The Whippoorwill

This evening, we sat out in the garden in the twilight and listened to the coming night sounds. The local whippoorwill began his singing, and after a few introductory passes of sixty or seventy repetitions, repeated his call two-hundred and eighty nine times before pausing. After a pause of about six beats, he began again; but I stopped counting.

Smallpocalypse

Massanutten was burning.

I first saw it one afternoon as I came home down the long valley, a small wisp of white smoke rising from its east flank near Veitch gap as though Massanutten were a volcano and the smoke from a fumarole. By the next morning, the smoke had several sources and the cool air in Front Royal was sweetly perfumed with the most amazing incense. That afternoon, and for many successive days, the smoke grew and thickened across valley, deepening as the June air warmed and grew humid.

The fire took hold in a period of bright, clear dry days with parchingly low humidity and challenging winds. It spread from a small patch of an acre or two to tens, then hundreds of acres. It burned in an area far from roads on the rocky east slope of the eastern ridge of the dual mountain, and could only be fought on foot by firefighters carrying hand tools and water. It was tough going and slow. And because there were so few man-made things nearby, and little value to the coarse timber, there was no great sense of urgency to battling the fire and it seemed to linger. The perfume became rank and cloying, burning the nose and throat.

Then one day, the breeze carried the scent of burning pine across the mountains into our county. The smell  was pushed southeastward, riding the bow wave of a raging mass of angry, roiling air.

That night, the storm came.

The silence of twilight, the low-hanging half moon, a handful of dim stars in the still thick haze. Then, with the night, sweeps in a dark curtain—a wall across the western sky, malign and laced through with lightning. With little warning other than the sound of the wind racing across the nearby hills, it breaks upon us like a wave breaks upon the empty beach. The trees have nowhere to go and the storm shows no mercy, offers no quarter. In a brief time the storm tramples us and moves eastward.

We awake Saturday to a disheveled, wrecked world. We consume a tank of fuel in the chainsaw before our second cup of coffee; all around us we see unexpected and utterly random damage. Trees toppling other trees, crashing down onto fence lines; trees snapped in half, others losing branches that themselves are the size of trees. The destruction is without rhyme or reason or pattern, an unspeakable elemental rage brought down upon us. 

We join our neighbor to walk the road and assess its state. This is one of the small pleasant rituals we have discovered since moving to our house in the woods, after snow or heavy weather, reminding me of Frost's 'Mending Wall.' We set the road right, clear debris from ditches and culverts, remove the downed branches  and return up the lane to our respective places, having restored a small measure of normal.

Yet the bulk of the damage largely remains, and it is prodigious. It adds another layer of work to be done onto an already lengthy list, and the damaged fences cannot be ignored for long. The paths will be cleared, the debris removed, but the storm has left a mark that will be long in erasing. And we are fortunate we suffered no damage to our home or our buildings, and neither we nor any of our animals were hurt. But we will be fixing this for a long time to come...

__________________________________________

The Derecho of June 29-30, 2012, ended the forest fire threat on Massanutten, as well as causing a hellish amount of suffering and damage from Ohio to Delaware that persisted for a very long time. But far worse for us was a microburst thunderstorm some weeks later, which broke or felled at least ten large trees in our yard alone while doing very little else around us. We hadn't finished cleaning up that when Hurricane Sandy dropped a huge double-stemmed pine tree among other things. That one managed to just graze a fence line with some branches amazingly enough, as it had the potential to take out several powerlines. 

So we continue, keeping fingers crossed, and an eye on the sky. It's been a tough year for the trees, without a doubt.

A Moment, 2012

The sun rises on Main Street on the longest day of the year. What do you see? What do you smell?

An Interesting Juncture

We have reached an interesting—and not insignificant—juncture. With the recent assistance of our local electric utility, we have essentially gotten control of a broad band of our little hilltop from its northern boundary to its southern boundary.

