LK & RB Live in Maine

Back from Maine to the still steaming South. While in Maine autumn is in the air and summer’s end is all too evident here in Georgia there is the faintest hint that the ovens have been turned down and that the long gentle southern fall is just over the horizon. Nothing like frost or days of 55F rain, just day time temperatures hovering below 90F and nights finally falling below 70F. There’s none of the urgency and intensity of New England falls and I think I can get used to it. And foliage, well I’ve seen plenty.

I was lucky enough to catch my friend Walter in his office on Wednesday and he says I don’t write enough about the band and bluegrass as I should given how much I think ( and talk ) about it and maybe he’s right. We had a fantastic gig at the Old Town House in Union, ME and the rehearsals were even better. The hall is remarkably intact and a super facility for intimate musical performance. The antique quilts on display help the sound ambience ( as well as visual ) and the angled stage, beadboard walls and general air of the nineteenth century made for a fun time. Although the audio quality is atrocious this gives an idea of what we were up to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71dm60Yd1fI

We played twelve hours straight on Saturday with time out only to drive to the gig and back. It turns out that we’re all equally crazy about this project and have been putting in lots of woodshed time. Thus the sound was even more our own and even better than last time. We can’t wait for next time.

 

Doorstops dept.

Even in paperback this is a real doorstop of a book, ‘Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico’ by British scholar Hugh Thomas. Despite its size and weight I quite enjoyed it. Published 15 years after I studied the subject ( that would be 1993 if you’re counting ) it had plenty of new angles on happenings that we thought we knew something about and a good story well told.

Evidently much of the research was done in Seville and Thomas came away with a good understanding of the regional, almost tribal, nature of Spanish society even today and how much more so it would have been in the time of Cortés. He carefully notes where every conquistador was from in Spain and what that would have meant as to how they related to the various political factions, cabals and petty tyrants in the New World.

My first time in Spain I had as guide the impetuous madrileño Ramon Bujanda and he was nearly obsessed with just this. He was like a birdwatcher in the way he identified the regional identities of people on the street by their physiognomies and what that meant about them. Likewise Thomas finds clues to the behavior of historical personalities in their hometowns, emphasizing that Cortés surrounded himself with others from Extremadura and trusted them to support him.

Montezuma is well drawn and the image of him in his castle, listening to the reports of his spies on the doings of the slowly approaching Spaniards, vacillating over what to do, unprepared by life for the enormity of the oncoming catastrophe is haunting. I found it interesting that the Mexica prized rare feathers over gold, in all my time in museums I missed that, presumably because the extraordinary capes and clothing they made were ephemeral and not valued by the Europeans. Some of the costumes described sound wonderful. Thomas has a fine quote from Albrecht Durer as to the ‘wonderfully artistic things’ wrought by the Americans, how ‘In all the days of my life, I have seen nothing which touches my heart so much as these….’ speaking of the hoard of goods sent to the Emperor Charles by Cortés.

In all, highly recommended.

(Spent one half hour trying to get a spanish font going for diacritical markings. Failed. Will try again later.) Update: Fixed.

 

Strange doings in chickenland

I’ve been assembling the honey house and am finally done.  The extractor is up and running and we’ll have honey in the barn by the end of the day.  It will take a while to get it all done but having on site honey extraction is going to make possible better varietals and more exact harvesting.  In the past we’ve used  other facilities, one of them on Cumberland and its been more work than it should be.

Meanwhile back at the chickens, I was gathering eggs yesterday and was greeted by the sight of a 5 foot chicken snake getting its jaws around an egg.  Once I got him to yield up the egg and administered a lesson in not eating eggs I noticed yet another snake ( an oak snake, smaller, similar to the one pictured ) coiled up in the corner of the coop with the characteristic shape of an egg partway down it.  Eek.  The first snake in the coop this year and there are two of them, different species, side by side snacking on eggs. Strange doings indeed.  That rooster should shut up already and do some work.  If he can attack me, and he gave me the spurs just the other day, he ought to see off some puny snakes.

