Thanksgiving

 I have been slacking off on blog posts more than I realized. We went to North Dakota last week for Thanksgiving. The week before we left was filled with far too much activity, including but not limited to attending a half-day philanthropy seminar on Wednesday; going to two events on Thursday; making cookies and pumpkin bread with Kate on Friday; baking three more batches of cookies for a bake sale, going to a consultation with a periodontist, and attending an evening event Saturday; and hosting game night Sunday. What was I thinking? All I can say is that everything seemed like a good idea at the time.

Early in the week, I baked sourdough crackers. The first time I tried the recipe, which calls for two tablespoons of dried herbs of the cook’s choice, I decided that the herb I would most like to have was cheese. This time, I threw in a big ol’ handful of parmesan. Also, I didn’t have time to bake the crackers the day I made the dough, so it sat in the refrigerator a few days. To my delight, the crackers puffed up, perhaps because of the extra yeast activity, and stayed crunchy until game night! At which point, Nancy, Jane, and I ate them ALL.

Sourdough Parmesan crackers

Jane brought her cats up with her on Sunday, as she was going to North Carolina for Thanksgiving and her brother and sister-in-law’s 50^th anniversary shindig. We had arranged to have a friend come to the house every morning to feed cats and chickens, and two more cats wasn’t a bit deal. I’m pleased that her cats remember our cats and our house. There is much less hissing. In fact, when I let Gracie out of her travel crate, Banjo ran right up to her, and they exchanged nose kisses. It was very cute. Gracie spends a lot of time upstairs. In fact, I have all three cats here in the study as I type this. Gracie just walked over the keyboard and had to be removed from the desk. We had some quality time this morning.

Gracie on my lap

J.J. repaired to his hiding place behind the box of Christmas decorations in the basement storeroom. He doesn’t seem to lose a lot of weight, so I think he comes out at night to eat and use the litter boxes. I put a bed on the shelf for him. I know he uses it because I found him in it once.

Shy J.J. next to his bed on the storage shelf

He and I have bonded, in a way. When I call for him, he starts growling, or perhaps humming, as it does not seem aggressive at all. He comes out for head pets, and seems quite anxious for attention.

Head pets for J.J.

It is hard to get him to hold still for a photo, so eager is he to rub my hand.

Rubbing my had with his head

That left Monday to get the house and myself ready to leave for five days. As usual, I was tossing clothes into a suitcase late in the afternoon.

Oh my goodness, it’s a long drive to North Dakota. We broke up the outbound trip with a visit to Diane and Tom in the St. Paul area, which is just about halfway.

We spent Thanksgiving with three of Terry’s sisters (he had 10; 9 are still alive) and their husbands, if applicable. It was a whirlwind of people and places—the Moose Club for Steak Night Wednesday, Laura and Al’s house for turkey dinner and cards Thursday, the Eagles Club (for Terry) Friday afternoon, and the Mandan light display and pizza at Elaine and DeWayne’s Friday night.

Iris was kind enough to forward the pictures she took at the light display.

Iris in the entryway

Terry, Elaine and I by a car like the one in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Iris and Terry

Elaine and Iris

Elaine, Iris, me, Terry

Now that I’m back home, everything is getting back to normal. It was delightful to sleep in my own bed again. We had snow Sunday morning.

Snow Sunday morning

The girls were not excited about it. Only Goldie ventured out at first. She is standing on one leg in this picture. No sense having both feet in the snow at once.

Wind-blown Goldie standing on one leg

I had to clean the coop after my long absence. I tried to get the chickens out so I could do my chores.

Goldie, Sebastiana, and Bonnie venture out

Scratch grains helped some. Spot sat on the windbreak, trying to decide if walking on the ground was worth the treats. I had to shoo the other hens out of the coop and shut the inside door to keep them out until the coop was clean and the food and water refilled.

Spot is indecisive on the windbreak. Silvia and one of the Wyandottes are still in the coop.

I dove right back into baking again, since it isn’t Christmas without apricot-cranberry bread. Also, I have rediscovered granola. I forgot how good it is when you make it yourself. I remember when that was the only way you could get it! No ready-made granola in a box when I was young.

Granola fresh from the oven

Soon I’ll be on to Christmas cookies. I wonder why I can’t seem to lose any weight…

 

Penny's Obituary

 

Penny. If I'd known she was going to die, I would
have made a point of getting a better picture.

It is with great sadness that I have to report that I found Penny dead on the floor of the coop Friday morning. It was a shock. She seemed fine Thursday. That’s how chickens are. Sometimes they just drop over for no apparent reason. Birds in general are wussy that way. I have read that the first symptom you may see that a bird is sick is that it dies.

