Visiting journal: three brothers!

I come from a large family. We are spread across the continent and don’t get together often. The brother who taught me to fish decided to come for a short stay, which led two more brothers to arrange to be here as well. A fourth brother already had a full dance card and couldn’t make it.

We mostly visited and ate good food, but did manage to get out on the water one day.

My fishing brother taught me how to wield a fly rod. I practiced while the boys canoed. We collectively caught sufficient for dinner and then some.

They got to see my girls, their fellows, and my Grands. I have one grand niece, whom I have yet to meet. I hope to make that trip someday soon. Grands are the best.

They agreed the tykes are pretty darn cute.

We treated them to a true midwestern thunderstorm, which dumped more rain in a few hours than we’ve had all summer.

They got to see sideways rain….

…quarter sized hail…

…and the results of some amazing wind.

We showed them the wine bottling process. There is a tear-drop shaped primary fermenter behind me. We didn’t read the instructions for this new equipment and had more excitement than usual when the valve failed and we suddenly had a fountain of wine to staunch. We salvaged most of that batch, but it took many hands and quick action. Whew.

We got the apple tree straight again.

We enjoyed the fruits of our gardens.

Seeing them was the best gift a girl could have.

Harvest journal: garlic and currants and fish

Individually delicious. Not to be mixed.

July 7th the garlic came ripe. It’s time to dig it up when the tops start to go brown. Leaving it until it is totally brown will allow the earth worms to eat away the outer skins and the stalks to separate from the bulbs. The first is bad for storing garlic; the second for finding it without damaging the bulbs.

After drying for several days, I braid it or bundle it, depending on whether it’s hard neck or soft neck. The “neck” is the stalk. Soft neck varieties are pliable enough to braid. You can guess which ones I bundle instead. We grow four varieties, two hard and two soft. The soft tend to have smaller cloves with paper that sticks really tightly. It is difficult to peel them, until springtime when they begin to dehydrate. By that time, we have used up all the hard necks, which peel like a dream but dehydrate by January.

My chickens kept me company as I worked outside. They would come and pull garlic off the table while I had my back turned. Shortly after this, two hens failed to come in at night. Ever since, they’ve had to stay in the fenced chicken yard. Usually they will escape despite the 6’ fence. Lately they have been content to stay in the yard.

The currants came due on July 15th, which is right on time according to the dates on last year’s jars of red currant jelly. No mold grew on them in this dry year! I picked about 18 pounds of currants.

Enough to make one batch of currant wine. We’ve never made this type before.

I also got a short batch of jelly.

We rewarded ourselves with a short fishing trip to a new lake. The wind turned the lake over, which is never a good time to catch. Even so, we came home with dinner.

Summer chowder. Yum.

Harvest journal: 53 pounds of chicken from 5 birds

Michael and I have been “taking care” of our broilers, in the Cosa Nostra sense of that term.

This is a photo of a live chicken pecking at the dead chickens. I feed my free range flock parts of the harvest we don’t keep, such as kidneys, glands and lungs, which the live birds happily gobble. We’ve been reducing our duck hen flock as well. Our free range birds love the un-calcified eggs. Nature. Really quite good at recycling. Even if ghoulishly.

Broilers get dunked in 150° water for about a minute, whereas ducks get 160° for up to two minutes. Down. It’s a great insulator.

Broilers are bred to have few feathers. These boys had plenty of pins, which are feathers that have not grown all the way out. We remove those inside the house using pliers.

Ten pounds at ten weeks. Broilers are second only to pigs in turning feed into protein. These birds will be our Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, plus one for mid-winter. Two of the five go to our children’s freezers. They averaged 10 pounds each. The extra three pounds are the feet (they make the best broth!), hearts and gizzards (for sausage), and livers. We love liver.

Duck wings and cabbage greens: yum. Yet, we miss our big chickens. Going through the process of raising a living being and then killing it to eat makes us cherish our food, and give thanks in a very personal way.

