"He had perhaps been bruised too often. The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence. Something in him was raw and tender. The touch of men was hurtful upon it, but the touch of the pines was healing. Making a living came harder there, distances were troublesome in the buying of supplies and the marketing of crops. But the clearing was peculiarly his own. The wild animals seemed less predatory to him than people he had known. The forays of bear and wolf and wildcat and panther on stock was understandable, which was more than he could say for human cruelties." -- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling

Waiting....

Seems to be the predominant theme in my life right now.

The grading work has been held up by the constant rain. So I've planted all my live plants in pots so they'll survive a couple more weeks until I can get them in the ground.

Today was a nice cool, rainy, low-stress day for them to transition. I'll keep them on the porch in partial sun for a while, then move them out onto the sunny part of the deck.

I'm probably not going to have time to build the raised planters this year. If we're delayed much more, I may not get the vegetables in at all. But right now the plan is to do the vegetable garden in regular mounded rows this year, then build the frames over the winter and next spring. I'll have to do one for the strawberries, because they're perrenials, and once they're in, they're in. The most urgent thing is to get these trees, vines, and bushes in the ground before summer really hits.

Forestry

I've been exploring my forest, and discovering what a wonder and a blessing God has given me in this land. This is genuine old-growth forest, with an intact ecosystem--not the barren band of trees and undergrowth you find between suburban housing developments. I've only begun to uncover its secrets and treasures, and have probably only explored one or two of the six acres I own. Things I've found so far:

Shellbark Hickory, aka Kingnut. Because it has the best nuts of all the hickories.

White Walnut, aka Butternut.

Chestnuts! In case you don't know, the chestnut used to be the predominant tree in all the eastern hardwood forests in North America, until they were all killed by Chinese Chestnut Blight in the early 20th century. These are all seedlings and saplings, and may not grow to bearing age. But there have been recent finds of naturally blight-resistant trees, so they seem to be fighting back. Most significantly, a stand of around 500 healthy ones, including mature, bearing trees, was found very near here, down near Staunton. I'm going to transplant a couple of these into my clearing, and see if I can nurse them through to maturity.

Hazelnut

Wild Black Cherry

Blueberry

Mulberry (I think)

Wild Grapes

Witch Hazel. Not edible, but you can extract an excellent astringent from it--my grandmother swore by it. She put Sea Breeze on everything.

Hornbeam, aka Ironwood. If you can manage to work it, you can fashion very hard tools of this. I'm going to make myself a new walking stick.

King of the Oaks

Lord of the Maples

Gnome Home

Things I'm still hoping to find:

Black Walnut
Beechnut
Wild Plum
Wild Strawberries
A cave with a hidden cache of Confederate gold. Or a trove of silver dollars buried in mason jars by an old mountaineer. :)

My First Crop!

This little guy isn't even waiting to be transplanted to bear fruit. I may have to make exception from my diet for a single blueberry.

Geek Bread

I got to thinking the other day, after writing about my new diet, about making my own Ezekiel bread, so I went and started looking up recipes and stuff. But of course, being the ginormous book geek and Bible pedant that I am, that wasn't good enough for me. I immediately started asking critical linguistic and historical questions; for instance, all the recipes I found take the word "beans" in the verse and interpret it at face value, and just throw in a bunch of different beans from our modern diet, like kidney beans, navy beans, and pinto beans.

But not me: no, I've got to go and research what kind of beans the historical and archaeological record shows were eaten by the ancient Israelites, and then sort out which Hebrew word means which kind of beans, and which of those words is used in Ezekiel 4:9 where the recipe is given. (Long story short: fava beans.) And then I start thinking that, in order to really make it the most accurate Bible bread possible, I'll use olive oil, sea salt, and honey, all good Old Testament foods. And I'm going to call the yeast "leaven" instead of "yeast".

So what's the point of this post? I think I may have way too much time on my hands.

230!

I hit 230 pounds today. First time in this millennium I've been this low.

Today also marks 10 weeks on my protein-sparing modified fast. That puts me halfway to my goal from where I was when I started the fast. It took me some time to break through that plateau I had been stuck in for so long, but now it's coming off pretty steadily.

