Backyard Imu, Northwest Style

A jealous BBQ looks on as salmon roast over coals and the imu is unveiled.

When my kama'aina* daughter turned one, part of what fed the party was pork, taro, and sweet potato cooked in an imu, the Hawaiian word for an underground oven. In a little community garden on the flank of Pu'owaina (Punchbowl) in the middle of Honolulu, a group of Rotuman and Tongan guys helped me through the process, and the results were delicious.

The imu begins with a shallow bowl dug into the ground. I cannot explain the physics of it, but I'd bet that this shape turns out to be a very efficient one in terms of both heat loss and storing heat in the ground. Also, this shape can accomodate a few pieces of taro or a whole hog without a lot of adjustment.

But let's not get side-tracked. And really, what self-respecting Hawaiian would make an imu without counting on feeding a bunch of people?

An earth oven is a way to go whole hog, to cook hundreds of pounds of food if need be. You need a shovel, enough rocks to cook the food, and enough fire-wood to get those rocks red-hot. Besides the food, you need leaves or foil to wrap it, more vegetation to create the steam chamber, and some coffee sacks to cover that before the dirt caps it all.

The labor requirements are no more complicated than the materials. One person can handle a small imu (I just did a 65-pund pig solo), but a crew helps. Somebody has to know what's going on with the fire and the rocks, so that when it's time to cook, the rocks are hot and the coals are minimal. Somebody needs to know how much vegetation is needed and whether water should be added. Enough people have to be aroubnd at cooking time to assemble and bury the oven quickly, minimizing heat loss. Someone has to stick around long enough to spot escaping steam and ad more dirt.

In Hawaii, banana trees solve most of the vegetation issues. Smashed sections of trunk keep food off the rocks and provide a lot of moisture for the steam; meanwhile the leaves can wrap individual food packets or cover the entire feast. Ti leaves make even better food wrappers, and give a flavor that distinguishes anything I could cook there from anything I can cook here.


In the Northwest, people also cooked with earth ovens for thousands of years, back to when the ancestors of Hawaiians were sitting around their proto-Polynesians imus mulling over the prospect of open-ocean exploration. I've never been party to a purely traditional local earth oven, but did help do one to cook "black moss," a Plateau delicacy. Then this year a bunch of local archaeologists decided we would like to replicate an earth oven.

Our effort was hybrid. We cooked camas and taro (along with sweet potato and blue Peruvian potatoes), and of course pork. No bear meat was available, but we did roast some salmon outside the imu. We used some techinues I'd learned in Hawai'i, and some from here. But was this some post-Modern mash-up? Not really, plenty of Hawaiians came to the Northwest starting in the 1810's, meaning that we were about 200 years too late to be  doing anything unique.

One thing that makes it easy to cook underground in parts of the Northwest as well as some remote flecks of land in the Pacific is the presence of vesicular basalt in both places. I've seen other types of rock used here, but where basalt cobbles full of small air bubbles can be had, it's what people use first; I've even heard from Plateau tribes that areas with particularly good stone were special resources, and oven stones were traded to outsiders. Sweat lodges also use this rock. The vesicles help it withstand heating and cooling with fewer fractures and far less shrapnel than other kinds of stone.

Vegetation is a more difficult translation. Even here in the Salish Sea's balmy south, banana trees are not an option. In fact, there's no analog I can think of for the non-woody, water-filled, neutral-tasting banana stump. The largest leaves around come from the skunk cabbage, which I'm reluctant to use without knowing what it does to flavor. So, I looked at various books and in an ethnography of the Twano people (most of their descendants are now enrolled in the Skokomish Tribe, based not far from where I live), it mentioned big leaf maple as a staple of oven wrapping. This is what goes closest to the food; the big leaves sort out into layers laid immediately below and above the food. Below that: sword ferns. They don't have much moisture, but they make a cushion, a tangle-weave of springy midribs and leaflets that let steam circulate and hold the food above the charring coals and red rocks.

