Darn cold!

 The weather station was sad Wednesday morning. I wasn’t thrilled either.

Yes, that says MINUS 18.7

Terry, weather junky, optimistically pronounced, “This will be the last really cold day this winter.”

“You said that last week,” I replied. I had to wear my coveralls to do the chicken chores. I had a haircut that morning as well. Pat always blows my hair dry, but when it’s that cold, I could still tell it was a little wet near the scalp. Brrr. Froze my itty brain!

A couple weeks ago, I made a recipe for peanut butter stuffed chocolate cookies from Cook’s Country magazine. They were enormous, and I had to cut them in half. On the next page, there was a recipe for “Two Fat Biscuits,” which could easily be confused with “Too Fat Biscuits.” They were made with both butter and lard, and a good amount of each. Well, why not, I thought. I still had lard in the freezer from the time we tried to make tamales longer ago than I care to remember when I’m going to use up some leftover ingredient.

Following the recipe, I patted out the dough and cut it into 9 square biscuits. They were also incredibly light and flaky, but OMG, they were HUGE. Like the cookies, they needed to be cut in half. Unlike the cookies, I only baked what I thought we would eat in a day or so. I froze the rest unbaked.

The second time I baked the biscuits, I cut each of two squares in half. That was a more manageable size. They are beautiful biscuits.

Fluffy, flaky, two-fat biscuits

I noticed a new bird at the feeder this week. I think it is a song sparrow.

Song sparrow

We don’t see blue jays at the feeder much, which is okay with me. They scare all the other birds away.

Blue jay

Cardinals, sparrows, and finches are better at sharing. This cardinal illustrates the problem with wings. Vertebrates only get four limbs. If you have wings, you give up arms. You can’t wipe your beak.

Snow on the beak. So annoying.

Special guests

 Last week, I reported that we had an opossum with a cut on its foot. Monday, a possum showed up at the bird feeder just before sunset. It’s a warning sign when nocturnal animals start being active when it is not fully dark. I thought it looked like it was missing hair on its back. “Possums always look scruffy,” Terry said. "It's fine."

Mangey-looking possum

A day or so later, it was there at 4:00, in broad daylight. It was definitely not well. The week passed. We didn’t see it for a couple of days, but the skunk didn’t come around either.

We had about 3” of snow last night. Thinking the storm would last longer, I was surprised to see the moon when I got up this morning. It turned out to be a beautiful day, all fresh and clean under a layer of white.

Fresh snow at sunrise

We had special guests today, even though we are getting ready to paint, and the house is a wreck. Kate had to get a new furnace and asked to hang out with us where it was warm while the furnace guys did their work. Newton, her 2.5 year-old Corgi, came too. We had waffles for brunch and then took a lovely walk in the new snow. Kate and I walked, in any case.

See Newton run!

Newton running

Run, Newton, run!

Still running!

The only signs of animals we found were mice (vole?) tunnels under the snow.

Mouse tunnel under the snow

When we got by the creek, Newton ran over to something very interesting in the snow. All we could see was an arc of furry gray. “No, Newton!” Kate said. “NO! Don’t roll in that!”

It was a dead something. Raccoon? Possum? I flipped it over with the toe of my boot. From that side, I saw that the head was definitely possum. I was a little sad, but we knew it was sick. Something, probably coyotes, had eaten out the guts. Because the possum was curled up, I suspected it had died of its wounds/illnesses and was consequently scavenged. Murder victims are seldom so peacefully composed.

Definitely a dead possum

Newton seemed hard-wired to roll. Prevented from lying on the carcass, he rolled vigorously around in the snow.

Must...roll...must...roll

The wind was really cold, but it was nevertheless a beautiful day to be out. The snow was sparkly and fluffy, very Currier and Ives-y.

Kate and Newt

Our plan was to wear Newton out so he would take a nap (he didn’t) while Kate and I went through my mom’s collection of lectures on DVD. Hilda was far more interested in physical sciences than I. Kate took most of the DVDs for herself, her colleagues, or her sister (who teaches 6^th grade science). So that’s done. One more thing out of the house. We’re getting there.

 

 

Poutine and so much more!

 On many evenings, we see one or two opossums and/or a skunk underneath the bird feeder. Terry got worked up about it at first (“I don’t want no skunks coming around!”), but now he seems to look forward to their visits. If there’s a contest, the skunk wins, but lately we’ve seen a possum and the skunk feeding together for quite a little while.

When I went out to do the chicken chores yesterday, I saw bloody footprints. They were partial, but the two widely-spaced toes that were visible suggested that the foot belonged to an opossum.

Partial bloody possum footprint

It had walked from the side door of the garage most of the way down the driveway and cut over toward the third and fourth oaks. Poor thing. It’s not bad enough that it has to walk around barefoot in the snow, now it had a wounded foot too!

