Garden 2012: Your Late August Update

The garden – by which I mean the yard – has been inordinately productive while promising more and more.

The green beans are on their third wave of crop. Salad green have been on every plate for weeks. Stoke’s Cherokee purple tomatoes are meaty things with tiny watery seed cell. And, as illustrated, the yellow and purple fleshed carrots that were planted where I lifted up front lawn on Easter weekend are now a foot and a half long. I dug deep. Layered in a deep seam of sheep poo. Going into a carrot cake this evening. And green beans can be made into pesto. Who knew? Ripped out another yew hedge and put in black currants. Sugar snap peas for autumn planted.

Foot long Chinese pole beans are in my diet now. Hidden under over reaching… or, really, crowded… collards there are defiant multi-coloured Swiss chard. I am already looking at seed catalogs dreaming of next year. And that shower stall in the basement might get turned into a salad grow-op for the off season. It already has a drain so why not? I could start 1,000 onion seeds in February in my own home. I could. As the thumbnail shows, Google maps hardly recognizes the place out front since the decision was to ditch the ornamental ugliness of the front lawn for tasty utility.

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Not Beer: Unfiltered Rosé 2011, Closson Chase, Ontario

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Another day with nothing to do. Another summer run into nearby Prince Edward County, Ontario, to hit a few wineries and pad what we like to call the Christmas stash. See, I like good beer just fine and all but when you have big gatherings around roasts and twenty types of root vegetable when the sun goes down about 3:15 pm and find yourselves packed in tight with people whose tastes I am not sure about – well – I am going to pour wine. I will have good beer around, too, but just like a 50th birthday party I attended recently where I took a few good beers I expect they will sit there on the counter as every cooler, every bulk beer is drained ahead of it. See, most people are not like us. They don’t share our hobbies. They like auspicious dates on the calendar to be filled with familiar comforts and joys. And why not? Does every occasion need to be some sort of amateur training session?

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So, west we drove the thirty miles or so to the winery laced county. It is pretty impressive when you get into the back roads. Corn and produce stands mix with wineries as well as folks’ houses and farms down narrow back roads roamed on a Saturday. Lunch was at Huff with its table service dining. The food was swell. Architectural even. The service attentive. We only had one glass of 2007 Merlot to check on the state of one of the bottles laid in last time. No need to save it any longer. The kids will do without in the 2020’s. Then we hit Grange, a new one for us with a bucolic setting and plenty of folk enjoying a basket lunch on the grounds. Our favorite sample was the most humble, a 2006 blend that was under 11 bucks. I also bought a Cabernet Franc, too. It’s destined for a roast as well. The tasting room had that odd library hush about it that wine people seem to like but the service was pleasant. Not that I was going to slap my knee and shout yee-haw or anything but, really, could the staff ask what I thought of their wine?

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Last of the three was the smallest, Closson Chase, a return visit. On the way out, I told the staff that they won our loyalty with that free Freezee give away – not to mention the gardens in which you were invited to take the samples. Kids need a break and drinks buyers have kids. Smart move. Buys you 12 minutes. We tried a pinot noir, their 2010 Chardonnay from local grapes as well as this pinot rosé in my glass here later at home. It is tough having pinot noir or other red wines from Ontario having been trained as you all have for years on inky red plonk from Oz and Chile. These are lighter. And complex in ways that are… complex. So, even swishing the rosé around we noted something that was not acid, fruit or mineral in there. Something vegetative. We hummed. We hawed. Then green beans next to salmon were mentioned and, bingo, there you were. Now that thing is reminding me of that thing in saison that I like when it is there in a saison. Something between white pepper and green beans.

That was it. All the kids could take. We were off to the beach to paddle about and then off to Black River for cheese curds, a block of maple cheddar and a round of ice cream before the ferry home.

Maryland: Max’s Taphouse, Fells Point, Baltimore

Baltimore has given me a very good argument for its place as a beer destination and no other spot has made the case as clearly as Max’s Taphouse. We stopped in with the kids after taking the tour of Fort McHenry and crossing back across the harbor all by water taxi. The Fells Point area is a bit like the old port of Portland, Maine with the neighbourhood bars, funky shops and interesting restaurants. Max’s sits in the middle of it. I had a cask Red Sky saison from Clipper City as well as the recently released Union Duckpin Pale Ale.

 

 

 

 

Liked them both. The bar service meant a chat with the tender was in order and, like most sentences he hears all day, it was mainly about the stock – cask, taps, bottles and even stored un-chilled beer. He also explained that they did off license sales in Maryland as well as growler sales. If I wanted one of the special beers to take away, they just needed a few minutes for someone to go retrieve it from storage. The free state indeed.

