Downhome/Downtown

New place!

2009-09-27T15:30:00.004-04:00

No longer living as close downtown, but still fairly downtown-y and just as downhome.

My new place is in an older neighborhood in Gainesville, Duckpond. Fairly walkable and within biking distance of just about anything I want, Duckpond has always been the region I'd hoped to move to in the 352.

I finally have a yard and compost bin again, though with some caveats. The bin itself is a tiny chicken wire enclosure with bamboo growing out of the center, and yard is beset with invasives. Nevertheless, I'm working on and with both.

My landlord lives above me: I hear him clomping around, sliding doors and closing cabinets. I don't know his story yet, but I can tell you that most of the work done on the house was done by him. All the wood is cedar and the stonework is local chert.

It's a nice place.

Sunday Morning friend

2009-03-15T08:31:00.002-04:00

Met this little one while cleaning out the back ~~forty~~ deck. Don't know my herpetofauna well enough to ID it, and it seemed to be in a bit of torpor. As I was writing this post, squatting punching the screen of the iPhone, a large red tailed hawk (likely the same one I see in the park quite often) swept down and grabbed a mouse - not eight feet from me!

Pretty good day so far.

A cracker a day...

2009-02-04T16:47:00.002-05:00

The little lady accuses me of being a cracker monster, but really, I just like
snacking.

I've been on a Mark Bittman kick lately. I really like his, well, minimalist cooking style. Indeed, you could say I was bitten by the Bittman bug.

I pulled this from his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which I recently nabbed from the library.

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons oil (olive, for me)

About 1/4 cup water, plus more as need

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Mix together the flour, salt, and oil, and slowly pour in that water. You want it smooth.

3. Roll out on a lightly floured surface until 1/4 inch thick, or even less. Mine was mostly more, becaues I was mainly in a hurry to get a hot oven ready to warm the house.

4. Cook about ten minutes, and let cool.

These extend easily with rosemary and other herbs/cheeses added to them, I hear. Maybe I'll give that a try tonight.

Cold morning for a pack test

2009-01-23T13:32:00.003-05:00

It was in the 20s here Thursday morning. Having not slept well, I was running around the house trying to get ready for the pack test at 09h00. To get your red card, required to work any sizeable wildland fire, you need to pass a pack test. There are two levels: my brother and I were opting for the higher, harder one, wherein you must walk 3 miles in 45 minutes with a 45 lb pack.

The rear passenger tire on the jeep was a little low, so I borrowed K's Jetta. Unfortunately, I didn't count on having to need to pull over to scrape the ice off the windshield. Gainesville is supposed to be semi-tropical!

I scooted out to the Waccasassa Forestry Center out towards the airport, overshot it a bit due to bad pathfinding from the iPhone, came back, and parked. Brother Bear pulled in just after me, and we crunched over the still-frozen (not just frosted - frozen!) grass to the center, only to wait in line...and wait...and wait. The military influence on the early days of the Forest Service is still evident in the ever-present "hurry up and wait."

We finally made it through, with the bonus of now being on-call for Western fire duty. While waiting, we ran into some other folks from the UF Fire Science lab.

As we stretched, a 16-passenger van rolled up. We clambered in, and I ended up sitting in front of three FWC employees: one who I'd taught recently in a GIS course at work, and two others who now had jobs for which I had previously applied

We picked out our weight vests, which to our amusement looked like flak vests.

We lined up and started walking. You're not allowed to run or jog: only walk.

It was tough, but our whole cadre made it.

2009-01-21T08:40:00.000-05:00

The downside of adding organic, vegan hemp protein powder to your
oatmeal: it turns green!

Cracked Cooking

2008-12-17T07:30:00.001-05:00

The Master Recipe: Boule

(Artisan Free-Form Loaf)

Makes 4 1-pound loaves

3 cups lukewarm water
1 1⁄2 tbsp granulated yeast (1 1⁄2 packets)
1 1⁄2 tbsp coarse kosher or sea salt
6 1⁄2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
Cornmeal for pizza peel

After the success of the fry bread, and with the apartment still reeking of oil, I felt encouraged enough to give non-fried bread a try again. My most previous attempt had failed fairly completely, but that wasn't enough to get me down.