But that's once the fire has done its thing and the food is being placed in the oven. Before that, you've got to heat the rocks, which is more or less the same procedure anywhere on earth: burn hard wood until the rocks are red and hot. In Hawai'i, almost everyone now uses the exotic tree Kiawe, a big-ass mesquite introduced by a trader two centuries ago--so goddam BTUs packed into logs you cannot believe. Here, maple and its more flavorful counterpart alder are just fine. Burn your oven with evergreens, and your camas will taste a little like turpentine.

Building the fire, constructing a heap of rock and stone, requires forethought. The first thing I do is plant a pole in the bottom center of the imu. Then I lay a log or couple of two-by-fours from the base of the pole to the edge of the bowl. Then, stack kindling, covered by logs and rocks and rocks and logs until there's a heap around the pole. When the time is ripe to ignite, pull the pole and the log, put in balled up paper or your accelerant of choice, and fire it up. Air flows in from the rim and rises up the pole-void chimney. Pretty soon, you have a jet of flame shooting up and out of the wood-and-stone volcano.

Every hour or so, push the coolest rocks into the flame, and add fuel. Add wood that will fuel the flame, wood that will insulate the most exposed rock, wood that will further the fire. An hour later, you do it again. Eventually, you feed more to the fire than you used to set it up in the first place. After three hours, you make sure to toss on the largest pieces. An hour before you end the fire, start feeding in the last fuel, tosing sticks onto the pile to keep rocks from losing heat. Your goal is to end up with a maximum of red rocks and a minimum of unburnt fuel. I think 5 hours is typical.

But you'll never get rid of all the coals. Shovel out what you can. Redistribute the rocks across the bottom of the pit, making as even a layer as possible. Because there will still be some coals, and because the rocks will be hot as hell, toss on some dirt. Seems like an inch give or take is enough; the goal is largely to keep from igniting the ferns you are about to toss on.

But before you do that, go find the four stout (2"-diameter if you can find them) ironwood sticks, and lay them at four "corners" of your pit, with one end touching bottom and the other extending out from the rim. This will be important to the Northwest no-banana technique you'll use later.

Sticks in place, you put in the ferns half a foot thick or more, spray them a little with the hose, and add maple leaves so they're few thick over the ferns. Then comes the food: a pig in foil-covered chicken wire (if the wire is new, burn it over the fire before this, to off-gas the galvanic coating or whatever other crap may be adhering), foil or leaf-wrapped packets of food, and whatever big root foods you may have handy. Biggest stuff in the hot center, smallest stuff on the periphery. Then, more mape leaves, and finally more ferns. If you got 'em, cedar boughs help weigh down the ferns, but if not, jump straight to wet coffee bags. Usually a half dozen will be plenty--they help make sure that dirt does not penetrate to the food.

Then shovel on a ton of dirt. No vegetation, if you can help it, include no stems or leaves that create channels for escaping steam. A foot or soil would be great, to insulate the oven beneath. Yank out any fronds or leaves sticking out of the pit. Tamp down the edges, especially around the four ironwood sticks emerging from the edge for the pit. Then, one by one, pull out those sticks, and pour a half-gallon of water down each hole. Shovel some dirt in the hole to seal it up, and move on to the next. If you can, put the stick back in the last hole and tamp it down instead of back-filling it; that way you can add water or monitor the sound/smell/temp of thelower oven if needed needed.

Then again, I've never added water or done much to monitor. So you could just seal it entirely, like I did last time.

When is it done?

I dunno, you might as well ask me how many kilos of rock or wood I used. Enough. I suspect that the cooking all happens in the first 10 hours, after which the oven just sits there being warm. All I can say is that is makes no sense to open the oven before you're ready to eat. Ten or twelve hours into it, the soil surface will feel warm, but the hottest of the heat has dissipated. If you had adequate vegetation and moisture, and if you managed to cover the oven so air cannot sneak in, nothing can burn. It just stays warm for a ridiculously long time until you are ready to eat.

Early in the summer, I cooked maybe 40 pounds of pork shoulder and root foods for 12 hours, and it was all well-cooked. Just the other day, with more rocks, I cooked a 65-pound pig for 16 hours, and it was well-cooked. I'm starting to get over the panic of wondering whether a couple dozen peopel will stand in judgment as I open a pit of undercooked pork.

