Terry discovered a goldfinch nest in one of the cherry
trees. I have been taking pictures every couple of days. This morning I lugged
my telephoto lens out with me to try to get a shot of the mama on the nest. She’s
been skittish and takes off as soon as I get within 20 yards. This morning, she
wasn’t on the nest when I went out.
Here is a series of photos of the nest, which is maybe 3”
across.
Goldfinch nest on August 3
With down still wet from hatching, the first two chicks emerge on August 5
August 6, with index finger for scale
August 8. The only picture I've gotten of a chick with its mouth open. Too bad it's out of focus. Its head is about the size of my pinky fingernail (shown)
August 11. The nest is getting crowded already.
Jackie is still lagging behind the hens in his/her foraging
skills. S/he still won’t join the flock in the fray for Happy Hen Treats (dried
mealworms). After one of the apple tree sloughed some fruits (they do that if
they are bearing too heavily), we tossed some apples to the chickens. Jackie
really loved those apples! Here is a picture of him/her now, as well as a video
of him/her sharing an apple (or perhaps fighting over it) with Giada.
Jackie on August 6
This morning, most of the girls were hanging out on the windbreak after breakfast. The weather was cool; maybe it's warmer up there.The prayer flags have sent out quite a few prayers. I wonder if there are any left.
The girls on the windbreak
On day last week when I was headed back to the house for my
tea after doing the chicken chores at the literal crack of dawn, I saw my
shadow stretching out toward the fifth oak. I liked the image of myself so
firmly rooted on the ground and dwindling up to my tiny head. I had a sense of
readjusted priorities. It is the earth that gives me food and therefore life.
My brain is just a source of anxiety, especially this time of year as I
frantically prepare for the start of classes. I felt calmer.
Jane and I did some new things this year on our annual trip
to the Boundary Waters. I was proud of us. On our way up the north shore of
Lake Superior on Saturday, we stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse.
Split Rock Lighthouse and fog horn building (left)
The Fresnel lens of the lighthouse was shipped from France
as individual prisms. I couldn’t find any information about how many prisms
there were. I’m sure someone counted as they assembled the lens on site. The
lens weighs 4 tons and floats on a pool of mercury. No such thing as occupational
hazards in 1910 when the lighthouse first began operations. At that point,
there was no road to the lighthouse. All supplies came in by boat and had to be
hauled up the cliff. The road when through 20 years or so later. By the 1940’s,
it became a tourist destination. It was decommissioned in 1969.
After two days in the car, we spent Sunday hanging out at
the cabin. The morning was calm, misty and beautiful.
Our dock and boat in the Sunday morning calm
The view from the deck
We went out fishing in the afternoon. We caught mostly small
bluegill. Here’s a picture of one of the larger ones. They are beautiful fish.
Bluegill
Monday was too windy to take the boat out. We drove up the
Gunflint trail, stopping at the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center. I can never
tell if they keep adding things, or I didn’t see everything last time, or I don’t
remember, or some combination of all of the above, but I always learn something
new. This year we learned all about the first owners of Clearwater Lodge, Petra
and Charlie Boostrom. They had 10 children, and ran the lodge for 30 years.
Pretty amazing.
After lunch, we went into Grand Marais to pick up some
things we needed, such as hand lotion and Dove bars. In a departure from our
usual routine, we did NOT go to Sydney’s for custard.
Tuesday we had our big road trip day, this time to Thunder
Bay, Ontario. Jane got a passport for the occasion. I already had on from our
Costa Rica trip. I first became interested in Fort William, which is heavily
advertised in Grand Marias. The more I read about it, however, the more it
seemed like same old, same old—just like the fort at Grand Portage. Jane had done
some research beforehand and suggested we go to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.
The view of Sleeping Giant across Thunder Bay: the head and chest are to the left, and he has very long legs
We drove around the park for quite a while before we figured
out where anything was. Canada is not big on signage. We found out that one of the
legends of the sleeping giant was that a lesser god betrayed his people’s
secret silver stash to the white folk. That made one of the gods angry, so the
guy was turned into stone. A bad day.
The cliffs of Sleeping Giant
Our next stop was Ouimet Canyon. A short, mostly accessible
trail led to enormous stone cliffs. The view was spectacular.
Ouimet Canyon
One of the two overlooks had an “Indian head” stone. The legend
goes that a lesser god accidentally killed his beloved, the daughter of a
greater god, and hid the body. The greater god got angry and turned the guy to
stone. Another bad day.
