Livestock journal: unexpected gifts

I write from the shade of the apricot tree, waiting for new ducklings to reappear. Michael espied them as he cut across duck country to reap rhubarb.

Zeke does not use this dog house. Michael made it for Zealot while we were in Maine. It traveled all the way here, heavy though it may be. Lately he’d been thinking of burning it as no longer having purpose. His delight in finding it occupied is endless.

We brought ducks down to summer pasture on April 30th. We lost count as we ferried them about. We kept debating whether we lost a gray duck. Now we know where she’s been hiding. Duck eggs take 28 days to incubate. Today is May 27th. We have counted 5-6 hatchlings. They come in various sizes and colors, which means the one broody hen hatched eggs donated by her pasture-mates. We can hardly wait to meet them.

Nine ducklings!

Small things journal: Grand times and sunshine

With the rain came all our grandkids: a side benefit of weather not conducive to gardening.

We do not have fancy toys. We don’t have a finished house. We do have baby birds and fascinating tools, like grain grinders. Happy the grands like to be here with us.

Fishing opener and all I got was a Norther Pike that got off before I landed her and a huge sunnie that got off because the Northern bit halfway through my line. A rare thing, fine as a beetle’s wing.

Toads spring from the muck. Ducks go into egg overdrive. Michael makes tortillas for bean and dandelion crown burritos.

We dig gardens. We start seeds.

And spread the gospel of rhubarb.

Fast forward journal: when things change by the hour

I’ve been looking for my first wildflowers while taking my morning walks. Yesterday there were none to be seen as I walked east. Five minutes later, walking back home…

…the Bloodroot bloomed!

As did the apricot tree and the few bulbs I have hidden amongst the rhubarb. The deer ate all the daffodils I planted for Irene.

Our first duckling hatched April 23rd.

Our first chicks made their break on April 25th.

We hatched 19 ducklings…

…and 17 chicks.

On May 2nd we picked up 26 broiler chicks from the feed mill.

The arrival of the broilers meant we had to get the adults out on summer pasture. Here they are on May 1st.

Our hatchlings spend their first week in large tubs in the basement. They soon outgrow those and graduate to the outdoor coops. Michael checks on them at about 3 am daily to make sure they are warm but not too warm, and have food and water. We all keep an eye on them during the day. They have to be kept at 90° for the first week, and gradually lowered until they are big enough to regulate their own temperature by about 3 weeks old. They grow at an amazing pace.

The snow that came with our first hatchlings made us worry we had started our eggs too soon. The next week saw wild wind and rain. Then May 1st came. The sun started to peep through clouds. Yesterday we had 70°s and sunshine. Today is cloudier, but still beautiful.

The Marsh Marigolds bloomed April 28th.

Trout lilies, anemones and hepatica blanket the hillsides, which were barren two days ago.

While Michael worked getting the summer yurts ready for the birds, I weeded the asparagus garden. You have to dig up the quack grass roots before the asparagus shoots appear. I got the last of the garden weeded just in time and only broke a few new shoots. I covered them all in 8” of well composted duck straw. I finished this garden on May 3rd.

On May 1st, while Michael was out splitting wood with a friend, I planted the potatoes left from last year’s harvest.

May 2nd the poplar won the first leafs of spring game.

Getting out on pasture came with a side benefit: finding winter cress before it bloomed!

Fish fillet sandwiches, fish soufflé and duck tacos are all so much better with winter cress.

Michael cleaned and organized our gear as a prelude to taking me fishing this Sunday.

If we don’t catch fish we shall feast on wild greens.

Today would have been Irene’s 91st birthday. Tomorrow our children bring us the Grands. We will share good memories, eat good food, and create bonds that survive time and tide. Michael and I are loving life, fully realizing death comes always. L’Chaim!

Fiber journal: dipping into the stash again

A skein of sock yarn often makes a pair of socks with enough left over to make something…but not another pair of socks. Following the example of my mom, I began making small squares with the leftovers. She makes all her squares the same size. Whenever one of her many family, friends, or slight acquaintances has a baby, she can piece together a blanket in a relatively short amount of time. I get bored making squares. I don’t have such a wide variety of people on whom I can bestow a blanket. I get to play a bit more with my sock yarn.

I use three shapes: small square, big square and oblong. The small square and oblong are knit from one end to the other. The big squares start in the middle and grow out.

I do a basket weave design on the small squares. It keeps my attention engaged, but just barely. I crochet a ring around all the squares to make joining them easier.

