Magnolia in usual late April mode

The pattern itself is always the same: 1) multi-week warm spell, 2) magnolia blooms, 3) seasonally-appropriate frost comes, 4) flowers turn brown. But it used to happen between late April and early May. Then the whole sequence moved back to April.

In 2012, all March. Bloom started around the 10th and was thoroughly whacked when the temperature dropped to 25 degrees on the night of the 26th.

April 18th, three weeks and change after the frost - just a few late-opening dots of pink.

Meanwhile, the combo of February and March was the 3rd driest on record and April is not shaping up well.

I could go on, among other things airing the usual caveat that this is weather, not climate. But I’d rather cut to this not-climate’s effect on the maple syrup industry, as described in the crop reports written by Arnold Coombs, a seventh generation maple syrup producer and packer in Vermont.

Full disclosure:  The 2012 crop report abbreviated below was originally sent to me by the farm’s publicist, who thought it might provide a story about the connections between maple syrup and climate change.

Indeed it does. Especially when combined with Mr. Coomb’s reports from 2009 (best crop in the last 75 years) and 2010 (production dramatically below average).

Up, down, up, down, way hot, way not, dust-bowl dry and then hundred-year flooded, the globe is on a violent weather see-saw that is not well described by “warming,” a word that usually evokes something pleasant. “Climate change” is a little better,  but not by much. Change isn’t always pleasant, but it’s beneficial at least as often as it is harmful, which cannot be said about the see-saw.

The search for a term that is both scientifically defensible and sufficiently horrifying is ongoing. As is the phenomenon the term will describe. Here’s an on-the-ground look at one early shape of the agriculture to come, and following that, links to a few recipes. Maple syrup shortages and price hikes are probably inevitable, but they’re not likely to be crippling, especially given that our local, sustainable sweetener is not only delicious but also, for what it is, inexpensive.

2012 Preliminary Crop Report

By Arnold Coombs  (edited and condensed by me)

Following a huge crop like 2011, the 2012 crop had a tough act to follow.  The winter weather was most unusual with temperatures well above average. In southern VT and NH we had only two significant snow storms with the biggest being in October.

Because of the warmth and the lack of snow, getting around in the woods was much easier. Most sugar makers were ready to start producing early, but then in the week of March 19th, temperatures hit the 70s for four days in a row and ended our season prematurely.

This year, half of last year’s record amount seems to be normal, which translates into about 70% of an average crop for some, less for others.  We estimate the final US production at 18,000,000 lbs. compared to over 30,000,000 lbs. last year. Canadian production looks to be similar. What does that mean for prices? They will be going up. How much? That is still to be determined…

The farmers’ union in Quebec increased the base of syrup price 3% and with other costs rising (what isn’t going up?) we see a minimum increase of 5%…. pricing usually settles down by Late May or early June.

Due to the warmer weather, this year’s crop is running darker than usual, (last year the crop was 30% Grade A Light Amber and this year it is 5%) but the flavor is still quite good and we have plenty.

Personally, I’m delighted. As long it isn’t “buddy” (off-flavored because the tree has started to leaf out) I like the darker grade B better anyway.

Recipes:

Yes, it's dessert. (Carrot cake for pie-preferrers, albeit without raisins.)

Assorted maple tarts (carrot, apple and wild rice), and Downeast Company Coleslaw are here.

Crisp Crust Maple-Walnut Pie is here.

Les Grandperes (French Canadian cottage pudding, aka biscuits on syrup) is – or I suppose are – here.

This picture (taken at Adams, in Poughkeepsie, NY) is actually a bit of a cheat - I buy almost all of my seeds online, from too many favorite suppliers.* But it does say "time to think about starting seeds” in an unmistakable way.

This year’s gigantic assortment of seeds has finally arrived, bringing with it the usual gigantic dose of buyer’s remorse. I had firmly decided against bulbing onions, for instance, having concluded that purchased plants  -  also available mail order, in convenient bunches of 50 to 75 -  do much better than the plants I start myself.

