Free Willow Basketry and Cultivation Books Available

I just made 5 old out of print books available in the FREE STUFF section of the site. A lot of you might not even know that page exists. I use it to house collections of out of copyright books that I’ve ferreted out over the years, while doing digital research on various topics that I dabble in. I hope to find some more basketry books in the future to add to that collection. In the mean time, I wanted to publish these, because for the second year now, I’m offering basket willow cuttings in the webstore and these publications have useful information on planting and cultivation.

Basket willow is very easy to start and to cultivate. The short story is that you find some damp ground, with year round moisture, poke holes with a rod, stick the cuttings in with a couple of inches exposed, and they grow. Once established, you cut all of the shoots off every year for weaving and they grow back the following season. But of course there is some nuance involved and the important question of how far/close to plant them. These old publications discuss that question and other subjects related to basket willow cultivation and harvest.

It is my opinion that most homesteads in good willow growing country ought to have at least a small patch of basket willow if good ground is available. They prefer to have damp feet and sunny leaves, and may do well on ground that is a little too low or flooded in the wet season for most other crops. The rods are not only useful for basketry, but also for use in the garden and just seem to come in handy here and there. They make great cat toys with a feather stuck on the end. I’ve used them a lot to hang apples or meat for drying and bacon for smoking. I’ve made bean trellises with them and used them as plant stakes and who knows what else.

Basket willow cultivars are selected for flexibility and toughness, color, lack of branches on first year’s growth, and maybe most importantly for a long even taper. In otherwords, the rod should not go from very fat at one end, and rapidly to very skinny at the other. Growing under crowded conditions helps insure long, branchless shoots with good taper.

Apples rings drying on basket willow shoots in the front of the car (the best food dehydrator you already have!). I keep a bundle of these on hand all the time. If they get funky or dirty, I can just toss them in the woodstove and gram more. Excellent for skewering jerky to dry as well.

I have two types available, Green Dicks is an English variety with smaller than average rods. If planting a patch now, I would likely plant at least 2/3rds of that variety or a similar sized one, as I like the average shoot size, for average baskets. The larger variety I’ve lost the name of, but it is large, with bark that reddens in the sun, and it’s big enough for heavy duty baskets. If I were ever making a dog bed, a room screen, or some bushel baskets for agriculture this one produces those sized rods. Of course the larger butt ends of the rods can also be cut off and used at any diameter, so it is still all purpose in that sense. It should also be large enough to be used for making living fences and other living structures.

Weaving with medium sized rods. This was in 2008 and aside from a handle replacement, 13 years on and this basket is still totally functional, having seen a lot of very hard use and no babying. That durability is due to reasonably competent weaving and high quality basket willow from my friends willow farm in Oregon.

Willows multiply fast, and cuttings as small as 8 inch in length can be stuck directly in the gournd to propagate new plants. A small number of cuttings can be turned into a full patch in a few years time. All in all, basket willow is a pretty good deal, and aside from cutting every year consistently once established (though even that is not absolutely necessary) they generally require little to no care.

Check out the books here, fully downloadable.

All Willows are propagated from simple cuttings, which are extremely easy to root. They are rooted in place where they are to grow, but sticking into a hole made with a metal rod.

Scions and Seeds are Coming March 1st

Scions and seeds will be available March 1st in the webstore. I was planning on releasing them Feb 15th, but I’ve pushed the date back so I can get more product done before launch. If you need to do some planning, the scions listed in the webstore now from last year are mostly the same stuff I will have this year too. I will also have some scion wood of a few of my seedling apples available, but I have not figured out how to handle that yet. It will likely be auctioned off as there are limited quantities and a lot of interested parties. I just don’t know how or where yet, but will be figuring that out in the next week or so and let you all know. I will have at least Sugarwood, Cherub and Black Strawberry, but probably others as well.

I have some intentionally cross pollinated apple seed and some open pollinated. Unfortunately, most of a big batch of seed, including a lot of BITE ME! crosses that I made, were hauled off by mice one night while drying on the counter. It was also just a bad apple year, so I don’t have as many seeds as usual. I have a lot more basket willow cuttings this year than last year however.

