Sunday, April 24, 2016

Lonely bachelor

The pheasant cock persists in pestering our hens. He stands outside the fence, squawking and posturing, to no avail. We had a pheasant hen on the property last year. We hope that another one will come around soon. It would be fun to have some pheasant chicks.
Ring-necked pheasant ruffling his feathers to uninterested chickens
The tom turkeys are not having the same trouble finding mates. One morning last week, three toms were displaying in the field across the road to about 9 hens. I got a picture of the rafter running around the garage by the magnolia that is about to bloom.
Turkeys beneath the magnolia
The plum tree is in full blossom.
Plum blossoms
The standing water is gone from the south end of the property. The chorus frogs were smart not to lay eggs there. The only plants that are clearly evident now are curly dock and reed canary grass. I am in despair for my native prairie plants.
The snipes have moved to the willows on the north side where the water persists. I saw three of them take off out of there yesterday. I also saw a few solitary tiny tadpoles. Here is one nestled in the muck. I took the picture first and then verified that it was a tadpole by poking at it. It was seriously tiny, less than 1 cm long including the tail. I hope they have time to turn into frogs before that puddle dries up.
The black dot in the middle is the head of a tiny tadpole
I was relieved to see that the wild ginger came up again back by the creek. I planted it several years ago and kept it protected with a tomato cage until it had gotten sufficiently robust that I felt it could withstand herbivory. Last year, I took the cage off. I told Terry what I had done and asked him to pick up the cage next time he was back there with the Gator. A few days later, he went back with the weed whacker to attack the garlic mustard and cut off my ginger in the process. I was, to use a phrase I learned from Kate just this week, so mad I was spitting bees. Thus, I have been anxiously awaiting their renewed growth.
My wild ginger survived last year's weed whacker attack
The jack-in-the-pulpit made it through another year, still in its tomato cage (I have learned…).
Jack-in-the-pulpit
Violets are blooming also.
Violets
The asparagus is up. The first two harvests have given us enough for one meal. The thistles are up as well. I must go weed when I am done with this post.
Asparagus

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Quick trip to summer

Hoo-boy, it feels good to sit down tonight. I have a familiar ache in my back, hips, toes and fingertips. Gardening season has begun.
The last two days could not have been more different than last Sunday, when the weather was so cold, wet, and dreary that I wouldn’t have gone outside even if I’d had time. Temperatures have been in the 80’s all weekend.  52 kWh today, and the sun isn’t down yet. Our all-time high so far was 60 kWh last Tuesday, which was an absolutely cloudless day.
The puddles are drying up. I took Terry on a snipe hunt after work Thursday. Not a snipe to be seen. The chorus frogs knew what they were doing. Had they laid eggs, all the tadpoles would be little raisins very soon.
Friday morning we had a flashy visitor under the bird feeder. As I crept around the side of the house on the deck, a turkey joined him. The turkey ran off faster, however, and I only had a chance to photograph the pheasant. He’s been hanging around lately. Terry’s hypothesis is that he’s looking for a mate and wants one of our hens.
A high stepping pheasant walking away from the bird feeder. Did you know they had ear feathers?
 I had a number of chicken chores on my list for the weekend. The egg ramp suffered a number of soft-shelled eggs when the new hens were learning to lay. We wiped up as best we could, but through the winter, dust accumulated on the spots. I promised myself I would clean on the first nice day.
Egg ramp before cleaning
Yesterday afternoon, I took a wet vac, a scrub brush, and a squirt bottle of fragrance-free laundry soap to the coop. (I have read that chickens are sensitive to fragrances.) I squirted, scrubbed, and vacuumed up the dirty water. It looked a lot better when I was done.
Egg ramp after cleaning

