Monday, October 31, 2016

The cranes of Jasper-Pulaski

Such a weekend! I will have to do multiple blogs this week. Let’s begin with Friday. I asked to tag along with Jane and Jan on a trip to Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area to see the migrating sandhill cranes. It’s been on my bucket list for years. Jan had been keeping track of the daily updates that reported a count of nearly 7000 cranes the day before.
I left my house at 7:45 so Jane and I could leave her house at 9:00 to meet Jan at Ikea at 9:30. Logistics. After a quick stop at Starbucks, we were off to Indiana. The traffic wasn’t too bad that time of day except on I65. We got off at the DeMotte exit looking for lunch. Jan was on her phone looking up restaurant reviews for this tiny town. We ended up at Heather’s Diner, which we discovered had won the honor of being named Best Breakfast in Jasper County (not sure there is a real reference point here—Jasper County seems to be largely rural with few restaurants to pick from).
Lunch in DeMotte

If you’ve known me for a while, you know my rule for restaurants that serve breakfast all day is to order breakfast. I had a Western omelet with ham, mushrooms, green pepper, onion, and enough American cheese to coat my teeth. Which I love in a retro raised-on-Velveeta sort of way. The hash browns were brown and crispy; the whole wheat toast had been brushed with melted butter. The table was supplied with individually-wrapped tablespoon portions of Mixed Fruit Jelly. Perfect. Total comfort food. Jane’s turkey and bacon wrap had real roasted turkey breast, not lunch meat, but otherwise was not a standout. Jan’s hot beef had real gravy (plus) but instant mashed potatoes (minus). I took half my breakfast/lunch with me in a Styrofoam box.
On to the Wildlife Area, which is named because it straddles the boundary between Jasper and Pulaski Counties. Oddly, we saw no cranes until we were practically there. When Jane and Jan had been there before, the cranes had been all over the harvested fields eating the spilled grain.
It was hard to tell where we were supposed to be. We pulled into a parking lot by the Hunters’ Check in Station—n.b.: no guns or dogs allowed inside. Says so right above the door.
Check Station in Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area. Leave your dogs and guns in the car.

Jan found a map in a kiosk, but I couldn’t make any sense of it primarily because I though the blue line meandering through it was a road when it was in fact a river. Jane did better and took us back to the main road and down to another parking lot. We walked a short distance through a lovely forest.
The trail to the observation deck

At the end of the trail was an observation deck with the World’s Longest Handicapped Ramp.
The observation deck with the handicapped ramp zigzagging up in the foreground (and Jan walking to the car on the right)

There were two high power scopes on the deck through which I verified that the animals in the distance were deer. Thirteen deer, actually, 10 standing and 3 in the grass. There were three cranes behind them.
Thirteen deer and three cranes

Well, there were a hundred cranes, but no 7000. Pat S. told me that you need to be there at dawn or dusk. A big flock was hanging out by some surface water.Here’s one bathing while another dries its wings.
Large flock of cranes by surface water--one is bathing while another dries its wings
Three cranes in flight.
Three cranes in flight

We didn’t see a crane up close until we went back to the car. Sadly, most of the numerous photos I took ended up with the grass in the foreground in focus, not the cranes. Since bifocals, I have become dependent on autofocus. It often lets me down.
The closest we got to a crane

We drove around some more, but no cranes. Lots of folks out at the rifle range. We drove back north on a smaller highway, which was a good deal more pleasant than I65. But we did get caught in rush hour on I80. Lord. We dropped Jan off at her car and drove through more traffic to get back to Jane's, arriving about 6:00. I ate my leftovers and got in my car to drive another hour to get home. Long day.
I’m not crossing this off my bucket list yet. The thing to do would be to leave in the middle of the day to avoid traffic and stay overnight somewhere nearby. (WHERE?? See note on Jasper County restaurants and extrapolate to hotels. Valparaiso, maybe?) See the cranes come in for the night and go back at dawn. Have breakfast at Heather’s and drive back in the middle of the day.  It’s a plan. Might have to wait until I retire.


