Harvest in high gear

The beginning of the semester has certainly cut back on my free time. Every minute I’m not at work, I am harvesting or putting up. An early rain shower this morning gave me an excuse to catch up my blog while the garden dries off, although I could be pickling jalapeno peppers right now. Sometimes it just feels good to sit down for a little while.

The late summer flowers are blooming all over. Here are some examples:

Boneset gets its name from the leaves that are fused at the base. In the Doctrine of Signatures, the similarity of the leaves to a mended bone led people to believe that the plant was beneficial for setting broken bones. This turned out not to be true.

Joe Pye Weed. I bet there's a story behind that name, too.

The white stripes on the underside of the flower are a characteristic trait for Great Lobelia.

Tall sunflower is one of only two sunflowers with alternate leaves. It has a red stem while the stem of sawtooth sunflower is whitish.

The red raspberry harvest is gearing up. So far, Terry has done all the harvesting. I think it’s good that he gets in the habit of harvesting what he’s grown since Hilda and I have all we can manage with our garden. I have probably mentioned that Terry tends to act like fruits and vegetables magically jump from the plant to the freezer.

Red raspberries

Here is a photo of what I picked and processed one day last week. From left to right, you can see tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers (under the potatoes and carrots), cherry tomatoes, cabbage, fennel, cantaloupe, zucchini, pattypans, and more tomatoes.

One day's harvest

The last variety of corn to mature was Silver Queen. It was supposed to be all white. Some ears (probably most) had some yellow kernels. I had to explain the miracle of double fertilization to Terry. It’s been a long time since he was in college. I can’t imagine that a horticulture major never learned it. When flowering plants are pollinated, two sperm nuclei travel to the ovary. One sperm nucleus fertilizes the egg to form the embryo. The other fuses with two female nuclei to make the endosperm, which, in one form or another, nourishes the embryo when it sprouts. In a corn kernel, the embryo is down near the cob. Everything that you see from the outside is endosperm, which is only 2/3 maternal. Thus, if a kernel gets pollinated from a yellow corn, it will be yellow. Terry was confusing a fruit with a seed. The seed is a product of fertilization. The fruit is entirely maternal. A fruit will always be true to the mother plant. A seed will have traits from both parents. End of botany lesson.

Silver Queen

We had some wicked hot and humid days last week. I changed T-shirts three times on Friday before the day was over. Kate came up for supper on Saturday. As we were having red raspberries and scones for dessert, a fog came over the hay field as the sun went down. It was beautiful.

Evening fog at sunset

One of my three T-shirt changes happened after the chicken round-up. When Hilda scheduled the butchering for August 22, she had no idea it was going to be one of the hottest days of the summer. I ordered a poultry hook online Monday, and it arrived on Thursday, much to my relief. It helped, but there was a learning curve. Mom and Dad had gone to visit my brother for the weekend. That was too bad because Hilda was the only one among us who knew how to use a poultry hook. I didn’t think to ask if there was a trick to it. The trick, I discovered far too long into the process, is to hook them above the ankle. Time out for chicken anatomy: the thigh of the chicken is truly a thigh. The joint between the thigh and the drumstick is the knee. The ankle is below the drumstick. The “foot” of the chicken is really just toes. When I hooked the chicken above the toes, it just walked out of the hook. If I hooked above the ankle, it held, and I could pull the chicken to me. In any case, Terry and I had all twelve in the cage in about 20 minutes. Then I had to change my shirt again.

In conclusion of the dual-purpose experiment, we are going back to broilers next year. Yes, they are messy, but the inconvenience is a good deal shorter, and they are much, much cheaper to raise. We fed the broilers for 8 weeks and got 5.5- to 7-pound chickens. We fed the dual purpose chickens for 15 weeks and the biggest ones were 2 lbs 15 ounces. They came back from the butcher looking like undernourished Cornish game hens. I expect we would have had to keep them several more months to get to their full size, which I assume would be close to the Light Brahma hens we had that had a dressed weight of 5 pounds. Living and learning.

