Introducing Black Strawberry, a New Seedling Apple

After planting a few open pollinated apple seeds in 2010, I immediately began breeding apples, by making specific, controlled cross pollinations between various parent varieties. In that process, some seeds went unlabelled, mixed up etc. I remember planting some unlabelled seeds outside. I didn’t graft them anywhere, but just left them there in the ground. A year or two later, I remember one winter, selecting the ones with the reddest bark, hoping those would be red fleshed types, and grafting them onto an established tree nearby. The rest were pulled and discarded. Well, 7 years after planting that unlabelled seed, 3 of those fruited and Black Strawberry is one of them.

I now vaguely remember making some cross pollinations with Grenadine and King David? Or losing track of them and planting the seeds anyway? I’m not sure what happened, but I’m about 95% sure that King David is the second parent and it’s likely that I made that cross pollination on purpose, though I did have King David growing nearby enough for it to naturally pollinate Grenadine. This apple has the speckled skin, some of the angular appearance and red flesh traits of Grenadine and the dark, almost black appearing red skin of King David. Unfortunately it also has a tendency to go mealy like Grenadine, but I think it is going to prove to have a better texture in the long run, which is important.

Comparison and similarities of King David and Black Strawberry. Oxford Black looks even more like Black Strawberry, but it was not flowering or fruiting when this seed was collected. Besides, I’m pretty sure now that I actually made crosses with Grenadine X King David that year and just lost track of them.

This apple is not the high quality dessert apple that I’m aiming toward in breeding. So why am I naming it and telling you about it? For one, I’m just excited about it and not inclined to curb my enthusiasm. It’s also so tasty that I’m sure I will be growing and eating it in spite of it’s flaws, and that’s enough to give it a real name. Finally, I will definitely be using it in breeding, talking about it, sharing seeds and pollen and maybe sending out scions. Even if it is only a stepping stone in breeding, why not give it a name? It actually has no number designation. When I grafted them out, I tagged them and wrote funny names on them hoping they would be red fleshed apples, like red scare and tirceratops. Black Strawberry’s tag says Drucilla, after an insane vampire girl in Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. which is kind of a cool apple name actually, just not for this one. Besides, I might get sued by someone. I have been inclined to think I would test stuff before naming it and releasing it, but I talk about these seedlings all the time and if I’m going to talk about one a lot, it might as well have a name, even if it’s only a breeding parent or never amounts to much.

So, lets talk about this apple. FLAVOR! Wow, does this thing have a heaping helping of special flavor saturating it’s mottled pink flesh. The main component is certainly strawberry, although it reminds me more of fake strawberry processed foods like candy, cereal or ice cream than a fresh real strawberry. One taster said “beyond strawberry”. It is definitely one of the most uniquely flavored apples I’ve ever eaten and also one of the best flavored. I had to think back to all the amazing apples I’ve tasted to convince myself that it isn’t the best apple I’ve ever tasted. It is as intensely flavored as Grenadine, if not more and as good, if not better.

Time stamped sections of videos in which I taste this apple:

https://youtu.be/f2q4VlYiJEo?t=35

https://youtu.be/pbaklnXXcoA?t=34

It inherited Grenadine’s tendency to go dry and mealy, but I think it will be at least a small improvement over that apple when it comes to texture. I bit into at least one that was actually crisp, but it’s going to be a problem.

Scab was pretty bad, but not horrible. It is grafted to a pink parfait tree, which does actually have horrible scab, with very few specimens untouched, but I was able to get quite a few nice apples off of the Black Strawberry branch. It probably rates as 3 or 4 out of 5 for scab susceptibility. It bore a lot, even in it’s first year, so that helped me select the least scabby specimens in thinning.

It did NOT inherit Grenadine’s tendency to turn waxy and drop off the tree before ripening normally. My main grenadine branch had 100% loss to that phenomenon this year. In most years, many grenadine fruits will drop early. It is extremely annoying.

Overall, the fruit is inconsistent in size, shape and texture. Some are pretty large and others are pretty small.

This apple will be more of a stepping stone in breeding on the way to better things, than anyones absolute favorite. But what excites me is that it validates my choice of Grenadine as a parent. I chose grenadine in spite of all of it’s negative traits, for the flesh color intensity and unique complex flavor. Maybe those could be gotten with a different parent with better dessert characteristics, like pink parfait, or Rubaiyat. But, I went with the best flavor/color combo, which was Grenadine. Also, it shows how deep the flavor possiblities are in this red fleshed gene pool, or in Grenadine at least. Grenadine I would never say tastes of strawberries, while this is distinctively so. I’d like to find other strawberry flavored apples to cross with Black Strawberry, the first of which will be Pink Parfait, which has a very subtle strawberry flavor, but it’s there. I also had another seedling fruit this year that had a strawberry flavor. Extremely flavorful and interestingly flavored apples will be coming to our tastebuds in the future. If Black Strawberry can taste this good and rich, others can as well, and even more so. This will definitely get crossed with Sweet 16, Pink Parfait, Wickson, William’s Pride and Golden Russet at least. I already made some crosses this spring.

I’m also encourage by this and a couple of other red flesh x King David crosses and plan to use King David more in breeding red fleshed apples. My original hope was that the dark red skin of King David indicates some genes that would reinforce the red fleshed trait in seedlings. So far 3 out of 3 (red flesh x KD) crosses do show red flesh, one solid through and two pretty strong, but mottled.

I’m sure I’ll have pollen and seeds available in the future, but that depends on how well it blooms and fruits. Scions probably won’t be available for a couple of years and when they do, it will be the usual late winter availability with my Patreon supporters getting first pick.

I hope this one develops into a better version of itself as it continues to fruit. I will be grafting another branch or two out this year, to make sure it survives and so that I’ll have more scion wood should I decide to send it out into the world. And of course so I can eat more of them! I ate several mealy samples down to the core because it tastes so damn good! I’m so excited to keep eating Black Strawberry, seeing how it develops over the next couple of years, and using it as a breeding parent.

Mealy, but delicious!

Flame Charred Eggplant & Tomato Salsa, Unique Flavor and Less Watery

My cooking creed goes something like this

Measure as little as possible

Experiment a lot

Observe no cultural boundaries

I don’t care if the spirits of a 1000 great, great, great grandmothers are standing around me wagging their translucent fingers, shaking their heads and making universally understood sounds of disapproval; if I think it will taste good, I’ll mix anything, with anything. The deep cultural melting pot of global cuisine, means that fusion cooking has arrived.

One day my good friend Scott McGrath was telling me about making babaganoush, a Middle Eastern dip based on eggplant and tahini, which I had never heard of. The part that caught my attention was scorching the eggplant with a torch until it is charred on the outside and cooked through. I threw some eggplants on the gas flame of the cooktop and realized that there was a whole new aspect of this vegetable to explore.

One day I had the audacity to mince up some of that pulp to mix in a batch of my tomato salsa, and a star was born. The cool thing about putting charred eggplant in your tomato salsa, is that it plays so well with the other ingredients in there, that it can augment without being overt. Yet you can also add more to bring a very unique and unexpected taste toward the front of the flavor line.

But wait, there’s more! Ever have your burrito get soggy from fresh salsa?, or have large quantities of juice run down into your sleeve?, or end up with a puddle of salsa juice on your plate when you make fresh salsa? It turns out that the eggplant pulp goes a long way toward absorbing extra juice in the salsa. That is a pretty great quality.

INGREDIENTS

Like I said, I don’t care to measure things much. It’s about how things taste, so taste, add, taste, add, taste, add… These ingredients are vaguely in order of quantity.