When I first heard of chicken snakes I assumed it was yet another southernism like ‘chicken hawk’ which refers not to a specific species of hawk but to all hawks that might like chickens.  My guide to local herps had no chicken snake.  Then during a trip to the Smithsonian I chanced to find the Okefenokee display and there it was, clearly identified, a chicken snake.  Egg snake would be more accurate because they don’t actually prey on hens but they love to steal eggs.  I don’t blame ‘em our eggs are delicious.

 

Muscadine Melomel

Its time for the muscadine harvest so its also time to talk about mead. Mead is something of which I have too much to say but I’ll try and restrain myself, for now.

Simply, mead is honey wine. Using honey as the source of fermentable sugars is ancient and mead has played interesting roles in history, everything from a secret military weapon ( soldiers that are high fight better ), to an aphrodisiac ( honeymoon ), to a vehicle for herbal remedies ( the root of the word ‘medicine’ ). In modern times commercial beekeeping means that it is no longer an exclusively luxury product and we can use honey in ways that would have seemed profligate in medieval times. And we can add fruits, spices and additives at our fancy to create never before imagined drinks.

Fruit meads, known as melomels, are a wonderful and varied kind of beverage with the flavours of the fruit and honey blending in strange and unpredictable ways. I like using fruits with lots of anthocyanins and tannins to add body and complexity to mead. Think wild Maine blueberries or blackberries, sour cherries, or grapes of many kinds. I’ve used the old overgrown Concords from my farm in Maine and this year for the first time I’ve got a real harvest of muscadines in Georgia.

For the first years we owned our Georgia farm we never picked a grape. They ripen in August and we were always in Maine. The man we bought the place from said the critters got them but our friend Roy says the critters were two legged. The vines had been neglected and it took a couple of years of pruning and irrigation to bring them back but now they look great and the fruit are some tasty. Three years ago I was given 20 kilos of heirloom muscadines by a local beekeeper that came from his families home place and I made two slightly different batches of mead with them as experiments. I think its a great way to use muscadines for wine, balancing out some of their exotic nature and making a drier wine than using the grapes alone. SWMBO

is a mead lover and is urging, even insisting that I get to it and turn these into wine. Pinot Georgio perhaps.

Ken Schramm has written a fine book that I would recommend to anyone who cares to have a go at making mead. His best idea is to make melomels in a whole new way, by making a plain honey mead, fermenting it to 80% and then adding fruit and finishing the ferment. This eliminates the need for sterilizing the fruit by cooking or sulfites and it preserves more of the fresh fruit flavour because it isn’t scrubbed off by the vigorous initial fermentation. Even after aging for a few years the fragrant volatiles are still there.

Another great resource for mead information is the Mead Lover’s Digest. Some really good meadmakers are very generous with their knowledge there and I, for one, am very grateful to Dick Dunn for his years of moderation ( as it were ).

For six gallons of mead I use a gallon of honey in five of water. It takes three or four weeks for the initial ferment to quiet down then I rack to a new container, leaving sediments behind, and add the fruit. For muscadines I like 6 to 8 kilos in a batch. After another month or so of ferment I bottle in champagne bottles with a small amount of honey dissolved in water added to make a little sparkle. Melomels, like all meads, have a very exhilarating effect, like champagne with considerably less aftermath.

 

Dismal science

Well yes, there has been a little turbulence in the markets the last couple of weeks and its not easy to cut through the pablum served up by the media to figure out what it all means to regular folks, let alone bee farmers. One good analysis is up at Firedoglake, don’t miss the comments, especially #84, #107 and # 113. There’s some static, it being the web after all, but there is also some good thinking here.

I was in the Yucatan during the currency crisis Mexicans called ‘el Crack’ in 1993. With an odd group of friends ( a Mexican charter boat captain, a German retiree, an itinerant Aussie barber and others ) we would gather on the beach in the late morning to discuss classical economics through the lens of the chaotic and opaque events in the Mexican market and try to figure out how to use the day to day fluctuations to our advantage in stretching our hard currency assets. Since we were all, to some extent, gabacheros ( seekers of babes ) this was a counter productive activity because there is nothing that will turn people ( let alone babes ) off so quickly as the dismal science. Still we found it strangely exciting to be in a ‘crisis’ and tried hard to understand what was going on. It all helped me when I was in the middle of a very similar event in Asia a few years later. You see one crack you’ve seen, er……

I think there’s a shoe or two still to drop in this one, especially with the administration hunkered down trying to run out the clock.

