EFG: Eating, Finding, and Growing

Last night I made a stir fry out of the things I encountered during the course of my day: turnip greens from our CSA harvest, garlic scapes from the backyard garden, and a shaggy parasol mushroom that popped up near the fire pit in my own backyard. It's brethren were harvested by some other animal residents, but I felt lucky to try this guy for the first time. Very meaty flavor!

The star of the show: a very meaty shaggy parasol mushroom. I plucked this guy before the parasol opened so that I could enjoy him instead of the deer in the backyard.

Supporting characters: turnip greens harvested and ready for sharing.

Hard-neck garlic developing it's scape. This is the start of the flowering head and needs to be removed if the bulb is to develop the way we like for cooking and eating. The scape also has a nice garlicky flavor and stir fries up nicely!

We're hitting our stride on the farm. Tomatoes were planted in Big Bob (the large greenhouse) and the hoophouses last week, and today our first flowers and summer squashes were planted out in the field. We harvested and shared our second CSA shares yesterday and Saturday will be our fourth market. The little greenhouse on my property is emptying out of BYG plants as they are either sold to lucky new parents or planted at the farm. Shane and I are excited to reclaim the space and put in tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and other miscellaneous ground plantlings for personal consumption.

Big Bob on the second week of June. Tomatoes are staked out in the center, carrots have the little puddles of drip irrigation under them in the center right, radishes and turnips hide from aphids under the row cover on the left, and peas grow up both walls.

The little greenhouse looking sparse with the remaining peppers, basil, and eggplants for market and planting. Big changes to come soon as the "permanent residents" move in next week!

Con-census

The motto of the Wallowa Land Trust is "Keep it rural," and this phrase perfectly encapsulates the sentiments of Joseph residents that I've encountered towards the place they live. While everyone I've met is warm and welcoming, there is common pride and value for the beautiful place we share, and with it, a fear that a population boom is lurking just beyond the horizon. Soon, Joseph will be "discovered" and the influx of urbanites and their contrasting sensibilities will transform the town and county in execrable ways. I've been wanting to put some numbers on this fear, and the census data is striking: in the last 120 years, the population of the state of Oregon has grown more than an order of magnitude, with the urban center of Portland recently keeping a similar trend.* In contrast, Joseph experienced tremendous growth early in the 20th century associated with the logging industry, and then that went bust and there has been slow but steady growth since the 1930s.**

Change in population through time normalized to the population in 1890. I.e., a multiplier of 2 means that the population is double that of 1890. All data courtesy census.gov as made easy to find on Wikipedia.

Will the surge in growth that current residents fear happen? If so, what changes will it bring? Can there be smart growth that shares and maintains the unique cultural and ecological values of this region? Only time will tell.

*I would hypothesize that before the boom in Portland, most of the population growth was in logging towns and suburban areas, but have not yet investigated the drivers of early population growth in the state.

**I would also like to compare trends in tourism over the years, but haven't pursued this yet and am not sure if adequate data is available.

Exploring Canyon Country

I think it may be summer finally! We've had what's felt to my skin like a lot of sun the last few weeks here in the northeast Oregon, with no more snowfall outside the mountains since May 12th. I spent many evenings training for the Scout Mountain Ultra, and then had the revelation that I didn't want to spend 14+ hours of time, fuel, and energy driving to Pocatello. I want to be here, in this place, while I'm here. It doesn't hurt though to be in fine trail running shape to get out and explore. Here are two recent adventures.

The last weekend in May, Jasper and I headed to canyon country and spent a peaceful evening car-camping on a beautiful ridge in full spring wildflower splendor. The next day we hiked from the ridge down along Swamp Creek to its confluence with Joseph Creek. The 20-mile hike took us about seven hours including luxurious morning snack and lunch breaks. We saw lots of cows early on in the creek bottom, and as we clawed our way through the final unmaintained and fenced half-mile section approaching the confluence, I became more grateful for their trail-squashing presence than I've ever been before.

The sunset view looking northwest towards the Swamp Creek canyon and Starvation Ridge across the way.

The ridge top hosted healthy ponderosa pine forest with a carpet of spring wildflowers.

A few essentials make for a happy hike.

At one creek crossing, we found evidence of a resourceful scavenger in a collection of empty mollusk shells and a lone crayfish claw.

Jasper smiles in gratitude for a scrap of shade as we climbed several hundred feet back up the ridge to the Subaru at the end of the 20-mile hike.