Indian head
Wednesday we hung around the cabin, fishing off the dock,
and reading to recover from our Big Adventure in Canada. A pair of loons with
two chicks entertained us.
Loon family
Thursday morning was calm and damp. Spider webs were visible
everywhere in the horsetails growing by the dock.
Spider webs in the horsetails
Mirror-calm lake on Thursday morning
We took the boat out again Thursday afternoon. The fishing
wasn’t great. We got a good laugh when Jane pulled up a baby perch that was
clinging to the leech several inches down from the hook.
Ambitious baby perch trying to eat a leech almost as big as itself
It rained all morning Friday. The loons spent a great deal
of time feeding their babies in front of the cabin.
Loons in the rain
The wind picked up in the afternoon, and the temperature
dropped to 45 degrees. The rain became more of a mist. We had to use up the last
of the leeches, so we went down to the dock to fish in the drizzle. The loons
were still hanging around. We had one of the more exciting moments of the trip
when I turned my back to the lake so I could help Jane get out of her chair. I
heard something very large splash in the water behind me. “What was that?” I
asked Jane
“An otter! It stuck it head up right behind you and looked me
in the eye. I could see its whiskers! It was very cute.”
I turned around in time to see an otter head pop up, then
another, and another. They were very cute. Too bad my camera was in the camera.
In the absence of any otter pictures, I will end this blog with a montage of
pretty bad videos of the loons and chicks. If you look and listen carefully, you
can see the adults come up with small fish and hear the gentle cooing of the
parents to the chicks and two loon cries.
The broilers had their appointment with destiny on July 20.
They were to be delivered to the butcher in the evening of Friday, July 19. They
would be dispatched, cleaned, and shrink wrapped on Saturday, frozen overnight,
and available for pick up on Sunday.
I missed all the excitement. I had left with Jane for the
Boundary Waters Friday morning (more on the trip later). All remaining family
members were pressed into service for the round-up. In preparation, I had
picked up another large cage from Jane because we didn’t think mine would be
big enough for 14 chickens. Terry put the two cages in the back of his pick up
truck. Terry opened and shut the electric net. Dad manned the door to the cage.
Hilda was assigned chicken handling because the chickens knew her and would
therefore be less likely to fuss. I’m not sure how good that assumption was. Hilda
was so covered in chicken excrement by the time the process was done that Terry
parked the back of the truck in the shade so the chickens wouldn't overheat while Hilda took a shower. She
dropped all her clothes in the laundry room, which is well-positioned by the
garage door.
And on Sunday, there they were, dead, dressed, and frozen
solid. The roosters weighed about 7 pounds; the hens 5. Perfect.
Freezer heaven, as Jane says
Hilda cleaned Coop 2 the day after the round-up. Terry and I
moved the electric net around the ripening sweet corn to keep out the deer and raccoons, and Terry mowed the
former broiler yard. Note how the grass is so much greener in the path between
the coop and the feeder due to additional fertilizer, if you know what I mean.
The effect of nitrogen rich fertilizer on grass--note how grass is greener on the path between the coop and the feeder
Hilda waited until I got back to cook the first one. She
made Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic. Here is a picture of what was left after
four people had eaten their fill. It was a big chicken, and delicious.
Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
In other news, I harvested the first of the red raspberries
today. I got 14 all together. It won’t be long before we have way more. I hope
I can get to them before the daddy long legs lick all the fruit off the seeds.
Did you know that was what daddy long legs eat? It was news to me the first
time I saw it.
Sunday night, all the girls except Jackie went into the coop
at dusk. Jackie was hanging around outside the coop door. I threw him/her into
the coop and closed the door. I got up at 5:00 the following morning open the
coop up again at dawn. Chickens don’t see well in the dark, and I figured
Jackie would be safe until it got light. Once the sun was up, I wanted to be sure
he could run away if there was trouble. Indeed, the hens were still on their
perch. Jackie was asleep on the floor by the food.
The next day, the hens seemed friendlier, especially the
Dominiques. One wonders if it was because they too were black and white. At one
point, Hilda saw all of the hens in the cage we’d set up for Jackie, eating his
food.
Jackie and his/her new friend, Sara
Jackie’s gender is once again in question. Since he/she came
to live with the hens, we have seen no signs of aggression or mating behavior.
