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.

Garden Update

As prelude to a land finding trip, I rode home to PA Friday on the train. It has been a good week at the happy organic garden. The entire structure of the beds have changed with the season as certain key species undergo sharp population changes. The corn stalks, now that the ears are removed, are showing their age and sagging heavily. Soon the spent corn plants will join their ancestors in the compost bins. Likewise the eggplants are fading fast, as their fruits have been devoured by squirrels. With the Japanese beetle threat gone, the pole beans have expanded like weeds. All of the corn stalks, all of the bamboo supports, and most of my neighbor's fence is now covered with bean vines. They have grown so much that now there seems to be a competition between the beans and the tomato plants for valuable sunlight. A few days of cool weather have greatly boosted the growth of the turnips, a harvest will be possible within 2 weeks. The animal ecology of the garden has also changed drastically. In the bean vine dominated habitat, there seems to be hundreds of small spiders, all of them furiously spinning webs to capture thousands and thousands of tiny winged leaf-hoppers. In the turnip areas, the struggle now appears to be between green worms and ants. The green worms are taking advantage of the rich turnip greens, while the ants seem to be busy hunting the green worms.


The produce has been abundant this week. All in all, 14 lbs of pole beans, 10 lbs of tomatoes, and 1 lb of green onions have been harvested.

The corn harvest!!!!

My square meter corn patch has finally ripened. This weekend I'm home in PA harvesting the fine corn. After some inspection it appears that heirloom corn looks a bit different from regular genetically modified corn. For one thing, no two ears are of the same size. Upon closer inspection it looks like as if even individual kernels on the same ear are differently sized. As I worked in the garden picking beans and corn, I noticed the appearance of a familiar and much detested character. There is this squirrel in my back yard, a scruffy looking thing. He's slender, gray, and has an unusually thin tail. I had already lost several beefsteaks and some corn to this tree rat, and now he's back for more. So I decided to tip toe back to the garage, where I strung up my long bow, and tip-toed back ready for action.

And there he was, sinking his teeth into a small ripening tomato. I tried to get as close as possible but it wasn't long before he saw me. So there I was, being stared at by the critter. So I promptly notched a blunt arrow that I made, drew, took aim, loosed....and MISSED!!!! The squirrel scurried up my neighbor's fence, hopped a few meters and disappeared up a tree. My arrow had lodged itself between the wooden planks of my neighbor's fence. There has to be a better way to take out this villein. In any case, about 20lbs of corn was harvested. 3 ears had suffered some squirrel damage but not too severe. The yield for corn per unit of cultivated area seems to be substantially lower than the yield for potatoes.

Aside from the corn, the beans and tomatoes continued to yield. I picked up 2 tomatos(1 lb) and 4 lbs of pole beans. The onions should be ready for another cutting next week it seems.

Gathering and shade garden update!

The blackberries have been ripening in the nearby forestlands. So I took a short diversion from NYC last weekend to indulge in the art of gathering. After spending much time in the pursuit of berry picking, 2 lbs of the delicious berries were gathered! The only trick to it is to not let the thorns prick one's hands.



Meanwhile, back in the outskirts of Philly, the long neglected shade garden is finally bearing fruit. After planting some beans, bitter melon, and calabash seeds(that I got through barter last year :D) along the backyard fence early this spring, I had pretty much left the shade garden for dead. Surprisingly enough, the calabash plant got along well with the local ivy to produce several small and one large fruit. The beans had entirely failed. The Bitter melons had largely failed but did manage to produce several fruits. This was rather surprising to me since I had expected the beans to succeed and the bitter melon to fail. The reason being that even the cold climate variety of the bitter melon is still far suited to a warm temperate/subtropical growing region than the north east. Bitter melons are distasteful to me, however it is considered a delicacy in certain Asian cuisines. In any event, 5 lbs of calabash and 4 lbs of bitter melon was harvested.


