Season journal: trick or treat

My breakfast views: first white and last reds.

Beautiful snow, but the ice accumulated on warm roads cut short my morning walk.

We made our rounds to the marble forests, sharing bread and wine (cheese curds and beer too) with our dearly departed, who return to us during these days. Michael dreamed Irene walking up the steps to the old part of the house last night. She really didn’t want to die. She was so afraid we would forget her. We try to ally her fears, even in death.

Our scions have made good use of pumpkins. So many would be so pleased with these children who have children. It has been ten years since Clyde died and our slow journey back here began. Walking through the graveyard where Michael and I plan to be planted, near Nonie and Ralph, reminds me how much this is home to Michael. I have no place where I know most of the etched names. I choose to make my home here, and look forward to resting among my adopted clan. I hope to live each day as a good day, so that when my days come to an end, it will not be a trick, but a treat.

Garden journal: late fall wonders

October 27. No snow. Yet.

We sent the Very Large Pumpkins home with grands and gather the last inside. Cold comes. The high of 46° happened at 8 am. Only chillier from here to the foreseeable future.

The squash shall live in the basement, lasting until spring.

I stripped the Northwest Greening this week, saving the few keepers, then patrolled all trees for strays. The apple maggots use fallen apples for part of their life cycle. Once established, they stay until a very hard winter wipes the soil clean of larvae. Better to keep the orchards clean. We do not spray.

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant. All gone.

I made a green tomato galette, layering tomato slices with thin sliced onions. Grated Parmesan over and under tomatoes. Salt, pepper and paprika. All cuddled in a savory crust. Salad rounded out dinner. Michael loosed the ducks on the last of the lettuce. They will clear that garden for us.

The chicken pullets began laying on October 10th. A pullet is a young laying bird. Their first eggs tend to be small. They are hard to incorporate into recipes, so Michael boiled a batch and we had soup and egg salad for dinner. The soup is a type of borscht I created with the last of the red eggplants. I added onions and garlic and beets and cabbage and a number of different types of peppers and paprika. Oh, and chicken and chicken broth…and a bit of maraschino cherry juice. It just needed a little sweetness. Turned out a lovely red and even lovelier to eat.

Last weekend we visited a dear friend in Western Minnesota. The trees remained spectacular. Color started with maples and is ending with cottonwood, poplar and birch. The oak leaves will hang on until spring. The Glaciers there brought down a different mix of gravel. Our roads in Western Wisconsin are paved with Lake Superior agates. Their roads incorporate Iron Range taconite, which rusts. Thank you, Valerie, for sharing your time and world with us.

These lovelies kept the animals fed while we played hooky. Thank you Artemis and Matt for allowing us a holiday.

We can hardly wait to see this guy again.

Season journal: Wow. Colors.

Every year, the changing of the seasons creates cause for celebration. Spring flowers. Summer abounds. Fall flames. Winter sparkles.

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

“Pied Beauty”—Gerard Manley Hopkins

I’d try to say it better, but for lack of words, I borrow liberally.

First frost on October 9th had us gathering the last of our garden bounty and finding ways to eat tomatoes in all their glory: egg sandwiches, Brazilian fish stew (moqueca), fried green with white sauce. The parm substituting green tomatoes for eggplant and making sauce from ripe reds goes without record due to gobbling them unapologetically.

Michael cleaned our new chimney on October 5th, with my help. I climbed onto the roof TWICE, which tells you how much I love that man. My bad knees don’t like stepping off ladders and getting up on slanted surfaces. I admit to uncontrollable shakes during this process. No photos of the magnificent view due to said tremors.

Even so, I can’t believe I get to live in Wisconsin!

Where I stumble across blewits while walking Zeke. They are delicious!

Where we seek out entalomas while the trees exude cloud-forming particles that smell of cracked pepper.

Where we clear faded vines and plant garlic for future savor.

We collaborate on cakes to celebrate the birth of friends.

Where we squirrel away cabbage, beets and pickles for future feasts.

And revel in the long low light in the autumn of our days.

Celebration journal: combining the new and the old

We celebrated a birthday with visiting our dearly departed on a wedding anniversary this year.

Visitors from Michigan and Virginia drove us out into glorious fall weather, where we could picnic with ancestors without needing parkas.

Tales from more people, knowledge of times gone by, root us to place and to each other.

Married 34 years, John and Lori serve as supplemental grandparents, much as Klink and Harriette did for our girls.

We make space in our hearts and homes…

…and they leave gifts that last after they are gone.

We hope to do the same.

Moonlighting journal: Boston in September

I still lead a double life: down and dirty farm girl by day/highfalutin lawyer by and by. My caseload is pretty sparse, but things heat up now and again. That happened in September, when my presence was required by the First Circuit, which sits in Boston.

Going from ducks to mass transit was a little disorienting. Luckily, my Big City Navigation brain cells have not completely disappeared. I made it safely to my hotel all in one piece.