Penny would have laid blue eggs. Now we have 5 brown-egg layers and only 3 blue-egg layers. I may have to get over arranging the cartons I give away with alternating colors.

Penny was one of the pullets, just five and a half months old. She was so beautiful! Their feathers are lovely when they are young. Why couldn’t it have been ratty old Goldie? Perhaps Penny had trouble laying an egg. Eggs can get stuck, or break inside, or the oviduct can get twisted. Perhaps she ate something that she shouldn’t have, although I can’t imagine how that could have happened. The other chickens seem unaffected, so I am optimistically assuming that it wasn’t something contagious.

We do not suspect fowl play.

Gulls and honey

 It’s a dreary, drizzly day in Northern Illinois. I’ve been working on some exciting inside tasks, such as paying bills. I had a technological breakthrough when I figured out how to print photos on my new printer. Other than that, it’s been a low-key day, a good day to sit at my desk and drink tea. To that end, I made tea with perennial Roman chamomile. I planted both annual and perennial chamomile last year. The perennial did not bloom at the first summer. It has time. The annual chamomile’s flowers made a sweet, hay-like tea, which I enjoy. It reminds me of late summer, which is nice in the winter. The perennial tea, however, is truly vile. It tastes like turpentine on the front and becomes quite bitter on the back. Perhaps it has hidden health qualities. Isn’t that what they say about stuff that tastes nasty?

For years, I have wanted to get a picture of gulls during plowing. I have often seen them as I’ve been driving, and even if I could find a place to pull over, I wouldn’t have my good camera with me. I am trying to break myself of the habit of calling these birds “seagulls”. Serious birders are quick to tell you there’s no such thing. No, these are herring gulls, very far indeed from any herring that’s not salted or pickled. According to Sibley, we are in their winter range. And they are here by the hundreds.

Finally, the farmer across the road plowed when I was home to watch. The gulls are such a hoot! They must be after worms or grubs. They line the newly-plowed rows, flying up as the tractor approaches and landing behind as it moves forward. It’s quite a spectacle.

Gulls fly up in front of the tractor and down behind it

The farmer’s behavior mystifies me. Plowing puts the field at risk for topsoil erosion from rain or wind. I suppose once upon a time, farmers could count on the ground freezing solid and being covered by snow from November to spring. Not anymore. In addition, I often see farmers, like this one, spreading pelleted fertilizer or, worse, anhydrous ammonia in the fall. Anhydrous ammonia is highly leachable. Peg says that if the soil has a lot of clay it might hold onto some of it until spring, but still—seems like a colossal waste of money, not to mention a source of nitrogen runoff to the waterways. I expect the farmer thinks he’ll be that much further ahead come spring.

Terry and I have moved the beehive to its winter location, where it will hopefully stay cold enough to keep the bees balled up in their energy-saving configuration in the hive. We snuck out one of the frames to harvest a tiny bit of honey. I took a bee class two years ago, and from what I learned there, we are doing everything wrong. We should have harvested the honey in August and fed the bees in September so they could replace it. Instead, we pulled a frame last week and haven’t fed them at all. Terry and I are like Edison and Tesla. Tesla was all for book-learning, and Edison preferred to fly by the seat of his pants. Yet Terry does have some bee experience, having worked briefly as a bee inspector in North Dakota many years ago. So, Edison-like, we just keep trying things to see if they work. If the hive lives through the winter, that will be good. If not, we buy more bees (which is not a trivial expense).

Anyway, here’s the frame as it came into the house.

A frame partially full of honey

I used a chef knife to cut off the top of the cells and flipped it over onto a half-sheet pan. First I tried Terry’s method of heating it in the oven. It’s tricky, though, because it has to be warm enough to get the honey flowing, but not so hot that the wax melts. Terry suggested 100°F. My oven cannot be set lower than 170°. I turned the oven on and off, but had little success and drawing out any honey. Finally, I put foil on top of a heating pad and plopped the frame down on that.

The fuller side is flipped down on top of the foil on top of a heating pad

A significant issue was that the heating pad turned itself off every 40 minutes. I heated it up off and on most of the day, turning it on again when I remembered. Periodically, I scraped the honey into a strainer to remove the wax bits.

Filtering the honey

The waxy bits that got caught in the strainer

In summary, it was all a giant sticky mess that yielded a bit less than six ounces of honey. Plus this morning, I cut myself cleaning the wax off my chef knife. I think I’ll file for worker’s comp. It is exceptionally excellent honey, however. I look forward to having enough to rent a centrifuge and spin it out. Perhaps next year.

Not quite 6 precious ounces of honey