We’ll just have to wait. Jackie seems to be developmentally delayed from being
raised with the Jumbo Cornish X Rock broilers. I knew the broilers were
hybrids. I assumed it was between a Cornish and a White Rock chicken, but given
that they are as dumb as actual rocks, I have to wonder. All they do is eat and
poop. They do peck around some in the grass, but they aren’t interested in
mealworms or watermelon rinds. They sort of go in the coop at night, but we
often have to encourage the stragglers to make the step up to get inside. They
don’t perch, preferring to lie all night in their own wet, stinky excrement.
Jackie did have enough sense to perch at night. She’s slowly getting the idea
of foraging from the other hens. She can hear the “food over here” call, and
she pecks around on the ground near the hens. Here’s a video of her trying to
figure out what the big deal is with the watermelon rind, which the rest of the
girls think is about the best think since carrot peelings. Part of her problem
might have been that she had a wood chip stuck on her face, possibly up her
nose. Can’t begin to imagine how that happened. I found it quite easy to walk
up behind her since the feathers block her vision. She doesn’t like to be held
much, but I was able to remove the wood chip.
Jackie now sleeps on the lower perch. He/she also hangs with
the chicks in the shade of the coop on these hot afternoons. In the picture you
will note that all the hens have their mouths open.
Jackie on the lower roost (right)
Hot chicks in the coop
We got the garlic harvested yesterday. The yield was good
this year. We counted them and hung them under the deck to dry. We are getting
more cucumbers and zucchini every day. The corn is tasseling. The beans are
starting to develop, and the tomatoes are showing a tiny bit of color. Soon the
household will be obsessed with “putting up.”
Hilda digging the garlice
Garlic hanging under the deck
We are, thankfully, coming to the end of our time caring for
the broilers. Their appointment with “freezer heaven,” as Jane calls it, is
tomorrow. I’m leaving for my annual week in the Boundary Waters with Jane in
the morning. Hilda knew I wouldn’t be around for the round up when she made the
appointment with the butcher. She and Terry will load the chickens into two
cages and drive them to Walworth. Then, as if by magic, they will pick them up,
plucked, cleaned, shrink-wrapped, and frozen, Sunday.
And even though we probably will raise “dual purpose”
chickens next time around (they take longer to mature but are more like normal
chickens, and we can keep some of the hens for layers), when I see the broilers
lounging on the grass in the evening, I remember why we did it. They’ve had a
happy 8 weeks with us. They were able to get outside and breathe fresh air for the
better part of every day. I have the same kind of pride that I feel when
looking at a tomato plant. We are raising our own food. And at the end of the
season, the chickens and the tomatoes will be equally dead. Through their
death, my life continues. I have come one step closer to grasping the true
meaning of being an omnivore.
The broilers enjoying the late afternoon on the lawn
This being Bastille Day, we liberated Jackie from Coop 2
(which Hilda now calls “the hell hole”due to its unpleasant smell) and put him up with the girls. We began
by closing him in Della’s kennel with food and water. He didn’t think too much
of the layer feed at first, but after a little while was seen eating and
drinking. He seemed to enjoy the grass at the bottom of the cage.
Jackie in the cage
The hens ignored Jackie completely. After an hour or so, we
opened the door to the cage. Jackie didn’t seem to notice at first that he was
free to leave.
Stepping out
Before long, however, he stepped out and began exploring.
What are YOU looking at?
In other news, we’ve been harvesting the wild black
raspberries that grow along the edge of the hay field. It’s hot, buggy work.
What with all the rain, we’ve got a bumper crop of mosquitoes for the first
time in several years. The raspberries are, of course, thorny, and they grow
among invasive roses and stinging nettles. We pick every two or three days. So
far we have three quarts in the freezer, enough for one batch of jam. You might
be thinking that this is miserable work, but to me being hot, sweaty,
scratched, and bitten feels like summer is supposed to. I am alive on the
planet. Picking berries reminds my mother of the times she would go with berry
picking with her mom, her brothers, Aunt Fay, and her cousins (Aunt Fay’s
children). “My mom was really happy then,” Hilda recalls. And I will remember
picking berries with my mom when she’s gone. It’s a happy time.
Goodness, it has been a whirlwind of celebrations and
staying up late. We picked another quart plus a little Montmorency cherries. I
made a pie for our Fourth of July celebration.
Fourth of July Montmorency cherry pie
I didn’t take any pictures at the actual party. Kate, Pat,
Nancy, and Jane came. Terry grilled chicken (not our own); I made baked beans,
and Hilda made potato salad. Our guests brought snacks. We had tons of fun. We
discovered that we could see the fireworks from Sharon, WI over the trees. We
sat in the backyard late into the evening, watching not only the fireworks but
hundreds of fireflies over the hay field. We are very pleased to have such a
large firefly population three years after we converted the corn/bean field to
hay and stopped the spraying of chemicals. The fireflies seem to synchronize their
flashing so it goes in waves. I’ve been going to bed too early, that’s for
sure. I miss sitting out at night.
