Bloody “Queen Bea” Beatrice often taps at the back door for her dinner

The laying hens and the guineas and I have reached a compromise about their confinement. Around Happy Hour, I spring The Girls, as they’re collectively known, from jail. During the day, otherwise, I come out and give them treats while they’re locked up in their run. Only Pauline makes a daily escape to go to her trusty bird feeder. When she’s had her fill, she waits patiently on the back porch for me to let her back in the pen.

When Happy Hour rolls around, all nine birds RUN to the big dirt pile and do a dusty roll-about. Dirty birds! In the warm dirt, their eyes glaze over with happiness. So between the kid and the chickens, I have to sneakily move wheelbarrowloads when they are not looking. Everyone here loves dirt.

Can you count nine birds? Black Australorps Maggie is hiding behind a guinea. Notice the chaos of construction by the garden gate.

The Girls then do their thing running about the property, usually in threes, scratching and bug-searching and grass-eating. If Tom happens to be mowing, they chase his tractor. They will all end up at the goldfish/frog pond at one point, hoping for an amphibian morsel, but mostly they clean up spilled birdseed from the two feeders flanking the pond. (The frogs know better, and dive deeply at their approach.)

After they’ve had their fill of grass, worms, bugs and clover, they wander back to the back porch. Bloody Beatrice usually comes and sits on the back porch for a bit before the rest, sharing space with Penny the dog. Bea knows we’re inside eating dinner, and she knows if she waits patiently she’ll be the first to get the scraps. She’d be the first to get the scraps anyway because since Bonnie’s passing she is now Queen Bea. That, and she’s the only bird left from our first batch of chicks two years ago so we spoil her rotten. She’s such a dear bird, accepting scratches and pets, being picked up by the kid, etc. Who wouldn’t spoil her.

L-R: Maggie (Black Australorps), Pauline (Gray Leghorn), Bea (Isa Brown), Phyllis (Ameraucana), and Verloe (Rhode Island Red) are wondering if I have dinner scraps for them

After I share the dinner scraps, they wander into their pen and then into their coop to their perches. Before the sun sets it’s time to close the coop door for the night. Goodnight, biddies!

Pizza on the grill last August: homemade mozzarella, crust; homegrown eggplant, garlic, onions, tomatoes and basil

For the last two summers, I have participated in this Challenge. The idea behind it is to create one completely local dinner per week, and post about it (or take pictures of it and email your regional round-up person, if you don’t have a blog). If you even have the slightest interest in the local food movement, this is a great way to get started yourself.

I will not be participating in the Challenge this year, so I won’t be rounding up for the Midwest either. The OLC Challenge host has also changed: Liz of Pocket Farm is no longer blogging, so the torch has been passed to Nicole of Farm to Philly. Please participate, should you feel the urge. It really is a great way to get a grip on your foodshed. You will push your cooking skills in new directions, and you will learn new recipes and get great ideas along the way!

The Challenge starts the last weekend in May, ends the last weekend in August. Learn more about it here.

So little but so tasty

Green Gluttony season is winding down, at least where the greenhouse is concerned. I have been cleaning out the greenhouse beds fairly slowly. The tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, though, are beginning to get large, so it is time to completely clean out the beds to make room for them. Because the greenhouse gets so hot, only heat-loving things like the toms and peppers get to live in there in the summer.

Am I alone here in saying that hauling out still-growing greenery is hard for me? Even nixing stuff that is really winding down, like this broccoli, makes me a little misty. I can be such a sap sometimes. I would like to do a bit of a eulogy for the broccoli, however. There were six plants total; three Calabrese green sprouting, and three Piracicaba. I planted rows of seed in late July, and transfered the little seedlings into the greenhouse beds in early October. I spent October through December tending them, squishing those nasty cabbage worms as I went (until the frost did them in for good) and just patiently watching them sprout. Then, toward the end of January, I got my first real harvest. I was elated. And they’ve put out little sprouts ever since. They still would be, but…their time has come.

I must also mention two proven winners from the greenhouse. One is a cold-friendly lettuce. I admit I shaded this thing mercilessly by planting it next to some beets, but…it has been our stalwart beauty! I planted this batch last September. If you know anything about lettuce, it’s a short-season crop. Well, look at it. September to May is not what I’d call a short season, and it shows no signs of bolting. This is called Winter Marvel. I agree. Marvelous.

