What's growing?

It's already summer and I've not done a garden post in a while. In fact, I can't remember when I last did one, but, then again, I can't remember what my kids birth dates are either sometimes.

So, here are some random photos of the garden.

lots of garlic (right) and onions (left) with tree nursery in front

kale in the foreground

alpine strawberries that some people claim are full of flavor, but I think they mealy

various lettuces

trying out a special weed cover made from paper

banana peppers

eggplant in the greenhouse

nopal (that we hope will grow big enough to eat one day)

Asian pears in the orchard

black raspberries

These photos were taken over a couple of weeks of end of spring and beginning of summer, so there's a mix of spring and summer veggies.


And finally, because I've preempted "My Favorite Scene" today, I feel like I should at least have a video, so here's one of the guys and the chickens:

So, how about you? How does your garden grow?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A Farewell to Tethys

In memory of our goofy hen, Tethys:

It's not that chickens aren't tough creatures, but that the cost to get a vet to treat them far outweighs the benefits of keeping it alive, especially when their course of treatment is probably like this:

Far Side cartoon by Gary Larsen

When Tethys had a prolapse, hubby and Son1 decided to tackle the situation themselves. "I'm not a veterinarian, but I play one on my own homestead." They put her in a bucket of water and washed her poopy butt, pushing the prolapse back the best they could.

Tethys had lost a lot of weight, but their TLC seemed to buy her some more time. She appeared to recover enough to lumber around the yard like a willow branch through molasses for several more weeks.

Far Side cartoon by Gary Larsen

But, she was no spring chicken (ouch!), and, eventually, the illness and weight loss got to her and, I'm sad to report, she died last week.

We'll miss her, especially Son1 (who was having fun with her in this video).

If you raise chickens, do you have any home treatment success stories - where you brought it back from the brink of death - you'd like to share?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Eggs, eggs, and more eggs

**Thanks to Yvonne for making me realize I spelled "yolk" wrong. In my defense, I had a loooong day out yesterday and found out at the end of the day that I never did finish writing my post and schedule it (I'd uploaded the photos and totally forgot about the post...genius), so I rushed to post it. Things are corrected now! How embarrassing. :)

We currently have 15 hens, the most we've ever had (well, 16 is the most we've ever had, but Brody was picked off by a hawk not too long ago).

Because our hens are a variety of mutts (even Ameraucanas are really "mutts"), the eggs they lay are nicely varied too, ranging from light pink to dark olive.

Not only do they have a range of colors, but they also have a range of sizes. Some measure longer than 3 inches!

Recently, we've had a couple of eggs that were not only long but also massive in girth. One is in the upper left of this photo:

We speculated that those eggs would be double-yolkers, and sure enough... See the middle egg in the pan:

In the 12 years we've owned chickens, we'd only gotten double-yolkers a couple of times. But within the past month, we've had 2 of them. Hmmm, methinks we have a mutant hen on our hands. Call Professor Xavier!

Have you had any double-yolked eggs lately?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

The week in recap

Because I've been too darned lazy and busy to do a post during the week, I'm down to Sunday and don't want to bore you with a long post.

An update on the copperheads: it would appear that after guarding our blueberry bushes from the marauding chipmunks, and obviously having eaten all the chipmunks in our backyard, they have decided to move on to a new home. We've not seen them all week. I'm a relieved but a little sad. They did do a darn good job with keeping the chipmunk population down.

Dh picked some more Asian pears this week. This is what happens when you leave them alone for a while instead of trying to pick them early: they grow bigger! Duh. The one on the left was picked a couple of weeks ago, while the one on the right had a chance to catch a few more rays of sun on the tree.Yesterday was canning day. The pile o' tomatoes in front of dh was just 1/3 of what we ended up processing. We got a total of 18 3/4 quarts of sauce! The 3/4 quart we didn't can, but will use for borani or something this coming week. Never leave more than a small head-space in your canning jar.All the tomatoes in 4 big pots:Did I mention that they were in FOUR big pots?We watched a bit of Mad City Chickens last night. We'd first seen it written up in a paper in Vancouver, and requested that our library get a copy of it. Being the generally agreeable library it is, our wish was granted. It's a cute little film, a bit silly and humorous. What struck me as sad though, was, at the beginning of the film, someone in Madison, WI, who had been raising chickens illegally, said that one of her neighbors complained to the city about her chickens...not because of the noise or the smell, but because this neighbor was afraid this woman might eat the chickens. I'm boggled as to where this neighbor thinks the supermarket chickens come from? Rained down from the sky in a pristine shrink-wrapped form?? It's disturbing how some people are so removed from their food (and ancestral roots of merely a couple of generations ago) that they think it's unnatural to raise and process one's own meat.

