We had a great day yesterday. North into farmland, to Sebastapol and the Harmony Farm Supply, what a great place. Good tools, good additives, seeds, irrigation, etc. No foul chemical smells. Knowledgeable staff.

   Then to the National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa. Unique event. Yesterday was the last of 3 days (Tues-Wed-Thurs). Tons of different heirloom fruits, vegetables, cheeses, on and on… goats, sheep, cows, turkeys and a huge display of bantam chickens. Food booths (and samples) up the kazoo. It’s a very together farming, gardening, food preparation and preservation show. Real food and respect-for-earth concepts and practices have come a long way in the last 25 years — progress. I’m going to this for sure next year, and we’ll probably get a booth and sell building books. Our kinda people.

   Back through Petaluma and Heritage Salvage, huge amount of recycled lumber, including some stunning old barn timbers.

  Got a lot of good pics yesterday, no time to do anything other than this with 3 of them:

This was on back road between Petaluma and Sebastapol.

Real tomatoes

Bantam Silver Spangled Hamburg

raised by Janelle Thope

There are 3-4 places you can eat at the Harris Ranch. I like the the coffee shop best. It’s filled with pictures of the Valley around the turn of the century, as well as farm and carpenter tools and implements. Descriptions of this valley in the old days are heart-breaking. It was so beautiful, not over-farmed, before million-year old aquifer water started being mined to support crops that shouldn’t be growing in the desert. Some of the first grain crops were said to grow 6′ high. Driving down yesterday, things weren’t looking good. Where there were miles of lush fruit trees, you’d know agribiz is sucking unsustainable amounts of water from ever-deeper wells. Ah me. California you were so beautiful.

Tonight Bug (Michael Deakin of Heritage Salvage in Petaluma) is interviewing me on his radio show in Santa Rosa (Calif.). KSRO 1350 AM with Jaxon and Bug, 5:30 PM tonight (July 10, 2012).

This is a review I wrote for the Mother Earth News in December:

If I’d had Ben Law’s book Roundwood Timber Framing (Published by Chelsea Green) back when I was learning how to build in the ’60s, I would have been inspired to plant and tend trees suitable for house framing — I could have framed several buildings by now as a result. Filled with beautiful color photographs and detailed drawings, this one-of-a-kind, practical guide will likely evoke the same “if only” reaction in many of its readers.

One of the unique features of this book is its step-by-step description of the process for creating your own building materials. Another is that every building shown within was constructed using a modified cruck frame. This method consists of using two or more A-frames, and was used in medieval times to build houses, barns and halls. Law has adapted it structurally to triangulate, and therefore brace, rectilinear buildings. In the back of the book are sequential photos of the construction of seven different round-pole buildings.

Read More …

Politics: I cringe somewhat when posting political stuff, but I’ve never been good at sticking to one subject. I just happen to be all over the place. Once in a while something in the political arena strikes me. I don’t claim to be right and in fact, have a record of naiveté and even polyanna-ish hopes, but these thoughts and observations are all part of my world. Give me Obama, disappointments and all, over any of these dangerous creeps visible in the Republican media circus. I don’t have time to get into dialogues on “comments.” Just puttin it out there…

Music de este Domingo: Jimmy Reed, “Big Boss Man”

Big boss man,

Can’t you hear me when I call?

Big boss man,

Can’t you hear me when I call?

Well you not so big,

You just tall, that’s all…

Fishing:

It’s a great crab season. At night there are a dozen or more lights out in the ocean. Pulling crab pots. Think of the competence and resolve of these fishermen, out on the black ocean at night, getting knocked

around if seas are rough, hauling in heavy traps. tossing under-sized ones, and dumping the rest into boxes, then back to port, Not for the faint-hearted. San Francisco crab dinner: cracked crab, salad, sour-dough garlic bread, red wine.

   It was a much better year for fish in general. Salmon, halibut, rockfish. Great to see all these guys getting wild local fresh food.

Local Oyster Farm Controversy

The Drake’s Bay Oyster Company is being threatened by the same well-heeled “environmentalists” that recently forced the shutdown (in the next 5 years) of all trailers parked at Lawson’s landing. See my photo-report here: https://www.lloydkahn.com/2011/06/29/lawsons-landing-under-threat-by/

“…Some observers see a David versus Goliath struggle, with a federal agency and moneyed environmental groups picking on a family-run business.…” https://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/12/10/norcal_oyster_farm_dispute_spreads_to_capitol_hill/?page=2

For a very complete refutation of the National Parks Service’s bad science and underhanded tactics (in cooperation with the Environmental Action Committee) in an article by John Hulls and Todd Pickering, see: https://russianrivertimes.wordpress.com/

Homesteading 

They’ve Made a Better Rat Trap (2 of ’em):

The big problem I’ve had for years is that unless the bait is tied to the trigger, these cunning critters will spirit it away sans springing trap. I was sheet-metal-screwing a ½:”copper plumbing cap to Victor traps, but they would come off. Both these traps have got little cup/triggers you fill (I use Skippy peanut butter) and voila! The springs are also strong. (Got 2 rats last night.)

Woodstream M144 Power Kill Rat Trap

Ortho 0321210 Home Defense Max Secure-Kill Rat Trap

On this subject, here’s an article I wrote a few years ago on critters on the homestead for The Mother Earth News: https://www.motherearthnews.com/Modern-Homesteading/Protect-Your-Home-From-Critters.aspx

Homemade Sauerkraut

I got the book Wild Fermentation due to a Cool Tools review: https://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/005221.php

Then got this Polish-made crock: https://www.amazon.com/TSM-Products-Fermentation-Liter-capacity/dp/B002UUT4CI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323633345&sr=8-1

It has a lip you fill with water to keep unfriendly bacteria out. Note: If you want weight (recommended), get the 20-liter stones, not the smaller ones. Anyway, sauerkraut (great for digestion) is composed of — cabbage and salt, nada mas. Simple! First batch worked great. Centuries-old low tech.

Is The Old New Again?

It’s not so much that “…the old is new again,” but that some of the old is mighty relevant in this day and age. To wit, Otis now singing “I’ve Been Loving You For Too Long (To Stop Now),” on a vinyl record, live in Paris, 1967, just sent a chill through me…