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Muddy Valley Farm

~ Life on a tiny west coast hobby farm

Muddy Valley Farm

Category Archives: Seasons

Dried Clean Tomatoes!

05 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by Jodi in Farm Produce, Gardening, Preserving, Seasons

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Ready for the dehydrator

Spaghetti, butter chicken, tacos, tomato soup, salsa, meatloaf, chicken paprikash, mulligatawny, hamburgers, curry, chili, beef stew. It makes sense for us to grow tomatoes, because we use them in so many dishes. Resident Gardener starts them from seed, usually saved or traded, in January each year. This means they are easy on the budget too. 

Since the sixteen century when the Spanish brought tomatoes home to Europe from South America, their use has spread around the world like…well, like an indeterminate tomato plant. You know…the ones that just grow, and grow, and grow.

Our gold nugget cherry tomatoes always ripen first, in July usually, and by late August we are buried in tomatoes of all colours, shapes and sizes.

Heavenly. There is nothing better, in my view, than a still-warm-from-the-sun Italian Stallion tomato, sprinkled with pepper and eaten out of hand…buttery, umami, nirvana. 

By the time September rolls around I’m preserving tomatoes like crazy. RG picks them a couple times a week, taking everything from fully ripe to just starting to pink up. I finish the half ripe ones in the house. Tomato harvesting is a race against the weather in our damp climate, and in this way we maximize our harvest. Once picked and brought in, which can be done as soon as they “break” (10-30% of the surface turns pink) I set them along the window ledges so I can easily see when they turn red. 

In another month or so, when we pull the plants, hopefully just ahead of the blight that shows up each fall, I’ll fill paper grocery bags with mature green unblemished fruit and then check for pink ones every few days as they ripen slowly in the bag. Some years we are eating homegrown tomatoes almost until Christmas. I know some folks make green tomato salsa, and pie, and chutney, and I admire their innovation, but I like them red. Or golden or black or chocolate…depending on the variety.

I process our ripe tomatoes in various ways, with my goal being to enjoy them in all the dishes mentioned above, all winter long. I used up my last bag of frozen 2019 tomatoes in June this year. Perfect timing.

Prettiest tomato award for 2020 goes to this beauty.

Every year I roast tomatoes with olive oil and garlic, bag and freeze. The flavour is incredible, but sometimes I forget they are in the oven which never ends well. Or I make ketchup and can it. The easiest method is to simply de-stem, rinse, bag, and freeze. This has been my preference for years; it’s so simple. I add them straight out of the freezer to whatever I’m cooking that needs tomatoes. On the rare occasion when I want to get all fancy and remove the skins, I hold them still frozen under warm running water, squeeze slightly, and the skins slide right off. The single drawback to freezing tomatoes is that they take up a lot of room. And freezer space is hard to come by around here in the fall, even with our big upright freezer, RG’s small chest freezer, and three fridges going.

A couple weeks ago I saw a discussion about drying tomatoes on one of my preserving groups. Some people dry just the skins, left over from canning tomatoes. Others dry the whole fruit. “Oooooh boy”, I started thinking, “if I could get the tomatoes out of the freezer, maybe I will have room for some local lamb!”

A tomato mosiac

I had several pounds of ripe ones in the fridge, so I sliced them a quarter inch thick, the cherry toms into halves or thirds, then onto trays and into the dehydrator they went, for about eighteen hours at 135 F. I suppose you could do them in your oven. But my friend says tomatoes don’t go well in her little Nesco dryer…so be warned.

The gold nugget cherry toms shrunk the least.

Once they snapped when I bent them, I unplugged the dryer, piled them all into the blender together and zipped them into powder in about thirty seconds flat. 25 cups of tomatoes, eight 15×15 inch trays full, almost fourteen square feet of tomato slices, dried down into about 600 ml of super concentrated tomato powder.

So far, I have mixed my tomato powder with water (two tablespoons) to make an almost-too-rich tomato paste for spaghetti sauce and sprinkled it sparingly (two teaspoons!) into homemade veggie barley soup where it both added a tomatoey tang and reddened the broth. The flavour is intense. I can already tell I will need to be careful to not use too much. Best of all, it stores in glass jars in a dark cupboard where it takes up very little space. I added a silicone crystal sachet to the jar too, to keep it from clumping.

