A rafter on a fence

It was a dark and cloudy morning. I didn’t think it would ever get light. I had a cup of tea and caught up on my email, waiting until I could see well enough to do my chicken chores. By then it was raining. No time for a bracing second cup of tea when I got in, though. I was late, late, late. I hung my wet clothes here and there to dry and hopped in the shower. Shoot! It was Tuesday, the day I haul the extra produce to work. We have nothing but cherry tomatoes left. I looked the trays over quickly for split ones and dumped them in two bowls with lids. I was brushing my teeth when my cell phone rang. Then the home phone rang. Who is calling me when I’m trying to get out the door?

I checked the cell phone. There was a message from Terry telling me he was going to try the house phone. I called him back with no small irritation.

“The turkeys are out on the fence by the gate. It’s pretty crazy. I know you like to put pictures on the Internet.”

Well, okay. I had nothing for the blog this week because I was at a conference all weekend. What’s a few more minutes? I multi-tasked by taking up one of the bowls of tomatoes to put in the car when I went up to take the picture. And there it was—a rafter on a fence. Maybe they didn’t like having their feet in the wet grass.

A rafter of turkeys on the fence

I only counted 16 in the rafter this morning. I would not be surprised if cars have taken a toll, along with coyotes. I haven’t seen any bodies by the road, but I don’t ever drive to the north.

As I moved to get a closer shot, the turkeys started wandering off.  One of the turkeys on the fence started flapping and knocked off one of the other ones.

The turkeys get restless as I approach

I tore myself away and went to work.

Tonight when it got dark, we moved the pullets into Coop 1. I took them one at a time from their roost in Coop 2 and handed them over the fence to Hilda. Terry opened the inside door to Coop 1, and Hilda installed each pullet on the roost. Chloe went first and managed to give me a good scratch on the palm of my hand. She didn’t break the skin, but it still hurts as I type this.

The plan for morning is to open the coop at first light. We fear that if the hens wake up while the coop is still shut, they will peck at the pullets, and the pullets will have nowhere to run. We shall see.

Tension along the border

Last week was not without sadness. Hilda spotted Toby, the feral cat that had been hanging around this summer, lying stiff in the road Tuesday morning. She kicked him/her to the side of the road. I walked down to say goodbye on my way to work. I was surprised at how small he was, maybe not even a year old. Poor little guy. I thanked him for his good work keeping the ground squirrel population under control. Terry laid him to rest under a tree later that morning.

Friday night, we rounded up six of the laying hens for the butcher. All of the Welsummers went. Behag and Fiona had virtually no feathers on their necks and backsides.  Morag was beautiful. Our suspicion was that Morag pecked the others. One of the Americauna, Lidia, and a Buff Orpington, Nelly Elly, were also missing feathers, so they got on our hit list. Finally, Anna Vic, the broody Buff Orpington, had to go. Yes, Gracie gets broody too, but the Silver Crested hens are just too fun to put down. If we are wrong about Morag being the meanie, we have just gotten rid of all the submissive hens and may be in for some serious chicken fights as the new pecking order gets established.

When I went out Saturday morning to do my chicken chores, I heard car horns at regular intervals. Had someone put up a “Honk if you love Jesus” sign in their yard? After a particularly long honk, I looked down the road to see turkeys running for the shoulder. Of course.

I opened a passage way between the pullets and the remaining layers. All day, each group stayed on their sides. On Sunday, Hilda threw scratch grains along the border. Both groups ate together uneasily. Gracie took it upon herself to chase off one of the Rhode Island Reds.

Tension along the border

Gracie flares her tail and chases off a Rhode Island Red

I thought I’d better put in some pictures of the Americauna pullets before their cheek feathers get pecked off. I have noticed that they don’t seem to have the luxurious beards for very long, which is too bad. It certainly give them a look.

