the ladies

Our little chicken are, predictably, getting a lot of love and attention (how could they not with all that fluffiness?) and so they are very used to us already. They eat quite happily out of our hands and hop up onto our fingers  and cheep loudly until we open the door to the bathroom (their temporary home) when the stop and look at us expectantly, hoping for food or playtime, which we generally offer up with smiles and coos.

The older ladies, also predictably, are a little more standoffish. They were raised among lots of other hens in a large farmyard with no kids around. Although they had lots of dogs and are absolutely not afraid of Nigella. In fact, this weekend, as everyone but the cats puttered in the garden, it became pretty clear who is in charge of the backyard (it's not the dog, in case you were wondering) But little by little, they are getting used to us. They don't run to the other side of the coop when we approach anymore and once we catch them when they are roaming (still a little tricky, but we're getting there) they are happy to be held and pet and generally loved on.

It's been a long time since we had chickens in our yard. In Charlottesville, of course, we had the neighborhood coop, but it wasn't quite the same. Having them clucking and boking away as I check the bees or watch the kids or just walk to the car makes me smile. Every time.

 Two eggs a day doesn't hurt either.

prepping

Thank goodness spring evenings are long. Time enough between dinner - which has lately been eaten hurridly on the porch instead of at the table, the better to get it doen quickly and get outside - and bedtime to have a few precious hours of time in the yard. I won't say garden, because it isn't, yet, but we're getting there. There are so many things I want to do to the yard, too many. Landscaping and grass for playing and tree thinning here and planting there and the vegetable garden and the bee yard and the chicken yarn and a place to sit and eat and laze the summer days away. Too many to realiztically get it done this year. I keep reminding myself that there will be other springs and summers to turn our little bit of neglected woods into the something we have in mind.

Right now we are focusing on the impending needs. Seedlings that need to go into the ground in the next week, bees that will arrive in a matter of days, chickens that need to be bought before it becomes too hard to find what we want. So it's a few beds, instead of many. And if the coop is unpainted for a while, well, so be it. There is no pretty path to the bee yard, just an area wide enough to walk where the blackberries have (I hope) been whacked back into oblivion (the rest have been left alone because...well...blackberry honey sounds pretty good, doesn't it?) There is a lot of bare earth where the bread oven or the flower beds or the grill or the grass will go, when we get to it. In time. I just have to keep chanting that. All in good time.

sweet and cold and bright

The temperatures have dropped again, way way down to below zero once more. I keep telling myself that it will warm up. After all, we visited here in April last year and it was warm and lovely and sunny, without a trace of snow. So I know it will warm up. And with the warm will come more sap, and planting the garden and more boiling and chickens and bees and all we have planned.

This weekend we finally got down to the business of boiling our first run of sap. Not, as we had hoped, a homemade evaporator. But the small amount we had was easily done on the side burner of our barbeque. The next go round we hope to have something a little bigger up and running. While I boiled away in the cold (and knit with mittens on and drank lots and lots of hot tea), and the animals stuck close to the fire, and Will, with a little help from the kids, worked on the chicken coop, cutting and fitting pieces together. It's not quite done, but well on it's way. We ended up with one pint of syrup plus a pancake dinner's worth and a few spoonfuls to drizzle over fresh snow. It's delicious, light and mapley and wonderful. I'm paranoid about it spilling and have it hidden up on the highest shelf in the pantry. Maybe I should transfer it to small bottles so that if (when) we have a spill or an over zealous pancake dousing, we don't loose all that precious, lovely syrup.

The seeds are starting to sprout in the sunniest window and something very exciting should be arriving in the mail later this week. Spring, spring. Come on....We're (almost) ready for you!

What's Clickin' Chicken?

Remember those sweet little chicks we got during the spring?
Well they grew up to be huge meanie hens. All hens. We thought we'd end up with at least one male in the lot, probably two, but oh no...all gals.
Our ladies were getting a little stressed with overcrowding, so we gave three away last week and ahhhhh.... so much better. No more crazy fighting over food (even pumpkin seeds!) Our coop is peaceful once again.
Except for the fact that they are laying in the hay storage instead of any of the THREE fancy nesting boxes they have. Ah well.

