The News

"I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." - Mark Twain

Chicks vs Chickens

When do baby chickens stop being chicks and start being chickens? Hmm...

Our little ladies spent the entire day outside in the sunshine today. They really seemed to enjoy being able to run around like crazy, flying three feet in the air and having little squabbles here and there.

It was especially fun to watch the chickens interact with Fleur, our most adventurous and friendly duck. She would walk up and try to check them out and the chickens would absolutely flip out, torn between terror and territorial rage. It was pretty hilarious. 

As a quick aside, while my father (who is visiting from NH) was doing laundry yesterday he discovered Fleur had come into the house (we have to run the washer hose into the yard through the back door). Apparently while I was out tending sheep he was chasing Fleur all over the house! Hahaha. I wish I'd been in here to see it. It wasn't until later we discovered she left us a present behind one of the chairs in the living room. LOL. Never a dull moment!

Tanglewood Farm's First Lamb! Congratulations Ingrid!

My lambwatch has been very lazy this week. I had been checking around 8pm and again when I get up around 8am. I had a sneaking suspicion Ingrid would lamb this week since Laura from Queso Cabeza warned me she likes to lamb in inclement weather.

This morning I woke at 5am after a restless night of storms and wind, and I had this weird gut feeling that I needed to go to the barn. When I got there, the sheep were lying down and Ingrid was breathing a little more heavily than usual. She often breathes hard when I am around because she cautiously sniffs the air.

She didn't really appear to be in labor, so I told her "I really want a little ewe, Ingrid... just so you know..." and I went back into the house and to bed. At 8:15am I woke to Gertrude's little baa coming from the barn. She often bleats once or twice if someone goes past the barn so I lie very still and listened. 

Within seconds, she was bleating almost continuously. I rolled over and poked Jeremy and told him something was up and stumbled from the house in his boots and my comfy sweats. 

When I got to the barn, I found Ingrid in full labor with itty bitty white toes sticking out and Gertrude in an outright tizzy! Gertrude was seriously concerned for her friend and would run back and forth to sniff me and then to sniff Ingrid. 

While I watched, Ingrid had another contraction and I was able to see a little black nose as well! I shot a quick phonecall to Laura and asked a few frantic questions and she reassured me that things sounded like they were going well. I opted to head back into the house to give Ingrid some space, and when I returned ten minutes later it was to the soft "Mehhhh" of a little lamb!

 She was very strong right from the start, and as soon as Ingrid had licked the afterbirth off of her she was standing!

 

She is a gorgeous little badgerface ewe. What more could I ask for? How about hilariously adorable little black ears! :)

 

Her little face is heather grey, flecked with white hairs from her badgerface markings. She's primarily white and has her dad's big personality already! She had a hard time figuring out where to nurse, and she would walk right up to her mom's face and bleat at her like "I'm HUUUUUUNGRY!" At one point she tried to climb right into the low hay feeder to get her mom's attention. 

She finally figured out how to nurse, which is when I was able to finally sterilize her umbilical cord and sex her. I couldn't believe my eyes when I discovered she was female. Holy cow!

We're assuming at this point that Ingrid doesn't have any other lambs this year, since she hasn't shown any additional signs of labor. I'm definitely happy with a single lamb, as my hopes were pretty low after Gertrude's mishap earlier this month. I have a name in mind, but I'm going to keep it to myself until I get to know this little lady a little better (and until I feel more confidently that she is going to make it).

The first violets

I picked my first handful of violets today!

In the Works

I've got another boring garden update for you this morning. :) 

Above is a photo of our south gardens (as opposed to the new north gardens). It's in total disarray but things are starting to come together slowly. In the top right corner you can see my south veggie garden, roughly 12x24. I re-tilled it last night to a nice crumbly depth of 4" and it's ready to plant! It had been starting to grow grass earlier this year, and I've been plucking and pulling and whacking at the grass trying to get rid of it. Last year I let the grass kind of do it's thing and it really helped the seedlings establish. Unfortunately I found that the grass harbored a lot more pests than usual so I'm going to try to keep it under control this year. Does anyone else think grass is the worst weed? I'm morally adverse to it. ;)

In the foreground are the white buckets that I planted in last year. They're standing in as place-markers for where I plant to till, enrich and slightly mound the ground to plant winter squash. Last year I planted the winter squash in the very narrow three sister's garden that I planted. While I plan to incorporate the 3 sisters in another bed, I don't want to till huge swathes of land to accommodate the squash. This year I'm going to plant them in little plops around the field, allowing the vines to clobber the grass in the field.

In the back left you can see the raspberry bed (kind of) where the fence has totally flopped over. Alas, I'll probably be replacing this altogether since the fencing I used seems to have deteriorated considerably after just half a season. Ah well.

Other than what you see above, I've finally got my peas planted in the cinder block beds (at left), and I hope to get some onion seedlings planted out today to make room for the tomato seeds I need to start. There's always something to be done!


How is your spring prep coming along? Are you planning anything new this year?

Potato Trenches: Check!

We finally finished digging potato trenches! We got 11 pounds planted on Sunday after a few days of sporadic digging. It sure feels good to check that off my list!

Do you plant potatoes? What method do you use?

Books: Meat A Kitchen Education

I just picked up a new book at Borders last night and wanted to share it with you. It's simply called "Meat", with the subtitle "A Kitchen Education" and it's by James Peterson.