I'm thinking that I'm going to keep at this until I've gone 10-15 pounds below my goal of 200, so that when I get the inevitable bounce-back after I start eating again, I'll end up where I need to be. So probably somewhere between 10 and 16 more weeks.

This is based on what doctors give patients who are morbidly obese before bariatric surgery, and on the Cambridge Diet. My diet currently consists of:

Protein shakes: 3x/day

Super Greens 1x/day

Fiber 1x/day

Multi-Vitamin/Mineral supplement

Creatine powder--to maintain as much muscle mass as possible

Plus coffee, tea, herbal tea with stevia, and lots of water. 

I started out around 2000 calories per day, then reduced it by 200-300 periodically when I stopped losing. Currently at around 1000, and seem to have hit the sweet spot. I'll reduce it again if I stall again--will probably be at around 300 per day at the very end.

Tricks to help stay on it: broth and gum. I make some broth once or twice a day, and add salt, pepper, garlic, sage, and tabasco, so I get the feeling of tasting something savory, which is very satisfying. And sugar-free gum helps curb the urge to chew on something, as well as soothing that metallic ketosis taste in my mouth with something fruity.

In addition to planning and preparing my garden, I've been refurnishing my kitchen. Not re-modelling--I'm not putting in new cabinets or major appliances--just getting new pots, pans, and utensils, and the rest of the dishes and glassware I needed: I started buying new dishes and things when I bought the house, but then never finished. The idea is that when I start eating again, everything is new and different, to help me start on a new and even better way of eating. I was already eating pretty healthy; but this is a way to help me psychologically completely break with the past. Like buying a new wardrobe after you've lost weight. Plus, it doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that my subconscious is currently preoccupied with food, and the garden and kitchen are ways to express it without breaking my diet.

I actually don't feel bad at all. I have to take a little fruit juice for a carb boost when I'm going to be doing heavy work outside, and I had a smoothie the day I helped my daughter move, but it's really surprisingly easy at this point. I find that it's far easier to deny the appetite altogether than to give it a little satisfaction by eating small amounts of diet food, then try to shut it off.

"Christendom has made two efforts to deal with the evil of war--chivalry and pacifism. Neither succeeded. But I doubt whether chivalry has such an unbroken record of failure as pacifism."

-- C.S. Lewis

Love Vigilantes

Orchard in a Box

My fruits arrived yesterday! I had no idea when I ordered that you could send live plants this way: I thought they would have to send a special delivery truck, like they did with my furniture. But they came by FedEx sealed up in boxes. Crazy.

 Fruit trees and grape vines

 Blueberry bushes

Strawberry plants. They told me to store them in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator until I'm ready to plant!

I'm taking a bit of a chance here, because I won't be ready to plant for a few weeks. But I had to order now, because the season is closing for ordering live plants, and they only do it once a year. As it was, a lot of places were already sold out. So for now, the strawberries are in my fridge, and the other plants are in a dark, cool room in the basement, sleeping peacefully.

Gardening

I'm finally getting to some of the projects I had in mind when I first bought this place. Currently number one on the agenda: building level terraces in my back yard, and putting in a garden and mini-orchard.

Fruit trees: Pink Lady and Granny Smith Apples, Honeysweet Pears, Elberta Peaches, Damson European Plums, Sweetheart Cherries, Santa Rosa Asian Plums, and Moorpark Apricots. I wanted Bing Cherries and Flemish Beauty Pears, but neither are self-pollinating and I'm only planting one tree of each fruit (except apples).

 Vines and Bushes: Canadice Red, Interlaken White, and Glenora Purple Grapes; Ozark Beauty (everbearing) and Sparkle (June-bearing) Strawberries; and Sweetheart Blueberries.

Melons: Crimson Sweet Watermelon, Tuscan Cantaloupe, Tam Dew Honeydew, and Canary Casaba.