The big thing on the blogowub now - or, at least, ~~15 megabytes~~ minutes ago - is Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

However, I'm cheap, and don't want to order a used copy 'til the popularity dies down and the resale crashes.

From the gallons of information that Google Reader dumps on me daily, I had caught an article from Mother Earth News.

The recipe itself is fairly straightforward. It's similar to the No-Knead Bread, which I'd already made a while back. I won't put down all the directions here, as it's fairly involved. Click through to Mother Earth News for that.

I mixed up the bread using Southern Lilly white flour and kosher salt. Lacking corn meal, I opted for grits.

I mixed it, and following the instructions, let it rise over night in the 'fridge.

It turned out great, except for one thing...

My pizza stone cracked!

I suspect it occurred when I poured the water into the hot pan (as described in the article) to put steam in the oven. Although the steam made a great crust, it was not so great for my stone.

Fry Bread Power!

2008-12-15T07:30:00.001-05:00

...or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the fried, oily goodness.

I'm a sinodont, which is to say that I exhibit sinodentition. My teeth, along with those of my brother and father, look like this:

A recent ancestor of my father was a Native American. Native Americans and east Asians tend to express sinodentition. It is particularly pronounced in my father (I'll refrain from posting the pictures of his teeth) and less so in my brother and I.

With that as preface, this past Wednesday I was cooking up some hushpuppies for a potluck. I've carved out a particular (or peculiar) niche as a consumate fryer of hushpuppies: these puppies are so quiet, you'll never need to hush them.

Once the hushpuppies were cooked, however, I was left with extra time, a well-stocked kitchen, and a cast-iron pan full of cracklin' hot oil. This is never a good idea.

On an early date with the lil' lady, I had cooked for her fry bread. Fry bread is regarded as a traditional food of native americans, but some suspect it was more of an adaptation to the meager rations provided on early reservations. I tend towards the latter interpretation, but I do suspect that it has roots in earlier acorn-flour-in-tallow cakes.

This time around, I pulled up a recipe online and set to work. By this time, the kitchen was a minor disaster, but as is said in our family, "it's a very small kitchen."

FRYBREAD (Zahsakokwahn)

Staple of Powwows, Symbol of Intertribal Indian Unity

(Source)

  2 cups flour
  3 tsp baking powder
  1 tsp salt
  1 cup milk
  Deep hot fat in frypan or fryer

Sift dry ingredients. Lightly stir in milk. Add more flour as necessary to make a dough you can handle. Kneed and work the dough on a floured board with floured hands until smooth. Pinch off fist-sized limps and shap into a disk -- everyone has their own characteristic shapes.(Shape affects the taste, by the way because of how it fries). For Indian tacos, the disk must be rather flat, with a depression -- almost a hole -- in the center of both sides. Make it that way if the fry bread is going to have some sauce over it. Smaller, round ones are made to put on a plate. Fry in fat (about 375°) until golden and done on both sides, about 5 minutes. Drain on absorbent paper. (Phyllis Jarvis, Paiute)

I did as described. I had to wait to heat up the oil again - the first ones turned out pretty oil-laden, but the latter ones were nice and crispy.

The results must have been well liked, because by the time I made it through the line in the potluck, everything was gone! It's always a good sign, I figure, when your food is gone so fast that you don't even see it taken.

Whosit whatsit

2008-11-15T21:57:00.008-05:00

I've been digging soil pits lately, trying to compare old field and a possible shortleaf pine native landscape. The other intern and I were up at Pebble Hill plantation. Driving along a dirt road, following a contour between a hill and a bottomland hardwood wetland, I came across what I thought must have been the foundations of some earlier building.
A semicircular brick wall surrounds an space where steps descend.

The steps lead down into an area that may or may not continue further back; I was unable to see that far inside. Water has filled up to the steps.

