Friday, September 30, 2011

Succession Planting, Broccoli


A nice head of broccoli forming in September.


Will a frost sweeten up this Tuscany black kale?


I didn't do near enough succession planting as I should have this year. All season I struggled with what I felt were tough, crappy growing conditions. We had tornadoes in April. It was bitterly cold and rainy or snowing in May. We had a upper 90s heat wave the first week in June. We recorded record rainfall in both June and July and a drought in August.

The first crop of broccoli bolted. Lettuce quickly seeded out, too. I had spring-planted carrots set flower heads! The radicchio just never tasted right. The black kale went from fairly good juvenile leaves to very bitter adult foliage very quickly. Fennel formed seeds without setting bulbs. The peas got buried in the rambunctious growth of grape leaves after waiting an extra six weeks for the buds to unfurl their leaves. The mesclun mix I planted early season was over-run with leafy, fast-growing mustard.

During the small windows of good weather, I planted, transplanted, weeded, attempted to rototil. I couldn't get out to the garden to plant a second planting of sweetcorn, the rain never let up.

I did plant a couple additional seeding of mesclun, a fall crop of peas, and a second round of carrots at both gardens. I replanted cucumbers and honeydew after the first crop did not sprout.

The broccoli continually tried to bolt until the weather started to cool. I had kept cutting back the shoots that seemed to bolt out a foot tall and burst into yellow riotous bloom overnight. The few heads I harvested in August seemed riddled with the worms of cabbage moth, a result of the rainy June and July. Now that the weather has cooled the worms seemed to gone on vacation. Eating broccoli is no longer like walking through a gastronomic mine field.

The mesclun seedlings have been turning out a bowl of greens every couple days in my potager and the family garden. The 'China Rose' radishes I planted also just get longer while maintaining a sweetness that bolted from my grasp in June.

A second planting of dill would have been nice. Planting more carrots would have been nice. Onions have not yielded anything near my expectations.

In small spaces, succession planting is key. I have not made good use of all my space resources. I could have done better.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Sweet Autumn




If I ever marry again, it will be in September.

It will be on a day when the blue skies are incredibly crisp. It will be on a day when the clematis is in riotous full bloom. I will clothe myself with a spray of a million blooms and the bees and those who bear witness will be put to task to decide who is sweeter, the Sweet Autumn or I.

If I ever marry again, it will be in September.

The air will have just a hint of burning leaves or burning bridges. The air will be redolent of green things turning brown. It will smell of goodness, ripeness, and fecundity. The harvest will be brought in from the fields and its richness will be upon the land.

If I ever marry again, it will be in September.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Sweet Potato Harvest

I have been eyeing my rambunctious sweet potato vines in the family garden with trepidation all growing season. As you may recall I received the half dead-looking cuttings in mid-May. My wonderful son actually opened the box and did a very gardenerly thing-- promptly stuck them in water.

After a couple days I potted them up and stuck them under my grow lights, the temps still in that freezing range nearly every day. Then, before I could plant them, temperature shot into the upper 90s. I think I planted them June 2.

So today with temperatures hovering in the mid 50s for a week, lots of rain, it seems daily, and the ground temperatures creeping down, down, into what I know is that sudden decent into winter, on DAY 121; I dug our sweat potato crop.

I didn't expect much.

I planted Georgia Jet. I had to hunt to find them for purchase, and ended up getting them from Jung's.

I tried them with another gardener a year ago, and was not around when they were harvested and I don't think the other gardener left them for the requisite recommended 120 days. She reported they weren't much.

My goal was 50 pounds from the 15 slips we planted. Today, I harvested two heaping full 3-gallon pails. There were many tubers in each hill. They scratched easily, an errant fingernail easily leaving a mark, resulting in my decision to dry them dirty and wash later.

I only cut a couple in half with errant digging.

Rodents of some sort feasted on a couple closer to the grass edge of the row. I think there were some tuber they may have eaten entirely; a couple other where they hollowed out to the midline. The vines on the grass end were the heaviest, but did not produce the most tubers, although they did produce a couple of the biggest.

