Celestial journal: light shows

Once Irene passed, we shut off the yard light. We have stars again! And on October 20th, a beautiful view of the aurora borealis.

On October 18th we had a super moon.

I couldn’t capture the shooting stars on the 22nd. The most amazing thing has been being able to stand on the deck in my nightgown, without shivering! The prediction is for a cold winter, but fall has been long and warm.

The sun rises and sets on this little one! Can you see the double moons of her new teeth?

Season journal: first frost

Frost visited this morning in a serious way. Cold mornings had burned the squash vines back, but it wasn’t enough to hurt the tomatoes and peppers. This morning’s frost burnt everything! And that is a shelled-out baked pumpkin in the lower right. Michael is making pie and the ducks love the leftovers.

Which led us to trim the deck plants and bring them in for winter.

I hunted down the last tomatoes, feeding the injured ones to the chickens.

I gathered 4 pounds of tomatoes. Tossed with olive oil and salt, garlic and onions, they roasted nicely in half an hour. I put them through a blender and into the freezer. They will brighten some dinner in the middle of winter. That is a 16 pound cabbage sitting next to those tomatoes.

I shredded four pounds, layered it with salt (2 teaspoons per pound), and stuffed it into a crock.

I chopped another 4 pounds, along with onions and carrots, and made a sauce with grated garlic, ginger, fish sauce, sugar, red chile, and glutinous rice paste. (Doesn’t everyone keep glutinous rice in their pantry?). Both the kimchi and sauerkraut should be done in a couple of days. They make my house smell good!

I weighted both down with plastic bags filled with salt water. The bags seal the cabbage and keeps it under the water generated by the fermentation process, and so far has kept any unwanted mold from growing in my brews. I didn’t have Korean chile powder, so I used New Mexico red. The rest of that cabbage went to my daughter, who has her own plans for making beautiful food for her family. Braised? Grilled? All good!

We gathered squash and pumpkins in from their garden spots. I found several by pulling vines out of the weeds, reeling in squash like bass out of lily pads.

We decided to leave the really big pumpkins in place. Our children will have to come and claim them.

While Michael was hiking squash down to their basement home, I was clearing out the pepper and eggplant gardens.

I ended up with about 20 cups of chopped green chile and 12 cups of eggplant pulp.

Michael dipped the rutabagas in paraffin and they should last until December.

Before we left for the wedding, we chopped one rutabaga, potatoes, onions, mixed the veg with ground venison and made 32 pasties.

Michael got the apples off the trees. So many were bad due to an early hail storm. We have the ones that look good enough to save in bins in the garage. We are still trying to decide if it’s worth making cider. Now that the tomatoes are done, I will start eating apples and yogurt for breakfast.

A couple of days before our trip to Massachusetts, we found a sulphur shelf and a hen of the woods. They are safely stashed in jars and the freezer. The hen of the woods is particularly good rehydrated by adding it to brown rice.

The rice was great with our final meal of green beans. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the cabbages I still have on my table. If the kimchi works out, I’ll see if I can can it and maybe I’ll make more. We only eat so much sauerkraut.

This beautiful, crazy, time of year brings the frenzy of racing against the hard deadline of this first real frost. And then the day comes when the growing season is done. We still have food to process and save, but this is the end. I’m looking forward to sitting before the fire and knitting.

Celebration journal: expanding families

October brings challenges and joys, as do other months. But this October’s blessings have been particularly abundant.

On October 6th, a Sunday, Michael officiated at the wedding of a dear friend from our days in Maine. Hannah calls Michael “dad” and their connection fits that title. She has blossomed since they met in nursing school more than ten years ago. Neither ended up being nurses, but the fact that they maintain close contact, despite distance and language barriers, testifies to the honesty of the name she has given him. We love having extra daughters in our lives! I will need to begin knitting a baby blanket.

We stayed at an AirBnB in Malden, a suburb of Boston. I enjoyed the stained glass, especially since learning about cabochon stained glass techniques from my dear friend Katherine, who is a docent at Trinity Church in Boston.

We lured her into picking us up at the airport and then whisking us off to the North End for lunch at the Daily Catch. We try to eat there if ever in the neighborhood, as they make food better than we do. That is high praise!