The brickwork appears old (composite of different clays, but not stamped,) but has been reinforced with what appears to my uneducated eye to be modern concrete.

Any ideas? My initial thought was a millwheel, but it doesn't appear to have any location for the wheel to attach. My next thought was a cattle dip, but it's awfully fancy for that, and Pebble Hill has never had cattle. It remains only a forestry and hunting reserve, with a focus on quail.

My Bread Brick

2008-10-08T10:59:00.003-04:00

I can admit my failures - well, at least some of them.

Maybe the flour went rancid, maybe the yeast is spent, or maybe too much salt hurt the leavening. Whatever it was, my version of Grandma Van Doren's white bread did not pass the mustard.

Oh well! Better luck next bread...

Burning Man

2008-10-03T18:24:00.004-04:00

Despite what one might expect, a fire ecology position is a lot more ecology than fire. Lots of weighing, sampling, counting presence/absence, and otherwise quantifying. However, occasionally we do get have some more fun.

A bit back we got to do a burn. We were burning plots at Pebble Hill, a massive plantation that straddles the Florida/Georgia border. We've been allowed easements of plots to do some fire frequency studies on upland plots.

The plots are primarily longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and wiregrass (Aristida stricta). Wiregrass can grow thick here: this isn't old-field, but intact, original landscape.

Longleaf savanna once covered most of the southeast, but now has been decimated to a few rare stands. Longleaf pine itself is on the IUCN red list as vulnerable, which is one step below endangered.

Longleaf savanna is a fire-maintained landscape: without periodic fires, hardwoods such as oaks outcompete the wiregrass, and the savanna is eventually lost.

Obviously, fires require fuel to burn. Wiregrass holds the longleaf pine needles above the ground, providing a light, airy, receptive fuel bed. This helps carry the fire, and reduces the growth of the hardwoods.

The project at Pebble Hill is examining fire return intervals. Briefly, and this is ignoring variance in fuel types and seasonality of burns, the more frequent a fire, the less fuel there is from year to year. The longer the time between fires, the higher the fuel. However, in the longleaf savanna, the longer the time between fires, the more hardwoods, and the less wiregrass/needle fuel. Thus, a curve develops, wherein eventually the system loses its proclivity towards fire.

This research is important for providing a clear demonstration of the need for frequent fires for longleaf savanna maintenance.

We burnt three plots, taking fuel measurements before and after. These plots had also been previously measured for species composition, with particular note of the relative abundance of hardwoods.

All in all, a great day.

More later about fuel, fuel moisture, and fire behavior...

More downhome, less downtown.

2008-09-22T18:58:00.004-04:00

I've made a fairly drastic move. Out of the relative cosmopolitan Gainesville and into the rural quietude of former Red Hills plantations. The soil here is older, and lacks the sandy deposition so prevalent below the cody escarpment (cody 'scarp to those in the know.) Gone are the paleodunes, the ancient coasts. Here, Appalachian clay sticks to my boots, the rolling hills testament to the different land.

This is closer to the land I grew up in, the land my father was born from. Gainesville, it's a different shade of green. The leaves are a little shinier, the crickets a chirp off.

I'm working a Fire Ecology internship here at Tall Timbers. More on that later.

My house was described to me as "rustic"; aside from the wasps living in the walls, it's not as bad as the ~~slave~~ tenant cabin I expected.

Although the drive here is a bit long, my daily bike ride to the lab has some nice views.

My wiggly chompers

2008-09-13T07:31:00.001-04:00

Digging the doubly dug garden

2008-09-10T11:40:00.005-04:00

I've been wrestling with different garden thoughts lately.

So far I've been doing a combination of double-digging and square foot gardening. I dig out a chunk of the garden about two square feet about a foot down. I dump in the flora I'd previously pulled, and dump the soil back on top. This was initially to achieve a sort of lasagna gardening and carbon sequestration.