In the vegetable garden I'm going to grow:

Corn	Bell Peppers	Spinach
Beans	Celery	Cucumbers
Peas	Yellow Onions	Radishes
Carrots	Red Onions	Yellow Potatoes
Brocolli	Green Onions	Red Potatoes
Cauliflower	Plum Tomatoes	Sweet Potatoes
Brussel Sprouts	Grape Tomatoes	Butternut Squash
Yellow Squash	Head Lettuce	Acorn Squash
Zuchhini	Leaf Lettuce	Pumpkins
Eggplant	Spring Mix	Garlic

I'm planting all heirloom varieties, so I can save my own seed and do my small part to resist Monsanto and all the evil GMO mega corporations. And save the world by saving the bees.

Here's the plan I drew up:

Each section is going to be a separate terrace, getting lower as you move away from the house. And to the left of where the vegetable garden is, I'm putting in a fourth terrace, a nice flat space with grass that I can use as a little bit of yard. Here's what it looks like now:

I've...er...let things slide for a while. But this shows what fantastic soil I've got: this is two or three years' growth, and those trees are 12-16 feet tall! My soil is rich, black, loamy, and perfect in every way except for the abundant rocks. It's been forest floor for thousands of years, and has never been stripped, contaminated by inferior fill dirt, or poisoned by commercial farming.

Got all my tools ready to go. I discovered Mintcraft years ago when I found the double-bit axe at an old-timey hardware store, and found that it was the best tool I'd ever owned. Now I buy all my long tools from them. The hand tools I found in the Burpee seed catalog, and I'm very pleased with them: heavy duty stainless steel and solid hardwood. I tried buying cheap garden tools at the local department store years ago, and most of them broke within one season, so I go with quality now. Except for one shovel and one axe, which I somehow lucked out on, and used for years and years, until I worked the poor things down to the nub. My shovel actually had holes worn in the steel of the blade.

For the vegetables, melons, and strawberries I'm going to build raised beds, and for the bushes, vines, and trees I'm going to frame them in with landscaping ties. Then I'll mulch the walkways in between with cedar mulch (repels many pests and deters the growth of bacteria and certain diseases), then fence each section in to try and keep the deer and rabbits out. Also for deer discouragement, I'm going to sit on my back porch at dusk and dawn sometimes with my rifle. I love venison! I'm also thinking about getting a dog, and having him sleep out in the garden area in the summer, to scare the nibblers away. 

I'm also all organic. I make my own insect-repellent spray out of hot peppers, garlic, and tobacco (they hate nicotine), and a few other ingredients. And around the borders, outside the fences, I'm going to plant chrysanthemums , marigolds, lavender, and clover, all of which repel certain garden pests, as well as attracting bees and butterflies, which help with pollination.

So with venison and wild turkey, trout from the stream nearby, the produce from my garden and orchard, and the wild raspberries, blackberries, grapes, black cherries, hazelnuts, hickory nuts, and (keeping my fingers crossed that the trees I found can be kept alive and healthy to bearing age) CHESTNUTS!, I'll be able to produce most of my own food. And over the winter, I'll be working on rebuilding the half-assed chicken coop the guy I bought the place from put in, and next spring I'll get me some baby chicks, and then have my own eggs too. Still exploring my forest, and hoping to find a black walnut tree and a butternut. Also would love to find wild strawberries, blueberries, and plums. Things I'll still have to buy at the store:

Grains and legumes--what little I eat. Mostly just the flours to make my own Ezekiel bread, and some Basmati rice and Irish oatmeal.

Chicken--I have no interest in the amount of butchering and processing it would take to keep me in chicken. Not to mention the numbers that I'd have to raise. Also what little beef and pork I'll need, with the venison filling most of the red meat requirement.

Dairy--this isn't the right place for a cow, and I dislike both goats and goat milk. And I have no experience with dairy. I'll get all that from Homestead Creamery, except for the imported cheeses.

Citrus and bananas--too cold to grow them here.

Imports and exotics--coffee, tea, spices, and anything else I can't produce myself.

Beer and Wine--I may try home brewing and vinting at some point in the future, but not yet.

I'm also thinking I'd like to get some bees next year or so. Fresh bread with real butter and honey might be my favorite thing to eat. I know my neighbor Ralph would like that too. Have to come up with ways to keep him out of the hives, hopefully short of shooting him. And out of the chicken pen and garden too, come to that.

I'll upload pictures as the work progresses.