Tomatoes: (see thingy on tomato types below) dice 1/4 inch-ish

Eggplants: Preferably use 2 inch diameter and down if you can get them. Long skinny asian types are perfect. Char blackened on flame or charcoal until collapsed and totally squishy inside. Mince the pulp to almost paste consistency. A few bits of charred skin are fine, but don’t scrape everything right down to the skin, as it is pretty strong. Use some of the browned/burnt stuff, but not all of it.

Sweet peppers: bell, cheese or frying. flame roasted, diced or minced small

Anaheim Peppers: red ripe, flame roasted, take off most of the peel, or whatever comes off easily, mince finely

Cilantro: minced.

Onion: I like it minced very fine.

Small hot chilies: any kind, I prefer ripe over green.

Lemon or lime juice, or vinegar: Quantity depends on how acid the tomatoes are. I know it’s heresy, but I prefer lemon over lime.

Salt: use a lot, it’s a condiment

Chili powder: I use dried Anaheim, aka California chilies

Coriander and Cumin: fresh ground seed. Put in a lot, then taste it and add some more and then add even more.

SOME INGREDIENT AND PREP NOTES:

Tomatoes. If I have them, I use drier processing types to avoid having a lot of extra juice. Not the usual smaller roma, pear shaped paste tomatoes. Those are actually pretty wet. I mean larger, longer paste types like polish linguisa, blue beech and others (I have seeds available!). They have low amounts of watery pulp, and fewer seeds. I also like Zapotec, but it’s not as dry as these others.

Chili powder: I use California chilies, aka dried Anaheim peppers. This is s great pepper to grow and very versatile. California chilies can be had pretty much anywhere that Mexican people do their shopping. Toast lightly to crisp them up and add a little flavor, but don’t overdo it! Cool, then grind in an electric coffee grinder or blender. What is usually sold in the U.S. as chili powder is actually a spice blend, which I don’t recommend. Occasionally you can find pure chili powder, but it doesn’t keep very well. Paprika is not a bad substitute if it is fresh enough.

Coriander and Cumin are always available on my counter in pepper grinders. That is a great kitchen hack, try it! Both of the, as well as chili powder, lose their flavor quickly when ground. It is not just a matter of becoming weaker either, so you can’t really just add more. They should be fresh. If you don’t use them a lot, put the seeds in a tightly sealed jar and freeze. They will last for years that way.

Eggplants: don’t like them, or your family doesn’t like them? If there is a recipe with eggplant for people who don’t like eggplant, this is it. If I were to grow anything specifically for this, it would be the larger long asian types, like Ping Tung Long.

Fall Seeds and Bulbs in the Webstore

Just a heads up. I spent a bunch of time this late August preparing and listing some stuff in my webstore. Mostly Seeds and Bulbs. I have some saffron corms from digging and dividing my saffron bed, a collection of 8 varieties of narcissus, some of my top favorite tomatoes, lettuce, a cool poppy that has closed pods so the seeds don’t fall out, and Haogen melon, and lots of cactus seedlings. Most packages will go out in the first week and a half of September. Skillcult.com/store

Bronze Beauty lettuce

Paul Robeson, rich smokey goodness with a great sugar acid balance.

A closed vent poppy that allows for the harvest of every seed.

Twang, a New Seedling Apple Report

This year I was excited to see one of my Williams’ Pride x Vixen apple crosses flowering and setting fruit. Two of them actually flowered and only 5 years from seed, which is unusually fast, so this seems to be a precocious cross. One of the trees ripened 4 apples on a stunted, un-watered 5 foot high scrawny seedling. It is a drought year too, so producing 4 very handsome and perfectly clean, medium sized apples in it’s very first flowering is pretty impressive! The apples had dead smooth skin consisting of a pretty shade of pink blush over a yellow background. The first were ripe in late July and the last in mid August.

Twang is tangy, thus the name. It is not particularly lacking in sugar, but it is decidedly sharp. The flesh is rather dense and firm, which is unusual for an early apple, most of which suffer from thin foamy flesh. That alone is something of a triumph. It doesn’t seem likely to hold up well either on or off the tree however, which is also typical of early apples.

The flavor seems to vary from slightly complex, maybe a bit tropical with some nuance at it’s best, to a pretty generic apple flavor when over ripe. Most early apples are ready and then a few days later, they’re over-ready. I think Twang will not be an exception to that trend, but would not be surprised it it will hold for a week or two if picked significantly ahead of ripening. I found the flavor of the best specimen to be pleasant and somewhat interesting and would happily eat them if that was the best apple fruiting at the time.

As the tree is grafted out onto established orchard trees and the seedling itself matures and develops more, it may produce better and different fruit, especially with better culture. I don’t think the basic character will change a lot though. Likely it will be an apple that ripens over an extended season of about 3 weeks in early to mid august, with a few early specimens in late July. Given the sharpness and density, it will probably be a very good cooking apple for that season, and should fill the spot right before the Gravenstiens come in nicely. It does not have Gravenstein’s special aromatics, but it’s hard to compete with an apple that has been one of the most famous early pie and sauce apples for hundreds of years, if not the most famous. It will be best for all uses right off the tree or soon after.

I saw not one spec of scab on any of the fruits. That trait is probably inherited from William’s Pride, which is pretty well scab immune here. Vixen is related to Wickson and is the closest thing to a large Wickson. Wickson is also scab resistant, so maybe Vixen also carries that resistance, but I don’t know the scab status of Vixen itself.

While Twang shows traits of both parents, not so much in the flavor department, where it seems to resemble neither. Neither parent is particularly sharp and Twang’s level of sharpness is somewhat uncommon in my apple seedling trials. In some ways, it is a ho hum, mediocre apple. But as an apple enthusiast/collector/breeder, my bar is set pretty high. I have a feeling it will have a place in the seasonal parade of apples, quite possibly filling the important niche of an early tart cooking apple that actually has some density. While people may be cooking with unripe Gravenstein in August (I am!), Twang will actually be dead ripe in that season and probably available for early, under-ripe cooking in late July.

Only time will tell how this apple performs and impresses going forward. This winter it will be grafted out onto a couple of established trees in good sun. Then it’s wait, eat, wait, eat, wait, eat, maybe make a few pies and some sauce in there… Then, someday, I’ll decide if I want to send it out into the world or use it in further breeding. In the meantime, it has a cool name so we can talk about it and keep track of it. I’m hoping for more of the Williams’ Pride x Vixen crosses to produce fruit in the next couple of years. The real goal with that cross is to get the Wicksony maltiness flavor of Vixen to express in a new apple, with the general quality, performance and disease resistance of Williams’ Pride, so fingers crossed.

Winter Gardening Schedule and Garden Tour

Here is a tour of my July garden, with talking points. I touch on Winter gardening in this video, but I’d like to say a few words about it here and post my winter gardening planting schedule in brief for anyone that wants to get started experimenting this year. One thing to know about winter gardening is that it is actually quite easy. There is little work to do once it all gets established and the rains come. Weeds are weak and spindly in the low light, and watering is completely unnecessary. It’s pretty cool to have a garden full of food all winter and the main work just being to pull it out, clean it, cook it and eat it.

Keep in mind that my climate is rather mild. That is not to say that you can’t winter garden in colder climates, but that further expedients and different timing may be necessary. Eliot Coleman grows year round in Maine, as detailed in his Winter Harvest Handbook, so you probably can to, wherever you are. It’s just particularly easy anywhere from about my zone and warmer. Simple expedients like mulching mature roots with straw to insulate or growing under low plastic tunnels will probably go a long way, but the timing will be different. I will see consistent freeze damage to lettuce, but all root vegetables I can think of over winter fine here and most will actually continue growing through the winter (albeit slowly). My lows are around 20 f, but for just overnight and it is rare indeed for really freezing temps to hold through many days. Occasionally lower, but rarely. We get solid frozen ground, but shallow, frost heave, ice on any water left out, but just a sheet, not freezing whole buckets or anything like that.

