Free to Be You and Me, Paleo-ee

OK, bad scansion, but good concept.

I’ve started a 30-day trial of eating the Paleo way, e.g., avoiding more or less things our ancestors couldn’t easily get, such as dairy, wheat, processed foods, cheez wiz, espresso (oh noes!!), and the like. There’s a lot of crossover with raw foodies as well.

I’ve started a separate blog, Chick Paleo, to document my journey and connect with other women who are trying a Paleo or raw simplified diet. Drop by and visit!

Fascinating analysis of the Obama presidency. #wp

Fascinating analysis of the Obama presidency.
#wp

Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics | Daily Beast

'The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he's a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all." You hear it …

from Plus Public Activity Feed for Strata Chalup https://plus.google.com/105710544490625323606/posts/eqFCbxwEimY

Planning for Beans

I seem to post about shelling beans a lot.  Maybe that’s because I’m passionate about them.  Beans are nutritious, easily transportable, can be stored for a long time, and yield literally more than ten-fold per bean planted.  What’s not to like?!

While planning your summer garden, remember to put in some tall trellis or fence space for shelling beans.  Many types, like borlotti beans, are wonderful to eat as rich Italian-style green beans, and then can be left to mature for yummy dry beans when you’re tired of eating them fresh.  Sure, you could freeze them, but if you are, like myself, one of the generation scarred by school cafeteria green beans, the idea of freezing and then actually EATING a green bean pod is anathema.  Why not mature them for dry beans instead!

A single 10-foot row of heirloom pole beans will yield two large paper sacks of pods, shelling down to 1 – 1.25 quarts of dry beans under normal productivity conditions– not super productive, not scraggly.   While some years I got more than other years, the weather conditions, and my watering learning curve, have been such that I don’t feel comfortable drawing any conclusions about the relative productivity of the different cultivars.

My results were in Cherry 3 bed of the Sunnyvale Community Garden, also known as the Sunnyvale Teaching & Demonstration garden.  Types of beans were: True Red Cranberry, Borlotti, Good Mother Stallard, Hidatsa Shield.  Most of these beans will not only climb a six-foot fence, they will noodle and doodle and swirl above it for a foot or so, before reluctantly dipping back down onto the fence for support.

If that sounds like too tall an order for you, many dry beans are semi-vining types that grow into a scant bush-like configuration and then send up several tendrils to a height of 3 – 5 feet.  I’ve observed this with Repokob/Tiger-eye and Jacob’s Gold.  I still haven’t figured out a favorite  method for growing these.  If I’m going to stake-and-string, or put up a trellis, I figure I might as well use full vining types and get more productivity out of the vertical space.  On the other hand, they might be good candidates for growing with sunflowers or huge dahlias, since they won’t overwhelm the host plant.  Or if you have a minimal fence around the garden to keep out dogs and overly-helpful toddlers, these might be a good choice to grow up that fence!

At home, I grow scarlet runner beans up the carport supports of our mobile home.  My favorite varieties are Scarlet Emperor (red/purple beans) and Painted Lady (white beans).  Sometimes they will come back the next year, sometimes I need to replant– I have not investigated this with any great diligence.  One to two runner bean plants up an 8-foot high, 18″ wide trellis will extend along string or plastic lattice between carport supports, and produce approximately 1 – 1.3 quarts of dry beans after shelling.

In my experience, if you have limited beaning opportunities, or limited time, the runner beans are the way to go.  They are almost maintenance-free, the huge pods are easy to spot and pick, and they attract hummingbirds and native bees (who sometimes put on quite a show, doing aerial duels with each other over possession of a nice branch of flowers!).  Runner beans always seem less “tame” than many cultivars, and they don’t seem to know what to do with much fertilizer.  Put them down in a nice heap of compost with a little sprinkled bone meal and a teensy pinch of greensand.   When they have reached about six feet tall, refresh the compost a little, but do nothing else.  Fertilizing, even with compost, in mid to late summer will cause a rush of new growth that is substantially weaker and sweeter than usual, and you will end up with a veritable plague of black aphids– at least here in Sunnyvale.  Nope, benign neglect but lots of water and partial shade is the recipe for success with these beans.