Full Cupboards and Excitement

And the jam is done.Phew. Let me tell you, 15 pounds (well, really 12, we ate or froze the rest, but still!) of strawberries makes a lot of jam. On a whim I picked up an extra set of 8 ounce jars when I bought the pack of 12 ouncers I intended to use for the jam and a good thing because I used all but three up. So we now have a very full (almost groaning) store cupboard in the basement with rows of deep red filled jam jars. Which is a satisfying thing.

I decided to go ahead and go the pectin free route this year, just to see. The test batch seemed to please everyone, it was sweeter but still very good. The much bigger batch turned out much the same. I used a combination of lemons and grapefruit for this one because I was worried about getting enough natural pectin for that many berries and you can kind of taste the difference. It's consistency is just the way I love it, thick enough to be jam, thin enough to blob and spread on bread without pulling things apart. One of my issues with the pectin variety is that I think the jam comes off too thick.

I think, however, in the end, I prefer the brighter strawberry flavor of the low sugar pectin based jams. If I had to choose between regular pectin jam and using citrus however, citrus would win hands down. Both use an enormous amount of sugar. It shocks me every year to add THAT much sugar to something that already seems sweet and perfect, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. Strawberries aren't fresh in February, so jam it is.

Here's the recipe although I'll warn you that this takes a VERY big pot and it foams quite a bit (which was ok because we mixed the foam with ginger ale to make a yummy drink- even yummier with a little vodka thrown in!) but you can pare it down easily to a much smaller recipe. In case you're not insane, like me.


Strawberry Jam (Pectin Free)

12 pounds of Strawberries, hulled and sliced at least in half
12 (yes 12) pounds of sugar
8 lemons
4 grapefruit (basically one citrus per pound)



Squeeze the juice into the pot with your strawberries and drop in the peels. Mix in half the sugar and let it set overnight. Pull out the lemon and grapefruit peels and add in the rest of the sugar. Put over high heat and bring to a rapid boil, stirring all the while, for about 6 minutes then reduce to simmer until the jam is set, skimming off the foam as you go. How long it takes to set varies according to how much fruit you have and how ripe they are. You can tell if jam is set by dropping a few tablespoons on a plate and putting it in the freezer for one minute. The surface should wrinkle when you push against it. If it doesn't, it's not ready, keep it a cooking.

And have I told you that a wide mouth funnel is an absolute must? Well it is. I went for years without one and have no idea why. It was, maybe, a dollar and made filling the jars so much easier. In fact, I would have had absolutely no mess at all to clean up except for the fact that while the jam was in it's hard boil the kids came roaring through with a lacrosse stick and a broom and I had to chase them down and explain, again, that that was probably not the best thing to do while mommy is dealing with boiling hot sugar, and some of the foam boiled over while my back was turned. Yuck. But really, get the funnel. It's awesome.

OK, so now that's out of the way I can get to the exciting news.

So after little chicklet # 1 didn't make it through the night, the other two eggs failed to hatch. Turns out you aren't supposed to move the eggs close to hatching time. Oops, and we thought we were being so clever by cleaning out the coop and nesting boxes in preparation for the hatch. (come on lady, that's not exciting! I know I know, I'm getting there)

Once it became apparent that we would have no chicks and still had two very broody hens, we decided to go the adoption route and snuck four little day old chicks from a nearby farm under the sleeping hens Monday night. All day yesterday we made quiet checks to see if the mamas were down with the switch. We caught a few glimpses of little feet so all seemed well.




This morning Evie and I went up to check on them and found the four little puffballs hopping around in and out from under their mamas wings. So freaking cute. No really, who can resist a chick. I want to carry them around with me in my pockets but I don't think the hens would like that much, so I'll leave them where they are. Although I'll probably have to go look at them again, just because.

All My Eggs in One Basket

Yesterday was quite a day at the downtown chicken coop, our hens, who up to now have produced one or maybe two eggs a day (total, not per chicken) laid two in the morning and two more in the afternoon. it takes a while for chickens to be at full production and with eight hens we are still not anywhere near there even with the impressive four eggs in one day, but it was exciting none the less.