In the aftermath of an earth oven, you have several interesting by-products. The dirt-lid you just shoveled off the pit has been steamed for hours; the part closest to the fire will have been sterilized, which makes for a good component of potting soil. There will be a fair amount of steamed/smoked leaves and ferns, all fodder for compost. And remember how you had to scoop out coals from the final fire phase? Well, you could partially bury those in back-dirt and let them slowly turn into charcoal, or you could let them burn into ash, or whatever. Whatever path, at some point you end up with

Kama'aina is a child of the land, a person born on the island. Since ancient times, the first birthday was the biggest celebration, which meant throwing by far the biggest party we new haole parents had ever attempted.

Journal

Four months since my last entry, so I guess we know how committed I am to this journal thing. So what happened:

Hops
Perle and Zeus had early big hops, but everything other than Hallertauer is a first year plant, and it's hard to say much. Flowering started variably, but all were in full swing by mid-July, and harvests began August 23rd (Perle) through mid-September. The north bed did not do well. I now toss all coffee grounds that way, will augment with compost and ash this winter.

Tomatoes
A few big plants seems like a good way to go, but I need bigger cages/hothouses. Paul Robeson got blight earliest, Soldacki grew very well, but many (most?) fruits got end rot. Black Krim did best.

Potatos
I'm pretty sure that I gave them too much nitro, and got impressive vines with small potatoes. I may have planted them too closely (8-10 inches) as well. That, and I don't think I kept track of which was which. Anyway, the one close to the house gave me about 5 gallons from 10 feet by July, and the further one just kept growing, but instead of feeding and embiggening the crop, was growing strings of marble-sized potatoes. They're cool for soup and stuff, but not much yield for the space and time consumed.

Beets and carrots in the ground now finishing up. A second planting of beets was stunted.

Green beans that remain are now destined to be dry beans, although I may have to pull them earlier than I want, simply because the sun is fading and clouds more frequent.

A handful of kale plants will try to survive the winter, and will be nice next spring if they do. Collards took a few hits during recent feastivities, but look great. Fava beans pushing 3' tall but I still think they'll just be biomass.

Speaking of which, I did two imus this year, contributing four big garbage bags of steamed sword fern and big maple leaves, a fair amount of ash and charcoal, two fish heads, fish and pig bone in various states of char, etc. into the 421 Turner ecosystem. Also, the imu depression has been dug and baked a couple of times now, and a yard or so of cover soil has been steam sterilized. Besides the imus, I've had fire frequently enough that there's a small flow of charcoal available for soil management.

Second Week of April

Once again, I traveled this week, so there's not a whole lot that's new. Did some more cleaning--to the point that there's no plastic crap in sight from the house--and finally broke down the raspberry trellises. Rotting 1x4 crosspieces nailed to chemical-treated 4x4s, they looked like little utility poles. Now the posts are out of sight and the cross-pieces are on the kindling heap. (I't's good when you travel, and get to finish your work week early and tackle somethign like this before the weekend's officially underway).

Through a combination of girl stomps and worm tunnels, the weed heap really does seem to be shrinking. I did not add to it this week.

The rhubarb is ready. I'm amazed at that a few hacked up crowns are producing already, at about 2 months in the ground.

One of the things about getting a yard with long-untended trees is that you end up bringing a bunch down: deadwood, moribund-wood, cross-branches, unwanted withes,... Mostly, I try to neither bring in nor remove biomass, so it's important to be able to deal with a lot of it. Because so much of it is woody and not readily compostable, it begins to eat up space.

I feel like I'm getting into a pretty good flow now. Part of it is pacing. Not every bad branch needs to come down today, and doing a few at a time pulse through the system without the hang-ups that a yard-full of branches can create. Generally, here's how it breaks down:

• Branches, cut-end first, are dragged to the SW corner, between the pear and my willow fence. 
• Conifers get the machete shave, removing flexible boughs with foliage and strewing them around the pear where the ground is muddy.
• Any branches that would make good stakes are pulled and cut, with the small stuff usually going onto the brush heap.
• Bigger wood is generally destined to be firewood, and I bring it north, near the shed and under the fir, where it gets hacked and sawed down. 
• Pear and other fruit-wood is separated for cooking only. The general wood-pile is more or less twigs at one end and pieces awaiting final sawing at the other. 
• The fir carpet will, as the weather dries up, shed the needles. Twigs will then go into the firewood stream. 