The last winner is an Italian dandelion. This chickory has grown fairly slowly, but its beautiful red-ribbed leaves have added a welcome bite to the salads since October. It is at the point that I need to chop a whole row down and fry it up with some green garlic.

(I really love this greenhouse.) Thanks, everybody! (Sniff!)

Boo!

I can’t help it: I still am a city girl. Or at least that’s what my brain tells me.

There are instances where I am caught off guard by something I see or hear when here at the farm and my immediate reaction is to Think a City Thought. It happened again to me early this morning when I blearily stepped outside in my bathrobe (yes, Not a City Habit) to feed the chicks and chickens. It was still somewhat dark outside. A big patch of white caught the corner of my eye and I thought, “Who parked a van in our side yard?”

It was a blooming crabapple tree, not a white van.

I remember walking our dog at night when we first moved here in late November of ‘04. (He was a city dog, and therefore expected a walk. Our current country dog assumes no such courtesy.) As I waited for Alex to do his thing, I looked diagonally across the property and I saw a red light, then a green light. “Wow,” I thought. “I don’t remember there being a stop light over in that direction.”

Not a stoplight. A neighbor’s Christmas lights. The nearest stoplight? Five miles away, in town, one of two.

Sometimes I will wake up and hear voices, and I won’t assume it’s the tv downstairs (which it is, as Tom’s a night owl) but I will think “wow, those people are out late walking, aren’t they.”

I wonder if I will ever lose city-centered thoughts. Will I ever wake up in the city and wonder who planted a crabapple tree on the curbline?

WARNING: If you have a fear of snakes, or just plain don’t want to read about them, then check back in a day or two.

I often kid myself into thinking that I (as opposed to most other humans) live in as much harmony with nature as I possibly can. This of course is a massive self-delusion. I am human, therefore, my lifestyle-slash-existence is the least harmonious with nature than any other creature’s on this planet. It is true I may cultivate some natural, non-human things, but my preferred “nature” is a list of maybe 200 plants and five animal species that I brought here myself. All other things are either in my way (weeds, hawks, voles, raccoons and opossums) or tolerated (sparrows, deer) or welcome (all other birds, most other mammals). Snakes are in the “welcome” category.

I first saw a snake on the property by first seeing a snake skin, shed a few feet away from a compost pile, a few years back. It was a big skin. Cool, I thought: a snake will keep the vole population in check. I of course never put two and two together and thought the skin’s proximity had anything to do with the compost pile. Ahem. A blue racer (about 5′ long) was living in the pile, and when I turned the pile I found him/her and screamed like the girl that I am.

Fast-forward to last year. I found another snake, this time a dead one: another blue racer. It had tangled itself in the deer netting that I had erected as chicken-proof fencing around the greenhouse beds. I felt awful.

Okay, now this year. Mother’s Day around here is Leave El Alone All Day To Garden Day. It was to rain all day but hey, that’s alright. I have a greenhouse to garden. So I armed myself with a shovel and some task buckets (I planned on evicting the herb garden along the back wall) and set to work. I moved first to the far corner of the greenhouse to begin the chores and…caught in that same deer netting, which until now, was used to deter voles, was A WHOLE BUNCH of snakes.

I did not scream. The small part of my brain, the residual prey-animal part, was definitely spooked though. I sighed deeply, then went inside to tell Tom about it, and convey how awful I felt. Because I did feel awful: no, I did not foresee that snakes could get into the greenhouse; it’s pretty well sealed against voles. But, in the back of my mind, I knew (like finding the skin near the compost pile) that it was a possibility, and that that netting, if it was doing any good at all against voles, was potentially harmful to snakes.

Three blue racers were trapped in it. Agh: not only did I kill three animals in their prime, I probably killed off another generation. What little I know about snakes is that spring is mating season and snakes, being solitary creatures, are never near each other except for this important purpose. So I clipped the deer netting in the area before and after the snakes and then proceeded to go outside with it but ONE WAS MOVING!!

Okay, I placed the mess outside and then went back inside the greenhouse and sat down for a bit. I need to get that live one out of there, I thought. So I took a few breaths, grabbed a pair of garden scissors, and went to work. Trouble is, I’d no sooner free the guy he’d try to crawl back through the netting, so…I had to hold his head to free him. I had to completely be in My Happy Place in my head to do this, too.