I still have some vegetable seed too. I’m particularly interested in Zapotec tomato this coming season, as it seemed to display as much late blight resistance last season as the two resistant varieties I grew. i hope to plant several zapotec plants mixed with susceptible varieties to get better information on relative performance and resistance. I’m hoping it wasn’t just a fluke. If it continues to show resistance, I’ll be very happy. It’s hard to find resistant varieties, let alone one that I already love. Check Zapotec out here…

I also hope to get a new batch of awls made by the first. I ran across some beautiful spalted maple for handles which I’ve started turning up on the lathe.

Spalted Big Leaf Maple destined for awl handles. basically it’s attacked by fungus leaving various shades of discoloration and black lines.

As usual, patrons will get early access to the store for a day or two before sales open to the public. Watch for a notification from patreon on the 27th or 28th for a password link for access.

Introducing A New Crab Apple Variety, Cherub

When I say crab apple, a lot of people will think of something for cooking at most, or more likely for the birds to eat. Well, I’m sure the birds will love my new crab apple, but there is nothing crabby about it. In fact, Cherub is an exceedingly polite dessert apple. Lets dig in to the specifics.

Wickson is the seed parent and the red fleshed Rubaiyat is the pollen parent. Both parents were brought into the world by visionary plant breeder Albert Etter in the first half of the 20th century. The pollination was made in spring of 2013. The seeds were planted in the winter and grown out for the summer of 2014 into saplings. In spring 2015, they were grafted onto dwarfing rootstocks and planted out to await fruiting in the trial rows.

2015 seedlings grafted to dwarfing stocks and planted in the trial rows to await fruiting..

The first and only of those 2013 seedlings to produce fruit in 2018, was Cherub. So right off, it gets points for being precocious. In fact, Precocious was one of the 3 run off names that I had the good folks that support me on Patreon choose from. It is also worth noting that it has fruited the two years since as well, so it is very likely going to get points for regular bearing.

Cherub, small, chubby and irregular

The apple is small, though not all that small for a crab. The skin, when it colors up in the sunlight is like it’s parents, striped with light to dark reds, layered over yellows. When it reddens up well, it is quite attractive hanging on the tree. The outline is lumpy and irregular, and the somewhat chubby appearance is one of the reasons that I hit on the name Cherub. The cherubs of the old classic paintings, and of modern folk art, are typically chubby and pink.

The flesh color varies from somewhat mottled pink and white, to dark pink all the way through. This flesh coloration will vary from season to season and fruit to fruit.

A cut Cherub in a collection of other seedlings from my breeding project. The flesh color seems to vary a lot, but that is fairly typical of red fleshed apples.

Culturally, it appears to be a small tree. It is hard to tell for sure with only a single parent tree, but so far, it is rangy and small. The tree got what appeared to be fireblight on the trunk early in it’s life, with black running sap from sores in the bark. It has survived without intervention though, continuing to grow and fruit. I’m not sure it is fireblight, but I suspect it is. My notes seem to indicate that scab susceptibility is light to medium.

The season for this apple is probably long, with more flavor developing later on. I have picked it as early as mid October and as late as December. it’s too early yet to say when is best and that will vary from climate to climate anyway.

It has flavors from both of it’s parents, but not always in great abundance. It has some mixed fruit and berry flavors from Rubaiyat. It also has a small, but significant, measure of the rich, deep, malty goodness of Wickson. Wickson lends richness and depth and rubaiyat lends higher fruit notes. The two together make a slightly odd, but compelling and interesting palette of flavors.

Sugar is through the roof. It was the third highest reading of the year in 2019 at 24%. It is all the sweeter tasting because it is also low in acid. It can be sweet to the point of being cloying due to this combination of low acid and high sugar. It should be good for processing into cider jelly, cider syrup, juice, hard cider and apple butter, at least when paring is not required.

Out of the crab apples I’ve been able to grow and taste, this is probably the third best, with the other two being Wickson and Chestnut Crab. But it’s hard to really rank them, because they are all quite a bit different. The fourth would be Trailman. There are still a lot of crab apples I haven’t tasted, but I would guess that if one were to spend a few years ferreting out and growing the very best small apples with crab genes, I’d be surprised if it did not rank in the top dozen, and more likely the top half dozen. I think crab apples as good as cherub, and better, are coming in the near future, either from my orchards or other’s. For now, this apple can compete in the pool. It also shows what is possible by injecting new flavors into our crabs.