King’s Chapel, established in 1868. One of the first churches in Boston. Right across from my hotel. A good landmark to navigate to dinner and back.

This is Boston: ancient cobbles reflected In sleek architecture.

The Brutalism of City Hall. Irony?

This interactive memorial to the Holocaust billows steam as you stop to read survivor’s stories. Very effective.

The oldest Pub in the US. I had another destination in mind.

The Daily Catch in the North End seats about 15 and serves great seafood and pasta. I ate it all.

I took the greenway to the footbridge that leads to the federal courthouse, only to find it closed. I walked further to time the journey from the courthouse back to my hotel.

Night and exhaustion overtook me. I slept well, awoke early, donned my armor and went out to joust. I parried all sword thrusts but will not discover if my client will regain a chance at freedom in his lifetime until some unknown future date.

I got to explore more of Boston with a friend after work.

Thank you Ralph, Katherine and Rebecca for helping me transition back from antiseptic professionalism to the doctrine of friends, family, and dirt.

Livestock journal: pullet eggs!

Our new duck hens began to lay eggs this past Monday, September 25.

Two more Tuesday and two this morning. Different ducks as we went from one green and one white to both green today. We have 10 new hens. Our 10 older hens have given a total of 1-2 eggs a day for about two weeks. Losing 12 of our dependable layers hurt productivity. The remaining 10 old hens are laying a few more now. Weather? Molting? Stress from change of housing? We still haven’t quite figured it out. We await the first pullet eggs from our new Wyandotte hens. Stay tuned!

Equinox journal: hurtling towards winter

All the leaves on one walnut turned yellow today. The maples flash red, warning of waning days. The tomatoes look tired. We, like squirrels, scurry to store food for winter.

The eggplants produce more than we can eat. I split them, salt them to draw out moisture, then toss in olive oil and grill until soft. I scoop out the flesh and freeze for that winter day when Baba Ganouj on toast will transport us back to steamy September days. Along the way, I sample the different types we’ve grown. The orange round ones are sweet. The purple round ones are fleshy. The others taste more like classic eggplant. I mix them together and love them all.

We have squeezed 10 gallons of pear cider and 10 gallons of apple cider, and have more apples to process for wine and dried apples. We have tossed loads of fruit ruined by July’s hail storm. We may be in drought, but the trees remember winter snow.

The tartness of cider cools the tongue after a day in the sun.

I completed my first quilt. I hope it helps warm some fragile frame come winter. This is part of a church group effort to bring comfort to our community. Our quilting guru joked that we should make it a “Sip and Sew” event…so I provided home made wine to help ease the aches that come with hunching over a sewing machine. Michael and I really can’t drink all the wine and cider we make.

The blue potatoes are amazing boiled or roasted. They are becoming our favorite. Cabbages crack when cut open, fresh and crisp. The giant pumpkins will go to Grands for Halloween. Extras will go to the church rummage sale. We will eat the small ones before Christmas, saving the winter squash to cheer us and our birds with their rich orange flesh in hard winter. Beets and pickles we eat now!

Michael and I took a break from pressing apples to go hunt the wily wild hazelnut. We found a stand driving around in the sand barrens and gathered a couple of paper grocery bags worth in half an hour. The hazelnuts are about the size of a chickpea, but are sweet and lovely. Sitting down for a while in the evening and chatting while cracking hazelnuts has become our new favorite pastime.

Aborted entalomas appear near the equinox. They cannot be confused with any toxic mushroom, so we gather them when we see them. They have a firm flesh and umami flavor. Great in stews or omelets.

We harvested the last of the ducks and chickens on September 3. Between 26 ducks, 25 broilers and 12 Wyandotte chickens, we produced a total of 268 pounds of usable portions. This includes feet and bones for broth, as well as meat and fat for sausages. 81 pounds went directly to our children. The rest we share out over the year. We lost 12 ducks and 4 chickens to predators. The birds have moved to winter quarters, which provide better protection. Bob continues to do well and keeps up with the flock on her single leg.

“Autumn is here!” sings Roger the Rooster.

The Grands remind us there is joy in hurtling through space.

Gratitude journal: thanks for all the memories (and the chance to make more)

Clyde and Irene, Michael’s parents, have given us so much over the years. Clearing out Irene’s paperwork, I found the loan document when we bought our first new car. We paid less than the going rate and they earned more than their CDs paid. Seems we did a lot of that win-win coordination with them.

This is what the house looked like 10 years ago. There was a porch on the other side where Michael’s brother installed a mini-elevator to allow Clyde to get into the house when he got sick. This place is another one of our win-win joint projects. Michael and I purchased the real estate and Clyde and Irene put in the well and septic. The guys built the cabin together.

Here’s to you, Clyde! I’m feeling a little sentimental as today marks his 10th “death-aversary”. It marks 9 years and 2 days since we moved in with Irene. We’ve done a lot and have more to do.

More fishing.

More gardening.

More walks to the river.

More observing interactions between plants and insects.

More squirreling wood away for winter.

