Coffee notes

    Coffee is one of my can't do-withouts. It wasn't until college that I became a coffee drinker, but I haven't looked back. Forty years ago, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Coffee Connection, a combination coffeehouse, roasting and retailing operation, opened, and I became a coffee connoisseur, sort of. Buying gourmet coffee by the pound, carefully grinding the whole beans and putting just the right amount into the drip pot--in those days, Chemex pots were favored. I understand they're making a comeback today, but I went over to Melitta drippers long ago. At first I liked the stronger-flavored, darker roasts; but as I've grown older the delicacy of the lighter ones appeals more. The Coffee Connection is long gone from Cambridge, and so am I; but gourmet coffee beans have been one of my very few luxuries over the years. And so it was delightful to learn, a few years ago, that a coffee roaster had set up shop here on the island. I've been a patron ever since.
    Coffee is in the news periodically because of fluctuations in wholesale prices and coffee futures, and because of the fair/unfair trade aspects of the operation with its residues of colonialism in third-world corporate capitalism. Recently, a disease (coffee rust) has reduced production drastically in South America, particularly Brazil (which produces more coffee than any other nation). Prices are rising, and a story in a not-so-nearby city paper featured an interview with some of the purveyors in the state, including the one on this island. After noting that Dunkin Donuts, the chain that pours the most non-gourment coffee in the northeast, was upping its prices by ten percent, the reporter asked a couple of the best-known roaster/retailer/pourer shops in Portland what they were going to do, and each said they would raise prices. But the one on the island is going to hold the line, the owner said--which is good, because the prices there already are higher than in Portland (just like gasoline and most everything else on the island).     
   The island roaster sells coffee for $14 per pound. These are first-rate beans, especially the ones from Middle and South America. $14 per pound is near the high end compared to other gourmet roasters in New England, but the retail prices have stayed pretty much the same over the past decade or so, while the cost wholesale to the roaster fluctuates. I supposed they thought by keeping the price constant they would make up in good times for the smaller profit margins in bad, but I had no idea how much the wholesale prices were. The newspaper article mentioned that the gourmet beans cost the roasters on average $3.50 per pound, green, before roasting. Of course, they add value, but it struck me that by charging four times as much for the finished product as they paid for the raw material, this would be a good business to be in. And that is just for beans; the per-cup price of poured gourmet coffee is about one-fifth of the retail cost of a pound of beans, whereas that pound of beans will make many more than five cups of coffee--more like forty than five. I'm not going to feel sorry for the roasters and retailers, but I do wonder about the unkind practices that must have resulted in the spread of the coffee rust.
    Brazil, I wrote, produces more coffee than any other nation; but when I was there, I found it was not so popular a drink as it is in the US and Europe. In fact, it was sometimes difficult to find coffee, and when I did I had to specify that I wanted it in what to North Americans is a normal-sized cup. The usual size there holds only about four ounces, but the coffee they pour is quite ordinary, and the effect is like having Dunkin Donuts coffee in a tiny cup. There were no coffee chains like Starbucks; and relatively few cafés in João Pessoa, where I went for a week about a year ago, staying to give a keynote at a conference of Brazilian ethnomusicologists. Nor was the coffee particularly tasty. In that regard, it reminded me of the state of Maine, whose raw products (fish, pulpwood, blueberries, potatoes) are mostly exported rather than consumed at home.

Apple buds at green tip stage

Prima apple buds at green tip stage, late April, 2014

The blog entry title is meant to invoke the slow growing season, not the slow food movement. Pictured above are Prima apple buds from my orchard here on this island, at the green tip stage, in late April. The season then was about 2-3 weeks behind where it's been for the past few years, though over the course of the last 30 years I'd say it was only a little later than normal. If you look closely at the tops of the reddish bud cases you'll see the green tips emerging. By now they have leafed out, and it's too early to judge whether this will be a good blossom year. The Prima seems to be my most photogenic tree, for some reason.