FYI, I have had issues with the harvested dry beans from the Sunnyvale Community Garden hosting bean weevils (Acanthoscelides obtectus).  If you see tiny circles at the bottom of your jar of dry beans, you have bean weevils.  Get rid of, or clean and refrigerate or freeze, the remaining beans, depending on your particular tolerance for such things.  I have grown many types of beans at home (near Tasman & Lawrence) and haven’t had any bean weevils.  I do the lazy gardeners’ method of letting the beans dry on the vine and waiting for almost all the leaves to fall (as long as no rain is coming) so I can see the pods easily.  It may be that my lazy method provides enough exposure for the weevils to populate the beans.  The jury is still out!

Send Me a Dollar, Please

This is an experiment. I wonder how it will turn out. I’m not selling anything, I’m not begging, I’m not collecting any info from people, I’m just saying, “hi, please give me a dollar, I’d appreciate that”. On what’s arguably one of the busiest streetcorners of the virtual world, Google+.  Let’s see what happens.

Watering for the Novice Gardener

I’ve been helping some friends learn to garden this year. I absolutely love getting other folks hooked on gardening! Recently someone sent me the following question:

I’m doing pretty well finding info in my Sunset Magazine books and on the Internet. There is one question not in the books and no one seems to agree on the Internet. What are the parameters for when to water? I know I’m not supposed to water in the afternoon on a hot day, but can I water in the afternoon on a cool day? Afternoon on a warm day? How about 6 pm on a warm day?

Watering, ah, always complicated! It’s one of those things you set guidelines for, and then kind of muddle along learning by trial and error. To help things along, let’s talk about the overall theory of watering plants, so that the novice gardener can get a feel for why and how watering is vital, and how plants respond to watering. Armed with that knowledge, you can then reason things out and generate common sense rules for watering.

So, what about plants and water? Not enough water and you get cell damage and stunted growth. Too much water and you deprive roots of the air they need to do their job, and you risk opportunistic infection by molds, mildews, and fungi. What’s a gardener to do? Well, let’s look at what plants do.

Plants transpire, emitting water as vapor through pores (stomata) in their leaves. They do it to cool themselves and also as part of photosynthesis. Plants are capable of closing the pores in their leaves tightly to minimize water loss on hot or windy days. Not only does this limit water loss, it will physically cause their leaves to droop so that they present less of a target for the sun.

The answer is to tailor watering to the overall conditions. When you water a plant, even at the roots without hitting the leaves, the pores on the leaves open up from a physiological response. This is why it can be bad to water on a windy day or a really hot day– you are tricking the plant into leaving its pores too open and ‘panting away’ its water. The leaves can also get physical burns from water droplets on them acting like a magnifying glass in full sun! On the other hand, you also want the water on the plant and at the base of the plant to drain and dry, so watering at night is usually undesirable– it also attracts snails and wildlife to your garden.

The best times to water are in the morning before 10am and in the evening about 2 hours before sunset. The hottest part of the day is over (or not started), it’s ok for the plants to open their little pores for a couple of hours, and the watering will have dried up and things gone back to normal before any conditions of extreme heat or cold.

If you know you have been watering regularly, and see droopy plants on a hot day, *especially* don’t water right then. Some plants, like tomatoes and squashes, are so good at sucking up their pores that their leaves get really really droopy and they look very bad. In the early evening, they should have perked up and look better. If they don’t, then water the heck out of them, including misting the foliage so they can take water directly in via the stomata (pores).

Also remember, especially if you have plants in containers, that the first 1 – 3 inches of the soil should be primarily dry, so that the roots are getting enough air. Too much water in the soil can prevent your plant from getting the building blocks it needs to grow. It can also provide standing water for algae or anaerobic bacteria to grow and damage your plant. So you want the soil about 3 – 5 inches (or more) below the surface to be damp, but not wet.

Always love to hear other folks’ watering tips and observations, please feel free to comment!

