Well, it\u2019s back to rain for a couple of days.\u00a0 I have to admit that I\u2019m OK with the dampish summer we\u2019ve had, although the vegetables have been slow and probably the crop will be reduced.\u00a0 The last couple of years with bad fire seasons were worrisome, and having lots of water in reserve has been a good thing this year!<\/p>\n
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We\u2019ve been working on filling the new shed \u2026 pretty much had it filled before it was built (at least in our minds).\u00a0 We have a metal shed and a tent that we set up when we first arrived, a very temporary arrangement, and these need serious repair, so moving stuff out of them has become a priority.\u00a0 The shed kit came on two fairly nice pallets, which provided just enough material to make a nice work bench.\u00a0 Some left over vinyl flooring from the cabin made a good wash-and-wear surface for the bench.\u00a0 Now we are pondering whether or not we have enough salvage\/leftovers to make some storage shelves.\u00a0 Out here, stuff gets reused and repurposed to the max, as bringing materials in is expensive.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of satisfying in its own way \u2026 we are not so consumer-oriented and have a smaller footprint on this overused planet of ours.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019ve been harvesting our grain trials (barely ahead of the birds, which have also been testing out the produce).\u00a0 Looks like wheat, barley, triticale, and rye are growing well here, with nice fat seed heads.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to dry them before I can thresh them and see the quality of the seed.\u00a0 Oats, for the third year, was something of a disappointment.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been trying to grow hulless oats, but they are low yield and the grains are so soft that the predating birds just pulverize the heads into flour before I can get them cut. \u00a0Our local miller doesn\u2019t like the hulless oats either.\u00a0 He claims that they don\u2019t keep very well.\u00a0 However, I have yet to find a way of dehulling oats on a small scale.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m going to test hulled oats next year, or try a different variety of hulless ones.\u00a0 We love our oatmeal, and I\u2019d hate to give up on growing oats, but so far, the variety we\u2019ve been testing hasn\u2019t proved out.\u00a0 I have a couple of other \u201cancient grain\u201d crops planted as well \u2026 buckwheat, amaranth, and quinoa.\u00a0 All of these are starting to head out, but it\u2019s a little early yet to tell what kind of harvest we are going to have.<\/p>\n Back to strange potatoes \u2026 I thought that the new little potatoes might be propagating by using up the energy stores in the old ones.\u00a0 However, so many of the parent potatoes are still hard and crisp that it seems like they must be getting their energy from something else.\u00a0 A little light seeps into the root cellar through a few small cracks, but not enough that the potatolets formed leaves or any signs of chlorophyll.\u00a0 I did a search on the internet to see if anyone else considered potatoes to be saprophytic, but didn\u2019t see any references to something like this happening.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m still puzzled at how these little potatoes were being formed.\u00a0 We have ghost plant (aka Indian pipe, Monotropa uniflora<\/em>) around here, which is saprophytic.\u00a0 A very bizarre looking plant \u2026 it almost looks more like a fungus than a plant at all, and is in fact using a fungus to extract energy and nutrients from its environment.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll have to admit that the mess of colorless stolons and little potato buds in our root cellar did look a bit ghostly in that same strange way.\u00a0 But if there was a fungus involved, I don\u2019t know \u2026<\/p>\n Sailboats come in a lot of different shapes and sizes.\u00a0 We\u2019re kind of peculiar in our choices, in that we haven\u2019t been much interested in the modern, sleek, racing-style sailboat with a deep, fixed fin keel.\u00a0 Rather, we\u2019ve been looking at boats that have much greater versatility.\u00a0 We selected the Awen<\/em> because she had a pilothouse, which is rare on sailboats, but which is an excellent option for all-weather travel.\u00a0 She also has a flat and open stern deck, useful for working on and for hauling stuff.\u00a0 Her draft is shallow, for a sailboat, and she has an almost full keel (sometimes called a modified fin keel) which she can balance easily on, making haul-outs much simpler – we just lean her up against some dock pilings at a good low tide.\u00a0 If she\u2019d had a fin keel, we\u2019d have to take her over to Campbell River for haul out, which would add a good $500+ to the cost.\u00a0 We are thinking of getting a smaller sailboat, if we can ever sell our Surfer (a cabin cruiser), and we have been looking at MacGregors, particularly one which has a swing keel that can be pulled up, allowing the boat to be beached \u2013 something very useful for travel and work out here.\u00a0 But at the moment, that\u2019s still another boat dream (don\u2019t get us started on those).<\/p>\n We haven\u2019t managed to sail the Awen<\/em> yet, although learning how is definitely on our bucket list.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had several friends who have offered to help, should we ever manage to arrange the time.\u00a0 We had sort of hoped to do a bit more visiting and traveling this year, but with COVID, it became more sensible to get other projects underway.\u00a0 Maybe next year \u2026<\/p>\n I sort of thought that COVID might put a bit of a nix on many peoples\u2019 travel plans.\u00a0 However, we have been feeling the pressure from the tourist season.\u00a0 Unfortunately, some of the people who are travelling are apparently quite irresponsible, and this seems to be the cause of a number of the small outbreaks of COVID that we have been seeing.\u00a0 Lots of people I\u2019ve talked to are frustrated by this.\u00a0 We\u2019d been doing very well on Vancouver Island, with people moving about cautiously and taking care not to travel when sick, etc., but now there is a distinct fear of the stranger happening, especially with the news coverage on young people traveling and having parties whilst spreading COVID to everyone else.<\/p>\n I made a batch of scones using some freshly milled flour \u2026 they were most excellent!\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to believe how sweet fresh milled grain tastes if all you\u2019ve ever eaten is the stuff you buy in stores.\u00a0 We managed to get another trip to Sayward in between our projects, and picked up our new grain mill.\u00a0 We are very happy with it!\u00a0 It makes course flour in a single grind, or if you want very fine flour, a second grind is necessary.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been using it to make cracked grain which is great added to rice or stews, or as a breakfast.\u00a0 I made some pea flour a little while back.\u00a0 That was a bit more work.\u00a0 The peas had to be soaked for a day, then run through our meat grinder.\u00a0 The course \u201cpea grits\u201d were parched until dry, and can be used this way to make pea soup.\u00a0 But now that I had the miller, I made some pea flour as well.\u00a0 This is a good addition to savory breads to add extra protein, or as a thickener in curries, etc.\u00a0 The mill also does a good job at grinding flax without too much effort.\u00a0 The flaker attachment for the mill is wonderful \u2026 I can make a cup of rolled oats in about a minute.\u00a0 They are like the large flake oats that you can buy, but taste much better.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also flaked wheat, which is a little more work, but a tasty addition to the morning gruel.\u00a0 So, all in all, we are very pleased with the purchase, even though it was a little bit expensive.<\/p>\n August flew by some time ago, but here is some of our summer trivia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-11289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journal"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside.jpg",1024,768,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside-768x576.jpg",768,576,true],"large":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside.jpg",840,630,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside.jpg",1024,768,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside.jpg",1024,768,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside.jpg",1024,768,false],"sendpress-max":["https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Shed-inside.jpg",600,450,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"blueseas","author_link":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/author\/blueseas\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"August flew by some time ago, but here is some of our summer trivia.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11289"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=11289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oceanecology.ca\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/WholeGrainsPoster2018.jpg\")
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\nAugust 13th<\/sup>, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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