I will still roast, and freeze, a few tomatoes. But most of them are going in the dehydrator this year. And now to find me a nice box of lamb…

Barnyard Inspiration

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life, Farm Produce, Seasons

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It’s that time of year again, broodies sitting on eggs or raising babies all over the barnyard, with varying degrees of success. Lots of my Marans are broody this year, which is a bit strange. In all the time I’ve kept this breed I’ve only ever had one or two wanna-be mommas. My sister has a Marans broody from my lines, and it appears that now I do too. Except I seem to have seven or eight. Luckily they have mostly been doing a good job, especially for first time moms.

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The latest one hatched a surprise Wyandotte x Marans chick last week. It was a surprise because I thought I had put a couple infertile eating eggs under her, to give me time to gather fertile ones and then hatch chicks in the incubator for her to raise. Or at least I thought they were infertile.  I also didn’t realize the placeholder eggs had been under her for quite as long as they had, until one morning I walked into the barn to hear peeping coming from her nest box. Uh oh, we’d had a little accidental hatch, and well ahead of the incubator hatch too. Damn, now I couldn’t give her any extras, her singleton would be a week old when the next group hatched. I would have to do the work of raising that batch myself.

In retrospect, I am glad I didn’t give this Marans any more responsibility than she already had because she turned out to be not particularly interested in mothering. I moved her and the chick out of the nest box into clean quarters, as I do after every hatch, putting them in a large brooder with some two week olds and a heat lamp. After making sure momma was fine with the two week olds, I left them to their own devices.

Over the next few days, little singleton settled right in, playing with the big kids then running under momma’s skirts every time he needed a warm-up. But momma wasn’t happy. She just kept pacing the fence line, all day long. She totally ignored the older chicks, and kind of ignored her singleton. He really had to yell to get her to stay still long enough for him to warm up.

I thought momma might be happier back home, and thus do a better job with her baby, plus I knew from past experience that her baby would be safe with the mostly calm, laid back Marans and olive eggers, so I took them home to her flock, and then carried on with my day.

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But at dusk when I went to lock up, what do you think I discovered?  Had indifferent momma made a nest in the fluffy thick shavings I laid down in her preferred corner for that purpose? Was she snuggled in for the night with her baby? No. Of course not. She had hopped up high on a roost, leaving her baby behind on the floor, where he was stomping around peeping pitifully for her to ‘get down here!’

Now the logical next step would have been to take momma and baby out of the Marans coop and put them in a small private brooder, with no roost. And honestly I did think of that first. But when I looked up at the rows of black chickens, preparing to scoop her up, I realized I couldn’t tell which one was momma. And she sure wasn’t talking – none of the 20 black hens looking back at me showed even the slightest interest in the complaining baby below.

So what could I do? I scooped baby up instead and walked him back to where he had come from. He would just have to bunk in with the older chicks, in the only brooder with a heat lamp.

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It has been a few days now, and things are going great for little singleton. His bunkmates all snuggle together to sleep, and he just worms himself right into the middle of the pile where I can’t even see him. The heat lamp is only on at night, but he seems to have no problem making it through the day with no momma to warm up under. It helps that it is summer, and that the brooder coop is snug and dry, he can always get in out of the wind. The little guy is actually thriving!  He even has a “bird of a feather” to flock together with, another little black chick who is much bigger than him now, but not for long.

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I am pretty impressed with this little guy’s resilience, it’s a talent we could all use lots of in these most eventful days. I hope that I will prove to be as strong and resourceful as my little singleton. It’s sure worth a try anyhow, just look at him go!

Happy Canada Day everyone. And as our most wonderful Dr Henry says…Be kind. Be calm. Be safe. ❤️🇨🇦❤️

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April Fools’!

01 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Seasons

≈ 1 Comment

Google may have cancelled April Fools’ Day, but my silly husband didn’t get the memo. After forty years of him savouring every April 1st, I should have known I could count on him to coax a giggle or two out of me, even in the midst of a pandemic. I can’t remember most of the tricks he’s played over the years, although the one where he duct taped the kids’ bedroom doors shut is hard to forget. I think it was all the scraping and trim repainting required after three kids howling with laughter ripped duct tape from their doors. Or the niggling thought that perhaps partially disabling their exits for a night might have been not quite super safe. But all’s well that ends well and we got a precious family memory out of it too.

This morning when I got up and headed to the kitchen to make coffee, I couldn’t find the kettle. As usual, it took a while for the penny to drop. Ohhhhhh, April 1st.