Birds are back but the season is slow

     After returning from a short trip to southern New England last week, I noticed that more summer bird species had taken advantage of my absence to move in. In the past five days I've now heard the hermit thrush, the bluejay, the black-throated green warbler, and the oven bird. The goldfinches are much more numerous now. Even the phoebe has made a few cameos. But no white-throated sparrows yet. Warblers are here but other than the black-throated green I haven't identified any yet. It's been raining almost continuously for four days, keeping me inside most of the time. Tomorrow it will stop, but then it's supposed to rain again for another three days. This has been good for indoor work but not so good for outdoor. This afternoon between periods of drizzle I managed to get out and finish planting broccoli, brussels sprouts, and a few lettuce transplants. It's too wet to plant seeds. The snow peas are a few inches tall and soon I'll need to drop a woven threaded mesh where they can climb, for this year I'm experimenting with a snow pea variety that grows to five feet, instead of the usual dwarf sugar snaps or podded peas. The onions that haven't washed out are starting to grow their tops, but the potatoes have yet to show themselves. It's way too cold and damp to plant beans, tomatoes, peppers or cucumbers. About ten days ago I managed to get a Garden Royal heirloom variety apple tree into the ground, and today I fenced it against the deer, cutting some saplings and pounding them into the ground, then stretching fence to encircle the whip, which is taller than the usual ones that come from Fedco, about five feet and already beginning to leaf out. The trees in the orchard and other parts of the property have been in leaf for a week now, though with all the rain there should be some issues with scab later on in the season. It's hard to tell at this point what kind of blossom year it'll be.

Slow birds

     In this cold, wet and backward spring, the birds have been slow to migrate to the island. Today I heard ospreys whistling aloft, then looked up to confirm it. Four were circling, lower than usual. A couple of days ago on my afternoon walk I heard a downy woodpecker knocking a tree. Usually they are a week earlier. No white-throated sparrows yet, though the song sparrows are around. The phoebe that visited earlier has seldom been back, so I don't suppose a nesting pair will be here as they were last summer. Robins abound, singing more often just after a rain, or as it comes to an end in drizzle. Haven't yet seen or heard bluejays. Goldfinches are scarce and should not be. The hermit thrushes I thought I heard a while ago have not sounded since. Soon, I hope. I did hear a Nashville warbler three days ago, out by the camp. They are rare visitors here. I didn't recognize the song and had to consult Donald Borror's recordings to identify it. As usual, the chickadees are most numerous. I've always hoped to see a boreal, but it's the black-capped that is here, there, and everywhere. They are the first here to sing a spring song, their fee'e-bee, sometimes a little earlier than the calendar arrival of spring.
     Twelve days ago I planted peas, and they're just beginning to push up out of the soil. Today onion sets and potatoes went in--the usual Stuttgarter sets (seeds take too long) and two varieties of potatoes--red gold for the early, and satina for the late keepers. All later than usual on account of the wet soil. The deer having decimated the rhododendron in front of the house, I read in a pamphlet on "gardening in deer country" that Japanese flowering quince are not to their liking, so planted two small ones near the rhody and will have to cut the rhody back severely. We'll see if the deer leave it alone. They are bold enough to come right up to the edge of the house. In a couple of days I'll plant some more vegetables and hope also to get an apple whip into the ground in the orchard where another had a rough go--same variety, Garden Royal. The town truck came up the dirt road today and spread some dirt into the places where it had washed out last fall and earlier this spring. Unaccountably, more often than not they time this road work just before a rain and this was no exception as the forecast is for a storm tomorrow. But the forecasts aren't always accurate and one can hope for a light rain or none.

More birds, and skunk cabbages

   The weather finally started turning last weekend and more birds began arriving. In the past four days I've heard song sparrows and, faintly, hermit thrushes. I thought I saw a myrtle warbler. But the forest is too silent still. I still haven't gotten out on the gardens because they are too wet and cold. Next week, I hope. The new batteries I bought for my small solar energy system are working well. The ground is warming, the water in the vernal pools going down, and the skunk cabbages are showing themselves nicely now, the spadix observable in the most advanced. 