In exchange, she showed us the amazing library in Malden. Worth the walk! And this is from a person who is bone-on-bone in both knees. [The confusion of travel might explain how I missed getting photos of Katherine!] We slept well Saturday night. Getting up at 2 AM Saturday morning may have helped.

The bakery across from the metro station had jelly donuts filled with red mung beans! There is a large Vietnamese-American population in Malden. The French colonized Vietnam, which means stunning bakeries. The Communist regime wreaked untold agony on the Vietnamese and others. If there is no ill that does not also bring good, perhaps the bakeries and amazing people we inherited is that shining light in what was a very dark period.

I coaxed Michael into taking the train into Boston on Sunday as a dry run for our return trip Monday morning. Good thing too, as we were pretty clueless at buying tickets. We met so many kind people who helped us navigate streets and ticket machines.

We stopped at the Sea Dog across from Faneuil Hall for some calamari.

Then back to Malden and a Thai restaurant, where we hoped to (and did!) find some vegetables. The dip was lump crab in coconut curry. Yum. And yes, I gained about 4 pounds on this trip, despite all the walking.

More amazing food at the wedding! Just as well that the bakery was closed Monday morning. Back home. We love being home.

Especially since we got to celebrate Petra’s birthday. Hearing her sing “Happy Birthday to Me” while she danced on the tall chairs was a delight. Imogen was a drool monster. Cutting teeth will do that to a girl. We all wanted to hold her even so. She’s our last baby! Good thing we recruit more daughters into our lives. Love you Hannah and Quy!

Season journal: harvest in the post autumnal equinox

We were crazy busy on the equinox. Still are, but without the frantic edge that came with juggling my moonlighting gig with harvest with church lady duties.

The popcorn is in and drying.

On the equinox we had spectacular weather. It’s been dry and warm, highs in the mid-80s, since.

The storm led us to harvest the corn.

The late rain brought moisture at an inconvenient time, promoting aphids, grasshoppers (they chew through the husks to eat the kernels), and ear worms. (Yes, they really are a thing.)

We have a good crop even so.

I neglected the green beans for a couple of weeks. Big and getting tough, but still tasty if sliced thin. Wonderful stir fried with garlic and sweet chili sauce. Those are some of our last tomatoes.

I dug up the last of the potatoes yesterday. About another 30 pounds. Planting in straw does make them easy to find.

Marigolds in the long low light of autumn simply glow.

Pumpkins and squash have wandered everywhere. Still too green to cut and gather. That’s a lilac bush supporting this fellow. The lilacs have been blooming again after losing all their leaves in the wet of early August. They did this last year too. Irene loved lilacs.

We spent this past week preparing for my church’s fall rummage sale. It was yesterday. We may have made enough to put new linoleum in the kitchen AND support our local Christmas toy giveaway. Today we got to see the Grands. Since the last time we saw Moogie, she learned to sit on her own. She’s a big, strong child. At 6 months she wears 12 month clothes. She’ll sprout teeth any day now! And Felix is learning his colors in Spanish!

All the woolly caterpillars are out, telling us winter is coming.

Our land grows languid, shutting down with the waning light. Fall may be frantic, but in strangely mellow tones. I do love it so.

Foraging journal: indigo milky caps

Zeke took me for a walk a couple of days ago, when I spied mushrooms growing in the neighbor’s yard.

Always curious, I wandered that way and plucked one. Running my nail across the gills was diagnostic. A lactarius, or milky cap! Not just any, but an indigo! Woot! These are more common in warmer climes, such as Mexico and Central America. I think my climate may be changing….

My research told me they are edible and hard to confuse with any other fungus.

The blue dye was pretty amazing.

I sautéed them with red onion, garlic, oregano (I didn’t have epazote) and olive oil. Salt and pepper, of course.

They made a nice filling for omelettes. They tasted like mushrooms, but a bit meatier than your normal agaricus (the type commonly sold in supermarkets). And they didn’t kill us! That’s always nice.

Foraging journal: mushrooms but no filberts

We marked our calendar last year when we found filberts, also known as hazelnuts. That date popped up on our calendar, so out we went to the sand barrens/wildlife reserve, where we find wild hazelnut bushes.