Harvest journal: jamming in July

The soybeans may be a total loss, but our fruit trees have been loving the warm weather.

Michael picked a huge bowl of itty bitty cherries on July 2nd. We babysat on the 3rd and then spent two movies worth of time on the 4th pitting them. Breaking out the laptop turned an otherwise arduous obligation into a fun afternoon.

This year’s jam turned out jewel-like and scrumptious.

We netted 15 jars of cherry, which came out to about an hour’s worth of work per jar. We are debating whether to pick the remaining cherries or let the birds have them.

Our apricots produced fruit for the first time in years. Michael used to shake the trees to get the fruit to fall. They have gotten so big he propped the tall ladder in small branches to reach the fruit. I held the ladder as he poked about with a four-foot ruler, knocking them down around my ears.

We netted about 2 dozen jars of apricot gold with not as many hours of labor.

Our black currant bush suffered damage a few years ago and still hasn’t fully recovered. We gathered 4 cups of berries, which gave us 5 cups of jam.

You know we love you a lot if we give you black currant jam.

Our breakfast table is adorned with jewel-like colors. Perfect with Michael’s whole grain rolls.

I’ve been singing on my morning walks, telling the bears that all the berries are “way off over there, there ain’t nothing here, we don’t need no bears! Oh bear oh bear, I have a dog. He’s a worthless dog, but you don’t know that bear.” My singing is such that the bears run when they hear me: at last, having been denied musicality pays off!

Season journal: June in the rear view mirror

Nap time for Felix (and Michael) gives me a chance to look back on this past month.

The columbine came out in early June. It has been sparser this year, perhaps due to the hot, dry weather we’ve had.

A few days ago I finally made it to the boat landing on the St. Croix. My snow-shoveling injury is mostly healed. Yay! Water level has lowered to where it was most of last year. Drought persists.

Our snowy winter helped subsoil moisture. The fruit trees flourish. The mulberries produced enough this year to entertain Felix and fill all of us with sweet, black fruit.

Michael planted the big garden, mostly in onions, by the beginning of June.

By late June the weeds had taken over. I think it was the weeding that finally helped my hip to heal. The big, leafy plants Zeke is nesting in are some type of brassica (cabbage family) that came as a “bonus” with our other seeds. It is a bit too fuzzy to eat raw, but has a pleasant flavor. I hope to have the energy to experiment with it soon.

Speaking of experiments, Michael remembered reading about elderberry blow (blossom) wine in Euell Gibbons “Stalking the Wild Asparagus.” We had guests visiting a couple of days about a week ago, giving us an excuse to sit and visit while processing the blossoms. Last night we removed the blossoms from the wine. It smelled marvelous.

We’ve been snacking on radishes.

The jalapeños won the first pepper contest.

The asparagus blossoms fed countless bees.

Michael has been replenishing our wood pile.

Raccoons reduced the size of our duck flock.

And so Michael has been feeding the vultures and eagles. The soy beans finally germinated after the rain. We hope they can catch up with good growing weather.

We need more rain. Our front yard still sports cracks. Glacial till contains a lot of clay.

We reduced our flock by eleven, spread over 3 days. They are mostly done growing out feathers from the springtime molt. But not totally. We spent two early morning hours (before heat and flies set in) doing the outside portion of the harvest, and then until 2:30 pm removing fine feathers, boning and packaging. 4 ducks result in about 10 pounds of useable products. I say “product” because about 2 of those 10 pounds is skin and fat. Great for sausage making or for rendering into duck fat. The kind that makes fabulous fried potatoes or scrumptious sautéed vegetables. We started our duck harvest early this year as we have to reduce our flock from 57 to 27, or fewer. Another 5 days of hard duck work lie ahead. We also have 22 more chickens to process: 5 broilers and then a number of old hens and new Golden Laced Wyandottes. The need to rotate laying hens is a reality of having eggs.

Some of those eggs went into a tasty cake my daughter made for the Grand Girl, who is now 6! School means she has graduated from her favorite color being yellow to being pink and her cake choice going from a triceratops to a unicorn with hearts.

