J and I used our WorldMark membership to rent a two bedroom, roomy condo in McCall for one night. Cost $77. We ate out at Lardo's Tuesday night and then at at my favorite breakfast restaurant, the Pancake House. The Pancake House is an 11,000 sq. ft. restaurant. During the ski season the wait to get a table can be an hour--for breakfast. I attended a week-long economics workshop about a fifteen years ago held at the Shore Lodge in McCall. Attendees were teachers from around the U.S. The lead professor was from Florida State Univ. He conducts these workshops for an Economics Foundation. He has conducted workshops in every state of the Union and says the the McCall Pancake House is by far the best place in America to get breakfast. He felt so strongly about this place that he chartered a school bus and required every teacher to board the bus and eat breakfast there. He bought. He had his camera ready and when the pancakes and cinnamon rolls were served, or the biscuits and gravy, he had his camera ready to capture the shocked look on the face of the participants. The pancakes and cinnamon rolls are just huge.

You can see pictures taken as we traveled over a dirt road for 28 miles up the Middle
Fork of the Weiser River to get to Donnelly, ID. We stopped in to take pictures of the failed Tamarack Ski Resort. You can see the big hotel in mid consturction when the bank Credit Suiss finally pulled the plug on the owners. This is a huge operation. The bank that loaned the money for the ski lifts is having the ski lifts removed for lack of payment. Quite a blow to the local economy. Some pretty good prices on some multi-million dollar homes are to be had.

The first three pictures show the condo where we spent the night.

On the way up I took a side trip to Brundage Reservoir to look for bolete mushrooms that a club member had reported were just beginning to flush in the area. I spent an hour walking around and only found a fool's hen for my efforts. When I get home the next day and checked my e-mail, two members are bragging about the boletes they found around Brundage Res. Huh, I must have been looking in the wrong place or I am blind.

On the way back home J and I stopped and picked three pints of huckleberries. Yummy.

Papa Coyote is traveling to Post Falls, ID tomorrow to attend my mother's side of the family re-union. J cannot accompany because she has a booth a the Eagle bizarre. I am looking forward to seeing cousins and the few aunts and uncles that are still living. I have the camera battery charged.

Yeooooowww, the Mariner game is on. Gotta go. Mariners won 1-0 in fourteen innings last night. I watched it all. Griffey won the game with a pinch-hit single. Wowzies!

Papa Coyote loves you all.

An Exotic River

I think the first picture will show what I take from the garden every two days. The potatoes are a potato developed by the Incas some five hundred or more years ago. The meat of these potatoes is blue just like the skin. Peru releases a vegatable a year to the market. The Incas developed over 3,000 types of potatoes. Mostly specifically to grow at various elevations and on various sides of the mountains because they terraced gardens up the sides of the mountains. I got these potatoes from Territorial Seed in Western Oregon. My daughter turned me on to this neat seed catolog. They have an online presence. Check it out.

Perry and I went fishing for brown trout on the Owyhee River today. Perry had no strikes. He is a very good fisherman and he was bummed. I had one strike--this little rainbow that I helped plant last June. I had some big browns rising occasionally in front of me, but they could not be bothered with my offerings. This river is a classic example of what geographers call an exotic river. The surrounding terrain is desert, but the river provides a ribbon of green vegation. This river and the surrounding area is the site of of the deadliest Indian battles in all of the West. These occurred from 1864 to 1868. Both sides were brutal. Paiute and Shoshone attacks had been going on since 1851. Check out the Utter and van Ornum Massacres in 1851. Puts the Donner Party in second place. Then check out the Boise River Massacres (Ward Party) in 1854. Very brutal. So when the fish are not biting, one can enjoy the scenery and wonder what was taking place at this site in 1866. I taught four children in high school whose mother is a Paiute Indian from the band that lived on the Owyhee near its mouth at the Snake River. Their mother speaks fluent Paiute and their grandfather is the medicine man of the tribe. I some times think about how brutal her people were a hundred and fifty years ago, but then get my thinking straightened out when I think about how brutal the whites were to these same Indians.

Yeeeeeooooowwww, the Old Papa Coyote loves you all.

Forest Management and Diabetes, Yup, there is a link

Just before leaving to pick huckleberries last week, I was listening to National Public Radio (NPR) while eating a breakfast of shredded wheat and huckleberries. There was an article about the Umatilla Indians displeasure with so many white berry pickers in the mountains this year. The competition was interfering with the gathering of berries. The woman interviewed feared that they would not get the berries they needed for food, medicine and religious use. The Indian lady said that pharmaceutical companies were paying pickers for berries. That got me to wonder what interest the pharmaceutical companies would have in huckleberries so I have done some research and the findings, I thought were rather interesting. I will share some of what I learned.