The oblongs have as many stitches as the small squares, which means they match in width. They are a more complex pattern, but still easy enough to knit and keep up with an audio book or a movie. The oblongs are a couple of inches longer than the small squares. I knit the large squares in the round until they match the long edges of the oblongs. By keeping the first oblong nearby, I don’t have to count rows but just compare the new piece until it matches.

I ran out of the blue-green-gray yarn and so made the last of the smalls with a color of equal intensity as the gray/red oblongs. I bet you didn’t even notice that color change in one of the border squares! By using so many different colors, I built myself a challenge as to how to create a whole out of the parts. I took some of the orange and made crochet borders around some of the smalls and the light colored oblongs. I took some of the light colored yarn to border some other smalls and the large squares. Everything still seemed unconnected, so I bordered everything in a dark color. When I laid out the squares to start joining them, the blanket looked too dark and bleah for a baby. I went in hunt for more yarn. Nothing in my stash did what I needed.

The yarn I found knits into stripes when made into socks.

The neon green version turned out to have enough blues, grays and pink to go with the array of colors in my squares.

A row of single crochets around all the pieces in the new yarn helped integrate them. I joined them with a slip stitch/chain stitch combo, skipping about three single crochets between slips. It makes that zig zag pattern.

The border consists of another round of chain stitches, two rounds of single crochets in the orange (which lasted to the end with about six inches to spare…whew!) and a row of half double crochets in the dark color. Then a final border of a crab stitch in the new neon yarn. The new mom’s comment was that the blanket was thin, supple, soft and warm. She loved the design and colors. Her baby loves being wrapped in it. Because it is sock yarn, it can be tossed in the washer and dryer and won’t shrink. The fibers run the gamut from cotton to silk to merino, but they could be combined into one blanket due to being designed to make socks. My homespun is not as easy care so I am more than happy to spend money on sock yarn!

April 21st and another inch of snow. Warm blanket time for a while yet here in Big Woods country.

Weather journal: swinging in the Heartland

Several 80°+ days this past week kicked aside the snowbanks and pushed up flowers.

The crocus I planted for Irene appeared in force yesterday.

They regret it today. We are forecast to have highs in the 40s for the rest of the week. I console myself by remembering we had an 18” snowfall on April 15th five years ago…and it melted the next day.

A week ago the Grand Girls hunted the eggs in the Duck Mansion.

Felix tried to convince his mom mom that he’d be clean, but she nixed his being in close contact with unwashed eggs. We’ll work on her some more for next year.

Although my girls often hunted eggs in the snow, the drifts were a bit high for toddlers on April 9th.

Going from highs in the 30s to highs in the 80s melts snow spectacularly. We had rivers running through our gardens on the 10th.

The sun freed the gates and then the ducks nibbled the snow to oblivion.

The garlic made an appearance on the 12th.

As did my sister, who (with her husband) dropped in to admire our ducks as they made a cross country trek.

The St. Croix River keeps rising. The first photo is from April 13th. The second from the 14th. The towns downstream pile sandbags and pray for cold weather to slow the melt.

We celebrated birthdays yesterday while it rained steadily, if slowly. The wind howls as I write and I am grateful that our wood pile isn’t entirely exhausted…yet. I am set up to sand and varnish boards for the bathroom. I need to get my lumber out of the future stairwell so we can transform it from a storage closet. Once that space is cleared and the wall between the addition and the original house gets wiring, wallboard, and paint, we can put the final flooring in! Not bad if you say it fast… There is something about living in a place where nature hands out surprises every single day that makes anything seem possible.

4/17 update: the river crept into the boat ramp parking area sometime overnight. The water marks on the tree trunks indicate a falling water level. At last.

Weather journal: April snows

On March 24, the woolie bears came out of hibernation. Although I haven’t seen them, my neighbors say the black bears are out and about as well. Sandhills calling. Vultures soaring. Great blues nesting. Ah, springtime in Big Woods country!

Then along came the April Fools Blizzard.

Somewhere between 10 inches to a foot of new snow, with drifts three feet high. All our paths blew in. The back storm door iced shut.

Having gotten blown around, the snow settled in heavily with a thick crust on top.

A few areas were almost blown clear.

But most places weren’t. Notice the snow blasted onto the garage door!

I cleared the path to the wood pile and then to the garage. Michael started on clearing the driveway.

Squirrels and mice got to the woodpile before I did.

I didn’t feel too badly as they were first out to the driveway too.

Small bits of bark blew and melted odd little tracks on top of otherwise smooth snow.

It took about 12 hours of steady work, but we got the driveway cleared. I’ve been limping ever since!

The Grand Girls came for a visit on April 4th, just in time for a hail storm.

Lilith decided being out in the hail was not as much fun as it might appear, so came in and did “crafts.” The girl has an imagination!