The other daughter grew tired of battling tangled (if beautifully curly) locks on the Grand Guy and let me give him a trim.

And that other Grand Girl has mastered ladders and slides like a boss.

Gardens and flocks and wood and Grands and physical recovery filled our lives in June. We have yet to add construction to that list. Soon. Soon. Yes. This is a lot of work. It is also so much fun.

Weather journal: rain at last!

We last had rain on May 6th. Today, at long last, we got a quarter inch. I can feel the ground expanding beneath my feet!

Overnight, the temperature cooled and the grass greened.

Fishing journal: Father’s Day fortune

Mother’s Day hosted our first fishing foray. We had no fish to show. Father’s Day came after a spate of warm weather and our luck improved immensely.

We shared the lake with other fishers.

Loons, osprey, eagles, swans, kingfishers…and us. A friend put us onto this lake, which is closed to any motorized boats. We often are the only humans enjoying this gem.

Black crappie, sunfish, and Northern Pike is what we took home. We caught a few largemouth bass and yellow perch, but too small to keep.

Michael caught more sunnies than I did, but I caught all the pike. The biggest was 23”. I hooked a bigger one, but it bit through my line as I wasn’t using a leader. I hope to share some fishing adventures with my brothers sometime soon.

Harvest journal: two days, 81.5 pounds of chicken, and some lessons learned

The first few photos are not graphic, but they do get more so as I go along. So if dead birds are not your cup of tea (how’s that for an inappropriate metaphor?!?), STOP LOOKING!

After the Grand Girl left on Saturday, I found this small bouquet awaiting my delight. Charmed, I’m sure.

The GGs got to feed the broilers after the Chosen Few (9, to be exact) went to freezer camp.

The Grand Guy explored the lawn tractor while we worked. He will need a few more minutes before he can reach the pedals.

The first part of the harvest begins with selecting a chicken. Always carry them head-down. It makes the blood run towards their heads and stupefies them. Not only does this make it easier to get them in the killing sack, but it is kinder to the chicken. Our goal is a quick and un-exciting death. If you’ve gotten this far, then you are ready for some blood.

Michael, Matt and Nate did all the beheading. The Grand Girl’s comment on viewing the process was: “chicken heads are pretty cool, if you don’t care about the chicken.”

The Grand Guy liked petting the chickens that didn’t run away, or move. He did put together the loss of heads and no more cluck-clucks.

Matt learned how to get water to 150°, how to dunk a chicken so the feathers come off but the skin stays intact (anywhere from 40-60 seconds), how to pluck bodies and clean legs and feet, and then how to eviscerate. Save the liver! (And heart, and gizzards too.) Artemis ran herd on the girls during this process. We keep young ones far from the burner and pot of hot water.

Persephone learned the dunk-pluck-eviscerate process on Day #2 while Nate ran the Grand Guy. For those who may be curious, the evisceration routine begins with removing the feet, which go into a covered bowl (flies are a reality of the harvest). Then slice down the back of the neck. Turn the bird over and separate the trachea and the throat and crop (a sac where the chicken stores food before it goes to the gizzard) from the neck and chest. Cut both as far down into the chicken as possible. Turn the chicken around so the vent faces you and make an incision just below the line of the breast. Keeping the knife parallel to the breast keeps you from puncturing any viscera. Slice the skin down to the vent (holding it away from the guts - again avoiding slicing into anything in there) and slice around the vent. Then all the guts can be removed by reaching in and gently tugging on them from the back. Removing the throat, crop and trachea makes this part a lot easier. The lungs are attached to the ribs as chickens do not have a diaphragm. You have to scrape out the lungs with your fingers. Some people use a special tool for this. I don’t own that tool. Then the carcass goes into a plastic sack inside the cooler loaded with ice. Remove the heart to a separate bowl. Remove the gall bladder from the liver and add the liver to the bowl. Finally, slice the gizzard in half and cut the meaty part away from the tough inside lining.

