Wild grapes & their leaves

This summer has been ferociously busy, but I have managed to find time for some wild foods harvesting and preparation. Last week I crossed the road and fields to the woodline, in search of tender wild grape leaves and the small tart purple wild grapes.

With them I planned to make dolmas and grape juice. Euell Gibbons and other wild food writers say you should collect grape leaves in June while they are new and tender, but even in August I found several dozen that were not too bug-eaten or leathery; and I also gathered numerous ripe, miniature grape clusters, found hiding beneath the blankets of vines and leaves.

Back at the house, I cooked the leaves in a few inches of boiling water (with olive oil, garlic, red wine vinegar) for about five minutes to soften and partially cook them. While they drained and cooled I prepared rice with olives, garlic, nuts, raisins and other tasty ingredients. I dabbed a bit of the rice mix into each leaf; folded top and bottom and sides of each leaf around the mix, and placed each dolma bundle seam-side down in a glass casserole pan.

When the pan was full (one layer, tightly packed), I poured over it a flavorful mix of oil, vinegars, salt and pepper (also some liquid from a jar of olives) - enough to come up the sides of the dolmas but not to cover.

A tin foil cover was applied to the casserole, and I let it simmer in the oven for about 45 minutes at 350F. Then it went into the fridge to cool. These dolmas were wildly flavorful and tender - success!!!

As for preparing the grapes for juice, I sorted the ripe purple grapes into a pan with a little bit of water, brought it to a boil and let it simmer for about 10-12 minutes. I placed a metal mesh kitchen strainer over a bowl and poured grapes and juice into the strainer.

With a wooden spoon, I rubbed the grapes gently so that their pulp went through the strainer into the bowl with the juice, leaving the grape pips behind in the strainer (I discarded the pips, yes of course into the compost bin).

Tasting the resulting juice, I found it exceedingly tart, so I cut it with about a cup and a half of water and 2-3 T of sugar, stirred, and let it cool in the fridge. Even a week later it was AMAZINGLY pure and refreshing in its purple grapey flavor - I mixed it with seltzer - POW!

When it fails to rain

Beautiful fresh rainwater can fill a bucket quickly - but none fell this weekend.

The rainclouds swept heavily and darkly across my backyard all day Sunday, but released only a few sprinkles in all that time, not enough to even wet the bottom of my buckets set at the bottoms of downspouts on the house. Not enough to flush one toilet one time!

I went to the Slottjes' house for a tasty (home made! Go Helen!) supper on Saturday, had a long hot shower, and filled twelve jugs of water from their kitchen and bathroom taps. As he lugged the jugs out to my car David said, "It would do some people a lot of good to have to live like this for a while."

Of course, most of the world's people do live like this -- in fact much worse -- drinking, washing and cooking with polluted water -- when they can get it.

David was referring to New Yorkers and other pro-gasaholics who are convinced that using our precious clean fresh water for gas fracking is a great energy bargain for the country and planet. If they had to live on water in jugs and showers at friends' houses, they might begin to understand the true (overwhelming) value of water in the gas-water equation.

I got back to the house with my twelve jugs of water wealth, and ran around setting up the downspout buckets for all the rain that was supposed to show up on Sunday. I went to bed Saturday night thinking that I was going to be rich - water to drink, wash dishes with, water for the tomatoes in the garden, and flush the toilet twice a day!

I used up almost three gallons of the jug water wealth on Sunday to wash two sinkfulls of dishes that had built up -- and there was an almighty stink of putrefaction in the drain due to no soapy water having rinsed its gullet for five days.

And then, no rain all day Sunday. A month into having no running water, I kept thinking about what the Atlanta sewer and water authority guy said at that conference: "Try to do without it for an afternoon!"

Sadly, the new advice is to call in a well driller expert to help diagnose the problem. Uh oh.

The sound of flowing water

Some days I am cast down by the complications of having a dry well, but this afternoon as it rained gently and quietly, I began to hear the most lovely sound: it was water trickling through the downspouts off the roof and into the buckets I have set around the house. Such a sweet pure small calming set of notes.

I washed chard from the garden today by setting the leaves out on the picnic table, turning them over when they were brimming with rainwater, and then shaking them. I know there's bad stuff in the rainwater, but surely the romance of rain-washed produce is stronger than acid rain?

Sitting out in the back yard yesterday, I gazed at the tops of the trees around my house as they swayed far above me in the restless breeze of the approaching rainstorms. White pines, maples, willow -- and the big oak in the front yard, about 60 years old (I remember when my mom planted it, young and skinny.) I thought about the shallow roots of the white pines, and the deep taproot of the oak -- and stopped to think again. Maybe the oak tree's root has grown deep enough to tap into my well water? If that is true, the oak is more than welcome to it.

"Will Dryden Go Dry?"

Photo: Put a brick in it - a brick in your toilet tank reduces water needed for flush. That is a good thing when you have to pour water into the tank for each flush, when your well goes dry.

“Will Dryden Go Dry?" That's a good question. It is being asked by a Dryden-based pro-fracking group, in terms of the Dryden Town Board voting for a zoning ordinance that would ban gas drilling in the Town of Dryden (August 2 is the likely date for the vote).