Cherub was an inspired cross of two parents with exceptional traits of one kind and another. As is often the case, it shows obvious traits of both parents, extreme sugar and malty richness from Wickson and red flesh, fruity/berry flavors and coloration from Rubaiyat. I have been somewhat lukewarm on this apple actually, because, with all it’s exceptionally good characteristics, I tend to feel that something is missing in the eating of it. It may very well be as simple as the low acid, which coupled with exceptional sweetness can make it seem a bit cloying at times. Or maybe it’s that one or other of the flavors is just not quite up front enough. Then one day I realized that I’ve been enthusiastically breeding with it already, crossing it onto various other apples, and that it competes with the best crabs I’ve eaten, those that inspired me to breed with crabs in the first place! This led to an epiphany that I am indeed a picky little bitch and totally spoiled! The apples I’m hoping to breed I can already taste in my mind, and they are lofty imaginings. Those may come to fruition in the future, but it is definitely time to name this little nugget of sweet goodness and send her off into the big world to multiply and perhaps produce some delicious and hopefully superior offspring in someones orchard.

So here it is, the aptly named Cherub; a fruit of ridiculous Sweetness, chubby, pink fleshed and deliciously different. If it turns out to be as good as I think it is, I think it’s worth pausing a second to consider the ramifications of producing such a promising crab apple in a small population of seedlings. What then is to come in the future? I will restrain myself from going off on a tangent about the potential there is in breeding with crabs, both for home growers and the public market. I’ve already gone there before and will at some point make the point even more emphatically.

Scions will be available this year, but in very limited quantities since I only have a few from the original tree. They will likely be sold in some kind of auction to raise money for my breeding and orchard projects.

Most Intense Flavor Yet, Taste Testing Seedling Apples Nov 2020

Here is a recent video where I’m going through the apple seedling trial rows taste testing fruits. It has been a very weak apple year. We paid for the epic crops last year with the trees taking a year off. It was also a bad drought year, which no one is talking about with all the other bad news. I’m hoping for a good rain this year, even if it means flooding. Too much water is better than not enough (he says from the mountain). If there is a fruit that can adapt to a changing climate, it’s probably apples due to the very high genetic variability and ability to grow and fruit from the tropics to siberia. Already, what you can grow often ends up being what will grow and fruit well in your climate, instead of which apples you actually decided you wanted to grow and eat. Another great argument for planting MORE APPLE SEEDS!

Aaaaanyways, this year saw the most intensely flavored apple out of the trial rows yet, Grenadine x Lady Williams 2011 #7 It is also at least equal quantitatively in flavor to any apple I’ve ever tasted. I think I’ve identified some of the flavors, but it is a mixed bag. One thing I love is when apples have these sort of artificial fruit candy flavors. I think this one has the relatively common watermelon candy flavor, but also with purple grape and probably more. Eating it tastes very familiar, as in childhood memories familiar. I think the reason I can’t exactly nail it is that it’s probably like taking several jolly rancher candies of different flavors and melting them together. But the feeling of familiarity is as strong and relevant as the actual flavor. It’s sort of like those smells that take you back to grandma’s houses or school and that may be more relevant than the actual smell. That happened to me the other day when I got an espresso maker at the thrift store and the smell of the plastic water reservoir took me back to camping in my grandparents travel trailer, drinking and eating from plastic bowls and cups and the smell of the water from the onboard plastic water tank. Well this flavor is like being back at the corner store as a kid spending a few cents on hard candies.

Other than the remarkable and strong flavors, this apple is not much of an eater. It has a good measure of tannin, the texture is not particularly fun and the skin is thick. It is definitely more in the cider making class. The acidity seems adequate to make good tasting cider, although I’m not enough of a cider maker to know if it’s good enough to consistently produce smooth sailing results without blending or adjusting. Though it has a red fleshed parent, there is no hint of red flesh, and not likely to be any in the future. I’m starting to suspect though that the red fleshed grenadine, which is a flavor standout among blood apples, is hiding much more in it’s bag of flavor genes than just berries.