I finally located it, camouflaged by the cozy we use to keep the bodum hot. I smiled, thinking “of course he couldn’t resist” and feeling relieved that he had been gentle with his trick this year, and I had figured it out so easily. I should have known better.

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When the kettle boiled I opened the drawer to grab the coffee, and discovered that, as usual, he wasn’t quite done with pulling my leg. My morning scavenger hunt ended, as so many hunts do, right back where I started. How did he know that when I saw his first note, I’d head off on that wild goose chase, rather than opening the drawer to its full extent to find the coffee canister hiding at the very back? By the time I had the coffee brewing I was giggling hard.

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And how did he know that I would next grab my phone, to take some shots so I could share? It took a little bit to get my phone out of the case it sat in backwards, so I could use it. “I wonder if he’s done yet?” I thought. Again as usual, I will spend the rest of the morning warily living my usual routine, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Well, I did marry him because he made me laugh. And forty years later, I’m still chuckling. ❤️ Happy April Fool’s everyone!

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Thankful for Ordinary: Take Two

22 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Seasons

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Way back in 2017 when life was, y’know, normal, I wrote down the stray thoughts that ran through my head as I prepared Thanksgiving dinner. I shared my resulting interior monologue, calling it “Thankful For Ordinary.”

Re-reading this blog post today really cheered me up. Made me grateful that I lived that day, and happy that I didn’t take it for granted. “Good job!” I congratulated myself, “you didn’t squander what you were given.”

I need cheering up too. Because life these days is too eventful. On the one hand, it’s kind of awe-inspiring to be living now. To be a part of history in the making. Even though it’s dreadful history that’s being made, and a little terrifying.

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So, to cope with it all,  I’m working hard at finding my balance, as I have had to do many times before in my life. Like when my first newborn was critically ill, and numerous times since, as my family has faced serious illness and injury, and yes, death. As we all must do each time life throws a challenge in our laps.

Thank goodness, I’ve gotten better at life in my 58 years of practice. It’s just life. We get thrown in, and we swim. Or we sink. Swimming is better.

I find my balance by staying informed. Not soaking up every bit of news, not marinating in the hyperbole, the hysteria. Instead, I ration it, listening to a full, balanced newscast once or maybe twice a day. I educate myself, heeding the words of my government and public health professionals. I ignore the unreliable voices, checking the source of every interesting headline before I plunge into the content, refusing to consume the garbage. I safeguard my mental health along with my physical health.

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I cook ordinary meals, wholesome food, for my family, temporarily expanded this week to include a couple big city refugees.  I keep busy. I work at home, so that hasn’t changed, and I have plenty of chores and projects to keep me busy too. I appreciate my family, and my dog, and my barnyard, and my beloved muddy valley.

And I glean what pleasure I can from the experiences this pandemic is beginning to bring. Like the brave Italians singing out their windows. And my coworker’s really good animated short film about social distancing. And the many stories of people helping people. And like the long distance phone call I got yesterday, just to catch up, from a dear cousin who temporarily walked away from her social media accounts last week. Long distance phone calls are vintage social media and happily far more affordable today than they were back when they were the only game in town. My cousin is doing what she must to find her own balance as she faces dual challenges, working in our beleaguered Alberta’s oil patch plus Covid-19. It was good to hear her cheery, spunky voice.

But what works best for me, is just being thankful for ordinary. There is still plenty of ordinary around, I have to look a little harder for it is all. And make sure I appreciate it wherever I find it. As I try to remember what my Dad always says when trouble strikes. This too shall pass.

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More Rain!

10 Monday Feb 2020

Posted by Jodi in Equines, Farm Improvements, Farm Life, Seasons, Weather

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On top of January’s once-in-10-years rainfall accumulation, we got more than ten mm of rain a day in February until the 8th when the sun finally shone.  Our muddy valley is sopping, dripping wet. Keeping the barnyard crew comfortable (and thus healthy and thriving) is currently a very hard slog.

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The farrier came last week and to our relief pronounced the equines’ feet to be in pretty good shape, better than most he’s seen recently. Lots of horses in our area are up to their fetlocks in mud and nowhere dry to stand. 😕

Luckily our hoofed creatures have a dry barn floor, as well as a high spot here and there in the paddocks to take refuge on. We’re hoping it will dry up enough that we can get the tractor in the paddocks to scrape the worst areas…but the rain keeps falling.  Maybe later this week, fingers crossed.

