3 ingredient mix

Hypertufa = 2 parts peat moss, 1 part Portland cement, 1 part sand

This ratio is the most important part of the process.  Use any size container to measure out the dry ingredients.  After that, it’s akin to childhood mud pie making. Armed with basic knowledge and newly acquired hands-on technique, I decided to make more.  I gathered my recipe ingredients on a late night trip to a big box store (to remain unnamed).  I managed to slide an entire 90 pound bag of Portland cement into the shopping cart all by my lonesome!  All pride was immediately squelched when I tried to dead lift my weighty purchase in the hatchback.  After many futile attempts I had to call Joel for a rescue.  Driving up to my aid, he said he saw smoke coming out of my ears.  Oh well, now I have a lifetime supply of Portland cement. 

I plan to share the hypertufa love, so I made up a large batch and divided it into several gallon zip lock bags. 

Ready to get your hands dirty?  Just add water – I’ll show you how!

make extra for your friends!

Wearing protective gloves, mix the dry ingredients in a large plastic container (preferably one that’s easy to rinse), breaking up any chunks of cement and peat moss.  Wear a mask if you get ferocious – don’t want the black lung. 

Add 1 part water (in the same container you used to measure the dry ingredients) and mix until moist. 

Mixing hypertufa is like mixing pie crust; slowly add water to obtain a crumbly consistency.  Grab a fistful of the mixture and squeeze (hard!).  If you see a small amount of water gush out your gloved fingers, you’re there.  Technical huh?! 

Line your mold (I chose a round bowl shape) with plastic.  Folds in the plastic will ultimately be a good thing, adding texture to the finished product. 

Place mixture in the mold and firm to form the bottom of the pot.  For this size mold, aim for a base and wall thickness of 1-1 ½ inches.  If you want to make larger structures, chicken wire reinforcement will be necessary.  You can test the depth by poking a hole in the bottom as you go (this can later be used for a drainage hole) or filled in if you want a trough or birdbath. 

Work to compact and smooth the mixture as you move up the sides of the mold to your desired height. Round the top edges to reduce the chance of chipping and breaking.  When satisfied, put your hypertufa in a garbage bag and prepare for a slow cure.

Curing:  The ideal curing environment is 2 weeks at 55 degrees.  Occasionally mist the hypertufa with water – it slows down the cure and strengthens the material.  As it dries, the hypertufa will become lighter in weight and in color.  After 2 weeks, remove from the mold.  You can give the pot a more distressed look by accentuating the lines left by the plastic by scraping with a screwdriver. 

After curing completely, let the hypertufa sit in the rain or mist often with water, allowing the alkalinity of the Portland cement to leach out.  Finally, before planting, rinse the hypertufa with a ¼ cup vinegar in 1 gallon of water.  Enhance mold growth and that lovely Martha patina by applying buttermilk mixed with moss or 2 sugar cubes mixed with a beer and pulverized moss.   Then drink a beer and admire your work! 

And another photo for good measure.  A very healthy looking Valerian, that was just a wee lad last season. 

It’s not like he has had ample time these past eight months to make this closet into the best pantry it could be. 

He’s been toiling in our yard with landscaping and studying for his series seven exams. In a nutshell, he’s busy.  A neighbor told me about her closet dilemmas and the solutions Custom Closets & Bedrooms on the Hannegan came up with for a surprisingly meager price.  Wanting to let hubs off the hook, I scheduled an appointment, and told him this would be a ‘temporary’ solution until he could have the time to build his custom design…after we finished the day basement, and built the fence, deck, and put up crown moulding.  Eh, it could be a while.

The installer came this afternoon and quickly put in four wire shelves for a song.  As soon as I closed the door behind him I returned all the food stuffs stored in our dining room.  Yes!  I have space to spare!  It’s not beautiful but it’s oh-so-utilitarian.  Now I will know if I have three bags of brown rice before I put another on my shopping list.

Tomato trellis a la Steve Solomon

This training method comes from Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades.  I bought this at Village Books with my used book credit.  (Village takes used books?!  Where have I been the last 9 years, this is the best deal ever!).  I bought this along with another biblical garden text, Eliot Coleman’s The New Organic Grower.  Steve Solomon started Territorial Seed Co and resides in Oregon – a great reason to buy Territorial.  Solomon can recommend seed varieties for our region – Sunset Region 4: Cold-Winter Areas of the North Coast and Mild-Winter Areas of Alaska and British Columbia. 

The Northwest’s Inland Sea:  Windy, Dry or Wet:  Three weather patterns mark western Washington’s climate.  Northeasters roar down the Fraser River valley, spilling over Bellingham and the San Juan Islands all the way to Sequim and dropping temperatures 20 degrees in a few hours, which can kill otherwise hardy plants” (Sunset Western Garden Book, 36). 

Sounda familiar?