Last month, the power company spent a few weeks clearing trees and brush from the power line rights-of-way in our area. As our property is criss-crossed by a number of different power line, this meant that a number of broad swaths were cleared first, by crews with chainsaws, then second, by an armored bush-hog.This was a super-duper bonus for us, because first of all, we had long planned to remove many of the trees that were dropped anyway (we have a long-standing no-spray preference for the rights-of-way, which imposes a reciprocal obligation to provide a modicum of maintenance) and had that done for us.

The bush-hogging was great, because it replaced a lot of messy undergrowth with a thick layer of coarse mulch that will help keep the open spaces open and temporarily suppress regrowth. Finally, we appear to have gotten a decent amount of firewood on the ground for the gathering, and have already made an effort at harvesting that for eventual bucking and splitting.

So, beginning at the northern property line, we have a cleared swath beneath the power line. This abuts the open pines, then the summer chicken yard, then the main garden. The significant part of this is that we have finally cleared and tilled the last major portion of the garden around the old maple stump, so for all intents and purposes, everything within the fenced area is productive garden or flock space. To the east and west flanks lie broad bands of forest which we at least have a basic understanding of, and plans to one degree or another. Along the garden and summer chicken area, we can see clearly how we have pushed the forest back by several ranks of trees, to provide more open space and more unobstructed sunlight for the growing spaces.

Continuing along the hilltop, in the back (south) yard, we will be fencing a garden area in short order, producing a fenced-area-within-a-fenced area to grow veggies safe from the marauding poultry. In the winter, this will give us another secure area for the turkeys to occupy, netted over and protected from the harshest winter winds.

It has only taken us to our seventh growing season here to reach this point, and without the little boost we got, I wouldn't feel quite the same sense of completeness. We still have a lo-o-o-o-ng way to go, but it makes me feel like we've made some kind of breakthrough, some kind of milestone. It feels good.

Don't get used to this

After a long evening of lightning and thunder, punctuated by sudden sweeps of fierce rain, this morning dawned clear, crisp and cool, with last night's rain sparkling on everything.

It is the middle of June, and time to make something I haven't made in decades—elderblossom fritters.

The first step is to mix up the fritter batter, because it needs to rest a while before it's used. I am surprised to see the recipe calls for flat beer; either I had completely forgotten about that or I used a different recipe in the past. Not surprisingly, we have flat beer on hand—several quarts of it in fact, in several different styles, all of them homebrewed by one of us.

As I had chosen the mixed dark beer/stout leftovers for a batch of early-morning beer bread (sweet, with cinnamon, raisins and cranberries), I decided Phil's flat lager would be just the thing to compliment the delicate floral flavor of the elder blossoms. And, there would still be plenty of both left over for the next beer recycling project.

We were lucky enough last summer to uncover a healthy elderberry bush near at hand, just off the cemetery. With clippers in hand, I cautiously navigated the maze of berry canes, poison ivy and greenbrier until I was able to gently clip a handful of lacy, pure white blossoms.

The secret to making good fritters is to remove as much surface moisture from what you are coating with batter; it lets the batter adhere to the surface and reduces the amount of grease spattering. But the night's rain had left water droplets lodged in every nook and cranny of the complex blossoms; placing them on paper towels did little.

So I did the only reasonable thing. I put a few blossoms at a time in the salad spinner, very gently spun it up to speed, and let it slow down in its own sweet time. By the time I was done, the batter had warmed up to room temperature and the oil had reached frying temperature.

The light blossoms resisted being coated with the thick batter, but with a little coaxing, they relented. A quick frying of about three minutes on a side, and they were golden brown, crisp and fragrant. And I was right about selecting Phil's lager—it made a subtle and delicate contribution to the flavor without overpowering the blossoms themselves.

So by about nine o'clock on a brilliant Sunday morning in mid-June, the lot of us were standing around the kitchen, sipping spiced coffee with fresh milk, eating beer bread warm from the oven, and munching on fresh Elderblossom fritters lightly dusted with powdered sugar.

Not gonna happen often, but sure was good.

Done and done!

