Maine public radio

Maine Public Broadcasting (MPBN) announced that it was shutting down its transmitters in Calais and Fort Kent on account of the economic recession and the ensuing crisis facing the station. This is a betrayal of a public trust.

While it doesn't affect me--I can get the stations from Bangor and Camden clearly enough--it affects two counties the combined size of Massachusetts and Connecticut. That is a pretty large area.

No doubt the folks from Washington and Aroostook counties who contributed their hard earned dollars during MPBN's most recent pledge drive, last summer, where they raised more than $200,000, an amount four times that of the contributions of listeners in Rhode Island, must be wishing they could get their monies back. Fat chance. And fat chance that they will soon contribute again. What is MPBN thinking?

Perhaps they're thinking that the state legislature will step in and give them more money. Fat chance again. The legislature is mandated to drastic budget cuts themselves. Besides, many resent MPBN's firing, last year, of Robert Skoglund, aka The humble Farmer, a state treasure, a Maine humorist who had a show on MPBN Friday nights for more than 30 years, and who did it voluntarily for almost all of that time.

humble was asked to sign a loyalty oath, that he would not inject political humor into his monolgues. Imagine if Mark Twain had been asked to sign such an oath! Or Garrison Keillor? No way. And so humble was fired. And so listeners withheld $180,000 in contributions. No wonder MPBN is hurting.

It's mismanagement of a public trust, plain and simple. Throw the Board of Trustees out. Throw the executive managers out. Bring in a new group that will be responsible to the public trust, re-hire Skoglund, and usher in a new day for Maine public broadcasting. If money needs to be saved, cut back on television.

Yes, television. Public television in Maine is pathetic and has been for decades, increasingly unable to compete with cable channels, losing its audience while radio is gaining.

Cedar Waxwings

Cedar waxwings made an appearance migrating through the day before Christmas, Marta wanted me to note. I've seen them most winters I've been here, usually more than there were a couple of days ago; but they are a sweet sight no matter how many.

Blizzard

No sooner had I written that we'd avoided the big snow thus far, a northeaster and a blizzard arrived Sunday afternoon. Monday morning we woke up to fifteen inches of new snow, some of it blown to more than two feet. The town plow, which usually comes up to the end of the road and turns around in our circular drive, for the first time I can recall simply gave up and backed down. And so I had a date with the snowblower to make paths and clear away around the vehicles and then clear the drive down to the town road. This took all morning. In the afternoon I shoveled around the cords of wood stacked on pallets and covered with tarps.

The snowblower is a powerful attachment to the BCS 735 walk-behind tractor, and when everything is working right, as it was this morning, it is a joy to work with. What was not a joy were the 30 mile per hour shifting winds, which got me in cloud of snow from time to time.

It would be nice to be in the South (I have lived in Virginia, Georgia, and Kentucky) instead of northern New England at a time like this. Some of the wealthier residents of this island head south for the winter--snowbirds they are called. You can often tell them by the Florida plates on their cars. I understand they establish a residence in Florida because they then pay no state income tax, whereas the state income tax in Maine is among the highest. Florida holds no attraction for me, at this time.

The next winter difficulty will be ice, as when it warms up the precipitation falls as rain, and then it freezes and stays. This happens in southern New England as well, of course, but the layout of this plot of land and buildings means that the ice stays and walking can be treacherous. I have spent winters here and avoided falls, but as someone who does not care to be indoors all or most of a day, winter here concentrates life unless a particular effort is made to be out. One of the ways to be out is cross-country skiing, and I intend to do that tomorrow.

Cold and heat

The past week has brought cold and snow, normal here for this time of year, though not so much snow as by this time last year. There's still not quite enough on the ground to ski on the old abandoned roads and the trails nearby. Inland there's been more snow.

The cold and snow (and ice, at times) concentrates movement around the buildings. The woodbox is constantly in need of replenishing. Outside there is the wood split and stacked under tarps, and the snow must be thrown off before it can be dug out and moved to the large woodbox on the porch, which holds about a 3-4 day supply that gets moved gradually into the smaller woodbox inside, and then into the stove. It's an old airtight Jotul 118, in the green enamel, which takes a 2-foot stick.

These Jotuls, and their smaller cousins (the model 602) were imported by the tens of thousands in the 1970s during the energy crisis and its aftermath, and put into the old houses that countercultural refugees from the cities moved into hereabouts. Even more popular among this segment of those "from away" who moved here then were the Vermont Castings stoves, which were advertised in a manner calculated to serve the values of this countercultural population, with an emphasis on fine craftsmanship and hints and tips on felling trees, splitting and stacking wood, and so on, for the do-it-yourself wood burner. In the long run the Jotuls proved more robust and reliable, but that is neither here nor there. Woodstoves, despite their appeal various grounds, are worse polluters than oil furnaces; and the recent increase in outdoor wood furnaces is particularly troublesome, with neighbor complaints and local ordinances multiplying.

Later generations of transplants favored the more expensive stoves with the glass fronts, but as oil prices rose precipitously last spring and summer, many on the island and throughout the state as a whole bought wood pellet stoves, which promised an easier time of it: instead of having to work one's way toward stacked, split wood, one could buy bags of wood pellets that could be stored inside and set to feed the stove more or less automatically. There was a shortage for a month or two when the stove buyers who spent more than two thousand dollars for their stoves found demand for pellets had outstripped supply; but as this fall's drop in oil prices occurred, pellet bags were more easily gotten, and those who had planned to save a lot of money buy purchasing a pellet stove when the price of home heating oil was five dollars a gallon are going to have to wait until the next oil crisis comes around--possibly not very long.

Wood is cheaper than oil, of course. A cord of good hardwood will give off as much heat as 200 gallons of oil. When heating oil was $4.50 a gallon this summer, 200 gallons cost $900 while a cord of wood, cut, split, and delivered, cost a little more than $200, less than 1/4 of the cost of oil. Now that oil is down to $2.50 a gallon, wood is still less than half as expensive as oil. If you fell trees from your woodlot, buck them, and split them yourself, your only cost is labor time plus your investment in a chainsaw and splitting maul, axe, and wedges, while a woodstove is a lot cheaper than a furnace and ductwork, baseboard heat, and so forth.