Yet somehow, mysteriously, here is a packet of heirloom Australian Brown storage onion seeds, roughly 700 incipient plants. Here also are 8 kinds of peas, most of them the kinds that require poles. We cut way back last year and they were sorely missed, but this does not explain where the hell I’m going to put them all. As usual, too many tomatoes, but on the other hand I’m not going to start any eggplants.

I had no intention of getting into cardoons again, either, but then there was this nice packet of Gobbo di Nizza in one of those racks (well, you have to at least look), and a facebook friend had just assured me they really could be delicious and before I knew it, two dozen little green sprouts, each capable of becomming a bush 4 feet tall and almost as wide.

Even if you don’t eat them, cardoons are great in bouquets, especially in late fall when most other home grown beauties are no more. This Thanksgiving arrangement also includes Redbor kale and Bright Lights chard.

I’ve given individual pots to only 6 of the strongest-looking, but even that modest number will be eating too much precious seed starting space by the time it’s time to start the tomatoes.

And thus we arrive at When Is the Right Time to Start the Seeds? The chart at the end of the post provides some guidance and many seed packets have suggestions too, but the truth is it all depends.

SOME THINGS SEED STARTING TIME DEPENDS ON

* First and foremost, LIGHT. Outdoor plants do not cope well with the restricted light of indoors. A greenhouse helps, obviously, and grow lights can be almost as good. But if all you have is a windowsill it’s best to start only a very few things and to do it only a few weeks before they can start spending at least some time outside.

Tomatoes, for instance, are typically started 8 to 10 weeks before the last frost, but windowsill seedlings will be stronger if started no more than 6 weeks in advance. They’ll be small, but they’ll catch up, and they’ll catch up more rapidly than they would if they’d been stressed by two more weeks of low light.

* How dependable is the weather? All timing for seeds started indoors is calculated on the basis of distance to last frost. You can use a calculator like this one from NOAA to get a probable last frost date, but “probable” is the best that predictions can do. In places where there’s enough frost to worry about in the first place, spring weather is often unsettled. Balmy days can be followed by cold ones so blustery it is below freezing if you count the wind chill; and sometimes it’s just plain below freezing – late cold snaps can never be completely counted out.

On top of that, most tender plants prefer genuine warmth, in the air and in the soil. Forty five degrees is far from freezing, but if you’re a tomato it’s also far from warm. Short version: even though I have a greenhouse that lets me start early, I count as though “last frost” will be ten days later than predicted. If warm weather comes promptly, the seedlings will be a little smaller than planned, but that’s better than having them too big. (Seedlings that outgrow their pots get root bound, which sets them way back. )

*What’s the weather like indoors? A tomato seed may germinate in anywhere from 5 days to 2 weeks, depending on the temperature of the soil. (75 – 80 is ideal, but anything over 60 or so will work, eventually). This obviously affects how much of the allotted time the seedling is actually growing.

* How crucial is it that the vegetable, fruit or flower get a big head start? Plants that must make good growth in cool weather (delphiniums) and plants that are ruled by day length (onions) must be about 12 weeks old when planted out in early spring, no matter how long the growing season may be. Plants that just need three or four months of warmth after they hit the garden (tomatoes, peppers, daturas) have a lot more leeway – at least in places where the first fall frost doesn’t come until mid October or later.

* Some favorite sources for seeds , with a brief excursion into heirlooms and hybrids

More on seeds and seed starting:

Is seed starting really essential?

Organic seeds, starting off on the right foot

A Seed-Starting Timetable

(slightly adapted from one provided by  Kitchen Garden Seeds)

Counting back from last frost:

Vegetables

Four Weeks: Winter Squash, Melons, Cucumbers, Nasturtiums

Six Weeks:  Fennel,  Shallots, Tomatillos, Basil, Echinacea  and St. John’s Wort.

Eight Weeks: Eggplant, Tomatoes, Chiles, Sweet and Bell Peppers, Chives, Sage, Stevia and Thyme.

Nine Weeks: Broccoli, Cabbage and Kohlrabi (transplant out four weeks before the last frost date).

Ten Weeks: Celery, Celeriac.

Eleven Weeks: Leeks and Cauliflower (transplant out four weeks before the last frost date).

Twelve Weeks: Artichokes, Cardoons and Brussels Sprouts.

