Autumn Leaves

06 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening, Seasons

846E8DA0-25C2-4465-8FCA-56317AA65FFC The weather has been wonderful so far this fall, cool and sunny, perfect for producing great drifts of sun dried leaves. The drier the better. Each year I gather as many as I can store and put them under cover; less moisture extends their shelf life. Leaves are so useful and the chickens enjoy them so much.

A thick layer gets spread across the entire silkie pen, it does a fine job of keeping the mud at bay even after the rains start. In the main coops, I’ll dump a tote full over the fresh wood shavings after I clean each week for as long as they last, for feathered tidbit-hunters to avidly scratch and peck through. Woe betide any little bugs who have made their homes in those leaves.

Momma Barred Rock vacated her room at the hen hotel yesterday, taking her seven children, now ten or so weeks old, back to live with the flock. Good timing Momma! That gives me a good sized leaf storage room for this year. It can hold many wheelbarrow loads, there are four in there now and still a ton of space.

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Of all the things we grow here in our muddy valley, the autumn leaf crop is one of my favourites. Looks gorgeous through spring and summer, and more so when it “ripens”. Zero effort to tend all year long, no seeding or weeding or slug war or watering or deer fencing required. Heck, leaves are even easier to grow than garlic!

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Homemade Butter in 30 Seconds

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Preserving, Reduce, reuse, recycle

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Our household went off margarine in August 2012. We had been thinking about it, so when a visiting cousin mentioned the canola processing plants in her area, commenting that one whiff would make us swear off marg forever, I reached my own personal tipping point. Since I am the grocery shopper, our house went margarine-free.

There isn’t much price difference between the two any more. That had been my main reason for buying marg over the years. But these days I can buy a pound of butter for $3.50 at my local big box store. A 2 lb tub of Becel is $6.49. Some say that butter is bad for you, but I would much rather consume butter than a tub of chemically-manipulated faux butter. Hell, it’s all bad for you…everything in moderation.

I have been experimenting lately with making my own butter. But no laborious churning process for me. It’s the 21st century. I can make butter in literally thirty seconds.

I picked up a half pint of whipping cream for under $2 last week, on clearance, best before Oct 28 – in two days time. It didn’t get used for pasta sauce, cream soup or dessert topping, so last night (Nov 2), I took it out of the fridge and set it on the counter overnight to bring it up to room temp, and maybe even get a little fermentation started.

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This morning I dumped it into my mini food processor, half at a time, and whipped it until it “broke”, which took less than 30 seconds. That’s what happens if you whip cream past the point of whipped cream. It separates into butter and buttermilk; and rather suddenly too.

Once it breaks, you pour off the buttermilk (mmmmm pancakes), scoop the butter into a bowl with your spatula and rinse it under cold water, squishing it in on itself until the water runs clear. Then pour off the water, squish it some more until it stops shedding water, mix in a little salt if you choose (I like pink salt) and refrigerate or freeze.

Today, I got 194 grams of sweet delicious butter – almost half a pound – from my expired whipping cream. Isn’t that cool?!?

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Right Under My Nose

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Liza and Arrow, Seasons

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A sweet little hand-turned yew bowl followed me home from the thrift store last spring. I had been looking for a bowl to keep my sock yarn under control, and this would be perfect! DH cut a curved slot for the line to feed through, drilled a couple holes to hold my needles, sanded it smooth and I was in business.

I love my yew yarn bowl, but soon discovered that it is just too small for bigger projects. The balls of chunky acrylic I bought to knit C’s infinity scarf were twice its size! So I added “big wooden bowl” to my wish list, keeping my eye out for one on my sporadic thrift store visits. But no luck, and I refused to buy new, the up-cycling part is half the fun. Practicing my patience, an ongoing project, I kept on looking.

Recently Resident Gardener got a new puppy. Arrow is currently in training with Liza the barnyard protector, so that one day he may be just as useful and obedient as her. In the meantime though, he alternates between ‘adorable’ and ‘royal pain in the ***”. He helps me to practice my patience too.