I felt a little better afterward. I felt even better after I took a hot shower.

Let me be the first to say that this is not my design. No, it is a mishmash of lots of ideas I have stolen mostly from the web. I should also here mention that I have become amazingly tight-fisted in my dotage and really wanted to see if I could build a chicken tractor under $100. And I did.

Today is cold and rainy. Normally, the tarp is not covering it and there’d never be a light in there…and it would never be near the buildings

My original design was a lot more elaborate. I had envisioned hoops of cattle panels (which are actually hot-dipped concrete reinforcing: they’re flat grids of small steel rods that’ve been welded into panels 4′x16′ long), arched tall enough that I could walk in there. That idea went away when I couldn’t get them from the store to the farm. So I started scanning the nearest big-box home impoverishment store and decided on PVC conduit, sunlight-grade, as the hoop material. The base is 2×4s, untreated (untreated are less prone to warping IMHO) and the door side is 3/8″ plywood. The ridge beam is another 2×4. So it’s 6′x12′ long, the 1/2″ PVC conduit are 10′ long; it stands 42″ tall. I got a tarp large enough to cover three sides (12′x16′).

It is fairly lightweight. I can move it easily without wheels, though I plan on snapping a PVC pipe, cut lengthwise, to the back base to act like a sled runner. I worry about it tipping over when the wind whips through, especially with the tarp attached, so I have placed some conduit clamps on the outside of the base to guide step-in tent stakes into the ground.

Honestly, I wanted to create something more elaborate for the chickens themselves. I am glad I had a bit of time to get to know them before I undertook this endeavor. The meat birds really do not want to roost; they want to be on the ground huddled in a chickpile. This design, then, contains a fair amount of ground space for them to do what they do: sleep, eat, and poop, with the occasional wing-flapping session and (roosters only) chest-bumping jousting with the other roosters in there. That’s all they ask. No roosts, no great area to run around. No grass, either, from what I can tell.

This design, frankly, is easily adapted to make many things: larger stationary coops, for example; chicken runs, and…greenhouses! Danielle and her family used basically this same design, minus the ridge beam, add 30″ pieces of rebar into the ground to anchor the PVC, and some greenhouse plastic. 6′x12′ is probably large enough for more than the 23 birds who today inhabit mine; it feels roomy enough to me, though. It was cheap enough I could build another one easily, even taller, for turkeys or ducks or geese.

Still cute, at least to me

Here’s a perfect example of how behind I am: I haven’t had time yet to make the new greenhouse beds. Most of the leeks are destined for it, as you can see the difference between outdoor

and indoor leeks. The babies from seed were getting leggy and needed to get in the ground. Ding! it occurs to me that they can be transfered later (unlike onions they don’t hate being moved) so they’re now doing time, temporarily, crowded together in a corner of a lettuce bed.

It’s been cool lately, which has been something of a gift as far as the garden and greenhouse are concerned. Every day I spend about two hours outside doing various growth-related tasks: seeding, transplanting, mulching, weeding (which I realize doesn’t help the growth of the weed, but you know what I mean). I spend an hour before work, an hour after. And I am still behind. So the cool weather has bought me some time in terms of moving things out of the greenhouse. They get to stay in there longer until it completely warms up outside.

The cool weather has been a bad thing as far as the chicks are concerned. They are still indoors in the mini-coop and not outside in their tractor. (Today is Tractor Day: I will post about it soon.) I think I got them too early. They’re fully feathered out at four weeks. I have noticed their chests (breasts) don’t have a lot of feathers on them yet, so I worry about sticking them outside. They spend most of their times lying on those big chests of theirs, and, well, it’s been so cool so I am sure that’d chill them. So next year? I will not be in such a rush to get them.

Two hours of garden work a day sure sounds like a lot of time, I am sure, to many of you out there. The time to the task at hand is a constant thing. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but those two hours aren’t doing a great job of knocking down that mountain of work! Of course I am the only person to blame for this work… Either way, I think I need to take a day or two off of my job just to feel like I am pulling even.

And then, I will come up with another scheme, and then I will be back where I started….

Gymnosporangium: cedar rust gall. One in this tree was so large I thought it was our dog’s frisbee.