We found this fine fellow, but no nuts. Our black walnut trees have taken the year off as well, so the lack of a mast did not surprise us.

On our way to look for filberts, I yelled “mushroom!” Michael hit the brakes and backed up. It was a perfect age for harvesting. Because it was doubtful that anyone else would eat it (except the beetles), Michael cut it off the stump and into one of our paper bags it went. It is good to put mushrooms in paper or an open wicker basket. We have found that wild mushrooms don’t like plastic!

Having found a mushroom but no filberts, we decided to hike the “mushroom woods.” This is a state trail that follows the top of a limestone bluff above the St. Croix River. We have hiked this trail for about 30 years. Not many people use this lovely resource. We know because 1) we rarely encounter anyone while we are there and 2) there’s usually no trash to be found on the trail. Even when we do not find edible mushrooms, the hike itself is a worthy way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

But we did find mushrooms! These are lobster mushrooms (hypomyces lactiflorum), which is a type of fungus that infects russula and lactarius mushrooms, turning them from their usual white to this stunning red color. They are edible, but we rarely catch them before they are too old to eat. We gather them anyway because they also make a lovely red dye for my hand spun yarn. (A post for another day.)

We also found some aborted entalomas. There is some evidence that this is another type of fungus that infects a mushroom species and changes it. Which fungus infects which mushroom may not have been settled, but we love these for winter stews. They add a deep umami flavor and are a bit chewy.

Finally, we found this hen of the woods, another favorite to dry and use in winter stews. Unfortunately, it was too old to harvest, so we let it be.

More loveliness on our way home.

I cleaned and sliced mushrooms for the dehydrator while Michael put the birds to bed.

They were all nicely dried by this afternoon. Into tightly sealed glass jars for later use.

We have not been out fishing or foraging as often this year for a number of reasons. We willingly cede other activities to have time watching the Grands grow and to hold onto small bodies while we may. The Grands were not impressed by the borscht I made, but they came back for seconds of the pear-pecan upside down cake. I confess, I ate the last piece after they left!

Visitor journal: the love of family and friends!

A dear friend from college stopped by in early September on her way back from one of her adventures in Alaska. I do not get out much, so I live vicariously through the travels of others. She is also an amazing gardener, so we put her to work.

With her help, the garlic got planted early this year!

We subjected her to the chaos of having small children in the house. We advised that she might find odds and ends of bread rolls in her room, as indeed she did. Felix slept over her first night here. She says she still cherishes the memory of awakening in the morning and hearing a tiny voice chanting “abracadabra” in the next room.

I grilled eggplant (they are beginning to be plentiful) and made a big batch of baba ganoush. Turns out it is one of her favorites!

We went to a neighbor’s house and picked fresh corn. Thanks Mike!

She experienced our motto: the pay is bad but the food is good!

She stirred the pear butter (we took turns) until it “traced”. Now that is friendship!

She made fast friends with Zeke, and then went back to her own fantastic life in Massachusetts.

A few days later I went back to the neighbor’s and brought him seed garlic and one of our huge cabbages. Not only did I score more corn, but I also found some huitlacoche, or what is known around here as “corn smut”. He willingly let me have all I could find.

I sorted through and removed the corn silk and older mushrooms that were turning black. The next day I sautéed it with some onions, garlic, jalapeños, herbs, salt and pepper and then served it as tacos to my sister and her husband, who were passing through from Washington state to Vermont.

She still loves me! But seriously, she and her hubby knew what huitlacoche is, and were happy to finally try some. No photos, as they arrived late and we were all hungry. And more corn! Yum.

Michael had just moved the ducks from their summer pasture to winter residence, which meant we got to enjoy their cheerfulness with Mariluz and Tomás. And now we are back to the craziness of harvest time and preparing the gardens for winter.

(We still have some friends around…)

Up-cycling journal: used tires

The Grand Girl always likes to have a project going. Since she would be visiting, I decided that it was time to act on my vision for the four used tires someone deposited in our ditch last year.

It turned out that her little hands were not strong enough to work the spray paint cans, but she was a trooper and kept me company.

Her job was to draw me designs to put on the tires, from which I made stencils. She chose the sun and moon on her own. I drew the apple.

She pretended to be a flower so I would know how pretty these would be. Then it was time for her to go home.