Update: There’s a much shorter but interesting discussion of this at the excellent John Quiggin’s blog:

 

Green Papaya Salad

The weather has been steamy, 99F to 101F, maximum humidity and it makes me think of Bangkok where stifling is just regular. For me Bangkok, its difficulties aside, was a non-stop every day street food party. The local denizens are nobody’s idea of fun, like the residents of capitol cities everywhere ( see Paris, Cairo, Bonn, el pinche DF, etc. ) but they do have ideas about things, especially food.

Among the many street food discoveries in Bangkok was green papaya salad. It was like putting a grenade in one’s stomach. Noises I’ve never heard from inside a living body that kept going for a long time. Every time I’d have it one hour later I’d swear never again. Then, the next day, I’d find myself in the vicinity of a papaya salad dealer and I’d think, oh yeah.

The components of Thai cuisine are all present in papaya salad, magnified. For a serving of typical ( to American eyes tiny ) size there would be three cloves of garlic, two or three fresh, red Thai chilis, fish sauce ( lots ), lime juice ( lots, natch ) a yard long green bean, sliced, three or four leaves of lettuce, the papaya and…. some kind of sea flavour.

One place that I favoured for a fix was a bizarre food court on the eighth floor of a vertical mall. The view of smog choked and flat Bangkok was exotic and the food choices, in brightly lit, white tiled booths were, well, different. At a table was a papaya salad group, three or four vendors in a row. They had nurse like uniforms and a near fiendish delight in preparing a salad that would make you regret it. The reason I would get papaya salad there was on account of the black crabs which were only occasionally available on the street and are crucial for the sea flavour. After all the other ingredients were mixed in the big wooden mortar there would be a pause. Because I was a farang and therefor insane and unpredictable ( but probably had some money ) the server would look at me interrogatively. I would, with my best Thai manner, point to the crabs. There would be a second interrogative look. That was because of the significant upcharge for the crabs. Imperious, I would assent. One of the small, live, black crabs would be chosen, cut up with scissors and added to the mortar. More vigorous mashing. The resultant mixture was added to the shredded papaya and poured over the lettuce and bean.

It is so explosive your brain can’t remember how intense it is, every time you take the first bite and say, oh yeah, I remember now. It is too hot, too salty, too citrusy acidic, and don’t forget the enzymatic action. Papain, just one of the enzymes in papayas, is one of the main ingredients in meat tenderizers. I wished they would give one more salad with it but try and tell them anything. The rumblings start soon and before you know it there’s a Tambora going on in your heartland and you’re swearing never again, again.

So last night I made green papaya salad. I tend toward the Vietnamese style and add more lettuce and greens than you’d ever get in Bangkok but it had the authentic effect, making the heat outside more endurable. I like the substitution of honey for sugar and habaneros for Thai chilis. I used raw Georgia shrimp in place of the black crabs. Our friend Vinh, the source of our green papaya, says that a similar crab is available in Florida but I haven’t found it yet.

• One green papaya, peeled, seeded and shredded
• 6-8 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 ripe habaneros, seeded and minced, hey, I said it was going to hurt
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
• 4 cherry tomatoes or one regular
• 5 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 5 medium size raw shrimps

Lightly steam a handful of green beans and shred a small head of romaine. Arrange some beans and lettuce on serving plates ( this is for four servings ). Mosh all ingredients except papaya in a mortar. Toss with papaya and serve on lettuce.

 

Comb honey for sale

People have different reactions when I say I’m a commercial beekeeper. Do you get stung? is by far the most common. Less frequently but still often enough people ask if I sell comb honey. Till now the answer has been no. Its labor intensive and difficult and a very small percentage of those who ask are prepared to reach in their pockets and part with the readies. Nonetheless, now I can say yes I do sell comb honey and we’ll see who really wants it.

