Turkey Angst

I left a batch of morels to grow for another day and the goddamn turkeys got them. They scratched up the entire area. Evil creatures. Lovely, though, and I never tire of watching them, they're such eager feeders. I leave the radio on, sometimes, to remember to listen to a specific show, and I ended up tonight listening to an hour of music I didn't want to hear, so I could hear an interview with Carlos Santana later. It's difficult to remember something located in time when you don't pay much attention to time. I've always loved Santana's playing. Africa channeled through south America. It's raining hard again, so much rain, flood warnings. Heaven-filling thunder, thunder that shakes the earth, my first reflex was to crawl under a table, crawl under a table and cover my ears. Take a cup of tea to settle your nerves. Passed quickly. It rained hard for about seven minutes. The interview was great, and the music, seems Carlos got the old band together and did another album. Dappled light, but more rain in the forecast, decent batch of morels, then read Thoreau for six hours. There's a new hot-house tomato around here, the grape, and then the cherry tomatoes have gotten pretty good, and now this larger (two inch) variety. I buy them to slice with mozzarella, covered in balsamic vinegar, but I hollowed a couple out, and stuffed with the morel tapenade, cooked them in the toaster oven. Quite good. Better than that, but I don't want to extend my reputation as a morel nut case. Coming home yesterday I remembered where the last occupied log cabin had stood on the creek (the cabin has been moved and thereby saved) and remembered an apple tree in the old lady's yard. Sure enough, a nice clutch of mushrooms. I entertain the idea of buying an abandoned apple orchard, finding out what nutrients morels want, and farming them. The fact that they especially like burned over areas indicates a desire for potash. I wouldn't be raising them as much as encouraging them to grow. A little rust, a little bone dust, a dash of sulfur. The butterflies are on the blooming blackberry. The leaves uncoil, after a rain, when they're still young and flexible. There's a young red maple, maybe twenty years old, that I use as my forecast for weather, she's at least as good as the Weather Channel. Lately, she shimmies as she stands rooted, rolls her leaves over and doesn't say a word. I get the message, put out a bucket and collect some water. Voluntary simplicity. Twice a year I have to have saved $400 to cover land taxes, vehicle insurance and registration, another couple of hundred for the winter pantry, but it's not been a problem because I otherwise don't spend much money in the spring and summer. Lowest electric bill, the phone (my land line connection) is a fixed price, and I don't buy much food. Whiskey and tobacco, but since I inaugurated the multiple back-up system, I haven't once had to hike out, through snow, to satisfy a habit. For long periods of time, last winter, there were two paths, one to the outhouse, and one to the woodshed. Not going to town saves quite a bit of money. Enough that I can save, even on my meager income, adequate cash to pay the bills. Beyond that, it's morel gravy. Peanut oil has gotten quite expensive, even corn oil (fucking ethanol) is getting expensive. I've gone back to mostly using lard, and the other various forms of pork fat. Bacon, fried salt-pork, drippings from a pan. I make a gravy from drippings, with a little browned flour, then add chicken broth. Throw in a half-a-pound of morels, pan-fried in butter, call it the house sauce.