Flowers

Five Weeks: Alyssum, Calendula, Marigold, Zinnia.

Six Weeks: Balsam, Cutting Ageratum, China Asters, Celosia, Cleome, Coleus, Catmint Nepeta, Echinacea, Euphorbia, Forget-Me-Nots, Dahlia, Nicotiana, Scabiosa, Snapdragons, Stock, Thunbergia.

Eight Weeks: Baby’s Breath, Black-Eyed Susans, Milkweed, Coreopsis, Gaillardia, Globe Amaranth, Helichrysum, Hibiscus, Hollyhock, Heuchera, Nigella, Phlox, Platycodon, Statice, Yarrow.

Ten Weeks: Dianthus, Digitalis, Lobelia, Heliotrope.

Twelve Weeks: Datura, Salvia, Verbena, Viola.

Our holiday tree, 2011, aka the top of the former arborvitae. There’s a bucket of water inside the pedestal.

Putting it up was extremely easy; taking it down wasn’t much  harder and now we have the same pile of long branches anyone with a regular tree will have as soon as they saw them from the trunk, first step in successful home recycling.

Some will argue deconstruction is unnecessary; you can simply recycle the tree by setting it up outdoors, replacing the human-centric ornaments with items of interest to birds: cut oranges, a feeder or two, that cute bell made from suet and encrusted with seeds you got from the office gift-swap.

Well, yes, but myself I’d rather use cut boughs to mulch the perennial beds, evergreen boughs being just about ideal for this purpose: They hold in the cold without matting down and they’re quick and easy to remove in spring without harming tender emerging shoots.

That’s right, hold in the cold. There are some instances where the object is to hold in warmth – such as when you’re trying to protect the fig tree.

Wrapped fig tree surrounded by bagged leaves, further insulated by a large pile of hemlock boughs

But most of the time what the mulch is doing is keeping the surface frozen, so you don’t get repeated thaws and freezes between January and April. “Frost heave” doesn’t just happen to roadbeds. Even when plants stay put, delicate feeder roots right near the surface are often damaged by soil that expands and contracts like an accordion.

The beds in Maine take a lot of boughs, so each year Kristi goes scavenging right about now, looking for raw material. Being well out in the country, she has to work at it. But in towns that offer municipal pick up there’s a bounty of useful material conveniently located right next to the curb.

Alternate use for evergreen branches: back door decor. Former “tree” makes a good anchor; saved up shrub and hedge prunings add variety.

Beds already all cozy – or non-existent? Consider the outdoor arrangement. In cold climates cut evergreens will stay fresh looking right through the entire Carnival season (Epiphany to Mardi Gras).

Added benefit of tree-in-tall pot: this is actually the first tree we’ve had in several years, feline depredations having finally discouraged me from even trying. But it looks like a combination of cat maturity and – comparative – tree inaccessibility is a winning one.

It's not that he COULDN'T jump; even fat as he is that's an easy distance. But as long as nothing moves he's not that interested.

Allium christophii, aka A. albopilosum, aka Star of Persia. A prolific self-sower, among its other virtues, though succeeding generations are smaller than the originals. Also a bit less intensely purple than my camera wants you to believe.

Pop Quiz

1) How many spring-blooming bulbs is too many?

2) How many spring-blooming bulbs is there room for?

3) How many spring-blooming bulbs must be planted before there are enough to cut for the house without diminishing the outdoor show?

Around here, the answer to all three questions is “Who knows?” Several hundred into it I’m not there yet, and that’s not counting the little guys (crocus, muscarii, scilla and the like don’t even show up until there are thousands – unless you force them, which I heartily recommend).

Reason for mentioning it now, when even procrastinators – no names please – have usually gotten all of them in: CLEARANCE SALES!!

Two of my favorite Mail-order Sources are in final get rid of ‘em mode:

Brent and Becky’s, home of gazilllions of nifty narcissi as well as a wide selection of less-usual crocus and other things. Half-price while they last or until 12/05, whichever comes first.

Van Engelen, wholesale quantities and no slouch in the choice department either. Minimum order $50.00, a distressingly easy target. Forty percent off until they run out. Quantity bulbs can be “estate size,” which is to say on the small side; don’t forget to check sizes when ordering.