 The other thing I did on my early start weekend was buy about 65 bucks of plants at the farmers market.  Now I have a couple of lavendars at my doorstep, and the bricked corner of the south bed is now home to some oregano, thyme, and rosemary. I also got some bay and white sage, which will live in pots.

By virtue of travel, I also had some bulb planting to do. I've been looking at areas affected by wildfire, and gathered what I believe to be camas and some other kind of lily. Since I don't know exactly when they'll bloom, much less guarantee that I'll make it, I dug up a few and planted them here. Having slightly expanded the onion bed and added some presumed wild onions in part of that space previously, the new bulbs went there.

That seems like about it, so far.

Foment a Ferment, the Lazy Cider-Punk's Guide

Bubble bubble, no toil, no trouble.

For years, I've wanted to make hard cider, but never have enough apples at once for it to be worthwhile. I always give the tree's owner a good share, and maybe some to friends and neighbors, but basically the girls and I drink it as fast as we make it. Despite a particularly generous neighbor this year, it was the same story.

Once you press the cider, you end up with a "cheese," the wheel of spent pomace, apples chewed by the mill and crushed dry by the press. In the past, this went onto the worm heap, but this time my inner cheapskate devised another step in the cycle.

I dumped some pomace into a bin, and filled it with water, on the theory that I could coax forth more sugar and get a ferment going that would yield some vinegar. Just a plain plastic bin, sprayed out with a hose, duct tape over two openings that the fruit flies would have entered. Snap on the lid and walk away.

Being shiftless and lazy, I did not keep notes, but fuzzy recollection tells me that fermentation set in quickly, and it was not long until it was frothy. Yeast was gobbling sugar and pumping out alcohol. I shut the lid and walked away for another undetermined amount of time, checking progress intermittently, satisfied that the fermentation gases were escaping, but fruit flies were not getting in.

At some point, the fermentation slowed, and I decided to jettison the fruit. I strained out the liquid and then put the pulp into a canning kettle, pushing it down with the circular wooden plunger from the cider press to squeeze out the last liquid. Then, finally, I let go of the pomace and the fruit flies and worms got their feast on.

This liquid was then covered for the final ferment, turning alcohol into vinegar. Because I'd just let the wild microbes do what they wanted, and maybe also because this was a second pressing, I doubt the liquid was ever really what you would call hard cider. The vinegar smell was present early on, as the Acetobacteria drank alcohol and pissed vinegar. By this time, I had not only apple, but also pear and plum batches a-brewing.

The pear juice was thick and viscous, a syrupy consistency that I hoped translated to sugar. There was more than half a bin of this as I snapped the lid shut and walked away. The times between lifting the lid and checking grew longer, and between stirring even longer. There were some more bubbles, but not as many, as fermentation mellowed and aging began. Meanwhile, the bin sat just under the eaves of the house, getting afternoon sun when it shone, getting cold at night, pretty much neglected. The whole process, I figured, was a very low-stakes gamble. Rather than invest time and effort, what would happen if I let nature take it's course?

Good things, it turns out. A little more than two months after putting the batches in dark places to do their thing, I pulled the bacterial mat off the surface to reveal liquid that was less cloudy than before and much less viscous. It smelled like vinegar, and tasted like it.

Now, I have a quart of plum vinegar, which seems really fine, but I am continuing to age in the fridge. There's a gallon or so of apple, which seems to be fairly weak and clear; I have not tasted it yet, but even if it's not flavorific, I can use it for the 1001 non-food functions of acetic acid. Finally, I have several gallons of pear vinegar, which is pretty good. I pasteurized some (150 degrees for 35 minutes) and bottled it in re-used beer bottles that I boiled for 10 minutes. I just used the regular crown caps like beer, but will seal it with wax if I get around to it. It will be interesting to see how these age. The live stuff is in a big jug out in the garage and a few half-gallon growlers (again, thank you, beer containers) in the fridge.