Monday, October 24, 2016

Planting garlic

It’s that time of year when I can’t go anywhere without getting stuck behind at least one piece of farm equipment going 10 mph down the middle of the road. Some of them have no choice, really. They are as wide as the road; going down just one side is not possible. The soybeans are pretty much all in. Everyone is working on the corn right now. Even though I know that everything about the way we raise and use corn is wrong—bad for the environment, bad for the food supply, harmful to our health and the health of the animals we feed it to—I can’t help but think about sitting on top of that big ol’ combine, watching the stalks head into the chopper, driving to the edge of the field to offload a golden cascade of kernels into the waiting grain truck. How can that not feel great? If it were me, I would just about burst with pride.
Meanwhile, in my own little domain, we are finishing up the gardening. We finally got the last of the landscape cloth rolled up. Terry will rototill the rest of the garden except where the Brussels sprouts are still growing. Through an oversight, we did not start any from seeds this year. I had to buy an unknown variety at Klein’s. The sprouts are maturing from the bottom up. That is normal to a certain extent, but my favorite varieties have little difference in size along the stalks. The variety we have this year has very large sprouts at the bottom and practically non-existent ones at the top. Instead of whacking off the whole stem and picking the sprouts off whilst seated comfortably in a chair, I have to pick the big ones off the bottom of the stalk while it is still in the ground so the upper sprouts can keep growing. It requires a posture that is reminiscent of milking a cow by hand. I can only hope that we won’t get a hard freeze before the top ones catch up. (In reality, we are not going to be short. Actually, I’m not sure what I was thinking when I bought so many.) Also, the bottom sprouts have little Brusselettes. “Doubly compound,” Terry remarked when I showed him.
Brussels sprouts with Brusselettes sprouting from the bottom
We got the garlic planted on Friday. Hilda and I transferred landscape cloth from the Brussels sprouts to the garlic bed without rolling it up. I made the furrows. Here’s Hilda putting in the cloves.
Hilda planting garlic

This is what it looked like when we were done planting. It was too windy to spread the straw on Friday.
All planted and labeled

Early Saturday morning was calm. It was a good thing we took advantages of the moment because it was windy the rest of the weekend. Here I am spreading straw.
Me spreading straw


The final step in putting the garlic to bed was to tuck it in with row cover. We skipped this step last year and had straw blown from here to Kingdom Come. And I can sleep a little better knowing the garlic is nestled snuggly in the soil for the winter.
Under the row cover and ready for a long winter's nap

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Introducing the new girls

We finally have names for all the girls. Introducing the Flock of 2016-2018, unless they get mean and start eating eggs:
The Golden Girls (Barred Rock)
Blanche
Dorothy
Rose (right) with Angelica (left) and Layla (center, if you couldn't figure it out by process of elimination)
Angelica and Layla are Americauna. Our third Americauna is Bella. They're the ones that lay the green-blue eggs.
Bella (with Angelica)
Then there are the girls that we got from Dale.
Opal
Ruthie
Bess and Pearl were reluctant to come out of the coop at first.
Bess steps out while Pearl assesses the situation
But they did eventually strut their stuff.
Bess and Pearl out and about





Sunday, October 16, 2016

Apples and more apples

Finally a weekend when I did not have too many things on my to-do list. I’ve got everything completed except the blog post, and here we are!
We have an abundance of apples. One of my apple projects was dried apple slices. Dried apples are a handy, healthy snack, but a few apples make a lot of slices.
Apples in the dehydrator

To use more apples, I have been experimenting with apple juice. My first attempt was to follow the recipe in the Ball Blue Book. It called for 24 points of apples and two quarts of water, cooked together “in a large saucepot” until the apples fell apart and then strained through a jelly bag. In preparation, I bought a jelly bag and frame and at Farm and Fleet.
I started cleaning and weighing apples and quickly realized that a saucepot large enough for 24 pounds of apples would be enormous indeed. I scale back to a more reasonable 6 pounds, which just fit in my largest stock pot. I dutifully added 2 cups of water and turned the burner on. If you think this sounds a lot like making apple sauce, you’re right. When the applesauce was done, I assembled my new jelly bag and frame. To my dismay, I discovered that the jelly bag held about a quart, and I had roughly two gallons of applesauce to strain. I put in as much applesauce as the jelly bag would hold and waited. And waited. Eventually, I had 1 tablespoon of apple syrup.
I started diluting the applesauce so that there would be some fluid to go through the jelly bag, planning to boil off the extra water later if I needed to concentrate it. I initially thought that I might get applesauce as a byproduct, but no, much of the flavor had washed out. I had to wash the jelly bag often to get out the particles that clogged it up almost immediately. The apple juice, while a beautiful light pink, tasted exactly as one would expect washed applesauce to taste. It was not only watery and flavorless, but also thick from the pectin that had cooked out in the process. I did not attempt to concentrate it.
I declared that a failure and got out my juicer. The juicer was new the last time I used it, purchased on the recommendation of America’s Test Kitchen. The trouble was that the juice was foamy and pulpy. I addressed those problems by a two-step filtration process. I poured the whole pitcher, foam and all, into the strainer. I stirred the foam to encourage it to go through. I then put it through the jelly bag, again rinsing it at regular intervals. I boiled the resulting juice, skimming off the scum that rose to the top. I put it through the strainer and the jelly bag. I poured it into a jar. It still had a lot of flocky precipitates in it. After it sat in the refrigerator overnight, I poured off the top and threw out the bottom. I had used a tray full of apples and ended up with less than a quart of juice.
Apple juice, take 2: juice on right, waste on left