We finished up the kids' swim lessons this week. It was good to find out that they didn't forget everything that they learned last year. :)

Our homeschool co-ops and classes will start up next week and the week after. I guess fall is officially here, despite it not being September yet.

Has school/homeschool started for your kids yet? What sorts of fun things are you doing as August comes to an end?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A Sunday full of chickens + a poll

I'm pleased to say I actually got my act together and sent my gifts off to Little Shadow Creations and Gassner Custom Soaps! Yay, me! Isn't it sad that I'm such a procrastinator that I get so excited when I do things in a timely fashion?

So, because Blonde Duck requested chickens, I'm going to show off some pictures of our chickens this Sunday.

Before I do though, I want to ask: do you think I post too often, not often enough or just right? Right now, I'm trying to keep my postings to 3 times a week: Tuesdays for random facts (and maybe some thoughts), Thursdays for being thankful, and Sunday for various other things. I'm going to create a poll on the sidebar (hopefully) and get your feedback. If you have further thoughts, please comment. Thanks!

So, chickens...well, we had a long, convoluted rooster swap, which I will spare you the gory details of. Basically, we got rid of a rooster that kept attacking us, and have come full-circle back to a rooster we had as a chick (who lived most of his life at a friend's mini-farm). Let's give a warm welcome to CH...here he is when we had him as a chick:and here he is in his adulthood glory:Some other random chicken photos...This is Dino; she was hatched out by Gaia about 2 years ago. Her sister Mrs. Tweedy died mysteriously several months back.
Here we have Alpina, the white Ameraucana mix, Dino, taking a dust bath, and Amelia in the back (she was named Amelia because she's a good flier...barump-bump). Alpina is one of our favorite chickens. She'll be 4 years old in August, and is still a feisty and smart (for a chicken) little thing. Lastly, we have Bogey. She came with the batch of roosters we had ordered for eating last fall. Since she turned out to be a hen, we decided to keep her. She is a pleasant soul. We've not been able to figure out her breed though. Anyone has ideas?Now I have to go clean the bathrooms (I've been putting it off and putting it off). What did you do for fun this weekend?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Ow, me achin' back!

You know about the Schwarzchild Radius and that it describes the event horizon - the boundary between the areas of no return and that of achievable escape velocity - of a black hole? I really thought that culling 9 chickens would be my Schwarchild Radius. I thought that I'd teeter between being able to recover from the back-breaking experience and being unable to return to normalcy, doomed forever to hunch over with a sore back (or worse yet, having my back actually break from the labor with such force that it'd shoot blood into my brain and give me an aneurysm...would that happen or should I leave writing medical dramas to someone else?).

I now suspect I'd probably be more like Hawking Radiation and be able to escape even if sucked into the hole side of the radius, a bit sore for the experience, but otherwise, bouncing back sufficiently to do another batch next weekend.

If you think I'm babbling, I probably am. Tiredness does that to me. :}

9 down, 9 more to go next weekend. And if we can't get a hold of a free-range turkey from our health-food co-op, guess what we're having for Thanksgiving? Give you a hint, it's not a Tofurkey (although I've been wanting to try that); it'll be one of these chickens below...(five of the nine today, and nothing like Seven of Nine for you Trekkers)

Wishing everyone in the U.S. a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday week!

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet." ~ James Oppenheim

Too busy to write...

...but I do have some random photos to share. :)

Michelle asked what the buns looked like after being baked; we had already eaten all the hot dogs, so I took a photo of the burger buns (ds#2 made the plate the buns are on) ~Speaking of baking, I tried the Magic Blondies recipe that I'd printed out from MarthaStewart.com We'll have them for dessert tonight ~Ds#1 took a photo of the chickens (the roosters who will reside permanently in our freezer in another month or so) when they'd gotten up on the roost poles for the night. They've gotten so big already. ~I finished my first pair of cotton socks. I could have sworn they fit me when I measured them, but I discovered that they're just a tad too small, so my sister, who has smaller feet than I do, will get to take these. ~My dh is pretty clever. Our wonderful friend, C, gave us these peach baskets, but the handles were rusty wires that cut into our hands when we carry heavy things in the baskets, so dh cut off sections of an old garden hose and inserted them into the handles, which makes them really comfy to use now. The pear basket is without the hose insert, and the apple basket has it, for comparison. ~And now, back to scurrying around...