In a couple spots the vine anchored itself with auxiliary roots. I have read that allowing this to happen takes away from the main growing activity and should not be allowed. I'm not sure it made any difference in our yield. Some of these spots actually put out a decent sized tuber.

Yes, we had enough rain in June and July (although a dry August), and it was a hot summer here in central Wisconsin. It must have been prime sweet potato weather.

Laid out on a bench to dry, more than half the tubers are 4" long and over 1 1/2" in diameter. Over 20 tubers are probably each a pound alone! These are each as big as my fist (I wear a men's XL glove when gardening!) One of the tuber might weigh in a three pounds!

My sister-in-law and I are happy, happy, happy!

Now we will dry them a couple weeks, then rub off the dirt, sort them into long keepers or "use 'em up now". She wants to freeze some as baby food. I might make sweet potato pie or maybe an orange sweet potato marmalade, maybe a sweet potato-apple butter. Definitely some sweet potato fries...

I took cuttings to grow over the winter for slips for next spring.

Ain't it sweet?

Saturday, September 24, 2011

This Year's Spring Giveaway from Jung's: Sunflower Seeds and Cape Gooseberry


Cape Gooseberry

This year Jung's was giving away seed packets with qualifying purchases. I managed to get both packets they offered, a sunflower and cape gooseberry.

I duly planted the sunflowers in the family garden. They were a big hit with my twin nephews who liked to watch the bees working the flowers, to count the bees in their own informal bee census, and pick the flowers for Momma. One nephew has even been concerned about where the bees have gone now that their bee work is done and the sunflower heads droop heavily laden with seeds.

The other packet was cape gooseberries. These cousins of tomatoes I started in flats, pricked them out, and at what we believed to be an appropriate time planted them out to our hopefully frost-free garden at the end of May.

Ouch!

Frost-free wasn't yet on Mother Nature's calendar and a pretty hard frost killed these tender young things. I had held back two plants for the potager here in the village, and at that point decided I'd plant them out in the family plot instead.

Within a couple days of the killing frost, temperatures soared into the upper 90s not dropping below 70 at night. This went on for a week; extreme weather, even for us here in central Wisconsin.

At the end of the week, my sister-in-law calls to tell me she thinks the cape gooseberries haven't died and are resprouting from the roots. I was hopeful, but thought she probably had it wrong. This is her first foray into vegetable and fruit gardening. She is a fair gardener and her husband, my brother, is a farmer. Even so, my mother had long given up on vegetable gardening by the time my brother, child number six, was born. They are pretty "green" veggie gardeners in more ways than the popular one.

Well, she had it right. The cape gooseberries seemed to spread out and eat up the ground. Neither of us thinks this is the typical growth habit of the cape gooseberries. The gooseberries, affectionately named "mato berries" by the twins, are growing laterally having lost their vertical growth tip to the frost. Even one of the others I held back and which never actually made it into the ground, attaching itself into the ground through the holes in its pot epitomizing the saying "grow where you are planted", or not... phrase, tends to be more horizontal rather than vertical.

I have to say Jung's got it right. Any parent that handed the free seed packets to their kid and suggested they plant them probably had a successful child gardener in their midst this year.

The twin sit right down on the ground and scramble about looking for ripe husks chanting "mato berries, mato beries" like noisy baby birds in a nest. The 1/2" berries are incredibly sweet. The boys know what they like.

They have learned which are ripe and which are not. They greedily pick the or scoop up ripe ones laying on the ground and remove the husks in what has become a daily ritual with the twins.

They have eaten almost the entire harvest of the five plants that survived in the family garden-- much to their mother's and my hopes of having enough at some point to make a jam or marmalade.

A surprise hit for all of us this year, but something we will definitely be looking forward to next gardening season. As these are non-hybrid, heirloom seeds, I am attempting to save seed from these more frost-tolerant tomato cousins. We want at least twice as many plants as last year, where I started out with just 12 seedlings.

Every season can bring surprises in the garden, both good and bad. This was certainly a good one, and one which we hope to repeat in the future.