I cut the stencils out of contact paper. I have to admit, this was the boring part. Then I spray painted over the stencils. The tires are stacked because it kept raining and you can’t paint a wet tire. The stacking kept the top tires dry.

My admiration for graffiti artists grew by doing this project. “Golden apples of the Sun; Silver apples of the moon.” William Butler Yeats is probably turning in his grave.

Clyde loved flowers. If ever told of my scheme for used tires, he would have shaken his head and said, “That girl is crazy!” But he would have devised a means of keeping the flowers watered. Irene always wanted something decorative for the entrance to the driveway. She also liked the color turquoise. Anything bright and cheerful. So here’s to you Summa and Bucka! [No Used Tire planters allowed at the cemetery, so these will have to do.] And no, I don’t want any more tires left in my ditch.

Family journal: time with the Grands

I often include photos of the younguns in my posts. We were blessed with having the Grand Girl and Guy for overnight stays in August, as well as a number of other visits. I decided it was time for a Grands post.

Michael and I traveled to our daughter’s home so the guys could work on several projects. This allowed me to hang out with Moogie and her mom. The Grand Guy was learning plumbing, or at least that plumbing is a thing.

We left them functioning faucets and clean kiddles.

At about the same time, my mother was enjoying the other set of Grands at her house.

I notice we take a lot of photos of Moogie. She is quite charming.

When the Grand Girl arrived for her visit, one of the first things we did was take her on a tour of the deer stands. We have two that are enclosed and with easy enough access that even I can get into them.

She helped me with turning some tires someone left in our ditch into flower planters.

We had to go into town to buy the flowers, which took us past the ice cream shop and the falls overlook.

We found a good bedtime book.

She enjoyed the watermelon that grew from the seeds she planted this spring.

Fueled with watermelon and pancakes, she took Zeke on his 2 mile walk to the river.

We took her to the Minnesota State Fair before returning her home.

We picked the Grand Guy the next morning. He LOVED riding in the Ranger.

We had everyone over for dinner, and all the Grands went home with their parents. We are so blessed to have children close enough to visit regularly. It makes for a wonderfully energetic space, encouraging us to keep working to make this a place children want to be.

Harvest journal: duck anatomy

We have been reducing our flocks. No more birds to harvest as of 8/21! The temperatures bouncing between chilly and muggy hot. We feel the pressure to squirrel produce away for winter.

Water plantain, pine boletes and chickory: all signs of fall. These are the buffer photos for those who do not care to see blood and gut photos. Frankly, I’m fascinated by the insides of my birds. One more buffer photo of a puffball and then onto the hard core farm life.

Michael uses a cleaver to chop off heads. I can never get a photo of the bagged bird, as I’m usually holding one and cooing to him while his companion goes to the block. Think of a pillow case with a corner removed. Head goes through the corner and the body is wrapped snugly with the bag. It keeps them still until the end. I stroke their breasts afterwards, which calms their bodies as they finish dying.

We hang birds from a gibbet, which also is a shooting bench, to let them finish bleeding before plucking. This is from earlier in the year when we harvested broilers.

This is a duck pizzle. Ducks will sometimes stick them out when going through the process of dying. Chickens never do. Ducks have a battle of the sexes going on. Hens have internal means of avoiding fertilization by undesirable males as they cannot avoid unwanted copulation. Too many drakes per hen will create undue stress, as will cold weather or unsafe lodging.

The eggs on the right side are normal. The ones on the left are not. We harvested three of our last year’s Khaki Campbells, even though we had some older hens in the flock. They lay a tannish egg, which was being scarce. They also were not overwintering well, due to their small size and producing less down than other hens. The stress factor may have led to the malfunction in their egg production. This will also happen as ducks grow older.

One of the three still had viable eggs. This one would have been laid, but for her being a member of the culled group. Because we pasture the birds and have common nests, we can’t keep track of who is laying, except by the color of the egg.

We submerge ducks in a big kettle of water heated to 160°-170° until the wing and tail feathers pull out easily. Sometimes the ducks are not done molting, which means there are feathers that have not quite emerged from their skin. You don’t want to save down from a duck during the molt, as you will have spiky things throughout the fluff.

