We've always grown a few tomato and basil plants, but this year we put in a more significant vegetables garden. We filled in our 20 by 40 foot in-ground pool last fall, so we have a flat large area right outside our kitchen door -- perfect for a garden.
Our serious gardening friends wanted us to turn the whole thing into a garden -- 30 by 50 feet or more -- which we thought was probably overly ambitious to start out with. So before the excavator arrived to seed a lawn on the newly-spread top-soil, we covered a 15 x 15 foot area with the pool cover, so no grass or weeds would grow there. This spring, Jordan rototilled a boat-load of purchased compost into four long rectangular beds, and Margy began to plant.
There's been only one hitch: it has rained just about every single day since mid-June. We're not just talking about sprinkles; we got three inches last night. As a result, parts of the garden have been underwater for hours at a time, and a mushy bog most of the time. The worst spot is the center bed, which is directly over where the deep end of the pool used to be and has probably subsided an inch or two.
The tomatoes, peas, lettuce, artichokes, eggplants, onions, and basil are undaunted. (Of course, none of them are growing in the boggiest bed.) But four out of the eight brussels sprouts have folded their tents, and hot peppers don't appear to be growing at all. Naturally, the zucchini are soldiering on in the swamp. (Typical!)
Monday, August 4, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Kabob One, Margy Zero
I went out to feed the chickens and collect eggs yesterday, wearing the loose garden clogs we use so that we don't get chicken crap on the soles of our regular shoes. Kabob has been feeling pretty feisty since the sudden disappearance of the other two roosters. Sometimes he raises his hackle feathers and tries to drive us away from his hens. Jordan thinks he's more likely to get defensive if you look him in the eye. I've certainly noticed that on the occasion that a hen holds still long enough for me to pet her, he's not happy about it.
Today I don't know what got into Kabob, but he started jumping at me with beak and claws. As usual, I kicked at him to push him away. This time, my clog flew off and landed behind him. Now hopping, I used the egg collecting basket (containing eight eggs) to fend him off. Naturally, he attacked it, and six of the eggs fell to the floor and broke. Damn!
I gave up on self-defense, hopped around him to get my clog with a flurry of angry rooster around my legs. I held him off with the basket while I retrieved some eggs and ground the shattered ones into the wood shavings so that the chickens wouldn't figure out how delicious they are and start eating their eggs. I don't know whether it was Kabob's claws or beak that got me, and it's lucky I was wearing thick pants, because I've got big round bruises all over the back of one calf -- he even broke the skin in one place, right through the pants.
I'd be pretty ticked off if it weren't so funny. Where's America's Funniest Home Videos when you need them?
Today I don't know what got into Kabob, but he started jumping at me with beak and claws. As usual, I kicked at him to push him away. This time, my clog flew off and landed behind him. Now hopping, I used the egg collecting basket (containing eight eggs) to fend him off. Naturally, he attacked it, and six of the eggs fell to the floor and broke. Damn!
I gave up on self-defense, hopped around him to get my clog with a flurry of angry rooster around my legs. I held him off with the basket while I retrieved some eggs and ground the shattered ones into the wood shavings so that the chickens wouldn't figure out how delicious they are and start eating their eggs. I don't know whether it was Kabob's claws or beak that got me, and it's lucky I was wearing thick pants, because I've got big round bruises all over the back of one calf -- he even broke the skin in one place, right through the pants.
I'd be pretty ticked off if it weren't so funny. Where's America's Funniest Home Videos when you need them?
Friday, March 14, 2008
Kabob Rules the Roost
The time came to off our two young roosters, before things got ugly in the hen house. Normally, I hold the bird with its neck over an upended log, and Jordan swings the hatchet. However, a friend had told us about the value of a rooster's neck feathers (hackles) for fly-tying -- people pay $20-$60 per rooster for its hackles.