Chloe has the best beard

Antonia doesn't have as fluffy a beard as Chloe, but she is the boldest of the pullets

Lillian does not seem to have much of a beard, which is not typical of her breed. It will be interesting to see if we get any colors besides green. In theory, blue and pink eggs are possible from the Americauna/Aracauna chickens.

Lillian (right) has virtually no cheek feathers. Isabel (Rhode Island Red) is on the left

The days have passed. Today Hilda reported that she thought all the chickens were together in the shade under Coop 2. The layers have also been eating the pullet’s food. This is too bad, because what really needs to happen is that the pullets need to move to the layers’ coop and run. All in good time, I suppose, but there are still two coops to clean every morning.

We’re getting our fill of raspberries. I experimented with a raspberry pie on Sunday. I can’t blind bake a crust to save my life. It always slumps down the sides. I passed enough raspberries through a sieve to get one cup of juice. I heated the juice with sugar and corn starch until thickened and folded in fresh berries. It was awesome, if I say so myself, especially with whipped cream. 

My raspberry pie in its slumped crust. Still tasted great!

Pullet surprise

I finally got around to researching how to introduce the pullets to the older hens. What I read online corroborated what I’d heard from a fellow chicken owner. The pullets need to be where the hens can see them while still separated by a fence.

Sunday morning, Hilda and I got up early and were out at Coop 2 just as the sky was getting light in the east. It was so beautiful and peaceful that I wondered why I didn’t get outside at 5:30 every morning. Then I remembered how warm and cozy I’d been in my bed. In any case, the reason we went out while it was still dark was because chickens do not see well in the dark, and I figured that we would be able to grab them right off the perch. I could not help but think of this as the “pullet surprise.”

I’d put the transfer cage together when I shut the coop up Saturday night. Sure enough, the girls were still on the perch when we opened the door Sunday morning. I passed them to Hilda, and she put them in the cage. In a few minutes, we were all done. Easy peasy.

We went back in the house to have our morning hot beverages in our respective kitchens and wait for it to get light. Terry was ready to go by 7:00. He took part of the deer fence down to open a wide enough gap for the gator and the coop. While he worked on moving the muck buckets, food, and other accouterments, I disassembled the chick fence. We put the pullets on the back of the gator for their trip up the hill. With everything cleared from the orchard, Terry hooked Coop 2 to the gator’s hitch, and off he went.

We got Coop 2 positioned by the greenhouse facing the chicken run. Terry got to work on getting his farm stand open for business while Hilda and I put the chick fence up. I have to say it was one of my better fencing jobs. Terry later remarked that he made the right decision to leave us alone because he would have wanted to go a lot faster. It would have been trouble for sure.

Coop 2 and the chick fence next to the chicken run

Before we let the pullets run free, we had to clip their wings again. We also leg-banded the Rhode Island Reds so we could tell them apart. The Americauna all look different, so leg bands are not necessary. Clare has a white leg band. Isabel is orange. Helen is unbanded.

There were so many little things to take care of that I despaired of ever being done. We plugged along, however, and were in fact done by 9:00. It didn’t take long for the pullets to be all over their new territory, including fairly close to the fence that separated them from the hens. We will be rounding up six of the hens for freezer heaven tomorrow. Saturday morning, we will open a passage from the chicken run to the pullet run and hope for the best. In another week or so, I fervently hope that we will have only one coop to tend.

Meanwhile, while Dad was cooking breakfast, he saw something big land on the deck. "Scared me to death!" he remarked. I was summoned and got this picture:

The turkeys are getting very bold and perching on the deck rail

The lettuce bolted long since. I have been slowly cleaning out the bed by feeding the lettuce to the hens. Like everything that comes along, lettuce is the best thing ever!

Hilda had some of her friends over on Sunday afternoon. She fretted in advance that the turkeys would not be around. These fears proved to be unfounded, as they showed up right on time to eat bird seed under the feeders. The adolescents are getting really big! 

Turkeys under the bird feeders

The hilarious part was watching the hens watch the turkeys, as shown in this video.