After plucking (and saving down), I get to clean the birds. Duck and heritage chickens have narrow body cavities and I have smaller hands than Michael. I start by turning the bird on its breast and slitting the neck skin down to the shoulder blades.

Then I turn the bird over and separate the neck skin from the muscles. The trachea and esophagus need to be peeled off of the neck skin. Same for chickens, except they have a crop (feed sac) in the esophagus which is snuggled up to the top of the wish bone. It all has to come off as much as possible before removing the viscera from the abdomen.

This is a drake trachea. It has a large bulb where it adjoins the lungs. This gives drakes a very quiet quack.

This is a duck hen trachea. No box to dampen their quack. Hens are noisy!

Having removed the upper sections of breathing/feeding apparatus, I open up the body. I push down on the part just below the ribs to keep from puncturing any organs. Same for chickens.

There is a layer of skin, a layer of muscle and a layer of membrane and then internal fat deposits. It helps to have sharp knives.

The liver is in the upper left and the gizzard is hiding under the fat on the right.

I hold the intestines back from the abdominal wall while slicing down to and around the cloaca (the one hole where everything comes out).

After detaching the guts from the top and bottom, I reach into the cavity and detach all the membranes holding the guts in place. Then I grab hold of the esophagus and pull. The heart usually separates out, but the rest is held together by more membranes.

I have to detach the testes with a knife. Otherwise they are delicate and break into pieces. My chickens love these.

I carefully cut around the gall bladder, which is embedded in the liver. Gall is bitter and best kept contained. Sometimes I puncture the bladder and have to wash everything down.

The esophagus feeds into the gizzard, which acts like teeth for ducks and chickens.

It is lined with extremely tough skin. The bird swallows gravel, which gets ground with feed/grass/bugs/etc. The mash then goes into the intestines for final digestion.

I filet out the muscles to make into sausage.

These are the parts I save: liver, heart and gizzards. Hearts go to sausages too. We just eat the livers. I put all these in a small bowl when doing the outdoors portion of the harvest. One of my favorite things is opening the bowl indoors to do a final rinse before packaging. The sudden puff of meaty, bloody aroma is amazing. Heaven help me, I am a carnivore!

We pack the carcasses on ice in a cooler while doing the outdoors processing. We bring the cooler inside and Michael washes them down and removes any stray feathers, then hands them off to me. I part out the young ducks and skin and debone the sausage ducks. Duck breasts cook at a different rate than legs and wings. We prefer duck parts to whole roasted duck, due to cooking time differences, although a whole crispy duck is pretty special. I start the parting at the wing joints. Easiest to find from the back.

Wings and legs are best slow braised and then crisped under a broiler or on a grill. I toss the wing tips. Because ducks are so fatty, the skin doesn’t make good broth. The bones are very light and aren’t good for broth either. I save chicken carcasses for broth, but toss the ducks.

I take the legs off by slicing the skin along the muscle line and then slide my knife between the muscle and bone to the hip joint. I bend the hip until it pops out of the socket and continue the cut towards the tail.

Duck legs include the thighs. Braising helps render the fat out so they can crisp under high heat. Those legs get a work out and need slow cooking to become tender.

I bone the breast off last. There is a line along the skin that goes from bumpy to smooth. I slice along that line and slide my knife along the ribs to the central keel. Then I slice along the keel and the wishbone. A duck wishbone is “u” shaped, while a chicken or turkey has a “v” shaped wishbone.

Duck parts ready for packaging! I take all the meat and skin I can off the carcass for sausage making. Any extra skin/fat gets rendered for soap. The leftover cracklings are wonderful to snack on.

We also processed the extra young roosters and did in our old rooster. We fried one of the young ones. A rare treat! The old rooster will go to making sausage. He lost his place on our farm when we incubated 21 eggs and only 8 were fertile. When I opened him up, I found he had gotten so fat that he had almost blocked off his cloaca. Yikes! I could barely get my hand inside to clean him out. He was also very well connected. He weighed in at 8.5 pounds. The young cockerels weighed closer to 2 pounds each.

Julia Child said that she could become a great chef because she loved food and had no fear. I inherited my lack of fear from my mother. When she was young, she lived next to a woman who raised chickens but couldn’t kill them. My mother made a deal: she killed and cleaned two chickens and got to keep one to feed her family. I couldn’t resist sending her a rooster to protect her front door. I’m happy she likes Henry!

