Departure from Reasonableness

So, as I am bringing in the last of my winter crop, it's time to review what I learned in my first foray into food growing:

1. If your soil is good, your plants practically raise themselves. Seriously. Just stay on aphid patrol, and your winter veg will flourish. 

2. In the winter garden, some things go dormant, (my beets, spinach) showing no growth during the dark months. Don't panic; you'll harvest in spring.

3. One flat of veggies, grown out well, provides a LOT of produce.

4. In the cool damp of a bay area winter, additional irrigation is not necessary.

5. And, finally, if you fall in love with how beautiful your garden looks, you won't harvest your crops at their peak. Remember that the beauty of a veggie garden is transitory, and don't be precious about it...GET YOUR CROPS IN AND HARVESTED.

So, winter over, it's time for the spring season. I'm trying to be reasonable about spring and not bite off more than I can chew. Hmmmm....So far, the whole reasonable thing? Epic Fail. 

Operation "More than You can Chew"  is already well underway.   Seedlings? I have three flats currently sprouting like gangbusters.  I have a further 20 packets of seeds or so that are direct sow.  Obviously, if I filled my winter garden with 3 direct sows and 1 flat of seedlings, then this quantity of plant matter exceeds the capacity of my current garden space. 

So this weekend, I began to prepare more space by digging up more ornamentals. Funny how much less I care about my flowers now than I did in Fall. I'm quickly coming to the opinion that if it doesn't feed me, or feed my animals, or do something beneficial for my garden, then it's a freeloader, and must be removed. Okay, not entirely. I'm still keeping the Irises that remind me of Mom.  But everything else? It's either gone, or going, if not this season then next.  A well tended veggie garden is easily as beautiful as a perennial flower bed. 

I'm also converting Kalin's old sandbox into my lettuce/greens garden. Oh, and then I'm planting raspberries and blueberries in the backyard. And a loquat tree...But really, I'm being reasonable. Sort of...

Eggstacy!

It happened! It happened!

So the timing of initial egg laying is an individual thing.  Some breeds mature earlier than others, but even within a single breed there is often a 6-8 week variation in the start of egg-laying. Two chicks can be from the same brood, the same breed, the same hatching day, and there can still be MONTHS between when each decides to start making eggs.  

According to my calculations, my first chicken (Yubaba, the black star sex-link) could, optimistically have started egg laying as early as February 6. Or, it could be another month. But I AM an optimist. Thus, I've been on a frantic egg watch for the last week. 

And I had reasons for optimism. Yubaba looked like she was ready to start popping out eggs at any moment. Her wattles and her comb were bright red. Her chicken butt was all fluffy. And she was squatting enticingly at me. The squat is the chicken equivalent of a come-on. Like "Hey, you big sexy rooster, come and geeeeettttt it!" So anyway, I knew the day would be soon. But when?

Then, on Friday afternoon, it finally happened. I was at home taking care of my sick daughter, who thankfully did NOT have appendicitis.  I took a break to check on my chickens.  And what did I find in the previously ignored egg box but a small, perfect brown egg? I could barely breathe I was so excited. 

The best part of the whole thing was the next day. We couldn't reasonably expect another egg on Saturday. Chickens take a while to warm up to everyday laying. But Kalin was excited, so she checked anyway. And found a beautiful BLUE egg. So freaking pretty. Seriously. It was like a giant robin had snuck into the coop and left a little present. 

So while all eyes were on Yubaba, with her wattles, and her fluffy butt and her shameless squatting, little Calcifer, the Easter Egger, was sneaking up behind her in the maturation process. And once Yubaba demonstrated the how, she decided to get in on the action herself. 

Who will be next? Yakul, easter egger number 2? She's not hip to the squatting yet. But her butt is fluffing. Or maybe it will be everybody's favorite, Lady Yupa. Her wattles are nice and red.  Or Kiki. She's tiny but she's got the red going on. Who knows. But in the meantime, it's an extravegganza in the backyard. Woo Hoo!

