Past precipitate

It’s been a week since my last post and I’m still thinking about salt.  Salt mines. Road salt. Sea salt. Waking up in the middle of night and drinking several glasses of water because dinner was too salty.   (You also can’t make a batch of lactofermented pickles without some salt.)

All aboard the salt train! Salt in cars on train tracks underground in a Carey Lyons salt mine, By undergrounddarkride CC BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASalt_Cars.jpg

I was disappointed to find out that the salt mines under Detroit are not open to the public for tours.  However,  if you head to Hutchinson, KS (also home to the Kansas
Cosmophere), you can check out the tours at Strataca: The Kansas Underground Salt Museum. These Wellington formation salt deposits are the remnants of another inland sea that once covered part of Kansas 275 million year ago during the Permian Era.

I remember learning in 6th grade social studies that salt was a major trade item in the kingdoms of ancient Africa. Check out this National Geographic video from Taoudenni, Mali of salt mining and transportation, similar to the process that took place hundreds of years ago. The workers cut slabs of salt from the beds, which traders load onto camel caravans to transport across the desert to Timbuktu.

Salt Selling at Mopti Mali by Robin Young (2003) CC By 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salt_selling_Mopti_Mali.jpg

The Taoudenni salt deposits are relatively recent Holocene (geologically speaking). Lakes covered this area about 9000-4000 years ago. As the climate changed, the lakes eventually evaporated, leaving salt deposits behind.

To produce sea salt, harvestersevaporate seawater in shallow ponds. (Technically, mined salt is also sea salt, from sea water that evaporated a really long time ago.) Various dissolved salts precipitate (crystallize) out of seawater at different rates.

Satellite photo of San Francisco Bay salt ponds, taken in 2002 {{PD-USGov-NASA}} via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_Francisco_Bay_Salt_ponds_2002.jpg

One of the challenges of producing modern sea salt is the presence of microplastics left behind by evaporating seawater. Karami et al (2017) tested 17 commercially produced sea salts from 8 countries for microplastic particles. These tiny bits of plastic wash out in our laundry wastewater, or photodegrade from larger pieces of plastic floating around in the ocean. Eventually, ocean circulation brings those tiny plastic bits to even remote locations (like the very bottom of the ocean). From the report, “Due to their low density and slow degradation, plastics are becoming the chief cross-border contaminant that often travels far from their original source. Hence, [microplastics] found in the salt samples of one country could have been produced by another country thousands of miles away. ”

For more about microplastics pollution, check out my posts here and here.

Memories of an Ancient Shallow Sea

Running low on salt, by A. Drauglis, (2010) CC BY-SA 2.0 on Flickr.
https://flic.kr/p/7CazLC

This morning, I woke up to the rumble of salt trucks and snow plows. Southeast Michigan is experiencing the first significant snowfall of the season this week. The mood is varied (depending on who you ask) with emotions of delight, annoyance and resigned acceptance (sometimes all mixed together).

While the kid part of my personality checks the school closings for a snow day first thing (810 today in Metro Detroit!), the grownup part (with the driver’s license) is very grateful for my car’s snow tires, the snow removal crews and copious amounts of rock salt sprinkled on the roads. Salt, when added to the wintry roads, keeps the slush and melted snow from re-freezing by depressing the freezing point of water. When salt molecules dissolve in a film of liquid water on top of ice, these dissolved substances alter the way that water molecules can line up to freeze. It takes a lower temperature to freeze water with stuff dissolved in it.

Much of the rock salt used this area is actually mined from salt deposits 1100 feet beneath Metro Detroit. (For more about the history and mining process of the Detroit Salt mines check out The Detroit Salt Co. page.)

These salt layers are what remains of a shallow saltwater sea that once covered this area around 410 million years ago. This ancient “Great Lakes region” (which is a little confusing, because the Great Lakes wouldn’t form for another 400 million plus years), was located near the equator. Coral reefs allowed some water in, but limited exchange with the larger ocean. The seawater got saltier and saltier as the water evaporated in this hot climate.

Maybe the salty sea looked something like this. Halite deposits on the western Dead Sea coast, Israel. by Mark A. Wilson (2012) CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADead_Sea_Halite_View_031712.jpg

Eventually, the salt (and other minerals) would precipitate in layers from the super salty water that sank to the sea bottom. By the end of the Silurian period (390 mya), this inland sea completely dried up, leaving only the salt deposits behind. (I highly recommend checking out MSU Prof. Randall J. Schaetzl’s online resources about Great Lakes geology.)