It being after Thanksgiving, most garden centers have already gone All Christmas All the Time, but every once in a while there’s a bin or two of orphans. And every once in a while they’re worth buying.  But not alas all that often. I’m disappointed almost every time I start inspecting them carefully for shrinkage, mold, etc.

Storage in the warm drought of sales rooms is just about the opposite of ideal, and of course anything in open bins could indeed be anything. (People who just toss their rejects into any old bin are not rare, unfortunately.)

This lily flowered mystery been coming back for years, as sturdy as the astilbe I probably planted later.

In our gardens, lily flowered tulips are among the more reliable returners. Catalogs don’t seem to list this among their virtues, so our situation may be unique. But it’s something to think about. A few other Tulip Tips are here.

late autumn color, late autumn flavor: winter squash, chestnuts and wild mushrooms

Must say I do love a soup that tastes rich and creamy without being heavy – or containing cream. Also nice if it doesn’t require an arsenal of seasonings and is easy and quick to make.

The quick part does assume the squash is already baked, and that you know speedy ways to peel chestnuts, but why not? *

As usual, the ingredient list is pretty much the whole recipe, but given that the beauty shot of the main ingredients promised something a bit more extensive, here’s a rough outline, based on the most recent iteration.

“Rough” and “most recent” are definitely the words for it; this is one of those home style soups that’s infinitely variable.

In other words, almost impossible to screw up.

If we’ve eaten most of  the squash, I just use more mushroom and chestnut. When I have the help of chestnut peelers, I shamelessly take advantage. Don’t have these particular mushrooms ? No problem, there are plenty of alternatives.

That’s “alternative,” as in “it’ll be good, but in a different way.” Recipes that call simply  for wild mushrooms or mixed wild mushrooms drive me nuts.

As though there were no differences! Granted, all of them taste like mushrooms, but anyone who thinks Boletus edulis and Cantharellus cibarius can be interchanged willy-nilly should have their head examined simply isn’t paying attention.

I am tempted to rant at length. Instead will just mildly point out that this soup can be made with almost any pair of mushrooms, wild or domestic, but one of them should be an intensely flavored low moisture variety like hen of the woods or shiitake and the other should be a firm, meaty but tender variety like lactarius or cremini.

AUTUMN SOUP

as measured out in midcoast Maine in Late October 2011

3 tbl. butter

3.5 oz. Lactarius thyinos, cut into half-inch chunks

A large onion in roughly 1/3 inch dice

5 oz Grifola frondosa coarsely chopped

12 chestnuts, roasted, peeled, and coarsely chopped

5 c. light chicken stock

6 oz. baked winter squash, roughly cut into walnut sized chunks

4 good sized springs of fresh thyme – enough to add a hint but not a shout

3 scrapings of nutmeg

1. Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the lactarius chunks and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are lightly browned and completely cooked through. Remove and set aside.

2. Add the onion, cook until golden, then add the frondosus. Keep cooking and stirring until the vegetables are brown and there is no free liquid in the pan. Stir in the chestnuts, add the broth, cover, and simmer over very low heat until everything is falling-apart soft, about an hour, maybe more.

3. Stir in the squash and seasonings, cover and cook until the squash is more or less dissolved, about 20 minutes.

4. Fish out the thyme and puree the soup. Depending on the toughness of the mushrooms, it will come out somewhere between fine applesauce and French Restaurant. This batch was the former and perfectly tasty, but I did put it thorough a strainer to achieve F.R. for its portrait.

5. Reheat, salt to taste and portion out, topping each bowl with a sprinkle of the reserved lactarius. An herb garnish doesn’t help, tastewise, so I resisted the temptation to pretty it up with something green. If you feel you must, a sprig of chervil wouldn’t do much harm.

BAKED WINTER SQUASH

Is more flavorful and less watery than squash that has been boiled, steamed or microwaved. All the same like baked potatoes, including stabbing here and there to prevent explosions. Unlike potatoes, squash leaks sweet juice, so you do have to put it on a pan. At 375 degrees, it’ll take anywhere from one hour to two, depending on the squash variety, size and age. (They cook more quickly after they’ve been stored for a while.)