Zeke had a good time entertaining Petra.

Marble sized hail fell later that night. We’ve had flurries on and off ever since.

April 6th and my garlic gardens are still blanketed.

But the driveway is almost clear, with most of the ice hanging out in the ruts.

We visited with the Grand Guy today, basking in the 50° and sunshine they had in the Big City. We almost hit 47° here. The St. Croix River isn’t over it’s banks yet, but it’s getting there.

Today is Good Friday, and we commemorated with camarones (dried shrimp fritters) and papas doraditas (fried potatoes). We hide the potatoes packed in newspapers in boxes wrapped in layers of blankets and rugs in the darkest corner of the basement. They know it’s springtime. We have duck and chicken eggs incubating, betting that the potatoes know more than what our eyes tell us as we look outside. We will feed our clan Easter dinner, and then clear a space to start garden seeds. We have more snow forecast for April 17th. We hope to have our ducks on pasture by then. As my grandfather would say, “Pues a ver que pasa.” We will see what happens.

April 9th update: we still have drifts up to 18” deep in shady places, but the sun is doing its job where it has direct contact. The ducks have cleared their enclosure. We need to let them loose on the rest of their pastures! They are so hungry for green things. As are we all.

Equinox journal: slouching towards spring

Our January thaw came in February, with rain falling on us for Valentines Day. March has been one major snow storm after another.

The rain made our driveway a luge run. I took to walking on top of the drifts to get to the road.

The warmer weather created fog, frosting all the trees with lace.

As the sun gains strength, the ice “rots,” or melts from the ground up. Rotten ice is okay for walking, as you just crunch through it instead of having a hard surface to skate on.

The swans and geese convene in ever greater flocks, proclaiming that the time for nesting fast approaches.

On March 7 the cardinals started crooning to their lady loves. On March 8 robins magically appeared, busily kicking through the leaf litter.

More rotten ice!

Then we had ten inches of snow on March 9.

The deer have gotten brazen about eating from the bird feeders.

As have squirrels and pheasants.

I abandoned Michael as the snow fell to be with my mom for a while.

Flowers!

Snow wherever I go!

Hugs from sisters, brothers in law, uncles, and more!

Food! Wine! Tea!

Cake! Cake! Cake!

At (almost) 90, my mom still has a spring in her step and a song on her lips.

I will return to Big Woods land in a few days…and it will snow some more.

Yet, my flowers know the light balances the dark.

Our birds lay more eggs.

The world tilts. We hurtle through space and time. Together.

Fiber journal: diving into my stash

We have an elderly neighbor lady we keep tabs on by delivering eggs every other week or so. While chatting with her just before our latest big snow (17” fell from 2/23-24!!!) she admired my fake beard. Since I fell on ice (not once but 3 times) while bringing eggs and a visit to other elderly friends later that same day, I got the message that knitting was the way to spend my time while it snowed, and snowed, and blew around the snow. Thank you Josette for giving me a small project!

This is the finished product. The edge yarn is yak and silk spun in a single ply. Super soft against the face. Shiny! The body is a series of leftovers from a variety of yarns. I found the last of the alpaca/mohair I used for my fake beard, a small skein of single ply merino and the last of a ball of merino Navajo plied. There was also a bit of commercially made merino triple plied. By doubling the single ply, they all fit into the same basic DK weight and color scheme. Think off-white to tan.

As you can see, my yarn is more uneven than the commercial yarn, but not by much. I like the subtle variation it creates when knit up.

The commercial yarn is at the widest part, which is also the smoothest. I alternated rows as I used up the leftovers so the transitions were not jarring. I also learned how to do a stretchy cast on and stretchy bind off. Thank you You Tube and all those generous people willing to share knowledge!

These are samples of a few small skeins I found in my stash I chose not to use. The light colored yarn on the left was made from alpaca, silk and mohair, much as my fake beard yarn. However, it was full of “veg” or small pieces of plant matter. Having veg in your yarn makes it feel scratchy, regardless of the softness of the fiber. It was also over-spun, as was the middle green yarn. Compare those yarns with the pink strand (which is one of my skeins). The white and green skeins kink up on themselves. The pink is a bit uneven in thickness, but doesn’t double up. Overspun yarn makes hard spots where it is twisty. It’s like having knots in your yarn. You never want to have a knot in a knit. It ruins the stretchy quality and makes uncomfortable lumps. I will find a use for this yarn, but would not choose it for any item meant to be worn close to the skin. Looking closely at other people’s yarn made me fall in love with my own. I need to start spinning again!