But a woodstove will not, in an old and uninsulated house, keep it very warm overnight, so while you're asleep the temperature drops and in the morning it's either cool or cold when you rise to start the fire again. The airtight stoves like the Jotuls do hold a fire overnight, to the extent that hot coals remain in the stove in the morning and the next load of wood can be laid right over them and will start right up, vented all the way open for the first twenty minutes to burn out any creosote, then damped down. If it's a little chilly then you just bundle up and after an hour or less the house is comfortable again.

To me the best part of heating with a wood stove is the warmth of the radiated heat, which simply feels better than heat from any other source. Reading or sitting with a laptop computer and feeling the radiant heat is a kind of pleasant comfort, whereas heat from a different source is just there, unnoticed. The savings are an added bonus, as is the good exercise I get in felling trees, bucking and splitting wood, stacking it, moving it, and so forth--though on a very cold morning like today, digging it out from under the snow-covered tarps, tossing it into the cart to move it to the woodbox on the porch, and then moving it into the house is a lot less convenient than turning up the thermostat on an oil furnace.

Windstorm

Tuesday night came a strong windstorm, blowing forty miles per hour steadily, with many gusts in the fifties. Certain areas of the islands and coastal mainland had higher gusts--71 registered in a town nearby--with trees down, power out. For unknown reasons the power didn't go out here, but most of the island was out for most of Wednesday, and the crews didn't finish with the trees and lines until late on Thanksgiving.

The rocky coast, with its thin soil, doesn't root the trees as deeply as elsewhere, so they're vulnerable to high winds. "Some [seeds] fell on stony ground." The coastal edge effects sometimes magnify winds and storms. This was unusual, from the southwest, and fairly tropical, with temperatures in the forties all night. Although a few years ago, in the summer, a tropical storm was particularly bad on this part of the island, with isolated tornados, this time the other parts of the island got the worst of it, and here only a few downed limbs, and some downed trees in the woods.

Transition to Winter

The leaves are down from the trees and although we haven't had a hard freeze yet there've been some frosts and winter is in the air. This is the time of year to get things done outside before the snow covers the ground. The wood needs to be moved and stacked and covered, yet ready to be taken in when the ground is covered with 2 feet of snow. Without enough space in the house, barn, or store to stack it, it must remain outside--mostly--and covered from the snow with a tarp, the eventual building of a woodshed waiting. In the late spring with the price of oil so high I decided to get four cords of wood in, plus another cord or so from trees that I felled and split. Now the price of oil is about 3/5 what it was then, but wood is still much less expensive to use than oil, the heat of wood from a woodstove is warmer and seems friendlier, and until the ground is covered with snow, heating with wood is not annoyingly inconvenient.

I don't know whether oil or wood contributes more to global warming. The issues with oil are fairly well known, but wood is not especially friendly to the environment either, as the smoke is polluting inside (a bit) and outside (considerable), while the felling of trees reduces their number and degrades the land unless one takes them just for thinning.

Besides moving wood, other winterizing activities involve putting the gardens to bed, putting up plastic storm windows to help keep heat in the store, and caulking and tightening up the windows and doors in the house.

People who know that I sometimes spend fall and winter here often assume that it's colder and snowier than it is, that conditions are harsher than they are. They can be harsh, but usually not from the cold and snow. When I lived in Minneapolis I went through six winters of much cold and snow. Here it occasionally gets below zero; there it got below thirty below. Here it snows, there it snowed a great deal. The ocean that surrounds the island and hugs the coast warms the ground and the air in winter, and the differences in temperature between this island and the mainland are a few degrees; go inland ten miles and the difference can be as much as ten degrees. If the winters here are harsh it's more because of ice; as the temperature hovers on both sides of freezing, the precipitation arrives as snow and as rain, but when the rain freezes on the ground it turns to ice. At that point walking around outside requires watchfulness.

Besides winter preparation I had planned to do some other things this fall, such as cutting branches on spruce trees overhanging the edges of the fields so that I can mow more. Every year the branches encroach more. Some overhanging branches on the roads and paths back of the property also need cutting. When the snow falls on them they hang low and then don't spring back all the way. I guess they're tired.

Cider Pressing

On Columbus Day, Nathan and Clara joined Marta and me and we spent a couple of hours picking apples for the cider pressing. With so many available, we were able to pick and choose a mix of Medaille d'Or and Kingston Black (apple varieties grown particularly for cider), plus Primas (dead ripe), Dutchess of Oldenburg, Liberty, and Rhode Island Greening. After we picked, Fred and Allison came over and we spent the next few hours pressing cider, altogether filling two five-gallon carboys and one six. The cider was sweeter than usual; 1.05 specific gravity was what I measured from the carboy the next day, and I added just under 2 pounds of sugar to each of the two carboys that remained here, happily starting to ferment, with the fermentation locks secure, all on their way to becoming cider wine. To celebrate, we drank some of the 2006 cider wine (bitter) and 2007, which I just bottled (fresh, slightly sweet, and promising). After the pressing, we played music on fiddles and banjos for an hour or so and then our friends departed, taking the six-gallon carboy and leaving us tired from the day's work but happy to have gotten it done.

Apple Report 2

The apple crop promised a better than average year in the spring, and despite the three-week drought in the summer, they have sized up and the crop is much better than average. The old trees that bear well are, and the younger trees that I've planted over the past 25 years are bearing more than usual. The earliest ones have gone by. The full sized Baldwin that I planted about fifteen years ago finally is having a productive year although it is not yet ripe. The Prima has been ripe for three weeks and are getting soft. The Liberty is ripe and tasty, bearing fairly well. The Dutchess or Shiawassee is ripe and bearing well. The old Milding has more eating apples than usual. It's an excellent year for russets; the Golden Russet has more than ever, and some of the older russets are bearing well. The one down the road to the Scotts may be a Roxbury Russet. The Rhode Island Greening behind the house, on its biennial cycle, is loaded. Within the next week or so we'll pick many and press for cider. In all, the best year for yield since 1997 here.