I like to think about how the salt spread on the local roads (even though it contributes to potholes, cars rusting and water pollution) is a connection in deep time to sunny days on an ancient sea. Right here, in this place (but not this latitude), now and 400 million years ago.

Soil Carbon Stash and other stories

From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, via http://www.fao.org/world-soil-day/en/

In case you missed it, this past Tuesday, December 5th, was World Soil Day! (I realize I  commemorated it belatedly last year, too.) Maybe soil is a little like the heroine of “Sixteen Candles,” ignored on her birthday while chaos rages all around her. It’s easy to take soil for granted, even as it stands as this firmament beneath our feet. But don’t worry, soil, whether you’re caught in our fingernails or nitrogenating below a blanket of snow, plenty of folks are thinking about how awesome you are.

In the New York Times, Jacque Leslie wrote a cheerful editorial on the potential of managing agricultural soils for carbon storage. The Twitterverse brought it to my attention as one of my colleagues declared a resolution to begin worm composting in the New Year. (Does adding worms or worm castings to soil increase net soil carbon storage? Possibly.)

Earthworms make terrific pets! Red wigglers! by Protopian Pickle Jar (2017), CC-BY-SA 2.0, on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/V9yEc8

Marcia DeLonge at the Union of Concerned Scientists has a great blog post up with links to interesting soil news around the Web.

Sarah Laskow at Atlas Obscura describes how windborne dust contibutes nutrients to plants in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

At Forbes, Jeff McMahon explores the incentives Texas farmers could use to manage their property for carbon sequestration.

The amazing folks at the Land Institute in Salina, KS are doing some pretty nifty research on creating prairie agricultural ecosystems, including the development of perennial crops. These perennials plants help stash more soil organic matter conventional agriculture with annual plants. One of these perennial grains they’ve developed, Kernza, is now available fermented into beer!

Comparison of wheat roots to those of Thinopyrum intermedium in four seasons
By Dehaan (Jerry Glover) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

We love you, soil. We might call you “dirt” sometimes, but we mean it fondly.

New England Utopian Gothic

Winter tree on Johnson Road, Falls Village, CT by Protopian Pickle Jar (2013) CC By-SA 2.0 on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/xwmNSL

This weekend, I am returning to Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT for the ADVA (ADamah-TEva) Reunion. I am excited to reconnect with fellow alumni of these farming and environmental education programs.  I fully expect to use the phrases “transformative,” “sitting with it,” and “liminal space” unironically.  I hope to eat copious amounts of delicious fermented vegetables, hug the goats and tactfully admire the chickens (because chickens don’t really enjoy being hugged all that much.) I want to go for a walk in the woods,tell jokes about lichen, give nitrogen to a tree and pet the moss on the rocks.

And I’m bracing myself for the inevitable (but brief) sense of displacement and disappointment, because the Isabella Freedman to which I expect to return doesn’t really exist outside my imagination. The real Isabella Freedman is pretty great (and I’ll be able to immerse myself in all of the above activities in beloved holy community.) However, Nostalgic Isabella Freedman exists somewhere shared between my mind and the collective memory of fragile New England Utopias.

Colorful compost bucket by Protopian Pickle Jar (2013) CC BY-SA 2.0, on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/xzhiYD

While Isabella Freedman is at its heart a Retreat Center for people from the city to come hang out in nature, the life of its farming participants and on-site staff evokes shades of the idealistic communes dotting the landscape of 19th century New England. There’s the Oneida Community (1848-1881), famous for complex marriage and their successful flatware business. Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women)’s father founded the short-lived Fruitlands in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of The Scarlet Letter), was a founding member of Brook Farm.  Hawthorne based his novel, The Blithedale Romance, on his experiences at Brook Farm.

I first read The Blithedale Romance shortly after my experiences as a ADVAnik at Isabella Freedman. At that point, I missed the place so much I was toying with the idea of writing a series of fan fiction stories about a retreat center called “Isadora Feldman” where crunchy, privileged idealists pet goats, sustain unrequited romantic crushes and eat buckets of fermented vegetables. And maybe encounter supernatural and creepy folkloric circumstances while immersed in a cheerfully gothic New England community.

Anyway, reading the Blithedale Romance made me realize that Nathaniel Hawthorne had beaten me to the punch by about 160 years. I was astonished by Hawthorne’s eerily accurate description of the residents’ sartorial choices:

[W]e all of us seemed to have come to Blithedale with the one thrifty and laudable idea of wearing out our old clothes… in short, we were a living epitome of defunct fashions, and the very raggedest presentment of men who had seen better days. It was gentility in tatters… Little skill as we boasted in other points of husbandry, every mother’s son of us would have served admirably to stick up for a scarecrow.