I was puppy sitting the other day (at ten weeks old we can’t let him out of our sight for a minute) when he dragged a dusty old wooden bowl out from the bottom shelf of one of the side tables. The same bowl that Little Bean (human toddler, similar stage of development) had pulled out back in the summer when she was visiting. From a spot apparently so inconspicuous that it regularly avoids the cleaner’s swiffer.

The penny hadn’t dropped the first time when Bean had discovered it, but it certainly did this time. Yarn bowl! This thing would make a wonderful large yarn bowl! I whisked it away from sharp puppy teeth, washed off the dust, dried it, then rubbed in a generous dollop of organic olive oil. It cleaned up nice.

The bowl had come from my dear late mom, who had told me when she gave it to me that it had been her mom’s. “Munising” is burned into the bottom, in left leaning script. This is an indication – according to the Munising Wood Products website history page (thanks again internet) – that it was “hand carved” on a Michigan lathe in the 30’s or 40’s.

Possessing both precious family history AND collectable wood bowl attributes, it is remarkably perfect. I can’t bring myself to cut a slot in its side though. I just don’t think my Gram would like that. The bigger balls are all centre-pull anyway.

Right under my nose. A right sized bowl. Sitting quietly in my house waiting to be discovered, all the time I was looking everywhere else. As we all so often do.

The thought made me smile, my day a little brighter. And to be honest, I could use a little cheering up these days. Sometimes lately, the weight of the world settles so heavily I almost gasp for air.

The computer age that makes it possible for us to connect like never before and the social media that was supposed to draw us together, instead pushing us into diametric, vitriolic camps. Pushing us apart.

A caustic election, energy, refugees, the economy, the climate crisis, Trump, wars and cars and polar bears, the rise of the scary far right. My countrymen, friends and acquaintances, even my own family, split by opposing viewpoints. Torn asunder. We used to be able to mostly agree on the way forward, or at least the goals. It seems to me that we have lost that, I hope only temporarily.

The world is “going to hell in a hand basket”, mom would say. And there isn’t much I can do, except hope for the best and support the right causes. Assuming, of course, that I can sift through the crap and figure out what the right causes are.

So when I need to escape for a little while, I shall set Gram’s yarn bowl right here in my lap, busy my fingers, and free my mind to consider all the good things right under my nose. Once I really start to look, they do get easier to spot.

On Spiders

08 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Seasons, Wildlife

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On Spiders

“Stop! Look out!” DH blurted the other day, as I lifted my fork to dig in to my dinner. Puzzled but willing, I pushed back my chair, my eyes following his finger to where he was pointing. A delicate pink and silver spider, all long slender legs and teardrop body, hung above my plate right at eye level. A tiny fairy pirouetting gracefully, twisting and turning as she lowered herself via the spun silk she had fastened to the light fixture overhead. Where was she going? Did she want my dinner? Who knew.

DH stood up, carefully grasped her mooring line well above her current location, at which point she reversed course and started heading back up, and walked to the door with her sailing behind. I thanked him for saving me from a Miss Muffet moment, and we continued our meal.

We taught our children growing up to respect spiders (they’re GOOD bugs, they eat the bad bugs) and each time we were called to deal with another eight-legged intruder we captured it carefully and let it go outside. We generally use the glass and paper method, doming the spider in the glass, then sliding the paper between our quarry and the wall (care must be taken to not break their little legs), before upending the cup and with the paper lid held on firmly, making for the closest outside door.

Despite consistent role-modelling, our children still ended up with a diversity of spider reactivity. One kid screamed and had to restrain herself from killing on sight, one kid more calmly asked for help in capturing, and one kid, heaven help us, trapped them herself then released into her own bedroom…”so it could join the rest of her spider family”.

I have spiders on my mind, because this is the time of year when our lives intersect more closely than usual with the spider members of our environment. They’re just around more. The outside ones busy finishing up their lifecycles, getting ready to lay their eggs I guess, and the inside ones predicting rain.

Every single morning I feel at least one web tighten, then snap across my face as I walk the paths thru our muddy valley. I am so used to this that I just keep walking while apologizing to the spider, and asking them, in case they end up somewhere on my person and can understand English, if they could please depart expeditiously. This seems to work fine. I have never yet come across a spider hanging out on my person. They are in as much of a hurry to leave me as I am to have them depart. We are of one mind on the matter.