This morning I was able to make a whole pan full of fried eggs for breakfast that came entirely from our hens. Will's dad is in town picking Briton up for his annual Texas visit and the five of us feasted on the almost orange yolked eggs, two of which were double yolkers. there is something infinitely satisfying about serving eggs from your own chickens, I doubt I'll ever get used to it. So cool!

You know you have happy chickens when

This is how they decide to spend half the afternoon when they visit your back yard. Worms? What worms? We like the swing thank you very much!

Well You Don't See That Everyday...

We seem to have some extraordinarily talented hens.

Made for some great Penne Carbonara!

And in Other News....

We have our first egg!

A Little Chicken in the Afternoon

Today the kids and I were on chicken duty so after the bus we made our way up to the coop where we fed the girls their grains, gave them some leftover runny yogurt and greens and had our photographs taken by the newspaper photographer, part of a story that will be out in the next few weeks about our hens. Then, we snagged two of our gals and totted them home with us. Yep, we chicken-napped them for the afternoon.

This wasn't a first at-home visit for the hens. Elvira took a few to her yard last week where they cleaned her garden of slugs and had a great time stretching their legs. Since we still can't tell them all apart and we are trying to get them all comfortable with us, we took two that seemed a little hesitent to be grabbed and hoped that they were amongst those that needed some extra love.

I can't imagine what people thought as they saw me sauntering down the street with Evie's hand in mine, a chicken under my elbow while the other hand was pushing the stroller and Briton trailing behind holding another hen (upside down and cradled like a baby, and asleep, I tell you, he's got the touch!)

They pecked through the grass, scratched at the mulch and ate a ton of something. Briton had one hypnotized enough that she stayed there vegged out on her back for a good three minutes when he got up to eat his snack (and yes, in case you were wondering, I did make him wash his hands)

As we were walking them home (sans stroller this time, much easier) a neighbor stopped on her walk to chat, commenting that, between their posh pad, the rose garden where it's sited, the view of the neighborhood, the over abundence of love and the choicest scraps from four households our eight girls must be the most spoiled chickens in the whole world. But you know, I think we're pretty spoiled too, to have eight little chickens that will tolerate nine kids and eight adults (plus neighbors) who love on them almost non stop without a single peck and who will, with any luck, be giving us some lovely, fresh eggs any day now. I can hardly wait.

In other news, a local photographer came last week and took some great photos of the girls and the kids. Take a look
http://billyhunt.smugmug.com/gallery/7434346_ZdPn8/1/531491786_DBYfX#531491786_DBYfX

A Farm Girl at Heart

The other morning I went out to dump the watery coffee grounds from my french press into my planters when I discovered that my broccoli plant had sprouted a tiny little florette and the potatoes I planted a month ago were leafing up out of the black dirt. Just the site of my plants spring to life was enough to make my finger tips tingle in excitement.

I love to garden. Well, I love to garden vegetables. I will be the first to tell you that I know almost nothing about flowers. I love them, I long for a beautiful, blousy cottage garden with roses and lilacs and phlox and pinks and every other kind of flower that I love to look at around the neighborhood but don't know the name of. But vegetables, well, I'm pretty good at vegetables.

When I was growing up, my parents divided out yard into three, nearly even parts. One third was for grass and trees and for a time, my rabbit, minx. One third was devoted to the deck and one third was the vegetable garden. i can honestly say that the only flower I remember my house having growing up were some red tulips that I thought smelled of watermelons. I know we had more, I'm sure the front door was surrounded by flowers, I just cant remember them. But I remember almost every inch of the vegetable garden. Against the house was a triangular shaped bed that started out being devoted to potatoes but ended up being overtaken by mint. Along the garage was a narrow bed where the pole beans grew. I used to lie on my back in the grass between the pole beans the the next bed over, usually planted with tomatoes or peas, hidden amongst the green, blowing bubbles up into the air from my dollar store can of bubble mix. I thought that every time a bubble popped, a fairy was born. My own version of the old adage "every time a bell rings..."

