Bean shelling time.....

A few years ago we started growing beans for drying.  We save the seed every year.  And every year the beans do better and better as they adjust for our short cold growing season.  Of course, growing a lot of beans has a down side.  All those beans have to be shelled, and we don't have some kind of shelling machine that takes care of that for us.  

Black Beans

The Peregion beans are the only Oregon native bean.  Pretty markings, good flavor.

Peregion Beans

We started with growing beans for drying with a bag of plain old kidney beans from the grocery store.  They have evolved over time from bush beans to semi-pole beans.

Kidney Beans

A year ago we tried garbanzo beans. That was pretty much a joke.  They only got to be the size of a pin head.  But it was a good experiment, though a failed one.

Besides shelling beans, we've been making tomato sauce, green and red salsas.  And yesterday I made blackberry ketchup.  We finally have ripe blackberries, saw the ketchup recipe and gave it a try.  Recipe says it will be good on pork chops.   

Tomato Sauce/Red Salsa

Also, lots and lots of pears this year.  Anyone have something wonderful that you do with pears?

Road Trippin'

Just back from an Eastern Washington Road Trip.  Over 1500 miles on the Dodge pick-up.

Went through many of the towns whose names I have heard my whole life, but never been there, or hadn't been there for many, many years.

• Glenoma
• Packwood
• Soap Lake
• Ephrata
• Coulee City
• Electric city
• Colville 
• Tonasket
• Metaline
• Metaline Falls
• Ione
• Republic
• Twisp
• Mazama
• Keller
• Kettle Falls
• Winthrop
• Omak
• Oroville
• Cashmere
• Okanogan
• Chelan
• Wenatchee 
• Manson
• Selah
• Nachez
• Yakima
• Ellensburg

And many, many more.

The most interesting thing was that every community, no matter how small, had a great natural foods store.   Our favorite towns were Republic and Twisp. Some communities felt healthy and welcoming.   Others were less than thriving.  The Wal-Mart on the edge of Okanogan seemed to have made a hugely negative impact on the downtown store fronts of both Okanogan and Omak.

We traveled the road that takes you to the furthest NE corner of the state and then hiked in a few miles more.  Could see the Rockies in Canada, the Sawtooths in Idaho, and the North Cascades in Washington.

We saw funky!

We saw beautiful!

We saw amazing!

We also saw stupid ugly!

(Lest you begin to think that Washington State is perfect.)

And for me the best part of any trip is the gravel road that brings me home....satisfied, reinvigorated, and ready for whatever comes next.

Birds or Bees?

I went out to do a bee count this evening for the Great Sunflower Project, but was diverted by the bluebirds splashing around in their water. 

Mother bluebird on top, adolescent to the left and new fledgling in the water.

The five new babies fledged Monday morning.  We think that they have all made it, but know for sure that we still have at least four of them.  There are two or three from the previous clutch who are still here and the two parents.  So this evening we watched the family of 8-10 bluebirds.  The "adolescents" help the parents take care of the new babies, they feed them, act as sentries, show them how to bathe.

Can you find the baby bluebird?

The male bluebird found it.

Baby bluebirds two days after leaving the nest.

So the bees on the sunflowers will have to wait for another day to be counted.  I was way too busy watching baby bluebirds and enjoying the shade of this big old walnut tree.

Old English Walnut

I love that you can see where it was grafted.

The bluebirds, their babies, the walnut trees!  I am so lucky.

Men on a hot tin roof...

The barn roof is a beautiful rustic red.  Emphasis on the rust.  When the local hardware store recently went out of business, I was able to get the roof goo for next to nothing. Fortunately, we know two hard working guys from McMinnville who were willing to come help Mr. Shoulder to the Grindstone (center) with the roof job.

And speaking of hot, the fires in Eastern Oregon continue to burn out of control.  The wind is now coming into the valley from the east bringing the eye-burning smoke with it.

This is not an out of focus picture, just indicative of the smoke that is hanging in our little valley.