Chickens and the Giant Squid

Those of you who know me in real life know that in addition to my fetish for poultry, I'm also a devotee of bizarre housepets.  Our most noteworthy pets at the current moment are a trio of hairless cats: Kemo, the old lady (14), Clarabelle, the petite pink beauty, and Architeuthis, the big black-and-white, overweight, loving bruiser of a male. He's a wrecking ball cat: always in your lap, purring like a frieght train, except of course, when he's knocking things over just to see them fall.  (My husband named him after the scientific name for one of the giant squid species. It's a mouthful, but it fits.)

As you can imagine, this trio of predators have been, since day one, VERY interested in project chicken.  For a good month they were banished from my office while my babies brooded inside. It was amusing to stand inside the office, and watch the little kittynoses attempt to squeeze under the door. No matter how long I stayed in chickenland, they would keep watch. I'd find all three of them sitting like feline statues waiting for me whenever I left the room.  

Once the chickens moved out, the cats began to spend much of their day at the back windows, participating in my family's new favorite sport.  We call it "Chicken TV."  It involves sitting, sometimes for hours, watching the pecking, and fluffing, and flapping, and clucking, in short, the tiny dramas that make up a busy chicken's existence. All of us watch it, but none so much as Arkie.  You can just see the kitty-thought-bubble forming over his head. "YUM!"  

It's natural. I get it. My cats are, for all their highly bred, indoor cat hairlessnes, still predators. Those rubber snakes they drag around, and pounce on endlessly are an everpresent reminder of the call of the wild. And yet, despite this knowledge, and the obvious stalking behavior, I got complacent.  Cats are inside. Chickens are out. That's that.  I should have known that my cats, aesthetically challenged, but smart, would eventually figure out a way to meet the chickens "up close and personal."

And who was it that made the move? None other than our favorite squid boy, Architeuthis.  It's obvious to me now that Arkie had been planning his move for some time.  We'd been sitting in the living room on a Saturday, watching the chickens frolic in the yard, when, as I often do,  I got up to feed them a treat.  When I opened the door, Arkie appeared from out of nowhere, neatly slipped between my legs at a full gallop, and zoomed into the yard. It was an impressive display of stealth and cunning. I dropped both handfulls of broccoli, and raced after him, visions of bloody chickens in my head. 

I needn't have worried. Chickens are simultaneously very stupid about some things (Just look at the face of a chicken who has accidentally flown up into a tree. Priceless!) and very smart about others.  Apparently, Cat Management is one of the "smart areas."

When Arkie reached the yard, all the chickens immediately pivoted to face him.  They looked at him with blank, baleful gazes. Arkie blinked nervously and took a tentative step forward.  All the chickens, in unison, took a step forward too.  Arkie then immediately took a step backwards, glancing at me with panicked eyes as if to say "Help, Mom, help!" 

After another moment of mutual staring, Yubaba, the largest and most mature chicken, took another step forward towards the cat. It was just too much for the big predator...Arkie turned tail and ran back to the back door of the house.  I let him in, and didn't see him again for several hours.

I think he was hiding. 

Smart boy. As a witness, my money was on the Chickens.

Question Two: Any Crowing Yet?

It's very gratifying when my friends and associates get as "in" to my chickens as I do. My friend Kristin, in particular, has been a big chicken supporter.  Her favorite question, one that she asks with regularity is, "Any crowing yet?"

For those of you who are new to the blog, I'll add some color to explain the urgency of that question. You see, crowing may indicate the presence of boys in my flock...and boys end up in the pot.  If you've gotten attached to a particular bird, say, the one with the big white poof on her head, the prospect of beheading her, I mean, him, can be onerous, no matter how committed one might be to omnivory.  (Which Kristin is not, by the way.  An omnivore, I mean. Keep up, people!)

You see, chicken sexing is an imperfect science, and it's very breed-specific.  Here's my flock's breakdown.