Sauerkraut day

Here’s a funny story. A few weeks ago, my brother, his wife, and a friend of theirs came to lunch. I made a bacon and tomato pie with a recipe I got from Sara Molton’s Weeknight Meals. Anything to use up tomatoes at this point in time. Well, the only way it could have been made on a weeknight was if you had the crust made in advance. In any case, I read that recipe six times. Every time I read it, I thought, “Huh. Isn’t it funny that you don’t sauté the onions before you put them in the pie? I guess if they are sliced thin enough, they cook in the pie.”

The crust was all butter and difficult to work with. It split all over, and I had to piece it together to get it to cover the pie pan.

I layered the bacon, the onions, and the tomatoes in two layers before pouring on the eggs and cream. I glanced at the recipe once more to see how long to bake it. And there it was: “sauté the onions in the bacon fat.” Too late.

But the onions did cook in the baking, which was 25 minutes longer than the 35 minutes the recipe said.

Because the recipe made twice as much crust as I needed for one pie, I had another crust in the freezer. I let it warm up a little more when I made the second pie last Friday. It was, consequently, easier to roll out. I sautéed the onions in bacon fat as instructed, but really there didn’t seem to be much difference in the outcome.

Bacon and tomato pie

Saturday was sauerkraut day. Hilda and I harvested the cabbage in the morning. Pat and Nancy came for lunch at noon bearing gifts from Nebraska, where there apparently is a Chick Day festival. Hilda and I posed with our new blingy T-shirts.

Hilda and I in our new T-shirts

We got to work right after lunch. At least we intended to get right to work after lunch. The sauerkraut slicer wasn’t where I thought it should be in the root cellar. All four of us searched the root cellar, the store room, Hilda’s pantry closets, the garage—nothing. Hilda and I have between us four regular sized mandolins, so I got out one of mine. It worked nearly as well. It just wasn’t as wide.

Nancy and Hilda cleaned the cabbage and cut the heads in half.

Nancy and Hilda clean the cabbages

I sliced, wearing my special protective glove.

I slice cabbage on a regular mandolin

Pat weighed the sliced cabbage, mixed every 2.5 pounds with 1/8 cup pickling sauce, and packed it into crocks.

Pat weighs the sliced sauerkraut

And packs it into the crocks after mixing it with salt

We were all done by 2:30. That left us half an hour to rest before our other guest arrived for game night. My contribution to the meal was a cherry tomato salad. I’d read the recipe the night before in Saveur and thought it would be a nice accompaniment to Hilda’s braised chicken and mashed potatoes. I tossed the halved Sun Gold tomatoes and sliced shallots in vinegar and oil. I spread them over sliced tomatoes and added basil chiffonade to the top. I will miss tomatoes when they are gone.

Cherry tomato salad

Laboring on Labor Day

Good heavens, I’ve spent so much time standing in the kitchen this weekend that my feet are about to give out. I cleaned another two big trays of tomatoes and made pizza sauce. The peppers are ready for harvest. I made enough stuffed peppers for four meals. Jane is coming up later this afternoon to make a batch of pepper relish. I made some Asian chicken slaw with a cabbage that had to be harvested because it split. Once the head breaks open, fungus follows soon afterwards. We will be making sauerkraut next weekend.

We’ve started harvesting the onions and shallots. As soon as the tops drop over, they have stopped growing and will rot if left out in the rain, if it in fact ever rains again. (We are hoping for tomorrow.)

Onions drying on screens in the garage

The dry beans are ready now too. I love shelling dry beans. Not only can I sit down while I do it, but the beans are beautiful. The Vermont cranberry beans range from pink to magenta to dark purple. I particularly like Lena Cisco’s Bird Egg. What a cool name! The beans are like little bird eggs, and again highly variable. These are five of the 13 varieties we grew this year.