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The ground webs, woven between convenient grass hummocks and sparkling in the dewy early morning, are easier to see and thus easier to avoid. And they are everywhere too.

Last week one of our daughters came to stay for a few days, and late one night after I was in bed, her and her dad had a spider adventure that I heard all about the next morning.

She had reached over to twist on the bedside table lamp when she came nose-to-nose with a big hairy brown spider (it was 👌 THIS BIG!!) chilling on the lampshade. Startled, she screamed loudly, “…and Mom” she exclaimed “I clearly saw that spider jump at the sound of my voice, and then freeze!”

“Well” I replied, “I’m sure you frightened him”.

Dad was called, and made a play for the spider with his glass, but the big fellow neatly evaded capture, dropped to the floor and scrambled for safety. DH and daughter, in hot pursuit, finally lost him among the spare blanket and winter clothing detrius of the guest room closet. I heard about the hunt and the spider’s exceptional size from DH too. Probably a descendent of K’s spider family I mused, as I imagined him still safely ensconced in his guest room (her old bedroom) closet.

Every year about this time I grow familiar with one or two specific spiders, who have chosen to reside in spots I frequent. This year I have a barn buddy spider. She has spun her web right above the log brace we hang the baling twine over.

I noticed her the other week, as after opening a new hay bale I reached up to add two more lengths of twine to the hank. Panic-struck at what she evidently saw as the imminent destruction of her web by my hand, she was running up to take refuge on top of the barn door when I noticed her. I was careful to avoid causing damage to her web as I hung my string and I told her so. After all, spiders are very useful in the barn, they eat the bad bugs there too. The next time I opened a bale, I talked to her in a reassuring manner as I slowly stowed the twine, she wavered and retreated, but just a little way this time. The last two times I added string, she hasn’t budged but sits watching me carefully as I greet her, reassure her I mean no harm, and add my string to the hank. We apparently now have an understanding, which is delightful.

I love that we have such a healthy spider population in our muddy valley. They are useful and fascinating little creatures, although I must admit that like most wildlife (and sometimes people too) I do prefer to admire them from a safe distance.

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Invasion of the Cucumbers

17 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening, Preserving

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Our resident gardener planted lots of pickling cukes this year, and they all grew. We are absolutely inundated! Every few days, the garden disgorges another big basketful, as RG discovers another plant twining along in some random corner. The enthusiastic tone of her “I found another patch” announcements has steadily diminished over time. One can only use so many pickling cukes.

D8ECA2A1-EC8B-438B-BCD7-5540F0E5146E Mason jars full of fermenting salt brine pickles are stacked all over my sewing table, friends and family are sharing in the bounty and the chickens are enjoying the ones that grew too big to pickle before they were located. And they Just. Keep. Coming.

Last night, in an attempt to gain the upper hand over the cucumber avalanche, RG gathered up every cuke on hand and came next door to use our big kitchen. It was time to scale up she decided, and make a whole crock full of pickles. After a bit of thought, we pulled out our tall glass kombucha vessel. It would do quite well. We have lots of big pots, but metal won’t work for making pickles. She scrubbed the kombucha vessel thoroughly and filled it with a big batch of pickles, topped and bottomed with fresh grape leaves for tannin (to keep ‘em crispy).

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Ten days or so on the counter, then into jars and the fridge, and we’ll have healthy fermented probiotic pickles and pickle juice good for up to a year, if they last that long (they won’t). In the meantime I am enjoying the beautiful pickle tower decorating my kitchen, glinting green on the counter, filled with quiet purpose as a billion friendly bacteria do their job. Tiny bubbles forming and shifting as the fermenting process unfolds.

One of my cousins has been crazy about pickles his whole life. A true pickle connoisseur, he makes his own, he wins pickling prizes at the fair; the man even owns a pickle suit. If anyone can appreciate a good pickle, it’s cousin D. I will have to make sure he gets a jar. Especially since RG is already boasting about how her pickles are probably better than his. Are we on the verge of a pickle smackdown? Only time will tell…😘

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Balance

10 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Wildlife

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My daughter recently lent me some Zen Buddhism books, and one of the ideas I love is Tao. Tao is the idea that for everything there is an equal counterbalancing opposite, and that these opposites are not separate, but rather different aspects of the same thing. That nothing can exist without its polar opposite, and that this polarity is what our world consists of. The art of life, therefore, is keeping the two poles in balance. Taking the middle way.