Yesterday I bottled the ale I brewed mid-May. It's a simple, standard light summer ale, with a substantial measure of honey in the mix and a fairly modest hopping—a nice, post-lawnmowing quaff. While the total weight of malt and honey seemed enough as I was brewing, the initial s.g. surprised me at only about 1.035. I always forget that pound-for-pound, honey doesn't contribute as much as malt, though it attenuates nicely and adds a nice character. The final s.g. was 1.005. so the ABV works out to only about 3%, a little bit low for my homebrewing preferences but still in the ballpark.

However, if nothing else, it's a test platform for a new secret ingredient that I've been itching to try brewing with, and I don't recall seeing in many recipes. My intent is to introduce a flavor I've wanted to add to an ale flavor profile, but has never survived the brewing and fermenting processes. From my initial intra-bottling taste testing, I'd say it's a success, and I'm ready to move it outta beta into my next full-mash production: Brassy Kit! Coming soon to a carboy near you!

Watching the river run...

When we moved to this little hilltop in the woods a few years back (less of a 'hilltop' than a puckered wrinkle of Virginia's piedmont) the whole region was deep into a prolonged drought. Trees were weakened and dying; wide swaths of field and pasture were shriveled and sun-baked; hot hazy summer skies mocked the parched ground with dry thunder.

The drought lasted through our first year here, and into the next, and only loosened in our third summer. Circumstances were dire for many farmers, whose withered fields refused to bring forth hay month upon month; the range of the drought was such that hay had to be brought in by tractor-trailer loads from the upper midwest. The only crops that prospered were the wine grapes, which were blessed with intensely concentrated sugars; everything else, animal and vegetable, suffered to one degree or another.

At the base of our little hill, through a narrow stream valley, flows a small stream, a pair of streams really. They join up shortly with the river proper a fraction of a mile downstream. Deep as we are in the puckered wrinkle, the sources of these streams may only lie a few hundred yards away in a neighbor's field; there are countless springs and seeps and rivulets that mass in the bosom of these hills, forming the upper reaches of the river that eventually empties into Chesapeake bay. So close to the source of the stream, we are keenly aware of its cycle. Within two or three hours of a heavy thunderstorm, we can hear the fleshed-out stream running full and loud; in another two or three hours it will quiet down and disappear from our consciousness again.

In the depth of the drought, the streams diminished to little more than a string of minor puddles connected with a path of damp gravel; in many places the water was gone completely.

On our little hilltop in the woods, we depend on a well for our water; we aren't really sure how deep the well is, or how dependable. Every gallon we draw cost us in electricity, and needs to be replenished somehow. If ever there was a time our well's capability would be tested , this would be it. So we watered our gardens sparingly and judiciously, and they grew feebly in response to that parsimony.

We installed some rainbarrels, recycled plastic drums that caught the runoff from our ample roofs. But rainbarrels do not magically produce water; they simply buffer what falls from the sky. And if there is no rain, the rainbarrels stay empty. But a brief downpour may fill them, and every little bit helps. Yet, for years one, two and three, there was not enough water to go around, and demand consistently exceeded supply.

Late last summer and fall, the rain began to catch up; things seemed promising. But then we went through the driest winter on record; almost no significant snowfall, no rain to speak of, punctuated by a brutal, almost unheard of sub-zero cold snap that finished off many already deeply stressed plants. Winter rainfall is crucial for replenishing groundwater; when plants are dormant they do not transpire the soil moisture back into the air as they do in the growing season, when a large tree may almost immediately rebreath the rain from a thunderstorm into the sky. Winter rain stays in the ground.

Things were not looking good for this summer. We added more rainbarrels, so at least a portion of the rain that fell on every roof would be captured.

Then, just a few weeks ago, something wonderful happened. We started getting rain.

Late in May, we started getting regular rains. June kicked off with a low-pressure system that moved in and took up residence, and for what seemed like several weeks, it rained day in and day out, interrupted by short, intense downpours laced with thunder and lightning. The ground took it in, replenishing supplies that hadn't been topped off in literally years. Moss and mushrooms grew on everything.