First phoebe

     This morning the first phoebe of the season paid a visit. As usual, he sat on a black locust tree branch and sang for a while, then moved about to other branches on other black locust trees, and then after about a half hour of circling from one tree to another, flew off. Every season phoebes visit, but seldom do they set up a nest nearby. Last summer, though, they nested in the eaves of the porch roof. They built two nests over the course of the summer for two successive broods. One day in August I heard the male phoebe crying his heart out, possibly because his mate had been killed. Shortly afterwards, they all were out of the nest. I'll be watching to see if they nest here this summer.
     Because of the cold, late spring, the season may be a little backward, as they say around here. Apple blossoms, and the arrival of the warblers, had been a week or two earlier than usual in recent years; but this one may be back to the old schedule. I don't have a record to tell me when phoebes have arrived in past years. Around this time of year crows are abundant and loud, as if having conferences in the woods, and flying about in the mornings, sometimes dropping down to walk about and feed on the ground. The purple finches are showing themselves and beginning to sing, their song somewhat like the robin. The ground is thawing, and the vernal pools are iced on the bottom, soon to melt and in June or July to dry up. The ice storm that hit this part of Maine just before last Christmas was less kind to the mainland; some trees, particularly birches, are bent while others are broken. A good deal of ice formed here as well, on the tree branches and wires; but probably the slightly warmer temperatures helped melt it sooner. A couple of days ago the ground finally showed some green shoots poking up through the matted thatch. Only in the shadiest forest places is there still ice on the ground now. In another week it and all the ice on the bottoms of the vernal pools will be gone. "Ice out" day on the rivers and streams used to be an important time marker in these parts, but not many notice it any more.

Coldest March on Record

    Tonight the radio brought the news that this was the coldest March on record. The weather station at Caribou recorded an average temperature of 15 degrees Fahrenheit for the entire month. And as if to put on an exclamation point, the wintry mix of rain, sleet, ice and snow that's fallen all day has turned to snow in the night. The roads, also, are feeling the harshness. I've never seen the frost heaves so high. Cars must go twenty miles per hour or slower in the bad spots. And if you don't pay attention, or don't know where the bad spots are, you risk bottoming out and a bill for new shocks and struts. I've read diary entries from 100 years ago complaining about the roads at this time of year. Imagine bouncing along in a wagon. Not for nothing were they named jolt-wagons. But April will bring some warming along with its usual showers. With any luck I may be able to get my peas in.

The intensifying storms of winter

Climate change, they say, is making weather events more intense. Winters are now colder, summers warmer, snowfalls bigger, rainstorms more violent. More tornados, more hurricanes--although last fall the US saw very few hurricanes. One of the dramatic winter events going on at the moment is snowfall in the southern US, which is unprepared for it: no equipment to get the snow and ice off the highways. It came on suddenly, and many were trapped at work, at school, wherever they were; and if they tried to drive home, they became trapped on the highways in a gridlocked traffic jam. Here on the island snow is a regular occurrence, although ice is not so common. When we get an ice storm, the risk of a power outage is greater. In January of 1998 we experienced a severe ice storm; electricity was out here for three days, elsewhere anytime from one day to two weeks. Late in December of 2013 we had two ice storms only a few days apart, and once again the electric power failed, this time twice, for a total of three days. Temperatures fell to near zero fahrenheit (minus 16 celsius). It was bearable, as long as the woodstove could be kept burning--and it could. (The newer pellet stoves, which we don't have here, require electricity to operate, so they'd not be any help.) A week without electricity and the more remote sections of the house would risk frozen water pipes, which would then burst when thawing. But the outages didn't continue that long. Water usage was the main problem; with an electric pump, the only fresh water available is what you've stored when preparing for the storm. I've written here before about the irony that 50 and 100 years ago people were less dependent on electric power and therefore they could handle these extremes better than most today. With my snowshoes, the ones with the metal grippers on the bottom, I could walk around with my camera outside in the cold and wind. In the right frame of mind, it was very beautiful. Enjoy the pic and don't think about the power outages!