Hen Dilemma

When I head out in the morning to do the chores, my first stop is the chicken coop. The moment I open the door one of my favorite hens, Red Zinger, hops out, bustling off to her favorite laying spot. She has selected the cows' hay server in the loafing shed as the premier laying spot.
Apparently she hasn't figured out that it is not the most reliable site for laying an egg. This metal hay cage is designed to prevent the cows from spilling so much hay on the floor and wasting it. They pull mouthfuls of hay out as they munch and the nesting material is soon devoured from the bottom up. Today I watched for quite a while as Red tried to get settled in and the oblivious cows kept disrupting her nest. Red became all flustered as the hay was pulled out from under her, but she persisted in trying to arrange a new spot.

She must have finally given up or else the cows consumed all of the hay before she accomplished her task. Many mornings I find an egg on the floor beneath the feeder, where it has fallen through the bars and landed safely on the straw bedding, but I didn't find one today.

The Pig Tale

Several people have written wondering how the pig harvest went. We slaughtered our two pigs two weeks ago, and all went according to plan, but I didn't take photos (actually, I tried to stay out of the way) and Sara asked me to wait to write about until we got the pork back from the processor. It took a couple weeks while some of the meat was smoked and cured.

Sara decided to slaughter the pigs on the farm so they wouldn't have to be transported frightened to the processor. Our farmer neighbor, Mark, did the hardest part - shooting the pigs and hanging them from his skidloader, then placed them in the back of the pickup. Sara and Cadence wrapped them up and drove them immediately to the the processor for butchering. The entire slaughter only took about half an hour. Even though these pigs were raised specifically for this purpose, it was an intense and emotional day--I was proud of Sara for maintaining her cool and handling everything so calmly and thoughtfully.

This Wednesday, Sara and Cadence drove back to Dover and picked up the finished meat, all neatly frozen and wrapped. The two pigs provided 330 lbs. of pork chops, bacon, roasts, ham, steaks, ribs, and sausage. Sara had orders for three quarters and we gave meat to the dairy farmers in appreciation for providing us with milk for our pigs and to Mark for helping with the slaughter, so we will end up with about half of that amount for ourselves. That's a lot of bacon!

Last night Sara prepared a fabulous feast of braised pork shoulder, served with walnut-beer bread, spinach and dried cherry salad, and mashed potatoes for our dear friends who were also our first pork customers. We said a little thank you for the pigs. The meal was exquisite.

We have never been so close to our food before moving to the farm. We had grown our own vegetables and eaten fish we caught, but that is not anything like eating chickens you raised from day-old chicks or pork you have raised from young piglets, knowing them as individuals, feeding them, scratching their heads, laughing at their antics and making sure they have a comfortable, happy life. I know could readily be a vegetarian farmer, but then there would be no reason to raise these animals. And since these pigs were destined for the table, they couldn't have dreamed of a more pleasurable life.

Sara, ever philosophical and poetic, remarked as we ate out first pork meal, "It is a cycle - Right now we are consuming everything we fed our pigs this summer--the milk from our neighbors' cows, bushels of tomatoes and squash from our garden, those acorns we raked up from Hal's yard, that powdery pig chow we got from the feedmill, the bones from our organic chicken stock, broken eggs, wild raspberry plants and roots they dug up from the woods, insects they caught, and all of our lovely kitchen scraps." Yes, those pigs feasted like gourmands, and now they are nourishing us very well.

Here is the braised pork recipe Sara used for our dinner. She added beer and wine to the braising liquid:

Braised Pork Shoulder with Chimichurri
Recipe by Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo

ACTIVE: 45 MIN
TOTAL TIME: 3 HRS 15 MIN
SERVINGS: 8

INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
5 pounds pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 5 equal pieces
Salt and freshly ground pepper
5 garlic cloves
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
3 thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
2 cups chicken stock

Chimichurri sauce (recipe below)

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 275°. In a large skillet, melt the butter in the oil. Season the pork with salt and pepper and brown over high heat, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer to an enameled cast-iron casserole and add the garlic, onions, thyme, bay leaf, stock and 2 cups of water; bring to a boil. Cover with foil and bake for 2 1/2 hours, until the pork is falling-apart tender. Transfer to a dish; keep warm. Strain the liquid, return to the casserole and reduce by half over moderately high heat. Season with salt and pepper, add to the pork and serve with chimichurri.