Left to right, top row Hidatsa Shield Figure, Vermont Cranberry, Lena Cisco's Bird Egg; bottom row, Black Turtle Beans, Peregion.

We tried golden beets this year. The germination was terrible. We ended up with exactly four beets. Golden beets are supposed to be less “earthy” (translation: tastes like dirt) than red beets. Here they are in the casserole before roasting.

The entire harvest of golden beets

And here they are drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a side of Benedictine cheese. Frankly, I don’t think I could tell the difference in a blind taste test. Hilda thought they were a little sweeter.

Golden beets drizzled with balsamic vinegar and served with Benedictine cheese

Yesterday we had a dinner invitation to Diane N’s house. I offered to bring a peach pie because Michigan peaches were on sale. Not to brag or anything, but I think this was my first perfect pie. It did not leak peach juice from anywhere. All the filling was completely enclosed in crust.

I had a dilemma when I took it out of the oven. We live about a mile from a dairy farm, and when the wind blows from the south, we get innumerable flies. At first, I thought that they were all houseflies and was surprised that some of them bit. I read in Hobby Farms, however, that houseflies that bite are really stable flies. My first thought was that “stable” was the antonym for “unstable.” I felt like quite the city slicker when the true meaning of “horse barn” floated up in my brain.

In any case, we’ve got flies. How was I going to let this pie cool without getting flies all over it? I struggled to make a tent with a flour sack towel draped over four juice glasses. Then I remembered that years ago, Jane gave me a pop-up screen to keep flies off the food at picnics. We don’t picnic much anymore, but I knew right where the screen was. After a bit of study, I figured out how to put it up. The pie got plenty of ventilation in its fly-free zone.

Peach pie cooling under a screen while a fly (upper left) puzzles over how to get access

Whew. I’ll be glad to get back to work tomorrow so I can rest.

A Rafter of Turkeys

Every night last week, Terry told me about all the turkeys he’d seen during the day. I was worried that they would be gone by the weekend, and I would not be able to see them. Not so! They were everywhere all the time. I had to Google the proper name for a group of turkeys, which turned out to be “a rafter.”

Hen on the lookout

Our rafter of turkeys seems to consist of 4 adults and two cohorts of 8 adolescent chicks (20 turkeys all together), one a bit older than the other. They make the rounds of our 5 oaks eating acorns.

Headed for the fifth oak

They hang out under the deck eating bird seed that falls from the feeders above. This picture was taken from our living room window.

Under the deck

They wander through the garden and the grass eating God knows what.

Headed for the garden--note two different sizes of chicks

And even though Terry covered the grapes with netting, they duck underneath the net to eat the grapes.

On the way to the grapevines

This morning I was out doing my chicken chores when I heard a squawk and the flutter of big wings. I raced around the side of the coop, thinking that one of the hens had escaped. It was just turkeys. They do seem to hang around outside of the chicken fences.

Hen and six of her 8 chicks headed around Coop 2's fence

Video montage of the turkeys:

We had game night here Saturday. Hilda worried that the turkeys would not put in an appearance. But they did. I chased them out of the grapes and out of the garden. Pat, who is a birder, was thrilled to see so many turkeys at once. She quite happily took over turkey chasing, and thought it was the best game night ever!

Pat also insisted that I take a picture of her dinner plate, featuring grilled salmon with lemon and dill, Marilyn’s hot potato salad, and green beans with soy sauce, sesame oil, and pine nuts. It was a team effort. I put the salmon in the foil packs, Terry grilled, Hilda made the potato salad, and Nancy made the green beans.

Game night supper

At the end of the evening, Hilda found a baby toad on the front porch. So cute!

Baby toad

In other news, the petunia growing in the patio is blooming its little heart out. I do not understand where it is getting the nutrients or the water.

Volunteer petunia

It has been hot and humid the last couple of days. Just at sunset, a fog forms over the field. I think of fog being more of a morning thing. It is fascinating to watch it form so quickly.

Evening fog