First Frost..., 11-19-15

That ought to finish off the spud plants in The Garden.  Yeah…, about half of them were still green and hanging in there.  OK…, the monsoon rains had beat them down pretty good…, but they were still green laying there on the ground.

A few very short years ago…, yeah the years are slipping away way too fast these days…, I wrote a piece for The Agonist called, “Biscuits and Gravy and the First Killing Frost”.  It was dated 10/12/09.  A very late first freeze this year…, and a very early spring and summer that helped set off a fire season for the record books in the Pacific Northwest.  The dry spell during the summer browned up our grass pastures here on the Olympic Peninsula to a state that I haven’t witnessed in my 25 years here.  We got some early rain this fall…, enough to green the pastures back up…, but it didn’t seem to cool off that much.  September furnished us with some hot flashes..., but not much out of the ordinary.  October was about average…, during the days..., it seemed.  But I noticed that it didn’t cool off much during the night.

Biscuits & Gravy and the First Killing Frost

Encouraged by the comments from Ellen on my last post..., and of course by Don signing on as a follower..., I am posting this one from last fall. It was originally posted to my Diary on The Agonist (10/12/09). Hope Ellen (and Don) can smell the Biscuits & Gravey this time :)


There are few things in life better than biscuits & gravy on a frosty morning. Especially when it brings to mind fond memories of your recently departed father dishing it up inside a wood stove warmed tent in a hunting camp on Cook Mountain in Idaho many years ago. Yeah…, a little breakfast before the work begins. The fun is over but the thrill isn’t gone until we have saddled the horses and mules and headed back down the draw to pack the downed elk out.

But this morning…, it’s Julie providing the biscuits & gravy here on The Ranch on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Throw a couple of fresh eggs, provided by the chickens that roam The Ranch, fried to perfection on top, and you feel like you can take on any challenge. The game to harvest later today after this first killing frost isn’t elk though. I haven’t killed any game animal for meat since I left Idaho over twenty years ago. And I hope that I never have too. But will…, if I must. It’s been a few years since the elk have raised havoc with our fences…, but they aren’t far away. The horses and dogs attest to that. The Garden is closer though, and I feel confident that I won’t get the ambiguous feeling from pulling potatoes out of the ground that I did from putting an elk on it. We will see today how successful we have been at coaxing food from this ground we call home. A back up plan to put food on the table in never a bad strategy. In the days to come it may be a necessity to meet the challenges ahead.

I don’t see any back up plan for our nation. We are running on stimulus. We were served up a breakfast of dried biscuits in the form of a busted economic strategy to pull forward demand for housing and credit. Some say we couldn’t have chocked down those biscuits without an outlandish helping of gravy in the form of monetary stimulus. We will never know for sure now. But given the fact that the gravy wasn’t used for it’s initially stated purpose…, and has been spread over the plate to include things like enticing people to buy new cars that they don’t need…, I can’t help but doubt the wisdom of the plan. With real unemployment running around 20% and no real turn around anywhere in sight for the foreseeable future…, we are told we can count on a jobless recovery. The gravy hasn’t helped us choke down those biscuits either. What are we going to do when the gravy runs out?

I am going out to The Garden…, and think about better days and my father.

Friday Nite Check In

 Well..., I promised to post some more potato pictures for you this week in my piece last week.  I hope I don't overdose you 😉  I started harvesting the second row early this week..., I would have preferred to wait a bit longer to let the skins toughen up a little..., but the weather forecast for later in the week and beyond induced me to get busy in the dry dirt instead of the mud..., and I am glad I did.  We got about half an inch of rain on Thursday..., it kind of drizzled all day long and I even wussed out on the dog shit and horse manure chores and Charlie Horse Playpen duties.  Today we got 1.1 inches of rain before noon..., but it turned off nice and even sunny in the afternoon..., so did double duty on the outdoor chores..., and I decided to hold off on sacking up the spuds until tomorrow 😁.   These are the dandies from the first days diggings that I will save for seed potatoes.

They can't all be seed potato size and quality..., but there are a few here that wouldn't fit on the Ridge Runner Warming Table for the first picture.

The second days harvest produced lots more of those seed potatoes...,

Once again..., there just wasn't enough room on the Ridge Runner Warming Table for all the seed potatoes..., and they can't all be big spuds.

I got this shot of The Garden before I dug up the last few plant hills at the end of the second row..., it is gone now..., and the results are pictured below.

Here's the last batch of the season..., still a little damp from the washing process..., about average for one five gallon bucket for the day.  The previous two days were two bucket days..., and I am happy have the harvest completed before the monsoon season hits.  In the early years I had waited to harvest until the first killing frost had killed back the green plants because I had read that somewhere..., but that made for some muddy harvests and I don't think it made any better spuds than I get with the earlier harvests.

https://scottrthequillayutecowboy.blogspot.com/search?q=killing+frost

I noticed that I must have been in a hurry last week..., and neglected to post a Friday Nite Music Video.  This week I was thinking of a song that I had posted long ago on Facebook..., and low and behold my Google News Feed posted a link to a story about the artist that sang the song that was written by Neil Young.  A sad story of a gal who passed away way too early..., Nicolette Larson.

https://parade.com/entertainment/beloved-70s-singer-who-sang-with-linda-ronstadt-and-neil-young-was-all-but-forgotten-after-her-death-at-45

There is a link in the story to a YouTube video of the song..., but I will link to it here as well..., I am not sure how long the Google link will be available to view.