I am wondering the same thing, but in terms of Dryden's WATER WELLS going dry, due to this devastatingly dry summer.

How about it, Dryden residents - do we have water to spare from our creeks to use for fracking, at 5 million gallons of freshwater per frac?

When cows drink 50 gallons of water a day and more when being milked, aren't we already down to the dry creek bed in many places, and aren't many of you having to truck in water for cisterns and dry wells? This is the story I heard from friends in Lansing and Caroline last night, and I doubt it is different in Dryden.

Pro-frackers state that we have "spare, extra" water falling down out of the sky that we can use for fracking, and no one will notice its loss. Who are they kidding?

Farmers are smart, surely they won't fall for this nonsense. Right now, the creeks and our famous waterfalls are down to a trickle. Climate predictions state that the "new normal" has arrived in the form of extreme weather patterns such as last winter's deep cold and the spring mega-rains, followed by an extended, deep dry season. We do not have any water to spare, not one drop, for fracking!

Our climate will, it is projected (by the Union of Concerned Scientists), shift toward that of Georgia's today, by the year 2100. I don't want to think about Georgia's 2100 climate, but the Southeastern states seem to think that climate change is a commie plot and won't listen, anyway.
Meanwhile, I am dealing with my own domestic well going dry, and learning that many folks on (unfiltered) wells around here have to deal with water shortages every summer. They pay to have water trucked in to cisterns planted in their yards, and they go to the lakes and creeks for their baths and the laundromats for their laundry. That is the summer pattern here -- always has been; and is going to worsen as the "new normal" climate takes hold.

"Will Dryden Go Dry?" It already is dry -- and it will be parched and barren if fracking is allowed.

My well ran dry

Photo: rainwater harvesting.

My house gets water via a well; family lore says it is 70 feet deep. The house was built in 1950 and the well has never gone dry. In the hot dry days of 2010, the water supply got a bit shaky -- the faucet spat and coughed and the water was sulfur-smelly, but it kept on coming. I hose-watered a vegetable garden, new berry bush patches, new flowers around the front patio, a new bed of day lilies and perennials out near the road.

By mid-autumn 2010 I had forgotten all about my fears of the well going dry, further calmed by the copious water pouring out of the wetland woods behind my house all winter and spring 2011 -- enough to often form a small stream running across my backyard, the water pouring into my neighbors' front and back yard, their house surrounded by water, linked via a driveway isthmus to the road. Water shortage? Not here!

Last Sunday, in mid-July 2011, the water stopped flowing. I had done two loads of laundry and watered the small gardens and small trees and berry patches that I have planted over the past two years. I had bought a small cheap oscillating sprinkler to save myself some time (hubris enters the picture), had ratcheted down the settings so that it sprinkled very specific areas.

I was setting up the sprinkler in the patio to water the delicate flowers that get so super-heated, and suddenly the water flow began to cough and choke, and a blast of water blew out the plug on the end of the sprinkler - and then no more water. The well pump was on -- and did not go off. It was working madly to suck water up out of the ground and into my pipes and faucets and toilets - but the well was dry.

The plumber has been here twice and is fairly sure this is a dry well, not a leaky pipe under the house or a broken well casing (know all about that from gas fracking). He said that on the day I called their emergency line, FIVE other people called with dry wells. I have heard since that "many people" are reporting dry wells in this supposedly water-rich area, and farmers are in fear of losing their water supply.

My political voice keeps trying to break in here, about how is it that gas companies want our water to frack gas wells, when we don't have enough for our own uses -- but I'll stay calm and for the time being continue looking at this personal disaster with manifold household and day-to-day ramifications.

I'll eventually get around to water and gas fracking and Governor Cuomo saying that NY City's unfiltered water is more important than all our unfiltered wells upstate .... and right-wingers right here in Dryden NY saying that because we have all this "free" precipitation that "falls out of the sky every year," that means we have lots of "extra" water that can be used (permanently removed from the water cycle) for gas fracking, and no one will notice the loss!

But I will tamp down the rage and return to my situation of a household in midsummer suddenly without running water for the forseeable future. Like the guy who runs the Atlanta Sewer and Water District said in a talk at River Rally in May, "Try doing without it for an afternoon!"

Seems to me that climate change and my own personal necessity for adaptation have arrived on my doorstep: suddenly last Sunday. I am no consumer hog. I am getting an energy audit for my house so that I can further reduce my natural gas usage; I keep the house at 55-62F in the winter and don't have a/c or a dishwasher, and I put my laundry on the line whenever feasible. Trying to grow my own vegetables. Replacing lawn with native plants. Composting every last little scrap and recycling the rest. Trying to be good! But the "new normal" has caught up with me, and left me high and dry.

Wait a minute, did you catch me saying the words climate change? Those dirty wicked leftie words that mean I am part of some inchoate, foggy plot to destroy the American Way of Life? Oh darn it, "politics" -- though I call 'em FACTS -- have crept back in.