The deficit has been erased. We have probably gotten the better part of a foot of rain in the last six weeks.

Best of all, the stream now asserts itself with a constant, full-throated and unmistakable roar from far below our hilltop, rushing steadily from day to day. It has not flowed this way in the time we have been here. The water that fills its banks is not the murky, coffee-colored soup that the thunderstorms pulse so violently from the earth when they rake its surface—it is the clear, cold, sparkling water the earth gives up freely after calming and polishing it, taking it in and purifying it through its heart.

It is a gift to us, and we hear it singing as we watch the river run.

What we have here

1. I spent many hours cleaning up the shed. Late in the afternoon, I am sitting quietly, admiring the fruits of my labor, when the empty Sigg bottle suddenly topples down from its place on the shelf. Puzzled and curious, I pick it up to return it, and see that it was knocked off the narrow ledge by that large electrical cable that is draped in through the window...the cable that at this moment is slowly moving up onto the ledge above the window opening...wait a second...

2. I clear the new spring growth from the lower end of the trail with a brush cutter attachment on the strimmer. I spend twenty-five, thirty minutes slowly walking the trail, occasionally shooting sparks when I accidentally let the blade strike the bare rocks. As I return down the trail to where I began, I note the fawn curled up in a tiny little bundle, a mere foot or so off the trail I just cleared. I had no idea it was there.

3. Birds make many sounds, and among those sounds, alarm is unmistakable once you have heard it. As we worked in the warm sun one afternoon, I began to take note of the shrill and persistent cries of alarm in the background.

I walk over to where a pair of wrens flit back and forth agitatedly from the mouth of a growtube. A growtube is a translucent plastic tube about the length and diameter of a man's arm, used to protect newly planted saplings from extreme weather, dehydration and browsing animals. In this particular instance, the growtube was protecting an apple tree sapling.

Cautiously, I looked down into the growtube, and saw what I expected to see: the back end of a black snake, coiled downward, face into a pine-needle bird's nest. The nest still held several nearly-fledged wren chicks; one chick was already fully in the snake's mouth.

I pondered the circumstances for a few milliseconds/an entire lifetime. We created an artificial situation by placing the growtubes; the wrens, in their foolishness, exacerbated the situation by building a secure, sheltered, warm cozy nest—in the very bottom of a slick-sided tube their babies could never, ever, hope to fly out of .

I did the only thing I could do: I slowly pulled the tube upwards; the snake flopped out awkwardly, and chaos ensued. The wren parents fluttered about screaming ferociously; the snake writhed about in confusion, and two fledglings fluttered away from the now-exposed nest.
I picked up the snake and figured things were about fair at this point, with the snake having had a decent meal at the expense of the foolish wrens—but at least it was not a total loss for the wrens. I carried the writhing snake off to the edge of the nearby woods, and gave him a gentle (but firm) toss.

The snake landed in the pine needles, regained his composure, and slithered off with great dispatch into the deep cover of the woods. Delighted at my little role in this passion play, I returned to what I had been doing in the garden.

Within a few short moments, the wren wruckus wresumed. I walked back over to the scene, and sure enough, the black snake had returned; by the time I get there, it has already grabbed the sole remaining chick, one that for whatever reason, was less mobile than its siblings. This time, I grab him and walk him further away, to the very edge of the clearing. I toss him into the underbrush, and this time, I watch him carefully to ascertain his motives. To my satisfaction, he heads directly into the undergrowth, away from the wren nest.

For a moment.

Then he slowly begins a right turn.

For the next few minutes, the snake gradually heads back towards the wren nest. Anytime he senses my presence, he diverts slightly; but the net result is always back towards the nest. Within ten minutes or so, he has found his way back, in an arc of about fifty feet or so. When he arrives, the chicks are gone; he spends several minutes nosing the remnants of the nest apart, meticulously searching for some trace. Once convinced there is nothing left in the nest, he begins to track the scent left by the fleeing fledglings.

