July 2017 – Jack of all Hobbies

Bramble Berries

Anyone growing up in the woodlands of the Ozarks knows how to find wild blackberry patches. When I was a kid, my dad took my little brother and me picking blackberries in the summer. We would pick gallons of the sometimes sweet, sometimes tart berries, then park on the side of the road somewhere and put up a sign to sell them. If we couldn’t sell them all (and we usually didn’t, just due to the volume we had picked,) we would bring home the rest to make blackberry preserves, or cobbler, or to just eat fresh on top of some ice cream. Some of the berries we picked were as fat as a thumb, sweet as honey, and people would ask if they were really wild raspberries. The answer to that question is a definitive “no.”

A neighbor moved in around the time my mom remarried, and they had a small garden out front. I used to ride my bicycle up and down the dirt/gravel roads in the neighborhood, and would often see them out tending to their grow beds. A month or two after they first moved in, they put in a raspberry patch. I liked raspberries even more than blackberries, but we never could find wild ones when we went berry picking. Raspberries have a silvery shiny surface on the underside of their leaves. The fruit also comes off of the bramble vine, with a “hole” where it came off of the little cone shaped base attached to the stem. Blackberries, on the other hand, come directly off of the stem in a tight cluster. There is a little dot where it used to connect to the stem, if you look closely. How anyone could mix the two up was always a mystery to me at that age. Then I learned there are more than just “blackberries” and “raspberries.”

There is a bramble that sprawls along the ground, laying down roots wherever it touches the ground to spread along in a tangled mass. The stem is “hairier” looking than a blackberry cane, but it still has thorns, and it produces berries like its relatives. This is a “dewberry” bramble. We have some in our back yard, and the birds usually get them before we do, so we leave them for the birds to enjoy.

Blackberries, raspberries, and dewberries are the main varieties I’ve run across in my time, but there are some hybrids and crosses of various mixes of the three, as well as “black raspberries” and “thimbleberries.” Some people call black raspberries “thimbleberries” but there is another variety by the same name.

The wonderful thing about all of them is that they are all members of the “rubus” genus. All of them provide very tasty fruit that is in a wide range of sweet to tart, juicy, and delicious. They make great jams, jellies, and preserves, cobblers, and dessert toppings. They freeze well, but I wouldn’t try dehydrating them. The leaves can all be used to make herbal teas, and some of those are medicinal, such as raspberry leaves which are often used for women’s health regarding birth giving activities. The teas are tastey, too.

I plan to plant some black raspberries and “regular” raspberries during one of our perennial planting sessions in the coming year. Since we’ve had blackberries and dewberries popping up in our yard over the years, I know these other rubus relatives will do just fine.

Rest in peace Papasan

One of the “hobbies” I’ve done over the years is martial arts. I grew up wrestling (no instruction, just boys being boys) with my older cousin. I ended up on the losing end more often than not, due to him being bigger, of course, but whether he let me win or I genuinely found the right grip at the right moment, I did win a few.

When my mom re-married, the man I call “Dad” tried to teach me and my new little brother a little Taekwondo. This wasn’t formal instruction, and we didn’t learn any “katas” or whatever the Koreans call it. We didn’t go to one of the local dojos to obtain instruction from there, either. He taught me my first knife throwing instruction, and I probably still have that modified case knife in my old room at their house if I bothered to go looking for it.

I joined the military (U.S. Navy) in late 1995, and while we didn’t do any unarmed combat training, I learned proper firearms handling for combat situations while I was in.

After my oldest daughter was born, I started having nightmares about coming home from six month deployments, and her hiding behind my wife’s skirts, pointing at me, and asking, “Mommy, mommy… who’s that man?” I didn’t renew my enlistment, because I wanted my kids to know who their daddy is.

While I was in college, I returned to my interest in martial arts. A friend of mine in the Navy had known an old shipmate who had done “ninjutsu.” I went searching for anyone teaching the art. I couldn’t find any dojos online that that taught it near me, but I did my research and learned that the Bujinkan was what I was looking for. I found a “home study” course (cringe) that I bought into initially, because at the time I felt it was better than nothing. I devoured the course, but I knew I was lacking. I was still searching for a group to work with me on this, because you need a training partner or three to make any kind of progress. A partner gives you feedback, helps you understand when you are applying a technique properly, or where you’re failing to apply it at all. I eventually stumbled up on a small “training group” (not a dojo) that was active in central Arkansas, and one of the members offered to pick me up once a week to go to instruction.

I was nervous, since I hadn’t really had any formal training, but I was welcomed with open arms, and it didn’t take long for me to notice my own improvements which were rapid.

The way this training group worked was for us to all work together on the basics, katas, rolling, falling, and whatever the “topic” of choice was for the week, month, or quarter. Once a quarter, this elderly gentleman would fly into town and do a weekend seminar. He was gruff but gentle. He was full of wisdom. He would teach a specific topic, run us ragged with learning it, but we would all be laughs and smiles by the end. We were all bruises and bumps, as well, but that’s all part of the learning. He would finish the weekend with rankings, to let us know where he thought we were at in our progression. This man was Ed Martin, also known as “Papasan” amongst his friends in the Bujinkan.