Already, some of the vinegar has been put to use. Some went to scrubbing down a moldy molding (acetic acid kills mold without killing me), and some went into salad dressing that adorned the last lettuce of the year. Next Summer, I should be able to make pickles using my own vinegar. The frugal, off-the-grid, lazy, and independent parts of me rejoice. Wringing vinegar from spent cider-fruit adds another spoke to the re-cycle.

Heap o Worms - Update

Stick a fork in it; it's done. (Guardian caiman at left.)

Earlier this year, I wrote about how I abandoned the bin, and experimented with freestyle vermiposting. Having had a wooden bin that succumbed to rat raids or some unknown catastrophe, I just started tossing kitchen scraps and the neighbor's juice-machine pulp in a heap, aiming for an old-school compost, but thwarted by the cool wet NW winter. Then I noticed that worms migrated in, and the compost was just not heating up, so I took to tossing on dirt from molehills to aid the vermiferous digestive process, and turning it all with a fork from time to time.

Even in January, it seemed to be working just fine. I never added worms, but there they were. No idea whether they were heeding the dinner bell and crawling in from elsewhere, or if I had a breeding population, but each time I turned over the heap, scads of red wriggling worms appeared. The color and activity makes me think they are "red wigglers," the favored variety for composting, but again, I have no idea if that's true; my curiosity tends to take a nap when things are working fine (unlike those missing scapes, what the hell?).

On the initial worm heap, I would put fresh material on one side, followed with some brown matter (dead leaves and twigs, mostly, the idea being to get some partially decomposed material with it's microbiota to balance the fresh "green" stuff), finally dusted with some soil (I mostly used backdirt from molehills, which around here is the glacially deposited, mostly inorganic, sandy clay substrate). Then I'd flip the other side on top. Back and forth.

That worked fine. Yielding this:

Heap #1, cross section.

So yeah. Update: It worked. A few months turned all my kitchen waste and the neigbor's juice pulp into fine black loam. Because of the addition of sandy soil, it actually has more structure than typical worm castings, although it may not be quite so potent. Better yet, the soil for a couple of feet around the heap is spongy-soft; even after I harvest the good stuff, the network of worm-tunnels full o castings will make this a good spot to garden.

Hell yeah, I'll take that.

 
In May, I stopped adding material to Worm Heap #1, figuring I'd let the worms work their way through the last of the fresh scraps and make for a harvest that had only the good stuff (and presumably, fewer worms, wh would have moved on in search of food.

The new heap took shape about 10 yards away, beginning with a layer of dead leaves, poplar and spruce buds (thank you, windfall), and whatever. By now, my juice-fiend neighbor was keeping his pulp to himself, but it being Spring now, there was a supply of garden thinnings.

Heap # 2, cross section.

To augment the thinnings, I also tossed on weeds, unless they were the kind that would take root too easily, or were full of seed.

As if haphazard weed-tossing is not lazy enough, I decided this time to forego the periodic turning with a pitchfork. Not having giant clumps of carrot-pulp that need aerating to prevent slimy non-decomposition, it didn't seem so crucial, and an experiment in the name of finding an easier way is one gamble I'll usually take.

So far, so good. With drier weather, I pay a bit more attention to watering the heap, but no turning. After adding a decent amount of green material, I'll rake the garden paths toward the heap to give it an influx of brown matter, or shovel on some molehill dirt. Not quite so systematic, but still there is a good mix of green, brown, and grit. Maybe not as pretty as Heap #1, and to the untrained eye it may appear haphazard, but if it works, it's a refinement of technique from the standpoint of energy input (according to my back). More to the point, the worms are there in droves, and the green and brown stuff is turning into dirt.

Toss it, and they will come.

Maybe I'll do another update, but if not, just assume this is working. At this point, I cannot see the sense in trying real composting again. Or even making another worm bin. I have yet to sort Heap #1 (I'll sift it through 1/2-inch mesh to remove the sticks and avocado pits, which are apparently indestructable), but there must be at least 20 gallons of black gold there, and I should be able to do this twice a year. The sandy glacial soil in this yard should improve.

Open a Heap o Worms

 

I've never been the best composter, but even so the Northwest is the most difficult place by far that I've ever tried to do it. People talk about it a lot, blogs and newspapers run articles about composting, hell, even the county will subsidize your purchase of a bin. But some of the best gardeners I know, when pressed, will admit that our cool wet Winters (and Falls and Springs--let's be honest) make it a challenge at best. Sure, selectivity of materials, great diligence, and willingness to have multiple composts in the works at any given time can cook up some fine black gold, but it ain't easy.