Left to right: 5.5-lb broiler, 2 lb 15 oz dual purpose, 5-lb laying hen (probably one of the two fat ladies)

The cucumbers are dying back. The zucchini and pattypans have largely succumbed to powdery mildew with the resumption of regular rain fall. We need to dig potatoes when we get a dry day. The first batch of onions is hanging in the basement with much gratitude to Dad for putting them in the nylons.

Onions in nylons, which is the best way to store them for a long time

The current push is to get the tomatoes canned. Hilda is doing most of that. I have to work. I’m the only person in my house who isn’t retired. But I’m not bitter, that’s the important thing.

Biggest plum tomato so far!

End of summer break

Back to work tomorrow. Bah. I know why summer can’t last forever, but I don’t have to like it. When I got up this morning, I planned to have a leisurely last day of vacation. I did the chicken chores and had my tea. About 9:30 I went out to the garden for oh, maybe 10 minutes or so to check how things were growing.

Isn’t it always the way? No sooner do you heave a sigh of relief that the green beans are about done than you realize the sweet corn is getting away from you. We’ve been picking a few ears here and there to have for supper for a couple of weeks. Suddenly, it seemed like it was almost all ready today. Terry planted 5 varieties of corn. Two of the varieties were supposed to ripen in 60 days. They had very short stalks, and the ears developed less than a foot off the ground. Both varieties suffered considerable damage from raccoons before we moved the electric net from around the meat chickens. We left the chick fence up to keep the chickens contained. Last year, we moved the netting after the broilers went to freezer heaven. We didn’t realize how long we would have to keep the dual purpose chickens.

I hesitate to open the ears to check the progress of the corn. When the husk is compromised, the beetles move in rapidly. My tried and true method in the past was to circle the ear with my thumb and forefinger. If I can touch my finger to my thumb, the ear is not ready. If there’s a half inch to an inch gap, the ear is ready. My method failed with the two early varieties. I discovered today when I opened an ear that it was far past optimal eating even though I could still get my fingers all around it. I tried an ear of Early Sunglow for lunch. After two bites, I gave it to the chickens. Very tough. Native Gem was still tender and edible even when the kernels were quite large. If we grow these early corns next year, I’ll know. The ears are small.

So I picked all of the corn varieties except for Silver Queen, a late variety, and some of the Peaches and Cream that wasn’t ready yet. I set the corn in the shade and went back to the garden. While I was inspecting the fennel seeds (only one head was ready for harvest), I noticed that the onions tops were bending over. I know from experience that the onions need to come in when the tops bend over or they start to rot. They don’t rot from the outside in or the inside out. No, that would be relatively easy to deal with. A single leaf in the middle of the onion rots, making in necessary to cut the onion in half, lift the middle off the bad layer and then remove the slimy rotten leaf from the concave side of the outer layers. Nasty business.

It was a perfect day for harvesting onions. The soil was moist from a little rain two days ago. The onions pulled easily and came up without too much soil on them. Once out of the ground, they need to be put on a rack with the leaves over the bulbs to keep them from sunburn. The onions are big this year. The shallots are perhaps the largest known to man.



Onions on the drying rack. Nearly the entire bottom shelf is shallots

I took a break for a quick lunch and then started shucking corn. I left the Early Sunglow for Hilda and did the rest myself. After blanching and cutting the kernels from the cob, I ended up with 18 bags of corn for the freezer.

Peaches and cream sweet corn, before

And after

 

And then it was time to make supper. So much for my relaxing day.

In other news, the chickens are getting bigger. The roosters and unlucky hens have their appointment with destiny next Friday.

Buff Orpington rooster

Welsummer rooster and hen. The rooster has iridescent feathers.

 

The lucky hens are settling into their run. No eggs yet.



Left to right: Kirsty, Fiona, and Lidia eat overly mature sweet corn



Left to right: Nadia and Cleopatra

The cardinal flower is blooming back by the creek. I was excited to see that while last year I had one flower, this year I had two!

Cardinal flower

My swamp milkweed survived and is blooming. We have no shortage of honeybees.

Swamp milkweed with two bees

Finally, here’s a picture of my restoration project. Nothing exciting so far.