All of these varieties are indeterminate (vining) and will produce with reckless abandon until killed by frost.  Determinate varieties will ripen all at once – so be ready to can sauce like a grandmother.  They desperately need a trim, so that the 2 central leaders can climb the twine.  If trained this way, tomatoes can climb over 6 feet and focus their energy on producing fruit. 

Training 2 Central Leaders

Just talked with Dad to wish him a Happy Father’s Day.  I love talking gardening with him. 

Wish I had the scanner hooked up to share a photo of Grandpa standing with his tomatoes, along with a quotation from Kingsolver,

“I think I understand now.  When I cultivate my garden I am spending time with my grandfather, sometimes recalling deeply buried memories of him, decades after his death” (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle). 

Happy cultivating!  Love you Dad.

Translation: patience.

This morning (yes, they were ready on Saturday), Joe’s handmade “Shelling Peas” sign beckoned me to get them while I can.  I filled a bag with the green pods as I tried to remember a recipe for a delicious pea soup with ginger and orange.

Recipe (as best I can recall):

1. 2 cups of fresh shelling peas (from Joe’s Garden of course!)
2. low fat/low sodium chicken stock
3. zest and juice of one orange
4. 2 Tbs. grated ginger
5. salt to taste

Simmer shelled peas in chicken stock for about 10 minutes – until tender.  I eyeballed about 3 cups of stock.  Pour peas and stock into a blender.  Blend carefully because hot liquid expands.  I covered the lid with a doubled towel.  When blended stir in zested ginger & orange, a squeeze of juice, and salt to taste.  Top with a dollop of crème fraîche or sour cream. YUM!

The hubster was studying securities blah, blah, blah for work while son and I were looking for something to do.  Looking out the window we determined it would only be overcast – no rain, no excuses for staying indoors today. 

In the mood for shellfish and a trip to Taylor Shellfish Farm, I suggested that my son and I head to Larrabee and hike to Fragrance Lake. 

Winding our way down Chuckanut Drive through dense trees and ferns, we stopped to take photos of the islands jutting out of the water and touching the flat, grey sky. 

To our surprise we were able to park at the entrance to the trail head.  We only passed a few returning hikers on our way to the look out vantage point, stopping several times to enjoy the silence of humanity and the sounds of nature and practice our bird whistles. 

My son is pretty good and thinks that the gap between his two front teeth should not be corrected with braces for this reason alone.

Since we were nearly there, we made our way to Taylor’s after our hike .   My son decided to continue to hone his photography skills as I selected five pounds of manila clams. In retrospect this was 2.5 lbs too many but they will keep in a bowl in the fridge until the next day. 

Tonight for diner we’ll steam these in garlicky herbed white wine and serve over fresh pasta from Bellingham Pasta Company with a fresh picked salad from our garden.

As we winded back Chuckanut to town, we found a field filled with foxglove begging to be photographed. 

Ah, we love the bounty our environs provide.

5 chicks – no dudes:  2 Araucana, 2 Rhode Island Red & a lone Buff Orpington

Forgive the red light district photo – the ladies are basking under a heat lamp.  So what possessed this?  I think it was the vivid descriptions of the Araucana’s blue and green speckled eggs that hooked me.  However, it was cooking with farm-fresh eggs last week that sealed the deal.  A half dozen brown eggs from a friend in Ferndale made their way into Monday night breakfast burritos (creative huh?).  The yolks were the size and color of Satsuma oranges!  For curiosity sake I cracked a grocery store egg into the mix – it was a pale cloudy yellow, almost anemic in comparison.  I’ve met many an advocate for backyard chickens who claim they’re a delight.  Also, we’ll consider this pre-farm traning to see if I can hack it.  McMurray Hatchery’s website helped me learn about the breeds, but they require minimum orders that I’m not quite ready for.  The folks at the Whatcom Farmers Co-op on Meridian were very helpful.  When I asked how many chickens were allowed in city one employee replied, “heck you can have as many as you can feed!” For the record (and if I ruffle any neighborhood feathers) refer to the City of Bellingham fowl ordinance. 

So far cat Julio has presented as the only predator, he’s quite entertained with the 24 hour peep show. 

Next on the project list?  Building a coop before the flock gets too big for that cardboard box!  In 6 weeks, they’ll be ready to venture outdoors. 

The start of spring also brings the opening day of the Farmer’s Market.  The Plenty crew just had to be there, as well as everyone else in Whatcom County this sunny day.  We were excited to see a small selection of veggies – radishes, assorted greens, a few potatoes and leeks, as well as abundant tulips, hyacinths, narcissus, and garden veggie and plant starts.  Jill found Cascadia Mushrooms and invested in shitake plugs.  Instant gratification this is not. In one to two years we will have abundant shrooms that will return again and again for five to ten years.  Generous Jill is studding a log for me to tuck in my new shade garden that my family created this weekend, but I digress and will come back to that project in a minute.

We stumbled upon the Skagit River Ranch table and both of us purchased grass-fed beef, and I bought my first dozen of farm fresh eggs.  The carton revealed beautiful speckled brown and green eggs. 