But it’s not just this one bar. You go into most any bar and there are local beers on tap. Every few blocks in the center of town seems to have a reputable bar. We were at Joe Squared pizza for supper and there were a row of Duclaw taps. I had their double IPA as well as a blonde. Both very tasty and, at five bucks a shaker glass, not overly priced. Max’s was pretty reasonably priced as well now that I think of it.

We are already planning to come back and explore the city a bit more deeply. Sure, you will get the “you watched The Wire, right” line from half the people you tell you are heading to Baltimore but for a good beer holiday with family and kids, the Inner Harbor can’t be beat. Next time, the Orioles will be in town, too.

Ontario: An Early Reference To The Kingston Brewery

kingston1824The funny thing about Ontario is it started as a part of Quebec. Until the division of Upper and Lower Canada in 1791, this was all the one unified colony that Britain took from France in the conquest of 1760. Settlers started moving in 1783 first from central New York in the first direct Loyalist wave, then over the rest of the decade from the eastern US seacoast as the losers of the Revolution filtered their way around up from New York, Nova Scotia and then down the St. Lawrence. An oblique reference in a land document for a Lieut. Mackay from 1794 gives an interesting hint as to the development of brewing here in Kingston, the commercial center of this new colony:

On May 27, 1794, a petition had been presented in Council on his behalf for “a Piece of Land about the usual Size of a Town Lot, situated on the West side of a Lot lately laid out for the Kingston Brewery, to be bounded on the North by the said Brewery on the East by a small run of Water, on the South by the Common, & on the West by the top Bank…”

The passage is from The Parish Register of Kingston Upper Canada 1785-1811, an online resource that also confirms that by 1797 it was managed by one John Darnley. That is it above shown on a map of my town from 1824. It is also shown on a map from 1865 and later additions are still there – as the 2003 photo at this post shows. There was earlier brewing in the colony but likely tied to taverns like Finkle’s in nearby Bath. Steve Gates, our comment leaver and author of the excellent book The Breweries of Kingston & The St. Lawrence Valley pegs the building of the brewery in 1793 by merchant John Forsyth but it is John’s brother Joseph who is more of the man about Kingston in the 1790s. But, as a garrison town and a depot supplying deep into the continent from the main colonial centre of Montreal, it is entirely likely that their Kingston business affairs overlapped repeatedly.

Creation of the brewery reflected some level of certainty after years of difficulty in ensuring the grain crops could supply the expanding colonial population. A 1796 letter noted in Preston’s Kingston Before The War of 1812 even speaks of the continuing infestation of Hessian Fly affecting the area. Building a brewery spoke to an expectation of peace.

Garden 2012: Been Away And Back And What Survived?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The drought has had its effect. Something of a shut down by the onions. A refusal to go on. Squash and zucchini did not make it for a couple of reasons well studied already. But the leaves are booming. I have two sorts of mustard green as well as beet greens, red and green oak leaf lettuce as well as spinach. The salad bowl is full nightly. Beans boom. We are between flowerings so may well be looking at a late August harvest mirroring the mid-July one. A second planting of peas is taking off, too. Basil is booming. It will be pesto week. Collards have formed a blue green wall. All but two of the grave vines have excelled. Location is everything apparently. Having a yard full of berries now makes sense. There is nothing wrong with a yard full of berries. The rabbit has taken up residence. Were this 1870, he would make a swell stew along with the purple and yellow carrots. Starting to think about next year already. Five month to seed catalog ordering you know. Soil will need shifting, too. Much depends on soil quality.

Garden 2012: I Now Hate All Acalymma Vittatum

 

 

 

Acalymma vittatum or the striped cucumber beetle is the enemy of my now entirely dead blue hubbard squash. The wee bastards not only chop the plants themselves but carry the wilt bacteria in their propagating guts. Bastards. Anyway, all the vines are dead and I seethe with hatred. The only thing that calms me is the vast crop of green beans, lettuce and carrots.

We are eating our greens and have pretty much been since early June. I also built a second raised box bed out of cedar this week and have started to think more systematically about what the front lawn will look like. See, I have a system. And the system demands berries. So, out with the ornamental hedges of juniper and yew and in with the juneberries, raspberries, black currants and other stuff.

And it has rained. It began raining about 4 am and has been raining off and on since then. Big news since we’ve been mostly dry since early June.