However, I have become increasingly worried about nematodes. The soil in the garden is well-drained, heavily-used, and full of rich organic matter. Turning the soil from the depths onto the top can encourage nematodes. With not enough time to solarize, I'm in a bit of a quandary. I may approach with no dig gardening from now on.

Leapin lizards!

2008-09-08T18:08:00.001-04:00

As I was filling up the pitcher/watering can, I noticed this little fellar hanging on for dear life! I left him to frolic in the cilantro, bit he seemed rather shaken.

The importance of good coffee

2008-09-07T15:32:00.001-04:00

Coffee and I, we get along a little too well. I have multiple soft spots for well crafted, organic, fair-trade brew.

Gainesville happens to have a place that provides for all of the above. Volta serves excellent coffees, piping hot in crisp white mugs. Excellent teas, baked goods (from Flour Pot), and espesso make this place my haunt of choice. This also contributed to breaking my dining budget last month.

Volta is a good example of a bright green business. Coffee is sourced from small plantations throughout the world. Free wireless and a street/building interface encourage various uses and interactions. Perhaps most importantly, free covered bike parking is provided!

Volta is a welcome addition to the downtown Gainesville community.

85•F, but it feels like a bit more

2008-09-07T12:09:00.001-04:00

...but this garden won't weed itself!

My new garden plot!

2008-09-07T01:00:00.001-04:00

Things are starting to take shape in the new plot I've been alotted. Plants should be in this week.

Vermiculture to full on composting

2008-07-21T16:32:00.002-04:00

There's been an interesting development in my compost bin. Once only a haven to a wealth of red worms, it's now bursting with all kinds of other microfauna. Maggots and other tiny varmints happily munch on our waste, producing fine grade compost quite quickly. Even the paper is being broken down at an accelerated rate. There is also no detectable stench!

I'm impressed.

However, rain has been washing into it as our afternoon monsoons increase. This collects into what K. refers to as "murky death" at the bottom of the second tier, which I collect about once a week and pour onto the plants. I get about a yogurt tub and a half out of it, usually.

I worry about the effect this deluge is having on the worms, so I've placed the whole thing inside the outside closet. We'll see what kind of results we get!

Garden Plots

2008-07-02T09:18:00.007-04:00

Since I've written last, I've acquired a plot in the the municipal organic gardens.
Although marginal (a full plot wasn't really available,) it's large enough to do some square foot gardening, for which I am now preparing beds.

I'm following a modified lasagna gardening approach for building the beds: compost, newspapers, leaf litter, grass clippings, spanish moss, and eventually, straw.

I currently have K's 'mater planted. The corn withered and died after replanting. The okra is happy, as are the cucumbers.

I installed a soaker hose on a timer underneath the beds. It runs for 15 minutes every 6 hours. Everything - the weeds especially - seems to be fairly happy. I'm interested in putting some clay pots down in the beds and covering the top of screen, and using those as a slow release system.

Baby Worms!

2008-05-29T08:06:00.003-04:00

My vermiculture compost is apparently going quite well. Although it has quite a few gnats, it's still less than "the gnat line" in Georgia on a sunny afternoon. While pulling some casings out to feed my neglected porch plants, I noticed little red wrigglers! My babies have had babies! I'm a grandwormparent! The significance is that worms require specific conditions to reproduce, which apparently my bin is providing. Ever since I killed the plasmodial slime mold K bought for me for my birthday, I've been a little worried about my ability with invertebrates...

On the weirder end, some continue to crawl through the too-large air holes, resulting in what appeared to be a rat king of worms, writhing together in the bottom of the second box. I fished them out of the rain/casing sludge and plopped them back in the main bin.

I swore this wasn't going to become a garden blog...

2008-04-25T12:23:00.003-04:00

First off, check out how much those beans have grown since Monday! Holy moly!

And...first pea!

Porch Gardening...getting there!

2008-04-21T09:20:00.009-04:00

Been gardening on the porch for a while now.

My first food plant was a Jerusalem Artichoke, which may get as tall as 5 ft! It's an experiment. We'll see what comes of it.