How did he know that we dressed in a combination of thrift store finds, remnants from the retreat center lost-and-found bin, and communal garments bequeathed from cohort to cohort in the Beit Adamah coat closet? In the words of Kohelet, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Clothesline by Protopian Pickle Jar, (2013) CC by SA 2.0, on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/xh4Qz3

Anyway, so I’m packing my wool socks and long underwear for my trip. My nostalgia is coming along too, with its layer of cracking yellowed varnish. Maybe something new and wonderful is waiting in those woods and fields. I’d also take old and comfortable, like well broken-in pair of boots. And occasionally fizzy, like a jar of lacto-fermented pickles. Because you can never have too many pickles.

Fall Migration

Morning at Mariner Park 1 by Protopian Pickle Jar, (2015) CC BY-SA 2.0, on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/ykM8Cj

Last night around sunset, we noticed a steady stream of gulls flying south against the pinkish-purple sky. Every time we thought the flock was done, for a few heartbeats of open sky, the procession started again with a new wave of gulls. “They’re going south for the winter,” Toby observed.

I didn’t get a picture through the window blinds, but today went searching for some potential identities for these Laridae migrants.

Per the MSU Extension, possibilities include the Ring Billed Gull(Larus delawarensis)and Bonaparte’s Gull(Larus philadelphia).

While both Ring-Billed Gulls and Bonaparte’s Gulls migrate through southeast Michigan, open water and abundant landfills may provide incentive for some populations to stay here through the winter.

Gulls on Detroit River, Mariner Park by Protopian Pickle Jar (2015), CC BY-SA 2.0 on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/ykVTL2

So how do the gulls know where they’re going? Ring-billed gulls have a built-in sensitivity to magnetic fields that can help them navigate. Even 2 day old “chicks showed a preference for magnetic bearings that would take them in the appropriate direction for their fall migration. The gulls also rely on landmarks and high-altitude winds to provide directional cues.”

In my work as an environmental educator, we’ve been teaching our PreK students about animal survival strategies for the winter: Migrate, Hibernate and Stay Active. One adorable 4 year old, when asked about the word that describes birds flying south for the winter, shot up his hand.

“They retire to Florida!” he announced proudly.

Makes sense to me!

Twitter Fail

Has a vague resemblance to the Twitter birdhouse logo. Cactus cross-section by Protopian Pickle Jar (2017) CC By-SA 2.0 via Flickr https://flic.kr/p/QYPwQZ

I admit that I am a Twitter novice. I signed up for an account back in 2015 shortly after creating a WordPress blog, mostly out of idle curiosity, in an attempt to get the Twitter widget to work on my WP page. I mostly use Twitter for reading articles (Yay Science Twitter!), following authors I like, and retweeting funny pictures of cute animals and/or inanimate objects. I have tweeted links to my (very occasional) new PPJ posts, but per my WP stats page, am not sure this has actually had any effect on readership.

On Twitter, as on all other forms of social media/electronic interaction, I attempt to be pleasant and polite. I don’t want to be a troll! (Unless I can be one of Ursula Vernon’s bridge trolls). But somehow, my real-life social awkwardness also translates into the digital realm. I don’t leave many replies, so I was particularly surprised when upon leaving what I thought was a fairly innocuous (if inarticulate) message, resulted in being immediately blocked from the original poster’s feed.

This hurt my feelings, which I realize is kind of ridiculous. Maybe the Twitter immune system read me as either “Troll” or “TwitterBot.” Or the original poster thought my comment was dumb or offensive (It wasn’t intended to be, but I concede that it might be!) While I feel a certain kinship with the poster after following their Twitter feed for a few months, it is definitely a one-sided relationship. They do not know me, aside from the handle @ProtopianPickle, which in retrospect, is the kind of nonsensical name associated with AI-generated accounts.

So Twitter users, I am sorry. I will try to do better next time! And leave more intelligible, and less awkward, replies.

Time lapse

Nasturtium plant (July)

Nasturtium flowers (August)

Nasturtium Seeds (October)

Over the summer, I diligently more-or-less managed to water my garden and to document its growth on my camera phone.  Even though I have worked with gardens and growing things for awhile, it is still really exciting to be able to see the changes over the course of the season. I also know that annual plants are supposed to produce seeds, wither and die at the end of their life cycle. But it’s still always a little sad to witness the green garden I nurtured turning brown and crumbly.

My contract with the community garden stipulated that I had to vacate my plot by October 15th. I finally got around to pulling out the dead plants two weeks later, and putting their considerable biomass into the dumpster at the park. In an act of minor rebellion, I left my sage (which was still abundant and green) and the still-blooming sweet alyssum (which had grown huge and floofy.)

