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

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.

Easter bread and chorus frogs

Happy Easter! This weekend’s cooking experiment was to make Easter bread like Terry remembered from his childhood. I have a sense that his mother did not use recipes much and/or was too busy raising 13 children to pay much attention to passing her recipes on to the next generation. According to Terry’s report, Easter bread had saffron in it and a glaze on top of it. And there was no fruit it in. On this last point, he was adamant. One of the bakeries in town made Easter bread with all the same fruit that is usually in fruitcake, and it was nasty. “The only way you could eat it was to pick the fruit out, and even then you could taste it in the bread.”

I guessed that it would be a sweet dough with egg in it. I found a recipe for Russian Easter Kulich in one of my bread cookbooks (and yes, I do have several). It was wicked rich, having three eggs, three egg yolks, and a half pound of butter. The recipe called for lemon zest, orange zest, nutmeg, raisins, and sliced almonds. I’m not much into zests, but I thought the raisins and almonds might be good. Certainly better than candied citron and nuclear red and green mystery fruitcake fruits. The bread was, however, for Terry—there would be no fruit. There was no saffron in the recipe. I soaked two pinches in the water that I used to proof the yeast.

Egg doughs make me nervous. You can do about anything to bread dough that doesn’t contain egg. The more you work it, the better it is. Work an egg dough too much and you have a doorstop. I mixed everything by hand and kneaded just until it came together and didn’t spread when I made a ball. I put it in the greased bowl and crossed my fingers. An hour went by. It didn’t seem to be rising in spite of the three—count ‘em, three—tablespoons of yeast. It was, however, doubled after two hours. Whew.

I braided the dough and made a point of ignoring it for another hour. When I came back, the loaves looked good. After I baked them, they looked even better. Terry declared it the “best Easter bread I ever ate.”

Easter bread

The yellow color is from saffron. There will be no fruit!

I went out while the bread was rising to record the sounds of the redwing blackbirds and chorus frogs. I learned that they were chorus frogs from my old friend Huck, who passed by for a visit Friday with her wife, Margie, on their way to Margie’s folks’ for Easter. So good to see them after so long!

I looked up chorus frogs on Google Images. Not surprisingly, they are tiny. Still, it seems like I ought to be able to see one. If I can hear them, they have to have their itty heads above the water. I put on my Wellies and went to the south end of the property where we are trying to restore a wet meadow. The winter has been so warm and wet (thanks, El Nino!) that the area has been underwater more than it has been dry. It is a challenge to my faith to believe that anything will survive. In any case, the frogs love it. I stood still, ankle-deep in cold water, until they began to sing all around me. And I could not see a single one. The only sign may have been the vibration of the water (which is visible in the video when I stopped scanning the restored area), although that also could have been because of the light breeze.

I was also convinced that the garlic had surely rotted in the ground over the winter. To my relief, the sprouts are up and doing well.

The garlic survived the winter floods!

Last weekend the ground had thawed enough that I could move the chicken fence. My purpose was to exclude the girls from the western half to allow the grass to grow back. Rather than just making the run smaller, I extended it to the north so the hens could access the grass by the greenhouse. Miss Peckwitt was in the new territory right away. The others were more hesitant. Hilda encouraged them by tossing their cracked grain treats over there.

The area of chicken exclusion to let the grass recover

The extension of the run in front of the greenhouse

While I was moving the fence, I noticed that Cleo was digging a hole under the coop. Whether she thought it was a good place for a dust bath or is planning an escape is anyone’s guess.

Cleo makes a break for it.

By the end of the week, the grass in front of the greenhouse was not looking good. As I approached this morning, most of the hens were over there. All but Gracie ran back to the main run when they saw me. Gracie ran in circles, apparently unable to find the exit. Sadly, she found her way out before I could get the camera set to video her plight. She is such a spaz.

The western end is looking slightly greener. Terry loosened some of the more compacted soil and put down some grass seed. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t sprouted yet, possibly because it got cold Thursday. We had an inch of rain followed by an inch of snow.  That’s all right. We don’t want it to get so warm so early that the apples blossom and then freeze.  We aren’t out of the possibility of frost for another 6 weeks.

The grass looks a little greener

The grass in front of the greenhouse

I spaded up one of the chicken’s raised bed and sowed some oats that I had sitting around from the prairie seeding. (Oats are used as cover for the first season.)

Raised bed sown with oats

I covered the bed with row cover to keep the blackbirds from eating all the seed. The girls will like oat sprouts.