Friday, September 23, 2011

A Thousand Things Done Well


Pink 'Knock Out" roses in my corner scree garden

Reviewing the last few posts, I realized they are fairly scattered across a wide range of topics and events. I have attempted to make these posts as go-to information for the gardener attempting to garden in the not so hospitable parts of central Wisconsin. Life seems to get into the mix, though.

And more than anything else, although I have raised only one child, I have come to realize through blogging, that more than anything else, I am a nurturer. I nurture plants, gardens, landscapes, my son, creativity, my nephews, my village, and also students.

Something I don't mention often and on which I spent quite a bit of time is the substitute teaching I do throughout the school year. Yes, people like me, but more typically retired teachers from the school districts in which they used to teach, are spending time "teaching" your children.

I substitute in two smaller school districts. A couple years back I was spending so many days in one of the two school districts, that I realized if that continued I would spend more time with any particular student by their graduation than any other teacher in the district. This might be a scary thought, except that I can't think of a better person your child could spend that much time with other than their parent or their regular teacher.

Every day I come into a classroom, I look at that one day as a day to get it absolutely right. I want every student in my class, for that class period, to have a perfect day. I want them to have learned something, to have thought about something in a different way, to have stepped outside the box of how their normal classroom teacher sees them.

As a substitute, I know there are some students that want to "make my day". As a substitute, all I need to do is complete the lesson plans as written, keep your child safe from harm, and maintain the school's assets in the condition they were in when I unlocked the classroom door. After nine years as a substitute, and a flexible one, who feels like she has learned to dance on the head of a pin at this point; the typical expectation are generally a piece of cake.

But, I also want your child to grow his or her brain and take another step to learning who he or she is that day.

Teachers have been bitterly abused these days, in the press, by politicians, and administrators trying to keep federal tax dollars by fulfilling their school's expected test results and "leave no child behind" in the process.

Teachers are good people. They want the very best results every day. They attempt to keep politics out of the classroom, yet prepare your child for the "real world".

Today, I walked into the teachers lounge and was confronted by a staff member in tears. Typically, staff members can keep a tight rein on emotions; they leave the drama to the students. But not today, and not for this staff member; there was obviously plenty of drama to go around.

I couldn't help but think about this incidence in contrast with the exercise on which my day's students were working: fulfilling dreams using SMART goal-setting. I'm sure the days like teachers in Wisconsin have been having lately, with the virtual elimination of their collective bargaining rights and higher contributions to pensions and insurance costs, were not considered when they dreamt of becoming teachers.

So it especially poignant when one of my more intuitive students asked me if I ever wanted to be a "real teacher".

Although the teacher I was subbing for today teaches keyboarding, workplace readiness, and business classes; I just wrapped up a fairly long assignment as the high school librarian.

Librarians aren't what you think they are and this librarian's title is actually Media Technician Specialist. You might think, "Okay, fancy words for someone checking out books, videos, and DVDs." Truth is as the Media Technician Specialist, I was responsible for 75-80 of the latest computers and their cloud-like software apps, a couple very high-end document server/printers/copiers/, scanners, and an assortment of other cameras, laminators, and audio visual equipment.

Not only equipment, but more importantly, ensuring students and staff can get logged in and actually get the software to do what they want it to do and be the facilitator for the Distance Learning classroom. And did I mention, everyone got new logins and passwords this year. And...sometimes, a "How do I find this book?"

So like one of those defunct television dramas where each week the star tries on a different role, and convinces everyone he really is that; the goal is to step right up and be the Media Technician Specialist and actually have the answers for each and every particular problem.

It was challenging. It was engaging. It actually tested my abilities to step up with answers and quickly. I had some problems I had to work through and find solutions. It required me to pull all sorts of things out of my skill set and use them in new combinations. I think I did it well. I received compliments, to my face (wow), and inadvertantly repeated praise from administrators (double wow). And, it was an assignment that many retired school teachers being just 10-15 years the wrong side of the digital age, would find comparatively daunting.

I felt good about it.

So, it was easy to reply to the inquiring student that I completely enjoyed being the librarian recently, but not so sure I would want to teach business skills (although I do have quite a bit of real life business, management, and supervisory experience).