We called our fly-tying friend Dave and offered him two roosters worth of hackles if he could kill them without ruining the feathers. "No problem," he said. "When you hunt, you have to learn to wring a bird's neck in case you injure one without killing it." Perfect.
Dave came over one night, because it's more or less impossible to catch a chicken when they are awake -- you can do it, but you feel a perfect fool running around after them, grabbing and missing. At night, they are drowsing on their roosts (horizontal poles about 4 feet off the floor), and you just pick them up.
Jordan and Dave headed out to the hen house (former pool house) and did the deed. It took longer than we expected, because it turns out that a rooster's neck is a lot harder to wring than a pheasant's; Dave just kept twisting and twisting until the bird went limp. Red, and then Blue, were finally lying dead on our kitchen counter. We felt pretty bad about it, but Dave didn't.
The next step was to skin the birds; Dave's plan was to remove the entire skin, not just the neck skin, and we found out long ago that plucking a bird is way more effort than it's worth. Again, skinning a chicken, or a rooster anyway, turned out to be a lot harder than skinning a pheasant. "With a pheasant," Dave said, "you just cut open the skin, yank their legs, and the whole bird turns inside-out." The roosters refused to do so, and Dave had to cut a lot of skin to get it off. By the time it was over, both Dave and Jordan had band-aids on their fingers.
I'm not so sure how thrilled Dave's wife Diane was to receive an entire rooster, but both she and we made coq au vin the next night, since what else do you do with a coq? It wasn't bad, and the meat wasn't as chewy as I had feared. But raising chickens for meat rather than for eggs certainly isn't at the top of our list.
Kabob is once again the sole rooster, and the remaining chick, Curry (renamed from Yellow) has been accepted into the flock. Happy Ending, except from the point of view of Red and Blue.
We called our fly-tying friend Dave and offered him two roosters worth of hackles if he could kill them without ruining the feathers. "No problem," he said. "When you hunt, you have to learn to wring a bird's neck in case you injure one without killing it." Perfect.
Dave came over one night, because it's more or less impossible to catch a chicken when they are awake -- you can do it, but you feel a perfect fool running around after them, grabbing and missing. At night, they are drowsing on their roosts (horizontal poles about 4 feet off the floor), and you just pick them up.
Jordan and Dave headed out to the hen house (former pool house) and did the deed. It took longer than we expected, because it turns out that a rooster's neck is a lot harder to wring than a pheasant's; Dave just kept twisting and twisting until the bird went limp. Red, and then Blue, were finally lying dead on our kitchen counter. We felt pretty bad about it, but Dave didn't.
The next step was to skin the birds; Dave's plan was to remove the entire skin, not just the neck skin, and we found out long ago that plucking a bird is way more effort than it's worth. Again, skinning a chicken, or a rooster anyway, turned out to be a lot harder than skinning a pheasant. "With a pheasant," Dave said, "you just cut open the skin, yank their legs, and the whole bird turns inside-out." The roosters refused to do so, and Dave had to cut a lot of skin to get it off. By the time it was over, both Dave and Jordan had band-aids on their fingers.
I'm not so sure how thrilled Dave's wife Diane was to receive an entire rooster, but both she and we made coq au vin the next night, since what else do you do with a coq? It wasn't bad, and the meat wasn't as chewy as I had feared. But raising chickens for meat rather than for eggs certainly isn't at the top of our list.
Kabob is once again the sole rooster, and the remaining chick, Curry (renamed from Yellow) has been accepted into the flock. Happy Ending, except from the point of view of Red and Blue.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Three Roosters Is Two Too Many
Our three chicks have grown up -- they are the same size as the 12 chickens that we started with. The chicks are all half Araucana, half something else, since our original rooster, Kabob, is an Araucana (the green egg chickens that come from Chile). We refer to them as Red (red-brown, actually), Yellow (gold speckled), and Blue (black). We don't consider these names, since we don't want to eat something that we've named.