The young birds are capable of some semblance of flight, but are not truly ready to be on their own; they can get airborne for a few feet at a time, but fly with the grace of frogs, more bumping along than actually flying. Their parents are valiant—but somewhat hapless—coaches in this respect. But their ferocity in the face of this menace cannot be disputed. They light within six inches of the monster, squawking and feignting to distract him from their offspring, flying off just as he strikes. At one point, a wren screams at the snake from a fence rail just above it; the snake began to rise up and rear back; and at the very last instance as the snake struck, the wren flew off, out of range.

But the snake has now attained the fledgling's trace in earnest—he follows their course relentlessly and mercilessly through tufts of grass, weeds, and across the wide gravel drive, into the cemetery.

At this point, we take pity on both the vulnerable fledglings and their agitated parents. Mary finds one of the chicks hiding in a thick clump of grass, and as she tries to pick it up, it flops awkwardly onto her shoe.

She walks it to the edge of the woods where it might be safe (having not left a trail for the snake to follow) and releases it into the good graces of its parents, who shepherd it along a safe distance into the forest.

Mary's action was correct; by picking up the chick and moving it, the trail has been interrupted and the snake has nothing to follow.

Or so we thought.

Mary stands in the driveway, as we both watch the snake consider its next move. Slowly, deliberately, the snake begins moving—directly towards where Mary stands. Tongue flicking, it moves this way and that, tasting the warm air for a hint of baby bird. It continues towards Mary, weaving back and forth in consideration. To our—shock? horror? amazement? the snake crawls directly—DIRECTLY!—to the very spot on Mary's shoe where the chick lighted so briefly. It samples the air at that spot with its tongue, seeking so desperately that morsel of chick. It reconnoiters, and for a moment rears back to look up at Mary, not sure if this is an unbelievable windfall or its worst nightmare. We both are horrified for an instant, expecting the snake to begin crawling up Mary's leg...

At last, discretion seems to be the better part of valor, even for snakes, and it begins to head off. We decide this represents the end of the wren event, and if there will be an epilogue, we do not want a part in it. As far as I recall, we did not hear any further calls of alarm that evening.

4.)The boulder wall was in need of remodeling; we knew when we first constructed it that it was a prototype, and was subject to later revision. As we rolled one large rock onto its back ,we both simultaneously made the same comment:

"THAT'S a copperhead!"

A beautiful, unmistakable creature; elegant in color, markings worthy of a moorish palace, and the distinctive head shape that is burned into the DNA of any higher animal. This particular individual was not as long as my arm, and moved with an admirable quickness that few snakes display. Copperheads are equipped with a hemolytic poison, based on a protein common to many animals, that destroys cells and causes sure death in smaller animals and terrific pain in larger ones. Unfortunately, this individual decided to move from where it had been quietly and comfortably resting (under one rock) to under the bigger rock where we planned to work next. So for the remainder of afternoon, we worked...delicately...to say the least.

And this evening, when we went out to survey the boulder wall...there he was.

5.) A fawn almost ran me over this morning as I left for work. I didn't even have the chance to get that metallic taste in my mouth; it was very matter-of-fact, over in half a second, done and gone. So there you have it.

6.) Addendum: Late this afternoon, torrential downpours amid ferocious lightning and thunder; the greyhound is beside herself with nerves. The porch gutter is clogged with pine needles, and I get a ladder to help reach the downspout to unclog it.

As I climb the ladder, I place my hand on the roof to steady myself—directly onto the head of a very peeved black snake. The snake pauses a brief moment to glare at me, then ever so gently, curls about and crawls majestically up the roof and back into the steamy sunshine.

Dinner, June 2nd:

A salad of romaine lettuce with radishes, fresh from the garden.
Steamed radish greens with fresh green onion, sauteed in olive oil; both fresh from the garden.
Steamed green peas, fresh from the garden, served with homemade butter.
Grits casserole, incorporating fresh cheese, fresh eggs and raw milk.
Homebrewed beer.

Doesn't get any better than that.