Snow blocking our front door. Snow covering the wheelbarrow of wood. Icicles bent by the wind. Beautiful drifts. Snow as deep as Zeke. The wall of snow built up by the plow. We (meaning mostly Michael, if only because I had to work slowly due to having fallen hard a few days before) got enough cleared so the kids had a place to pull off the road, turn around, and park. They had to hike the rest of the way to get to our house. Bless them for finishing the dooryard!

I’d share my knitting rocker with these cuties! I delivered Josette her own fake beard today. I didn’t get a photo of her as she was napping. Irene would get so cold. I’m hoping Josette will be a little warmer as we are due another big storm tomorrow. I hear the wind picking up as I write. I think I’ll work on finishing a baby blanket for this next storm.

Baking journal: gonna take an experimental journey

Artemis gifted Michael a new book for Christmas.

He’s been wanting to try out some of the flatbread/cracker recipes, but lacked some of the ingredients.

He read up on ammonium carbonate. According to his research, this was one of the first commercial leavening compounds (that wasn’t yeast), first used around 400 years ago. It is used in crackers and flat breads that should remain crisp. Sodium bicarbonate, aka baking soda, leaves sodium in the finished product. Since sodium is hydroscopic, baked goods made with baking soda or powder will absorb water from the air and become soft. Ammonium carbonate produces little gas bubbles, just like baking soda, but totally bakes out of the product. It does produce a strong ammonia smell while baking. It leaves no taste behind. Because you really want all that ammonia gas gone, it is only used in thin things, like crackers.

Artemis gave Michael Danko rye berries for his birthday. Today was his first chance to play with them.

Half rye flour. Half bread flour. A little salt and a lotta butter. Leavening. Cut the butter into the flour until it looks like course meal. Add ice water until it makes a stiff dough. Think pie crust.

The recipe said to roll it to 3 mm thin. Nordic metrics. We took out a Leatherman and measured the rubber bands on the fondant rolling pin I got for creating birthday cakes. The orange band fit the bill. I’ve had the marble for a while. Our basement is COLD, which is what we needed to keep that butter from warming up. I have a feeling crackers are a wintertime treat. Nordic baking. Go figure.

My pastry cutter made the edges pretty. Fork dimples to keep them from puffing up in the middle and deforming.

Who makes crackers?!? Michael does. Oh yum. These have a wonderful nutty full round flavor. Crisp without being hard. Not too salty. Stands up to Gorgonzola. Makes you wish you had pickled herring. I might have to figure out how to make pate. Good thing we are due 15” of snow to work off the baked goodness.

Since Michael was baking, I decided I would too. I made more tofu this past week so I have okara in my fridge. The NYT has an almond cake recipe which I have been modifying. It’s a work in progress.

I first tried this recipe (think egg yolks whipped with sugar, add okara and almond flavoring and zest from an orange and a lemon, then fold in the whipped egg whites) on February 4. I didn’t use a mixer and my eggs settled to the bottom. It was akin to a tres leches cake, without any milk.

Today I used a mixer, cut the citrus zest in half and added some vanilla. The flavor was better and by making thinner cakes I eliminated most of the settling while baking. Neither the thin cake nor muffins came out of their baking tins well. I think I need to make this as a sponge cake (use that buttered parchment paper!) and fill it with a whipped cream/mascarpone frosting. Perhaps cut the citrus zest back a little more. Michael wants to toast the okara so we can grind it finer. The coarseness of the soybean meal bothers him. I’m okay with it but recognize that this is still a work in progress.

I can hardly wait until we get to bake with these little cuties.

Thirty eight years baking happiness into our lives, experimenting all the way.

Celebration journal: cake and so much more

In our family, the celebrant chooses a favorite meal and type of cake. We celebrated over the weekend with meatballs with gravy, mashed potatoes, twice baked squash, and Grandmother’s 1-2-3-4 cake with chocolate frosting. Cake first. Dinner later. Shenanigans throughout. Sledding to lull the wee ones to sleep on the car rides home.

This is a bonus photo of garage maintenance. Eighteen inches of snow removed and shoveled away from the edge in an attempt to keep our garage from becoming a stream bed this spring. Pretty spry for an old guy!

Cheers to the vintner. The apple wine turned out well. Bottled on his birthday proper!

Livestock journal: caring for birds at below zero temperatures

We have 26 below this morning. Hopefully the weather will warm from here out. Keeping the birds watered (important for chickens and really important for ducks) has been challenging, for us and for them.

Michael uses about 40 gallons of hot water for the birds every day in winter, most of it for the ducks. We used to cart five gallon buckets from the kitchen sink, down icy stairs and pathways, to the various watering stations. Since the very cold weather set in, he still needs one bucket of hot water from inside.