But to have an apple taste good and have those flavors survive fermentation are two different things. Methodology can certainly make a difference, but some flavors are fleeting in cider production, and some are lasting. My prediction, if I will be so bold, is that these intense and delicious flavors will be able to survive fermentation and make some amazing tasting ciders. It may be quite some time until light is shed on the accuracy of that prediction. The tree has to be propagated more, and eventually come to bear enough to do a significant amount of experimentation. I’m not much of a cider maker, but I may go back to it and try doing some micro batches in mason jars just to start testing some of the accumulation of potential cider apples out of the row. But of all of them, this seems to be the most promising yet.

Speaking of accumulating potential cider apples, among the rest of a handful of possibilities, the aptly named Sugarwood, a Grenadine x Wickson cross fruited again this year. I’m still high on this as a potential cider apple and will likely be sending out scions this year. It’s virtues seem to be sugar, tannin, adequate acidity, clean woody flesh, a good measure of nice flavors and good hanging properties. I have a feeling it will also be a good producer.

The cute, diminutive and woody Sugarwood, coming eventually to a cider orchard near you!

I’m hoping for a much better apple year next year. I’m pretty sure that if the bloom season goes reasonably well, the trees will try to set a lot of fruit. I’d guess that 70+ seedlings will set fruit next year, most of them varieties that have already fruited, but a good measure of new ones too.

Stone Roof #1, The Art of Slating

I have a new video out on slate roofing. I started this roof/art project about 10 years ago and never finished the last side of the roof. The goal is to finish it up before the fall rains. It’s an interesting and rewarding process with lots of room for creativity. This first video covers how the slate roofing system works, cutting and punching slates, and patterns.

Slate roofs are durable, very repairable, fire resistant and beautiful. The slates are pretty easily cut, opening up a lot of possibility for creativity in design. different widths, lengths, thicknesses and colors can also be used to creative advantage. One could also stack or double slates up just for visual effect. Honestly, I’m surprised how little advantage is taken of the possibilities for making visually interesting roofs. I think that a person could make a career out of creating artistic slate roofs of unique designs. There are some pretty fancy old roofs, but they still tend to use standard geometric shapes, rather than more creative patterns, or graduating designs. Very few do large scale patterning over many slates or even the whole roof. Some of the more creative attempts that do exist end up looking rather clunky and pixelated.

The video explains the parameters that need to be observed in slating to prevent leakage, which is basically 3 inches of overlap sideways and 3 inches overlap from the top of the previous row of slates. Otherwise, aside from slate being too weak to support lots of long pointy shapes, there is a huge amount of leeway in design. Many traditional roofs are made of completely random pieces of all sizes from huge sheets to smaller pieces, as long as adequate overlaps are observed in laying them.

It is actually pretty easy to learn and do, though it is certainly some work hoofing slates up and down ladders, punching, cutting and messing about with whatever little obstacles come up. One downside to using a complex pattern is that it will take a lot longer, v.s. slapping up a bunch of standard sizes and shapes. It takes me probably close to a day to cut all the slates for one side of this roof, so that is 4 to 5 days of cutting right there. It will also take time to design. This one probably took me days to design, and I think the other roof took us a couple of days too, and it’s not even that fancy. But to me, sitting in front of that pile of slate and knowing the possibilities, is like sitting in front of a pile of great food ingredients and wanting to cook something good instead of throwing it all in a steamer, very tempting.

Slate is quarried and split on site. It has a strong grain to it and splits easily in one direction, so sheets as thin as about 1/8” can be made. Some are much thicker. The slate for this particular roof was acquired cheap as a lot from craigslist and varies from 3/16” to over 3/4” thick. It also varies a great deal in quality from very soft and probably not very long lasting, to very hard and likely very durable. Be careful buying any lots left over from roofing jobs. While it might be very cheap, and a great way to get affordable slate, it can also be full of rejects, so get it cheap and make sure there is a lot more than you need to account for a high number of culls. Variations in thickness, lumpiness, and invisible cracks can all be reasons for slates to go to the reject pile. When you pick up a slate to use it, it should be tapped on to assess it for soundness. A good hard slate should ring if it is not cracked. Sometimes just a small loose piece of slate hanging on will keep it from ringing, but slates that don’t sound right are generally put back in the pile.