“You make juice to use up apples,” Terry remarked. And that established the theme of making apple juice: embrace the waste.
I invited Jane up Saturday afternoon to help me. The time-consuming step was cutting up the apples. We did that together until we had the first big bowl of apple wedges ready. After that, Jane cut the apples, and I did everything else. 
Jane cutting and cleaning the apples
Me putting the apples through the juicer. Metal strainer and pitcher on the right
It took a minute to put the apples through the juicer. I learned on the second batch that if I didn’t clean the fine-meshed screen between every pitcher of juice, the juice would be pulpy. It took 10 minutes to clean the juicer. While I did that the juice settled in the pitcher so I was better able to pour off the bottom while leaving the foam behind. Yes, there was still juice in the foam, but I just threw it in the mulch bowl. Embrace the waste.
Juice with foam

I put the juice in my big stock pot. My plan was to put it through the jelly bag only once, and that was after boiling it. My other duties as assigned included taking the waste bowl to the mulch bin, which from my previous experiments was now a breeding ground for fruit flies and wasps. I also brought in more apples and washed them.
Interestingly, Macintosh apples to not oxidize as readily as the other three varieties we used (Liberty, Jonathon, and Macoun).
Juice from Macintosh apples

I skimmed the foam off the pot as it heated up. I am pleased to report that the juice went right through the jelly bag. After the first liter or so, I didn’t even bother with rinsing the bag. While I was straining the juice, Jane washed the dishes and tried to clean the counters. I'm pretty sure the kitchen will be sticky at least until the cleaning ladies come on Tuesday.
I let it settle again overnight, but I wouldn’t have needed to. There was very little in the bottom of the pot. We got 6 quarts of juice. If we paid ourselves minimum wage, it works out to be $10/quart, assuming the apples, electricity, and gas were free. You don’t make apple juice to save money. You make apple juice to use apples. Embrace the waste.
The outcome of 3.5 hours of work by two people