If you look closely you can see two faucets. The one Michael is using is a hot water tap he installed this fall. The other, which is behind him, is the normal cold water tap. Both have frost free spigots, but the hot water one will still ice up, along with ice in the end of the hose. He needs the initial hot water to defrost the tap. When the temperature hovers around zero, the hot water tap works well without the need for priming. The hose remains in an empty bucket after watering birds because it gets too stiff to bend overnight.

The chickens get inside water and outside water, as do the ducks.

Everyone gets fed outdoors to keep the vermin from invading the coops, where eggs and birds are vulnerable.

The five gallon buckets with watering nipples tend to freeze up over 24 hours when it drops below zero. It can get below freezing outdoors and still maintain liquid in the coops. We tried fish tank heaters for the watering buckets initially, but they are expensive, didn’t deal well with variable water depth and burned out too often. Electrically heated watering devices tend to be designed for horses and other large mammals and are not useful for the birds. This means the water gets changed out daily. Michael rotates the inside water buckets, which defrost in the old shower stall. We will make sure our new space (whenever we get around to it) has a utility sink large enough to accommodate two buckets.

The joyousness of released ducks brightens every day.

Michael fills a number of cement hods for the ducks. It works out to be about a gallon of water per duck a day, summer or winter. Ducks need water deep enough to submerge their heads in order to feed properly. They also need water to wash and preen to keep themselves waterproof and lice free.

Since it’s been really cold, we’ve been watching for scenarios such as this. One duck away from the flock (you can see her at the base of the pine tree).

After bathing, ducks can get stuck on the ice. They will free themselves if you approach them, but can lose feet or die from getting cold if they don’t move soon enough. We have to keep an eye on them in this intensely cold weather.

Ducks lay eggs early in the morning, usually. Michael gathers them after spreading water love, then picks up the few extras when he puts the birds to bed. They have nesting boxes, but will also dig themselves nests in protected corners, except for those bad mothers who will drop eggs anywhere. Both ducks and chickens will share nesting sites.

Eggs left on top of the straw will freeze and break in this type of cold. The yolk of a frozen egg tends to gel, but not always permanently. Michael and I will eat the frozen/cracked eggs on the day gathered. If too damaged (or too many), then Zeke gets a treat.

With the increase in natural light, we are getting more eggs, from about 6 a day at New Years to about 14 now. We have 28 duck hens. We don’t expect 28 eggs a day due to some hens being older. We get 4-6 chicken eggs a day, with 10 hens. We don’t expect more than this, again due to the limited fertility of old hens.

We keep Boyo and Lil Blackie in with the ducks, as they were being pecked to death by the rest of the flock. They produce an egg every now and again. Boyo is our oldest chicken, having come to live with us in 2015. Blackie is our only broody hen. Without exposure to the roosters, we will have to steal eggs from the other coop and sneak them under her if she goes broody again this year. She might not. We’ll see. It is time to start to plan gardens and flocks. Looking out my window, the apricot branches reflect pink where before they were gray. The willow wands shade to yellow ocher beneath the hoarfrost. Dogwood twigs ghost the ground in mauve. “Men forget the old duet, in love with some other spring.” Billy Holiday

We appreciate the men who focus on taking care of all our precious duckies and keep a song in their hearts knowing this spring is gathering energy…even at 26 below.

Weather journal: observations on twenty below

January. Wisconsin. Cold.

We hit twenty below for the first time yesterday, January 30th. I made myself a “fake beard” for exactly this weather. Alpaca and mohair means it doesn’t irritate my face and does a good job of keeping my body heat near my skin. The deer and birds also puff themselves up, keeping warm by insulating the air next to their skin.

The sun begins to have strength as we tilt toward springtime. Cloudless days still signal colder weather, as all that solar power bounces off the snow cover without any clouds to trap the warmth. Still air keeps the wind from blowing, or the lack of wind keeps the cold from going.

Today we have cloud cover, a small breeze and only fourteen below. The breeze makes up for the lower absolute temperature, cutting through my fake beard and making my nose rosy. My eyelashes froze together from my breath yesterday, but not today. I avoid wearing glasses as they always fog in this type of cold.

The prior spate of warm weather froze and compacted the old snow, with sandy textured new snow on top. The wind sculpts drifts much as it does dunes.

We were warned of the impending cold snap, so we got the last of our duck-potato sausage smoked. As this was the final batch, I had time to take a photo of Michael manning the smoker. Our chest freezer was just big enough. Total sausage count: 110 pounds. The cold makes me want to eat it all RIGHT NOW.

