Down In the Holler

Sassafras Peppercorn by Kevin Griggs

Last Friday, the 29th, we picked up an adorable new addition to our pet family from some friends across town. May I introduce you to Sassafras Peppercorn?

This little bundle of trouble is already creating quite a stir. We’ve mostly been keeping her isolated in the bathroom until she’s weighty enough to get vaccinated, and she’s wasted no time finding cute little messes to make. The toilet tissue tower has become a climbing toy.

Our friend Kevin Griggs came over last night to take some glamour shots of the new baby. He posted a few choice samples to Flickr, and she even made the first picture in a “Kitten Tuesday” post on their blog! Clearly, with all this activity, we have a heart-breaker on our hands.

It will be exciting to see how she matures, and how Binky (our other cat) takes to her. After the untimely passing of our cat George (may he rest in peace), I was half-jokingly excited to get another pet named George II, but Kip managed to knock some sense into me, and Sassy here is the result!

Please enjoy responsibly.

For my birthday in 2007, a couple of my friends gave me four delightfully fresh rhizomes of two varieties of humulus lupulus: Cascade and Chinook. I quickly got to work researching planting and growing techniques for these vigorous vines. Based on this reading, I was prepared for (and got) a relatively meager yield from the first season. The second season, which is now in full swing, is another story entirely.

My trellis design takes advantage of a steep North-facing slope that forms the upper end of what we affectionately refer to as the Holler. Three vertical 2×6 planks act as the top end of the trellis’ wire, with the bottom end anchored about 18 feet down the hill in two large safety-orange stakes. The wire traverses the hillside between these structures in a large “W” shape, which provides one vertical length of wire for each of the four rhizomes.

Last year, even at the peak of the growing season, the vines only reached about three-quarters of the way up the wires, and I was able to harvest a total of about 16 grams of flowers. This year, the Cascade vines are already stretching beyond the top of the trellis and bursting with flowers.  I will probably harvest as much within the next month as I did for the entire season last year.

The Chinook vines are slightly less vigorous in my setting, and I think it is related to a nitrogen deficiency. A couple of weeks ago I gave them a decent dose of blood meal and they have since improved significantly.

I am extremely excited about harvesting these fragrant beauties and putting them to use in my first batch of home-brewed beer this Summer. Stay tuned for details on that process, as I am sure there will be many tales to tell.

So, we finally did it. After all this time, we jumped on the blogwagon. We have entered the blog-o-sphere. Though there’s a lot to live up to in this arena, we consider ourselves primed for the challenge.

In addition to a casual documentary of our lives, we hope this site can be a place to share exciting new ideas and experiences. Learning and growing together with our friends, old and new, is one of our favorite things to do!

You must forgive my lack of introductions. Allow me to start with my compatriot in this tiny kingdom: the love of my life, Ms. Kip Slaughter. She’s a saucy young woman with a head full of knowledge, and she’s not afraid to tell you all of it; you might not even have to ask! But seriously, as a trained Master of Science in Nutrition, she will have a lot to say about gardening, cooking, composting and living sustainably in the semi-suburban patch we call home.

And with that, I’ll leave my introduction to her.