I find this concept comforting. To imagine, as I confront our world’s evil via my newsfeed, that for every Bolsanado-empowered logger chopping down the Amazon there is a squad of earnest tree planters digging their heels in; for every ICE gang rounding up and separating families there are good and generous people giving refuge to the stateless and the homeless; that for every senseless act of violence inflicted on the innocent there is, somewhere, a random act of kindness unfolding.

Today I received an unexpected gift, a little Tao right here in my own neighbourhood.

A while ago I wrote a blog post about patience. About needing plenty, to accept a loud, unthinking family who barged into our neighbourhood, bought a big house on top of a thickly forested hill, and proceeded to chop almost the whole forest down to build a wide gravel parking lot. After a couple years of practicing patience with the neighbours to preserve my own peace of mind, I was rewarded with the pleasure of their departure, and the arrival of an unobtrusive new neighbour whom, two years later, I have yet to meet.

The hill’s life energy changed after it was shaved and capped with road-base. There were more casualties as some of the few remaining trees on its flanks sickened and died. I watched this collateral damage play out in extreme slow mo, as I sat every day contemplating the view from my bathroom window. I wondered if and when someone would come to drop the dead snags. Or if a storm would fell them first.

Today I got my answer. I was standing in the kitchen at bang on ten am when the chainsaws fired up, growling their threats to the neighbourhood, and causing more folks than just me I’m sure, to think “uh oh, who’s at it now?” We have all learned to be a little chainsaw-shy around here in recent years. We love our tree canopy. I grabbed a fresh cup of coffee and my cell phone and headed outside, following my ears to find out which neighbour had welcomed the invaders.

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Sure enough, the fallers were just down the road on the neighbour’s hillside, one up a tree and one on the ground, taking care of those snags. “Fair enough” I thought to myself. “Those trees do have to go before someone gets squished.” I would be sad to lose my tall bathroom window snag, and the local eagles and vultures would be sorry to lose their lookout post, but far better a controlled demise than an accidental unfortunately-timed one across the public path at the foot of the hill.

I grabbed a chair, turned on my camera and sipped my coffee as I waited for a photo opportunity. It would be fun to write a little follow up to Patience, to relate another chapter. I watched the faller slowly climb, stopping to carve off each branch as he encountered it, pausing as each crashed into the underbrush, then resuming his slow ascension. About thirty feet from the top, he sliced the treetop clean off and we all watched it crash down, bouncing on top of the lower branches now carpeting the slope.

By this time, the faller on the ground had been joined by my new neighbour, a snowy haired old fellow, and both watched the guy up in the tree intently as he reversed direction, slowly descending, stopping every 10-12 feet to slice and send another chunk crashing down. When he had about thirty feet to go, the guy on the ground called up to him. I couldn’t clearly hear what was said, but I saw hands chopping diagonally and my ears caught the word ‘angle’ as the wind wafted it by.

The next cut was duly made on an angle, so that I could clearly see the pale insides of the snag, and then the saw stopped growling entirely and the faller moved on down the last stretch of trunk.

That’s when I understood, the owner had asked the fallers to leave the remaining snag as a wildlife tree. Amazing, what a gift! I was so happy! Anyone who knows about wildlife habitats knows that it is best to leave snags standing if possible. Each one can support a plethora of flora and fauna as it slowly decays. What a good act. My new neighbour, doing his part to both keep local trail-walkers safe, and support nature. He embodies the polar opposite of my old neighbour. Balance. Tao, as in all the fabric of our universe.

I find that peculiarly reassuring, don’t you?

The view from

my bathroom window.

Hippie Pickle Weights

05 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Farm Produce, Seasons

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I’ve written before how me and my sister became enamoured with and acquired our glass mason jar lids. And how some of the old ones don’t fit today’s mason jars. In what has been an extremely satisfying development, I found a new use for these old odd-sized glass lids today.