This week, Kyle is taking advantage of his freedom to explore and visiting while he looks for summer employment. We took a drive through the Zumwalt Prairie and up to Buckhorn Overlook, which affords spectacular views of Imnaha Canyon and the Seven Devils beyond.

A survey marker and arrowleaf balsamroot blooming high above Imnaha Canyon. Lightning Creek is the smaller drainage coming in from the opposite side of the valley. Over the first ridgeline is the Snake River and Hells Canyon and the Seven Devils are barely visible through the haze of the gathering storm in the far background.

While seeing these landscapes from high above, I've also been reading Temperance Creek by Pamela Royes, which is an account of her time as a sheepherder in the Hells Canyon and the Wallowas. It is also the story of falling in love with her husband, and more importantly, developing her own identity in this world. I highly recommend.

Saturday Morning

This morning is pure pleasure. A storm is coming over the mountains now, but at seven the sun was out and melting the frost on the grass in town. I took Jasper for a longer walk to the moraine to make up for working long hours yesterday. Now I am toasting bread on a piping hot wood-burning stove and smothering the bread with smoked salmon torte, left over from a catering gig for the Nature Conservancy. I'm waiting for the Joseph Public Library to open at noon so I can go get my library card and hopefully check out some books on local cultural and natural history.

Walking along the eastern lateral moraine of Wallowa Lake. The Wallowa Mountains are towering in the distance like ghostly versions of themselves, costumed with fresh snow that fell yesterday.

Ten Hands

From greenhouse to ground, we've almost finished filling the middle beds with onions, greens, and brassicas. I loved the steady flow of the morning, covering the plots with landscape fabric to keep out the weeds, plopping the plants down, and pressing them into place. Ten hands made light work.

New friends listen to a lesson in placing and planting.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop... Gardening

Conquered those pesky, path-inhibiting... poppies.

The spring rain and warm weather last week turned the yard here into a jungle, and when temps soared above 45 F and the sun showed it's face today, I couldn't resist getting the gloves out to fight back. Besides the seemingly infinite dandelions that grow here, I was particularly eager to tackle a mangy, hairy-leafed plant that was threatening passage along the paths around the house. I noticed these weeds were also poking through the landscape fabric, which gave me a bit of a pause, wondering whether they were perhaps an aggressive, but desirable flowering plant of some type. But their abundance along the paths boiled my blood and I took them all out, merrily piling them in three large mounds as I progressed. Just after I switched over to saving a small strawberry patch, BG appeared to check that I wasn't destroying everything in the little greenhouse. We joked about the amount of work the yard needed, and then eager for more info on the hairy-leafed guys, I gestured to my work and asked, "I decided to start with that weed over there, do you know what it is?" She glanced at my impressive piles before informing me that they were poppies. Then she looked at me sideways and hesitatingly added, "They'll put out nice flowers a bit later in the spring." Doh, I felt like a complete idiot.

Later, Jas and I headed back to Hurricane Creek for a run, and I was surprised to find decent snow cover on the trail about 3.5 miles in, just past the falls I mentioned last weekend. With warm and sunny weather in the forecast again during the week, I'm hoping the snowline will be knocked back a couple more miles. I desperately need to get my butt in gear and train over longer distances and with greater elevation gains before the Scout Mountain Ultra Trailrace in Pocatello, which is coming up in a meager four weeks!

A Radiant First Week

Today marks my first week in my new home, and it's been a good one. In order to make progress on my dissertation work at the same time that I try out life as a farmer, I knew I would need to establish a common flow to each week. The plan for now is for weekends, Mondays, and Thursday and Friday afternoons to be research time, and for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday mornings to be farm work days, except when I work at the Wallowa County Farmers' Markets. After having a rather light teaching assistantship this spring semester, and factoring in moving and other life activities, it felt like a packed week! Good thing I enjoy being busy (thanks Mom). Here's how the routine goes.

Every morning, I wake up, make a cup of tea, and climb up the back landing to take a picture of the mountains to the southwest. I'm curious to see how the extent of the snowpack changes over time this summer, and later, how senescence will transform the forest into a patchwork of evergreens and golden tamaracks. Jas and I go for a walk, I have a big bowl of doctored oatmeal, pack my bag and head to the farm.

JP refreshes himself from a delicious rodeo grounds puddle a few blocks from our house under a brilliant blue sky. The contrast between the snowline and treeline highlights the Hurricane Creek drainage in the background. 