Instead, we used the last of our garden carrots in a stir fry. Yep, that is home-built tofu on top. We bought the cabbage and now remember why we love our garden grown cabbage so much. We had to feed the rest of the cabbage to the ducks. They liked it just fine.

All our wee ones (and not so wee ones) helped us reduce our sausage over-burden. Having others to feed (and help with the cross words) gives us a reason to cook, bake, and bask in the glow. Our wood stove has kept us toasty without needing to use much of our LP gas. Eggs are expensive. Gas is expensive. Feed is expensive. It’s amazing to have friends and neighbors willing to trade for things we have in excess. The deer have been sheltering in and feeding on the hay bales left in fields. Twenty below: we all depend on each other to survive and thrive. Whew. And Thanks!

Harvest journal: sausages

We harvest ducks and chickens and deer…and this year we were gifted a wild turkey. The animals and fowl not appropriate for eating in large chunks we save for sausage making. This year, sausage time fell just after I filed an appeal brief in a murder case. Seemed timely.

We save sausage making for days when we have nothing better to do and the snow is deep enough to provide clean coldness. Keeps the mix from getting too warm and “breaking”. Who wants broken sausage?!? Fair warning: the next photo is of Michael grinding meat cubes. Nothing identifiable, but even so…

We (meaning Michael) hauled The Monster up from the basement so our children could make venison hamburger. We kept it upstairs for sausage season. At 80 pounds, it isn’t anything I want to be schlepping up and down stairs more than absolutely necessary. It is a dream for grinding meat. And potatoes. And onions. And garlic. And anything else that makes sausage tasty.

We invested in an industrial scale stuffing machine. Given that we will make about a hundred pounds of sausage this season, it was a wise investment. We like it. A lot.

We started our sausage adventure with chicken bratwurst. We had two roosters too many this past season. We will enjoy the eight pounds of brats this summer. Great grilled. We also saved the hearts and gizzards of our broiler harvest. We never remember to thaw them for Thanksgiving stuffing, and it seems not everyone appreciates the chewiness they lend. Sausage making allows us to use the parts that would otherwise go to waste…and have people enjoy the experience.

Onions go into brats and potato sausage, but garlic is the driving force in kielbasa. Neither Michael nor I shot a deer this year, but we kept everyone else’s hearts and ended up with eight pounds of venison-pork kielbasa. We used a wild turkey breast and leg we were gifted by a guy we let hunt our land. It made some of the best kielbasa I’ve ever had. We may need to take up turkey hunting ourselves.

We use our cabin as an auxiliary refrigerator. It is too cold to keep the actual refrigerator operational, but insulated enough not to be a freezer. We appreciate the additional space.

I dice 20% of the potatoes that go into potato sausage to keep it visually and texturally interesting. The other 80% goes through The Monster with the meat. This year, all potato sausage is made from our old ducks. Gracie, one of our original flock, died several days ago. She is not in the sausage. We have two Khaki Campbells left from the initial cohort. We miss Gracie and Arthur, our favorite ducks. We decided we couldn’t keep all our ducks when our eggs cost $23/dozen to produce. We still don’t harvest as many old ducks as we should…. Good thing we are doing this for fun and not profit.

Hanging the sausage allows them to dry before packaging, reducing problems ice creates in storage. I didn’t get any photos of the smoker this year. The kielbasa are smoked, as are half the potato sausage. We will make about 100 pounds of sausage in four days. It is a series of early mornings and late nights.

We sample the sausage set aside when a casing splits or from the tail end of a squeeze. There is always something left. These confirm the end product is worth the work. Hot dogs and bologna were the only types of sausages I knew about growing up. Bratwurst were a revelation. Kielbasa a dream. Potato sausage otherworldly. My house smells like an old time deli/meat market. I ache all over and am tired to my bones, but my freezer is full and my heart is happy. Now I just have to convince our friends to make the trek and come for dinner!

Season journal: fire and ice

Wisconsin. January. Snow. More than we’ve seen in the past five years for January, and more for the season than in the past 30 years. It clings. It stacks. It sparkles. It melts and refreezes. Mostly on steps and paths. Everyone does the January shuffle. Choose your favorite tune.

I don’t know how the sons managed to skip out of the photos. They did. If you can imagine them hovering in the background, cheering the rest of us on, then you have the people who light up our lives. Minnesota. January. A great time and place to celebrate life.

Season journal:Twelfth Night

Which is now, the last day of Christmas.

Michael and I have been moving mountains of snow.

Blue potato pancake with green chile and duck egg.

Home made tofu in stir fry (black bean sauce) with brown rice.

Scrambled duck egg tacos, with all the fixings, and home built corn tortillas. Broccoli and blue cheese dip on the side.