• Yubaba is what's called a sex-link; females are one color, and males another. Yubaba's black and gold feathers make her not only a tidy, attractive chicken, but also undeniably female. So we are 100% sure, at this point that she'll be a layer, not a crower.  
• Yakul and Calcifer are Easter eggers. They were "sexed" by professional chicken sexers at the hatchery.  When they were a day old, a probe was shoved into their vent to look for the bump that would indicate a male.  (Fun job, eh?)  Anyway, neither Yakul, nor Calci had the bump, so we're 95% sure that they are of the female persuasion.  
• So that leaves our smaller breeds: Kiki, the Mille Fleur (shown above), Lady Yupa, the Polish (shown below) and Totoro, the Silkie.  In reality, for these three, the only way to really know if they are male or female is to wait for eggs. (Crowing isn't even foolproof, as occasionally a dominant female, in the absence of a roo, will take it upon herself to keep her flock in line...crowing all the way.) With that said, a couple of months before laying, males and females tend to feather in differently. Feather sexing is uncertain at best, but it does seem 80-95% accurate, depending on the breed.  

I am not an expert. But I've been studying up. For example, I know that a female polish's poof will stay round, whereas a male will get "streamers", longer feathers that break the illusion of a powderpuff. The female silkie will have an upright pompadour, whereas the male will have a "blown back" look. Given these nuggets, as well as others, I  had formed the unspoken assumption that my flock looked all-female. But as I indicated, I am in no way an expert.

Thanks to the internet, I do, however, have access to experts. 50,000 of them, to be exact. Backyardchickens.com is an online forum for chickenphiles around the world.  They have an entire board dedicated exclusively to helping people feather sex their flocks. Post your pictures, and within minutes, dozens of opinions will be posted about whether you have cockerels or pullets.  Two weeks ago, I finally got the gumption up to post photos of my "girls." The response of the experts? ALL GIRLS. And now, I'm sure, I have officially jinxed every single one of them!

It's too early to celebrate. I could still have a girly roo in the coop. (Particularly Totoro, as silkies are notoriously difficult to feather sex, and don't reach sexual maturity till 9 months of age anyway. All the others will be laying months before we know for sure on her.) So let's just say that I am "cautiously optimistic" at this point.

Your questions...

You've been asking...so I'll be answering. A different question every day until they are all done. 

Question from Gary: How's the composting going?

(Asking about my rotting poop? Now that's above-and-beyond the normal bonds of friendship. Thank you Gary.) 

Now that winter has arrived, my compost pile has slowed waaaaaay down. As in, stopped. Or at least stopped to the naked eye, which is what I'm using to make my inspection.  And this is despite the fact that one can hardly call our Bay Area winters cold. We haven't even had an overnight frost yet. But still, a slowdown in rotting is normal. But it leaves me with a problem:Where do I put my scraps now?  I've pretty much filled the bin, and since it will be a few more months until the compost inside it is ready for distribution, I have nowhere to put my daily non-chicken-friendly food scraps.  So I'm back to throwing away food, which feels...terrible. 

I could buy another composter, and fill it in anticipation of the spring rotting season.  But that doesn't really feel all that productive to my instant gratification needs. So, I've decided to step up my composting profile by adding a wriggly wranch (sic) to the equation. Worms. Lots of them.  Safe and snug in my laundry room, they will happily convert my organic materials into supersoil all winter long. I've done the research, of course. I can get a ranch at a discounted price through my county waste management authority.  And I can get worms from the local vermiculture supply house. (Ya gotta love the Bay Area, folks!)

It's the obvious next step, but I'm a little reluctant. To the uninitiated, vermiculture sounds really complicated.  There are worms, and there's bedding, and it all has to be damp but not wet, and then food and organics should cover the surface, and then there's a removal process that I still haven't gotten a handle upon.  It sounds a lot like...work. Shudder. 

