Peach madness

Summer is the most glorious time of year. Also the busiest. We do farm-to-table dinners every night. I love it. When I got home after my first day of classes, I walked out to the garden, picked four ears of corn, shucked them, put them in the microwave, and had them on the table in the space of 20 minutes. It’s true what they say—corn is sweetest when it’s fresh. I served the corn with thick slices of an enormous dead-ripe tomato and chicken from our own broilers. It was lovely.

The chicken was leftover from dinner with Pat and Nancy yesterday. Hilda fried the chicken. I made peach pie for dessert. We had corn and tomatoes too, as well as sliced green peppers and cucumbers with sour cream and dill. A whole meal from the farm. It makes me very proud.

Fried chicken from our own broilers--this is just one chicken, BTW

Sweet corn picked from the garden just moments before

Peach pie

The peaches (since I seem to be going backwards) were our very own. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might remember that last year, we had exactly one peach. It was beautiful, but not something we could share. This year was good to us. On Tuesday, Terry and I harvested 95.5 pounds of peaches—77 pounds were from a single Hale Haven tree, the same tree that gave us the one nice peach last year.

77 pounds of Hale Haven peaches from one tree

 Ninety-five and a half pounds of peaches is a lot of peaches. We’ve been eating peaches three times a day. I feel as if I am more in touch with my ancestors. Back in the day, I imagine when a particular food item came into season, you ate it until you were ready to spew. Fortunately, we have better preservation technology and have been canning, freezing, and drying, taking the pressure off eating all of them before they rot. It is much easier to give away peaches than eggplant, although I have been including a disclaimer that I cannot guarantee that the peaches are free of insect larva. I recommend cutting the peach open before eating it. As the old saying goes, the only thing worse than finding a worm in your apple is finding half a worm.

And the raspberries are ripening faster now. We harvest by the quart rather than the dozen.

Raspberries

The laying hens are molting. The chicken run looks like someone had a pillow fight. Most of the feathers are white  even though our hens are a variety of colors. Are they not all molting? Are their underfeathers all white? Who knows? Egg production is down while the girls grow new feathers. We hope it will increase again soon.

Feathers everywhere!

The goldfinch chicks grew up fast. On Tuesday, their flight feathers were coming in, but they were still looking pretty downy.

Tuesday, Aug 12: Goldfinch chicks are getting their real feathers.

By Friday, the feathers were well-developed and the poop was piling up outside the nest.

Well-developed feathers showing on Friday, Aug. 16

Poop piling up below the nest

I took Pat and Nancy down to see the nest yesterday. Pat reached in to hold the leaves back so I could take a picture and all four chicks (one of the five eggs must not have made it) fluttered off in all directions. We were concerned that they would not be able to fly well enough to make it back to the nest, so we chased them around a bit, picking them up and putting them back in the nest. Every time we got one in, the one we’d put up there before would fly off. They were very cute, and Nancy was excited that she got to hold them. In the end, it seemed like they were reasonably capable of taking care of themselves. By the time we got done picking raspberries, they were nowhere to be seen.

Chick down! Baby finch after flying the nest

Nancy holds a chick

Two chicks perching near their nest, just 14 days after hatching

Baby goldfinches

Terry discovered a goldfinch nest in one of the cherry trees. I have been taking pictures every couple of days. This morning I lugged my telephoto lens out with me to try to get a shot of the mama on the nest. She’s been skittish and takes off as soon as I get within 20 yards. This morning, she wasn’t on the nest when I went out.

Here is a series of photos of the nest, which is maybe 3” across.

Goldfinch nest on August 3

With down still wet from hatching, the first two chicks emerge on August 5

August 6, with index finger for scale

August 8. The only picture I've gotten of a chick with its mouth open. Too bad it's out of focus. Its head is about the size of my pinky fingernail (shown)

August 11. The nest is getting crowded already.

Jackie is still lagging behind the hens in his/her foraging skills. S/he still won’t join the flock in the fray for Happy Hen Treats (dried mealworms). After one of the apple tree sloughed some fruits (they do that if they are bearing too heavily), we tossed some apples to the chickens. Jackie really loved those apples! Here is a picture of him/her now, as well as a video of him/her sharing an apple (or perhaps fighting over it) with Giada.

Jackie on August 6

This morning, most of the girls were hanging out on the windbreak after breakfast. The weather was cool; maybe it's warmer up there.The prayer flags have sent out quite a few prayers. I wonder if there are any left.

The girls on the windbreak

On day last week when I was headed back to the house for my tea after doing the chicken chores at the literal crack of dawn, I saw my shadow stretching out toward the fifth oak. I liked the image of myself so firmly rooted on the ground and dwindling up to my tiny head. I had a sense of readjusted priorities. It is the earth that gives me food and therefore life. My brain is just a source of anxiety, especially this time of year as I frantically prepare for the start of classes. I felt calmer.

Self portrait at dawn

Vacation summary

Jane and I did some new things this year on our annual trip to the Boundary Waters. I was proud of us. On our way up the north shore of Lake Superior on Saturday, we stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse.

Split Rock Lighthouse and fog horn building (left)

The Fresnel lens of the lighthouse was shipped from France as individual prisms. I couldn’t find any information about how many prisms there were. I’m sure someone counted as they assembled the lens on site. The lens weighs 4 tons and floats on a pool of mercury. No such thing as occupational hazards in 1910 when the lighthouse first began operations. At that point, there was no road to the lighthouse. All supplies came in by boat and had to be hauled up the cliff. The road when through 20 years or so later. By the 1940’s, it became a tourist destination. It was decommissioned in 1969.