Second dry bean harvest

A week ago I pulled out the rest of the dry beans: the Black Coco variety, which grows well here and which makes good black bean soup. About 4 quarts from four rows, an average yield. I left them in longer than I should have, because a number of other things took priority; and when I pulled them out the pods had already started to mold and mildew from the September rains. But they were dry, and after drying them further last week I decided to thresh them, which I did today by the usual method, holding them by their stems a few at a time and banging them around inside a clean metal garbage can, then winnowing them by pouring them out of the can into the cap. The Black Coco shell easily, but the shells break off too easily from the vines, and the result is that many go into the can along with the beans, and they have to be gotten out by hand. The soybeans never came to term, and the rabbit was joined by deer a couple of weeks ago, so that many of the late crops are munched out for the first time in many years--the brussels sprouts, for instance. Tomatoes, eggplant and peppers are covered with agribon, and that keeps the deer out as well. Expecting a lot of rain this weekend, so I dug out almost all the rest of the potatoes. A small yield this year, as the three weeks without rain came at just the wrong time for them, when they were flowering and setting up. So they are small potatoes. The second crop of lettuce and spinach grows very slowly and it will be interesting to see if they size up sufficiently before the first hard freeze, which can come as early as October or as late as November.

First dry bean harvest

With tropical storm Hannah approaching, I wanted to make sure to pull out as many dry beans as had lost all or nearly all of their leaves. September's rains, usually from storms like this that slide northeast up the coast, cause the beans to fall over onto the ground and mold, which is another reason to plant early varieties. The Jacob's Cattle Gasless and the Light Red Kidney beans had lost all of their leaves, save a few plants that had a few left, and so on Friday I pulled them out, bunched them up, and put them in carts under cover in the barn. This morning as the rains continued and the wind blew, I hung them on strings in the loft. It was quite a good yield, particularly compared with two years ago when I planted dry beans in this garden. The buckwheat that grew there last year choked out the weeds, and the chicken manure that I worked into the soil at the beginning of the season gave the plants just enough nitrogen. I should lime the soil with wood ashes over the winter. The Black Coco dry beans had to stay in, for the storm last night and this morning that dumped four inches of rain here, causing minor flooding, with the wind blowing down some of the apples, particularly the Red Astrachan, and blowing a few shingles off the roof of the house as well.

Garden Report: Early September

The rabbit has fairly gotten to all the bean leaves in the garden by the old store, but a few of the edamame beans are coming on anyway, so I've left them. The patch with the Hutterite beans was not coming on, so I tilled them into the ground and planted a cover crop of oats and clover a few days ago. I pulled the onions and they are curing in the sun on the porch; I tilled that area and planted winter lettuce, spinach, and other greens. I will try to winter over some through December if possible. The yellow onions were large and the yield excellent; red less so. I'd planted them (from sets) a little farther apart this year and that may have helped them size up. The slicing tomatoes are ripening well, but a late blight has overcome the paste tomatoes. And so there will not be much in the way of tomato puree this year unless I use the slicers for that, which I think I will do. The leaves of the brussels sprouts were also mostly eaten by the rabbit, which had the effect of bringing on the sprouts themselves too soon; I'm watching them though to see. Cabbages have been ready; this was an early red variety. In the garden down to the Scotts' the beans did well and those to the back of the garden are drying with their leaves mostly off; I should be harvesting these and hanging them up in the barn soon.

Apple Report

The weeks of drought had come to an end, and the rains came off and on for the next few weeks, enough to bulk up the apples. They are a little more advanced than usual, with the Red Astrachans falling off the trees in the wind before ripening, the Anokas turning bright red (but not quite ripe), and the Primas getting ripe and tasty. This will be a better than average crop, although the winds of hurrican season may still bring them down before their time. Although the Baldwin I planted 15 years ago has had a half-dozen or so apples each year for the past five, this year there's an abundance. More than ever are on the Golden Russet as well. I must walk around and check them all out, but I've been doing other things.

Second Plantings

It is early August, the time of second plantings here. With the mild autumn coastal weather, the first frosts come any time between mid-October and mid-November, with the first hard freeze not usually arriving until Thanksgiving. This means that cool-season vegetables can be planted again now and harvested in the months of October and November: lettuce and other greens, as well as broccoli and other members of the cabbage family, peas, and spinach and chard. I'm a little late starting it, because I'm still harvesting lettuce and greens from the spring plantings, along with beets, potatoes, cabbage, onions, and early tomatoes. The rabbit has gotten most of the snap beans and has eaten the top leaves of the edamame, part of which I covered and hope to bring to harvest.

I was able to find some buckwheat seed after all, and so I planted it as a cover crop where the peas grew. This stony part of the garden has many weed seeds that come up annually, but growing buckwheat now should smother them for at least next year. I intend to plant some oats and clover in another garden as a cover crop later this month.

This morning I heard the song of a phoebe, unusual at this time of the year. In the spring they are usually around, and often they have built nests near the house; but this year was notable for their absence. This morning's appearance was surprising. On the other hand, the song of the barred owl has been startling near the house on many nights this month.

Rain go away

After the three-week dry spell, the last couple of weeks have brought mostly rain, and kept me out of the garden for the most part except to harvest greens, beets, and broccoli for meals. Today I ate the first ripe tomato, a Sungold, a cherry tomato which is a perennial favorite for flavor. A rabbit has been into the garden as a result of the dry spell stress, feeding on some bean leaves and beans, rather daintily. I could find no spaces in the fence where the rabbit could get through, but no doubt the rabbit is better at that than I. To discourage the rabbit I've moved some scarecrows around, and covered a couple of rows of the soybeans with agribon. After the week of rain it seems the rabbit has gone elsewhere for food. On the few partly sunny days I rototilled where the peas had been, and after the waste decomposes in the soil I will plant oats (could not get any buckwheat, and what I do have is too old) there and also between the dry bean rows. After that I will change over the rototiller for the sickle bar and get started mowing the fields. The apples are beginning to change color, making it possible to see them in the trees; it is an above-average year still for apples. The cider from last year is still oaking in the barrel.

Snap beans: first harvest

This afternoon brought the first harvest of snap beans. The three-week dry spell set back their progress, but when I checked them yesterday it was clear that the earliest were ready. In this variety, Provider, the beans come ready over a period of a few weeks, making for several pickings. Some varieties adapted for commercial use are bred with characteristics that favor all ripening at once, for a single machine picking; but for the home gardener, gradual ripening is more convenient--not only are fresh beans available longer, but the gardener is not overwhelmed. I picked and froze about a quart and ate a portion for supper.

Provider is Fedco's best-selling snap bean variety. Its best quality is dependability; next is the earliness and then the gradual ripening. The plants are vigorous and high-yielding. They freeze well. Unfortunately, it is not among the best tasting. For taste, my favorite is Levi Robinson, an heirloom that I have grown for years (but not this year). Compared to Provider, it is more vigorous, but not as high yielding; it ripens later (though not all at once), and the harvest is done sooner.