Sweet alyssum (mid June)

Sweet alyssum (late October)

The days here in Michigan are turning colder and rainier, which gives me the opportunity to upload and organize all those summer garden photos. I was trying to use Flickr to arrange photos taken of the same of angle of the garden in chronological order, to show the planting, growth and decline of each section. I’m ambivalent about the results, but readers are welcome to check them out here.

I think it may be better to just showcase specific plants in their various life stages. Even the dried-out sunflowers make me pretty happy (I used to see goldfinches eating the seeds, but my camera skills are not strong enough to get a good picture of the birds).

June 10

June 24

July 25

July 30

August 13

October 5

 

A Busy Summer

It’s nearing the end of October, and I realize I haven’t posted in a while.

Dried out sunflowers by Protopian Pickle Jar (2017) CC-BY-SA 2.0, on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/YCVJU1

From abandoned draft post from August:
“It’s been a busy summer. During the week, I spent my daylight hours outside working at camp or admiring my garden. On the weekend, I attempt to recover from the week! I do a lot of laundry (camp gets clothes very dirty), hoard recyclables for projects, purchase more yogurt and granola bars, and hopefully, sleep.

Lots of things have fallen by the wayside: Email correspondence, house cleaning, reading library books… and blog posting.”

My summer job at a nature center summer camp has morphed into a fall job as an educator at the nature center’s school and public programs. My hours are more flexible and am starting to have time for many of the activities I put on the back burner over the summer.

So here’s to more stories and photos and posts!

 

Protopian Portulaca Propagation: Michigan Edition

Heart of the Portulaca blossom by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

Readers of my adventures with Beanstalk Children’s Garden in Kansas City, MO may remember my stint with the Portulaca Witness Protection Program. I was deeply invested in transplanting volunteer Portulaca grandiflora (moss rose) seedlings from the cracks between the garden path bricks into new homes at the base of our raised beds. The relocated plants turned out to be pretty successful at thriving at the new sites!

I also eventually figured out how to propagate portulaca plants from cuttings, though these ended up in flower pots on my deck rather than back in the Beanstalk Garden.

Here in Michigan, I’ve decided to put some of that portulaca cloning to work in my summer garden plot at the community garden. I started with a few portulaca seedlings that I purchased in flats at local nurseries. I planted these in the gaps between the bricks of my raised bed.

 

 

by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

After the initial stress of being transplanted, the portulaca plants recovered and began producing new sprays of fleshy leaves.  I broke off some of the smaller tufts of new growth to produce cuttings for propagation.  From the cutting itself, I also removed the leaves  from the stem portion that would be covered by the rooting medium.

 

 

New growth on portulaca by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

Small tuft of new growth with stem. I removed some of the leaves along the stem to plant it in a rooting medium. by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

Portulaca cuttings to be rooted! by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

In an old aluminum foil baking pan, I mixed vermiculite and coir (coconut fiber) with water to create a rooting medium. (Kind of looks like brownies!)  I tucked the cuttings into this substrate, kept it moist and out of direct sunlight until they developed some roots.

 

 

Vermiculite, Coir & Water to create rooting medium. by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

Bury cuttings stems in moist rooting medium. by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

Close up of cuttings by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

After about 2 weeks, the cuttings’ roots had grown large enough for me to attempt transplantation back into the garden.

Cutting with roots ready for transplant! by PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

Portulaca are hardy plants with succulent leaves/stems that do well in sandy/well-drained soil, as well as tight places like cracks between bricks. In my experience, it’s easier to transplant a small portulaca seedling (volunteer or cutting with developed roots) into a gap than smoosh a whole plant (i.e. from nursery flat) into a larger space.

Rooting seedlings transplanted to their new homes. PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

If the portulaca seedlings take to their new homes, the growing plants will spread out across the bricks, creating a beautiful “carpet” effect, as well as providing nectar to insects. I never keep track of the flower color of the parent from which I take the cuttings, so it will be a surprise to see what colors combinations emerge.

At Beanstalk Children’s Garden. Portulaca blanket by Protopian Pickle Jar (2015) on Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/QR7jXb

I haven’t had much luck making a cutting and immediately sticking it directly into the soil. The cuttings always seem to dry out too quickly and wither, unless they have a set of well-developed roots. Even with roots, the transplants must be watered frequently for the first few days.

Putting in the baby portulaca seedlings only managed to feed my vision of portulaca carpeting the outside of the brick raised-bed.  So I made some more cuttings from the original parent plants. Still didn’t keep track of colors.

