Archive for May, 2016

Sun Day Delight

 

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The day was Sunday-slow and since it is deemed a day of rest, I decided to take it easy and stroll out to the hedge of rhubarb in the garden. I cut handful thick red stalks to render into a rhubarb cobbler. You know food for proper resting.

It seemed fitting that the day was cloudless and bright with sunshine. Got me wondering why  Sunday is called “Sunday?”

It turns out that early pre-Christian pagan Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples set aside this day to honor and worship the sun. The name is derived from an Old English word, Sunnandaeg, which means “day of the sun.”

Cultures around the world have historically and some presently honor the sun.

We would do well to pay homage to that big mass of burning gases that sits 93,000,000 miles away delivering 1,000 watts/meter of free energy at noon on a clear day. Not to mention that the sun rains photons that make it possible for plants to grow. In other words without this middle-aged dwarf star life wouldn’t exist on Earth.

Later, as Christianity spread, the church capitalized on a marketing idea to remain keeping it holy and to continue to use it as the holiest day of the week. It was simpler to get people to worship a new god than it was to get them to call the day by a new name. So Sunday remained Sunday, even when (most) people stopped worshipping the sun.

So given that it was the seventh day, it was perfect that I would be teaming with Ol’ Man Sol to bake the cobbler. Sort of a communion if you will.

Recently, we acquired our second solar oven. We had toted our first one, a different brand, to the Outpost in the Yukon several years ago and then proceeded to give it to some friends who live 25 miles down the Yukon River from Dawson and the nearest road or electrical outlet. Hopefully they are getting some use out of it.

(Go to an earlier blog to read about my first experience with that stove.)

The new oven, is a step up in cost and quality. It is the All American Sun Oven. I set up in the yard, facing south, on the picnic table where it sat in full sun. It took a minute to set it up, unfolding the reflective mirror-like wings to help direct sunlight into the oven.

The oven has a swinging grate to set the pan/pot on so the trapped heat can easily surround the prepared dish. I like the fact that there is an easy to read feature that allows you to track the direct sunlight and then move the stove as necessary for optimal cooking. It requires a slight adjustment of the stove every half hour or so.

Two hours later, the perfectly browned hot cobbler was removed and hurried indoors for consumption. The dollop of vanilla ice cream melted quickly on the steaming cobbler. Oh so good!

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Two days later we pulled a frozen venison roast from the freezer and put it directly into the pan with some of our carrots, potatoes and onions. There is no need to add any water as the meat and vegetables would cook in their own juices in the covered pan.

We began cooking it at mid-morning and pulled it out at 6:00 PM. It was unbelievably tender and moist. And, unlike the cobbler, we did not adjust the stove throughout the day because we were gone.  We simply aimed the glass door and reflectors to the south and left it alone.

It was so easy and we didn’t have to heat up the house with a hot kitchen oven. And the best part is that we required no fossil fuels for cooking. No coal-generated electricity, no propane and no fuel bill. . . sunlight is free.

The oven comes with drying racks and we intend to use it as a food dryer once the garden starts ramping out produce. In my world you can never have too many sun-dried tomatoes. They make great additions to any meal, good snacks and are easy to bring on extended camping trips.

One of my favorite wilderness meals is macaroni and cheese with sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts.

Hmmmmm, with the reflective wings all folded into place, the cooking box and it’s  suitcase style handle make it portable.  Perhaps we need to find room in the canoe for the fuel-free appliance.

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Buzzing Around the Neighborhood

A lady by the name of Bombus was in the neighborhood looking for real estate. I didn’t get to have a conversation with her as she was impatient. She seemed indecisive in her back and forthing through the neighborhood.

I was mesmerized by her tireless, haphazard coursing over the area. How could she so quickly analyze a decent quarters to raise her family?

Suddenly she paused. I guess you could call it momentarily hovering. Then, just as quickly she moved on; leaving me only wondering where this fat, noisy bumblebee, whose genus name is Bombus, might find a home place.

The Latin word bombus means “buzzing;” an apt christening of this group of insects. In Minnesota there are over 20 species of bumblebees in the genus Bombus.

Bumblebees are uniquely suited for unseasonally chilly days such as today. Though the calendar reads the third week of May, I have a fire in the kitchen stove. Unlike monarch butterflies, these bees, like all species of bumbebees, have developed a strategy to put up with freezing temperatures. The bumblebee is capable of stoking her inner fires by internally generating heat.

After spending a solitary long winter hibernating underground, she is patrolling low to the ground, looking closely through her huge, multi-lensed compound eyes for a likely site to create a nursery to raise her colony of children bumblebees.

Okay so “children bumblebees” is a pathetically anthropomorphic choice of words for bumblebee larvae, but it lands better on the ears of folks who tend to shy away from bees and their kin.

Ideally, this female bumblebee, fertilized last fall, will find a small excavated hole left perhaps by a rodent or some other critter. She will place dead grasses, leaves or other similar materials in the nesting chamber and then camouflage the entrance of her nursery den with these same natural materials.

Bumblebee are very competitive for these subterranean quarters and will sometimes fight to the death to claim a nesting site. Some entomologists feel that as many as 10% of the nests are taken over by a second challenging female bee.

Once the quarters are ready, the mother-to-be, collects pollen and tucks it in the chamber. The next step is to lay eggs on the pollen. The adult bee warms the eggs with her robust, hairy body until they hatch in 4-5 days. The hatching larvae feed on the pollen and then pupate for another nine or so days before they emerge as sterile females or worker bees. These are the corps of workers that will help the mother or queen bee with the following summer broods.

By the time fall comes around, the queen will lay eggs that will develop into fertile male and female bees. They will develop, leave the burrow for a mating flight and only the fertilized females will survive the winter. All others in the colony will die.

Sadly several Minnesota species of bumblebees are in decline. Overall there are too many pollinating insects in decline. Scientists feel most of the declines are the result of humans interaction and influence on the biosphere. Issues of climate change, invasive species, poisonous insecticides and habitat loss all make life difficult for bees and untold numbers of other critters.

Last year, I spent the better part of June and early July paddling down an arctic river to the Chuckchi Sea, at the southern margin of the Arctic Ocean. As we descended the serpentine river the tundra surrounded us and the long summer days gave rise to an amazing crop of short, arctic flowers. It wasn’t unusual to have a sensorial moment of celebration when the wind carried the powerful, sweet smell from thousands of crowded arctic lupines flanking the river.

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Busying themselves in the parade of purple blooms, were the largest of all bumblebees, the arctic bumblebee (Bombus polaris). It would be an exaggeration to claim these robust, well-furred bees are sparrow-sized, but they seem twice the size of our Minnesota variety. And their loud buzz makes you turn and look for an out-of-place dirt bike.

The big arctic bumblebee spends up to nine months, three quarters of a year, hibernating underground. It seems so wrong that this hardy bee can tough out months of dark and frigid days and competition among themselves and yet they cannot withstand our treatment of the natural world.

The irony is that we learn so late of the importance of these tireless pollinators.