I checked on the progress of the dry beans. They are doing very well this year, much better than in most years, although, again, because of the dry spell they are a little behind. I used the slicing wheel hoe between the rows to weed once again. That is only twice I've had to do this since the beans were planted in early June, which is some kind of record. Usually by now I've been at them weekly. I'm contemplating planting a cover crop between the rows before the beans leaf out between the rows.

Rain at last

Last Friday began a spell of inclement weather which was very welcome in the gardens and the orchard. The warm, dry spell had lasted almost three weeks, with all the vegetables stressed. The pea yield was down; the early potato plants ceased growing; the beets, chard and peppers were wilted; the broccoli had begun to rice. Only the tomatoes, eggplant and beans were able to withstand it. I watered but after a while the watering had to be done daily, then twice daily, and water was in short supply, the rain barrels empty, the well pump taking twice as long to fill the holding tank. It reminded me of the summers in the 1980s, when the dry spells stressed the wildlife, making it more tempting for deer and other critters to invade the gardens and eat--and, indeed, there were some nibbled-off bean leaves in the garden next to the old store. So I made more cheesecloth hair bags and hung them on the fence, and got the old scarecrow back in action. The deer can easily jump the fence if they want to inconvenience themselves, and if the weather turns dry again they might do so and one morning I will find the beans and tomatoes eaten down to the ground.

Today I cut down the peas and the weeds that had grown up between the rows, and after a couple of weeks I will incorporate the dead matter into the soil, and plant buckwheat there.

Managing the Peas

Yesterday I spent an hour picking a bushel of the podded peas--Progress #9, an old variety--and another hour shelling them, then steamed them for a few minutes and froze about four quarts. Lack of rain caused them to be later than they should have been, but many had filled out and in the interests of efficiency I picked them when most of the pods were full--the very earliest were overripe, and the newest underripe, but the vast majority were just fine. I'll do another final picking in a few days and then cut them down, till them into the soil and after a couple of weeks plant buckwheat in the pea patch, which should smother the weeds and along with the pea plants add to the soil's organic matter.

"Managing" in organic gardening sacrifices maximum yield and profit for the long-term health and sustainability of the soil. I have not used a pesticide in growing vegetables here for more than 25 years, with the exception of rotenone on the potato plants--and that is an organic pesticide. Instead of depleting the soil with constant cropping, cover crops allow the soil to recover while improving tilth. Ashes from the woodstove lime the soil. This kind of management does not seek control, but rather it seeks to enhance the conditions under which nature, always uncertain, can sustain growth. This year's chief problem has been the dry spell for the past few weeks which in poor soil would have wilted the peas and severely cut back the yield. But the good soil was able to compensate, holding the early moisture long enough for the peas to fill out in the pods. So sustainability does not mean efforts to control and subdue nature but rather to observe and learn from nature, and then to work along with nature according to nature's best practices.

Last of the bean banging

This afternoon after cleaning out a section of the barn I finished up the dry bean harvest from last year. Yes, a little late. These were all light red kidney beans, the pods still attached to the plants, all dry, banged around inside a clean garbage can, so that the beans drop out of the pods into the bottom of the can. Next the few dropped pods and stems are cleaned out, and the beans are transferred into the upside down top of the can, picked over to take out a few small stems and bad beans, and poured from as high as I can reach back into the can itself, the wind taking the chaff while the beans head straight down. Six quarts all told which, along with the four quarts of black beans from a couple of weeks ago, will provide 160 individual meals--soup, chili, baked beans, curried beans, beans and rice, refried beans, etc. Early in the morning I harvested more snap peas and parboiled and froze three pints--not a lot of work there. They're still coming, while the podded peas are slow this year due to lack of rain when the pods should be filling out. I also trimmed the grass around the trunks of the young apple trees, to discourage the apple borers.

The perfect wheel hoe

This morning I felled some trees and bucked up the wood for splitting, eventually to burn this fall in the woodstove in the old store. I'll have to do this again a few more times. Then in the afternoon I hoed the rows of dry beans, nearly 500 feet of row all told. For years I'd used a stirrup hand hoe, which was effective but tedious; and then one year at an auction I got a wheel hoe cultivator for five dollars, and for some years used that. It was a lot faster and easier, but it didn't do as good a job on the weeds. Then a few years ago at another auction I spent ten dollars and bought a wheel hoe with two slicing blades, and this is the tool I wish I'd had all along. It goes fast, it slices off the weeds just below the ground, and it takes almost no effort to push. The fancy garden tool catalogs advertise "collinear" hand hoes and stirrup wheel hoes at high prices. The collinear hand hoe probably gets a little closer to the plant stems but it would take an hour to do what takes me ten minutes now. I will post a photo of this tool on this blog sometime soon. After the hoeing, I shelled out some more dry beans from last year, Black Coco, and filled about four quarts. It's getting a little dry, which is stressing some of the potatoes, as they have reached the blossom stage and need moisture. The days have been very pleasant, mostly sunny and in the 70s.

Into the cider barrel

Each year around this time I take the cider wine out of the carboy(s), where it may still be fermenting a little, and siphon it into an oak barrel to age it for a few months and give it a slightly oaky taste. And so today I did that, with the wine still bubbling to the top a little. When I'm able to keep the carboys down cellar here all year the fermentation is very slow, which is good, stopping in the winter when the temperature drops below about 48 degrees F. In some years I add a bit of sugar when transfering it to the oak barrel, but when I tasted the wine it didn't seem to need any more sugar, either for further fermentation or for taste. I prefer it dry anyway, but not still--and with it still fermenting a bit, it probably won't be still at bottling time either. As with wine from grapes, the quality and taste vary from one year to the next. 2002, 2003, and 2004 were very good; 1997 excellent; 2005 and 2006 not so good. We'll see what 2007 is like when I bottle it in September, but so far I would say it's good, not very good, and not excellent.

Early Harvests

Fresh greens for salad have been coming in since early June--several varieties of lettuce (Red Sails always the most reliable, Plato the tastiest), spinach, beet greens, arugula. Time to replant the arugula and some lettuce--which will have to be shaded as it doesn't do well above 70 degrees F. Broccoli heads have formed and will be ready soon. The snap peas have been wonderful this past week. I put up about four quarts of spinach and three of snap peas thus far. It's time to plant some more snap beans for harvest in late August/early September. The apples are coming along well enough, and I need to trim back the grass and weed growth around the trunks of the young trees, to discourage the borers, which are the most destructive among the pests for these trees. In the fall I may find the time to whitewash the trunks, following the latest advice from Fedco's apple tree expert, John Bunker. This is an old practice; I think you can find it documented in nineteenth century French paintings.