Covered with row cover until the seeds sprout

Solar panels, part 4

A funny story: I finished grading the first part of all 66 lab papers on Tuesday. Obsessed as I had been with the grading, I had not given much thought to dinner. On my way home, I came up with three meals that could be made quickly with things that did not need to be thawed. I consulted Terry. “Would you rather have Spam with macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, or potstickers?” (I get frozen potstickers at Trader Joe’s. They are ready after 5 minutes in the skillet.)

“Do you have a preference?” he countered.

“All I care about is having a glass of wine,” I replied. I don’t normally have wine on a school night, but I totally deserved it after all those hours of grading.

“Ahh,” Terry said, considering carefully. “Then let’s have Spam with macaroni and cheese. That goes better with wine.”

So next time you are looking for a good pairing….

Paul and his crew were back Thursday to string the wire through the underground pipe. They finished the frame and hooked the wires up to the boxes underneath.

The finished frame

Close up of the box where the panels plug in

One of two boxes under the frame

Thursday was blustery. After I was done taking pictures of the day’s progress on the solar panels, I stopped by to say hello to the girls. They came out to see me in the hope that I was bringing them something delicious, like carrot peels. Finding me empty-handed, they retreated to the shelter of the coop. They don’t like having their feathers ruffled.

The girls with their feathers ruffled.

Terry took over the photography on Friday and Saturday while I was judging a robotics competition at MCC and having fun with Jane. Paul came out with two helpers to put the panels on.

The panels were mounted and plugged to the boxes, starting from the bottom and going up.

End of the second row of panels

Third row done, panels poised beneath frame for the fourth row

Second to the last panel

Working on the connections

Wired in

They strung a copper wire all along the top. I was not able to figure out exactly what it connects to. Terry said that there was more to hooking up the panels than plugging them in. “There was a lot of electrician work,” he said.

Roll of copper wire for the final steps

By noon on Saturday, the panels were in place. Paul checked that electricity was being generated, but we don’t have the right kind of meter to run backwards.  The inspector will come out on Tuesday. Then we have to wait for Com Ed to come install a new meter. It is not clear how long that will take. Still, the hard part is over.

All done!

Daylight savings time

Spring forward. Oof. I got up at 5:30 daylight savings time this morning with the only goal of staying awake until bedtime. I kept busy in the kitchen this morning, but as the afternoon is wearing on, I am wearing out. It does not help that today is dreary. It drizzled all morning and is now raining steadily. And I have a cold. I started last week with a sore throat. I tried very hard to convince myself it was allergies, but when the dry cough developed after two days, I knew better. By Friday, I was in the (hopefully) last stage of head-bursting sinus congestion. I am in the dispersive stage now, with viruses leaking from my nose. Folklore suggests that a cold is three days coming, three days here, and three days going. According to that schedule, I will feel better in a day or so. Let’s hope. Meanwhile, I am washing my hands a lot to minimize my threat to others.

Enough complaining. On the plus side this week, we welcomed back redwing blackbirds, robins, and killdeer. Yesterday wave after wave of sandhill cranes flew over, some so low and close to the house that I heard them with the windows shut. Spring is coming. The sandhills in particular give me hope for the future. When Aldo Leopold wrote A Sand County Almanac, he worried that they were going extinct. Some things do get better.

I went for a walk Saturday when I finished grading papers. The air was filled with birds singing, frogs chirping, and the deep, rich smell of wet soil. The frog sounds were localized in a large puddle on the south end of the property. I looked for frogs in vain. They stopped chirping when I got close, and I saw nothing move. I think they might be wee tree frogs. Some day I’m going to go to the Conservation District’s workshop on identifying frogs and toads by call.

Not much shaking on the solar installation. Paul came out Monday to dig the trench for the pipe to hold the wires.

Paul with the trencher

The trench

The part from the garage to the chicken coop had to be dug by hand because of all the other wires and pipes below ground.

This stretch had to be dug by hand

When the trench was finished, Paul put in the pipe without running the wires through first. Terry confided to me at the end of the day that Paul was doing this the hard way. I reminded him that Paul had done this before and likely had a system.

The pipe in the trench

Paul came back Tuesday to fill the trench in. Terry was pressed into service to help with that too.

In other news, Terry discovered that the rabbits have chewed through the plastic deer fence and have been eating the bark off his trees. His first thought was to get a dog. Discussion ensued. I’m not much of a dog person, but I have no objection to an outside dog. The main problem with his plan, as I saw it, was that he didn’t want to get said dog “for a month or two,” which would then be followed by a great deal of time training the dog to stay on the property and patrol for rabbits at night. I questioned how much biorhythm shift could be expected of a naturally diurnal animal. Furthermore, this hardly seemed like a solution to the problem at hand, which was that the rabbits were eating the trees NOW. What was going to be left by the time he had this dog trained? There was also the issue of the dog being coyote bait. As far as that goes, why haven’t the coyotes eaten the rabbits? So many questions.