Seeds are coming up: Calallo Amaranth, Seeds of Change Scarlet Emperor Running Bean, and Seeds of Change Sunflower. The Seminole Pumpkin isn't quite up yet, but here's hoping!

The three corn stalks are a little limp, and the seedless blackberry I've got in the tomato trellis lost a little bit through my rough-handling, but it's coming back. The blackberry bloomed!

I'm trying to decide if I like the taco'd-bike-wheel as pea support or not. It may be more of the community garden aesthetic than the porch garden aesthetic.

Krista's ~~squash~~ cucumber and cilantro are doing nicely, too! My aloe...not so much!

None of them are self-watering containers, nor do I have the rigged up irrigation scheme I've been sketching, but we'll see.

Link Roundup 02/26/2008

2008-02-26T00:07:00.001-05:00

Something I'd like to do once a week -

A roundup of interesting articles I've recently read, with a quick review.

Retrofitting the suburbs for sustainability

This article presents a permaculture approach to dealing with climate change, food insecurity, and the need to reduce ecological & carbon footprints through greater density. Nothing new to folks that ready a lot on the subject, but it's a good introduction. Focus is on Australian suburbs.

Archdruid Report: A Theology of Compost

A little kooky, admittedly, but the article does raise the important point that some basic actions can have profound impacts. Composting is a destabalizing activity, whose implications can affect us on a more basic level than we expect. Also, it smells nice, if you like earthy smells.

Global warming and the vision thing

Gristmill once again nails it, showing that it's not the doom and gloom that will convince people of the need to move towards a more sustainable society, but positive approaches. People will go towards the choices that sound like an easier, richer, more fulfilling life.

Worldchanging: My Other Car Is A Bright Green City

It's not about making better cars: it's about making better cities. It's about retrofitting the suburbs into something more walkable, bikeable, bus-able, and trainable. Alex Steffen is at the forefront of bright green (again, not doom and gloom, but certainly not business-as-usual) movement, and this article accurately addresses the true nature of the problems we're facing.

Waiting For Worm-ot

2008-02-25T09:11:00.001-05:00

Still no worms. I talked to the seller, and he says he'll reship them today. Somebody's going to have a nasty, rotten worm surprise soon!

From the other side of the "Waste = Food" equation, my dear roommate and partner K has started a new food blog call Gainesvittles. Make sure you check it out!

Worm-i-culture

2008-02-11T23:26:00.000-05:00

“Worms Eat My Garbage”

Another famous book I've yet to read.

Despite that, soon worms will be eating at least some of my garbage. K was out of town this weekend, which set me to a couple of projects I'd been meaning to get to - namely, working on the bikes and setting about making a worm farm.

Big Lots once again provides great prices on these bins: one inside another. Having purchased them and brought them home, I set about dremeling the holes required for ventilating the worms. I ran some old newsprint (non-glossy, because I figured the ink isn't good for the worms) through the paper shredder.

The worms were 200 red wrigglers I ordered off ebay. They shipped this morning, and I'll admit, I'm excited.

In The Beginning...

2007-12-18T10:10:00.000-05:00

I don't know when exactly, but sometime recently, it became the future. Maybe it was the turn of the millennium, maybe it was yesterday, but here we are - on the bicuspid of 2008, oil petering out, the climate changing, and our nation embroiled in wars in fledgling nations.

What's a guy to do?

Lots.

My impact needs to be light and appropriate, my life simple yet fulfilling.

I've started baking bread at home. I bike, but not as much as I could or should.

Next stops:
Vermicompost
Porch permaculture (porchaculture? permaporcha?)
More water conservation
Bike trailers
Home canning
Shift more to cast iron cooking
Building regional exchange networks
More energy conservation
Aquaculture?
Green investing
Household waste stream analysis (no, not that waste stream!)

...all in a tiny apartment!

This blog is an experiment. No Impact Man benefited from the robust nature of a larger city: more people creates more opportunities. Can I do the something similar in a smaller, less economically diverse city? Let's find out...