The juniper nearest the house is covered with these things. It rained yesterday, which was welcome: rain means lots of wild asparagus, as well as a bunch of other happy plant life. Rain makes these galls form their little gooey arms. This is a fungus that affects the rose family, of which apples and pears are a part. I’ve got an apple tree 40′ from this juniper. I’ve never noticed a lack of apples because of it…and even if I did, I would have to get rid of a good 30 trees on our property alone to avoid it.

Gall, in the sense I use it when I think about annoying things like this war or this president (irritating, rubbed raw) comes from the Greek word cholos, or wrath; it’s associated with bile and “something bitter to endure.” I kind of like that. But this gall, an abnormal plant growth, comes from the Latin word galla, meaning, of all things, a gall (!) on an oak tree: an oakapple. Words are funny, but I still think Nature has the best sense of humor.

I love these floozy parrot tulips

“…I want to use the time it takes. Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass slowly or quickly, but be only time, something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.” Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses (translation by Anne Born)

As I read that last night a large bug kept hitting the screen of the open window of the room I was in. Junebugs, already? I asked myself. It was a warm night after our hottest day of the year (79*F), the leaves are all out, the late tulips are blooming. Why does all this come as such a surprise to me? It must be I haven’t been paying attention.

I got dive-bombed by the barn swallows this morning on my way to feed the chicks. They’re back! They are so very beautiful, even their angry twittering when they swoop my head is lovely. I am reconsidering my plan to have a wild bird-free potting shed; I have spent days keeping the */&# sparrows out of it, but now, well, now the barn swallows want back in. If bird flu comes to our shores, I might reconsider, as the shed is where the chicks spend their first few weeks. But: the barn swallows are back!

Sounds are a nice benefit to farm life: the sounds you hear are, in the main, not man-made, and so they’re fairly welcome to tired ears. People say it’s so quiet here and I end up thinking you must not be listening. There are sounds a plenty, but mainly they’re not as strident as city or suburban sounds. One of my favorites is the noise the pine trees’ cones make after a rain. They close up, you see, during the winter and when it rains; when spring comes or things dry out, the cones pop. It’s a small sound, something between a snap and a pop; on a windless, dry day, you can walk out there and it’s positively crackly. Mostly, though, it’s just a small little blip you hear.

Tick, pop, tick.

The kid loves her dirt, and told me I can’t use any of the 10 yards.

“I’m planting my flower garden here,” said she.

Of all the idiotic ideas the Bush administration has foisted on our poor selves, this economic stimulus package is near the top of the stupid scale. We are borrowing money from other countries, thus adding to our deficit, to, somehow, make this recession (”rough patch”) hurt a little less on us “little folks.” We are, of course, supposed to drive to the mall and spend it. Oh, and we’re to spend some of it on gas, too, but not our defaulting mortgages.

I spent part of ours on dirt and wood for the greenhouse garden beds instead. The rest is going into the bank. It may not be stimulating the economy, but it’s stimulating me.

So, what’s a gardener to do if it’s raining on her weekend? She cooks.

Spring means egg season, so I have been trying hard to find as many different ways of preparing them as I can. So quiche has been on the menu quite a bit lately, especially asparagus/leek quiche. And quiche means piecrust, and piecrust means…lard!

I read this book when it came out a few years ago. I also read this one somewhat recently. I was a vegetarian at the time that I read both of them. I am not fat-phobic; never have been, and wondered always why it got such a bad rap. But since we’re eating locally as a matter of principle, and going whole-hog as it were with the bits and bites of the side of the pig we got late last fall, I have been experimenting with different kinds of fat. And one of the best fats of all? Home-rendered leaf lard.

Before you go all Ewww on me, I will have you know that lard is one of the few monounsaturated fats out there. It is great in my savory pie crusts, though I have been known to add it (half with butter) to my sweet crusts, too. Rendering is a fairly simple process. Leaf lard comes from around the kidneys of a pig, and therefore has no muscle fibers in it (unlike, say, back fat) and tends to be very light in color. You chop up the white lard into small pieces, place a little bit of filtered water in the bottom of a heavy pan, and you let the stuff cook down, without stirring it, over very low heat. I swear if you cook it slowly/low enough, it won’t smell at all. Use a ladle and scoop it through cheesecloth into a canning jar. The first liquid will be the clearest/most white; the further down you go the more little bits you will get. (The bits, frankly, are great to use to cook up some spuds and onions!) I tend to do two jars: the pure stuff, the last stuff. You cap the jars and put them in the fridge to use as you need them.