A dry week

This has been a dry week, warm and sunny but lacking in rain, stressing the plants and causing me to water the seedlings. The rock ledge is close to the topsoil here, which makes the ground wetter when it rains a lot, and dryer when it doesn't, than deeper soil would. Added organic matter helps but only to a point. Meanwhile potato plants are about 16" above the hills and have begun to attract the striped colorado potato beetles, their only consistent pest. Left alone, the beetles will eat the leaves to shreds within a week or so. My two remedies are (1) to remove and kill the bugs, and (2) to dust the leaves with an organic compound called rotenone. The easiest way to remove and kill the bugs is to pick them off the leaves and squash them between thumb and forefinger, and that is what I do. Some drop them into a jar filled with kerosene, but then one must get rid of the bug-filled kerosene safely. Why bother? And so today I removed and killed about a dozen from my four rows of potato plants. I also hilled them for the third time. The Satina and Red Gold (early) got a good stand; the Rote Erstling pretty good; the usually reliable Kennebec poor. I also planted cucumber seeds in the garden with the potatoes today. This is a little bit later than usual for the cucumbers, but they should come in during August and September which is a good time for pickling. I have been eating salad out of the garden. Greens fresh picked and eaten immediately taste wonderful, sweet and flavorful, so much better than supermarket produce. The forecast for the next few days is for showers, so perhaps the dry weather pattern will break.

Planting Dry Beans

Dry beans are so called because they dry in the pod, are threshed or shaken out of the pods dry, will store easily in jars at room temperature, and must be simmered back to softness in cooking; overnight soaking cuts the simmering time and makes it easier to get the right texture without splitting or bursting the bean as it cooks. I planted out dry beans yesterday. The weather forecast was for a heat wave--more on that later--which would bring the ground temperature up above 60 degrees, ideal for germinating beans, squash, cucumbers and corn. I used to plant corn but not anymore; I sometimes plant squash but the yield of the winter squash is low and I don't care that much for the summer squash. Cucumbers will have to go in soon. I planted out four 40' rows of light red kidney, four 40' rows of black coco, two 40' rows of Jacob's cattle, and two 25' rows of Hutterite soup beans. I saved the Montcalm red kidney seed for next year. Before planting I dropped some organic fertilizer atop the soil and lightly tilled it in, then used the earthway seeder which made the whole activity take only a couple of hours, whereas dropping the seed by hand would have taken at least twice as long and left me with an aching back and hips. I'd grown buckwheat in this garden spot last summer, and tilled it in six weeks ago, so that it's been decomposing, adding organic matter to the soil (which certainly can use all the help it can get), and shouldn't compete much with the beans for nitrogen. The buckwheat should have smothered the quackgrass that had been growing up in that spot, more and more each year, till it became troublesome. It remains to be seen what weeds come up between the rows--these are easy enough to deal with--and in the rows, which are not as easy to deal with. Those very close to the plants must be hand weeded young before pulling them up would disturb the roots of the bean plants. That is the ideal, anyway. It's possible to purchase dry beans inexpensively in the supermarket, but growing them is easy, saving the heirloom seed is satisfying, and knowing where what you're eating is coming from is always better than not. Store-bought beans can be old, tough, and tasteless, not to mention the pesticides that may have been used on them. About that heat wave: I drove over to western Maine very early this morning and drove back to the coast early in the afternoon, the temperature steadily dropping from about 86 near Waterville to 77 by the time I got back to the island around 2:30. It would have hit 90 in Waterville by then, surely. The ocean cools the land and the air near the coast in the summertime, particularly when an ocean breeze blows, usually in the afternoon. But occasionally, after a heat wave of a few days, there is no wind, and the ocean exhausts itself; it can get up to the high 80s here, and usually does once or twice a summer. But not today, while the rest of New England sweltered; it was in the 90s in Connecticut and Rhode Island. In the fall and winter the ocean warms the coastal air and land, which makes the growing season longer, though not hotter, than inland. Long-season, and late-season crops can be brought in here, such as Brussels sprouts, and fall broccoli, and various greens, that would be hurt by the colder temperatures inland. Tomorrow it may be warmer or cooler, but probably not by much, here; and a temperature in the high 70s is just fine for the beans to germinate--not only the dry beans but also the edamame and snaps. It will cause the spinach to bolt, though, so I need to harvest it pretty soon. Planting beans used to remind me of Thoreau and his beans at Walden Pond, and Yeats at Innisfree; but now I seldom think of them. Rather, it's good just to do it simply and deliberately, centered in the task, enjoying the work, thinking of the harvest to come, not the weeding that has to go on in the meantime. The beans are fenced, as all the gardens are, against the deer. I will need to make new bags of hair and hang them from the fences within the next couple of weeks. That is not a pleasant job nor do I imagine Yeats or Thoreau doing it.

