Eggs!

The chickens have finally started laying eggs... enough eggs to feed a family.
Around Thanksgiving we were getting one egg every other day, and the egg would be laid in the pen, not the nest, which meant we got a dirt coated egg every other day.
I bet even that egg is better for us than factory eggs from the grocery store...


Here you can see what the chickens think of me... a food vendor!
They associate me with food and treats, so now whatever I touch becomes very interesting to them... even if it's just the bedding in their pen. Silly birds.

With all the construction going on, and occasional errant dog coming into our yard, I've come to the conclusion that free ranging 6 birds is way too risky. We've lost one to a wild animal and had to cull three roosters that were extremely loud. The one rooster left (farthest right in pic) has a strange crow that's almost comical. I'm not willing to lose anymore and then have to wait another 6 months for more eggs.
So, I've been bringing the food to them. Now that the ground is frozen, I've been giving them lettuce and other greens and sometimes leftovers from the dinner table. When the lawn was still growing, I'd mow a strip and dump the clippings in their pen. I'd like to grow some meal worms as an added source of protein, but that'll take some figuring out.

Update...

The basement has been torn apart because of all the construction and as a result been very cold.
I don't spend any time down there in front of the computer and haven't updated the blog. There are pics on the camera of the progress on the house. Soon, maybe this weekend, I'll sit down and load them all and then post.

The weather has been a roller coaster. Monday in the high 20sF, yesterday 64 F and rainy, and today 35F and raining even harder. Bad headaches yesterday... not sure why.

The barometer went from roughly 30.0 in Hg down to 29.7 in Hg in a matter of 4 hours.

Not sure if that's a big drop... I'm just posting it here so I can have a written record and begin keeping track of this.
Today it's between 30.025 and 30.08 in Hg.

I really have no idea what the typical fluctuations are like for this part of the world so I can't make any conclusions.

Amber is sooooo close to giving birth that I'm on edge about that too. We have a couple of names up in the air but nothing certain.
Lots of exciting stuff happening!

Construction

It's mid-November and the weather has finally turned a sharp corner here in Massachusetts and barely got out of the 30s today.
Of course this all happens the week we decide to break ground on our house expansion plans. We had it coming though... it's taken weeks to get the financing in order and work out the budget with the contractor. All that was going on when the weather was a balmy 60 F all day long and barely in the 40s at night.

The diggers came in and really tore things up the past two days. It's really amazing how powerful these machines are.





Here's a video of stones being moved:


We tried to save stones and trees and anything that would add to the finished design and make it look like part of the surrounding structure and landscape. We had to cut one large dogwood but we moved a second dogwood with some bumps and bruises:



This weekend I'll prune it back pretty hard and tie it up so the wind doesn't knock it over through the winter months. Not sure if it'll make it but it's worth a try!

Chickens...

We have a small flock of laying chickens that my wife got from a local elementary school. A friend that she occasionally rides horses with is a school teacher and had purchased fertile eggs and hatched them for her classroom. Since we had chickens 3 summers ago, she asked if we would like to take some of the chicks and we decided now would be a great time to start the flock again.


Back in 2005 I decided I wanted to take control of where at least a small amount of my food came from. I started small vegetable garden and we bought 7 hens that we housed in a chicken tractor setup that I built from an old shipping crate, PVC piping and lots of chicken wire. It turned out to be a lot of work to move the setup around the yard about every other day. I liked doing the work, but all of the excitement and attention that it generated in the neighborhood exhausted my social batteries and made me feel a bit out of place. The neighboring children couldn't get enough when the tractor was on our front lawn, but the parents and older people thought we were weird people.

I kept it going for the first year and then parked the birds in the backyard for the winter which is where they ended up staying in the summer of 2006.
I wanted to keep them on pasture but encountered a few problems that made it easier to keep them in one spot. First, the PVC pen broke under the weight of snow and I didn't want to spend more $$$ buying the specialized fittings. Next, the tractor's tires had deflated and I had a hard time getting them to inflate again. And finally, the neighbors wouldn't stop with the commentary, which got my wife looking at me sideways.


You can see the coop jacked up for some tire repair in the picture.