I weeded about half of the flower bed on the north side of the garage and separated one of two clumps of shooting stars. I like to keep one as a control. If the dividing doesn’t work out, I haven’t lost them all. Today, they all looked fine, giving me confidence to divide another couple of bunches that I needed to transplant.
When I finished my inside work this morning, I went back to chicken chores. Hilda and I hung a new nipped waterer from the ceiling. You may recall we got a heated nipple waterer last winter, which was much, much better than the heated bowl that had to be cleaned every single morning. Nipple waterers just need more water added each day, with a weekly rinse out. So much better.
The cord on the heated waterer is a pain when it isn’t needed. Hilda got an unheated nipple waterer. I saw Chloe peck at it once, but I’m not sure she got any water. They’ll learn.
Chloe (center, between Miss Peckwitt and Lilian) examines the nipple waterer 

Next up, I spaded one of the raised beds in the run. We have a lot of clay, and the surface gets hard as a rock. It was getting right hot by then. I hadn’t sweat that much since Belize. I added some mulch from the bottom of my bin. I have learned not to put it on the garden because it does not get hot enough to kill the seeds. Imagine a solid lawn of tomato seedlings. I put the mulch in the chicken’s bed so they could have fun picking through it for treats. Which they did for the rest of the day, in between taking luxuriant dust baths in the loose soil. Dust baths are an important part of chicken hygiene. It keeps them free of ectoparasites like mites.
The hens pick through the mulch in a raised bed
Here's a brief video of Clair and Helen dust bathing.


The grass seed is coming up in the part of the run that is resting.
Grass seedlngs

It is not growing fast enough. I had hoped to get the fence moved back to its original position before they trashed the grass in front of the greenhouse. Too late.
Trashed grass in front of the greenhouse

The barley has come up. That will keep the girls busy for a while when the time comes to let them have at it.
The barley is growing nicely

For the remainder of the afternoon, I transplanted the wildflowers that I brought from our previous home and planted near the road “temporarily” until I could figure out where I wanted them. That was four years ago. They are now in their permanent home underneath the fifth oak. Every year since then, I have put in on my list and not gotten to it. Today, I can cross it off.




Sunday, April 10, 2016

Snipe Hunt

To tie up the last loose end, ComEd came Wednesday to swap the old meter for a new one. We are live! The only sunny day we’ve had was yesterday, generating 57 kWh. The cloudy days have generated half that or less—today was dreary indeed with a total of only 7 kWh. The coming week should be better.
The inverter measuring electrical output. The manual says that from left to right the numbers are the AC being generated, the DC used, and the total AC for the day. I'm not sure what that all means.

Like many or maybe even most children, I grew up thinking that snipes were mythical creatures, similar to unicorns except meaner. The snipe hunt was a way for older kids to lure uninitiated younger kids out into the woods in the dark to scare them.
Two weeks ago, I was thrilled to pieces when I walked out to our prairie restoration area (which at present is a wet meadow) and saw a bird with a long bill that resembled a woodcock. Then I saw another, and then a group of three. I looked up woodcocks in Sibley and found that there were several things wrong with my tentative identification. 1) Woodcocks have no flight call. The birds I saw definitely made a noise when they took off. Not a pretty noise, nor a long one, but a noise nevertheless. 2) Woodcocks live in the woods, not in wet meadows. But guess what! Snipes are real. On the very next page was a picture of the common snipe, Gallinago gallinago. They look a lot like woodcocks, but are a little smaller. Sibley described the flight call as “a dry, harsh, scraping, scresh or kesh,” and they inhabit wet meadows.
Last week, I saw them again. When I got home from GardenFest yesterday, I put the telephoto lens on my camera and went out to see if I could get a picture. I scared up a dozen or so in four bursts. Snipes fly fast and erratically. It was not easy to get a photo. In my snipe research, I discovered that the term “sniper” originally referred to someone sufficiently skilled with a gun to shoot snipes, and that’s saying something. Like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, my picture of the snipe is appropriately grainy and out of focus. The “boldly striped back,” white belly, and black wedge on the wing are characters that separate it from the woodcock.
Grainy, out-of-focus picture of the not-mythical snipe

Six snipes flying away after I disturbed them
I suspect the snipes are feasting on chorus frogs, which I have yet to see. I even poked around under the water looking for eggs, but all I found was filamentous algae. Some of the algae is forming mats on the water’s surface. No eggs, no tadpoles. Still plenty of noise from the chorus frogs. When will they get down to business? That six inches of standing water won’t last forever!
Mat of filamentous algae in the stagnant water of the wet meadow

The upside of the cloudy weather has been a slight downtick in the box elder bug and ladybug populations. As soon as the sun comes out, however, they’re back. Here’s a congregation of box elder bugs on the patio.
A congregation of box elder bugs

The turkeys are back too. I saw a tom displaying to five hens today. I was in the middle of kitchen work and didn’t take a picture. The hens were uninterested.