Prairie restoration that looks pretty much like a lawn. Boring.

 

 

An unfortunate accident

I told him to move it.

The picture below is a drum aerator. To give you an idea of scale, the spikes are two inches long. One fills the drum with water (for weight) and drags it over grass to punch holes in the sod. The holes not only provide air to the roots of the grass (hence the name “aerator”) but also facilitate the movement of water into the soil when it rains.

Drum aerator

Terry bought this drum aerator last spring and put it on the lawn next to the tractor shed. His idea was that he could use it to take out the ridges left behind when we cancelled our contract with the rental farmer at the end of a corn year. I was not opposed to paying the farmer to disc the soil. Terry was. Before we could fully discuss it, the moment had passed, and we were stuck with 18 acres of ridges.

I may have mentioned that I took over the lawn mowing this summer. And every week I had to mow around that drum aerator. “Can’t you put that somewhere else?” I asked.

I don’t remember exactly what he said, but the answer was, in essence, no. And there it sat.

Last Saturday, we got home very late from a wedding. Somehow, as if by magic, I have passed from “friend of the bride” to “friend of the bride’s mother.” It was a lovely wedding. We had good food, good wine, and good conversations. It was way past bedtime when we pulled into the driveway. Terry got out of the car to close up the polyhouse. I put the car in the garage and went downstairs through the house, intent upon a much needed trip to the bathroom (it was a long drive home) and getting out of my dress and into to bed as soon as possible.

I had just gotten a light on when I heard Terry say, “I’m in trouble.” In the darkness, he had gone tail over teacup on the drum aerator. He noticed that his pants were wet below the knee when he got up. At first he thought it was dew. As the pants got wetter and wetter, it dawned on him that it was blood. By the time I saw him, his pants had streaks of red from knee to ankle on both sides. He dropped trou, and I said, “That’s gonna need stitches.”

He had a triangular gash on the outside of his right knee and a long straight cut on his left calf. I quickly ransacked the bathroom for a roll of gauze. No such luck. At Terry’s suggestion (and not having the stereotypic petticoat), I cut a flour sack towel into strips, bound up the wounds and secured the cloth with duct tape.

I took time to go to the bathroom but not to change into something more comfortable. And off we went to the emergency room in Harvard. I dropped Terry at the door and drove around to park the car. By the time I got back to the front desk, a nurse was waiting to take Terry back to a room. “You do the paperwork,” Terry said, and he followed the nurse back.

“I told him to move it,” I said to the receptionist and the security guard.

“That was the first thing he said,” the receptionist replied. “’My wife told me to move it.’ Now, what did he trip over?”

“A soil aerator,” I answered.

The receptionist eyed me suspiciously, hands poised over the keyboard.

“A-E-R-A-T….” Hmmm. O or E? It’s midnight. It doesn’t matter. Just pick one. “E-R.”

I gave her my insurance card and the rest of the information. She directed me back to the emergency department where Terry was on a gurney with his bare legs sticking out from underneath a sheet. A nurse was at a computer typing in his vitals and chatting with Terry about the accident.

I said, “I just had to spell ‘aerator’ to the receptionist.”

“I just put down ‘farm equipment,’” the nurse replied. That seemed like a good idea.

“I told him to move it,” I added.

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

We waited. Terry’s legs had stopped bleeding. Another nurse, Bruce, came in with bottles of sterile water, which he put on the counter by the sink. A 12-year-old doctor came in next to examine the wounds. I could see from his security badge that his first name was Benjamin and his last name started with S. Dr. Ben asked, “What did you trip over?”

“A drum aerator.” Terry said. He started to explain and then said, “I can draw it for you if you get me a piece of paper.”

Dr. Ben got a paper towel from the dispenser and handed it to Terry with the pen from his pocket. Terry produced a remarkably accurate rendition along with an explanation of how and why it was used.

“And now you probably want one,” I said to the doctor.

“In Chicago? I don’t think so.”

I expressed my surprise and sympathy for his commute.

Dr. Ben continued his information gathering. “And was this aerator dirty?”

“Well,” Terry said, “it had never been used.”