That’s my preferred method, but when I’m in a hurry I halve the squash, remove the seeds, rub the cut surfaces with olive oil and roast the halves face down. Seed removal is a bit more of a chore, but you do get those delicious caramelized cut surfaces.

* Frozen partially cooked peeled chestnuts are quite tasty and an enormous time-saver, as I learned some years ago when a chef friend sent me some. Being as they’re not a money saver (unless you’re a chef with labor costs) and are not sold at any stores nearby, I have never bought any. But they are available retail, from Chestnut Growers Inc., a Michigan farmer’s co-op, among others. If you decide to go for it, please come back and let us all know how it worked out.

Ingredients for autumn soup: chestnuts from a farmers market, Lactarius thyinos (no common name), hen of the woods, Queen of Smyrna squash

I took this picture to run with the recipe – not yet written – because I was about to roast the squash and chestnuts, making them less photogenic.

But then I realized the picture itself is a massive seasonal alert. So:

Bill’s detailed hen of the woods hunting advice is here.

The post where I roll all over in delight about the squash, after a timely reminder that the window of specialty squashes is both small and right now, is here.

And really a lot about roasting and peeling chestnuts is here.

Further refinements:

THE SQUASH

This is the first Queen of Smyrna I’ve had this year, and I tasted it with considerable apprehension. Last year’s song of praise was so effusive the possibility of embarrassing disappointment seemed larger than the possibility of confirmatory delight. No worries! It was amazing.

Right now, Queen of Smyrna is being grown only on the farm in Northern Maine where it originated. I got it at Fresh off the Farm, in midcoast Rockport. But that just makes it the poster squash for “eat local.” Wherever you live it’s likely there’s something equally rare and fabulous at a farm stand or farmers market near you.

THE CHESTNUTS

I bought them a couple of weeks ago at the Poughkeepsie, NY farmers market, from a vendor who warmed my heart by clearly being not a professional farmer but just some guy who happened to have a (Chinese, not American) chestnut tree in his yard. Also a couple of apple and pear trees, from the looks of his stand. There was not a lot of anything – a few small boxes of apples and pears, I think maybe three pints of chestnuts.

It was the end of the day, but he couldn’t have started out with a whole lot more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m profoundly grateful to and admiring of the professional farmers who day in, day out make local food a reality. But I’m also glad this kind of neighborly exchange is not yet dead (and not yet priced out of a place in the marketplace).

The chestnuts themselves, I regret to say, were only so-so compared to those grown by the pros. But being very fresh they were quite wonderfully easy to peel.

THE MUSHROOMS

The hen of the woods is amply covered in the article linked up top.

The L. thyinos isn’t exactly uncommon but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it offered for sale. Some experts rate them uninteresting or even unpleasant. A mystery, that, except for being another reminder that taste is in the mouth of the taster and that mushrooms can vary a lot depending on where they grow.

We have a few reliable spots and the thyinos we harvest there rate quite highly with us. Although the taste is on the delicate side, sort of mushroomy and sort of floral; the texture is outstanding: delightfully firm, not tough but crisp, and it remains so even after thorough cooking.

Thyinos is hard to miss because when cut it exudes quantities of orange milk. The closely related L. deliciosus group has the same milk but turns green when handled. It too is edible, although “deliciosus” is pushing it.

THE APPLES

Not in the picture and not in the soup, but this very Sunday is Great Maine Apple Day and I wanted to give all within driving distance a heads up.

I probably should have titled this “Harvesting Wild Mushrooms;” there are all kinds of them just about everywhere (or at least everywhere in the Northeast). Our vegetable gardens may be soggy – even without Irene this has been a mighty rainy summer – but in the silver lining department there’s a bumper crop in the woods and fields.

Oddly, we haven’t found too many Cantharellus cibarius, the chanterelles usually sold under that name. Instead, we’re getting boatloads of the smaller sorts, including the Craterellus tubaeformis, aka Cantharellus infundibuliformis in Bill’s picture and the ever-popular black trumpet (Craterellus fallax).