Saving Bean Seed

Bean seed is easy to save--you need only dry them in the pods and then take them out. By saving seed you can gradually improve your crop if you save the seeds from the most vigorous, earliest-yielding plants. This intervention is called selecting seed. And so over the winter I dry the previous year's bean crop, some for seed and most for eating. The easiest way for me to do this is to gather the plants whole in bunches, tie them together, and hang them upside down on strings running a little below and parallel to the rafters in the barn. Today I took some of the seed beans out of the pods that had been drying all winter, and put them in jars. I will plant them within a few days. The rest I will get out of the pods for eating, but not until mid-June or so. These were dry beans I grew last year, and they are among the varieties that over nearly 30 years I've settled on as the best in terms of earliness, yield, and taste. The growing season on the island for beans starts late. Usually it's safe to plant soybeans and snap beans in the last week of May, when the ground temperature gets into the 50s. Dry beans require ground temperature in the 60s, which usually doesn't occur here until the weather turns warmer, usually during the first ten days of June. It's not frost that puts an end to the growing season for beans, but the rains that usually come in the third or fourth week of September and which, if the beans are left out in them, will mildew them and spread disease which will make them spot and wilt on the vine and over-winter poorly. Frost doesn't usually occur here until after mid-October, although for the last few years there's not been one until early November. Today I took the seeds from the pods in my usual way, by shaking a couple of dry plants at a time with the pods attached, and banging them to the insides of a clean garbage can. The pods shatter, the beans drop to the bottom of the can (along with some chaff and an occasional half-pod), and then after a few bunches are shaken, I turn the can over and pour the beans and chaff into the overturned lid of the can, pick out the few rotten ones, and then in a wind I drop the beans from the lid back into the can, while the wind blows the chaff away. Usually I repeat this a couple of times till the beans are clear, then I put them into bottles, labeled, for saving or planting. Bean seed can be saved for about three years before germination drops more than you'd like it to. I saved the following varieties of dry bean which I will grade from A to F. Light red kidney (good for chile and soup): Vigor B, Earliness B, Taste B, ease of shelling, A, yield A. Black coco (good for chile and black bean soup; also a good shell bean; plump and round): Vigor A, Earliness A, Taste B, ease of shelling B, yield C. Montcalm red kidney (good for chile): Vigor A, Earliness C, Taste A, ease of shelling C, yield B. Tiger's Eye (chile, soup): Vigor C, Earliness C, Taste A, ease of shelling C, yield C. Red Mexican: vigor B, earliness C, taste C, ease of shelling A, yield A. In other years I've been very pleased with the following varieties, which I still grow in some years: Jacob's Cattle, Ireland Creek Annie, Dot Yellow Eye, Flash (shell bean). I've grown many other varieties but overall they didn't please me as much as these. Soups, chiles, stews featuring dry beans soaked overnight can be made in large amounts and frozen in small batches for eating without much added prep time. The more home-grown organic ingredients, the better the taste--and there is some health benefit, to say nothing of the pleasure of growing your own food!

Growing Edamame

On Tuesday I planted out four rows (about 80 feet) of green soybeans, what the Japanese call Edamame. These are nutty and sweet tasting, high in protein, and when combined with other ingredients they make a nutritious dish. I started growing them in the mid-1980s, trialing a variety called Butterbeans from Johnny's Selected Seeds. I've experimented with several other varieties since then, but Butterbeans is the best for flavor, reliability, and yield. As with peas, I use an earthway seeder purchased for about ten dollars at auction. Its great advantage is that I don't have to bend over and drop the seeds in myself, although for nearly twenty years that is what I did, planting about 1,500 feet of bean rows including dry beans as well as the green soys. The harvest is time-consuming as the beans need to be shelled after they are parboiled, then frozen in small batches to put into soups and stews or eaten as a side dish with garlic and olive oil. In addition I planted out a row of green snap beans (Provider) and a row of yellow wax beans (Golden Butterwax). The best green snaps are a variety called Levi Robinson but they do better when the soil is a little warmer, as do the dry beans. Yet my organic farming neighbor Nathan, who lives ten miles away on the mainland, gets his beans in ten days before I do. Maybe he is operating on global warming time while I am still working the calendar that worked for me in the 1980s. His microclimate is a few degrees warmer than mine at this time of the year, though.

Tomatoes

Most of the apple blossoms have dropped by now, blown by the wind, except for those on the late-bloomers like the Baldwin. Usually the early-ripeners are the early bloomers, and so it goes: the Baldwin is a winter apple, which means it does not fully ripen on the tree before the winter comes. On the first of June Marta and I planted the paste tomatoes and the slicers that I'd grown from seed. We use IRT mulch, a kind of plastic that Fedco sells which is spread atop the soil and warms it--which makes a real difference in yield and earliness. The coast of Maine, with its mild summers and long, cool falls, is not tomato-heaven. Late varieties are difficult to bring in. And so I grow the early ones, and also the short (determinate) ones when possible. They all sprawl atop the mulch. Deer will jump the garden fence if tall varieties are staked; the stakes (for pole beans also) seem to attract the deer. This is something I learned in the 1980s and it's one of the compromises of gardening here. Of course, I might invest in 8-feet high chain-link fences around the garden, but that's expensive, ugly, and seems technologically inappropriate. More to my liking are the cheesecloth bags I make and fill with hair from the barber shop, which I then tie to the low (four-feet high) fences. The smell of the human hair seems to discourage the deer and other animals. A scarecrow or two in the middles of the gardens also helps. The law of unintended consequences teaches it's best to try to co-exist with the pests (including deer) by discouraging them but not eliminating them. Back to planting tomatoes: we slice a hole thru the mulch and plant the tomato seedling, which has grown in a small yogurt container, lower in the ground than it set in the container, with a tablespoon of fish meal and bone meal worked into the soil at the base of the plant. Compared with pea and bean planting, this is labor-intensive, requiring kneeling and digging. But we got about 20 paste tomato plants and an equal number of slicers through the mulch, along with some peppers and eggplant (also warmth-loving). Of course, the mulch is ugly also, but it keeps the weeds down and on balance because it's inexpensive and works so well, I'm not opposed to it. Garden aesthetics have to yield often enough anyway, when it's vegetables and productivity that come first, in a challenging spot to grow a garden. Over the years, I've experimented growing many varieties of tomatoes, from the most modern to the heirlooms. As with other types of vegetables, the variety that grows well here may not do so well 20 or 200 miles from here, so it's trial and error. Among the most successful here are Bellstar (paste) and Sungold (cherry). Some I grow because of their taste and earliness (Cosmonaut Volkov), others because of their yield (Heinz paste), others because of their keeping qualities (Burpee Long Keeper). I've grown the ones that are reputed to taste the best (Brandywine) and found that they just don't yield much here. At one point I decided to grow heirlooms that could be found in the earliest seed catalogs from the 19th c. and put in one or two plants of varieties such as Chalk's Early Jewel. None of these were especially outstanding, but it was fun to grow them from seed and taste them. A good tasting, good-sized, early, slicing tomato is just not possible here, under the conditions that I grow tomatoes. It may be that with special coldframes or tunnels it could be done, but that is more technology than I want to fool with. Over the years I've gradually tried to be more efficient with gardening. The perfect, as they say, is the enemy of the good.