Unfortunately, two of the three are roosters. We were hoping for hens, since we keep our chickens for eggs, not meat. But at the age of about three months, Red and Blue started sprouting beautiful black tail feathers -- a sure sign. The three chicks are social pariahs, staying in their own small group and roosting on a separate roost at night. A few weeks ago, Red and Blue starting jumping the hens, another pretty clear indication, and one that seriously annoys Kabob. Tensions in the hen house are high, not helped by being stuck indoors because of the cold and snow, with regular scuffles if no fights with visible injuries. It's time to do something about those extra roosters. No one wants layer-breed roosters, though. Their days are numbered.
Unfortunately, two of the three are roosters. We were hoping for hens, since we keep our chickens for eggs, not meat. But at the age of about three months, Red and Blue started sprouting beautiful black tail feathers -- a sure sign. The three chicks are social pariahs, staying in their own small group and roosting on a separate roost at night. A few weeks ago, Red and Blue starting jumping the hens, another pretty clear indication, and one that seriously annoys Kabob. Tensions in the hen house are high, not helped by being stuck indoors because of the cold and snow, with regular scuffles if no fights with visible injuries. It's time to do something about those extra roosters. No one wants layer-breed roosters, though. Their days are numbered.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Great Pork Caper
Back in June, at the end of Zac's last school year, his math teacher, Theresa, had a bonfire for the whole school at her house. We fell to talking and it turned out that she was raising eight pigs over the summer. We had been meaning to buy a pig "on the hoof" this year, as we had last year.
Actually, last year we bought a quarter of a pig from a local high-school student whose parents raise beef. We don't really know why she was doing pigs, but heard from our friends Will and Judy (the organic farmers) that she had pigs to sell. Last year we split a pig four ways. That turns out not to have been enough pig! We got sausage, which was marvelous; a lightly-smoked ham that we didn't really know how to cook - it was good, but we didn't cook it well; some ribs that Jordan mistreated on the grill; and a whole lot of chops and loin that were to die for. Before we knew it, it was gone!
So this year we decided to go for a half a pig, which was Theresa's unit of measure. Margy's cousin immediately spoke for the other half, but by that time we had talked the thing up enough that several other people were interested. No problem -- there were seven pigs left to go. So we bought another pig and divided it four ways - among four friends of ours.
Well, today was pig pick-up day, as well as being Halloween. While the kids were out trick-or-treating with their friends (amazing what happens when they get older and one of them can drive!), we drove up to Theresa's to get the pigs. She had taken them over to the local slaughterhouse (a mom-and-pop operation which is where Margy and her cousin picked up our pig last year), and they had delivered (or she had picked up, I'm not sure which) the pig back to her house.
As we drove up to Theresa's house, I could see about eight piles of stuff vaguely silhouetted in the yard - yup, eight piles of half-pig. Everything was vacuum-wrapped in plastic and some cuts were labeled. Of course our daughter had the van and we had the sedan, but everything fit just fine, in two coolers, two boxes, and a plastic garbage bag -- we took five of the eight piles because some friends who had made a separate deal for a half-pig with Theresa were out of town today. We chatted for quite a while about pigs and chickens and their cattle -- they have four Belted Galloway cows and are planning on four more.
So we dropped half- and quarter-pigs off at three friends' houses. By now, all the pigs are safe in freezers, except for the quarter that we're taking to Massachusetts on Saturday for ultimate delivery to the friends with whom Margy stays when she's there working.
In case you're wondering, a half a pig is about 17 pounds of sausage, four packages of chops, four packages of steaks, two pork loins, and either a butt or a rack of ribs. Average for a half a pig: 50 pounds. Still to come are the bacon and the hams, which are still being smoked.