I don't have to deal with meeting curriculum, testing, parent conferences, politics, endless on-going education requirements, and today, drama. That's for the "real teachers". A salute to all you teachers out there, by the way, who have to do a thoudsand things well everyday!

I get just the fun parts.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Classic Car Show

Those scarecrows from the village's Classic Car Show
were really cute, don't you think?



If you would like to know more about my village, click.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Grape Juice


'Othello' grapes in my potager

I canned grape juice, tomato sauce, and salsa this weekend. Started some apple cider. I made sun-dried tomatoes with garlic and basil in olive oil. I still have two very big bowls of tomatoes to can and apples to make into sauce. I have a basket of green peppers, some sort of hot, some not. I will probably chop or slice and freeze those, an easy way out as they don't even need blanching. I thought I had a plethora of canning jars, but I am down to about 6 large-mouthed quarts and a few stray others.

This weekend, my brother and sister-in-law have been concentrating on grape juice using a juice steamer. I will have to find out how that went. My brother says the harvest was one of the biggest he has had. His are Concord grapes planted on the old wind-driven water pumping windmill his historic homestead.

The grapes were there before he bought the property and have outlived the removal of the working parts of the drive that would have drawn up the water from the well. My sister-in-law has spoken of restoring it into a functional piece sometime in the future. A lot of expense for something that would be a novelty at best providing drinking water for her only livestock, a trio of donkeys.

Now, it forms the climbing structure for her grapes, however. Grapes that my brother had to harvest using a 16 foot ladder, wisely foregoing the tiny metal ladder running up the frame of the windmill.

Many people harvest what we call "fox" grapes which grow wild and can have a "foxy" taste. Some are lucky enough to have 'King of the North'. I have 'Othello', a true wine grape, and are a bit sweeter than the Concords. We have planted 'Reliance', a seedless red grape in the family garden for future eating as table grapes. We had five grapes this year,which the nephews declared very good with their 2-year-olds chant of "more, more!"

This year my pollination was hampered by the late bloom and rambunctious grow of leaves at the crucial point of pollination. On my two vines, I had ample set of grape bunches, but the number of grapes per bunch was down. Also a dry August affected the end size. My brother received two generous showers which my village missed out on entirely in August.

I had enough grapes to can just four quarts of juice.

I tried a new method. Last year I used an easy cold pack method:

Per quart:

1 1/2 cups of grapes, washed, and destemmed
1/2 cup sugar
Boiling water to fill within 1/4 of the rim.

Adjust two piece caps and lids and use a boiling water canning method for 15 minutes.

This is quick and easy, but requires some very messy decanting for not a lot of drinkable juice.

This year, I tried a slightly different spin on a couple different recipes, which is probably not advisable by the USDA.

Grapes like apples have pectin. Pectin separates out when fruit is brought to boiling. Pectin is good if you want it for making jellies and such. It is not good when you want to make good quality juices. Problem is, boiling is how you can juice and sterilize and pasterize.

So how do you get around boiling and the sediment it causes in the juice, which is not esthetically pleasing to the drinker?

The boiling water bath canning method makes use of boiling to set the seal. Everything is boiling, air is forced out, taking care of bacteria that need air to proliferate. The bacteria that don't need air are dealt with by use of proper pH. The proper pH is typically provided by a combination of lemon juice, 5% vinegars, salts, and sugar. This is why the weighs and measures in recipes are so important. It is also why only certain food items can be boiling water canned, others need pressure canning. It is also why with the advent of low-acid tomatoes the USDA recommends adding two tablespoon of lemon juice to each quart of tomatoes when canning them in a boiling water bath (one Tablespoon per pint).

So my method requires grapes to be simmered until they are soft enough to put through a food mill. It also requires they are brought to a minimum of 165 degrees for at least 10 seconds. (The USDA has found 6 seconds at 165 degrees sufficient to pasterize grapes, knocking out a whole host of pathogens.)

I then worked out the math on the proportions of sugar and boiling water that I would use if I canned my grapes using the cold pack method. This I compared to the syrup recipe found in the 'Ball Blue Book of Preserving' and found it to be in the medium weight syrup range. To be on the safe side, I added two tablespoons of lemon juice to each quart, as well. I canned the quarts in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Looking at my grape juice, I think there will be some of the pectin sediment that will settle out. Given the intensity of the grape juice, I would guess this concentrate will be diluted 1:1 with cold water when drinking, yielding much more volume of drinkable juice and a tastier product.