New slate is quite expensive, but probably a good deal if you are thinking far enough ahead. Many slate roofs are over 100 years old, even over 200. Given the durability, you can also salvage it from old buildings and re-use it. If there are slate roofs in your area, keep an eye out, or even contact roofers and ask them to call you if they have a replacement job and maybe they’ll let you remove the slate and save them some work. The slates may be perfectly good. Many people, including roofers don’t know how to repair them, so they just replace them instead. Tragic, but it could be good for you.

Cutting slates is essentially like cutting paper. It’s a shearing action. I use a slate cutter that is a lot like a paper cutter. Traditionally, a cleaver of sorts is used with a straight metal edge. Purpose dedicated slate hammers also have a shank that can cut slates. I watched a slate artist on youtube, James Parker, who uses a hammer face to shape slates. Any slate cutting by this type of shearing action leaves a beveled edge which is nearly always placed facing out on the roof as it is very attractive. Sawn slates are pretty boring looking and not commonly used.

Hole are usually punched instead of drilled. For most slates, one good smack from the pointy end of a slate hammer will knock a usable hole. Slate hammers and even some standard European framing hammers have a pointy end for punching slates. My slate cutter also has a punch on it that makes nice clean holes. You could also use a nail. Punching slates leaves a small divet in the face of the slate, which is necessary for countersinking the nail heads below the surface. It’s still good to have a drill and countersink handy for special situations, but generally punching is faster and easier.

The divot popped out on the face of a slate punched with the pointy end of a German carpentry hammer. This depression provides a place for the nail head to nestle into at or below the surface of the slate so that it does not rub on the bottom of the slate above it.

This was a more involved project than I had anticipated, but a very rewarding one. I would do it again if I could justify taking the time (making youtube videos is a good excuse ;), but I would take more time for design. Fortunately, it is easy to mock up designs with miniature slates cut to shape from scraps, of which there are always plenty. I’ll post follow up videos here in the blog as they come out.

My Spider Bite Story, Herbal Healing & Walking in The Dark

It’s story time! A video story on what I think was probably a spider bite that I got when I was 20. I think it went as well as it possibly could have, maybe due to the herbal remedies I employed. People suffer terribly and sometimes die from spider bites. Jeff Hanneman of Slayer died from a brown recluse bite, after a long hospital stay. I just hope I never get another one.

Apple Report: Grenadine X ? (Goldrush) 2011 #9 - Crunchy, Yellow, Scab Resistant Seedling

No time to type much. Gotta mail the old laptop off for a new keyboard this morning. But here’s a video report on a new seedling. In some ways it’s nothing super special. Just a competent, firm, crunchy, nice tasting, yellow apple in the Grime’s Golden/Golden Delicious complex. Good flavor, with a little spice and sometimes a fleeting lemon flavor. Though slightly pedestrian, it bore two years in a row and it’s almost scab free. It produced beautiful apples on a very sad looking sapling under tough conditions. It also expresses a very little bit of the red fleshed trait, which could be useful if used as a parent in further breeding of red fleshed apples. It might actually be useful for breeding for lemon flavored apples too, of which I have at least one other, actually named lemon. And of course scab resistance is also useful for breeding. This won’t be a long keeper like Gold Rush, but it does have the parentage, so it may express in offspring. all in all, a promising breeder carrying two important traits I want in apples, red flesh and scab resistance. It’s getting grafted out a few more places for further assessment and of course eating enjoyment :)

Commonly Axed Question: Charring Axe Handles, Why I Don't Do It

I’m asked a lot if I char the surface of my axe handles, have I tried it, do I recommend it, and so on. I’m going to tell you why I don’t, and am not likely to start. We’ll be looking at this problem largely through the lenses of primitive technology, bows and wood failure under tension, so there are some interesting general lessons to be dabbled in.

In spite of the very clickable, emphatic video thumbnail, even though I don’t practice it I don’t have a strong yay or nay opinion on whether anyone does or does not char their axe handles. People do it a lot and seem to get away with it, and it’s not my axe. I’m just sharing why I don’t do it. In searching for Youtube videos in preparation for this segment, I didn’t really see any dissent or contrary views, though I’m sure they must exist somewhere. It has become a popular and seemingly common practice lately.