Tilting at Windmills: Why We MUST Reply to the Tea Partiers

It’s time to stop rolling our eyes at the birthers and Tea Partiers, and step up to the plate and fight back. I personally shrink from engaging them because the sheer level of self-righteous ignorance displayed reminds me of a mud fight– get involved, you’re going to get dirty. The sad fact is that the more that they rant unopposed, the more that they are convinced that they are “right”, that they are a majority, that they are onto some kind of new groundswell of American opinion.

We have to get involved or these ignorant cretins will keep distracting everyone from the real business of running this country until we complete the process of sinking into a third-rate satrapy. Then they’ll stand back and blithely blame it on “liberals” and ignore their own role in it.

To quote the late, lamented Howard Beale, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Mini-Meadow Update: It Worked!

Back in early December, I wrote about seeding a ‘food meadow’ in my large garden plot. Fast forward a few months, and here is how it turned out: a great success!

Weeds have been light to non-existent, except for one small area where the sheet mulching was too shallow and grass came up. A light session of hand-weeding took care of that.

In this close-up, we see various bits of fennel, carrots, dill, and cilantro are showing their feathery tops above the lettuces. This salad in the making is making me hungry! Alas, it’s dark and rainy at the moment, so the greens are safe for now. Tomorrow, though, watch out!

I think the mixed-seed meadow idea has really done well, and I will be doing it again in subsequent years. To do it fully, I’d dedicate an area to it and let a few plants go to seed and keep reseeding themselves. I’m not going to go that far on my main garden bed… I think… but may let a lettuce or two seed out.

FullSize Tree Sides, Hot off the Bot!

So grey and rainy that it was very difficult to actually get up and get to Master Gardener class today. Grandiose plans for laundry, packing, etc after class interrupted by major nap attack. Feeling groggy but slightly more human now, still worried that I might be catching a cold. Might have to cancel tomorrow’s ShopBot session and rest up instead– really don’t want to miss this weekend’s birthday trip out of town.

Now have a total of four fullsize tree sides completed. Forgot the hearts and birds from the heartbird tree! Left them on the table saw extension bench, probably someone has thrown them away by now, oh well. They were cute. At least the tree itself is safely in my storage unit, along with the rest of the plywood to cut.

Increasing the plunge depth to a quarter-inch was successful. It slightly exceeds the rate at which the milling bit can eject material, so that the traces are full of sawdust. However, that does not see to impact the overall cutting progress. The wood is not heating excessively or scorching, so I deem it a success. That means 4 passes to full cut instead of 6 passes, so that’s a significant time saver over many trees. Especially if I switch to half-inch plywood, as I’m tempted to do for the next tree batch.

Among many things I’m learning on this project, I just tried and successfully figured out how to move files from my Blackberry to my Mac via Bluetooth, as I couldn’t find the serial cable easily. Now I have pix to put up of the fullsize cutouts.

Progress on Forest of the Heart

News flash: Forest of the Heart will be at Maker Faire! Come see us!

Came out largely victorious in my battle with the ShopBot today. One tree engraved and cut, with only minor (.001 inch) ply left in some places where the wood flexed. Need to bump up the files to cut to .79 from .78 and all will be well.

Realized (hel-LO!) that my saves were taking a long time because they were going to the USB and likely doing block by block ACKing. Sure enough, takes less than 10sec to save to the desktop, and only 15 – 35 sec to copy to USB. So redoing the other files tomorrow will be speedy, yay.

Clamped yesterday’s tree that was a whole ply’s worth from being cut out into some raised clamps and milled part of it out by hand using the busted mill bit in the cordless drill. That gets old fast, lemme tell ya. Got a genuine owie ‘shoving the drill around’ callus on my right palm at the first finger joint. Cut the last third of it out with a jigsaw, and while it worked faster, it was a much scarier process. I’m much happier jigsawing thru something between sawhorses, below my chest level, parallel to the floor. Not freehanding between a quarter-inch groove, keeping the saw from catching, at eye level, perpendicular to the floor. Whee. But it’s done.

Now of course comes much sanding and finishing and painting and all that, but not until I have a critical mass of trees done. I should be able to do some sanding, tho, on finished pieces while another piece cuts, assuming I keep an eye (as required) on the piece in progress.