The alternative to this would be decanting prior to canning and two or more runs through a juice bag strainer. This method requires two or more days and a lot of handling of the product which can always provide additional steps for the introduction of bacteria and other pathogens.

Just a note, I did have just a couple seeds that the food mill allowed to slip in that I did not manage to remove, but no skins, and for the most part no seeds.


2011 juice on left, last year's vintage on the right.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Very Spotty Frost and the Classic Car Show

I still have coleus and basil growing that I didn't cover. So, although I scraped my windshield and my car thermometer hit 36 degrees, the frost was spotty enough that protected areas in my yard did not hit 40 degrees; the critical temperature for both basil and coleus.

I have produce still covering every counter and table, although I have been using every spare minute to chop, cook, can, and freeze.

This morning is a bit overcast and the weather people are predicting some rain for Sunday. The days next week appear to be slated to be those crisp clear mild days of fall which autumn lovers adore. So what better than a cruise in the car to take in the day?

Hence...

...today is the village's Classic Car Show.

This event held each fall has become quite the event. Running my son to Madison to hook up with his dad last night I missed the street dance and car cruise. The Kiwanis have sponsored a wonderful street decorating event featuring scarecrows and corn shocks sponsored by area businesses. The decorations are quite delightful and will be the subject of a slide show on my blog and the village website in the next day or two, so be sure to catch that.

Today, I will spend some time, that precious commodity, supervising activities in the children's activity tent.

For slideshows of past years Classic Car Show, here's the link!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Growing Season Coming to a Close

I have been spending all my spare time picking tomatoes, caning tomatoes; picking, drying, gathering up everything I can. Last night there was traces of frost. Heck, this morning I scraped my car's windshield.

Every large bowl I have is filled with tomatoes.

I'd like to take my time and fashion some wonderful chutneys. Maybe some incredible sauces. Time is what I don't have.

Life is chugging along and I have lots of stuff all crying out for attention.

I just try to keep canning!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Points on a Line: Remembering 9/11

I will preface this with the declaration that I do not know a single person who perished that beautiful clean, crystal clean, autumn day ten years ago when terrorists got the incredible idea of using a civilian commercial aircraft as a weapon of war. I do not even know anyone who knew someone. Then, as a life-long Midwesterner, events in New York seemed a world away.

Expressions like "a New York minute" and "the Big Apple" and flying in and out of JFK or making travel arrangements for others to do so was the extent of my contact with New York City.

I remember we had had rain in the Chicago area, but finally were having some beautiful days. My grandmother had always loved the incredible blue of the sky on clear days in the fall. I recall thinking of skies as that shade of "Parthenon blue", like similar days when I traveled in Greece in August and the creamy limestone seemed to emphasize the blueness of the day. I coined the phrase "Parthenon blue" as a memory cue.

I was working in Schaumburg for Motorola that day in September in 2001. I had gotten to work just a few minutes before 8:00 AM. I had an 8' by 8' cubicle next to the office of one of our global supply chain managers from New Jersey. She flew in from her home in New Jersey to Schaumburg, IL every Monday and Friday. She usually rolled in a few minute after 9:00 each day, luggage in tow.

A particularly obnoxious co-worker stopped at my cubicle to tell my some little plane had just hit a skyscaper in New York City, she was streaming the news in her cubicle from CNN. I was reading my email, and I was thinking, okay some private pilot had a seizure or a heart attack and that was a pretty bad result; but, Hey! Woman get to work, we have reports due and meetings, a conference coming up, that database to clean...

A few minute later she's back. "You need to come see this." I peek into her cube and I'm thinking, Crap, NYC has some issues this morning. "Hey," a sudden thought comes to mind, "What building is that?"

"Twin towers of the World Trade Center," she replies.

"Do we have people there? Customers, salespeople, office space?"

"Oh my God..."

And that "Oh, my God.." is particularly telling.