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We ALL enjoyed Saturday’s sunshine, and the sky (!) somehow a richer shade of blue than I remember. Washed clean I guess. Sunday morning we were back to steel-grey heavens, with a little sun in the afternoon.

Even my fully roofed chicken pens are soggy. I can’t count the number of mud-filled wheelbarrows I have sledged over squishy fields to dump on the poo pile. It’s sure a good workout!

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I’ve learned some tricks since those first few winters, when I literally had streams running through my chicken pens. All summer long I throw heaps of veggie garden thinnings etc. in the pens, giving the birds their own private compost pile nirvana while building up the ground litter. By winter, this high ground deflects the surface water run-off around the pens instead of through them. When the chickens track in enough water that the ground gets muddy, (it has to rain a LOT for this to happen) I can use my trusty Restore pitchfork to pry up and remove the top couple of inches of mud throughout the whole pen, revealing fairly dry soil underneath.  This year, I’ve already had to do this two or three times in each pen. I will have to stop soon though, the ground height is dropping, with actual puddles seeping up in a couple spots. Time to change strategy and start deploying pallets over the worst areas to keep my girls out of the muck.

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The dust baths are stocked full of dry peat moss and wood ash from the fireplace. The chickens LOVE it, more so in this weather of course. The ladies’ public baths are crowded! Some birds need a bit more care, developing pendulous mud balls on their chests that need clipping out, or rinsing if it’s warm enough and they can run around to dry. I have never, in all my years keeping chickens, had the pendulous-mud ball issue before. It just goes to show that there’s always something new with chickens.

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This weekend, I can feel spring just around the corner. The osoberry is beginning to flower, and the alder catkins are swelling. Soon they will be dropping everywhere, detonating on impact in little yelllow puffs of smoke, and my poor DH will be sniffling and closing windows.
Of course the winter-flowering hellebore and snowdrops have been blooming for a while now. I wonder if we will get another dump of snow before old man winter is finished with us? These last few years, snow in February has been a thing here. I guess we’ll find out soon enough!
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Rain!

01 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by Jodi in Seasons, Weather

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We close out January 2020 with [drum roll please] 262.6 mm of rainfall. Looking back ten years, a total surpassed only by Nov 2009’s 274.6!
And our little creek glorying in her power this morning, her raison d’être never more clear, roaring with joy as she ferries her precious cargo away, away, down to the Salish Sea.

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Winter Solstice

22 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by Jodi in Seasons, Weather

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Winter Solstice

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Solstice yesterday, and today’s gentle daylight promises to stick around a little longer. Slowly, inexorably, over the next six months, my much loved cool, silvery grey world will brighten, quicken, surge, harden, crack. The light, waxing insistently, will demand more and more attention, lavishing its deceptive friendly warmth (careful, it can sting!) until by June it reaches zenith. And grateful homage will be duly paid by all manner of chlorophyll-fed life, gathering up the energy that will sustain them through another year.

Then, as if raging against its own dimming, the light will turn on us, browning and burning the thirsty earth even as it reddens the tomatoes and sweetens the melons. And we will eagerly await the fall rains.

Northern human tribes have celebrated the winter solstice for eons, and I am quite aware that my feelings of loss at this time are not widely shared. “How can November be your favourite month!?!” my sister asks, faint disgust tinging her voice. It’s a good question, to which I don’t have the answer.

I am a morning person. I enjoy all the four seasons (although I must work diligently to appreciate summer). Yet I have always been more comfortable in the dark than in the daylight. My favourite childhood summer memories involve playing tag and riding bikes through long dusky purple evenings, streetlights switching on, hoping that Mom would forget to call us in until well after dark. And when I was ten, after our family moved out of the city to the streetlight-free countryside, feeling comforted by the friendly black night keeping me snug and safe. This was where I belonged. When I grew up and got my first city apartment, it was the light I couldn’t stand, not the noise. I got back out to the country as quick as I could.

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Once my children were of the age to enjoy bedtime stories, Janice May Udry’s The Moon Jumpers, a simple story involving children playing after dark on a summer evening and joyfully illustrated by Maurice Sendak, was my absolute favourite. I know it by heart. We also enjoyed many ‘night walks’, roaming the neighbourhood well after dark. Did I pass on my love of the dark? I don’t know, you’d have to ask my children.

But there’s nothing to be done, it’s all out of my control, so I shall simply indulge myself with a little solstice sadness, and resolve to savour my dim grey days and dark black nights, before light chases them away for another year.