So a couple of years ago, I figured I'd try worm composting, but again, I was not so good at it. Ultimately, I did not have enough bedding and space to accomodate the volume of kitchen and garden waste I produce. In the meantime, I am pretty sure, rats gobbled up many of the specially purchased red wiggler worms alleged to be master casters (although I've had no luck to date finding reliable information on vermipredation).

Now I live alone, and don't have as many daily food scraps, but since I press cider, pickle, and can in bursts, I produce occasional heaps of peels and pulp. Add to this a helpful neighbor who makes a lot of juice and gifts me with bins of finely ground veggie and fruit every week or so, and I have so much fresh material that any compost or worm bin is bound to be overwhelmed.

Until I gave up. 

At least, I stopped trying to go the usual routes, like paying for special worms or compost bins. Taking the DIY ethic to it's sometimes backbreaking and stubborn extreme, I resolved to make due with the tools, soil, and critters I have. 

Over the carrot and kale pulp, a layer of old leaves.

I pushed my failed compost into a heap. The humble heap (a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, more faithful to the spirit of a shapeless mass of rotting vegetables than the Latin-derived "pile," which is a bit too prissy and upright for what this is). Somehow I got it into my head that I could coax the local earthworms up into it. The up-side of our cool wet climate is that it is rarely outright freezing, and worms are often close to the surface throughout Winter. In fact, I knew from my compost failures over the years that they would migrate into a heap if it weren't burning up at proper compost temperatures. [You may not be a big worm fan, but they probably beat my similar cannot-compost-adaptation/rationalization involving rats.]

So I decided to set the table a bit more to their liking. When I go on a cooking binge, or the juicaholic neighbor has one of his own, the debris goes on half the heap, as in the opening photo. Then I scrounge up some old dead leaves for variety and anti-bird cover, and toss them on, like in the second photo. Finally, I layer on some mineral soil. Luckily for me, moles are constantly kicking up backdirt from their endless tunneling under the lawn, and all I have to do is scoop up a few shovels of that nicely broken up soil and toss them on. Like in the last of this most un-photogenic series, here:

Yep, that there's a dirt-covered heap. One of the internet's finest photos.

The dirt is something earthworms like, even need, giving their guts the grit to digest the vegetative matter. According to my reasoning, which lies somewhere between superstitious hunch and scientific hypothesis, the combination of new scraps with old microbe-laden duff and mineral soil should be a balanced meal that lets the worms thrive and make more worms. Lately, as I turn the heap, the number of worms suggests that I am onto something.

Speaking of turning, my hunch/hypothesis is that this is the crucial activity on the part of me, the human steward of this worm mountain. Earthworms are good aerators, but the frequent addition of more fresh vegetable peels and pulp, of wet leaves and often sodden soil, is enough to compact the heap into a stanking anaerobic mess that will never decompose fully. Turning the pile loosens the material, creates new air pockets, and facilitates migration of interior to exterior and vice versa.

This is why, in the first photo, you see carrot pulp on only one side. In a week or so, I'll dig in deep to the other side with the fork, and turn it over on top of the left before depositing a new load of scraps, leaves, and soil onto the right. If I see any slimy clumps, I'll break them up. Maybe toss on more leaves or soil, or just pull out a few twigs; I respond to the moment. In time lapse photography, you would see the heap shift from one side to the other. 

This hypothesis/hunch has yet to run through the test. The look and smell of the heap, not to mention the burgeoning worm population, suggest it is working. As time passes, I imagine that I'll be able to harvest shovel-fuls of fertile dirt-compost-castings, as the pile continues its slow swaying dance and the worms shimmy inside. I may set up a half-inch screen box nearby and harvest the fine fallout that way, tossing the rest back into the pile. Or maybe, some other idea will occur to me. In the meantime, I toss dinner scraps on every day or so, a pile of pulp every week or so, and engage in a burst of heavy labor now and then. And the worms eat and make more worms.