And suddenly, the second plane hits and everyone in the global supply chain is scrambling to locate everyone on the east coast. Communication relays for all the 911 systems for the New York City firefighters and police are in Building 7 of the World Trade Center.

When the Twin Towers collapse, emergency communication for New York City are demolished as well.

Some of the salespeople from New Jersey are supposed to be in the Trade Center that day for meetings. The woman from New Jersey rolls in. Her husband is one of those salespeople.

"What's going on?" My cell can't get a line. I wanted to tell my husband I got into O'Hare..." She trails off, seeing the streaming video on my co-workers screen.

It turns out her husband is stuck in traffic on one of the bridges into NYC. She gets stuck in Chicago for about three weeks when they ground the planes. She considers renting a car, and driving home, but suddenly she realizes we have other issues and by the time she thinks about driving home there are no rental cars to be had.

In the ensuing days, we realize our borders are effectively closed with the grounding of the commercial air fleet. Motorola, one of a handful of global companies at the forefront of the money-saving move to outsource its manufacturing; with its heart and brain in the Chicago area, has literally had its head severed from it manufacturing hands abroad.

The air filters in the hand-held units for the emergency communications supposed to be replaced every two years, in the clouds of dust and debris in the air after the collapse of the towers, need to be replaced every 48 hours.

The design engineers in Schuamburg get up from their desks, walk out into the parking lot of the Schaumburg headquarters and begin building an emergency communications tower on the back of a flat bed semi-trailer.

Anyone who has every sourced a part in all of Motorola is suddenly scrambling to find back-up radios, air filters, and parts for the tower. Because I am a designated "superuser" and as such have access to the part sourcing software for the Global Supply Chain, I find myself calling warehouses in remote dessert areas out west; cajoling jobbers to literally walk out and double check bins for parts where they list them as being unknown or less than ten. Parts that are not worth ten cents that with the borders closed, the failure to locate even a single critical part means failure to restore emergency radio communications in NYC.

The design engineers bring in tools from home to help them in the construction. They work around the clock and literally have the tower on the trailer on the road by 5 PM. on the Friday after the Tuesday of 9/11.

A few weeks later when I saw the first airplane take off from O-Hare over my son's school, I broke down and wept.

Since then, time has passed. I realized I could not continue in my marriage and moved home to central Wisconsin to be near family. My child has grown from a child to a man here in the hometown of my birth.

The woman from New Jersey resorted to extreme medical interventions to finally conceive and delivery a child.

The obnoxious co-worker retires.

My US Representative from Illinois; a young, eloquent, black man by the name of Barrack Obama, is elected President.

Motorola has since been divided into two corporations, spun off subsidiaries and part of itself been bought.

Osama bin Laden, a man whose name I had never heard, becomes the world's most wanted terrorist. He is hunted down and killed by Navy Seals.

Things change, for better or worse.

We keep moving down those points on a time line of which we can see neither the beginning nor the end.

Time marches on.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Pictures from the Potager 2


A work house garden Roma-style tomato, 'Opalka'.



'China Rose' winter radish, has a strange growth habit, growing above ground. The taste has been good and sweet though.


Grapes are nearly ready for juicing. I had spotty pollination this year.


The largest Beefsteak tomato I have ever seen. It seems more the size of a small melon.


Celery, I not too excited about the way it has grown for me.

As you can see, I need to harvest and preserve this bounty.

Later...

Thursday, September 8, 2011

What I Did on My Labor Day Holiday...


A nice fall planting, with ironweed, Russian sage, and sedum

If you are reading this I finally have had my land line and DSL restored and the power has stayed on, at least intermittently.

Friday, we had a helluva storm. There wasn't a lot of property damage. In central Wisconsin, we just don't have the houses, businesses, and infrastructure you have in a large metropolitan area. So the brunt of this storm was felt in the damage to trees and power lines. The energy companies here were scrambling. Well, I have to assume they were. I don't think I saw a single utility truck working. I looked.