“But we hadn’t sterilized it lately,” I added with a giggle.

Dr. Ben instructed Bruce to clean the wound and went out to check on a man who had just been admitted. Bruce began by taking off Terry’s blood-stained socks which, after a brief discussion, we elected to just throw away. Bruce filled a squirt bottle with the sterile water from one of the bottles and put a collection pan under Terry’s leg. The nozzle had a cup on it to catch the spray as Bruce squirted the injury. So clever. To my immense relief, Bruce cleaned up Terry’s legs also. I totally did not want to have to do that when we got home.

It had apparently been quite the night for leg lacerations. Dr. Ben hadn’t done much but stitch people up. There was a bit of a scramble to find enough lidocaine to anesthetize both cuts. The doctor gave Terry several injections on both legs and left us to wait while the lidocaine worked its magic. After 20 minutes or so, he came back and started sewing. I was positioned on Terry’s right side, which was the more complicated cut. Dr. Ben started by securing the apex of the triangle, then one stitch in the middle of each side, and finally filling in the gaps for 16 stitches in all. He moved around to the other side and put 15 stitches in the straight cut.

“That’s 60 stitches I’ve done tonight,” he said, adding it up. And over half of those were in Terry, I thought. He gets the prize.

Dr. Ben and Bruce wrapped and wrapped. The right knee got burn dressing, its thick padding helping to immobilize the knee. Both wounds got a final wrap of Ace bandages held in place with Velcro strips on both ends. The original dressing was to stay on for three days. Dr. Ben said the stitches could come out in 7 to 10 days. He gave Terry one dose of antibiotic and a prescription for another 5 days. When he was out of the room, Bruce (who seemed much the wiser and more experienced of the two) said that it wouldn’t hurt to leave the stitches in for 14 days, give the location on the knee. Bruce suggested eating more protein to help with the healing.

“I’ll make you a roast on Monday,” I said to Terry. I had been planning that anyway.

“I wish my wife would make me a roast,” Bruce said wistfully. “She doesn’t eat meat.”

And we were home by 2:00 a.m. A very late night indeed.

The next day, we discovered that Terry’s pants had only a tiny hole in the left leg. That was some pretty robust fabric! I put his pants to soak in OxyClean. I don’t suppose there’s a woman in the world who hasn’t figured out how to get blood stains out of fabric. It is interesting to note that when I say that to a woman, she gets it immediately. I had to explain it to Terry. Anyway, the pants came clean. Terry has worn them three times since.

As the days passed, I became completely convinced that Terry has no nerve endings in his legs. He never had any pain. It was, as I expected, rather a struggle to keep him from charging right back into work. He didn’t even keep bandaging on after 5 days. Most of the rolls of gauze and pads that I bought when I got his prescription filled the next day are still sitting on a table. At least we’ll have them for next time we have a first aid emergency. I fully expected him to want the stitches out in a week, but he has decided to go in Tuesday. If it isn’t time, I’m sure they will tell him so.

And as soon as he’s all better, he’s going to move the drum aerator.

Vacation, Day 8. The end.

Friday, July 25, 2014

I baked the last four scones for breakfast. We ate them with the wild blueberries I picked the day before. We had about a tablespoon of blueberries each. Despite the small serving, the flavor was sweet and intensely blueberry-y. By 8:00 the sky had clouded over, and there was still not a breath of wind.

After the breakfast dishes were done, we went down to the dock to fish off the rest of our leeches. It turned out there were only 5, and they were quickly gone. We tried twister tails for a little while. It seemed that the fish would bite at the tails at first, learn that they were not good to eat, and leave them alone. I went back to the office for one more dozen.

Nancy was generous with the count, which she tends to be when the leeches are as small as these were. Still, it was a commitment to get through them. I kept putting them on the hooks, and the fish kept taking them off. I only landed one more bluegill after that. The biggest bluegill of the morning stayed hooked just long enough for us to get a good look at it, and then unhooked itself right by the dock. Frankly, I consider this a bonus. We had used up all our leeches by 11:00.

We continued cleaning out the refrigerator for lunch. We had the last two brats on the last two buns, the remainder of the carrots and the last cucumber. We finished the yogurt.