The first step is to know what is possible. I can grow carrots, beets, turnips, rutabaga, many hardy radish types, parsnips, scorzonera, salsify, chard, kale, cole crops, cilantro, leeks, potato onions, parsley and probably stuff I’m forgetting, in the open all winter, with only occasional freeze damage, usually minor, to a few of those. Lettuce will do okay under tunnels and the like, but not in the open.

After that, the trick is timing. We have to remember in the heat of summer when we’re starting to bring in basket loads of produce, that this abundance is short lived, and it’s time now to put in winter stuff, just as we start summer garden plants when it’s still freezing out. As you can see in the schedule below, that varies depending on what plant it is. I’m likely to put in certain roots early to mature over the summer and then eat them in the winter, the most drastic example being leeks. Leeks I start in Mid January, but eat most of them the following fall/winter and spring.

This schedule is always a work in progress and I may move stuff by as much as a month in the future as I continue tweaking it all. So, use this as a starting place and adjust as you gain experience.

Note that times are either the first or fifteenth of the month, which is how I do nearly all of my planting.

LATE MAY TO EARLY JUNE: Plant in ground- Parsnip, Scorzonera & Salsify.

JULY 15TH:
In flats: turnip, rutabagas (swedes), beets, kale, chard.

Direct seed in ground: Carrots, Daikon for Fall Kimchee & cilantro for fall salsa making.

AUGUST 1st: Sow Chinese Cabbage (aka Napa Cabbage) in ground if there is bed space, or in flats for fall Kimchee making.

AUGUST 15th: Start lettuce and cilantro to over winter, in flats or direct sown.

SEPTEMBER 1st: Direct seed big winter radishes (like daikon, Spanish black, etc.), clover under the current crops for an early start on cover crops.

SEPTEMBER 15th: Direct sow Fava beans under current crops or in empty beds, vetch, barley, rye, other winter cover crops.

JANUARY 15th to. FEBRUARY 15th, sow stuff like lettuce, hardy greens, carrots, radish, spinach and peas under plastic tunnels. Start leeks in flats to eat through the following winter. Many summer crops also start in flats on FEBRUARY 15th, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, brassicas, chard and other greens, beets, turnip & annual herbs etc. But squash and melons I don’t start until MARCH.

Pear Tree Training, Year Two, Spring Cuts, Smart Fruit Tree Training For the Win!

I grafted and planted this pear tree over 10 years ago that never would grow. but it also didn’t die. One year the top died and the rootstock was growing back with some signs of enthusiasm. I pruned it back to one shoot, watered, fertilized and mulched it, and it grew like mad. It ended up growing into a tall whip, which is s single shoot with buds and no branches. I determined to make an example of it regarding how to train a whip into a tree of a desired form. I made a video, and then a follow up video, of training that tree last year, which are linked in a playlist at the end of this post.

This spring, it was time to revisit this tree, see how my interventions worked and set it up for the next stage of growth. It’s a quick recap of the process so far, a look at the results, some snipping and then showing what I would do with it next year. Instead of repeating that information here, I’ll make this post complimentary by discussing some important principals in tree training.

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Some Important Principals in Training Fruit Trees

If fewer growing points are left on a tree, those remaining will tend to grow more. This is how coppicing (cutting completely down to stimulate regrowth) and natural regrowth after floods and fires all work. A coppiced tree will have X number of growing points, far fewer than a mature tree. Therefore those few growing points grow faster. As the tree grows, those tall new shoots branch and suddenly there are more than double the amount of shoots, so the tree cannot grow them all like it did the initial regrowth. And the process will continue until the tree is clogged with small growth that extends very little each season. Small less vigorous growth now serves the wood that supports it further down the branches and trunk. This process is not predictable in a linear way however. In actual practice, this tendency can be taken advantage of by removing whole shoots, pinching off unwanted growth, or just removing buds before the tree even has a chance to grow them as I did with this tree. the 12 buds I left on the trunk all grew, so this year I took off all I didn’t want, leaving 4, which will not grow longer and thicker in light of that reduced competition.

Resources coming up the trunk from the roots can be diverted into branches, resulting in fewer resources reaching parts of the tree further up: This is not as simple as there being a large branch and therefore that branch will siphon off X amount of resources, but it is true nonetheless. Other factors would be the amount of leaf area that part of the tree has to drive it’s own growth and “draw” in resources from the trunk flow, how much sun it gets, and it’s hormone situation. By creating it’s own self feeding ability to grow, or not, a branch may limit or increase it’s own use of and access to those resources coming up the trunk. There seems to be both a global tree-wide system of growth drive and allocation of resources, and a phenomenon that presents like the tree is competing with itself.

Leaf area is required to grow trees: Trees need leaves in order to do things like extend shoots, grow thick & robust trunks and branches, stock carbohydrates for growth and storage, and to grow more shoots and leaves to gather yet more food. Principal one, (fewer shoots means more growth into those shoots), may translate into less energy gathered, stored and used by the tree because it can reduce leaf area by reducing the number of shoots allowed to grow. If carried to an extreme, the trunk and branches may end up too spindly and weak. That does not however necessarily mean that we have to leave as much growth as the tree wants to grow. We can find a balance where we utilize the above principals to drive growth where we want it and into fewer points, while still leaving some extra growth to collect food. I don’t think there is a complete functional alternative to removal of some growing points to drive growth into others in order to establish large, dominant scaffold branches. Not to say that there are no other tools for prioritizing growth potential of certain growing points, but that reduction of growing points is an essential tool to that end. Just keep in mind that leaf area is required and note both how leaving extra growth may feed the tree with it’s leaf area, and also how it may hold back growth of the wood that you want to grow the most.

Hormones have a major role in controlling tree growth. This is why notching above buds will drive their growth. In the future, as I have more trees to experiment on and sketch out what I think are the most telling, achievable experiments, I’ll be experimenting more with notching both above and below buds and branches as well as ringing trees completely at times to observe how those practices might be turned to practical effect in various situations.

Training Trees and Pruning Are More Art than Science: If you want consistent results, get a different hobby lol. While there is a lot of predictability, challenges will present themselves and plants will assert their priorities or tendencies over yours at times. These situations require adaptation by the artist. Think in terms of principals and actual goals. The. goal is not narrowly to grow branch x exactly at this point, but to fill a vertical and horizontal space in a certain way to grow fruit on. That may involve, bending or guidance pruning to get the branch to fill in that area. But as long as it fills it in and does the job, that’s the real goal. I’m trying to collect, innovate and test tools we can use to meet the challenges that sometimes present themselves.

I had planned to plant some test trees this year and bought a bunch of rootstocks, but it’s looking like that won’t happen this year. I’m trying to decide today whether to ditch that project completely, or try to find a spot to grow them out into whips this year. But it’s just as likely that if I bother to do that, I may not want to put them in next year either. My position on the homestead is uncertain right now, and I’m hesitant to put in anything long term until that is more clear, which probably won’t happen soon. I’m also putting in as much food as possible this year, and that is a competing priority for dirt, water and attention.