It has been the usual summer week for the organic garden. 4 pounds of pole beans were harvested along with 7 lbs of tomatoes. The sweet corn is beginning to ripen, and I think I must do something to prevent them from being eaten by the furry creatures of the backyard.

Evil furry rodents!!!

I took a trip home to PA this weekend to see my folks and check on the organic garden. I ate a home-cooked meal consisting mostly of captured wild foods and my own garden's produce. There was a hearty beef stew with copious quantities of Garden tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and lettuce. Fine Kennewick potato pancakes were consumed with great relish. And the dish of worthiest note was a platter of wild sunfish(caught at Marsh Creek the day before) lightly fried along with lots of Garden fresh green onions. It was all so fresh and wonderfully delicious!!!


After dinner, I took the opportunity to check on the 2 beds(originally potato beds) that I had recently seeded with turnip and beans. The newly planted turnips and beans are thriving now. I expect the new bean plants to begin producing in a few weeks. This is good in light of the fact that the currently producing pole bean plants seem to have hit their maximum production limit and are gracefully transitioning into old age. The turnips should be ready for harvest around September when the cool Autumn weather transforms the tuber's warm weather bitterness into a delectable spicy flavor. The eggplants have taken quite a beating this growing season. Upon closer examination, I could see that there were numerous bite marks upon the leaves. I know for sure that both Aphids and Japanese beetles have preyed heavily upon the poor eggplants, and I surmise that leaf hoppers have been attacking them as well. The European Eggplant breed is showing very heavy pest damage and no signs of fruit. The Japanese Eggplant is showing somewhat less pest damage and is bearing 4 small white fruits.

The tomato plants are now reaching the peak of their reproductive cycle. There are roughly 150 tomatoes on the vine. Such a quantity of edibles have caused a disturbance in the force so to speak. One of the tomato plants is of the Beefsteak variety while the other is of the Early Girl breed. The Beefsteak breed produces larger, fewer and much sweeter tomatoes while the Early Girl produces larger quantities of smaller more tart tomatoes. Now we all prefer big, sweet, and juicy tomato steaks, and by we I mean humans, bunnies, and squirrels!!! So these small furry critters have dishonorably eaten at least 5 ripe beefsteak tomatoes from my garden within the last week. It is truly a shame that I can't be there during the week to put my archery skills to the test.

In any case, the organic garden is chugging along and producing rapidly. This week's yield was 21 tomatoes (15 lbs) and 2 lbs of beans.

Out of the human hive and into the Wilderness

Last Sunday, I embarked upon a journey away from the human hive that is NYC to the outer peripherals of the state. I have been planning to purchase a piece of undeveloped land for well over a year now, and the time is ripe to set the plan into motion. With rising gas prices and a collapsing housing market, having a fully owned forest or agricultural parcel could have profoundly beneficial effects for one's health and future. So off I went to look at a few properties in upstate New York. At 6am in the morning, I moved myself out of bed, went through the regular motions, and headed out of my apartment. The city scape was largely deserted at this hour. A fine morning fog shrouded the distant skyscrapers, dimming and softening the edges of the horizon spanning mega-city. The metropolis appeared largely deserted, almost ancient in a sense that I found very hard to grasp. The scene from the nearby subway terminal was one of uncommon stillness. For some odd reason, NYC( the economic heart of human civilization) felt a bit like the abandoned Anasazi ruins that I visited 4 months ago. Shaking off such absurd thoughts, I walked down the subway entrance wondering how NYC would look like if 99% of it's population simply vanished.

With great alacrity, I made my way to the Port Authority and onto a Greyhound bus, five hours of road time took me 300 miles west of the city into the small, peripheral center of Utica. From there, I met up with the real estate agent and went to see several properties. Most of these land parcels were heavily wooded with entry points on seasonally maintained roads of dubious quality. I needed an area with some basic qualities: reliable ground water, ample and mature hardwoods, agriculturally productive soil, and (if the gods are kind) surrounding wildlife and fishing resources. Most of the properties seen came far short of what I required.