Harvest journal: days of pickles and beer

We cycle through hot and humid to sudden and spectacular storms this time of year.

We make “3 day pickles” which often take 5 days to ferment. The cucumbers went from no cucumbers to a gallon’s worth a day. Michael packs the cucumbers in with fresh dill, garlic cloves, a tea bag and grape leaves. Water and salt on top. Leave in a warm place, lid loose enough to allow gas to escape. The recipe is from Michael’s Aunt Halyna, who immigrated from Ukraine. We do not can them but save them in the “overflow” refrigerator. They turn out crisp and delicious. We go through a lot of pickles in this household! They go well with a beer on the deck after a long, sweaty day.

Storms have been coming in from the northwest*. I braved rushing out right before the rain to grab the few ripe cherry tomatoes. The fruit will split if it ripens and then it rains. I kept thinking how ridiculous it would be to die of a lightning strike in the tomato patch. At least I’d die happy!

*2.1” from this last one.

The warmth and wet have encouraged the watermelons to grow. They are creeping out of their enclosure and taking over the deck yard.

Rabbit’s foot clover, evening primrose, thistles, wild cucumber, butterfly milkweed and common milkweed. The flowers of late summer.

So good to watch small ones grow!

Harvest journal: the way of the potato, and onion, and garlic, and…

It’s raining again. Half an inch in ten minutes could drown a duck! But the birds are all under shelter, as are we.* The past couple of days have been in the 90s and humid. We have been in the garden, racing time.

*Rain gauge the next morning showed an honest two inches.

Michael dug up red potatoes today. He soaks them in water and then sets them out to dry. Then they go into the basement, spread out on cardboard with a fan on them. Then into boxes for the winter. I rescued them from their bath today as the storm was coming. Sitting on the lawn in the heat, swishing potatoes in cold water, felt methodical and slow. Not in a boring way, but more as a meditation. The dao of potatoes. Who knew? Red potatoes are prone to have scabs, as illustrated by that middle photo. This year, most of the reds are scab free. All the better to eat with the jackets on!

We got the last of the garlic out the ground today, along with the final onions.

The Siberian White, a hard neck, had turned completely brown on top, which meant the paper was beginning to deteriorate on the bulbs. They will not save well this year. The other varieties were not as brown and had more paper left. We will use the Siberian White first, which we would do regardless. It’s just not as pretty as it should be.

The garlic got neglected as Michael and I were getting the onions out of the ground.

They covered our outdoor table space for a couple of (rainless) days.

Michael helped me get them braided this year. The next day he wondered why his hands and arms ached. Braiding onions takes upper body strength! Again, sitting in the shade in the warmth, doing the rhythmic action of braiding, proved a meditative and calming type of exertion. Digging them out of the ground was a sweatier endeavor.

We’ve been picking green beans daily, along with peas. Shelling peas for dinner gives me an excuse to sit for a bit. I love peas. The beans are delicious, but don’t provide as much of an excuse to take a moment for another one of those rhythmic, meditative breaks.

We have been reducing our duck flock. They have finally feathered out from the last molt. It makes them easier to pluck, and also allows me to harvest the down. Some day (when I have a sewing room) I shall make a down comforter. If you harvest the duck before fully feathered, the down will still be partially encased in a quill, which create sharp points. Not good for laying next to your skin. I always regret when I am unable to save the down. I’d use their quack if I could!

It is never all work and no play here. My daughter came and made us lemon-thyme ice cream. She forgot to pack part of her ice cream maker (ah, the chaos of a 2 year old in the mix) so we improvised with a wooden spoon and an electric drill motor. Worked like a charm. Yum!

It’s wonderfully exhausting to have children in the house, everything happening in double time. A lovely counterpoint in the rhyme of life.

More ice cream (with raspberry jam sent by my brother!) at the end of today. Sweetness in his thoughtfulness for sending it; energy we sorely need.

Harvest journal: garlic, potatoes, onions, and other delights

Late July and the days grow shorter and warmer. Suddenly, the root plants die back and it is time to get them out of the ground.