Why, you may ask, are we doing this? If you haven't read about the miserable conditions on hog farms, you really should. Then you can read about the miserable conditions in the slaughterhouses and the incredible pollution the entire commercial pork venture causes. Michael Pollen's book The Omnivore's Dilemma talks a lot about what's wrong with industrial agriculture (though not about pigs specifically). Jordan first learned about how bad pig farming can be from Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them which, in the middle of all of its political exposé, digressed a little on to the evils of hog farming. A number of other New Yorker articles and the like have driven the point home. Jordan tries very hard not to buy commercial pork, with some occasional lapses when the local stuff isn't around. Buying from our friends seems like a good way to support sustainable agriculture, people with decent life-styles, and get great food, all at the same time. What could be better?
Actually, last year we bought a quarter of a pig from a local high-school student whose parents raise beef. We don't really know why she was doing pigs, but heard from our friends Will and Judy (the organic farmers) that she had pigs to sell. Last year we split a pig four ways. That turns out not to have been enough pig! We got sausage, which was marvelous; a lightly-smoked ham that we didn't really know how to cook - it was good, but we didn't cook it well; some ribs that Jordan mistreated on the grill; and a whole lot of chops and loin that were to die for. Before we knew it, it was gone!
So this year we decided to go for a half a pig, which was Theresa's unit of measure. Margy's cousin immediately spoke for the other half, but by that time we had talked the thing up enough that several other people were interested. No problem -- there were seven pigs left to go. So we bought another pig and divided it four ways - among four friends of ours.
Well, today was pig pick-up day, as well as being Halloween. While the kids were out trick-or-treating with their friends (amazing what happens when they get older and one of them can drive!), we drove up to Theresa's to get the pigs. She had taken them over to the local slaughterhouse (a mom-and-pop operation which is where Margy and her cousin picked up our pig last year), and they had delivered (or she had picked up, I'm not sure which) the pig back to her house.
As we drove up to Theresa's house, I could see about eight piles of stuff vaguely silhouetted in the yard - yup, eight piles of half-pig. Everything was vacuum-wrapped in plastic and some cuts were labeled. Of course our daughter had the van and we had the sedan, but everything fit just fine, in two coolers, two boxes, and a plastic garbage bag -- we took five of the eight piles because some friends who had made a separate deal for a half-pig with Theresa were out of town today. We chatted for quite a while about pigs and chickens and their cattle -- they have four Belted Galloway cows and are planning on four more.
So we dropped half- and quarter-pigs off at three friends' houses. By now, all the pigs are safe in freezers, except for the quarter that we're taking to Massachusetts on Saturday for ultimate delivery to the friends with whom Margy stays when she's there working.
In case you're wondering, a half a pig is about 17 pounds of sausage, four packages of chops, four packages of steaks, two pork loins, and either a butt or a rack of ribs. Average for a half a pig: 50 pounds. Still to come are the bacon and the hams, which are still being smoked.
Why, you may ask, are we doing this? If you haven't read about the miserable conditions on hog farms, you really should. Then you can read about the miserable conditions in the slaughterhouses and the incredible pollution the entire commercial pork venture causes. Michael Pollen's book The Omnivore's Dilemma talks a lot about what's wrong with industrial agriculture (though not about pigs specifically). Jordan first learned about how bad pig farming can be from Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them which, in the middle of all of its political exposé, digressed a little on to the evils of hog farming. A number of other New Yorker articles and the like have driven the point home. Jordan tries very hard not to buy commercial pork, with some occasional lapses when the local stuff isn't around. Buying from our friends seems like a good way to support sustainable agriculture, people with decent life-styles, and get great food, all at the same time. What could be better?
Monday, August 20, 2007
Boston Gets in the Mood
Sometimes a hen gets broody, which means that she gets the urge to sit on eggs night and day. Here's how it all works: Hens lay about an egg a day during the part of the year when the days are longer than 15 hours. After they've laid a clutch of eggs in a nest (maybe 8 or 10), they stop laying and sit on the eggs 24/7. They get off the nest a few times a day to get a bite to eat, but basically they sit there all day long, with their feathers puffed up to cover all the eggs, looking like a toad in a trance.