I don’t have photos of the next part of the process because everyone’s hands were covered in chicken, so you get to see my efforts at beautifying my LP tank. This is what happened next: A son-in-law was tasked to haul the cooler full of chicken inside. I brought in the bowls of feet and internal organs, as well as knives and other equipment. Michael cleaned up outside. We do not want any strong smell of dead chickens attracting predators to our live chickens! The offal goes into a plastic bag, which is placed inside a second bag and hauled to the trash at the end of our 600’ driveway. All the outside equipment is hosed down and scrubbed. Everything else is washed inside while people grab a bite to eat before getting covered in chicken once again. I disinfect all inside work surfaces with a bleach compound. I clean off the internal organs and feet for packaging and, as soon as I can, I vacuum seal them into a package and haul them to a freezer. Michael cleaned the last feathers from the carcasses and brought them into us girls. I weighed them and then taught my girls how to cut up a chicken. They got to decide how they wanted their parts cut and the size of the packaging. (Boneless/skinless breasts? Wings whole or in parts? How many pieces per package, or package by weight?) The total on Day #1 was 40 pounds and 41.5 pounds on Day #2: that tells you how fast the broilers grow! Two days and eighteen chickens. All packed into coolers and sent home with our children.

The deer have turned red. They are everywhere. I have yet to see a fawn. This is my reality: living in a place where I am surrounded by an abundance of life and death and then more life. There is a lot of death in this world. One of the women to whom I gave some duck eggs admitted she had a hard time thinking of eating them because she could only think of the ducklings that could have hatched from those eggs. I told her that we nourish our ducks so they can nourish us. She ate the eggs and admitted they were delightful. It’s worth knowing how to raise and harvest chickens or beets. I’m so happy my children are willing to learn and take part in this cycle.

Season journal: May riches

April gifted us snow and floods. May began chilly, then warmed and remained dry. Time to garden like a banshee!

Irene’s rhododendron liked being buried in snow. The part of the forsythia that was buried bloomed too. I may take to piling snow on these plants preferentially.

May saw the first and last of our asparagus harvest. We gorged on fresh stalks for weeks…and then the time to let them grow into fronds came. Asparagus require a bunch of work for a short season, but are worth the trouble. They come and leave early, bridging the space between dandelions and nettles.

An urban friend expressed concern when I posted about eating springtime dandelions. I assured her we have enough to share with the bees.

May 13th: pussytoe riot day.

The pussytoes started blooming on May 10, which is when the rhododendron, cherries, ferns and currants blossomed.

Trillium, tulips, flowering crab, violets, strawberries, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild geranium, yellow violets, apple, plum and pear blossoms festooned Mothers Day.

Stinging nettle requires special handling, but makes lovely pasta, paired with pancetta, lemon zest and goat cheese. I must remember to gather some for tea.

We had several days of Canadian smoke sunrises.

But most days have been clear and warm.

Michael dug and fenced the tomato/eggplant/ chile garden while I was babysitting Grand Girls. A week later I weeded, caged and staked them. They love being in dirt!

Michael dug the weeds out of the “small” garden today. Winter squash will grow all over by the end of summer.

He planted pumpkins behind the chicken coop yesterday.

I turned over and raked out the raised beds, but haven’t planted them. We both have been working on spading up the big garden. Usually everything is planted by the end of May. Not this year. My April 1st snow shoveling injury slows me down. My doc said I may be on the walking wounded list for 6 months. Digging dirt is oddly therapeutic.

The purple potatoes I tucked into the straw pile are thriving. The russets just now peep out.

Honeysuckle, high bush cranberry, viburnum and bridal veil take over as the lilacs fade.

Iris replace tulips.

The new ducklings take their first swim.

I watch in wonder as the Grands continue to grow and thrive. We spend as much time as possible with them. They learn new things almost daily. There is art in advancing all parts of the picture at once. We work on a large canvas. I can hardly wait to see how this season turns out.

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.