First of all let me tell you that the Indian women pictured are Lakota women picking chokecherries on the Plains. I don't have a picture of Indian women picking huckleberries. Now, I can tell you that huckleberry bushes do grow almost as tall as these chokecherry bushes in N. Idaho and Montana. Not quite that tall, but tall enough that one can run his belt through the bail of a pail so that the pail hangs from the picker's waist. Then the picker pulls the branches of the huckleberry (also known as whortleberry) over the pail and strip the berries into the pail. I can' pick berries that way in Southern Idaho because the bushes grow so low to the ground. I set the pail on the ground under the bush and strip the berries into the pail if there are enough berries on the bush to use that technique. Usually, there are not. The Indians used skeletons of salmon as rakes for the purpose of stripping berries, today, one can order online huckleberry rakes.

The title of this blog will not stop the heart of any USFS policy maker because the U.S. Forest Service has been dealing with Indian complaints about forest management since 1904 when the Forest Service first started managing forests in the Pacific NW. Lewis and Clark and fur trapping companies noted in their journals the forest fires that the Indians started. Indians across the continent had burned off forests to create meadows to more easily spot and shoot game, to create fields conducive to berry growth, mushroom flushes, and to travel through. And in the east to plant the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) the staples of their diet. When the white man subdued the Indian and confined them to reservations, they began to manage the forests for timber production, not berry growth. The Indians had little interest in timber, but had a lot of interest in meadows that produce camas roots and at higher elevations meadows that produced large and profuse berries. The USFS and the Indians have been at odds ever since. So what else is new? haha. I can tell you unfortunately one is not likely to find many berries in the shade. Yeah, you really do have to pick berries in the hot sun. It seems that the berries need the sun and the fire produces ash that fertilizes the berries. Constantly burning forests is a good management tool for berry production.

So why do the pharmaceuticals want to buy huckleberries? Huckleberries may hold the key to a diabetes cure. Well, so say the natural pharmacy people. One online natural medicine site claims that their pill made of an extract of huckleberries has a 99% success in curing Type II diabetes and a 64% success in curing Type I diabetes. They also claim they have been offered $30 million by a major producer of an FDA approved diabetic medication to keep the huckleberry product off the market. Others are touting the juices made from huckleberries and huckleberry leaf teas. Some sites are saying that glucose levels can be controlled by cinnamon and huckeberries.

We know that before white contact the Indians did not suffer from diabetes. Of course, that was because of their diet. Their bodies had adjusted to the diet of the hunter/gather that allowed them to put on large amounts of weight in times of bounty so as to survive the times of scarcity which was a regular cycle of their life. (Scientists refer to this as the Efficiency Gene, which I seem to have; but this is a controversial subject among scientists and Native American people.) Now that they have ample food 365 days of the year and have plenty of fats, salt, sugar, alcohol, and pre-packaged foods; Indians have a very high incident of diabetes. Well over 50% in most nations and over 85% in the Tohono O'odham people of southern Arizona. (Tacos and enchiladas just look and taste way too good to be healthy)

I am thinking that the key to the huckleberry diet is in the words of one of the online natural pharmacy sites: "...our pill of huckleberry extract and other natural extracts along with a healthy diet and lifestyle will cure diabetes." I think the "along with a healthy diet and lifestyle" is the key here. But I do love the taste of huckleberries. And maybe I can eat the sugar laden huckleberry coffee cake and call it a health food. Hmmmm! Oh, yeah. Papa Coyote is loving this logic.

Hope I didn't bore you too much with the history lesson.

Yeeeeooooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.

The first pictures were taken this morning just around the house. You can see tomato plants by the pond. There are tomato plants next to the back stoop and there are tomato plants in the garden. J was on my case about planting too many tomato plants. My argument is that I plant with the idea of losing some to frost, but, well, I never seem to lose any to frost. I took J with me this spring to D and B in Ontario to help pick out tomato plants. My idea is to get six plants. But, J is picking them out by the four pack. Then at art class this really nice elderly lady offers tomato plants from her greenhouse to all the class members. Well, I could not turn that offer down. So I ended up with eleven plants and am scrambling to find a place to plant them all. I made frames for the plants. They do keep the plants corraled, but I can't say it is any easier picking the tomatoes that are crammed inside the frames. We have slicer tomatoes, grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

The p0nd had 32 lily blooms on Friday. That is a record. I got what I feel is a pretty accurate count of the goldfish Friday. There are 28 fish in the pond and they are growing. The pond is amazingly relatively algae free this year. The chemicals I learned about at the Far West pond seminar this spring are really working. Whew! Am glad of that because the algae problem was driving me to distraction. I really appreciate the Far West Nursery in Boise for sponsoring that seminar. It was free!!!