We grow four varieties of garlic: two hard neck and two soft neck. The “neck” refers to the stems. These are River Giant, and they loved the weather this year! Only a few tried to bolt (creating a hard neck in a soft neck variety), so I was able to braid them easily. I will bundle the hard necks. All will go down into the basement, where it is dry, cool, and dark. We are just finishing off last year’s garlic, which means we planted enough, but not too much. The soft necks tend to last longer than the hard neck varieties, as the paper around each clove clings tighter, protecting them from dehydration.

The red onions are so jewel-like as they come out of the ground. We rub as much dirt off as possible right away, as they are almost impossible to clean if the dirt dries on. When we first grew onions we washed them in water. The onions rotted. They need to be kept as dry as possible if they are to last all winter.

We spread them on tables until the tops are mostly dried. Then I braid them and into the basement they go. We ran out of onions in May. Shortly thereafter, the new crop grew large enough to steal green onion tops. We bought onions from the store twice. It reminded us why we grow our own.

These little tomato-y looking fellers are potato fruit. I found them about a month ago. You can see the leaves beginning to turn brown on the ends. They are very shriveled now.

The russets ripened first. Michael digs them, washes them, dries them in the sun, and then spreads them out on cardboard in the basement with a fan blowing over them. After a week of drying, they get packed in cardboard boxes with newspapers tucked around them. They last longer in the dark. We bought store potatoes twice, and then swore off. Seasonal eating, it’s what we do more and more.

We harvested the last four broilers on July 18th. They averaged 10 pounds each. It was almost as much work getting them into the freezer as it was processing 10 chickens weighing 4 pounds each. We have started harvesting ducks too. However, they are still feathering out after the molt, which makes plucking them very labor intensive. We will give them another week before trying this again.

We work in the early mornings while it is still cool. Keeps the birds fresh as we clean them and the insects at bay.

The sweet clover, goldenrod and black eyed susans appeared in mid-July.

At about the same time we picked all the red currants and started a batch of wine. We should have gathered the black currants at the same time, but we got chased in by the weather.

Big lightening accompanied this rain. Safer to be indoors! I raced inside with my bowl of currants.

I gathered about 3 cups of black currants and made 3 cups of jam. You know I love you if you ever get any black currant jam!

Hot weather. We will have tomatoes soon. No wine and roses. These are days for milkweed and beer!

Thank you Nancy and Diane for coming to share our bounty!

Season journal: high summer

Time to:

Eat mulberries!

Graze on black raspberries.

Catch fish with the loons and swans.

Inhale the velvety sweetness of basswood blossoms.

Revel in wildflowers.

Celebrate with family.

Share the garden with others.

Investigate duck anatomy.

Bask in sun and clouds and green.

Grand journal: time with Imogen

Imogen Alice recently started daycare, which means she came down with an upper respiratory yuck. Her fever came down over the weekend, but she still wasn’t feeling great, so we both got to play hooky on July 1st.

We took walkies.

We had a bath.

We took more walkies.

Which led to naps. Mom fed her on breaks from work. I changed diapers. Then I went home. It was a splendid day.

Season journal: flowers!

Pink yarrow! Who knew? It’s usually white!

Michael calls this “Butter and eggs”. My flower finder calls it Toadflax. It looks like a tiny snapdragon. I love snapdragons! They magically appeared the beginning of June and will be some of the last flowers of fall.

Marsh Woundwort. It has square stems and so I think of it as a non-fragrant mint.

The peonies smell light and sweet.

The Hop-Hornbeam is in full flower. A relative of a birch, it has very hard wood.

The hop clover grows everywhere.

I planted a lot of bulbs last fall and then forgot what was there. Such a lovely surprise to have some late bloomers!

The garlic blossoms, aka scapes, need to be gathered, sautéed in olive oil and tossed with pasta.

I greedily watch the tomatoes.

My first daylily burst forth today.

The elders are “blowing,” which is what we call its blossoms. The elder blow wine we made last year finally came into its own and has a complex, slightly bitter but floral flavor. It grows on you.

The Johnny Jump Ups and marigolds brighten the deck.

But they cannot hold a candle to this wonderful child. Happy Birthday Grand Girl!

Harvest journal: 82.5 pounds

In two days. 20 broilers. 2 girls.