I started my first batch of pickles ever this afternoon. Not your standard hot-vinegar canned type pickles, but hippie-style brine fermented pickles. With grape leaves top and bottom to add tannin. The plan is that they will bubble and stew at room temperature, and turn into delicious pickles, and hopefully grow all sorts of happy healthy probiotics along the way.

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Our resident gardener fermented pickles last year. Not only were they delicious, we used the brine as a probiotic electrolytic pick-me-up, like concentrated pickle Gatorade. So this year, after the second big armful of pickling cucumbers hit my kitchen counter accompanied by the usual “veggie delivery!” cry, I decided that pickles were in my near future.

RG shared her online recipes, handed me her bag of pickling spice, her dill and her non-iodized salt and finally, brought me one more armful of pickling cukes. I was ready to begin.

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It was as I was fitting the top grape leaves into the jars, trying to tuck them in so that, as RG had instructed, they were “like a cap, keeping the pickles totally submerged”, while thinking wistfully about the fancy set of glass pickle weights I had seen in the Lee Valley catalogue, that I remembered those glass lids. They would make perfect weights, if they fit!

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And eureka, they did!

I’m going to have to hustle on back to that place with the whole basket of odd shaped glass lids, cheap because there are no jars they fit, and pick me up a few more pickle weights. A lot better price than Lee Valley, I can tell you that! Probably grab some for my sis and RG too.

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July’s Bounty

29 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening, Seasons

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July’s Bounty

I’ve been reading a barnyard vignette collection set on a small southern Ontario farm. The author is a hobby farming woman much like me, except sheep are her passion not chickens. I can relate to most of her adventures and predicaments, but not what she says about July. She claims that July is a calm, quiet time. A time of nothing-much-to-do on the farm after the rush of spring and before the fall harvest.

I don’t know what planet her farm is on, because around here in July, we’re canning and freezing and drying and jam making like crazy, afraid to slow down lest we stumble and be engulfed in a rising tide of produce.

My resident gardener is mowing and hoeing and watering and serving manure tea and hunting slugs and voles. I am tending the year’s chicken population boom; layers and grow-outs, broodies and their families and the freezer camp boys. The work involved is not insignificant. The boys in particular require extra care to fit them for their life’s purpose, to grace my winter table.

Here in our west coast muddy valley we can eat from the garden year round. “Vegetable delivery!” sings out my resident gardener as she dumps yet another armful on the kitchen counter.

Production really starts building in April and May with rhubarb, peas, chives, kale, chard, arugula, lettuce; then strawberries, garlic scapes, raspberries and garlic in June, and now blue berries, tomatoes, tomatillos, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, cucumber and new this year…cucamelons (nut-sized striped melons tasting of mildly spicy cucumber).

We eat as much as we can fresh and prepare the mounds of surplus as quick as we can for the freezer, the dehydrator, the canner or the big sauce pot as required.

We’re watching the figs like a hawk and looking forward to much more deliciousness to come, carrots, grapes, peaches, apples, celery, beets, parsnips, cabbage, onions, leeks, to name a few. Our taste buds are happy, sampling July’s cornucopia, and our fingers busy preserving it.

Oh and the herbs! Cut in the morning for maximum potency, spread on stainless mesh racks and dried thoroughly in the spare room’s light summer air. Then tipped into my wide red fruit bowl, clean and empty at this time of year (because fruit flies). A gift from a young man who knows I love bright dishes, my fruit bowl is perfect for cleaning dried herbs. It offers enough elbow room that I can pull brittle leaves from stems without losing any to the floor, and then scoop them into jars with none left behind.

In July I like to lay in enough fresh lavender, oregano, sage, thyme, mint, cilantro, rosemary etc. to last through until next year’s growth starts. They are all at the peak of perfection right now, and the weather perfect for preserving them.

I empty my spice drawer bottles and refill them with fresh, saving the discards to sprinkle in my hens’ nest boxes. Herbs help to discourage bugs and I think the hens enjoy them too.