Garden 2012: What A Difference A Week Makes

What a difference a week makes. The long vines to the right are yellowed and likely lost. I do not have the heart to photograph them. All for the lack or even delay in application of a little copper sulphate. Really? Apparently I also did not know the golden rule: do not water your winter squash from above but tickle only from below. Who knew? Lesson learned. Well, some are now saved but, as on the Day of Judgement that awaits us all, others may not be saved. In better news, the yellow pettypan summer squash are being eaten, the replacement zucchini are up, the cantaloupe show no sign of disease but no sign of fruit either, the green beans are heroic, the carrots are worth pulling from the ground and leaf lettuce continues to feed us. The grapes greens thrive. Leeks are holding their own. The raised bed built just last week shows good efforts from both the mixed greens and basil. I may mow but only to reshape the weeds. Still no rain.

“…107 Tons Of Beer And Six Tons Of Canary Wine…”

Later this summer, we are spending a few days in Baltimore. Looking forward to it in many ways including things beery… including brewing history. We know a bit about Baltimore and beer already. See, in the 1620s there was a brewery at the first Lord Baltimore’s colony at Ferryland, Newfoundland. And in their voyage of 1633-34, the Ark and Dove apparently carried 107 tons of beer and six tons of Canary wine to what would be the second Lord Baltimore’s colony at St. Mary’s City, Maryland. It would appear likely, then, that the pattern of settlement in the latter might include replication of provision seen in the former for that necessity for the community, brewing.

But can I find a list of the ships’ stores? Not a chance. There is a book The Flowering of the Maryland Palatinate from 1961 that appears to have a reference at page 15. There may even be a list of provisions in this article from the state’s historical society. But Lord Goog is either not so wicked or has not yet found a way to make a buck at displaying these full documents to me. Drag. You would think that lists of ship’s stores from early modern period trans-Atlantic sailing would be the hot item of the internets. The 1670s evidence is there for northern Canada. But Maryland? No. I blame Gen Y. I often do. I know it is easy but that’s why blaming them makes so much sense.

Book Review: Philadelphia Beer, Rich Wagner

3501As recently discussed, the past is a foreign land when it comes to US beer history. More like another planet it seems sometimes. I am not sure why this is but I suspect it has something to do with the drive to be authoritative rather than innovative when it comes to so many of the beer books being published. Sadly, there is more than enough problematic high level description of various qualities out there but far too little of the more interesting and accurate detail.

Then one comes across a book like Philadelphia Beer by Rich Wagner – or rather just pages 17 to 34 – and all my despair falls away. Why? Because Mr. Wagner admitted and actually investigated a portion of that seemingly secret or perhaps oddly discomforting tale of pre-lager moderate to large scale ale production that not only existed but thrived in America from somewhere around the 1630s into the late 1800s. In those few pages, he identifies brewers and breweries by name, location, production and beer brands that existed not only before lager in the 1840s or so but he does the same for pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia, the city that becomes the first US capital. And in doing so, he adds credence to all that follows. I trust his writing on what comes later in the first German lager breweries, the later industrial macro-lager breweries and the craft breweries because of it.

Why have we found ourselves here? There may be a reason for this lack of collective long term memory. The introduction of lager roughly coincides with the expansion of the US from a coastal eastern nation built on a colonial footprint to the nation we know today, care of the Erie Canal and resolution of First Nation, French, Spanish and Russian control of large tracts of what are now the central and western states… and Florida. In a way, American ale was an Atlantic focused thing while lager is mid-western to Pacific. The path of lager, as Maureen Ogle so well describes, defines America as much as the wild west and California surfers so. It is in itself exceptional in all the meanings of that word. This burden of national history bears upon the topic. And it is in addition to the simple fact that a deeper longer view takes the sort of hard work that Wagner takes on himself and builds upon from the few earlier studies. Too often we only see what happens when one confuses facts as they were and the evidence that is available today.

Get yourself a copy of this book. Then, start thinking about how the structure of this small book, applied large, might change the way we see the extraordinary phenomenon that is American brewing. And might create a new tie between craft movement of recent decades and that small scale craftmanship of hundreds of years ago. And then maybe we’ll start seeing not only the similarities but maybe even the links. I had a Yuengling yesterday as it turns out.

Garden 2012: A Raised Bed Is Born

On rolls the summer. The lawn has the texture of shredded wheat cereal. The squash display a range of coping that stretches from vitality to the grave. Next year more zucchini. Not the green hot dog shaped ones though I have rammed more of those seeds into the ground to compensate for the lack luster patch of blue hubbards. No, I want the yellow 1950s spaceship shaped ones, pattypens. Been watering like a mad man. Everything has made its case for increased acreage next year. I would not sow a second round of bok choi, however. Seems to be not liking the heat. Spring and fall for that one. Carrots have been eaten. Onions are robust. Made a box out front with cedar boards. The box itself cost maybe $35 bucks to build but the soil was more. Some handy, though. That’s what I said when I looked upon my work and saw that it was good. “You’re some jeesely handy” I said to myself. And so I was.