More of the World's Best Reading

I came across, by sheer accident, a copy of Little Men in the nicely-bound series I collect, which I wrote about some time ago. I had wondered, when I finished Little Women, if the sequel had been published in this series. But then I got to thinking, that Miss Alcott had done such a superb job writing about girls, that I doubted whether she could really understand boys well enough to do as well by them. But just a few pages in, my fears are well laid to rest, and I'm hooked. Father Bhaer's boisterous but firm hoisehold perfectly exemplifies the best environment for raising healthy boys.

And as I read, I've been thinking about Jo, and how it takes a rare and special kind of woman to be good with boys. Most women teachers lack that quality, and so many boys suffer because they're being forced into a mold that doesn't fit them.

But I'm thinking about my daughter, and how she's got the perfect temperament for it. And about another lady I know, who has raised seven boys (and one girl) with extraordinary success, and what a remarkable woman that makes her.

C.S. Lewis on the Same Subject

"A great deal of what is being published by writers in the religious tradition is a scandal and is actually turning people away from the church. The liberal writers who are continually accommodating and whittling down the truth of the Gospel are responsible. I cannot understand how a man can appear in print claiming to disbelieve everything that he presupposes when he puts on the surplice. I feel it is a form of prostitution."

Idols of the Intellect

I'm about halfway through Tertullian in my complete through-reading of the Church Fathers, and about to start the treatise called "Against Hermogenes" with the subtitle "Containing a refutation of his opinion that matter is eternal".

As I've been reading the Fathers' arguments against the opinions of various heretics which, to us now, seem patently absurd, I've had a growing recognition of the overall nature of the ancient heresies and their modern counterparts. That is, that they all have this in common: that they are attempts to "reconcile" the things taught by Scripture and Apostolic tradition with the conventional assumptions of their day, and to make them more palatable to themselves and others. So, in the first three centuries of the Church, what we had was a continual stream of men trying to fit Christianity into the box of Greco-Roman philosophy and polytheism, and avoid the offense and embarrassment of embracing the silly Jewish superstition that there was only One God. That way, they could take the best of the New Gospel, but hold on to their intellectual and emotional attachments to their old ideas, ideals, and idols.

And in modern times, pretty much all "contemporary" theology, that is modernist, post-modernist, higher critical, liberal, etc., amounts to the same thing. Except our idols are idols of pure intellect, rather than of primal polytheistic paganism. Rationalism. Empiricism. Materialism. Scientism. All the goddesses of the Enlightenment.

But what struck me today, and prompted this post, is another example of how the Bible and the Apostolic teaching was right all along, and the greatest and most respectable minds of the world wrong. Look at that subtitle again. "Containing a refutation of his opinion that matter is eternal". You see, that both Scripture and the Church (in its orthodox teaching) have always held that matter is created and temporal. Yet the great minds of the classical world, and again the great Scientist minds of post-Enlightenment Scientism, held firmly that matter was eternal, and treated anyone who said otherwise in the same mocking, dismissive derision with which they currently treat those who question Darwinism or believe any form of Creation or Intelligent Design. But then in 1965, cosmic background radiation was "accidentally" discovered, proving beyond reasonable doubt that the universe was not in fact, static and eternal. Now, of course, the Scientismists claim that theory as their own. But at the time it blew all their conventional theories out of the water, and completely redefined their understanding of the universe.

And here is Tertullian, looking down on us from 200 AD, and Moses standing beside him, from 1600 BC, saying, "See, I told you so."

I think nothing pisses God off more than a sanctimonious religious hypocrite.

And I tend to agree.

I've known hippies who try to live in love but lack the theology and religion to be professing Christians, who are a lot closer to the Kingdom of God than a lot of the religious people I've known.

'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' -- Matt. 7:22

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps — what more can the heart of man desire?” -- Leo Tolstoy

"Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past."

-- Chris McCandless

I've accidentally created the perfect station on Pandora. I made one based on Apollo's Fire, because I liked their Christmas album so much, but it turns out they do traditional folk music too; so I've got a station playing Baroque, Celtic, Bluegrass, and various related pieces, in both secular and sacred varieties of each.