[Oh yeah, it worked great! See the Update, and Round 2 experiment here.] 

Recycled Christmas Tree Post

Every year before Christmas, newsrooms in cruise mode revive the great Real Tree vs Plastic Tree debate. Every year as Hannukah kicks off, my college room-mate attempts to understand why so many goy insist on killing a fir tree every year. After all, Jesus only killed a fig tree (Matthew 21:18-22), and didn't do it again every year.

In terms of appeal, fake trees win only among the extremely fastidious and the lazy, for whom cleaning up a few needles is too much of an imposition, so the articles in recent years have often focused on the environmental aspect of the debate. Initially, the ersatz Tannenaum contingent had the upper hand, asserting that cutting a tree down every year damaged forests, whereas plastic trees last forever. 

But nearly all live (then dead) trees now come from farms like this one, just outside of Olympia. People like me come and cut trees, and the farmer plants more. A recent study shows that if the tree farmers don't kill the groundcover plants between trees, such farms are good for carbon sequestration--not as good as a forest, but still significantly better than fields of annual crops or pasture lands (and bonus: no cattle farts), which is what most Christmas tree farms were previously.

In my case--recognizing that this will not be true in all parts of the country--there's the added benefit that the round trip to get the tree consumed less than a gallon of gas. Plus, I'm supporting the local economy, helping a farmer make ends meet, and helping forestall the loss of farmland to development. Because this is an ongoing operation, new trees replacing old every year, it's a relatively stable habitat for birds, deer, and other critters that like something between grassland and forest. No, it's not pristine, but it has some ecological value, and it beats the hell out of a lot of the alternatives.

Meanwhile, fake trees are made of petrochemicals and metal ripped from the earth, processed in factories that consume more oil and create toxic waste, packaged in cardboard boxes (killing trees! the horror) and more plastic, and shipped from China the trucked to your locality. The carbon footprint is large, and the sequestration value zero. If these trees lasted forever, the footprint might be amortized, but fake trees make their way into landfills, not from generation to generation. 

[A Digression: The same goes for ornaments on the tree. If you are stingy and nostalgic like I was this year, then you have ornaments that have somehow stayed out of landfills for decades. A bunch are made from Christmas cards and chicken pot pie tins recycled when I was in second grade, waylaid from the waste stream for twoscore years.] 

All this should be famliar to those of you who reard or read reports on the Real vs Fake theme before Christmas, but what about after? Fake ones go back in a box or into the garbage, so making them less environmentally harmful is a matter of holding on for as long as possible before trashing them.

For real trees, the environmental impact can vary a lot depending on what you do after the holidays. At one end of the spectrum, you  could burn it. Torching a dry fir can be a great show, but it exhales the carbon it breathed in from the atmosphere for years right back into the air in a few minutes. You could douse the flame before it consumes the wood and bury the charcoal, in which case the carbon could stick around for tens of thousands of years. 

Many counties and municipalities have programs to mulch Christmas trees. Olympia even comes around to pick them up. The chipped trees become mulch in parks and in some cases may be sold or given to citizens; this extends the useful life of the tree, provides a local source of mulch with a lower cost and fuel use, and ends up in the soil. Sequestration time varies depending on conditions and from needle to branch to bole, but again something is better than nothing, and the breakdown feeds soil microbes, fungi, arthropods, and so on--it is carbon recycling, not emission. 

I'm stingy with biomass, and would no sooner give the city my tree than I would my compost. At some point in January, I take the tree outside, stand and all. This being the maritime Northwest, it can stay there looking green and alive until April or May, and in years past I have placed to to seem like part of the landscaping. Some years, as Spring comes round, I cut off the boughs and lay them among the blueberries as a nice acidic mulch; I may come back the next year and toss the skeletal branches aside. The trunk gets tossed in back for the native blackberries to clamber over, and eventually to return to the soil. Other years, I remove the stand and toss the whole tree in back. Birds hide in it, berries climb through, and the soil beneath gets better year by year. 

I rationalize habitually, but in this case I really do think that my choice of tree and my treatment of it after the holidays is as good a way to go environmentally as most of the alternatives. A live tree, planted out after Christmas, would be better, but I don't own any ground to plant in, and I don't know many people who have the space to do that year after year. No tree at all could be better, maybe, but it sounds like no fun. Besides, I want my local tree farm to stay in business.