Whatever the future holds, I know I’m not going to get a fraction of what I want to do done if I don’t come up with a crap ton of money and pretty fast. Whether it’s to better secure or negotiate my place here or move somewhere else, a lot of money will be involved. Nothing is cheap here in the land of snooty wineries and black market cannabis culture. I’ll be switching my priorities to revolve around income for a while to see if I can make something work, which would essentially involve doing a bunch of stuff I want to do anyway, just in a very strategic way. My bare minimum goal is to be making 100% of the land and tax payments here by the end of a year from now and hopefully by then, or soon after, a lot more than that.

While the direct action part of tree training research has become a luxury that I probably can’t afford to engage in on any scale right now. It does remain a strong long term priority, because I think it has the potential to broadly update home fruit tree training to version 2.0 That solution probably won’t involve techniques and ideas that don’t already exist (nothing new under the sun eh?) but rather collecting those tools, vetting them for practical application, encouraging citizen testing and then packaging that effectively into a system or approach, that is both simple and effective for people that are not level 10 fruit nerds like me. I’m still super stoked about this project and have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people that are trying this type of approach. It’s just going to have to be put on the back burner to simmer for now.

In the meantime, I love hearing back from people how this approach works for them, good or bad.

Who Are You and Why Are You Here?

One of many new daffodil seedlings on the homeplace. If I keep it, I think I’ll call it ghost or spirit

I’m in an upward trajectory in general and working on my whole online interface as it relates to my message, my content and all of my pursuits. I’m taking an intensive YouTube education course that is very eye opening and I think will really help me get my message out more and more effectively. Part of that process if figuring out who I’m talking to out there and who I want to be talking to. I’d like to hear from any of you regarding almost anything related to your pursuits and interest in subjects I cover, or interaction with me and my content. It could be stuff like what interests brought you here, how you use my content, if you live a lifestyle that utilizes the type of things I talk about, or maybe you plan to live that lifestyle someday. Really, I’m interested in you talking about yourself as it relates to not just what I offer, but what you think I can offer you. Sometimes that stuff is not just practical either, but maybe inspirational or supportive of interests that maybe are not so common among other people you rub shoulders.

Feel free to go on and on and tell me your life story or anything you feel is relevant. I’ll read everything anyone writes. You can leave a comment or email me through the contact link on the website here. If you have any issues leaving comments here, please let me know about that too. One reason I don’t blog more is that I have zero idea if anyone is actually reading the stuff or getting anything out of it, because there is almost no feedback. I’ll put a bunch of time into a post, send it out into the world and it’s usually pretty much crickets. I don’t necessarily need a lot of validation for my ego or anything (well, mabye some..), but I literally forget to post stuff here, like when I release a video, because it’s easy to forget when there is so little feedback.

It may be that the comments plug in I’m using is not user friendly, or people don’t want to sign up, but until I know that, I can’t fix it. For all I know, my blog posts just suck. They suck lately, because it’s usually an afterthought and I’m not willing to invest when I don’t know if they are doing any good. So, I’m also very interested in feedback on why I don’t get any significant engagement on blog posts. I love writing and I can use it to complement videos well if I put in the time. But it is very time consuming.

With Mom and a basket of apples we picked for taste testing- new seedlings, heirlooms and moderns. Now you know where I get my youthful good looks from. She’s no spring chicken, as she would say, and still going strong.

Otherwise, I’m looking at my total content strategy and how I can serve people out there better, get more eyes, have more influence and bring in more money. In spite of much of the last few years being very demoralizing and difficult, I’m bouncing back strong and still have basically the same dreams to manifest enough resources to hire some help and make a few larger research and development projects happen related to orcharding, tanning, and possibly other stuff.

I want to hone my messages and content to be much more focused and effective in helping people with certain problems and generally inspiring and expanding my audiences options and interests. That may involve splintering off certain subjects to cover on other youtube channels and blogs, and possibly eventually hosting forums. If will also involve filling in blanks and getting new folks up to speed with foundational skills. The rock on which the foundation for all of that will be built is who exactly my audience is, so this is me doing my homework and asking. How is this interface between you and I working, what interests you, how do you live or how do you want to live and where do you watch or read my stuff and which do you prefer. Thanks do much in advance for any feedback you feel inclined to offer :)

Working on “the pit”, really more of a trench, a huge excavation that I’m backfilling by hand with differing percentages of charcoal and soil. This strip of land will house multiple orcharding and soil related experiments, like bringing new seedlings to fruit, more quickly, tree training methods, tree paints, effects of biochar and probably tree understories for Mediterranean climates.

Recent Gardening Videos, Vlog Style, FPG, First Person Gardening

Here are a couple of recent videos I did vlogging style, just working on stuff and touring the garden. I want to do more gardening content, since the recent events around COVID 19 virus pandemic should have people thinking about vulnerabilities in our material needs related to the supply stream of industrial goods that keep most of us going. in particular, I think that Self Reliant Gardening (SRG), is an important skill.

It is very different to garden as much as possible with what is free and easily available in your immediate environment than it is to purchase a lot of stuff in. Gardening can not only get expensive when purchasing a lot of fertilizers, starts, seeds, soil mixes and amendments, but if those become expensive, hard to get or just unavailable, it will put a real wrench in the gears of a dependent gardener. Self Reliant Gardeners can take advantage of those resources when needed and available, but we don’t need them.

When I first moved here, I decided to use very little from the outside. I bought oystershell for the acid soil, and the very first year of each bed I used steer manure because it was cheap and I needed something to get beds started right away since I had not even made any compost. After that, for the following 10 years I brought in minimal stuff; just oyster shell and waste coffee grounds from my neighbors and some places in town. For me to switch back now to using no imports is very easy. I have some holes in my game, but mostly related to more advanced seed saving.

Look forward to more gardening content and consider learning to grow some food if you don’t already. You can start small, even a few plants in pots, but the time to learn self reliance skills is definitely not when you suddenly need them. Our communities are ridiculously vulnerable to interruptions in the supply lines. Even in rural areas like mine, the agriculture is not at all geared toward being able to feed the local populace. In case of emergency, we’d have a lot of pot and a lot of wine, but not a lot else! As I’ve said for so long, FOOD NOT BONGS! This is a a very, very bad situation, and we should start living in a direction that begins to remedy it, or it will eventually be a serious problem. It’s not a matter of if, just when. The party is winding down folks. It’s time to invest in our own abilities and resilience, as well as that of our communities.

Stay safe and healthy out there, and plant something in the ground.

2020 Apple Scions, + Basket Willow and Grape Cuttings Available

The webstore is open at 12am on the 15th with scions, some new late ripening apple seed crosses, grape and basket willow cuttings for rooting and some crafty stuff. The store is password protected until that time while patrons finish their early access shopping. If you are a patron, check my post on www.patreon.com/skillcult for the password. The video is nothing groundbreaking, just talking about how I process, store and ship seeds and scions and of course, in SkillCult tradition, exactly why :)

Husqvarna Axe Project: Grinding the Axe to Chop Well, and Why Most Axes Don't

I started the husqvarna axe project years ago. I finally got around to putting a grind on it so it can be put to work. I’ll link the new video here and also the whole playlist for the series.

I have learned quite a bit since starting this project. One thing I’ve gravitated toward is what some might refer to as a flat grind, though that is fairly meaningless without some details. I’ve always been able to make my axes cut, but once I stopped worrying about flat spots and not making the bit too thin and took a more thorough approach to trimming the fat from my axe bits, I got to a new level of cutting ability. Almost all stock axes are much too thick in the bit from the factory and have to be filed down. This has long been asserted by almost everyone that has written about axes. Opinions on how to do that are varied and details about how to go about it are usually missing.

