Salvatore Del Deo sits in his kitchen on a snowy December afternoon, holding a jar of dried beans. “My favorites of all the favorites,” he says, holding them up to the light. “These are Romano beans, but we call them Portuguese beans, because they were given by an Italian farmer to a Portuguese guy from […]
Farm & Garden
What would it look like to grow, harvest, and protect our bounty?
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VIEW FROM THE HIVE
Honey Bees Await the Solstice
Our dark Outer Cape bees winter in frugal clusters
WELLFLEET — On this farm we have Wellfleetian honey bees — although not really; their origins are more likely Ukrainian. Honey bees were never native to North America. With the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea 200 million years ago, our continent drifted apart from Eurasia and Africa before honey bees evolved. Early honey bees were […]
NATURA VIVA
Juniperus Virginiana (Eastern red cedar)
“Juniperus Virginiana (Eastern red cedar)” by Natalie Van Staden
ON THE LANDSCAPE
Structure and Shape in the Winter Garden
Reminders of the bones required to support summer’s softer beauty
I used to rent a small house with large windows. The windows overlooked a meadow of grasses and wildflowers framed at its edges by low oaks and autumn olive. In the days of summer, of lush green and fullness, of breezes that push through blades of grass, the meadow was nearly overwhelming in its richness. […]
HOLIDAY TABLE
Ecoprinting: Natural Dyes From Leaves and Flowers
Dyeing is a multi-step process. The first step is a visit with nature.
Even in these chilly gray days of November we find color everywhere on the Outer Cape. Marsh and beach grasses are golden fire. Junipers are deep green, their bright berries like tiny punctuation marks in the lush foliage. Scrub oak and pitch pine leaves litter the woods, a russet-colored blanket for winter. The sleeping garden […]
ROOTS
All Eastham Turns Out for Turnips
The 16th annual turnip festival is at Nauset High on Saturday
EASTHAM — By the time this story goes live, the library’s countdown clock for the Eastham Turnip Festival will reach two days, eight hours, and counting. You can watch the Festival tick closer by the second on the library website. It’s almost as if the turnip festival, now in its 16th year, were Eastham’s New […]
VIEW FROM THE HIVE
In Winter, Bees Become a Superorganism
A strategy to conserve energy and food
Hive entrances are eerily vacant and quiet this frigid November morning, but an ear to the boxes reveals lots of life inside. A healthy cluster of wintering honey bees emits a low and steady hum — the sound of thousands of bee-muscle contractions, fueled by stored honey and generating heat to share. Unlike our native […]
ON THE LANDSCAPE
The Rewards of Caring for House Plants
The basics are simple: soil, water, light, nutrients, and love
Frost etches the margins of the grass in the early morning. You can see your breath when you step outside at night. The bin of winter clothing has been pulled from beneath the bed and all the warm blankets are out of their summer hiding place. You have brought your house plants back inside. They […]
IMMIGRANTS
Finding Increasingly Rare Refuge on a Truro Farm
A Nepalese couple succeeds even as asylum policy is strangled by Trump
TRURO — Fall hasn’t yet hit Down Home Farm: devoid of the expected autumnal colors, its fields glow green. The growing season isn’t over, and the farm’s cozy stand on Truro Center Road boasts a lush array of radishes, zucchini, arugula, broccoli, and flower bouquets. This patch of land is cultivated by its tenants, Bhala […]
KITCHEN TABLE
A Sweet Reward for Fall Foragers
The best applesauce mixes wild and cultivated flavors
A study published this summer in Science suggested trees are the best tool we have to stabilize our rapidly changing climate. We could increase the world’s forest cover by a third without affecting existing cities or agriculture, the researchers say, and cut atmospheric carbon dioxide by 25 percent, to levels last seen almost a century […]
at the library
Finding Fertile Ground in Old Card Catalogs
Repurposing turns out to be the perfect recipe
When local libraries began to introduce computers with searchable databases, most patrons thought they’d seen the last of the old card catalogs — those imposing wooden drawers filled with index cards that contained arcane data decipherable only by librarians. But three libraries on the Outer Cape are proving that there’s still life in the old […]
kitchen table
Boletes Ask for Butter
Layer them over pan-grilled bread for a well-foraged meal
It’s been a good fall for mushrooms, with plenty of rain followed by some warm, sunny days. I’ve been out in the woods looking for boletes — being careful not to trample the pine needle duff in their favorite settings as I go. There are lots of different boletes out there. They like woods like […]
view from the hive
The Bees Are Busy Getting Ready for Winter
Fat winter bees will jump-start the colony in spring
Unlike some bipeds I know, honey bees never seem to procrastinate in their preparations for the big chill of an Outer Cape winter. The bees take advantage of every warm day, coming and going at the hive entrance at a seemingly frantic pace. Like people, they need to ensure a source of heating fuel that […]
on the landscape
The Grasses Tell Us to Be Quiet
Plants to create spaces that borrow from the textures of woods, fields, and dunes
Shhhhhhhh. The wind is given voice by the grass. The wind has no sound if not for the things it passes through, around, within. It is not the sound of the wind, but of the grass. The wind does not scream in the lines. The wind allows the lines to speak their sound. Shhhhhhh…. Blades […]
in the wild
Not All Fungi Foragers Are Good Environmental Stewards
Overcollecting and trampling disturb a delicate symbiosis
The Outer Cape’s sandy, acidic soils are generally seen as inhospitable for food crops. But every fall, people travel from across New England and farther afield to visit our dunes and pine forests, looking for the special mushrooms that thrive in nutrient-poor soils and in symbiotic relationships with pines and oaks. The number of mushroom […]