Memorial Day

Today I remembered nearly 30 years of gardening on this land by spreading two cans of composted kitchen garbage on the part of the garden where tomatoes and edamame soybeans will grow this year. I moved the heavy garbage cans with a hand cart meant to move barrels, then shoveled out the compost, partly liquified, and spread it around and tilled in in, twice over. Impossible to avoid getting the stuff on shoes, splattered a little on pant cuffs, to the point where the old shoes and pants have to stay outdoors tonight. The stand of peas is spotty but luckily I planted enough in case that happened. Spent a couple of hours weeding, in the spinach, greens, onions, and peas. The garden is predictably slow at this time of the year, temps in the low 40s at night, 50s and low 60s during the day. Is there anything more pleasant than the smell of apple blossoms? The trees are in full bloom now. The Dutchess is not as full as I'd hoped, but many of the others are much better than average. Last year was an excellent blossom and apple year in this area, but as it was an off-year for many of the better-producing trees on this land, the overall yield wasn't as good here as elsewhere. This year it should be better, if all else goes well. It's unusual to have two good years in a row. I saw some goldfinches today; they are in their brightest gold and black plumage.

The apple blossom

I returned to the island yesterday after about ten days in Providence. "The Apple Blossom" is the name of a grand old fiddle tune from Kentucky's Cumberland Plateau. Source musicians include Isham Monday of Cloyd's Ridge, near Tompkinsville, recorded in 1959 at home by John Newport and D.K. Wilgus; and Jim Bowles, recorded by Wilgus and a dozen years later by Bruce Greene. And here on the island the blossoms are far enough advanced for me to tell that it will be an above average blossom year. Among the trees that are covered with bloom are the Red Astrichan (or Astrachan), an early apple that ripens around September 1, or rather falls from the tree around then not fully ripe. It's excellent for sauce but it'll be gone by come cider time around Columbus Day. Another is the large, unnamed, 50- to 75-year-old tree in the cluster behind the house; the apples are medium sized, round to oblate, green with a red blush, come in at cider pressing time, and although the flavor is not outstanding it is good and mild, blending well with the acidic, flavorful apples. Many other trees will have a good blossom: the Prima, the Dutchess, the unnamed tree at the rear of the orchard that is Marta's favorite, the Liberty, the Winesap. Even the Golden Russet and the Baldwin have more than usual--though that's not saying much. Pollination and blossom-set is next. Bees are endangered these days due to a virus, a tragic story, but in this location they have been sufficient over the years--so far, so good. A stretch of rainy weather at blossom time would be troublesome, and lessen pollination; but although rain is predicted for the next two days, the long weekend is forecast to be sunny, warm, and dry, which should be perfect for pollination. I noted that the blossoms are about five to seven days earlier than usual this year, perhaps due to global warming. 

Warbling

The warblers have arrived. On my afternoon walk I heard the yellow-rump's fizzle and the "I'm black-throated green." Yesterday morning I planted potatoes: the reliable Kennebecs, the smooth Satinas, and the delicious early Rote Erstlings. Trying Red Gold this year, supposedly a very early variety that doesn't store well. Arugula and lettuce just coming up. Apple trees leafing out; some blossoms, so the year won't be a bust. How many is still hard to tell, but it doesn't look like a boom either. 

Birds without puddles

I left the island for a couple of days to take care of some business in Providence. Upon returning I noted that although the soil hadn't puddled, the hard rain had compacted the soil some. Several days of warm sun would bake it, so a bit of watering is in order now. There may even be time to plant peas in the parts of the rows where mysteriously they didn't emerge. The birds around the house so far this spring are only the usual chickadees, downy woodpeckers, and nuthatches. Phoebes will appear; so will the white-throated sparrows. Soon the warblers will come in, especially the black-throated green. I did hear the hermit thrush, whose song is the most beautiful of all. 

A hard rain

The NOAA weather alerts were ominous: up to four inches of rain was forecast, with winds gusting to fifty miles per hour. After seemingly storing up rain all during this warm, dry April, the skies opened last night and by this afternoon a couple of inches of rain had fallen. Puddles in the lawn, puddles on either side of the car and the truck, but in the garden no puddles, seeds not washing away, not yet anyway. Here on the island, thin topsoil conspires with rocky ledge near the ground's surface to make it hard to absorb so much water in so short a time; yet so far the garden soil has absorbed it. A healthy garden soil of good tilth with plenty of organic matter will be more absorbent than the soil beneath a lawn. How much longer before puddling I can't say, but the rain is supposed to stop tonight and I will see tomorrow. If I could order rain, it would come gently at night, and not every night: just enough for what's growing, and a little more as the peas fill out in the pods. 

Apple Report: 1

Today I removed the tree wraps from the lower trunks of the younger trees, and checked out the buds, which are just beginning to swell in the later-blooming varieties, and which have broken out in the early ones. Although it's too early to tell how good a blossom year this will be, it appears as if the early trees will have some blossoms. How full they will be is still impossible to determine. Last year was one of the best for blossoms since 1997. Of course, many things about the weather have to go right from now until October for a large apple crop. Apple trees tend toward blossoming every other year, so I'm not expecting many this year. But we shall see.

Onions, Beets, Chard, and Greens

The spinach and peas I planted two weeks ago are up. I side-dressed the spinach with compost this morning. The unusual warm, dry spell that allowed peas to go in two weeks ago has continued, making it possible to till the soil and plant onions, beets, chard, and greens today. I don't have good luck with carrots and so I've stopped planting them. In a couple of days I will cut any large potato seeds and leave them out in a dark place to harden off before planting them in a week or two. Rain is forecast in the coming week. Soil preparation included fish meal spread over the wood ashes in the garden by the barn, worked in with a rototiller. Using a wheel hoe I next made six rows each about 25' long and three inches deep. I dropped compost into the bottom inch of each row, then planted a row of red onion sets, another row of yellow Stuttgarter (these store till the following June), a row of swiss chard, a row of three varieties of beets (some for greens), and a row of lettuce and arugula. I left the sixth row open. Using a regular hoe I spread soil over the tops of the seeds, and sets, leaving about an inch and a half of depression in each row. This will fill in gradually as the year goes on, while for now the effect is to keep the seedlings from spilling out of the rows in case of a hard rain. I also rototilled in the large garden down the road, a second pass to till in some of the buckwheat straw I never got around to tilling in last fall; and in the small garden out toward the orchard, the one that a former owner of this property had used as a garden spot. Each year at this time I promise to haul seaweed from the causeway to use as mulch between the rows, but it's been more than a few years since I got some. The seaweed has about as much nitrogen as manure, as well as trace minerals, and it's very good for the tilth of the soil once it breaks down. Over the years I've worked out thru trial and error a routine for keeping the soil healthy and planting with a minimum of time and labor. In the early years I put a lot of seaweed into the soil, and no, it doesn't turn the vegetables salty. More recently I've been purchasing soil amendments and working them in. 