If given a file and an axe, few people will take off enough to get the axe chopping efficiently. That is understandable as there is really no reference. In this video, I offer a simple system that is easy to carry out and understand and which will make an axe bite deep. Once a person has that, it can be used as an important reference when experimenting with grinding axes. I also talk about fundamental issues that keep axes from cutting deeply, though I have another video and blog post planned that goes into more detail on that.

Store Open, Apple Seeds, Awls, Fire Kits, Hide Glue, Bracelets, Cacti

I’ve been beavering away on making stuff for the webstore. I turned over 100 awl handles on the lathe. Here is a video of that process.

I have 40 tested hand drill fire making kits ready to go. I have a few videos on making fire kits shot and edited, but want to finish all of the hand drill fire vids before I start publishing them. I also dug into my stash of hide glue and listed a few packages.

Bark tanned goat skin bracelets are pretty cool.

And then there are the apple seeds. More than ever. Some neat cross pollinations and a lot of open pollinated seed, including a few from some of my new seedlings. There is still pollen in the freezer from last year at reduced price. I’m planning to collect and list a new batch of pollen in the spring, but I won’t guarantee it will happen. Also, it is not always ready in time and not every variety I want to gather blooms enough every year to gather extra. I think they pollen from last spring will be plenty viable, but I don’t know for sure. I used some pretty old pollen last year, both from the freezer and from room temp storage for up to two years and overall seemed to have pretty good success.

New Seedling Apples, EIGHT years later! Late October 2019

Eight long years late after starting my first batch of apples from seed using controlled cross pollination, I’m finally getting a lot of fruit to try. In this post I have some video footage of taste testing. I hope to pull off a post soon with photos and notes on the most promising seedling apples to date. I’d say this is probably the peak, but there are earlier and later apples that are already gone or not yet ripe. Enough are worth watching and testing further to be encouraged. I also have quite a few that could be good parents for entering the second generation of breeding, which given how long these have taken, I’d like to get underway!

I will not be releasing any of these varieties this year. I will assess them for a year or more, then decide about distribution, naming and anything like that. I may however have pollen and even seed. Those will be available on the website in mid to late winter. The best way to find out about seed, pollen and scion sales is to watch my social media Instagram @skillcult ( https://www.instagram.com/skillcult/ ). Facebook SkillCult https://www.facebook.com/skillcult/ . I don’t keep track of any requests, because I get way too many. Here are videos, parts 1 & 2 of going through the trial rows taste testing.

Trip to Lake County Fire Burned Areas

I recently took a camping trip with a friend to a very large fire burned area of Lake County California. We passed through at least two different fire zones probably burned two or three years apart. The main area was only burned in 2018, so the ecology had only this past summer to show the effects. It was very interesting to look at the response of the plants and strategies for survival. I have two videos from that trip now on YouTube linked here. I also have some pictures, which anyone that follows me on Intstagram has probably already seen.

The main purpose of the trip was to get high enough up into the mountains to find some Incense Cedar for friction fire boards. This is my favorite wood for that purpose. I’ve been meaning to get out there for literally years so that I can make fire kits to sell. I’ve sold these in the past. The idea is to put together known good, tested kits so that anyone practicing hand drill fire making can know that the kit is reliable and that if the fire isn’t happening, it’s a matter of working on technique, not continually trying new kits of unknown quality. On day two, after driving over 25 miles of rough dirt roads we reached about 4500 feet and started seeing new species of trees. It was dusk and I was like, okay, 15 more minutes of driving and it’s time to give up on the mission. 5 minuets later, the first cedar tree was spotted, and in a few minutes found a nice downed trunk, busted out the chainsaw, threw a bunch of rounds in the truck and drove home late into the night. It was also hunting season on public land, so I wasn’t crazy about hanging around there the following morning.

The cedar wood is seasoning and will be minced up with a bandsaw into 1/2 inch boards. I’ve found that a good cedar board will work with almost any good drill, and most cedar boards are better than good. Once I get some boards sawn up, seasoned out and kits tested, I’ll have them available in the store.

I also took 15 minutes to see how much charcoal I could pick up as free biochar. The result was about 2 cubic feet per hour, or 5 hours to amend a 100 square foot bed to 10% charcoal at 12 inches deep. I’m convinced I could at least double that collection rate though, using a rake and not worrying about dirt and leaves and stuff.

This is a terrible out of focus snap shot, but it’s an awesome tree. This is a sugar pine, one of the higher elevation trees. Huge cones with edible nuts.

Mile after mile of burned trees. Some areas burned cool enough that most of the thick barked pines survived, but many large areas were left without a live trunk in site. it was eerie.

There were tons of new seedlings, especially Pine and Manzanita, but many other brushy species as well. Most of the new seedlings are there because there was a fire, not in spite of it. This is the strategy for many brushy species; they sprout like crazy after fires to re-colonize when there are nutrients and low competition. I saw tons of pine seedlings too though that would not have sprouted last winter if it weren’t for the fires.

It’s tempting to see these babies as buddies. While brushy species and tall tree species like this Ceanothus and Pine can interact in mutually beneficial ways, there is also a strong competitive factor. Brushy species often form the first colonies that end up nurturing tall tree species in their protective covering. Ceanothus also fixes nitrogen out of the air like a legume, benefiting soil fertility in general. Eventually, the tall trees can out-compete the shrubbery, shade them out, and ultimately cause them to die as the tree based forest gains ground. Competition for water can also be a real issue out here in this dry, stony, hot landscape. This soil is mostly gravel as you can probably see. Still, they look like they are doing pretty good here at the end of the dry season and just one year old.

A native monkey flower near a rushing mountain creek. I think this is Mimulus cardinalis, or probably similar/related.

In a single year, these rose plants grew back from the roots and fruited like crazy. There were tons of them under the pines. This fire was all good news for them. They get a rich nutrient release from the ashes, less competition and more light. The tree in the back is not dead. The thick bark of Ponderosa Pines protects them in cool burns such as this particular block of trees experienced. About 80% of the Ponderosa Pine lived, which is good, since they don’t sprout back from the roots. Most of the adjacent thinner barked hardwoods like Black Oak and Madrone died back to the roots. But those hardwoods had already grown back 3 to 4 feet and even more. Some of those new shoots will be 8 feet tall with side branches by this time next year, backed by the root system of a full sized tree. Much of this growth is useful. I picked some of this regrowth for basketry, but passed up tons of redbud and Rhus Trilobata (sumac) shoots.

The goods, quartered with a chainsaw and ready for the bandsaw. Libocedrus decurrens Incense Cedar, a tough and very fragrant tree adapted to both dry and wet Pacific coastal mountains.

About the photographer… Cell-photo by Gretchen Immel. I wish I had more time on that trip to take pictures. I could see doing a photo book oriented around lessons in fire ecology and viewing the fires from a less human perspective than is usual. Yes, the fires were devastating, but they are not abnormal here, quite the contrary. This is a fire ecology, period. It’s not if it burns, it’s when. We tend to look at the climax forest as good and everything else as secondary or not important at all. But many species and individuals are stoked on these fires. They get nutrients, reduced competition and light. Once the deer come back, the browse for them will be amazing for quite a few years to come. big trees may have died, but baby trees get their chance now without the overcasting shadows thrown by older generations to keep them weak from lack of light. If you look up it looks like a holocaust, but if you look down, the land is bursting with new life. Each player out here has a strategy for this. Thick fire resistant bark on the pines, or if that fails, post fire seed sprouting. The main manzanita that grows out here usually dies when the top is burned, but it sprouts by the thousands for seed banked in the soil in response to the same fire. Many other brushy species sprout from the roots, others from seeds, and some both. The decidous trees and almost all of the non-coniferous species, sprout back from the roots. Oak and madrone shoots grew back 3 to 4 feet and sometimes more in one year. If these species didn’t have strategies for dealing with fires, they simply would not still be part of the ecology.