I think of carbonized wood as compromised wood. Charring wood makes it harder up to a point, but also more brittle. I have done a lot of what is often called primitive technology, essentially stone age living skills. A very fundamental skill in primitive technology is heating and bending wood. Arrow and spear shafts, bows, hoops and other items sometimes need straightening, or curving. Many applications require the heating of dry wood, v.s. steaming the wood or heating green. If someone doesn’t teach you otherwise, you are likely to find out pretty fast, that if you scorch the wood of an arrow shaft, not even black, but just toasted brown, it becomes brittle and is much more likely to break when bent for straightening. It’s easy to do, I’ve done it many times, it’s a thing.

Let’s look at bows, because they are repeatedly put under a great deal of stress, and provide a perfect model of wood under extreme tension. Bows in fact often operate near the edge of failure.

A bow is made flexible enough to bend a lot. In order for the bow to do it’s work, and not break, the wood, and the design, have to be adequately RESILIENT to the stresses a bow comes under. Strength is a bit of a sloppy concept to use when looking at this problem. Strength is an important concept in resilience, but what kind of strength? resisting what forces? and in what context? Resilience is the total ability to withstand stress, though it is still dependent on what type of stress. I’ve discussed the importance of resilience in regard to axe handles in another post.

Some bows are curved back at the ends, which is called recurving. Usually heat is used to make the wood flexible. The heat can be either dry or wet, and often steaming is used. If you were to survey the literature, I’m pretty sure you’d find that if there is a standard recommendation, it is to avoid scorching bows when heating them to bend. Scorched wood is compromised, brittle wood. I think it’s very unlikely that you will find bowyers recommending that you scorch the surface of a bow at any time, and actually just the opposite.

Primitive technologist Jay Sliwa heating and bending a yew wood bow in my front yard. He probably spent over an hour bending both ends of this bow, because it takes time to get the temperature high enough, and also deep enough, without scorching the wood. Hot wood, even dry, will bend more easily. If cooled in the new shape, it will usually stay more or less that way.

Scorching and burning IS actually used in primitive technology though, to shape and harden wood. The common uses are for burning the ends of sticks to a pointed shape when making spears and digging sticks. This practice changes the character of the wood, making it harder, in order to resist the stresses of things like digging in the dirt, and that is a form of resilience right? A fire hardened digging stick tip is resilient to the stress of hitting dirt and rocks. It is more likely to retain it’s shape and will not dent as easily or wear away as quickly. Resisting the stress of digging is not resilience to bending though, it’s a resilience to impact, to denting and encountering other hard objects like rocks, dirt and animal ribs. These are the stresses encountered by a spear or digging stick point.

This digging stick tip is shaped and hardened by fire. Great for impact and abrasion resistance, not so much for flexibility.

That begs the question, might charring harden the wood of an axe handle to resist impacts that damage the wood by crushing, such as contacting wood on wood when splitting and limbing? I’m much more inclined to think that charring will increase the likelihood of wood tension failures, than that it will have any significant effect on impact resistance. There is also another solution to that problem, which is wraps, braces and collars.

Lets go back to bows again. When the bow is pulled, the part of the bow facing the archer, the belly, is compressed. The belly fibers are smashed together and essentially made shorter if that is possible. The wood fibers on the back are stretched out and put under tension like pulling a thread tight.

I think in both axe handles and bows, breakage is much more likely than not, to initiate at a single point of weakness, in wood that is under tension. As the bow is pulled, tension stress builds and the further toward the outside back of the bow the fibers are, the more they are stretched. The fibers at the very back of the bow are not only stretched the most, but they have also been violated in most cases, by being cut through to shape the limbs. If there is a weak point on or near the surface, the wood will begin to split and separate apart, and that separation may travel causing a crack or a full break.

The inside of a bow is under high compression and the outside (back) is under extreme tension or stretch. If you studied it, I think it’s likely that you’d find failures initiating on the outside back of the bow and traveling inward from there in most, if not all, cases.

If you could study that break in slow motion, I think you would see that the wood doesn’t come apart all at once, but that the crack initiates on the outside of the bend, on the surface, and travels from there toward the inside of the bend. In either a bow or axe handle, that weak spot might be where the grain is violated and runs out more than other spots, or there is a nick, knot or worm hole, or a thick or thin area. A weak point might also be where poor design or execution in building stacks an especially high stress on the wood.