Jeremy and I have recently become more interested in meats. He's always been a meat and potatoes (well really just meat) kind of guy and I admit I enjoy a good hunk of flesh. The idea driving this book is that we as Americans indulge in far too much mediocrity when it comes to our meats (and pretty much everything else). Somewhere along the line we have gotten it into our head that more is better, and bigger is best, and not only is this detrimental to our health but it's also detrimental to the meat industry. We have created a huge demand for mediocrity, and thus the meat industry has met that demand with supply. Mediocre meat.

On a moral level as well as a consumer level that just seems so wrong to me. Not only do we lack the respect to truly enjoy and value the flesh of the creatures we're eating, we are paying for meats that have been injected with terrible chemicals, from animals living in terrible conditions (and did you read the latest bit about staph bacteria being in 50% of our nations meat?!) My God. It's disgusting.

Anyway, back to the book. We were looking for a basic introduction to how to cook various cuts of meat. We always marvel at the amazing selection of cuts at our local butcher, but out of timidity we often resort to purchasing only the cuts we're familiar with.

A week ago however, we decided to break out of our funk and we bought a rabbit to roast. Of course now it's in the freezer, and I'm a little intimidated by this new creature, but with my dad coming into town this week I think we're presented with the perfect opportunity to venture into rabbitdom.

Beyond this book we hope to get ourselves into Charcuterie this summer, by making our own sausages, brine cures, and maybe even a pâté or gelatine when we get the ducks processed. We hope to incorporate a bit of our own combined love for detail into our meats but without the proper introduction to meat (cuts of, properties of, flavors of, etc) we felt sort of lost in a vast sea of options.

Other books that are currently on my list of meat books to purchase are:

Do you often cook with meats? Have you dabbled in charcuterie at all? I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with charcuterie... I'm pretty intimidated!

We survived Earth Day 2011!

Yesterday we spent the entire day using as little electricity as possible. This is difficult when you live in an old historical stone house with few windows, and especially difficult if you an artist like my husband. Poor Jeremy spent the day following the best spots of light around the house with his latest page of comic book art, sketching here and there and being a general good sport of it. The morning brought about an amazing reintroduction for me... Gardening books! Sure, I borrow the occasional library book, but it had been so long since I'd sat down with a stack of gardening books to research something in particular. Yesterday's topic? Potatoes. I read about how the Shakers grow theirs, how the English Victorians grew theirs, how they're conventionally grown and how best to grow them organically. What an adventure!

After breakfast, I sat on the front porch sorting, cutting and prepping seed potatoes for planting. This is our first year planting potatoes, so hopefully this goes well. We'll be doing ours in straw and trenches.

I spent the rest of my day outside in the rain. I laid out where our pumpkin mounds are going this year (marked by white plastic buckets in the photo below). I planted twenty-five 3 year old asparagus crowns and I dug four of the eight trenches for our potatoes (and those we're donating to Project Grow). I also mapped (and then re-mapped) out where we're going to plant our fruit trees. Unfortunately the best area is currently dominated by several huge multiflora rosa monsters. You know the type - the intimidatingly large flopping mounds of 1/2" thick vines covered in big nasty thorns. They look like skulking beasts just waiting for you to turn your back... *shudder*

I may have a gathering some time soon where I invite our friends out with their loppers and trimmers and hedge cutters and chainsaws. We'll provide beer and potluck while they help us clean up all of the multiflora rosa thickets. You would not believe how overrun our poor antique orchard is by invasive plants. I was looking, the other day, at one of the geriatric apple trees and realized it has rose vines growing all the way up through its crown. That's at least 25 feet! I'm a fan of roses, and of rosehips of course (both for myself and the critters that eat them) but the trees are suffering greatly because of these beasts. I'll leave a few thickets around for the rabbits and voles to hide in, and I'll leave them along the fence because it deters the dogs' exploring, but other than that they have to go.

Anyway, by the evening we were totally bored. We realized too-late that our oil lamp wicks were both too short and we didn't have enough oil anyway, so we lit candles and ate sandwiches for dinner. After that we played scrabble, and I finished the game with six points less than Jeremy which is a serious improvement on my typical scrabble score...

I admit we did cheat a bit. Shortly after we'd been electricity free for 24 hours, Jeremy turned on his studio lamp and did some more work on his latest comic book page. Obviously I can't begrudge a man his job.

Earth Day!

Well folks, it's Earth Day, today.

Hopefully.

Head over to Not Dabbling in Normal, today, to see why I'm not sure if what you're reading is true!

How are you celebrating the Earth today?

Local Spotlight: Project Grow Potato Pledge!

This year I have decided to take part in the Project Grow second annual Potato Pledge! The Potato Pledge is an event held by Project Grow in Ann Arbor where they give you two pounds of potatoes to grow, with the intention and pledge to give a certain percent of your harvested crop to them for donation to local food banks.

It was just by chance that I stumbled across this program. I was standing with my family, in line to talk to the volunteers at Slow Food Huron Valley (more on them, tomorrow!) and I heard a great ruckus down the aisle a bit. "The Potato People are coming! The Potato People are coming!" they were yelling. It was pretty spectacular.

 

I decided to pledge 80% of my harvest to them, which knowing my luck could very well be a miniscule donation. 80% of zero is still zero. :) I'll be growing Red Pontiac potatoes, and I'm still not sure of when I'll be planting them. Definitely some time this week, though, if the weather holds!

Do you have any gardening outreach programs in your area?