My very first seminar with him is one of the happiest weekends I can remember. He taught cane that weekend, and to this day, the cane is still one of my favorite defensive tools. I still have the cane I bought from that seminar, and keep it in my car most of the time. I came away from that seminar feeling more battered, bruised, and abused than I can recall feeling in any other moment in my life, but none of that really “hurt.” It was a good kind of sore, and it melted into life lessons I will always remember.

At the 2002 Taikai, I received my Shodan (first degree black belt) from this man, alongside Jeff Schafer, and Robert Lamkin III. I stopped going to trainings when my senior level work load got to be too much for me to attend while still maintaining my grades. I’ve been back a couple of times, but have had life interruptions that have been problematic for continuing my training. The last time was just before my youngest daughter was born. I’m hoping to go back again, but only time will tell if I can ever get things in order enough to maintain and grow in the art again.

On July 14th, I received the news that Papasan passed away. He touched many lives, not just our little training group, and he will be sorely missed by many. His wisdom was ageless, and he will continue to touch the lives of new students for years to come, just by virtue of those students learning from HIS students. He was a great man, and the world is a sadder place for his loss.

Wine Cap indoor kit – Fungi Perfecti

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the purpose and functions of fungi. I’ve been wanting to get a mushroom yard going in the back yard for a while now, and while we’re looking at autumn for this, we went ahead and ordered an indoor kit from Fungi Perfecti to get things rolling. We know we like Shiitake, Portabella, and Button mushrooms, but we don’t know if we like Wine Caps yet, or not. We’re hoping to get a feel for how much we do or do not like this mushroom before we decide how much to inoculate the garden spaces with it. Some have described it as being similar to Portabella, so we’re hopeful it’s going to be good.

The kit arrived this week, and while I did open the box on day one, I only just got the spot for it cleared out, the tray to put the bag in cleaned up, and a spray bottle to mist it with “acquired” from other duties in the household to re-purpose it for the mushrooms moving forward. I’ll be starting the kit either tonight or tomorrow (today as you read this) and will probably take photos of the process as I go. It should take a few weeks to a month before we see any mushrooms poking up, but it should last a few months before it consumes all of the wood chip medium it was shipped in. The great thing about this kit is that once its used up, I can put it out in the garden areas with some fresh wood chips and propagate it further. If we really like this variety, we’ll probably order a second indoor kit, and I’ll do an ‘unboxing’ / ‘getting it started’ video of the process with a side by side comparison of how the kit looks when you start it out, and how it will look when it fruits. I’ll also go over how to tell when to pick them, and when they’re ‘overripe.’ I’ll also likely do a second video showing how to turn the first kit into an outdoor mushroom bed that can be used to grow out more, as well as how to select a site to put the bed, and so on. Until then, I’m looking forward to getting these to grow and trying out the flavor profile from cooking it different ways. As we figure this out through experimentation, we’ll share that information as well.

Locks as sport and hobby

I’m not big into sports. I never have been, really. However, I’ve always had a fascination with how things work, and that fascination extended to locks at a somewhat early age. I made my first set of pitiful picks in high school, made a better set after graduation, and eventually bought a professional set from a friend who was taking an apprenticeship under a locksmith near the college I attended after I left the Navy. I later took a course through Foley Belsaw on locksmithing, and learned more than just how to pick locks. All of this leads back to my first sentence… there is actually a competitive scene in lockpicking groups, and it is called “locksport.” (The more you know!)

My business mentor recently posted a monthly challenge to the group to spend time every day doing something. I chose to brush up on my lock picking skills, since I haven’t had to touch a lock in over a year, and haven’t practiced just to practice in almost 8 months or so, before this month.

I was worried that I’d get frustrated, since it’s been so long, but apparently I’m not as rusty as I thought I would be. I’ve managed to “pop” my practice lock at least three to five times every day for the last several days of the challenge. This weekend, I’ll put together a few other practice locks, since this one is actually getting too easy to pop, already.

So the basic concepts are simple, if you want to know the physics behind this hobby. Most locks people encounter will either be “pin tumbler” or “wafer” locks. Wafer locks are mostly found in automobiles, cabinets, desks, and so on. Pin tumbler locks are what are found on most peoples’ doors, here in the U.S.

The practice is simple. Two tools are needed in order to open the lock. One tool applies rotational pressure on the “plug” which is where the wafers or bottom pins live. The other tool manipulates each pin or wafter, lifting it out of its resting state, trying to get it to fit in just the right spot for the plug to rotate, as if the correct key has been inserted into the lock. For pin tumbler locks, this means lifting the bottom pin until the top pin is above the “shear line” and the bottom pin is still inside the plug. The shear line is that edge between the outside of the plug and the inside of the casing where the plug can spin. With wafer locks, you’re trying to get the wafer all the way into the plug (or out of the plug, depending on design) so that the plug can spin. It’s all about making sure nothing is blocking the shear line, either way.

The most successful pickers learn to feel when the plug “gives” a little as each pin or wafer are set. It’s truly fun, and is amazing for developing focus. The act of picking is a meditative thing for me, which is one of the reasons I love doing it.

Sorry to cut this short. Next week will probably be another Permaculture related post. In the mean time, try looking up how to make your own picks, and see if you can get into the “sport.” It’s worth the effort.