Okara patties and more broccoli and blue cheese.

Which allows us to eat voluptuously.

The chickens and the cat refuse to leave their respective houses, but the ducks and Zeke revel in the deep snow.

Time with the Grands is Great!

First taste of pear cider. Yum.

To life!

Celebration journal: those colly birds

On my walk this morning I heard a bird call I could not identify. A high note and a low note. Perhaps it was one of the mysterious “colly birds” made famous by the Fourth Day of Christmas, which is today.

Christmas for us has oscillated between upholding traditions and shoveling snow. We cut a black spruce from the woods surrounding our house, then spent the rest of the day mopping up the snow melt from its branches. The pine scent and added humidity rewarded our efforts. We usually save decorating the tree for when we have children with us, but weather and flu defeated our efforts this Christmas. The tree graces our season, even so.

We make two types of cookies this time of year: gingerbread and bizcochitos (an anise seed sugar cookie). We did have help making cookies, but no time left to decorate the gingerbread. Just as well, since Michael prefers them plain. I gave away some to my church group, but we were left with most of them. I asked Michael why we still make cookies. His answer: “So our children will.”

And so our grandchildren will as well!

The snowfall has kept us exercising enough to burn off those cookie calories. We faced a deadline for clearing sufficient space for visitors to make it to our house AND have a place to park. Whew.

Christmas is, first and foremost, a birthday party. Michael is a pie person and I am a cake person, so we get both for Christmas.

Lilith, being the youngest person who can read (at 5!) was in charge of distributing presents.

Felix, being the youngest, was exempt from social graces.

I managed to make time for a single hat. I finished it on Christmas Eve.

No one can party like young ones!

Since then we have reveled in the blueness of the sky, highlighted by raking snow off of our roof.

Marveled at how deep the snow got on our deck.

Rejoiced at the increased level of water in the St. Croix.

Appreciated the ease which having clippers makes cutting Michael’s hair and beard. Power tools. I love power tools!

Birds. Light. Work. Food. Joy. These we share with neighbors. We offer as gifts. We celebrate as life.

Season journal: snow and tamales

Snow! We love snow. Even when it is eight inches of heavy, dense snow.

Spectacular! Also destructive. We lost some tree limbs from the pines. We will have to trim them off before they tear down fences.

Working together, Michael and I cleared our 600 foot driveway in about three hours. It feels so good to be well enough to work this hard.

It also allows us to eat the tamales we made yesterday, beautifully paired with the last of the cabbage from our garden

We experimented a bit with the basic recipe. Michael ground me three cups of red popcorn cornmeal.

Mixed with seven cups of masa harina, two cups of lard, two tablespoons of baking powder, a tablespoon of salt and enough pork broth from cooking a very large pork roast (stewed with garlic, salt, bay leaves, oregano and chile flakes) until it was a very soft paste, it made a sparkly, lovely base for the tamale meat. That was made from that pork roast, cooked until fork tender, which I then cooked down with green chile from our garden, more garlic, more oregano, more salt, and comino. We discovered that the comino from the Asian food store is more pungent than the comino we have found elsewhere. I also made a batch of filling with chile caribe from chile pods my mom sent from New Mexico. Yum. Oh, and the darker side of that tamale combo we made from blue corn masa (7 cups) mixed with 3 cups regular corn meal (and all the other masa ingredients). These may be the best tamales I’ve ever eaten.

We used our new space to make tamales. We are looking forward to making cookies with all the Grands this weekend. We are all feeling well enough to get together, and for that I am truly thankful. We look forward to seeing them, and then to having bizcochitos to share with my church group. We already delivered tamales to neighbors. Spreading New Mexico traditions in the Big Woods. It also gave us a grand incentive to get the driveway cleared. Oh come all ye loved ones!

Harvest journal: making soap

I read cookbooks for fun. My fascination with cookbooks began when one of my professors mentioned reading one from ancient Egypt. How recipes are written varies by culture. One of my all time favorites is Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. What she provides in that one book is technique. One such gem of process is how to render fat. She was speaking in terms of rendering duck skin, which produces these wonderful morsels of duck chicharones as well as duck lard. I use the same method to transform venison suet into venison lard.

Why would anyone want to render venison suet? The lard, paired with other fats (including duck lard!) makes wonderful soap. Michael started making soap decades ago due to my allergies to commercial scents. At one point, we could not find unscented soap. His first efforts involved shortening and olive oil and drain cleaner. He has since found a more reliable source for lye and our access to suet sources reduces the cost of the soap. My skin loves it!