Possum trail

I told Terry the possum had a cut foot. He thought there was a body somewhere. “No,” I said, “just tracks.”

“You’d better count 11 chickens,” he said. I hadn’t thought of that. The tracks did come from the general vicinity of the coop. Still, the possums and skunk don’t come around until after dark. I was sure the girls would be safely locked down by then.

“If it was a murder,” I suggested, “I think there would be more blood.” Also, there weren’t any feathers. When I went into the coop, the girls were all well and happy.

We’d been waiting for the drywallers to have time to fix the cracks in the upstairs walls since October 5. They finally came Wednesday morning and were done by noon on Thursday. Just like that. It took almost as long to get the dust cleaned off of every single surface in the house. Now Terry is calling around for painters.

Ready for the drywallers

Just before Christmas, I decided that I had to get serious about cleaning out my parents’ stuff. I set a goal of being done by the new year. Everything else was put on hold. I almost made it, and I’m all done now except for some things that will take a lot of time, e.g., photographs.

I took the last load to Goodwill on Thursday. After that, I indulged in some remedial baking. I’d come across several recipes I wanted to try during the three weeks when I didn’t bake at all. First up were peanut-butter-filled chocolate cookies from Cook’s Country. I made the filling first, rolled it into 16 balls, and stuck it in the freezer. Then I made the chocolate part and divided that up. The dough was easy to work with, much like Play-Doh. I flatted the chocolate cookie portion into a disc and wrapped it around a peanut butter ball, times 16.

Cookies out of the oven

Peanut butter filling

The cookies were tasty, no question. They were also huge. I think it is a surface area problem. In order to have a detectable amount of peanut butter on the inside, there has to be a considerable amount of chocolate cookie on the outside. I could eat a whole cookie if I was really hungry, but we mostly eat cookies as desert, and I can’t do more than half a cookie after a meal. So I froze some of the cookies and cut the rest in half. You do what you have to do. We’ll soldier through.

I inherited an air fryer from my mother. I had no idea how to use it, so I ordered a cookbook. So far, I have made French fries. The first time was a success, so for the second time, I thought I’d try poutine.

“What’s that?” Terry asked, even though he should have known from the cooking shows we watch.

“Fries topped with cheese curds and beef gravy,” I said.

“I think I would like poutine,” Terry said.

What’s not to like? It was going to be especially good because the gravy was left from the Christmas roast. When we ran out of beef, I froze it for a future time.

Poutine

Terry admitted later that poutine didn’t sound like something I would make. Fat on top of fat on top of starch? Yeah, not my usual schtick, but delicious!

Of birds and sausages

 It’s been cold. Yesterday morning was -5°. The girls are not really inclined to leave the coop, even for scratch grains. They’ve been eating a lot too. Normally four scoops of feed will do them for the day, but I’ve had to go up to six or eight. It takes energy to stay warm.

The wild birds are eating a lot too. Also, they look twice their normal size with their feathers all fluffed to increase their R-value. It’s mostly the same crowd. Not-gold goldfinches (not pictured), juncos, and house finches. The ground-feeders depend on the goldfinches, who obligingly fling all the sunflowers to the ground. Well, not all. They probably eat one for every 10 they drop. They are fussy.

I have never seen a junco on the feeder. They stay on the ground, scratching and pecking. I think they're cute.

Cute little junco. I bet its tiny feet are cold.

The house finches seem redder than usual this year. I thought maybe they were purple finches, but a quick check of the bird book disproved that hypothesis. Purple finches have much more red on their bodies.

Red head of a house finch (the drab ones are girls)

I have noticed for the first time this winter that the house finches have red rumps. Once I saw it, it was hard to believe I had missed it before. It’s pretty obvious, even when they are just sitting if they separate their wings at all. I’m putting in this photo because it is dramatic.

House finch's red rump

I have often seen American tree sparrows during the winter. They have a distinctive dark spot on their breast.

Classic dark breast spot of the American tree sparrow

This sparrow puzzled me. It does not have a dark spot on its breast but does have a white patch under its chin. My best guess is a white-crowned sparrow. We are a bit north of its normal winter range, but with climate change, all bets are off. All ranges are creeping northward.

Putative white crowned sparrow

My favorite winter birds (although they are here year-round) are the cardinals. Their bright red looks so beautiful on the white snow. We often see the male during the day.

Cardinal on white snow

The female typically shows up just in the morning and the evening. She’s shy.

Cardinal pair in the early morning

Friday was Charcuterie Day. I bought four pork butts (which are really shoulders, go figure) when they were on sale many months ago. Terry feel that it isn’t worth getting the equipment dirty unless you are going to make a year’s worth of sausage. I started by defrosting the butts for several days in the refrigerator. Thursday afternoon, I boned and sliced the meat, cursing the irregular shape of the shoulder blade all the way. I then returned the meat to the refrigerator to chill overnight.