Also lobster mushrooms (scroll down for collecting and cleaning tips) and a great many boletes.

This includes Boletus edulus, or king bolete , the species called Porcino in Italy. Friends familiar with both insist our kings are not as royal as true Italian porcini. In my opinion, they’re plenty delicious enough – far better than other common boletes – and absent the genuine article it’s difficult to compare.

Being married to an expert mycologist puts me next to a grand assortment of less-well-known edibles, about which I will not speak just now since you really need to know what you’re doing before it’s safe to eat them.

Actually, you should know what you’re doing before you eat any wild mushroom. After all this cheerleading I’m sorry to be the ghost at the banquet, but I keep reading about wild mushroom feasts where a grand variety is served to people who have not tried them all before and it’s making me nervous.

Most of the time, no problem; the combination of good will and a healthy fear of legal retribution seems to be working pretty well. The scary part is the chance of trouble; sooner or later, it’s pretty much inevitable. The more different mushrooms consumed, the more likely it is that one of them will provoke discomfort – or worse – in at least one of the consumers, and if you’ve served a whole bunch of different species it’s going to be near-impossible to figure out which one’s to blame.

Even mushrooms long classified as the safest of the safe can cause bad stomach upsets. Sulfur shelf, for instance, has long been classed as one of the “foolproof four” because it’s so easy to recognize, yet there are many (myself among them) who cannot eat any of what has turned out to be a whole class of related mushrooms.

Short version: persnickety as they may appear, Bill’s Long Lived Mushroom Eaters Golden Rules are worth following.

This festival of links is just a taste of our blog entries over the years. There are many more of Bill’s expert collecting tips and a few of my favorite recipes in the mushroom section. It’s not logically organized( time for an upgrade!), so scrolling can take a while. If you know what you’re looking for, try the index first.

* Michael Kuo, in themushroomexpert.com.

Photo by Bill Bakaitis

Where there are shoots, there will soon be flowers. Also bees.

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling overwhelmed with imminent spring. It’s just so inspiring to see those fleets of tender crocus shoots pushing up; so inspiring ( in a slightly different way) to see those fleets of last autumn’s canned goods still lining the shelves.

Haven’t started raking yet, but I have been making Honey Bars, playing around with assorted vintages, pairing the perfumes of the honeys with different nuts: floral with hazelnuts, herbal with pecans, smoky with black walnuts.

That’s the thing about keeping bees:  if you get any honey at all, you generally get a lot, so even though last year was a total bust we’re in no danger of running out.

The thing that’s in danger is the bees. And as Bill points out in this guest post, the first wave of threats is already pawing away at the doorstep.

Sweetness in the Snow (Nope, It’s not Maple Syrup)

By Bill Bakaitis

In deep winter, our bees stay put, venturing out only on the rare warm days when they can clean up the hive (and themselves) without fear of freezing.

Then, long before the snow is gone come the first warm rains of the season. They fell here a little over a week ago, following which we immediately began to see dead raccoons on the side of the road and raccoon tracks in fresh snow around the neighborhood.

Then, a few nights ago I heard one scrabbling around in the side yard.  Oh, No, I thought. One way or another, Ugly is about to be the word in the bee yard.

Both raccoons and their distant cousins, the Black Bears, emerge from their winter denning slumber in mid-March, hungry and ready to roam. They are on the look-out for fast food. Around here, that usually means bird seed, household garbage, molasses spiked ‘sweet feed’ and bee hives.

Almost all of our neighbors set out garbage nightly, many feed the birds, and at least two provide sweet feed to their stock. Amongst this suburban smorgasbord, bee hives can beckon as the sweetest of finds. In such a setting, things can get real ugly real quick.

When the ‘coons come, the bears are usually not far behind, and they seem to have a singular fondness for the contents of bee hives. It’s not so much for the honey, but for the developing larvae packed into the innermost combs of the hive. But whereas the ‘coons opposable thumbs can open latches and investigate nooks and crannies with the skill of an ornery six year old, the bears use all of the grace and cunning of a smack down wrestler to demolish the hive in their effort to get to the larvae.