Between tramming the plywood onto the ShopBot table, installing the bit, setting the XY for the session, using the automatic Z-setter, and starting an air pass to assure sanity, it takes about 20+ minutes to set up. Each piece takes from 1:25 to 1:47 to cut. I have the machine for a 4-hour window. So until I get lightning fast with setup, I am going to only be able to cut one tree face per day, and each tree has 3 faces.

What I can do is see how well this bit cuts with a plunge depth of .25 inch vs the default .0125. If I can eliminate half the passes, I can really improve the cut time. I might have to slow down the cut traversal speed, but I should still save overall on reducing the passes by half, as I doubt I’d have to slow the traversal speed by more than 10 – 25%.

Gonna be spending a lotta time at TechShop in the next few weeks, for sure.

Playa Advice: Tenting and Packing

Some advice that isn’t in the various newbie guides on the Burningman.com site. Enjoy!

Here is how I keep a comfy, mostly dust-free tent. As you can see from the pics, I perhaps go a little overboard, but one can adapt the minimums from this.

2009: http://www.flickr.com/photos/strata/3897196515/
2010: http://www.flickr.com/photos/strata/4990277527/

Bring a couple of big beach towels or a moving blanket to use on your tent floor. If you are sleeping on the floor, put a mylar ‘space blanket’/emergency blanket under the floor covering where you sleep. The playa is a huge heat sink at night (as is any camping ground) and will try to suck the heat out of your body. If your tent is under shade, as I hope it will be, then in the afternoon when you desperately want a nap, you will be insulated from the hot playa as well. Having a floor covering greatly cuts down on the dust!

Bring a clean-clothes duffel and a dirty clothes duffel. You’ll find that your ideas about what’s too dirty to wear change on the playa. You may half-empty your clean clothes duffel and live out of the allegedly ‘dirty’ clothes duffel the rest of the week. One of those collapsable round net laundry bin things is great for a dirty clothes bin, and has the advantage of conserving floor space.

Pack at least one box or milk crate, and then use it as a ‘nightstand’ for the things you will use every day– sunscreen, contact lens solution, moisturizer, babywipes, your glasses at night, condoms, whatever. Having one ‘zone’ of stuff that is off the floor of your tent really helps.

Packing in ziplocs is great, true, but you will find your manual dexterity is not great sometimes on the playa, where many people are always just a bit underslept, under-hydrated, and possibly hung over or slightly drunk. Fumbling through many similar objects to try to find this thing you desperately want RIGHT NOW is crazy-making. Pack different kinds of stuff in different kinds/colors of bags, and/or LABEL IN BIG LETTERS what’s in the bag. Your playa-self will thank the non-playa-self that is mocking you internally for doing it. Trust me on this one.

On that note, make a Save My A** Kit, or SMAK, that is unmistakeable and not easy to lose in the jumble of your tent. One of those clear storage containers that looks like a file box is great and packs easily. In it are things like a couple of juice boxes, a bottle of gatorade, something durable and easy to eat like a granola bar that can ‘boot you up’ to get Real Food. Put your car keys in it because you won’t remember where you put them cleverly in your tent after a week in the desert. Ditto with your cellphone. Add a day or a dose worth of your meds in a spare prescription bottle, your backup pair of eyeglasses, a spare dust mask, glucose tabs if you might need them, a spare bottle of artificial tears eye drops, a backup pack of your birth control pills, *whatever* your crucial ‘oh s**t I can’t FIND IT or I’m TOO ZONED to find it but I NEED IT NOW’ items are. You will crack this kit at least once during the burn, never fear. And thank yourself profusely for making it. Put a small bottle of PeptoBismol in it. Playa runs are pure evil.

Remember you will also be at altitude and that will not be helping you the first 24 – 36 hours unless you come from someplace also high. The playa is at 4000ish feet. If your travel plans allow it, get into Reno/Sparks the night before and stay somewhere cheap, like Motel 6 or one of the casino hotels. That way you can sleep one last night in a clean comfy dust-free place, take a last leisurely shower, and get your ice, fresh food, etc the next morning early (or that evening if you get in early enough). Most importantly, you’ll have spent 6 – 9 hours asleep at altitude, when your body can do the most adjusting with the least negative impact on yourself.

Have a superdeluxe time of it!