Meat chilling

Having the meat really cold is key to grinding. If it isn’t really cold, it gums up the grinder. Terry put a table on the patio early in the morning, when it was a balmy -2°F, at put the bowls of meat on it to get stiff.

And then we ground it up.

Grinding the meat. My job was to rotate and change the bowls

While Terry cleaned the grinder, I did the mise en place  for the sausages. My recipes are for 3.5-pound aliquots of ground meat. It’s easier to evenly mix small batches of meat, so I am never tempted to scale up. I figured we’d have at least 7 batches. We eat more Italian sausage than bratwurst, and more bratwurst than chorizo. It’s like a story problem! I prepped spices for 4 batches of Italian, 2 of bratwurst, and 1 of chorizo.

Mise en place: top, chorizo; middle, 4 bowls for Italian; bottom, 2 bowls for brats

I weighed the ground meat and mixed accordingly. The wine you see in the picture is for the sausage! Swear to God! When Hilda was around, we usually did have wine while we worked, but this year we started much too early in the day. This was more of a work day than a party. Times change.

Weighing and mixing

Terry got the stuffer set up and threaded the casing on the tube.

Threading casing on the stuffer tube

I cranked the stuffer while Terry guided the casing and twisted the sausage into links. He make the links long this year because it seemed to him that the casings were narrower. I wasn’t so sure, but there’s nothing wrong with leftover sausage.

When all the sausage was stuffed, I wrapped it and spread it flat for quick freezing. Ultimately, I put the links in a couple of giant plastic bags for long-term storage.

Giant links of sausage in pack of 2 or 3 for freezing

I fried up two links of Italian to have with baked tomato pasta sauce and spaghetti for supper. It’s good to have sausage on hand again.

Supper!

More memories

 Winter has arrived. A vicious cold wind has been blowing all day. I don’t understand how the snow can still be blowing around. You would think by now it would all be where it was going to go. The wind chill is supposed to be 15°F below zero by morning. Brr. The hens do not like this weather one bit. They stay in the coop all day long.

I haven’t been outside much either. I’ve been on a tear to get my parents’ stuff cleaned out of the upstairs, so this will be a short post this week. It was painful cleaning out Hilda’s file cabinets. She had a whole drawer called “Memories.” I have been time traveling a lot, back and forth between Hilda’s childhood, my childhood, and all the stages between then and now. I will share two of the pictures from my childhood. The first one is dated June, 1961. My brother and I were both born in June, one year and 51 weeks apart. In this photo, Doug and I have just turned 4 and 2, respectively. Even at this tender age, our personalities are already on the path they would take for our entire lives. I don’t know what trouble we have just gotten into, but Doug is ready to charm and bluff his way out of it while guilt is written all over my face. I expect my mother laughed her ass off when she saw us.

Doug, Mr. Charm and Bluff; Bev, Guilt Personified

The next one is from 1969, the first photodocumentation of me as a trophy fisherperson. I have to say, compared to the tiny fish we typically caught off the dock in front of our house, this perch is enormous. Most of the perch we usually saw had very little dorsal-ventral depth. I actually didn’t recognize the fish in this picture at first because it was so fat. What I like most about this picture is it shows a little girl who is not squeamish about putting her fingers in a fish’s gills. A biologist in the making.

An exciting catch from my 10th summer

That’s all for today. Back to cleaning.

 

Relics and Escape Artists

 I have finally overcome my resistance to cleaning out my parents’ stuff. I’m making good progress. I found two typing erasers in my mother’s desk. I swear to God, these are the very same erasers she had when I was a child 50—maybe even 60—years ago. Why would they continue to be manufactured after the invention of Wite-Out?

Tools of the past--typing erasers, c. 1960's

Back then, you had to roll the paper up, erase the letter with the erasers shown, which, by the way, were different from a regular pencil eraser because they had grit in them to scrape away the ink, and brush away the eraser tooties with the brush on the end. If you weren’t careful, the eraser would make a hole clean through the paper. The paper got rolled down, and you continued typing. Oh, and if you wanted a copy of your document, you put two pieces of paper in the typewriter with carbon paper in between. If you made a mistake while doing that, you had to erase both copies. It was totally a lot of fun. Interestingly, this history lives on in “cc”, an abbreviation for “carbon copy.”

When personal computers were invented, my typing got a lot faster and a lot less accurate.

The automatic chicken door is working well. The netting around the run was not working so well. It was a worry. We kept finding chickens outside the run, and if a chicken was outside the run when the door shut for the night, we could easily lose her to a predator.

Our number one escape artist was Miss USA, so named because her white head resembles a bald eagle. She is bold and always looking for adventure, although once she’s out, she tends to just run around the outside looking for a way to get back in.