An offset to this is the fact that worm castings (the polite term for worm poop) are considered even more beneficial to a garden than kitchen compost. Furthermore, generating castings is certainly a quicker process than composting. In all liklihood, my first batch of castings will be ready long before my first compost, despite the fact that my compost has a 2 month head start. 

So, what's the delay? Why haven't I ordered my ranch and my wrigglers, and shredded up a mess of old newspapers so that my worms can get working?  Well... personal revelation time. And don't hold it against me, but despite the fact that Christmas is still a month away I already have spender's fatigue. Yep, you guessed it, I just wrote my semi-annual property tax check. Festive! So little Libby is feeling like short-sightedly hoarding her diminishing pool of pennies rather than investing in long-term green solutions right now. How very... American of me.  Sad, but true. But don't fret too much, dear reader.  This fatigue happens every year at this time...and doesn't often slow me down for more than a week or two. Eventually, my guilt at throwing away food scraps will overcome my post-property -tax-pouting. And I'll be back to being as close to zero waste as I can be. 

Next Post: You've asked. And I've been reluctant to answer lest I jinx it all. But you deserve to know.  Next week, an update on the male/female ratio of my flock, complete with pictures of the mostest beautifulest of my girls. Stay tuned!

Using it ALL

I have no problem with meat.  Really.  I'm an omnivore through and through.  But I'm starting to have a real problem with factory farming. Not that I won't, in a moment of weakness, scarf down an utterly-unsustainably-raised-but-delicious order of crispy deep-fried chicken strips from Jack In The Box.  I am human after all. 

But if I'm going to buy meat for my family, or prepare something for guests, I will go out of my way, and pay a premium, to get something that was sustainably raised.  Call me an idealist, but I want to buy chickens that ran around, kept their beaks, and grazed on grass.  I want to buy beef that didn't spend the last six weeks of its life hip-deep in its own excrement, trying to digest a grain for which its ruminant belly is clearly not evolved.  When I eat meat, I want my dollars to create demand for smarter, earth-and-animal friendly farming practices.  (And yes, I did read the Omnivore's Dilemma.  And yes, it got to me.  Which won't surprise anyone who reads this blog.)

So a couple of weeks ago I decided to roast a chicken. I researched recipes, sending out an appeal via facebook for my friends' favorite versions.  Once the recipe was selected,  I went to the Alameda Natural Grocery and bought a free-range, pasture raised, air-dried roaster. I rubbed her with salt and pepper and olive oil.  I stuffed her with a steaming lemon and some fresh herbs. I roasted her and her potato friends gently (as the recipe commanded) and then when she wasn't crisping up, I broiled her skin into tasty yumminess.  She wasn't the best roasted chicken I've ever had (there's no beating Zuni's wood-fired oven) but she was damned good. 

At the table, our little family did homage to the lovely bird.  Between the three of us, we ate almost all of the white meat (paired with a front-yard salad, naturally). Normally, I'm a dark meat girl, but the white meat on this thing was so moist and flavorful that there was no need to go for the higher-fat slices. I packed away much of the rest of the meat for Kalin's lunch the next day.  All that was left was the meaty carcass, the wings, some funky gristly bits, the underdone skin from below the bird, and the raw chicken neck.  

Given my recent reading, I was keenly aware of the fact that every animal that is slaughtered to provide a meal like this one has an environmental impact.  Even organic, humanely raised chicken, the waste of whom is composted into fertilizer, has an environmental cost... particualry when it is shipped in trucks that burn fossil fuels.  Given this, wasn't it my responsibility to get the absolute most from this animal?  To use it ALL?

So instead of tossing them, I plopped those leftover parts into my stock pot.  I tossed in a couple of bay leafs, a handful of garden cut rosemary, some pepper corns, some kosher salt, and some semi-fresh thyme that had been residing in my fridge for about two weeks too long. I cut a few limp carrots in half, quartered an onion, threw in the last rib of celery from the depths of the produce drawer, and covered it all with water. Total prep time?  Maybe 2 minutes. Absolutely clean veggie drawer?  A happy bonus. 