I say if the power stays on. It was out for me for 37 hours. Seventy percent of the village had power out for 5-6 hours on Friday and then at 6 PM on Saturday, the entire village went dark. It was so dark it was eerie. Although, for me the power outage seemed more like camping in a very expensive tent. When the village entire village lost power at 6 PM, I didn't realize it until about 8 PM when street lights and houses' lights across the way did not come on.

For most people, a power outage has it own immediate personal concerns; where is the flash light, where are the candles, how long will the power be out, and do I have to worry about the stuff in my fridge and freezer.

For me, when the rest of the village lost power, my first panicked thought was sewer plant. Without power our lift stations do not pump and or agitators do not agitate. All the moving parts of our fairly automatic system are not automatic without electricity. A lot of the plant functions simply through gravity. Any downhill residents from our sewer plant need these intermediate pumping stations to move the sewage from their homes uphill. I wouldn't want to consider the consequences. I'm sure for the greater number of residents the idea that sewage could begin to back up into their homes does not cross their minds.

Additionally, as we pump filtered waste water into the headwaters of a Class A trout stream, one slip in pH or effluent levels results in fines, penalties, paper work, and additional regulatory controls which could be financially crippling to a small community such as ours.

So while many were thinking, ‘Darn it! Where are the matches?" or "I need to charge my cell!"; my thoughts were sewer plant.

All of us have our own wells, which do not work if there is no electricity. Because the sewer plant was on the line that had service throughout the brunt of the outage, most people only found pouring storm water or pool water into their toilets and keeping their freezers frozen the only real pain.

There is an artesian spring at the park on the north end of town. We have the water quality tested each spring and it is some of the best quality water in the state. There are several very old houses to the east of the village whose basements actually sit on an artesian spring. Even with no electrical outages there are often people filling milk jugs and other containers with this crisp, clean water that simply runs out of a pipe shaped like a "J" driven upside down into the ground.

People from outlying area without power aware of our spring and residents without power lined up around the spring with jugs and containers.

Most of our Main Street business area was hopping all weekend serving food, selling gas, ice, milk, and guns.

Our main recreational area's bathroom had running water and a flushing toilet. Our Community Center was open from 10 AM to 12 noon and had power.

I have no idea how many people originally lost power. Reports are scanty. I lost my land line when a large branch from my sentinel white pine fell on my aerial drop line, snapping it. I think cell service may have been disrupted for about 20 percent of residents, and the WiFi was messed up at the Community Center. Even those with power often had broken cable networks and DISH satellite service was out.

So not only were we in a power outage, but communications blackout, as well. Personally, I don't think the news broadcasting stations that provide service for our area even realized a lot of our county's 20,000-plus residents were without power. Being the Labor Day weekend, however, we had probably an additional 20,000 tourists many who may have come to camp, but still expected to have functioning toilets and running water at their camp grounds.

Surprisingly, instead of people sitting around outdoors around campfires, because of intermittent rain after the torrential downpour and reputed winds of 70 to 80 mph Friday morning, people were hunkered down inside their homes thinking survival.

A surprising number of portable generators popped up in the area comprising the 30 percent of us without power. A tree fell on a power line in one part of the village, starting a fire and while the first call the homeowner made was to the power company's emergency number, followed by a second very quick call to 911, which was responded to by the local fire district; no help or contact was received from the power company.

Two houses in the village had enormous trees fall on their roofs.

Many of those in outage areas simply drove out of the problem. I don't think Waupaca, Amherst, or Stevens Point, all cities to our northwest lost power for more than seconds.

The biggest problem was the breakdown in communications within Waushara county and beyond our borders.

Also, without power, I personally have gotten behind with canning and my food preservation. I have been filling in as the librarian since the beginning of the school year at a nearby school. As such I am on a pretty short leash. I also had a village board meeting this week. Just before the outage I had a hose come uncoupled on my washer. Three loads of 35 gallons of water later trouble-shooting and fixing the washer, I now have the ignitor on the dryer is giving me trouble. Part of my house has been pretty torn up dealing with this. In between, I am cutting up branches off my pine tree. and trying to get my lawn mown.

In case you have missed me, I have been busy!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Handful of Hazelnuts



Rabbits and squirrels generally beat me to them, but this year... from my year old shrub