Picked about forty ears of corn this morning. J cut most of the corn from the ears and froze five quart packages. We ate about ten ears of corn today. Yummy. I have some really good size crenshaw melons growing in the garden and some of the winter squash is up to a foot in diameter. The blue potatoes have set their blossoms and the plants are nearing the time to die. Oh, and got a big picking of green beans this morning. I will have to take a picture of the Japanese cucumber we planted. Kind of a gnarly looking thing, but tastes good.

The other pictures are from the 3rd of July when D and H brought the girls over for dinner and fireworks. Big M really enjoys that day. I took a lot of pictues of the fireworks. The new camera has a setting for firework pictures. I thought some of them came out pretty good.

It has been hot here--nearly 100 degrees. Tomorrow, a Perry and I will venture forth to the huckleberry patch on the Smokey Boulder road. Everybody talks about picking two, three or five gallons of berries or more. Heck, I feel lucky to get two or three quarts and I am picking likey crazy for five or six hours. I have got to wonder how I can be so slow. And, no, I don't eat berries while picking--makes me too thirsty.

Got to go get some shut eye before having to get up to go berrying. You all be good or happy!

Papa Coyotes loves you all

I am getting out and walking a mile in the morning lately. I took some pictures of the field behind and to the sides of our house. You can see that the wheat is soon to be harvested. The last picture shows our house in that clump of trees. That clump of trees works really well to keep the house cool when the temperatures get near one hundred. Our daughter called and said she was sitting on the air conditioning vent today. They live a few miles south of Portland, OR. Portland recorded 105 degrees today. Seattle hit 104 downtown. Highest temp ever recorded in Seattle was 100 degrees. This is some pretty serious heat for the Northwest, but the wheat is loving it. Should be a good crop. Funny thing about NYC recording the coldest month of July ever. You can see that our neighboring wheat field is pretty stressed by a healthy yield of thistle. There is a county ordinance--actually state law, about failure to control weeds. Evidently, farmers are unofficially exempt from compliance. Not really, but, well, really. The weed commissioner visited a couple of summers ago and did not give me any hassle about my weeds--I do a good faith effort trying to control them--but herbicides are really expensive now. There is no way I can eradicate the thistle on my property and I do have a problem with thistle if the farmer is not doing his part. The best solution I have come upon to control weeds is to plant sunflowers. They go to seed and then go wild. I have 8-10 foot sunflowers all over the place. Guess what? The weeds don't have a chance under those sunflowers. The weed commissioner was duly impressed. He had never heard of doing that before.

Hey, hey! the garden is beginning to produce. The yellow summer squash is just about a staple of our dinners now. We are getting a few cherry and grape tomatoes, but in a week or two we will be overwhelmed with those small tomatoes. Plan to give a lot of them away. We got our first ripe slicer tomato yesterday and it was yummy. Forget about buying tomatoes in the store. In-season-tomatoes are the only tomatoes I eat now. I don't even call in-store-tomatoes, tomatoes. Just some red, artificial matter. And, the first three ears of corn. Oh, that was so good. My sister and brother-in-law will be visiting in September and they have their mouths already set for those tomatoes. Brother-in-law calls the cherry and grape tomato plants candy bushes. If you eat a sun warmed and ripened tomato right off of the vine, then you know what the sun tastes like.

We had come to the conclusion that our lonely squirrel was love denied. Hah. We are sorely lacking in knowledge concerning the sexual habits of tree squirrels. We have three little squirrels running around. They make a habit of not running around together, so we don't really have an accurate count. I believe that we may have squirrel stew this fall after all. Well, maybe.

Tomorrow I will be off huckleberrying again. Depending on how it goes, I may go back out again Friday. I got a hot fishing tip from a fellow in the waiting room at Hanigan Chrysler while we waited for our vehicles to be serviced. The creek with seventeen inch rainbows is within a few miles of one of my huckleberry patches. Hmmmm, I could possibly get distracted if the patch is not producing a lot of ripe berries.

In case you were wondering, coyotes, I am sure eat huckleberries. I use to have two Brittany Spaniels, Teddy and Leaky, who would most delicately eat huckleberries (one at a time) from the bushes. If I was picking huckleberries with them around, and they often accompanied me on such outings, I would have to pick like mad to get my fair share. A Brittany Spaniel with his pink nose and blue tongue is quite a sight. Oh, for a picture.