The bold and beautiful Miss USA

Miss USA’s closest friend, Miss Congeniality, follows her wherever she goes. They are often outside the run at the same time. Miss C. ventures farther away sometimes.

Miss USA's BFF, Miss Congeniality

Terry noticed yesterday that Miss C. has a white rump, which he thought looked like she was wearing a diaper.

Miss Congeniality's white rump

The annoying thing is that both hens seem perfectly capable of getting back in the run, but they don’t seem to realize it until we are chasing them. Under duress, Miss USA flaps and runs up the netting to where the holes are larger and slips through. I’m sure Miss Congeniality could do the same, but I haven’t seen it.

Blackbeard, the other first-year Americauna, also frequently escapes, not because she is looking for adventure but because she is especially skittish. If I throw scratch grains into the run too vigorously, she takes such  fright that she flies over the fence before she knows it. I chased her all the way around the glass greenhouse on one occasion only to have her fly back in under her own power.

Blackbeard, named for her spectacular cheek feathers

Even though the hens can fly over the fence, we suspected that was not their primary means of escape. Longtime blog readers will remember the year we raised three turkeys. We got the poults from a local man who told us that they would be “perfect” in time for Thanksgiving. In reality, the jake (male) weighed 36 pounds when he came back from the butcher, and the two jennies were in the upper 20’s. Anyway, because we kept the turkeys until Thanksgiving, they were separated from the pullets and meat chickens early in August. This was before we put the hens in the orchard for the summer, so the turkey enclosure was right next to the hens/pullets. The turkeys went crazy with loneliness, pacing back and forth on their side of the fence and pecking at the netting. We fixed the holes, but the netting continues to break at weak spots. Breaks are harder to find than you might think.

I was distressed when Terry told me one day that all of the hens had gotten out. That was a complete failure of the fence! He quickly confessed that he had left the gate open. Three hens were out initially. He opened the gate with the intention of shooing them in and then got distracted. I am not one to point fingers, as I get distracted a hundred times a day. However, I am able to keep my mind on the mission when I open the gate to the run. Be that as it may, when Terry’s attention returned to the chickens, all 11 of them were scratching happily around the base of the magnolia tree. He herded them back home.

Regardless of that episode, it was time to replace the netting. I placed the order, and we waited. It came late last week. Luckily, it was warm enough Friday to get the posts in the ground. As we were taking down the old fence, I realized that I had neglected to put earth staples in between the posts. It is possible that the hens were just sneaking out under the net. Oh well. We put up the new fence anyway. We have not had an escape since!

The new fence

 

 

Reindeer and varmints

Terry’s winter project for the last two years has been making eight not-so-tiny reindeer. He’s never been one to spend time in quiet contemplation. He needs to stay busy. Two of the reindeer are posted on either side of the garage. Terry has their feet on boards that are weighted down with bricks. Nevertheless, they keep blowing over in the 70 mph winds. Terry puts them back together and stands them up again. Hope springs eternal.

The other six are on the south lawn. At least they don’t break when they hit the grass.

Reindeer on the south side of the house

 One of them is different from the others. Terry does not like to waste scraps and uses them for embellishments of his own design. “Why does one of the reindeer have antlers on his butt?” I asked.

Comet, en flambe

“That’s Comet,” Terry replied. As if that explained everything.

“Those are flames,” he added. Ditto.

“Green flames,” I said.

“Yeah!” The tone here implied that everyone knows that.

“Coming out of his butt,” I said.

“Yeah!” Ditto.

In all of the variations of the Santa mythology, I do not recall anything about Comet having green (or any other color) flames coming out of his butt. However, I have learned that when Terry comes up with this stuff, it is often better to smile and nod.

In other news, I went out to harvest carrots from the high tunnel this week and noticed that some damned varmint had been there before me. This carrot did not grow this way.

Stumpy

I don’t know what varmint it could be. Mice and voles were my first suspects. They don’t hibernate. I have seen their tunnels all over under the snow. There wasn’t a whole lot of damage, so that would be consistent with a small animal. However, there was a whole lot of dirt excavated from the bed, which suggests something larger. I have not seen any 13-striped ground squirrels recently, but we haven’t had the consistently cold weather that would cause them to settle in for their long winter nap.

All of the black soil outside of the raised bed was excavated underneath the board.

The next day, there was even more damage. My carrots! My beautiful carrots!

Top chewed off a carrot

And another one

I could harvest all the remaining carrots and refrigerate them. I hate to do that, though, because they will keep better in the ground. It seemed that the varmints are coming in under the side of the high tunnel. Terry filled the gap with sand, which won’t prevent them from getting in, but will at least tell us where they’re tunneling. It’s always something. There was no further damage between yesterday and today. I’ll just wait and watch. Damned varmints!