Round two of portulaca cuttings! PPJ (2017) CC BY-SA 2.0

End of Season Update: November 9, 2017
A large proportion of my baby portulaca cuttings failed to root. However, the ones that did managed to bring a lot of color to the bricks of the raised beds. Towards of the end of the summer, I discovered many of the portulaca plants ripped out of the cracks by the roots, with the green parts nibbled away. My guess is that deer visiting the garden decided that these were tasty, or at least worth some nibble attention.

Goat Gatorade

As Slow as Molasses by Marshall (2009) CC BY 2.0 via Flickr https://flic.kr/p/64f7NE

I have been working on a post about neonicotinoid pesticide toxicity to bees, but have decided to back burner that piece to bring you a post inspired by summer camp (and goats!)

This summer, I’m running around with elementary-age kiddos at a science & nature day camp in Ann Arbor, MI. We just finished our first week of camp with campers, included a few very hot days. To help me stay hydrated, I made my own rehydration solution (aka “Goat gatorade”) from a glug (1-2 tsp) of blackstrap molasses dissolved in 16 oz of water. At a muddy dark brown, goat gatorade not as colorful as the panoply of commercially available sports beverages, but there are significant nutritional and dehydration-prevention benefits to this unusual beverage.

Blackstrap molasses is produced from the third boiling of sugar cane (or sugar beets) in the sugar-making process, concentrating minerals such as Iron, Manganese, Magnesium, Copper and Potassium. It is also a great source of B-vitamins.

I first learned about “goat gatorade” when I worked helped with spring kidding (birthing of baby goats) at Adamah in March 2013. After a mama goat had given birth, we gave her a solution of blackstrap molasses dissolved in water to replace fluids, electrolytes and minerals lost during labor. The mama goats also really seemed to like the taste!

Some cute pictures of newborn goats with their mama. Momma’s Boy by Sara (2007) CC By-NC 2.0 via Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/3ipNQC

When I found myself getting dehydrated during field work at Adamah, despite what I thought was copious water consumption, our farm manager suggested I try drinking the blackstrap molasses rehydration mixture. I discovered I also liked the taste of the solution(sort of a slightly bitter burned sweetness), so I drank more of it than plain water. The solution also seemed to help ward off dreaded dehydration-triggered migraine headaches. I started mentally (then verbally) calling the beverage “goat gatorade” in a nod to the mama goats.

As an apologetic hipster, I have to admit that I’ve been enjoying my unsulphured blackstrap molasses glugs mixed with ground ginger powder, a dash of kosher salt and a pint of tap water shaken vigorously in a repurposed glass pickle jar. If you’re letting it sit overnight in fridge, you can even up your hipster points by adding 1 tsp of chia seeds for an interesting globby texture.

While I like the storage capacity of glass jars (pickle/mason/etc.) I learned that I may want to reconsider using them to transport beverages at camp. I hid my goat gatorade jar under a bench to keep it from getting knocked over during a camp activity. Little did I realize that the top of the jar was in exact place where a 6-year-old’s heels might hit if he or she was swinging them nonchalantly while sitting on the bench. Thank goodness the only casualties in the incident were a broken glass jar, a puddle of chia molasses liquid and my ego (after an embarrassed radio call to my camp director asking for help in cleaning up the puddle/broken glass prevent anyone from getting hurt.)

It’s not goat gatorade, but you get the idea. Chunky Zilla by Mark Turnauckas (2012) CC By 2.0, on Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/bCv6wb

While the health and wellness blogosphere loves blackstrap molasses for its nutrition content, not everyone loves the taste or consistency. Some cooks warn not to use blackstrap molasses when a recipe calls for regular molasses, especially in baking recipes, because it will change the texture of the final baked good.

A quick search of Google Scholar and the NCBI database has not revealed much published research on blackstrap molasses solution for human rehydration on hot days. I mostly found information on blackstrap molasses as livestock food additive (because goats!), a feedstock for fermentation and other chemical processes, and as a plant-based dietary source of iron in nutrition journal articles.

Molasses seems to come in both sulphured and unsulphured varieties – the sulfur dioxide is added during the process as a preservative to keep the sugar cane fresh. I’ve try to avoid sulfur dioxide (I suspect it can trigger headaches), so I’ve been sticking with the unsulphured variety. (I also am not sure what causes the spelling changes from “f” in the chemical sulfur dioxide to the “ph” in “unsulphured” food product description.)

Fancier version of goat gatorade have been around for years in the form of switchel or haymaker’s punch. In The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder even describes a version of “ginger water” made with sugar, ginger and vinegar, that Laura and Pa drink while bringing in the hay harvest.