The summer of 2006 is when the predators started their attacks. First, a hawk killed two birds while I was at work on separate occasions. I had no idea what killed the first bird when I got home from work. There was just a dead chicken with bits missing here and there. I thought it got sick and the other cannibalized it. I've read about this happening. It wasn't until our neighbor saw the second chicken attacked and killed by the hawk that I figured out what happened to the first one.
Next came the fox. That happened because I began free ranging the birds and would close them in around sundown. Well a few times I wouldn't get to their coop until dark and that's when foxes hunt! We lost another two that way.
And the final predator was the fisher cat. There was no stopping that thing! It climbed the fence, ripped a whole in the netting and grabbed the birds one at a time. All this happened at night over the course of several nights. I didn't know this was going on until I noticed I was down to 3 birds from 6!
At this same time my daughter was being born in the hospital and I gave up on chickens until now!

Here are two short videos of the current chickens:

For real this time...

Okay. This time I'm going to stick to the blog thing.

I have friends and coworkers that are so good at keeping regular blog postings. Not me…

Work in progress.

The latest:

• Wife's preggers with #2. She's getting really uncomfortable at this point (due 12-25-08) and I feel for her.
  
• The house will very soon be under construction. We've decided against moving because the market is crap, and there's crap on the market, so plan B was to make our house easier to live in.
• We have chickens again. Got them this past June from an elementary school classroom that hatched them. Not laying yet, but still fun to have.
  
• Allie's is growing to be such a big girl! She's now 2 yrs 3 mos and fully potty trained. We're very proud of her. :)

This past weekend was fun, despite the ultra-warm fall weather we've been having. 65F and rainy on Saturday is not standard fall weather for November in New England.

In preparation for the construction about to begin at our house, I wanted to help tear down the back deck for two reasons: 1- Demo work can be fun. 2- I wanted to save some of the wood to either burn in the fireplace or to use for other projects.

I really wanted to save all the wood, but taking it apart board for board and nail by nail is really a feat for a crew of people with the right tools. Another goal was to GET IT DONE by Sunday afternoon, which meant doing some real demolition work with a saw, a sledge and a ripping bar.

Later in the day we went to Idlywild, a local fruit and veggies market that has great produce as their central theme. We found spinach from NJ on sale and bought a bag…

Meat Holiday...

I'm in the middle of reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver and I came across a quote regarding the eating of animals that does a good job expressing how I feel about the matter.

"I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable in order to feed me. If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade. And I am getting as fussy about food plants."

Wendel Berry

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a coworker regarding the shooting of animals while hunting. Although he, like I, had gone hunting in his teenage years and shot and killed a deer, he said he disagreed with the idea, saying it was cruel to kill an innocent animal in the wild. I, on the other hand, think it cruel to farm animals, equally as innocent, in a factory manner and then kill them, leaving their lives devoid of any purpose or meaning.
If we all had to kill a mammal or bird for our meal just once in our adolescent or adult lives, we would have a new respect for the food we eat and the people that provide that food.
It's certainly not easy to kill, but is it easier to live without eating meat?
I think not. In fact, I think living completely dependent on vegetables is as destructive as living with meat, if not more so.

This will shock most people, as it goes against the grain (most think that if we were all vegetarians we'd be better as a society), but animals allow farms to be sustainable and self reliant, not depending on fossil fuels for fertilizer, tilling and pest control. There are farms near where I live that use horses as draft power, use manure to fertilize fields, and use symbiotic relationships between animals to keep pests under control.

Animals are also able to make use of non-arable land that may either be too hilly, not fertile enough, or even land that doesn't have enough people to do the work it takes to harvest acres upon acres of plant foods.
Animals, especially ruminants, are able to eat grasses that grow in nutritionally poor soils and convert that energy into manure for plants and food for people. In fact, humans can obtain much more nutritional density from animals than from grains, fruit and vegetables. We're really good at digesting fat and protein but no good at digesting cellulose.

My family eats humanely raised meat several times a week but not every day. We rotate between fish, poultry and mammal, and we're thankful for what we have. I've done the dirty deed several times in the past and it has taught me the value of life.

Needless to say, it's been way long since I last wrote.
I'm not really used to the blog thing. I stopped keeping a diary when my handwriting became so bad that I couldn't figure what I'd been writing, and that was over 15 years ago.