Deer store fat in layers on their rumps, chest, and in their abdomens. Unlike beef, it doesn’t marble the meat. It is really easy to peel off the fat during venison processing. At that point, I put it in a separate bowl and when I’m ready to render, chop it into cubes.

The cubes go into a large stock pot, with enough water to barely cover them.

You bring the water to a simmer, leaving the pot uncovered. The target is to allow the suet to soften and release those fat molecules from the tissue. The milky hue of the liquid means it still contains water. By the way, this process smells wonderful in a fried meat kind of way.

I forgot to take a photo before I started to separate the cracklings from the lard, but you can still see that the liquid graduates from milky to clear.

I strain the rendered fat through a wire mesh colander and feed the cracklings to the birds. Pheasants love it.

The lard turns opaque as it cools. I use a glass mixing bowl and put it outside to harden. When Michael is ready to make soap, he brings in the bowl and the fat separates from the glass due to differential shrinkage rates. Otherwise it’s hard to get it out of the bowl. He scrapes off any fried bits that made it through the strainer. They tend to congregate at the bottom for easy separation.

Seventeen pounds of soap may get us through to next year, depending on how much we give away.

We have all these delicate little bodies to keep clean and happy.

Construction journal: wood stove Re-installed!

I hear Michael in the next room, loading wood into the bin. Our house has that toasty feel of a wood fire merrily dancing in its designated space.

For insurance reasons (and lack of skill, knowledge, and equipment) we hired Chris to put in the pad and chimney for our wood stove’s new home.

To prepare, we cleared out the room we had been using as a dining area and moved the furniture against the wall. The hole in the ceiling is where we had installed a chimney for the wood stove when the roof went on. Because we hadn’t yet put walls in, it turned out to be in the wrong place. We had also installed it in a manner that would have burnt our house down. Hence, the wisdom of hiring out certain jobs!

Before Chris started, Michael sistered joists onto the floor trusses to take out the bounciness from the floor. We had ordered reinforced trusses for under a wood stove, but put them in a different area. We had to install the trusses before we had walls and windows. Our floor plans keep changing as we go along.

We chose a stone type tile rather than ceramics. We figured it would look great with wood flooring. I also have this thing for agates.

Michael devised a brilliant way of getting that very heavy stove from its former home to its new location. That gray square you see on the floor is one of the heat shields we used to protect the old walls. He used one of the wall shields and would walk the stove off of the floor shield onto the next shield because it would slide on the slick metal surface. We propped up the temporary step platform we have between rooms to make a ramp. Between the two of us we moved that stove next to the new pad. It took three big guys to move it onto the pad.

Chris and his crew set the chimney and we were ready to have a fire!

And ready to host Thanksgiving! Chris patched the hole in the roof before it began snowing. I patched the hole in the ceiling before we started a fire. I still have to tape and mud that area, but it is air tight enough for the moment.

I also finally installed the trap door I made for the attic access. Our roof is a lot happier with fewer places for warm air to leak up and melt snow.

After all that construction, I had time to babysit Felix when he was down with what turned out to be Influenza A. I know this because I was just diagnosed with this bug. I also have a great case of bronchitis. Ah. The joys of daycare and viral infections. Michael is hacking and coughing too, and might have an ear infection (which is what Felix had). I’m on drugs. Michael is not. He is tougher than I am!

Thanksgiving journal: we celebrate our blessings

We were 12 for dinner. We miss Irene’s laughter. We give thanks to have so many who will take time from their busy lives to gather and celebrate with us.

Michael made us a lovely dinner and pumpkin and apple pies. Artemis brought a gorgeous and delicious cranberry tart. We feasted! We give thanks for the plenty we enjoy.

The gun deer season opened the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Our sons in law both bagged their deer opening day. Neither Michael nor I did. Michael helped the boys field dress their deer and then hang, skin and quarter them. I helped the girls process the back straps. We will complete packaging venison this coming weekend. Even my daughter who has never liked touching raw meat of any kind said that butchering the deer her husband harvested was “oddly satisfying.” We give thanks that our children wish to partake in the acts that bind us to this land.

I got to read bedtime stories to the Grands. Felix came down with double ear aches this past week, so I went to care for him for a couple of days. We give thanks for having the space and time to get to know this next generation.

Hunting allows us to spend very intimate time with our land. We give thanks for the privilege of caring for this land, and for its support of us.

Michael slaughtered the last giant squash that had been sitting in our guest room in preparation for the pre-hunt sleepover. It has fed both us and our ducks many delicious meals. We got the last storm door installed shortly before it started sifting snow on us. Michael kept the driveway open for hunters to arrive. We are thankful to have the health and strength to make this project we call life move forward with happiness to share.