The steward of Patterdale Hall, Chris Wyatt, proudly shows off a stately zucchini. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
The Patterdale Hall Diaries | Harvest time at the Hall
- Published: October 15, 2024
Aug. 24, 2024
The introduction of medical/recreational marijuana in Ohio is a good thing, but even though I have a medical card I have several concerns. Most of these concerns arise from the fact that I’m a scientist, specifically a pharmacologist. In my ideal world, cannabis cultivators would be growing strains with a profile of active ingredients that research has shown benefit specific illnesses.
Cannabis has over 400 pharmacologically active compounds, and we know very little about what they do or how they might be beneficial. It is incredibly difficult to do basic or clinical research into cannabis — there are regulatory, supply, funding and methodological barriers. What this means is that there is simply no research that could effectively guide growers to manipulate strains such that the plant produces a compound profile that will treat a specific disease. This results in patients having to blindly fumble for a strain that works for them while producers and cultivators continue to produce strains high in THC — the main compound producing the cannabis “high” — because they know that is what will sell.
It doesn’t seem that the regulations for research will relax anytime soon which is infuriating. I’d love a strain of cannabis that produced a minimal “high” but also relieved the inflammation associated with arthritis. It seems that in order to find this strain I’m probably going to have to grow it myself, which I am OK with, but it will take years.
Research is progressing incredibly slowly, there is evidence that cannabis is useful in treating symptoms in multiple pathologies but we could be doing so much better. Having an understanding of why one strain works for glaucoma while another works for seizure disorders, and another helps the inflammation associated with arthritis would enable us to predict what might work better for multiple sclerosis or muscle spasm.
Today in Ohio if you have a medical marijuana card to allow you to buy a product that might help with your medical problems, you are buying the same products as recreational users. The only guidance that you have regarding which product might work is anecdotal, and certainly for me it took me over a year to find a “product” that actually helped. Cannabis is not a panacea; smoking a high THC sativa strain does literally nothing to help my arthritis. It would be so wonderful to have rigorously conducted clinical trials into strain selection for specific pathologies, but at present, that is just a pipedream.
And so, I will continue to grow a couple of plants each year out at Patterdale Hall and hope they have a decent chemical profile that helps my arthritis. In order to find out what exactly I’m growing I’ll need to send plant material off for analysis, which I imagine will be costly. However, it would also be interesting, and so after I have finished mowing today, I shall get on the internet and see what I can find.
Well thank goodness for that. While chemically complex, apples are, by contrast to marijuana, blissfully simple. We have a massive apple tree out at Patterdale Hall and it’s time to process those apples. We are going to press them and collect the juice. Which we will likely drink. Karen is keen to ferment them, but I suspect we will not have enough to make that worthwhile. I don’t care.
Have you ever had apple juice that was crushed from the apples minutes before? I haven’t for decades. I will tomorrow.
Well, we got a gallon from one pressing. It is completely delicious — tart and sweet. Karen and I managed to work together without killing each other, even though she had no caffeine in her system, and I hadn’t eaten anything. What on earth were we thinking? Next time it will be super easy of course.
Aug. 27, 2024
I am clearly deeply unfit. My body still aches from the apple pressing workout! I really like the apple juice, but it is too acidic for Karen and upset her stomach pretty badly. Oh no — me and the boys will have to drink all of it. Life, as ever, goes on.
I am now back teaching and also have a bunch of hellish bureaucratic things to do, ah well. While I’m teaching a lot, I still have time in the morning to walk little Archie, which is a wonderful way to start any day. Morris is at school and Karen can’t really walk properly yet, so it really falls to me to exercise him. Bob will occasionally walk him while I’m at work, which is nice and means we have a happy little pup. Anyway, it will be 100 degrees Fahrenheit today, so I’ll get out early for my morning constitutional and then retreat into the air conditioning at work. Salad for dinner methinks.
Sept. 7, 2024
The semester is in full effect. Summer flew by. I saw turkeys again out at the Hall last night. Five hens were on the prowl around the house while I was reading in the great room. They really do look like dinosaurs, and they also looked pretty hungry. I think they enjoy the apples that we discarded, and Karen pointed out that they have been pooping with great vigor in one of Jim’s stone circles, where we dumped the apples. We are in the middle of a severe drought and so I think we need to put water out for these birds and maybe another serving of apples, as we got hundreds this year. Fall is upon us.
My student Ryan has asked if it is OK if he gets married at Patterdale Hall. I almost cried. Karen and I love Ryan, he is clever and kind. Of course he can get married at Patterdale Hall — the place radiates love. It will be the sweetest thing.
Sept. 12, 2024
Yellow Springs Brewery is releasing Wyatt’s Eviction this weekend. It’s a tasty English pale ale based on the recipe for the Yorkshire Bitter “Timothy Taylor’s Landlord.” Del made it and it has turned out beautifully.
*Originally from Manchester, England, Chris Wyatt is an associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology and physiology at Wright State University. He has lived in Yellow Springs for 17 years, is married and has two children and an insane Patterdale terrier.
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