Jane sat on the deck while I took a shower. I was just combing my hair when I heard the rain. I rushed to the door to help Jane get the chairs in. She had seen the rain on the lake and thought it was funny that she couldn’t feel it. Suddenly, it was raining on her, and not just the drop here and there. It was coming down! We were able to leave the windows open because there was still no wind. It looked like it was settling in for a rainy afternoon. No matter. We had planned to go back to town anyway.

We couldn't leave for town too soon because we did not want to get to Betsy Bowin's before 3:00, and we didn't want to come back before we went out for supper. We hung around the cabin. Jane said, "Did you ever notice that that chair is smiling?"

She was right. One chair had a definite smile right across the board beneath the seat cushion, which reminded us both of Chairy from PeeWee's Playhouse so very long ago.

Smiling Chairy

 

We started off for town a little after 2:00. The weather got better. We made our first visit to the Pincushion Mountain overlook.

Pincushion Mountain overlook of Grand Marais and Lake Superior

 

We got calendars and notecards at Betsy Bowen’s studio. And we went to Sydney’s to get custard. The girl at the window apologized that they had to mix up a new batch of chocolate, and we would have to wait a few minutes. I was fine with that. At least we could get it. I watched the process with interest. When we had been denied chocolate earlier in the week because it was too hot in the kitchen, I couldn’t figure out why they would be able to freeze vanilla custard and not chocolate. Well. They only use the ice cream freezer for vanilla. To make the chocolate, they put a bunch of vanilla custard into the freezer box that they scoop from and mix it with a very dark chocolate custard base using a mixer paddle attached to a heavy-duty power drill. If it’s too warm in the kitchen, the vanilla would thaw before the chocolate would get mixed in, and refreezing at that point would cause large ice crystals to form. Mystery solved.

We watched dragon boat practice while we ate our ice cream. The dragon boat races are the last weekend of July. We are often on vacation at that time, and up to now, we have avoided being anywhere near Grand Marais during the commotion. Since we were forced to come to town for the calendars, we were able to see how it worked. I had learned from our outfitter, Dave that the boats were big, expensive, and held 22 people. There were only three boats, and the race ran in several heats leading to the finals. Jane hypothesized that the boats were rented by various communities for these events. It looked like a lot of fun, although concentration would be required to keep the rhythm and not whack oars with a neighbor.

We got to the Red Paddle Bistro for supper at 4:45. We sat ourselves at the hostess’s suggestion and were ignored for a while. Once we were discovered, our waitress was attentive. I had a beer. Jane ordered a brandy Manhattan. We both had the burgers, ½ pound of beef with sautéed mushrooms, lettuce, red onion, tomato, choice of cheese (I had cheddar, Jane had provolone), and red pepper aioli. Jane was right—the aioli is what made the burger. I’d always had black and blue burgers in the past because I adore bleu cheese, but that burger was just okay. The red pepper aioli gave the burger a hit of garlic that made it truly outstanding. The burger was served with a huge pile of curly seasoned fries and a pickle. Too much food.  What’s new?

Back at the cabin, we packed as much as we could in the car. We played farkel while watching for loons and otters. We saw one loon and no otters. The last night of vacation is always a little sad.

Last loon

And on Saturday, we packed up everything else and drove home.

Vacation, Day 7

Thursday, July 24, 2014

We had blueberry pancakes with peaches and bacon on the side for breakfast. We relaxed on the deck until 10:00, when we set out to drive the Shoe Lake Road/Arrowhead Trail loop. We packed lunch of for a picnic at McFarland Lake. Our only wildlife siting was a ruffed grouse by the road. There were two ruffed grouse initially, but only one stayed around for pictures.

Ruffed grouse

 

It was a perfect day—upper 60’s, under mostly clear sky with a few wispy mare’s tail clouds. We got to the little park at McFarland Lake just at lunch time. I had a summer sausage sandwich. Jane had sliced summer sausage and cheese curds with crackers. We had carrot and cucumber sticks as well as yogurt with the last of the blueberries we brought from home. Our dessert was Lorna Doones (official cookie of Bev and Jane vacations) and chocolate covered almonds.