The rest of this year’s herbal bounty goes into a cool dark cupboard for now. It’s summer time, and the living is easy. So I’ll keep on wandering outside and collecting what I need for dinner, until I can’t any more. Then I shall crack open my jars, and all winter long, strew July’s savoury scents into rich soups, bubbling stews and homegrown coq a vin.

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Turkey Vultures

11 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life, Wildlife

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They’ve since moved on to riper pastures, but back in June we had a turkey vulture situation. Four big bald-headed birds hung around the barnyard for more than two weeks. This time of year when everyone’s raising hungry babies, we get lots of winged predators hoping for chicken dinner. Liza the LGD stays pretty busy barking at the sky. But this was excessive, the fly-overs were non-stop and nerve-wracking, at least at first.

Vulture reconnaissance

I was worried they were after my chickens, and so was Liza, but the chickens themselves didn’t seem too concerned. “What the heck!?!” I said to DH, “the roosters aren’t raising the alarm when the vultures fly over!” It was very strange, they were usually so good at warning of danger. We were heading into a hot spell, maybe they were feeling languid in the heat? It was troubling, I couldn’t figure it out.

The turkey vultures spent a lot of their time perched on a neighbour’s stump on the far side of the manure pile. They also frequented the tall poplars overlooking the barnyard, and the Douglas firs to the west of us. Back and forth they flew, between those three points, all day. More than once, when bald eagles turned up to the party, I watched the turkey vultures run them off the place. That surprised me too.

The vulture situation, and especially my chickens’ apparent indifference to it, piqued my curiosity about turkey vultures, so I did a little reading. I learned that turkey vultures almost never go after live prey. (Phew!) They don’t have talons, just sharp beaks. Nature’s clean-up crew, turkey vultures are attracted by even tiny amounts of the gases discharged by their primary food source, rotting meat. They live in family groups and have a wide range. They are big, with a six-foot wingspan, but pose zero danger to live and kicking chickens.

A couple days after the vultures arrived, I clued into why they were there (duh! of course!) The smell was heavy in the air as I swung through the gate into the winter field on my way to feed the equines lunch. There must be a carcass nearby, a fast-ripening one. Following my nose over behind the barn and climbing over the manure pile, I disturbed a couple vultures, who leapt into the sky like swimmers stroking for the surface. And there it was, a big buck, deflated, pongy and snuggled up against the vultures’ stump as if he had sought his final shelter in its lee.

Vulture on a stump

Our turkey vultures finished their job and moved on, and that smell is completely gone now. And so is my worry about turkey vultures and my chickens. The internet says they are no threat and, much more significantly, so do my roosters.

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Last Year’s Tomatoes

05 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Farm Produce, Gardening

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I froze about 20 lbs too many whole tomatoes last year. I noted this fact a couple of weeks ago as I was making room in the freezer for a few more bags of 2019 rhubarb and a flat of ruby red local strawberries. Here we were, starting to eat our first fresh tomatoes, sun-warmed and straight off the vines, and a bunch of last year’s frozen ones still hanging around. Hmmmm, what to do with them??

Give them to the chickens was my first thought. It’s handy having a flock of hungry omnivores in the barnyard, nothing even remotely edible goes to waste around here. But I still prefer to feed people food to people first if at all possible. So I pushed the problem to the back of my mind where it could stew for a while, and got on with life.

A few days later, I had it! Ketchup! We were almost at the bottom of our current bottle, so the timing was good too.

I’ve been buying organic ketchup for as long as it has been available. It was the first organic product I splashed out on back in the day. I figure that the tomatoes had best be pesticide-free when they hit the kettle, since any residues would only concentrate during processing. It’s expensive though. So I was pretty chuffed at my genius idea.

Good old Google gave me a million recipes; I combined a couple and after two days of simmering followed by two days of dark closet fermenting I had a nice stash of homegrown organic fermented tomato ketchup. Full of probiotics and with a delicious zingy taste, fermented ketchup aids digestion too. It even achieved the DH stamp of approval.

My ketchup will keep for six months in the fridge, longer if frozen. One jar for each daughter and one and a half for us is just about perfect. And 20 pounds of last year’s tomatoes transformed into deliciousness is the icing on the cake.