Furniture Foraging for Ages

Foraged Table and Chairs.

I spent less than $1,000 to furnish a household for a family of four. Not spending money has been a necessity, a sport, and maybe an obsession of mine ever since I was a kid. Populating my various abodes with furniture that is used, found, and home-made has been a major behavior as a result. It's also more environmentally friendly than buying new furniture, and it helps the domestic economy more than purchasing something new from China or Sweden. When Messrs Jackson, Hamilton and Lincoln conspire to ransom themselves for a table, I'm happy having filled a need and the seller is pleased to have 35 bucks in her pocket.

The thrill of a score cannot sustain you for years, though, and furniture foraging requires patience, maybe even Buddhist detachment or archaeological sense of time. If the proverbial rich uncle drops a load of cash on you, I suppose you could hit the estate sales and thrift stores and be furnished in quick order, but let's say it ain't so. 
 
Like for instance, maybe you live in Olympia, on the frayed southern fringe of Pugetopolis, where yard sale fodder has only been piling up for a couple of generations (am I having a fond memory of Virginia, and it's 400 years of accumulated goods? egad). A place where things from the '70s count as antiques, and yard sales regularly present those free FTD vases as things to be paid for. With the discipline to slog out in all weather and rummage through every corner, you'll eventually find what you want, but you cannot expect to run out one weekend and acquire a house-load--or even an apartment-full--of furniture and housewares that have any sense of cohesiveness. 


Which is fine. Get what you need when you need it, as cheap as you can. Then sit back in your naugahyde chaise and wait til something more perfect reveals itself. Refinish or paint that crappy dresser in the meantime, because chances are you'll be able to sell it for what you paid (more, if you are good at spotting the diamond in the rough, or at turning elbow grease into a fine polish). The game becomes trading up, getting the basely functional placeholder while keeping an eye out for the sublime. This is maybe the one area of my life in which I am a relentless capitalist. Get hold of some abused furniture, fix it up, and sell it in a more profitable market (sometimes all you have to do is take your meatspace find to a major metropolitan craigslist). 


Whether you want to make a quick score or ensconce yourself in the finest outfittery, the greatest potential is in getting stuff for free. The housemates too lazy to take all their stuff. The free thing set out by the road (do I need to tell you that upholstered furniture does not count? in the NW, such stuff is worse than junk, it is a mold bomb, substrate for all manner of malady modalities). Sometimes, what you have to work with don't offer much potential for rescue, and you may be that last person squeezing  use from something headed to the landfill (or, if it's wood, the fireplace), but there is no shame in that. You may take solace in having kept something out of the trash for another year, amortizing its carbon footprint that much further.


Other times, you can turn junk into an antique, hand-me-downs into heirlooms. The profit goes into something more suited to your needs. 


But it ain't all about trading up. Sometimes the trash-to-treasure progression is a closed loop, furniture alchemy wholly within your domicile. This is how nearly two decades of keeping eyes peeled and elbows greased resulted in this all-oak office: desk, swivel chair, book-case and drafting table all of rich mid-century Quercusian glory. Looks like it was born together, but instead cobbled itself from broken homes spanning a quarter of the globe. Or, in the dining room, a table reconstructed from a cannibalized dinette and an intended but ne'er-finished desk-top, paired with mixed 5-dollar chairs rendered magically matching through judicious sawing and some cans of black spray-paint--people think it is a Swedish modern set.


Then there's the spotting of things being passed along. As the elders pass, so becomes available their stuff; sounds crass, but any worse than letting grandma's stuff being hauled off by a stranger, maybe in a dumpster? Be a decent person, and karma may reward you with furniture and gear from people you are not even related to. My memory is far from flawless, but I think that this is where most of the couches in my life have come from. 

So too should you pass things along. Nice as it is to pull treasure from the waste-stream, it is nicer still to toss it back into the flow so some kid coming up can catch something too. Sold, bequeathed, or given to friend or stranger, passing along the old chair or shelves keeps them out of the garbage. The energy invested in manufacture is stretched that much further. The good karma keeps flowing, the greenstead gains life.