Tasting New Red Fleshed Seedling Apples, From Apple Breeding Trials

I have over 50 seedling apples fruiting this year, most for the first time. The best way for me to do content on tasting these is to do it how I normally do it, which is go out there and taste my way through the rows.

There are some interesting and potentially promising ones and certainly some stuff to use in making a next generation of crosses. I’ve also observed though that I have probably been right all along that there is a group of undesirable traits for a dessert apple, which follow the red fleshed trait around. I am assuming that some of these traits can be teased out and eliminated while retaining a deep red flesh. The classic red fleshed apple is acidic, soft, and low-ish in sugar. I’m pretty sure there is a trend where the redder the flesh, the more those are likely to be present.

The only thing to do is take these new fruits and make second generation crosses. some will be with other red fleshed apples or crosses and some possibly with other dessert apples. I’ll be thinking about which crosses to make once I taste these all and get an idea of what they are like.

As for the average apple in the row, they are generally edible, if not always good. Spitters are uncommon, but there are a few. Many are as good or better than the average apple I have growing here, about 80% of which I will probably end up culling out for low quality. A lot of them have just a hint of pink in the flesh and others have none, even though the great majority have one red fleshed parent. I’m hoping that when crossing apples that both have red flesh, I can increase the percentage of seedlings that show the trait. Many are very sweet, but the more red flesh, the less sweet they tend to be I think.

Scab is very bad on some and common in general, but I have some nice apples that look scab resistant if not practically immune. Even apples with two very scab prone parents can turn out scab free I learned. That is encouraging. I have not made crosses with two scab free parents yet, but I’m suspecting that they won’t always be scab free. But I’ve really been trying to use more scab resistant genes, because it is a problem for me and others, and it must help to add it to the mix more. Also, many red fleshed apples, including I believe all the Albert Etter red fleshed apples I have grown, seem very scab prone on a scale of 1 to 5 I’d a say

Pink Parftait 4 to 5

Rubaiyat 5

Grenadine 3 to 4

I do have some not very scabby or scab immune seedlings that are quite red inside, so I don’t think scab susceptibility travels with the rest of that package of undesirable traits I mentioned earlier. If I’m even right about that trend but I think I probably am.

As the season progresses. I’ve been very busy with winter preparations and homestead life in general. I’ve also had to take some time to do other stuff for money, so that takes time away from making content and working on real stuff that matters.

Lumber Terminology Confusion, In a Living Language, There is No Authority

In this video I address some common terms used in describing lumber and lumber milling. More importantly, some ideas about language regarding it’s misuse and limitations. I’ll talk about grain orientation in this blog post, but the language stuff will mostly have to wait for another post sometime. It’s a pretty big topic to bite into and I’d rather wait until I have the time and mindset to articulate my views as well as possible. This video was totally off the cuff and I was actually on pain meds after my recent appendix surgery, so it could have been better, but it is what it is. I think the language portion of the video is extremely important and the ideas presented are foundational for me in my world view and how I think.

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LET’S TALK ABOUT END GRAIN ORIENTATION

You can take a tree that has relatively homogenous properties as a wood, and cut two boards out of it that have very different appearances and properties. The difference has to do with growth ring orientation. We might describe the basic growth ring orientations in lumber as vertical, diagonal and horizontal. and obviously there are a lot of variations between them. See the diagrams below. Vertical grain is considered very desirable in many cases, but diagonal is preferred by some in some cases and even horizontal if a certain grain pattern is desirable. But in terms of stability, wood with about a 45º to 90º orientation is much more stable and less prone to cracking and cupping in seasoning or over time. The closer you get to horizontal, the less stable the lumber typically is.

Showing common end grain orientations and characters. vertical is the most stable orientation, and gives large, long flecks in woods such as Oak and Black Locust, which have prominent medullary rays. Diagonal grain is great and usually quite stable. The further diagonal grain gets toward horizontal the less stable and well behaved it is. Unless some specific look is wanted, horizontal grain lumber is not generally preferred, and even less so if it is from a small diameter log and the rings are very curved as on the bottom left. Of course there are many variations between these basic common examples.

Go look at an old wooden board fence. Typically you will see a clear pattern where any boards with horizontal grain are more cracked and more cupped than boards with diagonal or vertical grain. Boards that have diagonal grain but tending toward horizontal will have increasing problems. Boards with horizontal or close to horizontal grain will also have more tendency to not just crack, but to delaminate in layers along the growth rings. A fence is sort of a worst case scenario, because the boards are left exposed to repeated wetting and drying and hot drying sun. The wood shrinks and expands and if a board is going to show it’s hidden stresses and weaknesses, it will do so if nailed to a fence for years. If I were at a lumber yard buying fence boards, I would try to pick as many boards as possible with a grain orientation of vertical to 45º, with no knots or grain irregularities. Assuming the wood is a species suited to fence boards, that fence would last a long time, where my neighbors fence with randomly selected boards ranging from horizontal to vertical would have more cupped and cracked boards over the same span of time.

Grain orientation also affects the look of the wood quite a lot, especially in woods that contain pronounced medullary rays. Medullary rays are corky, dark structures in the wood that radiate out from the center of the tree. They can be very pretty if oriented certain ways in the board.

This triangular billet shows the 3 main grain patterns in Tan Oak by end grain orientation in the board. Note the long flecking of the medullary rays in vertical grain wood. If you look at the end grain of the vertical orientation, you’ll see the dark medullary rays as lines running horizontally. They run from the center of the tree outward, like spokes and show on the face of diagonal boards as this flecking effect. These get shorter and eventually less interesting the more the grain tends toward diagonal. Vertical grain is also typically the most stable orientation. The only milling method that produces this orientation in 100% boards is what I call Rift sawing.

The diagonal has a nice grain pattern, but not the high level of interest invoked by the flecking in vertically oriented. It does look the same on all sides though and anything from 45º to 90º, and even somewhat less, is usually stable, quality wood.

Look how badly the horizontal face has cracked. There are possibly a few small cracks on the diagonal face and none at all on the vertical face. This illustrates how horizontal milled wood is typically more prone to cracking and also cupping and shrinkage. In many woods, you’ll see the growth rings show as a distinctive and familiar pattern on the face of horizontal grain boards, but tan oak doesn’t really show that pattern when cut this way.

If the tree is cut with perfectly vertical grain, as shown, the flecks of color which are the exposed rays will be of maximum length across the face of the board. On the edge of the board there will be no flecking at all.

Boards with horizontal grain will have no flecking on the face, but flecking will be present on the edges.

Lumber is often described as to the way it was sawn. The sawyers who cut out the boards use methods suited to the species, the mill and blade type, efficiency, log size or qualities and quality of finished lumber. Often the easiest methods don’t yield the most quality lumber, but may be perfectly functional and adequate, such as for rough building material, or the method may be economically efficient regardless of lumber quality. Look through the diagrams and the descriptions below, which describe different methods. Lets look now at common methods and terms for sawing logs into lumber.

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SAWING METHODS

There are a lot of different and creative ways that boards are cut out of logs. For instance, although horizontal grain wood is generally more problematic from a practical perspective, there are methods that actually maximize boards with that grain orientation. The below however are some common ones that are relevant to this conversation.

PLAIN SAWING (aka, live, through or flat): It is typically easier for a sawyer to just run the log through a blade over and over with out resetting the log’s position. It is quick and easy. But it produces boards with every kind of grain, from vertical to flat, some very poor, some very good and some in between.