When we had chickens before, our hens never got broody. They couldn't care less that we took their eggs away every day, and they never seemed to stay in a nest longer than it took to lay an egg -- 20 minutes, maybe. But Jordan noticed that Boston, the smaller of our two feather-foots, was in the nest every time we went into the hen house, and she'd started sleeping there instead of on the perches with everyone else. Kabob the rooster insists that all his hens sleep on the highest perch, which is about six feet off the ground, but he made an exception in her case.
We tried to "break her up," the technical term for talking a hen out of sitting on a nest. What a joke! We threw her off the nest. We took her outside. We walked around with her. We even took her into the house to hang out with us. No luck -- as soon as we put her back in the hen house, she was back on a nest.
"It's August," said Margy, "and too late for hatching chicks! They'll still be little when it gets cold, and they'll freeze." But soft-hearted Jordan hated to see Boston wasting her time, so on about the third day of Boston's vigil we stuck the day's eggs under her.
When we had chickens before, our hens never got broody. They couldn't care less that we took their eggs away every day, and they never seemed to stay in a nest longer than it took to lay an egg -- 20 minutes, maybe. But Jordan noticed that Boston, the smaller of our two feather-foots, was in the nest every time we went into the hen house, and she'd started sleeping there instead of on the perches with everyone else. Kabob the rooster insists that all his hens sleep on the highest perch, which is about six feet off the ground, but he made an exception in her case.
We tried to "break her up," the technical term for talking a hen out of sitting on a nest. What a joke! We threw her off the nest. We took her outside. We walked around with her. We even took her into the house to hang out with us. No luck -- as soon as we put her back in the hen house, she was back on a nest.
"It's August," said Margy, "and too late for hatching chicks! They'll still be little when it gets cold, and they'll freeze." But soft-hearted Jordan hated to see Boston wasting her time, so on about the third day of Boston's vigil we stuck the day's eggs under her.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Moving the Chickens Outside
Time passed, the chicks grew, and we had to expand to a second cardboard box. Finally, we removed everything movable from the utility room and built a chicken-wire wall, complete with door, and turned half the room over to the them. We lined the walls and floor with a blue tarp, and put branches collected from outside through the wire and across the room to make perches.
Finally, we cleared out the back half of the pool house, a fairly spacious outbuilding, made another chicken-wire wall, and moved the chickens out to their new home. The final building project was fencing in a chicken run along the back of our fenced-in swimming pool.
Happy chickens! At about five months (that is, early July), we found the first egg, about half the size of a regular grocery store egg. (Chickens start small and work up.) We put up a row of nest boxes (left over from our previous chicken set-up), and put a golf ball in each one. Chickens can't tell an egg from a golf ball, so when they see a golf ball in a nest, they figure that this must be where eggs go, and they lay there. By early August, we were getting 8-10 eggs a day, and pestering out friends to take them. Once they got to a more normal size, we signed up as an egg vendor with the local food co-op, and starting selling them a couple dozen eggs every week or so. But it's more fun to give them away.
Finally, we cleared out the back half of the pool house, a fairly spacious outbuilding, made another chicken-wire wall, and moved the chickens out to their new home. The final building project was fencing in a chicken run along the back of our fenced-in swimming pool.
Happy chickens! At about five months (that is, early July), we found the first egg, about half the size of a regular grocery store egg. (Chickens start small and work up.) We put up a row of nest boxes (left over from our previous chicken set-up), and put a golf ball in each one. Chickens can't tell an egg from a golf ball, so when they see a golf ball in a nest, they figure that this must be where eggs go, and they lay there. By early August, we were getting 8-10 eggs a day, and pestering out friends to take them. Once they got to a more normal size, we signed up as an egg vendor with the local food co-op, and starting selling them a couple dozen eggs every week or so. But it's more fun to give them away.
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