After two days in the car, we spent Sunday hanging out at the cabin. The morning was calm, misty and beautiful.

Our dock and boat in the Sunday morning calm

The view from the deck

We went out fishing in the afternoon. We caught mostly small bluegill. Here’s a picture of one of the larger ones. They are beautiful fish.

Bluegill

Monday was too windy to take the boat out. We drove up the Gunflint trail, stopping at the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center. I can never tell if they keep adding things, or I didn’t see everything last time, or I don’t remember, or some combination of all of the above, but I always learn something new. This year we learned all about the first owners of Clearwater Lodge, Petra and Charlie Boostrom. They had 10 children, and ran the lodge for 30 years. Pretty amazing.

After lunch, we went into Grand Marais to pick up some things we needed, such as hand lotion and Dove bars. In a departure from our usual routine, we did NOT go to Sydney’s for custard.

Tuesday we had our big road trip day, this time to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Jane got a passport for the occasion. I already had on from our Costa Rica trip. I first became interested in Fort William, which is heavily advertised in Grand Marias. The more I read about it, however, the more it seemed like same old, same old—just like the fort at Grand Portage. Jane had done some research beforehand and suggested we go to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.

The view of Sleeping  Giant across Thunder Bay: the head and chest are to the left, and he has very long legs

We drove around the park for quite a while before we figured out where anything was. Canada is not big on signage. We found out that one of the legends of the sleeping giant was that a lesser god betrayed his people’s secret silver stash to the white folk. That made one of the gods angry, so the guy was turned into stone. A bad day.

The cliffs of Sleeping Giant

Our next stop was Ouimet Canyon. A short, mostly accessible trail led to enormous stone cliffs. The view was spectacular.

Ouimet Canyon

One of the two overlooks had an “Indian head” stone. The legend goes that a lesser god accidentally killed his beloved, the daughter of a greater god, and hid the body. The greater god got angry and turned the guy to stone. Another bad day.

Indian head

Wednesday we hung around the cabin, fishing off the dock, and reading to recover from our Big Adventure in Canada. A pair of loons with two chicks entertained us.

Loon family

Thursday morning was calm and damp. Spider webs were visible everywhere in the horsetails growing by the dock.

Spider webs in the horsetails

Mirror-calm lake on Thursday morning

We took the boat out again Thursday afternoon. The fishing wasn’t great. We got a good laugh when Jane pulled up a baby perch that was clinging to the leech several inches down from the hook.

Ambitious baby perch trying to eat a leech almost as big as itself

It rained all morning Friday. The loons spent a great deal of time feeding their babies in front of the cabin.

Loons in the rain 

The wind picked up in the afternoon, and the temperature dropped to 45 degrees. The rain became more of a mist. We had to use up the last of the leeches, so we went down to the dock to fish in the drizzle. The loons were still hanging around. We had one of the more exciting moments of the trip when I turned my back to the lake so I could help Jane get out of her chair. I heard something very large splash in the water behind me. “What was that?” I asked Jane

“An otter! It stuck it head up right behind you and looked me in the eye. I could see its whiskers! It was very cute.”

I turned around in time to see an otter head pop up, then another, and another. They were very cute. Too bad my camera was in the camera. In the absence of any otter pictures, I will end this blog with a montage of pretty bad videos of the loons and chicks. If you look and listen carefully, you can see the adults come up with small fish and hear the gentle cooing of the parents to the chicks and two loon cries. 

Freezer Heaven

The broilers had their appointment with destiny on July 20. They were to be delivered to the butcher in the evening of Friday, July 19. They would be dispatched, cleaned, and shrink wrapped on Saturday, frozen overnight, and available for pick up on Sunday.

I missed all the excitement. I had left with Jane for the Boundary Waters Friday morning (more on the trip later). All remaining family members were pressed into service for the round-up. In preparation, I had picked up another large cage from Jane because we didn’t think mine would be big enough for 14 chickens. Terry put the two cages in the back of his pick up truck. Terry opened and shut the electric net. Dad manned the door to the cage. Hilda was assigned chicken handling because the chickens knew her and would therefore be less likely to fuss. I’m not sure how good that assumption was. Hilda was so covered in chicken excrement by the time the process was done that Terry parked the back of the truck in the shade so the chickens wouldn't overheat while Hilda took a shower. She dropped all her clothes in the laundry room, which is well-positioned by the garage door.

And on Sunday, there they were, dead, dressed, and frozen solid. The roosters weighed about 7 pounds; the hens 5. Perfect.

Freezer heaven, as Jane says

Hilda cleaned Coop 2 the day after the round-up. Terry and I moved the electric net around the ripening sweet corn to keep out the deer and raccoons, and Terry mowed the former broiler yard. Note how the grass is so much greener in the path between the coop and the feeder due to additional fertilizer, if you know what I mean.

The effect of nitrogen rich fertilizer on grass--note how grass is greener on the path between the coop and the feeder

Hilda waited until I got back to cook the first one. She made Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic. Here is a picture of what was left after four people had eaten their fill. It was a big chicken, and delicious.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

In other news, I harvested the first of the red raspberries today. I got 14 all together. It won’t be long before we have way more. I hope I can get to them before the daddy long legs lick all the fruit off the seeds. Did you know that was what daddy long legs eat? It was news to me the first time I saw it.

First pick of red raspberries (all 14 berries)