QUARTER SAWING: Diagrams available on the net show two common quarter sawing techniques. In both strategies, the log is first quartered, then it is sawn in such a way that it produces just wood with vertical and diagonal grain, around 90º to 45º. Quarter sawing does not make the most wide boards possible, but it creates 100% high quality grain orientation. To do so, it requires much more time and effort, so it is usually reserved for higher quality wood or to create lumber for certain uses or grain appearance.

RIFT SAWING: The method most commonly termed rift sawing is even more hassle. It makes a lot of cuts in a way that makes no sense from the perspective of efficient lumber production, and actually wastes a few boards worth of wood! All in the name of getting as many perfectly 90º grain oriented boards out of the log as possible. But, clearly in some cases people are willing to accept those disadvantages to get all vertical grain or no sane person would do it.

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SAWYER V.S. WOODWORKER NOMENCLATURE

The Sawyer has had his way with the log, and we already looked at how grain orientation affects the lumber appearance and stability, now on to language and the consumer. It is common to refer to boards by the supposed method used in sawing them, such as quarter sawn, rift sawn, or plain/flat sawn. In a recent video, I invoked the term rift sawn, and was told by a commenter that I used the term incorrectly, and that rift sawn lumber is actually lumber that has about a 45º degree grain orientation. (that comment thread is in the bottom of this post) The truth is that in lumber and milling terminology, there is no authority, and no consensus. As such, there is no correct or proper term. Here is a Duck Duck Go search that illustrates the diversity and confusion of terms.

duckduckgo.com/?q=rift+sawn&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.protoolreviews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fptr%2F3000.gif

There is also a strange divide between sawyers and the the lumber merchants and users which reveals a hard contradiction. If one wanted to do the work, a stint of historical research might yield an evolution of these terms that could create a basis for claiming that certain terms are more justifiably used for certain methods of sawing. To get woodworkers and lumber merchants to start using a “corrected” terminology seems like herding cats. Sure it would be of utility to adopt a common convention and that would avoid much confusion, but between the unlikelihood of effectiveness and the level of effort involved, it doesn’t seem important enough to bother. Regardless, I’ll make my argument for what a less confusing common convention might look like at the end of this article.

A board is what it is and is not the terms we might use to describe it. Even if 100% of people agree that a board is correctly and accurately described by the term quarter sawn, or rift sawn, it is still not either. The object, the board just is what it is. Unequivocal acceptance of terminology implies that there is somehow, somewhere a consensus, or authority, or that there is some absolute grounds for using a given terminology. I do not believe that any of those are true. If anything, I think we are confusing ourselves by referring to lumber by the method of sawing, because it is impossible to know what method the sawyer used in all cases. I often use these sawyer terms myself to describe lumber, but it really doesn’t make sense.

It is my best guess that the lumber terminology that refers to a board as sawn in a certain way, derives from sawyer terminology referring to the strategy used to cut up logs. For instance in quarter sawing, the log must first be quartered in order to pursue that strategy. But there are also two and quite different methods of sawing up those quarters, which are both commonly called quarter sawing, and more variations on one of them.

I think it is likely that the term and method which seems to be most commonly referred to as rift sawing (as a strategy, not as a grain orientation!) derives from riven lumber, which is split from logs rather than sawn. If you split a log into halves, then quarters, then 1/8ths, then 16ths etc, then hew those down into boards with an axe, you get about the same thing you get with what seems to be most commonly referred to as rift sawing; the end result being that all grain will be vertical. Some entomological and historical research might help support or call into doubt that theory, but I can’t be bothered. I just don’t think it matters that much. The only reason I’m talking about it so much is that I think it offers a window into our use of language and our attitude about words and definition, and the validity of convention and authority.

Grain orientation and sawing methods is an interesting study of language, because it involves two main parties, the lumberman and the wood consumer. The lumberman may sell the lumber merchant wood that is literally quarter sawn, which involves first cutting the log into quarters, thus the term. But in selling wood to consumers, all that really matters is the grain orientation, not the sawing method. The truth is you can get 90 degree grain boards out of a single log when sawn by any of the above illustrated three most common methods, and others; it’s just that you will get more or less of it. This creates a perfect storm for confusion. It makes a lot more sense to dispense with sawing terminology on the merchant/consumer end, and use grain orientation to describe lumber. It would make sense to use sawyer terminology if you were buying a whole log, or having a log custom milled, otherwise, it doesn’t matter how the log was sawn, just the end result.

The culture of wood consumers and lumber merchants it seems has somehow come to often use the term rift sawn to indicate lumber with a diagonal grain. But the most common use of the term rift sawing from the sawyers end is a method which produces zero diagonal grain boards! It’s sole purpose is to produce 100% vertical grain boards at any cost.

The term quarter sawn on the other hand commonly seems to indicate vertical grain wood in the lumber world, while the methods most commonly called quartersawn in milling produce both vertical and diagonal grain. So, if the terminology originally derives from sawyers and the mill, it could be argued that the lumber merchants and woodworkers have it sort of backward if anything. But are they wrong?

Language is not just manufactured, it’s a product of living, changing culture. I once read a thread where someone posted a picture of what almost anyone would call a hatchet and some guy said, that is not a hatchet, a hatchet is …. I don’t even remember what he said, some old type of chopping hatchet axe thing that was different. But if you walk up to 100 people on the street and say what is this and hand them a standard short camp hatchet, they are almost all going to call it a hatchet, with maybe a random person calling it a camp axe. So, basically it is now effectively known as a hatchet by majority use. Language is fluid and evolves over time. Which came first, the dictionary or the word? The dictionary attempts to maintain standards and conventions, but it is also there to document and legitimize new and changing language. And regardless of all of that, a board of whatever configuration just is what it is in spite of our monkey chatter.

The nomenclature around lumber and milling is very confused and confusing. Because of the contradictions in milling and lumber terminology, and because ALL of the most common milling methods produce vertical grain lumber and all but one produce diagonal grain, I think the best argument that can be made toward a more sensical standardization of grain orientation terminology, is to leave the sawyers terminology to those milling the wood. If woodworkers and lumber merchants were to stick to grain orientation and work toward a convention around that, much confusion could be avoided. Not only is it not possible to take a vertical or diagonal board and know what method was used to cut it, but it is also completely irrelevant to the user. The obvious exception would be if you are having a log custom milled. But, you’d better make sure that you and the sawyer are on the same page regarding terminology of sawing strategies.

Ground Shots Podcast Interview on Bark Tanning With Kelly Moody

I sat down with Kelly Moody and traveling podcaster to discuss bark tanning. Kelly is a tanner herself and we get into specifics about tanning with tannic acid and some related stuff. It was fun and maybe we’ll do the same with some other topics when she comes back through sometime. This was my first podcast guest spot.

https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/ground-shots-podcast

Hewing and Seasoning Oak Billets for Later Use

I have a set of videos today on processing the large, raw oak rails that I split out this past spring. I hewed them into smaller, shorter billets and put them away to cure for later use. There are some, important points on how wood shrinks, seasons and cracks in vid one. This information is not just relevant to this project, but is broadly applicable to seasoning wood in general. Part two is hewing and hewing tips

I’ve been putting up some smaller pieces of this tan oak too. Some for specific projects and some just to save some of this beautiful wood before it disappears, possibly forever as our Tan Oak trees are decimated by sudden oak death syndrome.

Summer 2019 Updates and a New Early Wickson Seedling

A walk around video looking at projects and updates on biochar catch pit, apples ripe now, apple seedlings, grafts, tree training, nectarine growth etc...

