DECEMBER 12, 2027

The flood of 2010 that tried to take out Ellison Lane. That's me on the old John Deere 4310.

RAIN RAIN RAIN

Hard rain all night has filled the ponds and swales, so the overflow to the stream is now flowing. As soon as the stream level goes down a bit, I'll start up the hydraulic ram and fill up the storage tanks near the shop/greenhouse. The stream is in flood stage, but is staying within its bounds.

It was in 2010, I think, that we had the first of a series of floods here in our neighborhood. Ron, from the end of Alaska Place, came out with his tractor to help us clear the culvert under the road before it washed out. Eric had to close up his culvert to keep his shop from further flooding, which put the water onto Ellison Lane. We had to work quickly to cut a new ditch along the lane and redirect the water down the brushy slope toward the pond. Ellison Lane was severely rutted,  but still usable.

Eric's shop survived the flood and went on to provide an important service to this part of the island: keeping tools and equipment running when new items became too expensive and a trip to a repair shop in Friday Harbor was just too much trouble.

A few things have happened since then to help us deal with stormwater and treat it as the valuable resource it is. Eric and I set up a series of checkdams and swales on the slope above the big pond. That slowed down and filtered the water on its way off the property, and got more of it into the soil and not just running on the surface. Eric planted this new landscape with willows, aronias, cattails, and other useful water-loving plants. So now, almost two decades later, this problem area is now very productive, and helps keep Eric's booth at the Farmers Market stocked with choice edibles. He also installed gates in his ditches to control the amount of water running through his orchard and duck pond, so now we just smile and accept the rain where in the past we cursed and grabbed our shovels.

And to deal with the source of all that water, the neighbors' land above us, we teamed up and made a series of swales to slow down the surge and made things less "flashy". We got that done by 2012 or so, which is bad timing in a way, because just a couple years later, the new Stormwater District was making grants available for just that kind of work. It took some pretty damaging events to convince the voters to back a new taxing district, but that's how it goes, sometimes.

DECEMBER 5, 2027

I LIKE THIS SHOT OF ERIC AND ME CLOWNING AROUND AT THE OLD MARKET

I had a good day at the Farmers Market yesterday, selling eggs, sunchokes and nursery plants. I set up as usual at my stall in the Brickworks building. It's OK to set up in Sunshine Alley or across Nichols in the old moped lot in the Summer, but I like the cozy feel of the barn when the cold winds begin to blow.  A really good band set up on the rooftop above the gallery. I think they're from Bellingham. One of those new junk marimba bands, it sounded like. Anyway, I had to go outside to check them out, and watch the kids dancing in the alley.

We've been experimenting with faster ways to get into the Market, unload, and get out. Space was tight from the start, twenty years ago, and has been getting tighter every year as more of the island's food comes through Brickworks. The little railway that takes loads in and out of the trucks and wagons: my idea. I'm hoping someday it will run in a loop around downtown Friday Harbor, picking up shoppers and dropping off produce. But for a while longer we'll have to rely on the fleet of pedicabs. High school kids need work, too, I guess. I keep trying to convince the Town Council that even a peddled vehicle works better on steel rails, but they reply that money is too tight for "non-essential infrastructure improvements". Sheesh!

The nursery business is still rolling along. I've been able to do a lot of my own propagation, so I'm not so dependent on mainland nurseries for starts as I used to be. It feels good to help people fill their space with fruits, berries, nuts and flowers. I realise it took some hunger and fear to make some of the changes, but we've made it this far, and all the little trees are getting bigger and more productive.

NOVEMBER 28, 2027

Anita and I spent the morning sawing logs. On the mill. We made a couple tapered colums for an arbor I'm doing for a neighbor. I like the way we can take our own Doug fir trees and make things out of them that ordinary mills just can't do: tapered work, for instance. Try getting something like that from the mainland and it will cost you a fortune. I usually use them for gate posts or columns for arbors. More and more of my landscape construction work uses my own wood from my own property. I like that better than the old days of giving my money to the lumberyard.

This afternoon we went to the meeting of the Seed Coop to hash out an order for next Spring. It looks like there are more local seeds available, and we had a few new people participating this year.

NOVEMBER 27 2027

I spent the afternoon in the woods, gathering firewood for the boiler and oceanspray rods for fencing. I parked the train in the hairpin and worked the middle path on the ridge, along the zipline. I sent three bundles of rods and a car's worth of firewood down the zipline. The firewood came from the last of the grand firs on this side of the ridge. Dead standing wood makes pretty good firewood: it's already seasoned.

I can't believe how clumsy I can be. I tipped over the gas can while dragging a branch, and pretty much cancelled out any profit for the afternoon. I did rescue a couple shovelfuls of gas-soaked dirt in a bucket, though, and threw it into the fire. Waste not want not, eh?

We have almost enough oceanspray for our wattlework class. Anita says she'd like some more willow and alder. Maybe next weekend.

THANKSGIVING DAY 2027

My brother Eric and I spent yesterday pulling the electric pump out of the water tank and replacing it.  I'm glad I set the tank next to the house and a bit uphill so that our hand pump in the basement will draw water even when the power is out, the well house is frozen, or as happened yesterday, the electric pump dies. The pump in the basement is at a sink we use to process food, between the freezer and the root cellar.

At first I thought the problem was a frozen pipe down at the well house. I put a heater down there, directing the blast at the pipes. After half a day without sign of progress, I decided to open the top of the water tank and pull on the float switches. Anyway, long story short: I had no action from the pump, so we went two days without water pressure at the house, the chicken coops and the greenhouse during a big freeze. I had to rely on the hand pump for the house and the rainwater tanks for chickens and plants.

Actually, I'm glad nothing froze up, because I've been putting quite a bit of effort into protecting the water system. It's really expensive when popane or electric heat is needed to unfreeze a pipe. I'm also getting things set up with hand pumps and gravity feed, so that power outages are not such a disaster.

Anyway, now the family is gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, a couple of Eric's ducks are roasting in the oven, and the wonderful aroma is wafting up from the kitchen to the office where I'm fooling around with this new journal. As well as meat ducks, Eric sells a lot of duck eggs at the Brickworks Market, and also some at our own neighborhood market.

I'm in charge of the whipped potatoes. Thank God for potatoes. We'd have been pretty hungry or pretty poor or both if it weren't for the lowly spud.  We don't have grain land here at Thornbush, so we rely on our own spuds, sunchokes and squash from here, and buy or barter for grain from the San Juan Valley bunch.

Anita made a terrific looking medlar spice cake, from medlar pulp we processed last fall. We like to stay a year ahead, if we can. Experience is the best teacher, they say. This year's crop is still hanging on the trees, frozen solid but none the worse for it. I think it gets the medlar riper faster that way. I'm looking forward to dessert: medlar spice cake with whipped cream. Yum!

Things are finally warming up out there. I've been stoking the fire twice a day the past three days, keeping the boiler temperature good and high. One plus to all the wood-burning: I've been making a lot of charcoal for the garden at the same time.