Pilgrimage to FEDCO

Yesterday I took my annual trip to Clinton, Maine to get potatoes, onions, soil supplements, and late-season seeds at FEDCO, the gardening supplies co-op that has been around for some 30 years now. Like the trip to the Common Ground Fair in September, this has become a kind of pilgrimage, where it's good to see like-minded people going seriously about organic gardening and the path it puts one on. It's good, always, to see a young generation of co-op workers, not only the children but now even some grandchildren of the counterculture folks who came to Maine in the 1960s and 1970s and established, among other things, MOFGA (the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association), FEDCO, and Johnny's Selected Seeds, the other major organic gardening institution in the state of Maine. It feels good to see the old faces, talk with founders like CR Lawn (his actual name), give them some heirloom seeds to trial, and bring back a carload of bulk fertilizers, potatoes, and onions. FEDCO has always been primarily a distribution co-op for farmers; their prices are wholesale. Over the years they've increasingly enlisted Maine growers and honed their offerings to varieties that do well in northern New England. Johnny's founder Rob Johnston always viewed his seed company as part retail establishment, part research, and so down through the years they've developed many excellent varieties of vegetables on their own farm, some attaining All-America status, while trialing and testing the others that they offer, constantly improving their selection. Rob retired a few years ago, selling the company to the employees. They seek a national market with a glossy catalog and a friendly web presence; their prices are retail, and the quality of their products is outstanding. If you're a backyard gardener, you can't do better than Johnny's. FEDCO, on the other hand, is not market-oriented; commercialism is counter to their habit. If you want good, cheap seeds, potatoes, fruit trees, greensand, and various other stuff for organic farming and gardening, FEDCO is for you. The FEDCO catalog, on newsprint paper, filled with wonderful drawings and terrible puns, is a relic from generations past. 

What's in a Name?

I should say something about the name of this blog: apples from the island. Settlers who built homes on the island until World War II as a rule planted a few apple trees in their back yards, and others elsewhere on their property, for a good supply of apple cider as well as for cooking and eating. This was a common practice most everywhere in rural New England. Today the island is filled with old apple trees, some behind houses still standing, others in the woods where old cellar holes may be found. Still other trees may be found, "volunteers" that grew from apple seeds which birds and deer and other animals spread from their droppings after eating. The apple tree does not grow true to variety from seed; seed-grown trees are hybrids from cross-pollination. Named varieties are always grafted: a scion (twig) from the tree of a named variety is attached to a hardy apple rootstock. The island settlers usually planted named varieties obtained as nursery stock, but over the years the identity of most of the old trees has been lost and has to be guessed at from the tree habit and the qualities of the fruit. Apples from the island has a literal meaning for me, as I make cider wine from the apples here; also, the habits of the apple serve as a rich metaphor. Apple specialists (pomologists) have walked this property and attempted to identify some of the trees that are more than fifty or a hundred years old and still bearing, but they don't agree on the varieties; and I have my own opinions.

Spinach time

After dropping off my tax returns yesterday, at the very local post office on the island, I asked the postmistress, who is an avid enough gardener to keep her own greenhouse, how her seedlings were coming along. She replied, and then asked me if I'd gotten my spinach in yet. Spinach requires longer cool weather than I usually get after the ground has dried to workability, so I'd forgotten completely that in this unusual dry spring I could plant spinach now. So after doing a few chores I got spinach seeds out planted about ten feet of row. As a child I never cared for the taste. My mother religiously purchased it, and prepared it for the family, along with liver and onions, another food I wrinkled my nose at. I came to find out, as an adult, that she didn't like the taste either; but she had read in a nutrition guide that these were good for health. Well, she lived until 92, so she must have known something. But I was convinced that Popeye was a plot to convince youngsters to eat spinach. Today I enjoy the taste, raw in salads or steamed lightly. There's something almost human in the shape of the spinach plant, with its upright stem and many long arms. Cut and come again.

Get Your Peas In

Unlike most years, the ground was dry enough to plant peas when I got to the island yesterday. Today I spread wood ashes from the woodstove on a 30'x10' part of the garden by the old store, followed by a light spread of limestone, then tilled it and the surface plant debris from last year into the soil. I made four double rows two feet apart, shook fish meal fertilizer into the rows, and then using an earthway seeder planted two double rows of Sugar Ann dwarf snap peas and two double rows of Progress #9 podded peas. They are two feet high, support each other, and I do not stake them lest they attract deer. Instead, they flop over, some supporting each other, attracting mildew, and making picking harder. But the alternative is to find them eaten by deer. Gardening on the island isn't easy. The land is mostly a spruce forest, with clearings where ledge is close to the surface; drainage there is poor. Other trees are alder, poplar ("popple"), birch, a few pine and some ash. In one small part of this 20-acre property is a small, old stand of beech. The soil is naturally acidic and clayey; it is good for blueberries. Deer are plentiful on the island and they will eat growing vegetables, so the gardens have to be fenced. The deer could jump my fences but I use human hair bags that I make from cut hair I get from a barber shop, enclosed in cheesecloth and hung strategically from the fence. Hair bags against the deer is local folklore, and it has worked for me for nearly 30 years, so long as I don't grow anything that is taller than a couple of feet. Pole beans or staked tomatoes have proved too tempting for the deer, hair bags or none.  In 1980, the first summer after I bought the place, I started an organic vegetable garden to feed the household. Gradually it expanded to four vegetable garden spots. The one by the old store is about 30' x 50'; another by the barn is about 12' x 20'; another down the road is about 20' x 60'; and the last, which served the first owner of this property as a garden, is up the road to the orchard, and about 15' x 20'. It is the worst of the four, and despite my attempts to improve it with tons of seaweed from the causeway by the ocean and with various manures and fertilizers, it remains unproductive. The others have become decent to good, depending on the year. But I did not choose this spot because it had any natural advantages for gardening. When I spoke with Fedco apple guru John Bunker about my attempts to grow apples and make cider wine here, he asked me where I lived; when I told him, his words were, "You must like a challenge." I do. But I also like to have gardens that produce, and so this year, unlike last, may give me a crop of snap peas and another of sweet peas which I will eat in season and freeze for the rest of the year.  Today was warm (50 degrees) and dry, but rain is predicted for the next few days. Too much rain or cold and the peas will rot in the gound, feeding pessimism; but with any luck at all they will emerge in a few weeks and be ready by July 4th, the benchmark in local folklore.