Fall moon

First-time crops

A couple of success stories for the 2010 harvest, both vegetables I've not grown before and both plants that seem to thrive on neglect. Which is always good...

The swede/rutabaga were a surprise success. You can see from the photograph how stony our soil is, but these sturdy little plants have managed to produce good-sized roots despite that.

I've been growing winter squash of various types since we moved here, but this year was the first time I've grown butternut squash. These five fruit were all from the one plant. Next to them is the only pumpkin I've picked so far - there are two more on the plant, but they're still green and I'm not sure they'll reach maturity. The yellow ones are 'Small wonder' spaghetti squash, which have done brilliantly this year. I've picked over twenty so far and there are more still ripening on the vine.

Just add water

Yesterday's not-so-fun job was emptying the chicken's stall of litter. There were about seven barrow-loads of it, which are now sitting outside the greenhouse, ready to be turned into chicken manure. Of course when you want it to rain, it doesn't, so I'll be watering this heap along with the greenhouse beds for the next week or so, to get the process going. Then once it's good and hot, I'll cover it with tarpaulin and let it rot down over the next few months.

When I look at this pile I'm planning how it's going to help improve my vegetable garden next year. I certainly hadn't thought about it as a source of food for anything other than my plants. But while doing a little research on how best to turn it into chicken manure I came across this disturbing article from last year about how cattle are being fed poultry litter to bulk out more expensive animal feed. This practice is illegal in Canada, but not in the US. How can anyone think that it's a good idea to feed faecal matter from one animal to another? Poor cows.

In case that has left a bad taste in your mouth, here are a couple of photos I took today of flowers and insects, to change the subject.

Lake-cloud

The lake had its own blanket of mist, first thing this morning, forcing me out with my camera again.It was impossible to see to the other side, at first.

Away from the water, all was crisp and clear. The maple trees are beginning to show their autumn colours, tucked amongst summer's green:

By the time I got back to my starting point, the lake-cloud was thinning and the southern shore was just beginning to appear:

The deep dark wood

Yesterday, Mike asked me if I wanted to see the area where he's been cutting up fallen trees (this question possibly being the homesteader's equivalent of 'Come up and see my etchings'). It's quite impressive, the amount of clearing that he has managed to do - there's a passable trail into the wood now. In some ways it's like a sculpture walk, with Ice Age granite rocks and striking lumps of wood from tree roots marking the way:

This second one is Halloweenish in nature. Like a ghoul, or the figure in Edvard Munch's The Scream.

New order

The look of terror in the dog's eyes - and the supreme indifference in the cat's - sum up this new relationship perfectly.

Things are going slightly more smoothly in the chicken house, where Operation Chickentegration has been a success and the two flocks are now living in the same space. There's a bit of argy-bargy going on, but it's not just the older chickens occasionally pecking the younger ones: I saw one of the young hens having a go at the rooster twice this morning. Brave beast.

The chicks are happy to stay in the relative security of the barn and the adjoining run and they don't mix with the older hens much at the moment.

The water's lovely

This amazing beach is only a ten-minute drive from our house, and yet today was the first time the whole family have been there this year. Last summer we spent several hot evenings there and I was slightly shocked to realise that we'd got to the last day of August without a visit.

To make up for our neglect, I prepared a Blytonesque picnic of cheese, onion and potato pies, hard-boiled eggs, and pasta salad:

Although no ginger beer, sad to say.

I always find it stressful getting to the beach: everyone always seems bad-tempered, for some reason, as we load up the car with stuff and fail to find the suntan lotion, or someone's goggles. But when we arrive, the sound of the waves is instantly soothing, transporting me back to my childhood trips to the water's edge.

We lived in a seaside town then, but I seem to recall that our visits to the beach were just as infrequent in those days, too. My memory suggests that we mainly went there when our inland-dwelling cousins came to stay. Perhaps it's inevitable that you take such natural pleasures for granted when you live near them.

One of my enduring memories of those four-generation extended-family days out at the beach is of my grandfather. His method of entering the cold sea was quite spectacular. No timid inching into the water, step by freezing step, for him. He would run into the English Channel at a tremendous pace, spraying water everywhere around him and making a huge noise and performance about the whole procedure. The entire beachful of people would stop to stare at him in amazement while his family laughed in delight. Except perhaps his wife. I suspect she would have been wincing in embarrassment or hiding in the beach hut.

A damp start

It was the sort of dawn that shakes you out of bed and presses the camera into your hand.

I was just going to take a couple of pictures from the front step, but ended up wandering the vegetable garden in my slippers (which are now comprehensively soaked).

It looked very autumnal, but the temperature was already 18°C/64°F, so not particularly cool. Now, half an hour later, the mist has already gone and it is going to be a hot and humid day.

Jeepers Creepers

I do apologise. Not quite sure what it is with this cat and 1930s jazz songs, but you've got to admit that her eyes are quite unusual. We took her to the vet on Thursday for her first set of vaccinations and he said he'd never seen a cat with eyes this brown.

There was another grey tabby-ish cat in the litter from which my daughter chose this one, but her eyes were green. It'll be interesting to see how Minnie's change as she matures.