My first days working at BYG were a blur, as we scrambled to maintain the overflowing greenhouses and get the fields ready for planting after the wettest start to the water year on record. I learned to harvest and wash greens, transplant pepper and tomato starts which we'll sell at the first market, and maintain the weedwhackers, We put the latter to exhausting use on Thursday morning mowing the cover crop before Beth came through on the tractor to till in the cuttings. The rain this weekend should help get the breakdown process started and prep our soil for planting. Friday we put in our first outside crops: yellow, red, and sweet onions, which were started on a farm in Texas and languished in BG's garage for a few weeks waiting for the sun to come out.

A bonus hoop house stores overflow peppers and brassicas until they are ready to plant in the fields, or sell at market.

New to the farm fields this year are egg and meat chickens, which we'll move around the field twice daily in chicken tractors to add fertilizer and keep harmful insects down. BG, SL, and I will share the protein and responsibility for care and maintenance. The egg hens are on site now and got to enjoy some chickweed harvested from overwintered kale beds. The meat birds will arrive next Friday. SL is finishing construction on the chicken tractors this weekend and I hope to get a picture of them in action soon.

BG points out the freshly tilled beds where we will add ~600 onion starts, which will grow into green, fresh, and storage onions of a few different varieties.

The evenings so far have found me sunburned and sore as my body adjusts to working hard outside. SV and I enjoyed Midwestern tacos at the Stubborn Mule on Tuesday night. The first of many, I'm sure. In lieu of running, Jas and I took a short jaunt up the steep E. Fork Wallowa R. trail at the head of the lake on Thursday, catching the last glow of the evening on the eastern moraine before our path was blocked with snow.

The sunset reflects brightly on Wallowa Lake from the darkness of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

Cleaning Up!

Here in Joseph, volunteers have been working hard all week to renovate the city park with some fancy new play structures. My housemate suggested that I volunteer too, since it would be a good opportunity to meet some other people in town. I was happy to oblige, and showed up this afternoon ready to work up a sweat. Since it was the last day of the build, after taking down a few tents, I got the inglorious and delightful task of shop vacuuming plastic shavings out of the grass. I'm certain I made a good impression with the members of my new community, because several came over to either apologize for the absurdity of the situation or laugh about it with me. The lady who vacuums grass, yup that's me!

It actually felt pretty rewarding. I filled several large trash cans with tiny plastic shavings that came from all the playground equipment having been cut out of dimensional plastic. Since the park is directly adjacent and upslope of the Wallowa River, I feel like I've done a good thing for the aquatic community of this town too.

The playground build at Joseph City Park. Minimal plastic shavings remain under that Safeway tent!

Slickrock Falls- accurately named, whether colloquial or not.

This evening I went over to Hurricane Creek to check out the trail conditions, and was delighted to find only a few patches of snow between the trailhead and what I've heard called "Slickrock Falls" a few miles up valley. Spring has barely arrived in that north-draining catchment, with buttercups as the sole bloomers that I noticed. Even the buds on aspen had not burst yet. I wonder if there are glacier lilies in this area like there was in McCall, because that was one of the first things I remember coming up last spring. Animal sightings were sparse too, though I did see a couple hen grouse on the way down Hurricane Creek Road, and Jasper terrorized a jackrabbit along the trail. I'm looking forward to exploring further along down the trail soon.

Spring in Joseph

Spring is here, and as usual, it brings with it a change in geography for me. Instead of migrating to the Arctic, or feeling like I finally left it when spring came in McCall, today I moved to Joseph, Oregon. Jasper's here as my first mate, currently enjoying his rank by snoring on my knee.

The view of the Wallowas from my new home in Joseph, OR this morning. Photo credit: SV.

While in Joseph, I'll work part-time at Backyard Gardens, a small vegetable and flower farm, and continue my dissertation research and writing. I'll also be acquainting myself with the surrounding region, which includes such diverse places as the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Hell's Canyon, and the Zumwalt Prairie.

This year I have an unusual context- it's been the wettest spring on record across much of the Pacific US, and the impacts were clear on the drive here. The Wallowas were thickly frosted with snow, and while there wasn't as much flooding as when I came here to interview a month ago, the rivers and streams I crossed were still swollen with meltwater. Still, life pushes stubbornly against its environment, and the fields and forests are coming alive with the delicate green of new leaves. I'm excited to closely observe what the summer brings and invest myself along side it.

Precipitation this winter has been unusually high, compared to the 1985-2010 average, and dark green areas such as Pocatello, ID and Joseph, OR have seen record totals.