Mountain Musings: On Experience… and Mistakes

Mountain Musings – A guest column by Dottie Simmons who lives in eastern Humboldt County describes life at her rural homestead:

Musing on Experience… and mistakes

Someone once said “Good Judgment depends mostly on experience and experience usually comes from poor judgment.”  Well, I certainly agree with that!

I don’t think I can claim to be an actual ‘expert’ at much of anything. I know what I know, but I doubt I know the actual “best” way to do anything. What I do know is a lot of ways NOT to do things! We have certainly made a lot of mistakes and also done things that worked… sort of. All of this is a great way to improve one’s game.

One of the things I have learned here in Humboldt is its variety of elevations and geology and weather and more influence almost everything we do.  Even in things like gardening or cooking, there are always a lot of variables. The gardening tricks we learned in Willow Creek, even at the same elevation, don’t all work here in Dinsmore.

I can tell you why you shouldn’t try to speed chill a bottle of carbonated beverage in a freezer (have you ever seen a freezer completely full of ‘snow cone’?) and why it’s important to consciously put down any sharp tool you are not using at the time while doing something like tree pruning.

Hopefully we all know not to open or try to quickly release any pressure cooking device while it is still under pressure. And that cooking time and results change at different elevations and in different weather.

One learns quickly that wilting plants are not always a sign of too little water. Most die faster from overwatering than underwatering… in fact, most plants hate having their roots wet all the time. And thus hate clay soil. And that clay will overtake all the mulch and amendments you put on it if you don’t keep it up every year.

We’ve learned that protecting hens from hawks with a chicken wire roof can become a disaster in winter and mulch right up to the base of plants or trees can provide cover for rodents.

We learned building an island for ducks doesn’t protect them from otters, bears will climb – or go right through – deer fence, foxes can climb trees, a sheep or goat that simply vanishes was taken by a big cat, and electric fence does more to stop everything than most other deterrents.

Every year we find we are never too old to make new mistakes or learn new solutions. We ‘old dogs’ keep learning new tricks!

But most of all I have learned what works for us may be different somewhere else and I can tell you what works for me, but chances are it will be a bit different for you. Which pretty much limits my *expertise* to my own turf.

But you might be ok calling me an expert in how *not* to do any number of things!