These are “buffer” photos for those who would prefer not to see the blood involved in transferring chicken from pasture to freezer. We did have our first salads this past weekend. Amazingly yum.

We love our chickens. We both carry them down to the “lick log.” I create the kill sack. Michael beheads them. We started early in the morning Saturday, racing rain.

We had all chickens hanging and started the plucking/gutting process both Saturday and Sunday before our children arrived. Sunday we tried to beat the heat (and flies). Successfully.

Saturday the only Grand in attendance was the one dependent on her mama for sustenance. I got to introduce her to the Cresap mania for word puzzles between outside and inside processes. Always good to rest a bit between times.

They are beautiful: excellent at transforming feed to protein while still keeping their individuality. We love our birds.

Chickens breathe without benefit of a diaphragm. Their lungs are attached to their ribs instead. It makes removing them from the carcass a challenge. Amazing to have such perfect specimens. Marvelous!

This is what 40 pounds of chicken parts look like. Those are soup bones in the far bowl. The extra 2+ pounds were from hearts and gizzards (for making sausages) and livers (which neither of our girls like).

But we do! We have 14 more broilers to do in. We will package 10 soonish, letting the smaller ones grow a bit while it rains. We got an inch today. More rain due tomorrow. Four will grow up to the ten pound range, graciously providing holiday dinners. We have some Speckled Sussex to process as well. They will weigh half as much in twice the time, but will be delicious in a slow food kind of way. We love our birds.

Garden journal: producing produce

Our first radishes: Thursday June 6. Crisp and mild, they have benefited from the near-constant rain we have received.

Peppers, tomatoes and potatoes are abloom.

As are the potato beetles. Organic potatoes means squishing them. One. By. One.

My eggplant starts are almost large enough to plant.

Unfortunately, the eggplant garden needs some work.

The pumpkin patch has been prepped and planted.

The squash square sports sprouts.

I found a lovely toad while weeding garlic.

Onions! No bottoms yet, but we sneak some of the tops into pasta, guacamole, and anywhere else we can.

The cucumbers need weeding.

My lettuce/radish ratios seem about right.

We thinned the carrots and bok choi.

I thinned the Grand Guy’s thatch.

The rabbits thin the peas and beans.

Michael thinned the rabbits. (Cuban style fricassee comes highly recommended.)

The only one not getting thin is me!

Visiting journal: travelers and hosts

I usually visit my mom in March for her birthday. This year the tiniest Grand Girl took precedence, and so my sojourn occurred in May.

Added benefit: seeing not one but two brothers! One in Las Cruces and the other in Santa Fe.

We walked every morning.

We enjoyed neighborhood flowers.

We ate good food. (Now you know from whence the good food genes…)

We achieved Queen Bee status.

We got out and about.

I puttered in her yard while she puttered in her wood shop. And then I went home.

Where a few days later my Uncle Tom and Aunt Marcy arrived from Alaska! Just in time to read to the Grands and eat good food. I love my huge family!

Flower journal: the world is a blossoming

The iris and pinks blaze in low sunlight, greeting me every morning.

Today the black raspberries came into bloom. We do not often get berries, but with the steady rain we have received, there may be berries this year.

I mowed a legion of daisy buds two days ago. These smaller aster cousins appeared before the daisies.

Despite my mowing, daisies dust the landscape, set off by orange hawk weed.

Hawk weed comes in yellow too.

Vetch provides a soft purple haze when I ride by on my bike.

The dreaded buckthorn: planted for its beauty, spread by abundant berries.

Wild carrot or perhaps hemlock. It does not have hairy “legs”, so is not Queen Anne’s Lace.

Wild parsnip shares the same habit, but blooms yellow.

The humble clover holds its own.

Wild roses: you often smell their clove-like scent before you see them.

Phlox shades from pale to intense pink.

Hoary Puccoon: a horrible name for such a bright flower. These first started to show up in late April.

Hoary Alyssum: a more fitting name.

The shy Columbine.

The brash Bridal Veil Spirea.

Lilacs have come and gone.

As have the trillium.

The wild strawberries continue to blossom, even while bearing fruit. That is a plastic garbage bag on my fingers. I didn’t come prepared for strawberry picking, only stray trash picking.

My favorite flower of all!