was pretty full.

But that’s probably not the way to think about it. Here’s what I want to share with you:

Make some simple preparations, canned food, a propane burner and a box or two of votive candles are cheap.
Use what you have; I hadn’t thought about charcoal and ligher fluid as survival tools but that’s what I had in 2008 and now I know.
Keep your gas tank full and cash on hand, especially when the weatherman says a storm is coming.
Recognize that priorities change and we have to embrace the moment: hug a cat (or other warm body); read that book on the coffee table: drink that third cup of coffee just because it’s warm.

Nieghbor's House, notice the tree on the stoop.

More Route 117 Commute

Some things that catch my eye as I drive to and from work. I would like to know more about this statue; I’ve named him Adonis Rising but may be offending some artist. He doesn’t look completely comfortable with his place in the garden for some reason.

The homeowner in the next shot always uses the picket fence to set off nice plantings. Those may be some of the tallest grasses I’ve seen.

: Autumn Clematis

Autumn Clematis cover a shed in Stow, MA.

I may be crazy

About dahlias. After so many failures, with only a few successes, I often think that I should just give up on dahlias. Excuses abound. Our climate just isn’t right, it’s too hard to pull and store the tubers. But then, every day I drive by the Weston Racquet Club with a really exceptional display of dahlias. I stopped in to ask permission to photograph last year and I was told that one of the landscapers just likes dahlias. I’ll say. And, to put this in context, I look and look for public gardens with displays of dahlias this time of year and they are almost impossible to find in New England.

I just don’t know how any gardener worth her stuff can look at these flamboyent displays of color and light energy and not lust to grow them.[oqeygallery id=17]

Canna at Applefield Farm

I have every intention of writing a more complete blog article about Applefield Farm in Stow, MA, one of my favorite, maybe THE favorite, of my 117 commute. However, within the last weeks, I’ve had a couple of different conversations about their use of Canna in container arrangements. A picture being worth many of the words in those conversations, I snapped a few shots on my way home from work. Call this a “lick and a promise” as far as telling you about the farm market goes.

If you don’t know Canna, they are the tall plants with the banana-shaped leaves. The flowers come in an incredible array of colors as do the leaves. As you can see in these pictures, they make a very nice height component in a container and the effects last all season if you choose a variety for its leaves. One of my favorites is “Bengal Tiger” (not shown here) but it’s day-glow orange flowers and chartreuse striped leaves don’t go with everything. One of the nice things about this farm market is that you can buy the plants and combine them yourself, or they will create a beautiful container for you.[oqeygallery id=15]

It smells so GOOD!

In 2009, I heard that cherries were being dumped in the West Coast of Michigan, where I hope to retire, because there were so many that they couldn’t sell them. I had done tours and tastings for Nashoba Winery for a few years between full time jobs and I knew what really good wine sour cherries can make. What a shame! It came to me that the ability to make a decent fruit wine might come in handy in that (completely hypothetical at the moment) day when I retired.

So I bought a box of cider apples for $4 from Bolton Springs Farm in the fall of 2009. After 18 months, and the third racking, it’s clear and smells like apple pie. It tastes like apples, too; although a bit sour. Fermentation uses up the natural sugars. I didn’t have the right tool for racking so I threw away a more than I liked when I moved off the clear wine. I put in an order for some stuff that prevents added sugar from fermenting, a stabilizer. (And the rigid tool that I should have had during racking to control the siphoning process better.) I’ll sweeten it and bottle it shortly.

The first picture is before the first racking. The second and third are from today’s process. I wish it were a bit lighter in color but wouldn’t want to mess around with the flavor.

After first fermentation — Apple wine, after fermentation

How much snow?

Yes, I’ve ordered seeds and have the lights in place but it’s too early by weeks to plant, even indoors. These days in central MA my life is defined by the weather to a great degree. I would not mind the snow if I didn’t have to drive in it but one of my commutes this week was a record-breaking two hours – one way! Fortunately, I can work from home occasionally and today is one of those days.

Last night’s storm dumped somewhere between 8″ and a foot. I’ll know better when I shovel the driveway. Better get to it.

Local farmstands – Bolton Spring Farm

I came from the midwest and before I’d visited Massachusetts, knowing the stats on population density, I’d envisioned that the east coast looked a lot like the I-94 corridor around Chicago. I was very wrong. Trees and brush are allowed to grow right up against the historic, meandering roads and public lands like water reservoirs and state forests create natural, untouched green spaces in the most densely populated suburbs of Boston.

My commute, while too long, takes me through miles and miles of farm land, some of it very near to historic places like Walden Pond. Most of it is on a two lane highway, Route 117. In this blog, I’ll feature some of the places that I visit to augment produce from my very small garden.

One of the few seasonal farms that’s still open is Bolton Spring Farm, although probably not much longer this year. They open late in the summer and feature their own orchard products. I had the only realy ripe Mutsu (also called Crispin) this year in a bag that I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

Although they stock a broad variety of vegetables, gift products and home made baked goods, I think what makes them special is the many varieties of local apples that they grow and stock. They clearly mark what’s locally grown. This time of year, they sell Christmas trees and greens, too.

Other winter gardens

I drive by Bolton Spring Farms every day (more about that in a future post) and a stand of beautiful red shrubs. I stopped to take pictures on my way to work yesterday. The common name is winterberry. It’s a deciduous holly and the absence of leaves makes the abundant berries the dominant feature. Against the cold bright light and the monochrome winter landscape they pop. These are growing in full sun and I don’t have much of that. But I read that it likes acidic, wet soil so I’m starting to think about where I can fit one into my winter garden.