I also appear to have a good new early ripening Wickson seedling that I’m just now assessing. That is pretty neat! It has some characteristics of my other Wickson seedling BITE ME! and some of the appearance of a third one from that same batch of seeds. The graft is not labelled, but I’m about 90%+ sure that it is a seedling which was taken off of a tree that was broken by a bear and re-grafted onto this other tree. I will graft it out elsewhere this year for future assessment. It only had a few apples on it this year. I’m going to say that it’s not astronomically good, but that it’s the 2nd or 3rd best ripe now, the other two good ones being William’s Pride and Kerry Pippin. I also didn’t see much scab on it.

I have now fruited and tasted 4 of the 4 original open pollinated Wickson seedlings that launched my apple seedling growing endeavors. The one that I named and have sent out scions for, BITE ME!, was the best eating apple of it’s season last year, another is okay, but just boring, a third was tiny, green and completely bland and this is the 4th. This new summer apple is definitely worth eating, but we’ll see how it shapes up as it matures and with weather variation over the years. All in all, that is pretty encouraging for a bunch of randomly pollinated apple seeds. I sent out hundreds of Wickson seeds last year. I can’t hardly imagine that some very good and interesting apples will not result. This year I will have more Wickson seed available, both open pollinated and pollinated.

Toasting Seeds in a Basket With Hot Coals, Grass seeds & Deadly Fungus

Having an interest in natural living, self reliance, survival etc., I have tried to learn what I can about about how native people around the world lived in the old days; uses of plants, technologies and all of that fascinating stuff. In every part of the world, local residents of traditional land based cultures develop technologies and strategies that stem largely from the environment and what there is to work with there. Growing up In California, I’ve learned as much as possible about how people lived here in particular. In the traditional lifeways, eeds and acorns were abundant and travel to resource sites through the seasons was fairly common. This set of circumstances gave birth to a rich culture of basketry and the heavy use of baskets in daily life. Baskets are light and resilient, while stone or clay pots are not. If you want to see the products of an amazing art form, look up California Indian basketry, an old, and still living tradition.

A shout out to any California Native people reading out there. In the cultural wash of Indian stereotypes your rich and fascinating art and culture don’t get enough play. And in particular to the cultural ambassadors like Julia and Lucy Parker, Corine Pierce, Edward Willie, Sage LaPena and many more past and present who represent and share living California Native culture with the world.

Two fascinating practices from this branch of the human family are cooking in water tight baskets with hot rocks, and toasting food in baskets with hot coals. To the uninitiated, these things might sound impossible, but they work. In this simple video, I talk about collecting some native grass seeds, and avoiding Ergot, a poisonous fungus that infests them. Then I demonstrate that coal toasting in a basket works, even though I really don’t know what I’m doing. I just wanted to show proof of concept and how neat and useful oak bark coals are.

This video is an offshoot of my previous one on oak bark as a unique fuel that makes long lasting coals.

Also, check out this wonderful old movie of traditional acorn processing!

The Worst, Common Bark Tanning Mistake

On the road from raw skin to leather, there are many potential mishaps. Skins and plant liquors are potential food for bacteria, yeasts and fungus and growing the wrong ones, or too many, or for too long, can damage or blemish a hide. When dealing with natural materials, we typically have a sizeable degree of variability to contend with. It is very likely that home tanners are dealing with materials and quantities they aren’t familiar with.

One cluster of mistakes that all lead to similar results or scenarios stands out as the worst common error. Put most simply it is, that the hide is left for too long, in solutions that are too weak. This can come about in various ways and have differing effects, but it is super common. In this video, I lay out the typical scenarios and try to offer an approach to prevent them. This is an important video for anyone starting out in bark tanning, because this general area of understanding is so often lacking in the beginning. Nearly everyone seems to make these same mistakes, I know I did, and they need to be headed off intentionally.

Because there are so many variables in natural tanning, it is impossible to accurately quantify all of this. I can’t give out step by step instructions with times and quantities. It just doesn’t work very well that way with all the variables involved, not the least of which is tannin content by species, individual trees and condition of materials. What I can give is a general approach to this problem that will allow you to adapt to new materials and unknowns. That essentially involves observation and understanding the typical way things go as far as the hide tanning rapidly at first, then requiring a high enough level of tannin in the liquor to preserve the skin as it finishes tanning. Also, that some color in the liquor is not necessarily indicative that is has any tanning power left. There is a measuring device called a barkometer, but I don’t own one and find that I can judge when to add tannin by observing the liquor and behavior of the skin. Bullet points are…

*Always look at the liquor, before, after and during, just always; any time you add liquor or check the skin, or have a new batch of liquor. Pick it up in your hand and look at the color and density. All materials are different in color and how much tannin v.s. other coloring matter they contain, so you are making comparisons mostly with fresh, v.s. used and partially used samples of whatever you happen to be working with.

This fresh, strong bark liquor has a bright look and high color density

This solution, while retaining some color, has no tanning power left, or not enough to matter. It will grow bacterial scum on top and the hide will decay slowly, because it is just starting to tan. All color is not indicative of effective tannin. With a wll prepared skin in new starter solutions, this phenomenon can happen in one day. Unless you add a lot of tannin quickly, (which is sometimes okay) it will keep happening, but eventually it will slow way down and the solution can be left for long periods of time unattended.

*Understand that in the beginning, hides typically take up tannin very fast.

*If the skin is left for any length of time, the liquor needs to have enough excess tannin to adequately preserve it, and also to insure that tanning continues to progress.

*Be prepared to gather/prepare/add more tanning material as needed. Thoughts such as you used a “lot” or it “should” be enough are not really relevant. It’s either doing the job, or you need more. Sometimes that is a lot if the materials are not very rich in tannin, or it is something that is just hard to gather in enough mass.

*A healthy tan can smell quite strong and in a way unpleasant. I would characterize it as unpleasant, but kind of intriguing and not just flat out disgusting or vile. It is an odd smell that will cling to your skin for a time after touching it. While an element is unpleasant, there should also be a large measure of fermentation to the smell. All of that is normal. It shouldn’t just smell putrid or flat out offensive in the way that rotten food, a dead animal or an outhouse does. Some growth of stuff on the surface can be normal.

*Typically, tanning will progress very rapidly at first, then slow down a lot as the core of the hide slowly tans. Keep the solution rising in strength if anything during this initial phase, then leave it strong enough to maintain a healthy tan as it finishes. Common ways to fail at this objective are: Using low tannin materials, not using enough material, putting the hide in and leaving it without strengthening the tan, Judging by how much it seems like you’ve used instead of by how tanning is progressing (or not), and what the liquor is doing.

*A fairly reliable approach is to cook the material twice. Use the second cook liquor to start the hide, with some water add as necessary to cover the skin well. observe the liquor before putting the hide in. Add the stronger first cook liquor over the several days as you see the liquor depleting and the hide tanning. If you run out and it still seems to be drawing down the liquor, make more. I also talk in the video about dumping some of the liquor to bring the water level down and the tannin level up to get a solution you can leave the skin in. When it is no longer rapidly depleting, you can get the strength up and attend it less frequently. This approach gets most of the tannin out of the material, prevents any possibility of tanning the skin too rapidly in the beginning, is continually adaptable, and encourages familiarity with our materials and their tanning potential.

That is the quicky version, but it should be enough to avoid this worst common problem in bark tanning.

I’ll link two video playlists here. One is a lot of useful general tanning videos and the other is my strops from scratch series, which follows the tanning of a deer skin with oak bark.