Toward the end of the week, Terry decided he didn’t need a dog after all. He would wrap the trees in burlap. We’ll see how that goes.

A burlap-wrapped apple tree inside the deer fence

Solar installation, part 2 and other news

The work continued on the solar panels last Monday with the cement delivery.  Before I left for work, I gave Terry my little camera, showed him the on/off button and the button to take pictures. I warned him about getting his fingers in front of the lens. “Take a lot of pictures,” I reminded him. “It’s all digital.” I didn’t even attempt to explain the wide/tight function as I figured that would be too much technology. In the end, he took many good pictures.

When I got home, Terry didn’t even wait until I took off my coat to give me an earful about how the day had gone, and he wasn’t using his inside voice, either. I will relate the story as best I was able to piece it together. If you know my husband, you probably also know how his train of thought skips around when he’s aggravated.

Because it was a cold day and the holes were below the water table, Paul ordered the cement as thick as they could make it and with extra added sodium, both of which would facilitate having it set up quickly.  The trouble was that they couldn’t get the cement to go down the chute of the delivery attachment of the skid steer loader. Paul had had so much confidence in the system that he hadn’t even brought a shovel. Terry got two shovels from the tractor shed, and he and Rocko filled the first 8 holes by unloading the bucket by hand because the cement truck was there and ready to deliver.

Paul goes after a load of cement. The cement truck was parked on the road for 4 hours.

Meanwhile, Paul called the skid steer rental company. They dispatched a young man to fix the cement hauler.

The skid steer loader with the cement attachment

Each hole had about a foot of water in the bottom. Rocko set up the pump to get the water out of the first hole. He took the pump out while Paul went to get the first load of cement. More water flowed into the hole from the surrounding saturated soil. Rocko put the pump back in the hole where he left it until Paul got back with the cement.

The pump in the hole

The end of the hose pumping the water out

Rocko and Paul had an ongoing disagreement about whether the posts should go into the hole before (Rocko) or after (Paul) the cement was in the hole. “Rocko was right, of course,” Terry said, “because the cement was so thick. I suppose Paul’s method would have worked with thinner cement. But I didn’t say nothin’.” Unfortunately, because Paul was the boss, he won. Rocko and Terry wrestled the posts into place through the cement.

The first four posts in

After the guy from the rental company showed up, they did get the chute to operate for the last four holes.

Fix-it guy looks at the cement attachment

Nothing yet

One more adjustment

Finally the cement comes out!

All the posts in

Terry was exhausted and covered with cement at the end of the day. His right hand was so painful he could hardly run the TV remote (a crisis indeed!). In spite of his complaining about having to help, I think secretly he was glad to have been useful. His summary statement was, "Paul would have been screwed if I hadn't been here!"

An exhausted, wet, and cement-covered Terry at the end of the day

He would have rested Tuesday except that we got snow, and he had to shovel. He promised me he would rest on Wednesday.

Just before I left for work Wednesday, Paul called Terry. He wanted to come out and install the inverters. Because we built the tractor shed before the house, that’s where the electricity comes onto the property, and that’s where the inverters had to go. Terry would not have a day of rest. He had to go to the tractor shed, empty and take down the shelves that were where the inverters had to go.

By the end of the day, the inverters were in, the utility guy had come out to mark the underground wires, half of the solar panels as well as several boxes of (I assume) hardware were in the garden shed, and the first crossbeam was attached to the posts.

The outside of the inverters to the right of the meter

The inverters inside the tractor shed where Terry used to have all his paint on shelves

The first cross beam, installed on Wednesday

The solar panels and boxes of stuff (right) in the garden shed

There was no more activity for the rest of the week, presumably because the cement has to cure for a full 7 days before much weight can be put on it. Paul says he needs 7 more 8-hour days to finish.

In other news, my father turned 90 on Wednesday. We met my brother and sister-in-law for lunch Friday to celebrate.

Dad's 90th birthday lunch ended with lemon layer cake

Christmas is officially over now.  We have eaten all the baked cookies out of the freezer. Last week, I frosted a chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting left over from the Christmas bison. Today I sliced and baked the log of peppermint pinwheel cookies that I froze on cookie day in December. The fact that we are eating Christmas cookies in March suggests that we make too many cookies, but we can’t seem to decide which kind to cut. Maybe we can be more restrained next year. Maybe not.

The very last Christmas cookies