Through most of the moves of my childhood I helped my father plant out a garden. In San Antonio we planted a long row of okra which I never learned to like. In Pendleton there were sweet potatoes in big pots on the deck. When I went away to college I craved a garden the way most college students craved jello shots. I cajoled Will into helping me dig up an enormous patch of land in the even more enormous back yard of the first house we rented. I planted the newly tilled soil with winter rye, as recommended by my favorite book and then paid the price when it was almost impossible to till in by hand and ended up borrowing a crappy rototiller from our neighbor and almost vibrating to death trying to make a garden out of it. I discovered that I had a talent for starting tomatoes from seed and could get even the most sorry looking tomato plant from the dying plant table to flourish. The summer that Briton was born my tomatoes were so big that just one could make a huge bowl of salsa.

I continue to plant gardens, both big and small, in homes we've owned and places we've rented. In our flat in Dublin I raised one tiny squash plant from seeds I bought from a street vendor in Rome. In our last house I had four glorious raised beds, two compost bins and a chicken coop in a corner of the yard that was all my own. Here, where our back yard is almost completely shaded, I have a collection of pots on the deck where I hope to get a small but delicious crop of onions, broccoli, tomatoes, and potatoes, not to mention the lettuce we've already been eating for the past two weeks.

I'm not, by any means, the worlds best gardener. I hate being really hot so come July I'll be neglecting to do much beyond watering. I tend to let tomatoes go their own way without much support, which can be messy looking and sometimes hard to harvest. I'm not a big fan of weeding. But I do love the feel of dirt under my fingernails. I never could do the "Scratch a bar of soap" thing, I'm only just getting used to wearing gloves, and only because I'm afraid of spiders and in Virginia, there are lots of spiders. And even though my garden this year is just a clump of pots, I still love it. And someday I'll have my big garden again, where I can use up all the good manure/chicken poop our hens are making right at this moment or the worm castings that the worm bin at Will's office harvests every month and comes home in coffee cans or Tupperware (and as a side note, worm castings do look like leftover brownies when brought home from the office in Tupperware, but sadly, they do not taste like brownies. Lesson learned!)

Until then I'll just keep myself busy with lists of plants I'll have in my dream garden and visions of the chest freezer that I'll get someday and fill with shucked corn and shredded zucchini and tubs of homemade pesto. Bring on the summer, and the harvest, even if it's a tiny one.

Hey Everybody! What time is it? It's CHICKEN TIME!!!

Well, it might not be DONE done, but after a few late nights building in our garage, one evening work session in the yard and a last minute long lunch for Will and Joe, the coop was done enough for the chickens to arrive. And arrive they did.

After school on Friday, four moms and nine kids descended on the poor farmer we had contacted about buying chickens from. He was more than a little surprised to find a bunch of "city slickers" roaming around his yard, scarring off the sheep, petting the dog and pointing at the cows, but he very sweetly indulged us in all our questions (on the mom's part) and shrieking (on the kids) and sent us home with four Buff Orphingtons, two Golden Laces Wyandottes and two Rhode Island Reds in Elvira's dog crate.

Joe was finishing up the roofing when we arrived and Will came home early from work to help a few minutes later and before long they were clucking away in our little coop. Since then it's been a busy weekend of popping up just one more time to see the hens, coaxing them out for some loving and giving tours to neighbors. Several of us nervous nelly parents may have made late night/early morning dashes over just to make sure things were ok, but I won't name any names :)

And although we have more to do; doors to make, a whole separate section to construct, a permanent roof to attach, it's extremely gratifying to see the hens in there, doing what they do, what we dreamed of them doing this winter. The chickens are here, and all is right with the world.

Now, we just have to wait for the eggs...

If You Build It, They Will Cluck...And Lay, Hopefully!

Well, after some truly crappy weather for the past few weekends, we finally got a few sunny days and the Chicken Coop building has begun! Actually, Will and Joe had been working during the evenings at Joe's Woodworking shop. The upside of that is that they had alot of it done before the weekend even started. The downside is that Will now has serious shop envy. I can see power tool wish lists in our future.