And many more pies.

August journal: sunflowers and other delights

Both Clyde and Irene loved sunflowers. We plant them every year. When they bloom, it’s time to visit.

It helps that we’ve had highs in the mid-90s. Running north with the windows down. A fine way to travel.

Eleven pints of tomato and jalapeño jam made our house a bit steamy this morning. Another good reason to decamp.

We still eat tomatoes morning, noon, and night. Even so, our vines produce more than we can eat or give away. Canning in August drives my desire for a summer kitchen.

My neighbor cans green beans. We have heaps of beans, but I will eat them fresh always.

No one is having a good onion year. The hail was hard on them.

August sees the giant puffballs magically appear in ditches and on lawns. These I refuse to eat fresh! They are best dried, crushed into powder, and added to sauces or pasta.

Meadow mushrooms (they are the ones you find in grocery stores) we eat immediately. This year they have an especially floral scent. Omelettes with sautéed shrooms. Yum.

Michael took me on a trek to find trout on one of our rainy days. We discovered cold water, cool ferns, and chanterelles. No fish.

August brought some wicked wind. It made the gate to the duck’s winter pasture a giant kite, anchored by the grape vines. Michael repaired the gate while I plucked fox grapes. Grape jelly like you’ve never tasted! We are cutting our vines so we don’t lose more fences, but I may hunt for these in the woods if we have another banner year. Who knew fox grapes could be so good?

The pears produced a juice of a lighter hue this year. A result of huge snow but shallow frost? We need to strip the tree before it drops all its fruit. One of the duties of keeping fruit trees is clearing the ground under the trees. It deprives the worms a vector to reproduce and infect the fruit next year.

We bottled the currant wine last week. The red reminds me of raspberries, as does the bouquet. The rhubarb pales in comparison (although this year’s rhubarb is the best ever).

All the Greats would love to see how the Grands grow, and how wonderfully the children they spent time with are doing as parents themselves. They are delightful!

Garden journal: the nightshade parade

I live for tomato season. This year, perhaps due to heat and drought, it came early.

Tomatoes on my birthday. Amazing and wonderful and worthy of sharing.

The chiles and eggplants were not far behind.

Followed by our other nightshade, potatoes.

We eat tomatoes morning, noon and night: sandwiches, salsa and solo.

We shared our bounty with Michael’s friend Walt, his family, and High School friends, feeding them chile rellenos and other delicacies from the garden.

We feed our family on pasta cooked with grated tomatoes and grilled eggplant, fresh basil and feta as garnishes. I can hardly wait until we can make our own cheese!

Our days are full as we learn new things and practice older skills.

At end of day we celebrate with a glass of wine. Is it so much sweeter because it comes from our land and our labor? This year’s rhubarb bathes the tongue with a light, round flavor that speaks of spring.

Lovely to share at sunset in late summer.

Farm journal: losing birds to predators

We have had a running battle with raccoons. Yesterday the score was 4 lost ducks to 9 raccoons to feed the vultures, crows and eagles. The raccoons upped their game last night.

This is never a good sign.

The damage to the yurts indicate that the raccoon climbed over the outer fence into the pasture, lifted the tarp, chewed through the chicken wire, and then snacked on chicken breast and duck legs. Today we make an emergency run to buy hardware cloth (which is raccoon-proof) and install it around all the summer yurts.

Lil’ Blackie was one of our geriatric chickens. She was a broody hen. After she hatched her last clutch of eggs two years ago, she stopped being able to perch. Broody hens will stop eating and drinking while they sit on a nest for three weeks. It takes its toll. We put her in the duck pasture with two other geriatric chickens who were being pecked to death by the young chickens. The others, Mr. Whitey and Boyo, can still roost, which protects them from this type of predation.

Ducks are ground dwellers. If they could, they would spend the night on a pond, beyond the easy reach of raccoons. And fox. And weasels. Last night, the raccoon reached through the hole it made in the chicken wire, caught a duck by their leg and pulled/bit the leg off. These two ducks, who were Pearl and Electra, died of blood loss.

This previously anonymous Pekin survived the loss of her leg. She will now be known as Bob. Michael noticed that she can still get around on her one remaining leg, so we will see if she can survive sepsis and heal.

We filled our metal wash tub (what my father called a “tina”) and cleaned her up. I put on antibiotic cream (a lot!), a gauze pad and then wrapped it all with that type of bandage that sticks to itself but not to anything else. We put her in the winter coop with Fawn, our last duck from our original flock. Ducks need companionship. But Bob doesn’t need competition for food and water, so we chose a calm duck to go with her. This is a ridiculous thing to do from an economic standpoint. But these ducks were in the “do not kill” pasture, which means we could form attachments to them. Michael’s uncle, who farmed this land when Michael was growing up, would have certain milk cows he would pasture until they died. He figured they had been exceptionally good cows and deserved a retirement. If Bob lives, she will have earned her place in the permanent coop, for pure grit if nothing else.

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.