Up close

Now the sunflowers have opened, I can appreciate the complexity of the disc flowers in the centre of the flower head. They have a weird beauty which somehow reminds me of the illustrations in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's book, The Little Prince.

Nearby, a grasshopper seemed to be admiring its shadow. I didn't notice any ants, but I'm sure they were there somewhere, busily preparing for the winter.

Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-hi

Thank goodness for digital cameras. This beast has been in the house for less than 24 hours and already there are 62 snapshots of her. These two are just to introduce her - I will try to restrain myself and not post hundreds. We've called her 'Minnie', which is short for Minerva (her eye markings made us think of Professor McGonagall's cat form in the Harry Potter books). Only problem with that is that I've had 'Minnie the Moocher' as an earworm ever since.

Playing catch-up with ketchup

I made a determined effort to get back in charge of the garden produce yesterday, picking and processing 2.5 pounds of french/snap beans and 16 pounds of tomatoes.

Most of the tomatoes went straight into the food processor and were then cooked down into tomato sauce on the stovetop. Two pounds of them were used for my first attempt at tomato ketchup, using the recipe in Jamie Oliver's Jamie at home book. It doesn't make a huge quantity: about half a pint of ketchup, which takes quite a long cooking time to get to the right consistency. Tastes great, though.

Bon Appétit, raccoon

Perfect isn't it? It's a bi-coloured variety called 'Bon Appétit' which I bought from Vesey's seeds in 2008. Vesey's describe it as of "excellent eating quality".

Unfortunately the raccoons agree and we've had maybe seven cobs from this year's crop. The remainder have been stripped on the plant by the pesky creatures, leaving nothing but the vaguely obscene and insulting remains:

This is in my 'three sisters' bed, which for the first time actually worked according to the plan. The beans have been cropping well and the squash plants have spread all around the corn. The idea was that the spiky stalks of the squash stems would deter raccoons. Pah.

Losing interest

The mother hen is beginning to get bored of her five-week-old chicks. For the last few days she's been spending the daylight hours with the main flock of adult birds. At night though, she wants to be in the chick enclosure with her three youngsters. Instead of sleeping on the floor with them, as she used to do, she perches on the old manger in the chick enclosure and the chicks huddle up next to her.

I've been letting the chicks out of their coop and into the fenced run in the evening for ten minutes or so, after the adults have been locked up for the night. In the mornings, I let the chicks and adults run together for a while, under supervision, before shutting the chicks into their corner of the barn for the day, without the ex-broody hen, who seems to have decided that she's had enough maternity leave for now.

The twelve larger chicks, which are now coming up for seven weeks old, are wary of the adult hens and keep their distance. They've learnt from their experience in sharing the coop with the mother of the small chicks that big hens can be aggressive. The three smaller chicks are used to being protected by their mother and are less sensible, often going a bit too close to the other hens and the rooster and getting a peck in return.

It will be a few weeks before I can integrate the two sets of birds completely, but I hope that this gradual introduction will make that process more straightforward. I have been doing a bit of reading around the subject of introducing a new set of birds to an existing flock, but haven't come across anything that quite matches the particular circumstances in which these chicks have been reared. Taking it slowly and closely watching the behaviour of all the birds seems to be the best way forward, for now.

Girasoli

Considering that I thought I'd killed the sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) back in May, they've bounced back well and are now flowering. I'm pleased to have finally got some of these, as it's a plant that is native to this continent.

In the lower vegetable garden I've got some giant sunflowers growing. They're already taller than me and I'm looking forward to seeing these flower, too. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I've never grown giant sunflowers before. I think this is because my mother didn't like them and I inherited her prejudice without questioning it. I probably would have carried on not growing them if I hadn't been given some seeds this year. At that point I decided that I had enough prejudices of my own, without having to carry around other people's, so I sowed them and will happily confess that I have quite enjoyed watching these monsters grow.

Baked tortilla chips & salsa

Another couple of recipes from The Kid's Cookbook. Child #2 and I made these for lunch. The baked tortilla chips were delicious. To be even more home-made, you could of course make your own flour tortillas, but I have to confess that these were shop-bought ones. You just brush them with some melted butter, sprinkle grated parmesan, pepper, salt and paprika over, cut them up and bake at 200°C/400°F for 8 minutes, until they're golden. The recipe also called for poppy and sesame seeds, but I'd run out of both of those.

Perfect with some fresh tomato salsa - a mix of chopped tomato with a small green chilli pepper (Hungarian hot wax in this case), a few chopped onion slices and coriander leaves/cilantro (I added parsley, too), some lime juice (I didn't have any, so used lemon) and seasoning.

D is for Daunting

I'm beginning to get overwhelmed with food from the garden. After being away for a week, I picked 17 pounds of produce yesterday (and that's not including the enormous marrow that was lurking under one of the courgette/zucchini plants). This afternoon's harvest wasn't as large, but was still respectable:

I've been using a different method this year to preserve the tomatoes. I saw it on a Food Network programme: Laura Calder's French Food at Home. It's a bottling/canning recipe which is extremely simple and which was originally published by the culinary writer Anne Willan (confusingly, the recipe title on the Food Network refers to Anne Willian: I spent quite a while trying to find out who she was before discovering the truth!). The recipe involves putting the tomatoes into jars, adding some onion rings and herbs and then boiling the jars for 90 minutes in a large panful of water. The preserved tomatoes should then keep well into the winter for use in soups and pasta sauces.