By Saturday afternoon the framing was done for the bottom half and Will, Lisa and her friend Brooke spent a few hours building a sturdy but movable if necessary, foundation before the parts to the bottom of the coop were hauled from the shop and up the hill to the site. By the time that was done the sun was starting to set and the bar-b-que was fired up for an impromptu cook out. It was the perfect (and delicious) end to a lovely day. It also gave me an excuse to bake a yogurt cake I've been meaning to try.

This week is spring break and building is pretty much at a stand still until everyone returns (or at least, until Joe does!) but Will and Briton have plans to head over tonight and finish assembling what's there and we are HOPING to get the rest done in one big push next week and the following weekend so that we can get the birds in before there are none to be had. Stick around, Buff Orphington Pullets! We want you! Honestly!

Apple Yogurt Cake

- 1 cup vanilla yogurt
- 1/2 cup sugar + 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 2 cups flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- a pinch of salt
- one large apple, peeled and finely sliced

Preheat the oven to 360° F and butter the bottom and sides of a 9 inch spring form pan.

In a medium bowl, mix yogurt, sugar, eggs and oil. In a small bowl combine dry ingrediants then gently fold the dry into the wet. Mix just till combined, there will be some lumps. Pour into spring form pan and layer apples on top of the batter then sprinkle with a tablespoon or so of brown sugar.

Bake for 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean and the apples are starting to brown slightly. Remove from the pan and allow to cool slightly (or all the way, but it's yummy warm)

I really liked this recipe. it was not too sweet and really, pretty healthy but totally delicious. We had one slice left over which I put in a tin for storage and ate the next day, and I have to say it got better with time so this would be a great make ahead cake. I think next time I might switch the white/brown sugar mix for one cup of vanilla sugar just for kicks. Yumm....

Recipe adapted from Apple and Maple Yogurt Cake from Chocolate and Zucchini.

Chick...Chick...CHICKEN!

It started so innocently. Honestly, it did.
"Hey, what would you think about a community chicken coop?"
It wasn't even my idea. Sure I may have planted the idea somehow. Will and I had chickens in Portland and I have missed them. Their soft clucking as I worked in the garden, their funny obsession with dandelion blossoms, apparently the chicken version of catnip. I missed having them follow me around and sit on the edge of the sand pit while Evelyn dug away. So when the idea came up, I jumped. Little did I know the controversy it would cause.
A pre-walking Evie with one of our Portland Chicken - Henny Penny


We pulled together four families, found a site that was central to us all in one family's yard, designed a small coop (well, Will sketched about 40 two inch high ideas and I took the one I liked and handed it off to my neighbor who was doing the paperwork side) and submitted it to the board of architectural review. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?

Not right. The neighbors (not those involved obviously, not even really those around us, these were neighbors in the broader sense of "neighborhood") flew into an uproar. Somehow our plan for eight little hens turned into a scandal about having roosters and giant hen houses.

Articles were written in the paper, news cameras showed up, interviews were done, reinforcements were called on to come show support at the BAR meeting. We were in a panic, we were furious! What was wrong with people that they couldn't just LET US HAVE OUR CHICKENS!!!

Our three day old chicks in Portland

And then, as quickly as it began, it stopped.The BAR passed the coop with a unanimous vote and lots of off topic ( they were only supposed to be dealing with the structure, not the facts of chicken-keeping in town) banter about how great chickens were. All systems were go. No one even showed up to object. The fuss, it seemed, surrounded a lack in knowledge about chicken biology. Chickens don't need roosters to make eggs you see, but not everybody knows that. And really why should they. Just because I was lulled to sleep with John Seymour's Guide to Self Sufficiency doesn't mean everyone else was. I suppose it's just another part of the lost knowledge that modern times have brought. People don't just know how to milk a cow, or even sew on a button these days. Which is kind of sad.

Part of me hopes this economic situation we have gotten ourselves into will help people get back to their roots. I keep thinking of wartime Britain, where they dug up parks and front yards and even the moat around the Tower of London to help feed the nation. Pull together, grow your own food, help your neighbor, understand chicken ovulation. But somehow I can't see the Wall Street tycoons who lost everything they had, and everything everyone else had, digging up their manicured lawns to grow food for the masses. A girl can dream though. For now, I'm just excited that the chickens are coming.