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Autumn Leaves

06 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening, Seasons

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846E8DA0-25C2-4465-8FCA-56317AA65FFCThe weather has been wonderful so far this fall, cool and sunny, perfect for producing great drifts of sun dried leaves. The drier the better. Each year I gather as many as I can store and put them under cover; less moisture extends their shelf life. Leaves are so useful and the chickens enjoy them so much.

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A thick layer gets spread across the entire silkie pen, it does a fine job of keeping the mud at bay even after the rains start. In the main coops, I’ll dump a tote full over the fresh wood shavings after I clean each week for as long as they last, for feathered tidbit-hunters to avidly scratch and peck through. Woe betide any little bugs who have made their homes in those leaves.

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Momma Barred Rock vacated her room at the hen hotel yesterday, taking her seven children, now ten or so weeks old, back to live with the flock. Good timing Momma! That gives me a good sized leaf storage room for this year. It can hold many wheelbarrow loads, there are four in there now and still a ton of space.

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Of all the things we grow here in our muddy valley, the autumn leaf crop is one of my favourites. Looks gorgeous through spring and summer, and more so when it “ripens”. Zero effort to tend all year long, no seeding or weeding or slug war or watering or deer fencing required. Heck, leaves are even easier to grow than garlic!

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Right Under My Nose

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Liza and Arrow, Seasons

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A sweet little hand-turned yew bowl followed me home from the thrift store last spring. I had been looking for a bowl to keep my sock yarn under control, and this would be perfect! DH cut a curved slot for the line to feed through, drilled a couple holes to hold my needles, sanded it smooth and I was in business.

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I love my yew yarn bowl, but soon discovered that it is just too small for bigger projects. The balls of chunky acrylic I bought to knit C’s infinity scarf were twice its size! So I added “big wooden bowl” to my wish list, keeping my eye out for one on my sporadic thrift store visits. But no luck, and I refused to buy new, the up-cycling part is half the fun. Practicing my patience, an ongoing project, I kept on looking.

Recently Resident Gardener got a new puppy. Arrow is currently in training with Liza the barnyard protector, so that one day he may be just as useful and obedient as her. In the meantime though, he alternates between ‘adorable’ and ‘royal pain in the ***”. He helps me to practice my patience too.

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I was puppy sitting the other day (at ten weeks old we can’t let him out of our sight for a minute) when he dragged a dusty old wooden bowl out from the bottom shelf of one of the side tables. The same bowl that Little Bean (human toddler, similar stage of development) had pulled out back in the summer when she was visiting. From a spot apparently so inconspicuous that it regularly avoids the cleaner’s swiffer.

The penny hadn’t dropped the first time when Bean had discovered it, but it certainly did this time. Yarn bowl! This thing would make a wonderful large yarn bowl! I whisked it away from sharp puppy teeth, washed off the dust, dried it, then rubbed in a generous dollop of organic olive oil. It cleaned up nice.

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The bowl had come from my dear late mom, who had told me when she gave it to me that it had been her mom’s. “Munising” is burned into the bottom, in left leaning script. This is an indication – according to the Munising Wood Products website history page (thanks again internet) – that it was “hand carved” on a Michigan lathe in the 30’s or 40’s.

Possessing both precious family history AND collectable wood bowl attributes, it is remarkably perfect. I can’t bring myself to cut a slot in its side though. I just don’t think my Gram would like that. The bigger balls are all centre-pull anyway.

Right under my nose. A right sized bowl. Sitting quietly in my house waiting to be discovered, all the time I was looking everywhere else. As we all so often do.

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The thought made me smile, my day a little brighter. And to be honest, I could use a little cheering up these days. Sometimes lately, the weight of the world settles so heavily I almost gasp for air.

The computer age that makes it possible for us to connect like never before and the social media that was supposed to draw us together, instead pushing us into diametric, vitriolic camps. Pushing us apart.

A caustic election, energy, refugees, the economy, the climate crisis, Trump, wars and cars and polar bears, the rise of the scary far right. My countrymen, friends and acquaintances, even my own family, split by opposing viewpoints. Torn asunder. We used to be able to mostly agree on the way forward, or at least the goals. It seems to me that we have lost that, I hope only temporarily.

The world is “going to hell in a hand basket”, mom would say. And there isn’t much I can do, except hope for the best and support the right causes. Assuming, of course, that I can sift through the crap and figure out what the right causes are.

