More food from Garden and Reel...

This past week has yielded a goodly amount of edibles. The beans are still holding strong, and so are the tomatoes. The onions are dying of the cold while the turnips and beets are thriving. All in all, 13 lbs of beans and 1 lb of tomatoes were harvested.













On the fishing front, my father went at it alone this weekend. The yield was not nearly as good as last week but still quite respectable. 15 large pan-fish were caught, after cleaning over 12 lbs of fish was sent to the freezer. The remaining offal was of course fed to the compost bin.

The good garden continues to yield

All of the drying corn stalks have toppled with the autumn winds. The intricate bean vines of that bed have collapsed with the stalks. But out of the old and dying, emerges the new. The humble eggplant which has done not so well this year has rebounded with a vengeance, it has doubled in size over the last week. The onions are rapidly fading away, I suspect that one more cutting is all that it'll yield this year. The turnips will provide one more harvest. I am going to leave 1 bed planted with beets and another with the remaining turnips to overwinter. These two crops will yield a fine early spring harvest. The other two beds will be covered with dried bean vines and clover. The beans and tomatoes continue to yield, but they are both fading fast now. In a month, both shall be gone, alas, death is an intricate part of life's tapestry.

In any case, 15 lbs of beans, and 4 lbs of tomatoes were harvested this weekend.

Fishing for the holidays!

Of Friday, I headed home to see the parents for the annual Mid-Autumn festival. This ancient, far eastern holiday is celebrated with family gatherings and massive consumption of moon-cakes. Eaten at the conclusion of the traditional rice/wheat harvest, the circular moon-cakes is supposed to represent the eternal unity of family and the cyclical nature of existence, or so I have been told.

In any case, by Saturday afternoon, much eating had commenced and we were all a bit stuffed. So my dad and I decided to go fishing and catch up on old times. We drove to a nearby reservoir and began casting the lines from above a bridge. The fishing proved to be extremely good, which was in fact very odd for this time of the year. We quickly got into the zone and were catching fish left and right, consistently. Pretty soon most of the other fishermen on the bridge started glancing over periodically, since no one, except for one old man caught with the same rapidity.

Fishing is an art that takes quite a long time to master. When fishing under optimal conditions, the skilled fishermen manages to catch fish almost continuously, as if by magic. To beginners and novices, it does appear to be a mystical feat, fish of every type seems to magically appear out of the waters. I was like that once, many years ago. But after fishing every spring/summer/fall for 12 years, one manages to learn a few things.

Firstly, the seasoned hobby fishermen CANNOT fish like a pro everywhere, but only within his specific region. Secondly, during a single fishing day, the tactics of the skilled fisherman would change significantly with fluctuations in temperature,humidity,daylight and water level. Some fish species are optimized to feed during dusk, others during full sunlight, yet others during cloudy weather to evade birds. Darker bait such as earth worms or meal worms presents a sharp contrasting target to the daylight prowling fish with good eyes. Lightly colored bait(wax worms) presents great contrast to bottom feeding or dusk prowling fish with good eyes. Strongly scented bait(dough balls, fermented corn, blood worms) attracts the fish without highly developed vision. Cold water can dampen the enthusiasm of most fish, but other fish enter their mating season during a sudden water temperature drop and thus become more active.

Fishing efficiently with the reel requires a very keen understanding of the ecological niche and basic life cycles of numerous fish species. The man who regularly catches fish like it's magic fundamentally knows WHAT kind of fish to catch WHEN and under WHICH set environmental conditions. With that said we did very well today, in 3 hours we caught:

Saugers => 3
White Bass Hybrid => 2
Sunfish => 9
White Crappies => 16
Black Crappies => 14
White Perch => 5
Yellow Perch => 3
Rock Bass => 7
Pumpkin Seed => 6
Bluegill => 13

In totality, we caught 78 fish of all kinds, after cleaning, we yielded a staggering 42 lbs of fish meat. There were around 10lbs of fish guts and scales which were buried deep within the composting bins. Next year, the garden beds will be even richer, and the cycle is renewed once again!

Garden Update

This week's yield is quite impressive. 22 lbs of beans, 7 lbs of tomatoes, and 2 lbs of Turnips.

Massive Numbers of Fish!!!!

Went fishing with my father today. I still remember the good old days when father and son went fishing every weekend during the summer. Those days are gone with my childhood, so such outings that do manage to happen are rare and very precious to me. In anycase, We managed to catch 39 fish from 7 different species: black crappie, sunfish, pumpkinseed, blue gill, white perch, yellow perch, and northern crappie. over 23 lbs of fish were caught. After cleaning them, the fish guts were buried within the cold compost mounds.

Lots more veggies!!!

The garden has yielded yet more food this fine weekend. I have also found a particularly interesting pest attacking the now flourishing bean plants. There are these tiny grub-like hairy larvaes eating away at the leaves. They seem to lay eggs under leaves sometimes. But on one occassion, I saw one of them "give-birth" to a tiny larva. I wonder if this kind of pest can clone themselves? In any case, I killed hundreds of them, and the spiders probably took more.

I harvested the largest turnip in my garden. Dissapointingly, the turnip itself was tiny and woody. The greens are good to eat so I opted to keep it. In anycase, I harvested 11 lbs of pole beans, 2 lbs of tomatoes, and 1 lb of turnip greens.

Fishing time!!!

I'm spending Labor Day weekend at home in PA. The city was feeling too crowded for comfort. In any case, I took the opportunity to go fishing this afternoon. The water was rather chilly but the catch wasn't too bad at all. 12 blue gills and 1 perch rounds up 7 lbs of fish. The maturity of the fish could be a bit better. I usually try to specialize in trying to capture "panfish", 8 species of small fish which grow to be about the size of an outstretched palm.