Our favorite picnic table at McFarland Lake

After lunch, I picked some wild blueberries at the Otter Lake portage. They weren’t at peak ripeness yet, but the ones that were ripe were a good size, as wild blueberries go. Jane was too sore and stiff from fishing on Wednesday to help with the picking.

My wild blueberry harvest, which I washed in a custard ramekin and drained in my tea strainer

We continued to Grand Marais where we got custard at Sydney’s (of course). We ate on our bench overlooking a very calm Lake Superior. Betsy Bowin’s studio had no calendars, but they were arriving tomorrow and there was a high probability that they would be there if we came back after 3:00 the next day.

Supper was a repeat of the WondeRoast chicken marinara. I stretched the sauce with a small can of garlic, basil, and oregano tomato sauce. I used the rest of the garlic for garlic bread and the pasta sauce, sautéing thickly sliced cloves in butter before adding the tomato and chicken. Two salads finished off the lettuce. I felt a great deal of pleasure in seeing the refrigerator getting empty.

WondeRoast Chicken Marinara with garlic toast and salad

Jane was ready for bed at 6:00, but we held out until 8:30, passing the time by playing Yahtzee. Two loons cruised around the lake. I went down with my telephoto lens to try to get pictures. I’d get the camera ready for the shot just as the loon went under. I waited, and it would pop up half way across the lake, out of range. It was rather frustrating.

It  was such a beautiful calm evening that I went back down with the regular lens to get some pictures of the sunset with the cirrus clouds reflected in the surface of the water.



Sunset

 

Vacation, Day 6

Wednesday, July 23

I slept until 6:30, waking to a calm and blissfully cool morning. I made eggs and stuff for breakfast again, using up the rest of the foil pack potatoes.

We went fishing soon after Jane finished the washing up. There wasn’t much action, fish-wise. I caught one little bass at the point and had some nibbles. Jane wasn’t getting anything on a twister tail and switched to a leech. Soon neither of us were getting any nibbles.  Jane’s analysis was, “The trouble is that we don’t go fishing when the fish are biting. We would need to get up early in the morning or go out after dinner.”

That seemed contrary to our goal for vacation, which in general is to relax and do things whenever we feel like it. Still, it was a lovely morning to be on the water. We rowed around the point where we’d seen the big fish on Monday. No bites. We continued up the shore, Jane rowing, me fishing.  I set my bobber so the hook would be deeper in the water and cast away from the shore. “The fish are out here,” I said.

Nothing happened. “Or maybe they aren’t,” I said.

Suddenly the hook went down in a quite definitive way. “Or maybe they are.”

The fish on my line acted like a bass, which is to say, the same as having the hook caught on a log. As I got it toward the surface, though, it started to fight for real. It was huge. Perhaps the biggest fish I have ever caught. Jane got the net ready. Unlike previous years, where I got a glimpse of the big fish just before it broke the line of my weenie pole, I landed this one. We photo-documented, and let it go. From the photo, we later estimated its length to be 19”.

My big fish. Note look of astonishment on my face. (Don't just pack it; wear your jacket!)

For lunch, I made cheese steaks with onions and peppers, leftover steak, grilled buns, and cheese curds melted on top in the oven because the sandwiches were too thick to fit in the broiler. If we continued to overeat consistently for the rest of vacation, we would come out about right with the food we brought along.

Cheese steaks

Jane and I packed up our chairs, fishing poles, and leeches and headed up to Loon Lake’s boat landing. The fishing was slow, but not too bad. We were there for about an hour and a half. There were periods of apparent feeding frenzies when the surface of the water roiled with fish activity, their backs just breeching the surface. I found if I could drop my leech in the middle of the activity, I was guaranteed a strike. I caught four bass; Jane caught two pretty nice bluegill. The first three bass were small. At 4:00, Jane had and empty hook and started putting our things in the car.  I cast one last time, just to get rid of the leech, and caught the best bass of the afternoon, although not as big as the one I caught in the morning. I landed it without the net. Jane had to get my fish glove and the camera out of the car for me.