I brought the whole mess to a boil, turned it down and let it simmer all evening. Watched bad TV. Watched Rich tickle Kalin. Nibbled dark chocolate. Read another food book that will undoubtedly lead me deeper into the slow-food wilderness.  Never checked the stove. Just let the simmer do the work.  

Just before bed, I turned off the burner and poured the contents through a colander into another clean pot.  The disreputable-looking solids went in a bowl in the fridge.  The next morning, they'd go to my backyard coop.  My opportunistically omnivorous ladies would gleefuly devour every edible scrap, thus converting everything but the bones into future eggs. 

But the main result of my endless simmer was a fragrant, rich, golden liquid.  I poured most of it into empty yogurt containers (about six of them...I made a LOT of broth) and stored them in the freezer.  The rest? Kalin slurped it down.  My child, who has never enjoyed a soup in her life, not only drank a cup of broth fresh from the stove, but had me warm up more broth the next morning...for her breakfast. Apparently, she's a fan.

In the intervening weeks I've made several dishes with this stuff.  It's a marvel.  I needn't do anything fancy to make it tasty. Defrost, throw in some veg, and some noodles, and voila, something delicious that my daughter will actually eat. 

All the years I've been using Swanson's broth seem laughable now.  I'd always assumed that Swanson's was fine.  Sure I wouldn't want to warm it up and drink it. Nasty! But it tasted fine cooked into food.  Or so I thought.  How was I to know that homemade broth, which tastes good on its own, would make exponentially tastier food?  Now that I write these words, they feel obvious...but they weren't obvious to me.  And just in case they weren't obvious to you either, I'm sharing.  

So what are you waiting for? The holidays, with their stuffings, and gravies and casseroles are around the corner, crying out for good broth.  Next time you serve a chicken, or T-Bones, or a bone-in fish, boil up your leftovers. Believe me, it's culinary gold.  And you'll feel wonderfully virtuous when  you use it all!

As for the small mumified child that started this particular diatribe, my apologies. You guys get mad at me when I don't include a photo, and I didn't take a photo of my roasted-chicken carcass. So I improvised.

Remember, Kalin Tut says "Throw that carcass in the pot!"

Harvest

Look!  We have Lettuce!  

While the front part of our garden bed, the part that gets less light, is growing glacially, (I'm not sure we'll be eating beets until spring!) the full-sun part is in full swing.  We have lettuce. We have arugula. We have broccoli raab. The English peas didn't make it, but the snow peas are climbing, and blooming.  And we have the worlds smallest, cutest radishes.  My daughter, who wouldn't eat a radish to save her life, is happily pulling them up, and crunching them up, claiming "Mmmm....good."

My broccoli hasn't flowered yet; Brassicas are notoriously slow in winter.  But really, who cares?! The leaves are selectively making their way into our salad bowl, lending a lovely texture to what we eat.  If we don't get flowers, we'll still have gotten our happy money's worth from them. 

We are eating a salad from the garden practically every day now: our own mesclun made of lettuces, kholrabi leaves, even the tender greens from nasturtiums. We harvest every day with no appreciable dent being made in what is still out there.  It's good, it's fresh. It's worth every effort that went into its growth.

The other day, I made a winter soup out of some homemade chicken stock, (more on that next post!) some mirepoix, some shiitake mushrooms and a handful of barley.  I tasted it.  The homemade stock was so good that it needed nothing else. Well, almost nothing else. It was brown. Very brown. Unappetizingly brown.  So out to the garden I went, and came back with a big handful of broccolli raab. The soup was much improved.  Not only did the greens improve the look of the soup, but they added a freshness to the rich, earthy mix.  

And better still, using the greens made the soup mine.  I planted the seeds.  I transplanted the seedlings.  I watered them.  I worried over them. I threw them into my soup.  And I ate them.  I can't eat anything from my garden without feeling that blooming sense of prideful ownership.  It's a strange, but a welcome feeling.

Next step?  Sharing my bounty with other people.