Monday, October 10, 2016

Rotating the livestock

We sat for a good deal of time on the horns of a dilemma. What to do about the laying hens? We knew for sure that we had to get rid of mean old Isabel. She pecked at the other chickens. Hilda witnessed her giving hard pecks to Gracie’s head several times. We suspected that she was the one who pestered Chloe until she had a raw spot on her back. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Isabel also ate eggs and taught all the other chickens to eat eggs. You may recall that we have the nesting boxes built so the eggs roll out. Isabelle figured out how to stick her head through to peck holes in the egg. Then one of the Americauna started laying eggs on the floor of the coop, where they were fair game to all and sundry. One or more of the Americauna was laying eggs with soft shells, sometimes on the floor, sometimes in the nest boxes, where the contents would run all over the carpet and down onto the floor.
Hilda and I discussed and discussed. If we put down all of the hens, we would only have the 6 pullets that we raised this year. We didn’t know who was laying the weak-shelled eggs. I had never seen the chicken that laid eggs on the floor; Hilda wasn’t sure which one she was. Could we part with Gracie and Nadia?
In the end, we decided to put down everyone except Gracie and Nadia, who are now in pet status because neither has laid an egg in months. Who knows, though? Perhaps when they are not being harassed they will get back to business.
Hilda called Todd, the butcher. He did not answer his phone or respond to the email, which was concerning. Shortly after that, Terry and the folks went up to Dale’s to get more turkey food. Dale asked if we needed any more pullets. Problem solved! But could we wait to pick them up until we took the layers to Todd for butcher? Yes, that was fine. And by the way, Todd’s father-in-law had recently drowned. Probably why he hadn’t called back.
He did call back the next day. The date was set for Saturday morning, and we didn’t even have to bring them the night before if we could be there by 8:00 on the day of. Whew. That meant we could sneak out just before first light and grab them off the perch. So much easier than chasing them around the run in broad daylight.
Terry got the kennels ready Friday evening. Hilda and I went to the coop at 6:15 the next morning. The girls were still roosting as expected. The first plan was that I would get them out of the coop, and Hilda would put them in the kennel. Except that she had trouble getting the door lined up so that the latch would release, which is hard when you are holding a chicken. Lizette was first. When we finally got her in the kennel, she went wild from being alone. She put up such a fuss when Hilda was trying to put Lilian in there with her that Lilian got away. Crapsticks! In all the confusion, Lizette got out too. We herded them back toward the coop. I was able to grab Lilian by the door. Hilda got Lizette in the coop and shut the door while we put Lilian in the cage. Then I grabbed Lizette. They were calmer when they were together. From that point on, Hilda and I worked together, one carrying and one opening the door and blocking the chickens already in the cage. It went smoothly after that. The hens squawked a little, but we were able to give them a hug and say goodbye.
The layers ready for their last (and only) ride in the pick up

As long as it was still fairly dark, we pressed on to moving the pullets away from the turkeys. Hilda watched the door while I climbed in to extract the girls from the perch where they sat, of course, at the farthest possible distance from the door. And the turkeys were positioned between them and the door, so I had to negotiate around them (and they are BIG) plus the water and the feeder hanging from the ceiling in a space that is four feet wide.
Gracie and Nadia were as perplexed by their new roommates as the pullets were by their new surroundings. We left them shut in the coop so they would learn (we hoped) that it was their home now.
New roommates: where are we, and who are these girls with the big hair?

The turkeys, when we let them out, cried and cried and cried. I tried to get a video of them, but as soon as I came up to the fence, they ran over and were comforted. The crying stopped.
Terry and I left for Todd’s at 7:30. The girls were sitting peacefully on the bottom of the kennel when we arrived. We moved them to a larger cage, gave Todd the money, and drove home.
When we got back, the pullets were on one side of the coop and Nadia and Gracie were on the other.
We left the house again at 9:20 to go to Dales to pick up four of his pullets. We took two cars so Hilda and Dad could come along. Dale let us to an old horse barn where he’d converted the stalls to poultry pens. His chickens were Americauna crosses (he didn’t say what they had been crossed with), but they laid pale brown eggs, not blue. When we didn’t have a strong opinion about which chickens we wanted, he captured four different colored pullets one at a time with a net.
We got a tan one, a solid black one, a light tan one, and one that was more typically Americauna colors, but with a black head.
This chicken has black feathers with greenish iridescence in sunlight

This is the darker tan one with the other two pullets behind

Terry took the pullets home in the back of his truck. I drove Mom and Dad in their car. We stopped at a roadside stand to pick up two butternut squash. We have sunk to this from near total failure of the cucurbits this year. On Tuesday, I baked every Golden Nugget squash Terry harvested, and it wasn’t even enough for two pies. (I have been swapping out pumpkin for squash in my Thanksgiving pies for years, with no one the wiser. Until now, I guess.) So I had to buy squash. This made me realize how I have changed. When Terry started raising squash 14 years ago, the only way I knew how to cook them is roasted with butter and brown sugar, and I hated it. Now I can’t imagine going through the winter without some squash puree for pies, pumpkin bars, tortilla soup, cookies, and bread. And roasted squash is divine with butter, salt, pepper, and sage. It’s the brown sugar that makes it nasty.
Butternut squash purchased from a roadside stand. We have sunk to this.