This spring I spoke to a honey packer that buys a lot of comb honey and we discussed the economics and mechanics of it. So I did a trial run, south Georgia being an excellent place to do it and my woods here blessed with the right combination of flowers. Here’s the result and it came out rather well. The floral sources are holly, gallberry and palmetto in varying ratios, based on timing and location, yielding a range of heartiness ( holly very light, palmetto amber, gallberry in between ) but the flavour is excellent as only honey from the comb can be. If you’re interested get in touch, michael at beeherenow dot com.

 

Book dump

Trying to catch up with the book pile:

Collapse by Jared Diamond You know that I would like this, crumbing piles of ancient stone being one of my interests and many of the case studies here having felt the scuff of my feet. Prof. Diamond has a ( one suspects deliberately ) nerdy authorial voice but he usually stays on the right side of the line between pedantic and effective exposition. I just reread it, curious to think about it again through the lens of David Quammen’s Monster of God; Man Eating Predators in the Jungles of History and the Mind . The unpredictable ripple effects of removing trophic levels from ecosystems are something scientists are starting to grapple with, with resultant interesting new ideas. Both books highly recommended.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers I’ve lost my enthusiasm for Mr. Powers and this book didn’t stop the slide, in fact quite the reverse. I couldn’t see where it was going but suspected, rightly as it turns out, nowhere particular. I found The Goldbug Variations and Operation: Wandering Soul strikingly, even piercingly affective. Try one of those if you’re going to start on Powers.

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta I thought this was a shoe-in for our BOTY ( book of the year ) the first non-fiction winner yet. Now it looks like Cloud Atlas is going to take that going away but this is still a wonderful book. A sympathetic, self-deprecating author takes us on a tour of Mumbai through some of its colourful characters: hit-men, dancers for hire, diamond merchants, prostitutes and politicians. Really good, right to the end.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell As different from his Cloud Atlas as it is possible to be this is still a good read. Smaller and less ambitious it is closely imagined and precise. Despite being from an entirely different time and place to my own life its view of a 13 year old boys inner workings is spot on.

Albion, The Origins of the English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd   Its a real challenge to try and pin down Englishness but he does it very, very well and develops a coherent, cogent and entertaining story of the culture, its influences and tendencies.  I liked his London, the Biography too, which has perhaps less academic heavy lifting.

 

How are the bees?

Well they’re hot but so is everything. Near 100F again today and not dry either. While we finally got some good monsoon action last week and the water really stimulated plant growth and bloom there really isn’t much for the bees to do but haul water to cool themselves.

There is loblolly bay ( usually called red bay here ) and since we got rain it is blooming beautifully but there’s only so much of it. Likewise for the clethra ( Pepperbush ). That’s not one of my girls there, that’s a big solitary bee. In parts of our woods there are stands of clethra big enough that one smells them as one drives by and one Georgia beekeeper told me that sometimes it blooms enough that you can make splits but I don’t believe him.

The bees are toughing it out, mostly just hanging around the hive trying to maintain temperature control. They do this by taking a drop of water and spreading it with their front legs while fanning their wings to evaporate it. I found more small hive beetles than I would like; they are a much bigger problem here than in a Maine summer. I’ll have to do some trapping. Although the bay and pepperbush aren’t much they are all there will be until maple in January.

 

Creme de miel

In Spain or Mexico its flan. In France its creme caramel. Here we do it our way, cane sugar phooey. A great way to use all these fresh eggs and honey too.

• 1 cup honey
• 1 1/2 cups cream
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• dash of salt
• 4 eggs
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla

Heat honey in a sauce pan until it foams and browns slightly, about 2 minutes. Pour into a loaf pan and put in the freezer. Heat cream and milk to a simmer and beat eggs together with yolks, salt and vanilla. Whisking constantly drizzle hot cream/milk into eggs. Pour gently into chilled loaf pan, place in a larger pan of boiling water and bake at 350F for 50 minutes. It will be slightly browned but not completely set. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours. To serve, run a knife around the edge of the pan, invert serving plate over the pan then invert pan over the plate, leaving the flan upside down on the plate.

The bowl is from Jody Johnstone’s wonderful anagama kiln.