***

I love to cook but have been finding it difficult to find the time to make really good long and slow meals like stew, beans and soup. So the wife and I got a slow cooker after reading it would improve our lives, i.e. more time with each other and less time cooking.
We ended up with the All Clad ceramic 6.5 QT. It's great. I have nothing to compare it to but it's made a few really good meals so far.

I've been experimenting with the different settings, low and high, and the amounts of time on both.
My best successes have been the following recipes:

Ingredients:

1 lb beef chuck for stew

1 lb boneless short ribs (you might want to skip the chuck and just use two lbs short ribs... they were awesome)

(I cut the meat in 1-2 inch cubes)

1 med onion, chopped coarsly

1 turnip, 1 inch cubes

3 carrots

1 potato, 1 inch cubes

1 cup mushrooms

2 Tblsp flour

4 cloves garlic, chopped coarse

3 sprigs thyme

3 bay leaves

1 Tblsp Worcestershire sauce

1 Tblsp cider vinegar or red wine vinegar or malt vinegar (don't use rice vinegar... too strong)

1 cup red wine

1 bottle beer

Method:

Salt and pepper the beef liberally.

Brown the beef in a Dutch oven. The meat has enough fat that you don't have to add any if you don't want. Also, the burned bits on the pan bottom are good, they'll add flavor later.

Brown until meat is no longer red and juices are running.

Add all the chopped veggies (except garlic and herbs) to the pan with a few good, hefty pinches of salt. The salt helps draw moisture out of the veggies and helps to start deglazing the pan.

When the veggies begin to sweat, add two tablespoons flour. Stir well to coat and cook about 2 minutes.

When heated through and the flour is sticking/burning to the pan bottom, add the wine and vinegar along with the garlic and herbs.

Scrape the pan bottom to loosen browned bits.

When all bubbly, add the beer.

Stir well. When all comes to a simmer, transfer to slow cooker and go low and slow for 10 hours.

I cooked this stew on low for 10 hours and the meat, especially the short ribs, were succulent and fell apart in the mouth. The root veggies were not too soft and the flavors were deep, sweet, tangy, earthy and warm. It snowed today too, which made the evening ideal for beef stew.

I also tried my hand at a beef and bean chili, which wasn't what I thought it would be.

Chili recipe for slow cooker

Ingredients:

1 lg onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped (1/2" pcs)

1 lb ground beef (I used 85%)

4 cloves garlic

3 Tblsp chili powder

1 tsp oregano

2 Tblsp flour

1 cup red wine

1 cup tomato (canned whole, sauce, fresh, whatever)

1 1/2 cup water (I used close to 3 but I think that was too much)

1 cup dried red beans, kidney or similar, see below for how I prepare them*

salt and pepper

Method:

In a large Dutch oven or similar over medium high flame, saute beef until uniformly brown and rendered.

Add celery and onions and two good dashes of salt (this helps draw some water out of the veggies, caramalizing them and concentrating their flavors). Cook for 5-10 minutes, or until transparent/translucent. Add garlic, chili powder and oregano, stir and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, incorporating thouroughly and mixing continuously so the flour cooks and doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan; cook for about 2-3 minutes. Add wine and stir well. Mixture should begin to thicken. Add water, stirring continuously and turn heat on high. Add tomato and beans and bring to boil.

At this point you can transfer to the slow cooker or set it aside to cool and then place in the refrigerator until the next morning.

I cook on low for 10 hours.

Serve with shaved cheddar as a garnish on the chili and hearty bread on the side. Beer works well too.

*I prepare the beans two days in advance as follows:

Day one- Soak them overnight in enough clean water to cover the beans by 2-3 inches (they'll expand).

Day two- In the morning, pour off the water and rinse the beans. Let them sit in a bowl all day and add them to the recipe by day's end.

This preparation neutralizes phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors and helps breakdown difficult to digest complex sugars.

I think the problem with this chili was the beans were old. The didn't get soft like slow beans should get. There was also too much liquid in the pot. the flavor was pretty good but the texture could have been a little silkier with more body.

***

Thanksgiving should be interesting.
I usually don't get along well with my brother in the kitchen but I always get sucked into helping out with the meals, especially the big holiday meals.
More on that some other time.