Back to the chickens. Hilda and I left Dale’s pullets in the cage while we clipped the wings of our pullets and put leg bands on the Barred Rocks. Next, we got Dale’s pullets one at a time and clipped their wings. We left them together in the coop until after lunch so they could bond. We relaxed, confident that the hard part was over.
Chicken cliques--three of our pullets on the left; the ones from Dale on the right

Another picture of the pullets from Dale
After lunch, it looked like this. Nadia was perched on the highest possible point. The tan pullet was challenging her position. Gracie, not shown, was cowering in a nest box. The rest of the pullets were milling around on the floor.
Nadia ruling the roost while the others mill around on the floor and Grace cowers in a nest box

We opened the door. Nadia charged out immediately. Here’s a video showing what happened next. Two of the Barred Rocks, now named Dorothy and Blanche, tentatively stood outside the door. Hilda went around to shoo the rest out. Then they spotted the turkeys and vice versa. They ran to the fence to greet each other. 
The video ends then because I had to put the camera on the ground and go catch the four pullets who had pushed their way through the electric net. Crapsticks! I walked them all around the enclosure to the greenhouse, where I trapped them in the corner. I followed my first thought, which was to toss them over the fence and back in with the turkeys.
In the main run, we shooed Nadia back into the coop and shut the door for the rest of the day. When it got dark, Hilda and I took the pullets out of Coop 2 (where they had, once again, perched at the point farthest from the door) and put them into Coop 1 for the night. At that time, all of the girls who spent the day in Coop 1 were perched together. That’s good.
The hard part wasn’t over at all. The hard part was going to be moving the fences, which took two and a half hours. Terry and I were up early the next morning. We took the chick fence down from around the turkeys and put up the corn fence. We then put one of the two sections of chick fence up inside the fence around the permanent run. And we let everyone out to play. When I turned my back for one minute, two of Dale’s pullets had gone under the chick fence and were walking around between the fences. I caught them and put them back in the run. I then stuck earth staples through the chick fence where it didn't quite meet the ground by the gate.
The chick fence relocated to inside the permanent run: Nadia and Gracie hanging out in the shelter; turkeys trying to figure out a way through their new fence.

Now we were done. I hope. It is worrisome that the turkeys keep pecking at their new fence. If they break the wires, I’ll be mad.


Friday, October 7, 2016

Sinking into autumn

The dreary weather continued most of the week. We are finally seeing blue skies this afternoon. The leaves are finally turning.
The first leaves turning on the fifth oak in front of a low, grey sky

The turkeys are getting big, and the pullets are approaching full size.
Look how big the turkeys are getting!

We have lost our newbie enthusiasm for picking names. I’ve suggested naming the Barred Rocks after the Golden Girls—Blanche, Rose, and Dorothy. We’ll have to get the leg bands on before we can name them individually. 
Two of the three Barred Rocks. They all look alike
Hilda named the white Americauna Angelica, even though her attitude is not as pure as her color. The other two Americauna are not yet named. I’ve been thinking of Bella and Layla, just because I like those names. Haven’t run them past Hilda yet.   
The Americauna

We may have frost tonight. Finally. Enough is enough. We need to get the rest of the plants out of the garden and get that cleaned up. Terry has already rototilled most of the garden where the harvest was done.
The part of the garden formerly known as the pumpkin patch

The peppers and tomatoes remain plus a few beets and kohlrabi. 
Sad, bedraggled tomatoes and peppers
The Brussels sprouts will be better harvested after the frost. Folklore suggests that they are sweeter after a mild freeze. An observation that supports this belief is that I cooked some of the Brussels sprouts Wednesday evening, and they were a little bitter (but not resentful).  
In anticipation of the frost, Hilda went out to strip the remaining peppers and tomatoes today. Perhaps the weather will be less windy next weekend, and we can get out there and finish putting everything away.
This tiger swallowtail is one more sad sign of winter approaching. Its worn-out wings are at the point of being nearly useless. I hope it fulfilled its life function of passing genes to the next generation before it dies. So long, butterflies! See your babies next summer!
A tiger swallowtail with tattered, broken wings 

Monday, October 3, 2016

Dreary weekend

I got nothin'. The weekend was cold and dreary with spitting rain at intervals just often enough to make outdoor work untenable. I stayed in and revised my memoirs. I took some pictures Sunday afternoon with the intention of making something up that sounded exciting. When I turned my upstairs computer (the one that has Photoshop on it) on this afternoon to crop and reduce the file sizes on said photos, it started cranking through the latest updates. It doesn't have a very big brain, and it is taking forever.
It was good to have a nice rest.