Finally though, we came upon a very interesting place. The land at first glance appeared to be heavily forested. As I made my way through the forest, I noticed long stretches of low stone walls along the lengths of the forest. I made my way through several hundred feet of heavy woods, the foliage screen suddenly lifted. Before me stood this high, circular, and oddly regular-shaped hill. The hill top was flattened into a plateau of scrub and tall grasses. Making my way to the hill top, I was astounded by the panoramic vista before my eyes. The hill overlooked miles of the surrounding countryside and valley.

I could see the extent of the forests that I had just walked through, the farm next to it, and even the farms and forests far from the main road that led up to this land area. Less than a mile away, there stood this huge derelict-looking radar dish on yet another oddly regular hilltop. The structures upon this land felt subtly strange and even a bit alien to me. It felt as if it was touched by the passing of generations, as if the land itself was shaped by countless hands whose owners I would never meet. Yet at the same time, I felt as if I remember this place somehow, but the memories were jumbled beyond recognition. As we walked back to the car, the real estate agent casually mentioned that the radar dish was built by the military in the 1960s and that it has long since been deactivated. The man then went on a rant about how this wouldn't affect the real estate's future value and such. And all of a sudden, EVERYTHING fell into place.

There was the forest at first. Then men came, with stone hatchets the forest was turned into farmland divided between incessantly warring tribes and confederations. The land that I stood on was part of the vast the Oneida confederation, a polity that spanned a third of this state. To the East they faced the Mohican tribes, to the West there was an alliance of Huron chiefdoms. The mound that I stood on was an old Oneida military hill fortress. For centuries they fought their savage wars, and then a great sickness spread across the land, cutting down the populace like weeds. For a century afterwards, the few people that remained lived by hunting, gathering, and limited gardening. The forest swallowed this land. And then other men came, waves of Anglo Saxons, followed by Germans and European lowlanders. After many bloody wars with the first settlers, the Germanic peoples were victorious. The forest appeared virgin to them, and they proceeded to clear the trees with steel and grit and put the country to farmland once more. Using muscle power alone, these Germanic peoples built the old stone walls which marked the boundaries of their farms. Generations passed, and change swept the land yet again. The industrial revolution was upon the land. The descendents of these farmers could not keep their ancestors' small farms. They were thus pushed into the teeming cities. Generations passed and the forest once more swallowed the achievements of man's labor. And then once more people came, this time the world was divided between two great nations. Proud and hostile, they tried to gain dominance over one another through the possessions of nuclear tipped missiles. The Americans rebuilt a paved road into this forest, they saw the hold Oneida fort hill, and placed a radar installation on top of it's summit. This radar, along with many other, created a vast sensory network. The Soviet ICBMs could thus be monitored coming over the Northern polar cap and a prompt retaliatory strike launched in time. The war never came and the radar along with the land fell into disuse. The forest came once more and cleansed all.

So trapped was I in the depth of my own ruminations that I stumbled upon stick bushes filled with raspberries and blueberries. Between the berry patches were trees growing hundreds of green crab apples. I picked pounds of the delectable berries and apples and took them all home with me. It was a good day!

Garden update...and some bartering :)

A great deal of food has been produced this week by the tiny organic garden. Since, I'm away in the city, my parents have been harvesting from the beds on a daily basis. The 4 green onion plants continued to produce at a brisk pace. 2 pounds of onions were harvested this week. The pole beans are producing at a furious pace. Over the last week, over 20 lbs of pole beans have been harvested. The two tomato plants have begun producing in earnest.



























32 Tomatoes(12 pounds) were harvested in the last week. There are roughly another 180 hanging on the vine.


























Our neighbor Jeff has taken a keen interest in the organic garden and has started one himself this year. His set of food crops were a bit different, with way more cabbage, squash, and cucumbers than beans or tomatoes. As such Jeff had a surplus of cucumbers while we had an excess of beans. A quick bartering session resulted in 5 lbs of pole beans for 8 lbs of cucumbers.