It's hot, it's late, the neighbors are shooting off big boomer firecrackers that could set the tinder-dry woods on fire, the police soothe me over the phone that they will come check it out but they don't, and my cats are miserable in their heavy fur coats. I am going to take the one-gallon shower that I have perfected.

Check back in for happy hints on water conservation and things I have learned in one short week about what happens when a house goes water-free in mid-summer. And there will be sudden dangerous outbursts of fact-based science commentary.

I hear it might rain Sunday night, or maybe Monday.

Legal Maybe, Unethical for Sure: Hanshaw Road Cell Tower Project

Note: In October 2013 I was contacted by XXXX and asked to take down this post. I have removed all instances of their name.

The XXXX cell tower project on Hanshaw Road behind Ludgate’s Farms Store just keeps whittling away at the surrounding landscape.
I spoke to Mike Ludgate today, and he told me a sleazy tale.

Seems that XXXX needed to take down some of Ludgate’s full-grown trees for an electric power right of way (see photo, taken today) as a followup, not-mentioned-earlier, environmentally-negative impact of this project.

Did they contact Mike, who runs the family business at this location?
No. They found his mom’s phone number and called her.
(Yes, she is the landowner.)

They told her that they “had to have” a right of way agreement signed by her in order to cut down the trees. She said that she could not come to their office, because she had just had surgery and was on medications that prevented her from driving.

“Oh no problem, ma’am,” they replied, and they were over there in a flash, and obtained her signature. Mike found out about this action two weeks later.

Now they have taken out full-grown trees on his property to accomodate higher power poles, leaving one tree-depth as a screen for his property from the road.

Earlier, I was feeling resigned about the fact that they apparently put up the incorrect, non-“green” type of tower at this site, as a technician informed Mike casually last month as the tower was completed.

Now, I want to know: What is the tower they were supposed to put up?
What will it take to require them to take the incorrect one down, and put up the correct one?

I also want to know what additional impacts are planned for this site, that are already resulting in excessive destruction of wildlife habitat and degradation of the wildlife corridor between the Fall Creek Unique Natural Area and the Sapsucker Woods Unique Natural Area.

Is XXXX behaving in an underhanded and punitive manner toward Mike Ludgate and this neighborhood, for having tried to stop this bad project in this vulnerable, neighborhood location?

As Friends of Hanshaw said in their comments on this project, this “upgrade” will benefit only Ithaca residents.
It is already having negative effects on Dryden residents.

Late Spring is Relinquished to Early Summer: The Moving Hand

I learned from the Floating Classroom folks that it isn’t summer in Cayuga Lake until the blue-green algae move to the forefront. Likewise on land, for me the season shifts from late spring to early summer with a taste of the first wild strawberries.

This morning I ate three, as I walked back along the top of the Fall Creek Gorge on the Cayuga Trail after dropping my car off for an oil change in Varna. The berries were not fully ripe, and thus a bit tart, but their wild red berry flavor loosed a flood of 45 year old memories of picking them by the small bucketful in fields filled with grasses and flowers and young white pines, now converted into a lawn, parking lot and business building. Also of the astonishing luxury of mashing a handful of ripe wild strawberries just enough to release the juice, and spreading them on white bread for a quick treat.

As this slow, cool spring has progressed, I have been watching the many areas in my yard and in nearby long-grass pastures for the small white strawberry blossoms that shine out briefly in the grass and then fade, replaced by ripening small berries. I am ready to seek a real harvest this year, moving beyond the tantalizing few berries to the many, so that maybe at least once this season I will get “enough.”

Meanwhile, promise of harvests to come are seen in the wild grapevines flourishing along field edges and in shady and sunny roadside tangles, and in numerous other fruits and edibles that are flourishing as the seasons relentlessly carry us forward.

From March onward to now in mid-June, I have had several felicitous encounters with wild foods as they emerged after the winter, and enjoyed the company of those who manage and harvest them. However I have foolishly but understandably (seeing as how I am working full-time or more) not allowed myself the time to write about each one fully.

Thus a series of regrettably brief summaries will follow, in order that I at least record some part of my enjoyment and explorations from this just-past spring. Topics covered will be (though perhaps not in this order): Nancy’s grape juice, maple syrup and ramps, new plantings for future harvests (raspberry bushes, apple trees and hops), making dandelion wine (“Front Yard” label), violets and nasturtiums, one small peach tree planted by the Cayuga Indians to begin to reverse a 200-plus year old genocide; and the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute’s sustainable harvest workshops, from which I brought back a small log inoculated with shiitake mushroom spores.

Then I will be able to write about the wonderful early June evening that I and Deb Grantham spent monitoring bats via a Bat Detector on the roof of my car, driving in the full moon’s light across high wild places around Ithaca. Bats are in very bad trouble due to White Nose Syndrome, and this was a small step we could take, helping with a statewide bat census.

And meanwhile we must feel fully confident that it is the right thing to do, to firmly say no to bullying cell tower companies, bullying land developers, and bullying rapacious shale blasting and drilling energy companies and their shady ex-government overlords. It is time to turn that tide back toward what we are for: love of the land, water and air; time to again be unashamedly pro-environment, and to get our excellent environmental laws working once again.