The chicks have been growing well in my absence. Gender-wise, I think the ones I picked up from the poultry farm are all female, this time, but I'm fairly sure that the three that hatched from our own eggs are a mixture: two pullets and one Sunday lunch. If I can steel myself to deal with him accordingly, that is...

D also stands for 500, of course, and, according to Blogger this is my 500th post. Hm, perhaps I should have blogged about something slightly more exciting than vegetables and chickens.

But then that would have been completely out of character, wouldn't it?

Banana breakfast

We had a few bananas that were looking past their best, so it was time to make one of our favourite breakfasts:

The recipe came from The Kid's Cookbook by Abigail Johnson Dodge, which I can recommend as a book aimed at children who like cooking. My son loves it and I approve of its focus on fresh, unprocessed ingredients. This one is our favourite recipe so far.

Banana Pancakes

3 oz/¾ stick/6 tablespoons butter
1 ½ cups flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ripe banana
2 eggs
1 cup/250ml/8 fl oz milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt two-thirds of the butter and set it aside to cool. Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together. Mash up the banana and mix in the eggs, milk, vanilla extract and melted butter. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ones.

Heat a griddle or frying pan with the remaining butter and scoop ¼ cupfuls of the mixture into it. My frying pan fits three at a time. Turn the pancakes after about two minutes and cook for another 30 seconds or so on the other side. This amount of mixture makes about 15 4-inch pancakes.

Serve them with some sliced banana and maple syrup. I can't pretend that the bananas were a local ingredient, but the maple syrup was!

Drops

Very wet this morning. The garden is looking lushly green: almost unnaturally so for late July.

It's been warm with it. I picked the first aubergines/eggplants from the greenhouse yesterday. Those were the Ping Tungs, which are long, slender and dark purple.

 I'm also growing Rosa Bianca this year, for the first time. These are described as 'tear-drop' shaped in the seed catalogues, but I wouldn't call them that at the moment. They're certainly more curvaceous than the Ping Tungs.

Picking and pickling

It's been a much better summer than last year's (so far, anyway), weather-wise. Warmer and slightly wetter. On the 21st of July 2009 I was still awaiting tomatoes, beans and zucchini. We've been picking all of these for around a week now. Mind you, they are different tomatoes from those I grew last year - it's the Marmande and Poma Amoris Minora Lutea varieties that we're picking at the moment. All from the greenhouse - but there's at least one of the variety with the ridiculously long name outside that's nearly ripe, too. I didn't pick any tomatoes until August in 2009.

I've even started doing a bit of pickling already - some cucumbers, Hungarian Hot Wax peppers (the ones in the photo) and, today, some beetroot. Not because I have an excess of anything yet, just because we like pickles!

Mike bought me a hammock today, but I'm not sure when I'm going to get the time to lie in it.

Of course, he had to check that it was safe for me to use.

What a waist

Oh dear. This is rapidly turning into a wasps-and-chickens blog. This is another mud dauber (unsurprisingly called the black and yellow mud dauber (Sceliphron caementarium)) and here you can see it collecting a lump of mud with which to build its nest. There were around a dozen of these visiting a rapidly-shrinking puddle this afternoon. Like the blue mud dauber, these are solitary wasps and don't aggressively defend their nests - they're not a particular threat to people. They also stock their nests with spiders, so if you're the sort of person who is even more scared of spiders than you are of wasps, don't swat these ones!

Light and dark, feathers and fluff

We've taken a chance and put the two-week-old chicks in with the ones that hatched this week (and their mama). So far, so good. The broody and her young are keeping to one corner of the stall, while the twelve older chicks skitter about in the opposite corner, reminding me of the tiny but deadly dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Two weeks makes a huge difference in chick development terms: it felt a bit like putting a crowd of toddlers into the same room as a newborn baby. Having the broody in the mix seems to be keeping the peace.

Newly hatched

Another one of the eggs has turned into a chick. This one looks slightly bedraggled, so presumably only hatched in the last few hours.

The hen-hatched chicks are spending most of their time underneath the hen, which makes it difficult to know exactly what's going on. But she seems to know what she's doing. Even if she does look like a Pushmi-pullyu on occasions.

Chicks, the old-fashioned way

We've had a broody hen sitting on a clutch of five eggs for a few weeks now. I had thought that today would be the day they'd be due to hatch, if they were going to. I was not at all convinced that they would, so was quite surprised to find this little ball of fluff on the barn floor this afternoon.

The broody hen was fluffed up next to it on the floor and very soon I saw that there was another chick underneath her wing. They'd both fallen out of the nest box on to the floor and lived to tell the tale.

The other hens were not as pleased to see the new arrivals as I was, so I've moved the broody and chicks into the new chick pen (which we only finished yesterday - phew!) with the remaining three eggs, some chick food and water.

I can see I'm going to be juggling chicks for the next few weeks!