I have grand plans for these eggs tomorrow night for the in-laws.

Inspired by the budding Whatcom bounty, I headed home to finish up my shade garden on the north facing back side of my new home.  The fam and I hauled two yards of 4-way topsoil Northstar Stone & Landscaping delivered earlier for a very reasonable price.  I was not up to renting a truck, loading it myself then unloading it all before washing out the bed so this worked nicely.  My son and I tucked an assortment of hostas and ferns, many found at Bakerview Nursery, into the fertile soil. (Very fertile lemme tell ya!  We smelled like a barn by the time we were done and the cat thought it was a great idea to roll around in the manure.) We even found a home for some lilies of the valley.  We spread the bark mulch and thought it was great but definitely missing edging – but what to use?  As luck would have it there is a home ready to bud from its foundation near ours and the overturned dirt revealed abundant stones for use.

My boy was very proud to discover great stones and haul them to the back yard.  He loves all things rock.  We are excited to see this emerge as we head into summer.  I’ll post more photos as the hostas and ferns grow.  Now I hope to find some wild ginger to fit into the bed.

Not satisfied to only create exterior art, we tried our hand at making fresh mozzarella, Barbara Kingsolver style.  It’s was too easy!  Why don’t people do this all the time?

We used the fantastic whole milk (you can find bits of cream clinging to the glass neck) from our local dairy Twin Brook Creamery. Perhaps it’s the fact that their milk is wonderful, or that it comes in those charming, old-fashioned glass returnable bottles, but the cheese is simply luscious.  So you are asking we did with that marvelous cheese by now.  We made fresh dough and heated up our pizza stone for some of the best ‘za we’ve tasted.  That was not difficult to do with wonderful ingredients including the mouth watering salumi salami purchased from our fav foodie shop Quel Fromage - the only game in town that has scored the famed Seattle cured meats.  If you have not discovered Quel Fromage, you really must go because you are in for a treat! 

As it is with many families, we make 1/3 of the pizza the way lil’ C likes, and my hubby and I get the other 2/3rds just how we like it.  We happily washed it down with age-appropriate beers, cool lager for us while son slurped a dark cherry pop on our new deck overlooking the shade garden.  Now I call that a good day in Whatcom County.  Who says there is not enough to keep you busy?!

 We filled Jill’s car with our finds, yet we were unsatisfied. 

My new home’s yard is a blank slate waiting to be filled.  

I have designs for a particularly shady spot against the house.  I had the ferns, but not the hostas or wild ginger.  Unfortunately the extraordinarily cold winter has crimped grower’s plans a bit, with some losing a variety or two all together. This is true for many Whatcom County residents who are finding well established rosemary kicking the bucket. (Note: get your replacement rosemary now – there will be a shortage this year. Why not try Joe’s Garden to start?) Jill suggested we stop by Bakerview Nursery to see what they had available. We found half price, past-season checker lilies and ornamental grasses, as well as bareroot hostas – I nabbed three varieties.

I can’t wait for next weekend. My husband and I plan to create our fern/hosta bed.  Now I’m looking for wild ginger.  Anyone have a lead?

I adore opening my front door to a package. This time, I was not disappointed. There it was, the Pro Series. Unfortunately any baking would have to wait until our new oven was working. A coil had failed, or something to that effect, and we were assured the part was on it’s way Friday afternoon. Eager to dive in, I began the bread making process with the thought that it would rise while the repairman worked his magic. I decided to tackle a pullman loaf, or pain de mie – a more dense yet not too heavy, yeasty bread, and was just about to add the yeast to the warm milk/water mixture when the doorbell rang with the serviceman.
 

Not wanting to sound too confident in what we now call ”the oven situation”, I assured him that IF there was still oven trouble a nice neighbor would allow me to use her oven (umm sure).

I busied myself wiping down the counters and spied on the work in progress, noting there seemed to be another issue.  As luck would have it there was a second part that needed replacement and that would come next week.  ARG!  Two weeks sans oven, now more?!  After the nice man left I called hubby and complained.  Walter is a man who gets things done. He promptly called the appliance store and firmly stated they needed to find an immediate solution.  Ah ha! They could pull the part off the floor model and the repair man would be right back. 

My beautiful new standing mixer made easy work of 15 minutes of kneading. Two hours later, with a working appliance and thrice risen dough, my loaf pans made their way into a hot oven. Since I did not have the official pullman loaf pans with removable lids I simply made a tinfoil cover and weighted it down with my pizza stone to create the characteristic flat top.

There is nothing like the aroma of baking bread in a home. Nothing.

Two hot, yeasty, steamy loaves of bread cooled on racks while family paced around armed with softened butter ready to spread. Splitting open a loaf and tearing a chunk for each of us, we slathered it with unsalted sweet cream butter (note to self – can I make this or find something local?) and devoured it, crumbs and all.

I hope the buttery kiss I gave to my husband expressed my gratitude. Simply delicious.