But Mama he’s breaking my arm!

So, the meat birds are three weeks old now, and they are gigantic.

Where to begin? Sigh. I have lost three chicks, with two more separated into their own infirmary to see if they’ll get stronger. These five just never seemed to grow well. In point of fact, they never seemed to be able to walk, so they got trampled by the other birds in their hurry to get to the grub. I called a local feed store to see if I could get some replacements. The owner, who gets his birds from the same hatchery, said he wouldn’t be getting more in for a while, but, more importantly, it never should have happened! He told me to call the hatchery and explain the situation. So I did, and I will be getting a credit toward my next order. (This is what I wanted; I didn’t want 5 new baby birds now, and I didn’t want a rebate.) It was nice the hatchery stood behind their product.

But it’s the freaky nature of these birds to mature so darned quickly. Yes, thank you all for warning me: I did know what I was in for. Of the two sick birds, one seems to be able to hop around now, and the other is just not thriving at all. I have them on regular (non-grower) feed, along with boiled eggs. Tom asked if I was going to euthanize them. I said I might have to. Otherwise these birds would be the veal of the chicken world: no exercise, penned up, little meat blobbos.

They’re almost all feathered out, so they’ll be going out into the tractor soon. (I need of course to build the tractor. Maybe this weekend.) When it has been warm, they’ve been out in a small pen in the yard. It’s fun to throw them worms and watch them fight it out. But in general these big babies don’t exhibit typical chicken behaviors like scratching or dusting or roosting. Could be they’re still too young but I seem to remember my egg birds doing this at their age, easily.

I guess the proof will be in the eating if these guys are really worthwhile.

Despite her expression, she still thinks they’re cute

Celery in front, tomatoes in the temporary bed

The greenhouse is a wonderful place, mainly because it so easily does its job. I’ve certainly gone over a few of its unintended benefits (reduce S.A.D. mid-winter, help take the pressure off the gardener to hurry up and dig, etc.), but here is another one.

It’s a great nursery.

Last night it got pretty chilly (28*F) and I wasn’t worried, even though my tomatoes, eggplants and peppers were outside. They were in the greenhouse! In the ground, too, as it happens: I have been moving the lettuce and winter stuff out at a fast rate, and replacing them, as the beds clear, with these tender baby plants. I *hate* transplanting seedings, so the greenhouse beds are a great halfway house for them.

I’m also seed-starting things like mad directly in the ground in the greenhouse. Seeds are going into the ground in the gardens, too (peas, favas, carrots, beets, etc.) but I reserve the greenhouse beds for items that, if chilled outside in the ground, will simply go to seed and not do their thing by producing goodies for me. The smaller brassicas are in this category: rapini, pac choi, tatsoi, mizuna. They’ll get to be about an inch tall and I will move them outside. Likewise, anything I want to hurry-up-and-sprout are seeded directly into the chill-proof greenhouse beds. Flowers (marigolds, calendula, cleome, cosmos) fit that category, as does another seeding of yellow storage onions. But in a month the only things that will be in the greenhouse will be the summer crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and a few garlic plants.

I know I sound like such a liar, but it really is a lot less work!

And of course it’s a place of beauty: frilled lettuce with chard and broccoli beyond

Somebody had to do it: view from the greenhouse door

Busy weekend. Aren’t they all at this time of year? Sunday, I was feeling a bit poorly due to my own overindulgence of wine at a party the night before. It was a chilly day (40s) and all my light tasks had been accomplished, so I decided to sweat a bit and dug 80′ of trench.

I spoke to an old friend later that day and told her what I had done. “Have you become a masochist now that you’re a farmer?” she asked. Nah, I said: I figured, if I felt horrible already, I may as well feel horrible and feel like I accomplished something.

So, this was Step One in getting the new greenhouse going. That perforated drain pipe is now buried in the trench to avoid winter thaw/heavy rain water issues. Now I *just* need to till the clover in, build the beds, fill the beds with grass clippings, compost and more soil, refence the area from the chickens, plant the beds and then build the greenhouse itself. A lot of work ahead, but in 3 hours on Sunday, I got the worst part finished!

And oh, I felt a lot better afterward.