Christmas

 I slacked off last week and did not do a post. Time got away from me.

Because of a forecast for single-digit temperatures, I went out to the high tunnel to harvest the greens I had left. I didn’t take all of them, even though I figured the ones that remained would be killed by the cold temperatures. I had to do the experiment.

Greens from the high tunnel

I have found that the best way to thin or harvest baby lettuce is to snip off the stem at the base, usually a wee bit below the surface of the soil. When I stuck the tip of my shears into the ground, I hid a rock. How odd. I poked around and finally got the shears where I wanted them to be, snipped the lettuce and put it in my harvesting tray. I went on to the next plant and hit another rock. That can’t be right. I filled this raised bed myself with potting soil, peat, and sand. There shouldn’t be any rocks! Then it hit me: the soil was frozen. Duh.

Pretty amazing, though. The above-ground lettuce was just fine, yet the roots were in frozen soil. Indeed, the outside temperature dipped to 4°F one morning, but the lettuce in the high tunnel still looked good. I will continue my observations over the coming weeks to see how cold it has to be to kill the greens.

Terry’s holiday craft project this year is making some deer lawn ornaments from a pattern my dad ordered for him a couple years ago. He’s making them from plywood. He starts by drilling a hole and the base of each notch, being careful not to go all the way through because the last layer will split out.

Drilling out the base of the notches from one side

Close up of the drilling (he changed his mind about the position of the pieces when he was tracing)

Then he turns the board over and finishes the hole from the other side.

Finishing the hole from the opposite side

After that, he cuts out the shapes with a jigsaw.

Cutting out the shapes with a jigsaw

After painting and assembly, the deer look like this:

Finished and weighted down

Even weighted down with bricks, we’ve had trouble with them blowing over. It’s been crazy windy on a couple of days.

We were pretty much done with the Christmas cookies we made earlier. Jane found a recipe for Linzer cookies she wanted to try. Jane is fine mixing dough but claims she is unable to roll and cut. She’s the only person in our pod, and we had a small Christmas Eve luncheon, rolling and cutting the cookies afterward. We each got a Christmas cracker containing a paper hat and plastic toy. This year's crackers did not include any riddles, more's the pity.

After baking the cookies, we spread jam on the uncut cookies,

Spreading jam while wearing my "cracker" crown

Put cut out cookies on top,

Assembling the cookies

And sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Dusting with powdered sugar

They were pretty darned good cookies!

I hope you all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to a better New Year!

Crossbills and Christmas trees

 I had my Christmas letters in their envelopes a week ago and finally put them in the mail today. Why the delay, you may be asking. I ordered stamps online, thinking that my request would be forwarded to my local post office, and in a day or two my stamps would come in a small envelope to my mailbox. There was a warning that the order might be delayed two to four days because of high volume, etc. While ordering stamps did effectively prevent exposure to COVID from other postal customers, in every other respect it was not satisfactory. It took a full week, Saturday to Saturday, for the stamps to arrive. Furthermore, the four books of stamps, which measure 2.25” x 5.5”, were placed in an 8.5” x 11” envelope with and 8.5” x 11” invoice AND an equally sized piece of light cardboard, all of which went straight to the recycle bin. I believe I will take my chances at the post office. At least there will be less waste.

Stamps, left; excessive packaging, center and right

Terry and I cut trees for Hilda and us this week. We are doing concolor fir this time. We actually cut two of three trees that were growing in a group. Thus, we each have basically half a tree, but you can’t tell from the front. It worked out well. We can have the tree closer to the wall which allows for better TV viewing.

Oh Christmas tree!

I realized recently that Aunt Sam has a deformed beak. For a long time, I thought she was carrying around a stick, which chickens do sometimes. But she seemed to ALWAYS have a stick in her mouth. I finally got a closer look, which was tricky because (as you may recall) she’s skittish and a bit hyperactive. It was delightful to try to get a good picture. I must have taken 20, of which three were both in focus and showed the deformity. This is the best one.

Aunt Sam's cross beak

Here’s what I find interesting. There is a genus of birds (Loxia) that have crossed bills as an adaptation for prying apart conifer cones. There are two crossbill species in North America. I have no reason to believe that these crossbills are closely related to chickens. Certainly, Aunt Sam may have gotten a cross bill through an error in development, and it might not be genetic at all. But what if it were a mutation? That suggests that there’s not many genes, maybe only one, that separates a normal beak from a crossed beak. If that were true, this gene would be responsible for beak development across a wide diversity of birds. Maybe I think too much.

Christmas cookies

 I’m not quite in the Christmas spirit yet, in spite of a regular application of Hallmark Christmas movies. Sigh. It just isn’t the same when you can’t have people over. Still, I made some of the Christmas cookies. Just the sugar cookies and sour cream pockets, so far. I mean, you can’t have NO Christmas cookies, can you, even if you have few people with whom to share? I gave up on the Christmas bison this year, even though they are chocolate, and in my opinion, the only cookies worth the calories. But it’s not about me, and probably better that I don’t have a lot of my favorite cookies calling to me.

So I rolled and cut,

Rolling and cutting

Frosted,

Frosting--green for the trees and holly leaves

And put on jimmies (elongate) and sprinkles (spheres). Forget the piping of decorative frosting. No patience for that this year.

Sprinkles in lieu of piped frosting

Sunday was the last day of deer season in Illinois. As the afternoon went on, I saw turkeys again for the first time in several weeks. There were 10 toms in our field (nine are in the photo; one was off by himself). When I showed the picture to Terry, he said, “They’re toms! I can see the beard!” Turkey beards are on their chests. Don’t ask me.

Nine of ten tom turkeys. Note "beards" on their chests

In the field across the road there were 20-some hens and poults. The poults were a little smaller than the hens. They were too far away for pictures. Terry figured that deer hunters had moved through our neighbor’s woods looking for deer and flushing the turkeys instead (or in addition). Anyway, we were glad to still the turkeys still in the area.