Papa Coyote has to go, bedtime. I won't be dreaming of huckleberries, but last week after two days of picking berries, I kept seeing berries in my mind when I tried to doze off to sleep. Geez.

Night, Night,

Papa Coyote loves you all

I have not been too good about keeping this blog up, but it did not help when the last time I tried to log in the blog sponsor, evidently Google, was telling me that I needed to log in under a Google account, but if I wanted I could log in as I have in the past. Wrong! But tonight the blog sponsor must have relented and allowed me to log into my account. So I bring you pictures of our trip to Newberg go visit grandkids and return M. M had a Boy Scout day camp for the week that he had really been looking forward to. By Wednesday the poor kid had come down with a hard case of the stomach flu. When we left that morning he was Z'ed out on the sofa and missed camp.

We went to the berry patch and picked berries with S and the kids. U-pick berries are $.99 a pound--all types. I concentrated on blueberries. We ended up buying $30 worth of blackberries and raspberries. Really good stuff. J made some blackberry and raspberry Barbecue sauces.

The boys like to play with their friends in the neighborhood park which is only half a block away from their house. You can see G on the play set with some of his pals. He has lots of pals and is a very socialable fellow in the neighborhood. I see that S has not added to her blog in quite awhile, but I can attest to the fact that she has her hands full with a ten year old boy, an almost five year old boy, an almost two year old boy, and a three month old little girl. Dad helps, but during the day it is pretty interesting in the old neighborhood.

I have been sick for a few weeks with some kind of cold or another. The Doc in the Box gave me a round of antibiotics and a couple kinds of cough meds. He said it has been a particularly nasty species running around in the town. In our small burg they don't test for swine flu or any other nasties because it would mean writing reports and there is no time or staff for that falder rah. So who knows what I have had. I know it has stuck around for a few weeks and I still don't have my energy back. Heck, I have been taking naps in the afternoon. Geez!

Anyway I have been out huckleberrying last Thursday and Friday. I have two really good places, but I am going to let the berries ripen for a week before going out again at the end of this coming week.

The first two pictures show huckleberries. The temps have been in the high 90's but I have been picking at about 5000 feet. So the temps were probably more like about 85 where I picked, but huckleberries like to grow in the full sun so that was where I picked. The first day I finally was driven out by the mosqitos and the second day there were lots of flies. I finally stopped when I ran out of ripe berries and then scouted out the second spot. The second patch is alongside a road, so that might be picked out by the end of the week. The first spot is about a hundred yard walk up an old overgrown log skid trail. I doubt that anybody finds it and it is a really good patch. My mushroom hunting buddy and I found this patch while hunting mushrooms this spring. Berries in southern Idaho are quite a bit smaller than berries in northern Idaho so it takes a lot of picking. When all was said and done, I cleaned and put into containers about three quarts worth. J made a huckleberry coffee cake that is really good. I don't eat berries when I am picking because they make me thirsty. we have been eating huckleberries with breakfast. Really a nice way to have cereal.

Time to go,

Papa Coyote

Grandson visit

M is beginning his 4th annual visit. J and I drove west to spend a few days with RasJane and family and bring M home for a ten day visit. We have a 3rd of July visit with D and family. M really loves to set off fireworks with his Uncle D. That is one of his favorite times of the year. Then we have a couple nights of camping and fishing on the calendar. Today we set up the pool and patches leaks. M spent much of the day in the pool and, of course, I forgot the sunscreen. He has fair skin unlike my darker skin. I rarely use sunscreen except on river float trips and have hard time rememberting to slather up M.

Here are some pictures of M's brothers and some pics from a hike intot Pearl Lake. The fish at Pearl Lake are cutthroat and they were just beginning come out of their winter hibernation. There was still snow around parts of the lake and lots of very cold runoff into the lake. Marge Lake on the other side of the ridge was still iced over and snow packed. So the fishing was not good. I had one bite.

The young lady on the sofa is the niece of a friend of mine here in town. She lives in Orlando, Florida. She was visiting with her Dad. We met them in McCall. She did not have hiking boots and walked the six mile hike in tennis shoes, but she did have a good pair of socks. She ended up with two blisters. She never complained once about the mud, the snow, the water in the trail, the blisters, or anything at all. She was quite a trooper. For some wierd reason there is cell phone service at this mountain lake. Only one I know that has that available. She and her Dad called Mom who stayed back in Orlando. Her mother is Brazilian and had declared that she is only talking to her daughter in Portugese this summer so that the daughter can practice her Portugese. The young lady was born in Mexico City so is a Tri-Citizen.