A beautiful day at Loon Lake

My second best bass of the day

For supper, we fired up the grill again and cooked the brats from Zup’s in Ely, which I served with potato salad that I’d made that morning and a green salad. The brats were very good.

The package of Zup's Homestyle Bratwurst

 

Vacation, Day 5

Tuesday, July 22

We had a bad storm with a big wind during the night. By the time we left the cabin at 8:00 to go on our big adventure to Ely, someone had already driven Hungry Jack Road and cleared all the downed trees with a chain saw. I was impressed.

We took Highway 6 from where it left the main road along Lake Superior to where it joined Highway 1 in Finland. Not much going on in Finland. I noticed that there was a Lutheran Church in a double-wide trailer.

We got to Ely just before noon. My friend Pat had recommended the Chocolate Moose for lunch. Alas, there was a 30 minute wait, but if I gave them my cell phone number, they would text me when a table was ready for us. We went next door to Piragis next door (also on Pat’s recommendation) to look at sports equipment. I will need some water shoes for my next trip to Belize. The water shoes at Piragis were $110. Jane promised that she would look for a sale at L. L.  Bean.

The sign for the Chocolate Moose

Jane went back outside to sit down while I looked around in the camping gear and went upstairs to a very interesting book store. When I came back down, our table was ready. I had half of a ham sandwich and a cup of tomato basil soup. The food was very good. The soup had a lot of small bits that looked like celery in it which, in combination with the basil, gave it a fennel-like flavor. The bits might have been fennel, I suppose, but I didn't want to get out my hand lens at the table. The sandwich came with a big pile of potato chips and a pickle spear. We also had Dorothy Molter root beer.

 

Tomato basil soup, half a ham sandwich, Dorothy Molter Root Beer

After lunch we went to the International Wolf Center and paid $9.50 adult for me and $8.50 for Jane, because she is over 60 (how did that happen??). There was a special photography exhibit on the Aurora Borealis, although the connection with wolves was not clear. There was an extensive display on the role of wolves in mythology, history, and literature, and somewhat less information on evolutionary relationship with other canines. At the viewing area one wolf wandered by looking kind of bored.



Entrance to the International Wolf Center

A wolf with not much to do

 

We went to the Dorothy Molter Museum next. Jane thought it looked like too much standing for her. She waited in the car while I rushed to join a tour given by Bob. Bob gave us Dorothy’s life story from her birth in 1907 to her first trip to the Ely area in 1930 to her permanent relocation in 1934, when she came to help out at the Isle of Pines fish camp. She eventually inherited the camp from the owner in 1948.

Dorothy Molter's cabin

A ban on sea plane delivery in 1949 was the end of pop in the fish camp. A few years later, Dorothy came across a bunch of empty pop bottles and got the idea of making root beer. She used yeast for carbonation. Every summer she made 12000 bottles of pop which she sold to 6000 visitors.

The cabin was in three sections, a glassed-in porch, a kitching/living area, and two bedrooms made by bisecting the back section with a  wall parallel to the long side of the building. Bob didn’t say anything about the construction. I wondered if it had been built in three phases. This cabin had been Dorothy’s winter quarters. In the summer, it was rented to guests and Dorothy stayed in a tent.

The Forest Service bought land in 1973 and allowed Dorothy to stay on until her death from heart failure while hauling wood in 1986, at the age of 79. A group of people got together to move Dorothy’s cabin and a couple of other cabins from the fish camp to their present location outside of Ely when the Forest Service planned to raze them.

Our last stop on Pat’s suggested tour was Zup’s Grocery for their house made bratwurst. Near the check out, I saw a tree of water shoes. At the top it said “Regularly $6 now $3. I was naturally drawn to a red pair. When I found they were my size, it seemed like fate. Jane promptly dubbed them my ruby slippers.

My new ruby slippers

We headed back to Grand Marais. We went to Sydney’s for Margherita pizza and turtle sundaes because it was too hot to make the Dutch chocolate custard. We ate at a table on the street side. It was a very pleasant evening and a nice way to end our day trip.