One of the silver crested chickens has laid three tiny eggs over the last two weeks. (I guess they could both be doing it.) The two eggs I have opened both have nothing but white and what looks like yolk membrane. It’s gross. I have thrown them out. I had so hoped there would be perfect tiny yolks inside. It turns out that the eggs are only cute while in the shell.
A cute little white egg
Not so cute on the inside

Sunday, April 3, 2016

April snow

All day yesterday we had alternating blizzards and blue sky. It was cold and terribly windy. Hilda shut the chicken coop early in the afternoon because the girls weren’t out anyway, and the coop would stay warmer.
This is April?
The rhubarb is coming up. It does not seem to mind the return of cold weather.
Rhubarb sprouting
We had our March game night in April because of various scheduling conflicts. We choose appetizers as our theme, knowing the whole time that there would be WAY too much food if we all brought something to pass. Hilda saw a recipe in Cook it in Cast Iron for Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip. She gave me the choice of making that or Parmesan chicken wings. I picked the former because she is better at wings, and I love making bread.
When I got down to really thinking about it Friday, I realized that the Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip was not really a make-ahead thing. The recipe involved lining the outside of a 10” cast iron skillet with balls of pizza dough, letting the dough rise for 20 minutes, baking it for 20 minutes, filling the middle with a mixture of pizza sauce, cream cheese, mozzarella, and crispy pepperoni bits, and baking 10 more minutes.  Our game nights really start in the afternoon so the guests can get home at a decent hour. Thus, I had to have the prep work done before the guests arrived at 3:00 and be able to quickly finish it up and have it hot by 5:00 or so.
I began by making pizza dough using the recipe from Cook it in Cast Iron. I had misgivings because the whole thing was done in the food processor and took about 2 minutes. I was horrified to find that when I removed it from the bowl, it had developed so much gluten that I could have bounced it off the floor. As I mentioned last week, however, if it doesn’t have eggs, you can abuse it as much as you want. I put it in a greased bowl to rise and crossed my fingers. After an hour, it was still a tight ball at the bottom of the bowl. After two hours, it had relaxed and looked more like it should. I proceeded to make the dough balls, which I let rise for an hour. I baked them for the first 20 minutes and figured it would hold there. I would put in the filling and finish the baking just before serving. And it was delicious.
Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip
In addition to the pepperoni pizza dip and wings, we had deviled eggs, a tomato/rosemary tart, artichoke dip, Rumaki (traditionally chicken livers and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, but in this iteration, Lit’l Smokies replaced the chicken livers, which was a-okay with nearly everyone), shrimp cocktail and a variety of salty, crunchy snacks. We started with the cold hors d’oeuvres at 3:00 and ate more or less continuously until 6:00. Oof.
At Terry’s request (he was one of the two March birthday boys, my dad being the other one), I made a peach pie for dessert. I’d had the peaches in the freezer for quite some time, making it more of a Tundra Surprise pie. It turned out fine. I baked it first thing in the morning and had to get the picnic net out to keep the box elder bugs and Asian lady bugs off of it.
Bug-protected peach pie
Box elder bugs on the window behind the pie
The bugs have been driving us insane since the ground thawed. They seem to be attracted to water. The ladybugs are marginally worse because they release a stink when squished or even just brushed from the counter. The Asian ladybug was important intentionally to control soybean aphids. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Here is a picture of one that was on its way to contaminating my toothbrush.
Ladybug stalking my toothbrush

Soon the box elders will be leafed out and the soybeans will be up. The bug density in the house will go down until fall. It’s all part of the cycle of life here in the country.