I had to harvest the last 6 Napa (or Chinese) cabbage
because the earwigs were turning the outer leaves to lace. I had to remove the
leaves all the way down to the tightly-packed core to get beyond the damage and
the frass. Nasty. Earwigs are creepy, primordial looking creatures that give me
the willies.
One of my goals for this year was to try making kimchi. I’ve
never eaten kimchi, but the recipes read like it’s just spicy sauerkraut. What’s
not to like? I found a recipe in Wild
Fermentation (Katz, 2003) for a very small batch.
It starts by weighing down Napa cabbage, carrots, and
radishes in brine for several hours to pull some of the water out of the
vegetables.
Weighing down the vegetables in brine using my dumbells and a collander
Meanwhile, I mixed the spices. It was too soon for me to
have fresh red chili peppers, so I used a smoked Mariachi chilis from the
freezer. I had garlic and spring onions from this year’s garden. I had to buy
the ginger, of course. Katz says to mix the spices into a paste. I threw them in
the food processor.
Spice mix
I mixed the wilted veg and the paste, stuffed it all in a
quart jar, and weighted it down with a bag of brine. Every morning, I poke it
down to release the bubbles of carbon dioxide that have formed overnight from fermentation.
After two days, I had to move the jar to the root cellar because it was
stinking up the kitchen with onion smells. Not so bad in the short term, but
tiresome day after day and all night long.
When it stops bubbling or after a week, I’ll call it done
and give it a try.
Fermentation jar
I made a video of the morning feeding frenzy. Here’s
Hilda opening the coop and the broilers running for the food. They are so heavy
and bulky that they have to flap their wings to get up much speed. Jackie
circles around, taking advantage of any opportunity to get to the trough. Don’t
worry about him. The broilers do take a break, and Jackie has plenty of time to
eat then. The other morning, I heard a pathetic attempt at crowing from inside.
I suspect it was Jackie, but I couldn’t see who it was. It sounded like someone
holding the opening of a balloon tight so the air squeaked as it escaped. Haven’t
heard it since.
The rains finally stopped. After several dry days, our
clay-rich ground is becoming hard as a rock. I had to take a hoe to the raised
bed in the laying hens’ run yesterday so they could resume their dust baths.
Here is a picture of the last of the storms moving east on
June 28.
Storm clouds to the east
The day after the floodwaters receded, Terry and I took the
row cover off the bush beans. I wanted them to dry as quickly as possible.
Beans get an evil white fungus when they are too wet. If the fungus on one
plant touches another, the point of contact dies immediately. Evil.
Shriveld upper leaf of a bean plant after the row cover was removed
The beans looked pretty bad in spots when the row cover came
off. Two days later, however, most of the leaves that were as limp and wrinkled
as wet toilet paper had sprung back to life. I went down the row, clipping off
the worst of the dead leaves. Initially, I thought the spotty damage was due to
variety—some beans were just more susceptible to flood damage than others.
After several hours of contemplation and close observation (I weeded the rows
as I trimmed away the damage), I decided that it was where the wet row cover
had rested on the plants. The good news was that I only lost one plant that had
snapped off at the base when a piece of wood that had been next to the garden
floated above the bean and then sat down on it when the water went away. All
the rest had apparently healthy meristems (growing tips). I am expecting a full
recovery, although the beans might be set back a bit while they replace the
lost leaves.
Remarkable recovery of the plant, even though I cut off the leaves that had dead spots for fear of fungus
The apples and peaches are coming along. Both are the size
of golf balls. We picked two quarts of Montmorency (tart) cherries on Sunday. I
didn’t get a picture because I was too tired at the end of the day to walk
upstairs for my camera.
Apples
Peach
The differences between the male and female broilers is
becoming clear. While it’s hard to inventory moving chickens, I think we’ve got
9 roosters and 5 hens.
Rooster--note large red comb and developing caruncles (fleshy parts that stick out of the head)
Hen--smaller comb, less pronounced caruncles
Here is a video of Jackie foraging in the grass,
the afternoon feeding frenzy (which occurs after we add a little more feed to
the feeder), and Jackie hitting on one of the hens. I’m getting the feeling
that Jackie is a boy.