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet." ~ James Oppenheim

Sunday: the week in review

I just wanted to use that title so I can appear a lot more organized than I am. In actuality, I have the organizational skills of a 3 year old, but let's keep that our little secret, O.K.?

Mid-week, I actually *gasp* cleared off my work table, so I could work on it! What a novel concept. Usually the table is a receptacle for my random pieces of junk. I'd ask that no one look very closely at the photo because then you can see what a wreck my art/craft/sewing room is.The reason why I cleared off the table was so I could make paper downstairs instead of in the kitchen so I'd not be in dh's way when he got home to make dinner. Food is often the motivator of most of my actions.This was the latest paper - "There's a Tomato Leaf in My Garden" is what I call it. It's tinted green, and is scented with Bramble Berry's Tomato Leaf and Green Garden fragrances. As well, it has petals from a flower I'd picked from our yard. If my brain were here with me instead of being on vacation in the Bahamas, it'd tell me what that flower was, and I could share that information with you.Incidentally, the papers I've been making are tinted with junk papers, just like the rest of the pulp. I don't add my own colorings.

The previous batch of paper I made, which I never took photos of, were red-tinted and scented with Bramble Berry's Romance fragrance oil. I called it "Romancing the Red" (not the most clever name, but it's alliterative, which is good enough for me).

Yesterday, we picked kale, celery, and frisee from our garden and had a really tasty salad with dinner.*Warning: next photo contains meat products!

This morning, we took out two free-loading chickens. Gaia's rooster chick, while a sweet thing at 4 months, was one more rooster than a farmyard really needs, and we already have 25 other chickens of the XY ilk. As uselss as Nick is these days, we promised the friend who gave him to us that we'd keep him until he died of natural causes, so the un-named rooster had to go.

Another one who had to go was Attila who laid about 1 egg every 2-3 weeks. With the price of feed these days (even though we free-range them, we do supplement with store-bought feed), and with chicken housing being at a premium, any chicken not pulling its weight had to go. Besides, she was insane, even for a chicken. Insane and scrawny.And on the topic of chickens, I will close with a great quote from Jacques Pepin - "For most kids now, a chicken is rectangular. It's got plastic on top, and it doesn't have eyes or feet. This is scary. You should never eat something you cannot recognize. A simple principle, but important."

"Happiness depends upon ourselves." ~ Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

Surprise!

Gaia's chicks are hatching!! Their birth-date was yesterday, but close enough. We're just happy they hatched at all. The boys checked on her this afternoon and discovered them. I had looked in on her this morning, and they may have already hatched then, but I didn't lift her high enough to see.

Here is one in front of Gaia:I put on gloves so Gaia couldn't peck at my hands as I picked up one of the chicks. They are very curious at this age, and kept getting out from under her to stare at us. I imagine they, like human babies, can't focus very well at this age, but I could be wrong. Here's a better close-up (not blurry):Are they CUTE or what?? :)

So much for trying to make soap this afternoon. I need to go make biscuits for dinner now. The How to Cook Everything book has a very good, and easy, "emergency" drop biscuit recipe.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Remembering Star

With one of the last of Star's eggs (above), I made lemon poppy seed muffins (below), using the UBC cookbook recipe. They were delicious!


I was also thinking of doing something with the egg shell...some art, perhaps. What to do with something that fragile...hmmm.

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." ~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)

Alpina the Brave, and Smart

Not only does she range widely, and alone, when we let out the chickens, but she also seems to know where and how to get back to home base...unlike the dim-witted Australorps who couldn't find their way back the other day. We ended up having to let them into the fowl hut because they refused to be herded back to the orchard where the chicken tractor is currently. We should definitely try to hatch out some Alpina eggs in the spring.

I don't know where the name Alpina came from; ds#2 named her.

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." ~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)