Dry bent, with no scorching. This yew wood is prone to exploding apart when it fails. It is easy to understand why bowyers avoid scorching the backs of bows, where the wood comes under very high tension. Understand that this bow is not strung with this curve, but rather AGAINST this curve. It would be strung and pulled toward the ground in this picture.

Many Native bows in Western North America have sinew (animal tendon) glued onto the backs, similar to a layer of fiberglass. If there is one main reason to glue sinew or rawhide on the back of a bow, it is to keep the bow from breaking. Given the same exact bow, with and without sinew backing, the sinew backed bow is less likely to break. The reason this dried sheet of sinew prevents cracks is that it prevents them from initiating in the surface of the bow’s back in the first place. If the crack can’t initiate and travel because the fibers are held in place and reinforced, then the bow cannot easily fail in the way it is normally most likely to fail. Sinew backing is a very common way, to prevent the breakage of short bows that are under very high stress. In quite a few cases those bows use wood that is actually somewhat brittle and sometimes could not take the stress of being used to make a short powerful bow. The reason I point this effect out is to reinforce the idea that the initiation of cracks in the surface of wood is probably the initiating event in most wood that breaks under tension.

Sinew backed bow limb. Just like a collar or wrapping on an axe handle, sinew backing helps prevent failure, largely by preventing the initiation of cracks.

Axe handles are only somewhat analogous to bows, but they are under some of the same stresses and it is very likely that cracks typically initiate on the part of the wood that is under high tension in any given scenario. Like a bow, it is going to happen more where the wood is under greater stress and where the wood is weak at the surface in those high stress areas. This chink in the armor could be a small knot, a dent or nick in the wood or very likely where the wood grain is cut across at a strong angle. Another common place for cracks to initiate is where growth rings come together, because the wood between rings and between the fast spring growth and the slow summer growth are different, so they behave differently under stress.

So here are my working assumptions about axe handles and charring.

In most cases, failures will initiate at a point of weakness in wood under tension, on the outside surface of the wood, traveling from the point of initial failure.

Charring wood reduces the tensile strength of wood fibers, increasing brittleness under tension, therefore making that failure more likely to occur given the same tensile stress.

It’s important to note that theory v.s. real life is not always an easy pile of yarn to unravel. I may be missing something entirely that I haven’t thought of or have not been exposed to. Our decisions are informed by processing experience and information, and those are limited, as is our intellect. It may be that it is rarely, or even never, an actual problem to char the outside of an axe handle. Personally, knowing what I know and having charred and then broken arrow shafts, atlatl darts and other wood items, I cannot think of any good reason that I would burn the surface of a wooden handle that can come under a great deal of stress; on the contrary, it would seem I have good reason not to. Tests that might shed more light on the subject could be done pretty easily, as long as the sample sizes are large enough to account for wood variations and other unknown factors. But I’m not likely to spend my time at that, since I don’t really actually feel any need to treat handles that way.

The primary motivation for charring handles seems to be aesthetic, such as making the tool look more used or antiqued, or just good. And it is a very nice looking effect. I love charred wood and have practiced it a lot for decades, for reasons and effects I won’t go into here. I just built a whole wall of charred and burnished wood for my Indoor YouTube studio corner! But, you’re not likely to find me weakening the outside layer of an axe handle where failure is most likely to initiate, just for cosmetic purposes.

This video talks about how I do treat my axe handles after they are tuned up how I like them.

Charred and burnished pine used to good effect. This wood is basically under no stress.

Another question I’ve been asked quite a bit is how to make axe handles look used. My sole recommendation for that is to use them. I get it, you don’t want to be the kid with glaring white new shoes. If I were to treat my axe handles to make them look used, I think I would feel like I was the tool. An axe handle patina earned with dirt, sweat, and sap, rubbed to a polish thousands of times with calloused skin is something of an accomplishment and a point of pride. If you want that, pick just one or two axes, and take the axe cordwood challenge.

So, there’s another in depth dive into more relevant, if obscure topics, brought to you by my patrons @ www.patreon.com/skillcult

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.