One move, Ka Blam! And the three hundred dollar investment of a single hive is splintered in an instant. Ugly!

To ward off this threat, those of us who keep bees have learned to surround the hives with an electric fence.  The problem facing us in an early spring with a deep snow pack (and so far this year over seven feet has fallen) is that the fence is buried under snow and any electrical current shorts out immediately.

So for us, the first sign of the sweetness of this spring was not the boiling off of maple syrup but the digging out and reconstruction of the electric fence.

When most of us think of honey we think of warm days, blossom filled vistas, fragrant evenings and jugs of amber sweetness. Yet the tasks of late winter, although not so bucolic, are also part of the picture. Remember this the next time you purchase a pint of home grown honey at your local farmers market.

(Note: This seems like a good place to add that large mammalian threats are the least of the bee’s worries and that’s pretty much all bees, not only domestic honey bees like ours but also the native pollinators lately much in the news as possible replacements. Decline of Honey Bees Now A Global Phenomenon Says the United Nations. LL)

Although snow was still falling and blowing all morning on the 27th, the blowing showed a great deal more enthusiasm. No way to start shoveling much before noon, by which time the snow was what one might call “formerly fluffy.” It wasn’t heavy, exactly, compared to some snows I’ve hefted in my time, but it was already closer to igloo material than the original thistledown.

And there was a lot of it, so both of us were out there for hours. Bill started by clearing a path around the greenhouse and down to the bird feeder

The greenhouse from inside (those shelves are 4 feet off the floor)

First chunk of first south window cleared

Birds, feeding

And that was the easy part. Next came

The head of the driveway where as usual there was an enormous wall of salt hardened sludge shoved at us by the town plows

The path to the shed where we keep the bird seed

The path from the street to the front door

And of course the parking area, 40 x 100 feet, roughly 16 inches deep. Except for the wind-driven 5 foot dune banked up against the barn.

The view from our back door

So it looked to me like taking an angled path through the shallower stuff would get us to the barn door more quickly and that’s where I started while Bill finished the driveway to the car.

I became absorbed in the task

and didn’t notice Bill had come back around the corner and decided to take the short, deep route

Even when he’s exhausted, he’s fast, so I guess I shouldn’t complain, and I did hear him shout “I’ll finish that for you.”

Moral of the story: look up from time to time. It’s beautiful and you might learn something.

These aren’t they, but next year...

I’m not sure I’m really all that worried about it. Between the bacon and the barbeque we’re no doubt consuming enough carcinogenic material to make it a bit bogus to get all het up about the lids on the catsup – especially since after the jars are opened I  switch to one of my favorite products: plastic reusable caps like the one on the strawberry jam (reasonably easy to find although not, for reasons that elude me, available wherever canning supplies are sold).

Where was I?

About to say something about “better safe,” no doubt. BPA – free canning supplies do exist.

And now that I know about them, our next batch of lids and rings will come from Tattler company. Lids and rings are all we need, alas, thanks to the lifetime supply of perfectly good jars we bought for use as wine glasses at a garden party.

I say “alas” because otherwise I’d probably go for the far handsomer models from Weck, even though their plastic snap-on lids fit fewer other jars; the rings are the old-fashioned, single use sort, and the whole assemblage is a bit pricier than standard jars.

So what? It’s not a lot more if you’re starting from scratch and have to buy jars anyway. Given the time and love invested (to say nothing of having to look at the damn things sitting expectantly on the shelf), home-canned pickles and preserves deserve the prettiest presentation consistent with food safety.

(Home canned string beans not so much; but I don’t know anyone who is still putting up major amounts of unseasoned produce to use a full jar at a time in everyday meals.)

Photo note: The canned goods lined up at the last and very dark it’s raining minute so this would have an illustration are all pretty readable except maybe the little jar of Brandywine Tomato paste.

BPA avoidance notes:

1. We don’t have any children in the house. Keeping the stuff away from them seems well worth any hassle and expense.

2. I realize the reusable screw-on lids may themselves be loaded with BPA and have a call in to the manufacturer about it. Update when the call is returned.

Update, 10/28/10: no BPA in the lids, which are available online from Ball if you strike out locally.