So when I need to escape for a little while, I shall set Gram’s yarn bowl right here in my lap, busy my fingers, and free my mind to consider all the good things right under my nose. Once I really start to look, they do get easier to spot.

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On Spiders

08 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Seasons, Wildlife

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On Spiders

“Stop! Look out!” DH blurted the other day, as I lifted my fork to dig in to my dinner. Puzzled but willing, I pushed back my chair, my eyes following his finger to where he was pointing. A delicate pink and silver spider, all long slender legs and teardrop body, hung above my plate right at eye level. A tiny fairy pirouetting gracefully, twisting and turning as she lowered herself via the spun silk she had fastened to the light fixture overhead. Where was she going? Did she want my dinner? Who knew.

DH stood up, carefully grasped her mooring line well above her current location, at which point she reversed course and started heading back up, and walked to the door with her sailing behind. I thanked him for saving me from a Miss Muffet moment, and we continued our meal.

We taught our children growing up to respect spiders (they’re GOOD bugs, they eat the bad bugs) and each time we were called to deal with another eight-legged intruder we captured it carefully and let it go outside. We generally use the glass and paper method, doming the spider in the glass, then sliding the paper between our quarry and the wall (care must be taken to not break their little legs), before upending the cup and with the paper lid held on firmly, making for the closest outside door.

Despite consistent role-modelling, our children still ended up with a diversity of spider reactivity. One kid screamed and had to restrain herself from killing on sight, one kid more calmly asked for help in capturing, and one kid, heaven help us, trapped them herself then released into her own bedroom…”so it could join the rest of her spider family”.

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I have spiders on my mind, because this is the time of year when our lives intersect more closely than usual with the spider members of our environment. They’re just around more. The outside ones busy finishing up their lifecycles, getting ready to lay their eggs I guess, and the inside ones predicting rain.

Every single morning I feel at least one web tighten, then snap across my face as I walk the paths thru our muddy valley.  I am so used to this that I just keep walking while apologizing to the spider, and asking them, in case they end up somewhere on my person and can understand English, if they could please depart expeditiously. This seems to work fine. I have never yet come across a spider hanging out on my person. They are in as much of a hurry to leave me as I am to have them depart. We are of one mind on the matter.

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The ground webs, woven between convenient grass hummocks and sparkling in the dewy early morning, are easier to see and thus easier to avoid. And they are everywhere too.

Last week one of our daughters came to stay for a few days, and late one night after I was in bed, her and her dad had a spider adventure that I heard all about the next morning.

She had reached over to twist on the bedside table lamp when she came nose-to-nose with a big hairy brown spider (it was 👌 THIS BIG!!) chilling on the lampshade. Startled, she screamed loudly, “…and Mom” she exclaimed “I clearly saw that spider jump at the sound of my voice, and then freeze!”

“Well” I replied, “I’m sure you frightened him”.

Dad was called, and made a play for the spider with his glass, but the big fellow neatly evaded capture, dropped to the floor and scrambled for safety. DH and daughter, in hot pursuit, finally lost him among the spare blanket and winter clothing detrius of the guest room closet. I heard about the hunt and the spider’s exceptional size from DH too. Probably a descendent of K’s spider family I mused, as I imagined him still safely ensconced in his guest room (her old bedroom) closet.

Every year about this time I grow familiar with one or two specific spiders, who have chosen to reside in spots I frequent. This year I have a barn buddy spider. She has spun her web right above the log brace we hang the baling twine over.

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I noticed her the other week, as after opening a new hay bale I reached up to add two more lengths of twine to the hank. Panic-struck at what she evidently saw as the imminent destruction of her web by my hand, she was running up to take refuge on top of the barn door when I noticed her. I was careful to avoid causing damage to her web as I hung my string and I told her so. After all, spiders are very useful in the barn, they eat the bad bugs there too. The next time I opened a bale, I talked to her in a reassuring manner as I slowly stowed the twine, she wavered and retreated, but just a little way this time. The last two times I added string, she hasn’t budged but sits watching me carefully as I greet her, reassure her I mean no harm, and add my string to the hank. We apparently now have an understanding, which is delightful.

I love that we have such a healthy spider population in our muddy valley. They are useful and fascinating little creatures, although I must admit that like most wildlife (and sometimes people too) I do prefer to admire them from a safe distance.

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