Photos for Wikipedia

Written by karen on September 29th, 2016

Every once in a while, I go on a binge of taking photos for some Wikipedia project. (You may remember the lake work.) This month, they had a contest to gather photos of places on the National Register of Historic Places. It was a good chance for me to explore some things I hadn’t seen (or hadn’t looked at closely) around Douglas and Bisbee.

Here are the results. (The last three photos were taken in earlier years.)

Douglas Airport

Douglas-Williams Home Museum, Douglas, AZ

Hotel Gadsden (now for sale — they say if they don’t sell soon, they’ll close.)

Grand Theater, Douglas, AZ

Douglas Post Office

El Paso and Southwestern Railroad Passenger Depot, Douglas, AZ

El Paso and Southwestern Railroad YMCA, Douglas, AZ

(This building was recently purchased and is being restored. That’s a lot of work!)

St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Bisbee, AZ

Douglas Walter House, Bisbee, AZ

Evergreen Cemetery, Bisbee, AZ

John Treu House, Bisbee, AZ (also for sale)

Muheim House, Bisbee, AZ

Phelps Dodge General Office Building, Bisbee, AZ

Bisbee Womans Club Clubhouse, Bisbee, AZ

Silver Peak Lookout Complex, Portal, AZ

Fort Bowie, National Historic Site, Bowie, AZ

Chiricahua National Monument Historic Designed Landscape, Portal, AZ

 

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Visitors

Written by karen on September 8th, 2016

It’s pretty quiet here, and so when a car we don’t recognize pulls up to the front gate, it’s always interesting. On Monday, a truck pulled up and parked. Getting out the binoculars, I saw two women, a man, and a child who I didn’t recognize. As the couple walked up the drive, we waved, and they waved back.

It turns out they are the people who own the piece of land to the west of us. In 8 years here, we’d never seen them. It turns out that they’ve been married 16 years, and the woman had never been there. Her husband hadn’t been there for 30 or so years. (His father bought the parcel and left part of it to him when he died.) They live in Tucson.

In fact, they weren’t even sure exactly where the piece of land was, which was why they’d stopped at our place.

They were very nice. We invited them in, talked for a while, and exchanged phone numbers.

It’s amazing to me that someone could own a piece of land that they’d never even seen, but it seems to happen a lot here. People buy cheap with some expectation that the price will go up. For most people, it’s not a place they can ever really imagine themselves living.

That suits us fine.

 

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Camping!

Written by karen on September 7th, 2016

It is one of the most lovely times of year to go camping here, and we took advantage of the long weekend to see a new place, Aguiree Springs in the Organ Mountains just east of Las Cruces.

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These mountains are quite dramatic, and the hikes we did around them were beautiful. And because of the late monsoons, everything was in bloom! (And yes, the mosquitoes were in full force.)

 

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It’s that time of year

Written by karen on September 6th, 2016

This is lemon ginger pear preserves.

We are so grateful to our friends with fruit trees who share with us.

 

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New farm table

Written by karen on August 28th, 2016

A few of you might remember back in May when I said we were starting a new project. Today it is complete! A new farm table.

It is almost 10 feet long and capable of seating 12. It was a challenging project because it is so large. (Have you ever seen that scene in the movie where the woman sets a Thanksgiving turkey down on the table and the whole table collapses taking the entire dinner with it? That was on my mind.) Because it is so large (and very heavy), we mostly built it in place.

We built this out of large Ponderosa pine planks that we got for this purpose when we built our doors. (Yes, we’ve been holding them for a long time!) There were some significant challenges in the construction and lots of planing, sawing, drilling, clamping, and sanding.

I always wanted a table like this, and in fact, designed the dining space in our house for it. (The chandelier we got looked a little ridiculous over the small table we had before, but now it’s just right!) I’m very happy with how this turned out. Can’t wait to see it surrounded by people and filled with good food!

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Another great use for the slow cooker

Written by karen on August 4th, 2016

Onions (grown here). A little olive oil, red wine, salt, and fresh thyme. Eighteen hours on low.

Caramelized onion confit. Melty sweetness.

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This week at the farmers market

Written by karen on July 28th, 2016

This week’s gourmet treat:

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And in a couple weeks, it’s National Farmers Market Week. Go visit yours, and thank a farmer. Trust me that no one is making much profit doing this.

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Protección de los conejos

Written by karen on July 17th, 2016

So the rabbit problems have continued. We have gotten very little rain, and they’re just so starving for water. After more frustration over this than is healthy, this week we harvested and abandoned a few beds and then brainstormed what to do for the rest of the year. We decided to fence in one bed and try to grow intensively there (in addition to the greenhouses). Here are the results.

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I was worried about how this would look (which is why we haven’t relented and just fenced the whole thing — in addition to the time and expense and being unsure if it would work anyway), especially in front of out beautiful mountain view, but I think it looks cute.

Despite more challenges this year than we’ve ever had, we’re also having some successes. Garlic, shallots, and onions were all fabulous this year. We’ve harvested and sold over 70 bags of greens at the market so far (plus more we’ve eat here). Our new greenhouse is great. This week, we ate the first edamame and shishido peppers, and the eggplants are coming along. And the first figs have appeared!

 

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Heat wave

Written by karen on June 19th, 2016

I suppose you’ve heard that there is a heat wave, and if you are in the southwest, you may be experiencing it too.

I just looked at our temperature gauge, and it’s 111 degrees in the shade outside, and 86 degrees inside (with no air conditioning). I guess we built our house ok.

The greenhouse is up to 138 degrees, but things inside are looking good. Edamame, eggplant, radishes, and chiles all seem to like the heat. And of course, I water every day.

I did laundry today, and the clothes on the line were dry faster than they’d be in the dryer I think. Simple solar power.

What is saving us right now is the fact that the nights are still cool. We open the windows as soon as the sun is down, and by morning, the house is quite cool.

We’re supposed to be in the low 100s for the foreseeable future. (We’re glad we’re not in Phoenix where temps are over 120.) Keep cool.

 

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Onions

Written by karen on June 12th, 2016

Having eaten all the tomatoes, the voles and rabbits moved on to the onions. Here’s an example of what they did a couple nights ago (I hope whatever ate this got very sick):

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So despite the fact that the onions were not really ready to be harvested, I decided to pull them to save what I could. There were a fair number that did well and will be good eats:

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There were some others that weren’t really mature enough so I replanted them in other places to see if they might grow further. We will also eat some of the smaller ones as “spring onions.” I will also be making a red wine onion confit this week. Yum!

The variety that did the best by far was the Texas Early White.

On the weather front, we’ve started getting some sporadic storms, which seem to me like early monsoons. (We don’t normally get monsoons until early July.) As the rain picks up, this should help the garden considerably and also the pest problems.

And this week for the first time, I sold everything I took to the farmers market, which included 8 bags of greens.

 

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