Chimichurri sauce: In a mortar, mash 1 chopped garlic clove with 1 seeded jalapeño. Season with 1 teaspoon of salt. Work in 1 bunch each of stemmed curly and flat-leaf parsley and 1/4 cup of chopped oregano. Stir in 3/4 cup of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar and season with 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper.

My Future Wildflower Glade

This past weekend I worked on transforming the woodland area around the big rock from overgrown buckthorn thicket to magical wildflower garden. I ordered a shady woodland seed mixture from Prairie Moon, a wonderful native plant nursery in nearby Wiscoy Valley. The mixture contains about 2 dozen different forbs , including jack-in-the-pulpit, wild geranium, and Virginia Bluebells (my very favorite) and half a dozen different grasses. I supplemented the mix with a few other favorites: nodding wild onion, bloodroot, and wild leeks (wild leeks, also called ramps, can be sold for a very good price at the Farmers Market!)
My seed order was enough to cover 500 square feet. I had already removed buckthorn, but I didn't have time to ideally prepare the area by killing all existing vegetation and tilling. Since I don't own a rototiller, my solution was to hand cultivate seven swaths in long, irregular islands, curving around the rock at the best vantage points. This seemed like a better strategy than broadcasting seeds over the entire area because I could more thoroughly remove competing plants, choose what seemed to be the best growing sites, create walking paths between the islands so I don't walk on the young wildflowers, and mark each island so I can more easily identify the emerging sprouts. In the spring I will add some other favorites that aren't available from seed: trillium, Dutchman's breeches, and trout lily.

Most of these plants will probably take a couple years to bloom, so I have to have patience. If they succeed, I dream that the wildflower drifts will gradually expand and fill the entire woodland with a carpet of spring wildflowers. How magical that will be!

A Better Mousetrap

I have four mousetraps set up in the barn, but none have ever caught a mouse.

We store organic dried corn for the poultry and for cow treats in several large garbage cans on the north end of the barn. Two days ago when I went to scoop corn for the geese there was a cute little mouse who had fallen into a nearly empty corn can. I went about finishing chores and forgot he was in there.

Yesterday morning there were two mice in the bottom of the can! Now what? If we still had all the roosters I would have tipped them out and the roosters would have made short work of them, but we only have a few roosters now and I don't want the mice to escape and establish new well-nourished mouse families. I left the mice there to ponder what to do and forgot again.

So today when I went to feed the geese there were THREE mice in there! What am I going to do with them? (certainly NOT put then in a cage for pets, as one daughter suggested!)

Intrepid Eggs

Check out the photos of eggs from Squash Blossom Farm, which have now arrived safely in Maryland via priority mail. Katiegirl, a fellow small-scale farmer and blogger, is incubating them in her new incubator! I sure hope they hatch - and can't wait to see photos of the chicks in 21 days.

Taming the Wild Kitten

Last Sunday while we were installing windows in the barn, Nutmeg was barking frantically. When we investigated, we found she had chased something into a big brush pile in the woods. It turned out to be a little feral kitten--a feisty ball of sharp claws and hissy-fit. Cadence pulled it out of the brushpile wearing protective leather gloves and placed it in a big dog crate with a litter box, water and food. The kitten waswas nothing but fur and bones -SO skinny- and we were concerned that Nutmeg might have hurt her. It wasn't long before she began to eat, which we took for a good sign, although she snarled and hid in the corner of the crate whenever we came near.

Most of our cats have been adopted strays, but all have been pretty much civilized when we got them. I was skeptical whether we would be able to tame this wild thing, but I thought she might decide to stick around and be a barn cat, at least, if we supplemented her mousing.
We put the crate in my office, where it is quiet and can be closed off from the other animals, yet we can be around her a lot. Within two days she didn't try to bite us when we picked her up. By yesterday, she was sitting in my lap purring! She is still extremely skittish, but likes being held, or at least puts up with it. She has a stuffy nose so yesteday I took her to the vet for checkup before letting our animals come in contact with her. The vet was surprised to see she has an adult canine tooth--she is older than she looks, probably 6 monhts, not 3 months. She had a bit of a fever so now she is on antibiotics. When she gets healthy again we will test her for feline leukemia and get her immunized.

So, now that we have spent $60 on her, I guess we have a third cat. No name yet--any suggestions??

Monday Morning Frost

Where did this week go? It's already Friday, and I haven't posted yet this week! Here are some shots I took Monday morning. A little frost makes even garden litter look pretty.