The Book Report

Ah, me! No time to upload photos today. I do have some photos of the past month, however they are on Michael's iPhone and he's in Germany at the moment. I'll give a quick recap of the month and then move on to our book report.

Where did November go? I feel like I'm on rocket skates speeding through life, not unlike Wile E Coyote. I should probably slow down. It never ended well for that guy. Of course, the Acme company made tons off of him. I suppose it was in their best interest to see that he survived to pitch another episode.

Veterans Day saw us harvesting 24 of our own cockrels and another several hens belonging to  friends. Now that we have the complete chicken slaughter set up down and a some experience under our belts, we're okay with that. Michael even invested in a drum plucker. That thing is worth its weight in, well, poultry. It was really nice to go through the process with friends and neighbors. Michael, our neighbor, Phil, and friend, Tibi, were down on the killing and plucking station. We had Rex and Daniel and Luca getting chickens from the coop and taking them to the cleaning table where Amber and I worked. Valerie and Madelyn fine tuned the plucking with needle nosed pliers and then put the birds on ice.

When it was all done we gathered around the picnic table for some chili, caponata, cider and beer. It was really a good experience and sort of festive at the end. And now our freezer is full and the land is at rest for the winter. I tilled up the chicken yard and threw down some poultry pasture mix. I can't wait to see it green up. Maybe I'll throw down some wildflower mix too.

A week later Michael and I harvested the turkeys. Dang! Those guys were heavy. They ended up between 16.5lbs and 19.5lbs. (Luggage scale works great!) Also, the one we had at Thanksgiving was extremely juicy. It had a surprising layer of fat about 1/2" thick all around the breast. Extremely local food. Last night I made a pot pie with the left over bits and stock I'd made from the parts. I threw in some kale and chard from the garden. Yaaaaard fooood!!!

So, on to the book reviews! We do manage to find time to read. Quite frankly, I barely have energy to do that at the end of the day sometimes. But it's nice when we all get comfy in front of a fire with a good book at the end of the day and enjoy the quiet togetherness.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand:

I read this book in September as it was chosen by my book club. I have to say that at first I was really not into it. I thought it was going to be a story about WWII. Then I thought it was about Olympic running. Neither of these subjects are a draw for me. But, when I got into the book, I found it to be a wonderful story about humanity through many lenses and perspectives. It's a well researched book and re-tells a long story through the eyes of allies and enemies. It is well written and told with a sense of humor and compassion. I passed it on to Rex after I read it. He couldn't put to down. I highly recommend this book. It's a real page turner!

The Maze Runner by James Dashner:

I'm not reading this book, but Rex is. He has not been able to put it down and went to the library to pick up the next two books in the trilogy. I don't really know what it's about, but it appeals to a 12 year old boy.

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan:

Valerie has read and reread The Mark of Athena. She is a huge Rick Riordan fan. In fact, most of her friends have read this book. Rick Riordan is the author of the Percy Jackson series. I've read a number of his books. But after a while, I moved on. This book steeped in mythology appeals to many 10 to 12 year old girls and boys.

The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop:

Amira likes reading just as much as the rest of us. Presently she's into this one. It's a great read for ages 7 to 9. A young boy finds a castle in the attic and the little figures come to life and have adventures. I enjoyed these books myself.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver:

One thing I love about Barbara Kingsolver is that each of her books are so different. So, if you like a book or hate it, you really have to give the next book a chance. They are not all alike! This takes place in Appalachia. A young woman is about to emark on an affair but she suddenly witnesses a miracle of nature. She doesn't go through with her planned infidelity but what she witnesses has a life changing effect on her and those around her.

Lastly, on the subject of stories/books, anyone who likes stories might like to check out some of the following pod casts. I download them from iTunes and take them to the gym with me. I have to give credit for Snap Judgement to Paul Bollinger. He recently turned me on to it and it has become a new favorite of mine!

Snap Judgement

This podcast takes you to a different place each time. A series of poets and story tellers recount funny, unusual, life altering or just strange stories. The host, Glynn Washington, is thoughtful, humorous and charasmatic. I have become a "Snapper" as he lovingly refers to his audience.

This American Life

What can I say? Ira Glass pulls out some of the best storytellers ever. And, he checks his facts!

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

If the only way you can take your news is by laugher injection, then this is the podcast for you. I laugh out loud from the cardio room at the gym (which is difficult to do when you're as out of shape as I am!) So worth it.

Stuff You Missed In History Class

I love, love, LOVE history! The hosts of this podcast revisit EVERYTHING from scandalous royals of old Europe to the history of underwear to the Samurai. If you like history as much as I do, you will appreciate most of these podcasts from the "How Stuff Works" team.

Stuff You Should Know

This is Rex's favorite podcast. I enjoy the banter between Josh and Chuck as they inestigate all kinds of seemingly mundane topics. Well, they're not all mundane. What I'm saying is they can conversationally add some humor and little known facts to a subject to make it more interesting than just googling it. Check it out.

Photo Card

Stitched Memories Christmas

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Goodness! Autumn is finally upon us. I am so stoked to be able to go through the garden and harvest all that summer goodness. Sunflowers, squash, beans total success!

Corn made nice chicken food and some good old fashioned seasonal decor out front. Our sunflowers became a ladybug garden. Well, or an aphid farm. Depends on how you like to look at it. I prefer ladybug garden, myself. That seems to indicate some sort of success, where as aphid farm implies some sort of failure on my part. Why? Oh, I don't know!

 

 

Anyhow, after pulling up tons of gourds, pumpkins, butternut and hubbard squash the kids used the left over corn and sunflower stalks to make forts around the place. They are so darn creative. And they really helped take down the remnants of the garden. It is hard for me to be in the moment of taking all that down and letting go even though it is past. I should learn from that Buddist monk who comes to Chico each year to create the beautiful mandala and then destroys it. But, alas, too much attachment on my part.

Harvesting dried beans makes for a nice family night on the rug getting them all out of their pods. One row of black beans (well, a little less than a row) yield about 3/4 of a quart mason jar. My white beans were a bit of a disappointment. But we stuffed them in the jar anyway. We get what we get and we don't get upset!

While we are experiencing autumn bounty, the girls have started 4-H this fall. Valerie is taking Fiber Arts, Fiber Sheep and Cooking. Amira is taking "clover sprouts" where she will get a sample of a different type of project each month. The girls and I have had some fun field trips already. A couple of weeks ago "Fiber Fusion" came to the downtown plaza. The girls got card wool, see spinning demonstrations and weave on a loom.

The following weekend we headed down to Dixon for the "Lambtown" event. We learned about the different breeds of sheep, saw sheepdog demos, shearing and a "sheep to shawl" competition where these women took the wool, carded it, spun it and wove it into something. I had a lamb gyro. (How could I not?!)

Valerie also had her first cooking class this week. It was all about lacto-fermenting foods and learning about the good bacteria that live in the intestines and why they are so good for us. ("Hey, Kids! Can you say Enterocyte? How about gut dysbiosis?" Now, this is my type of cooking class!)She made saurkraut, beet kvass and dill carrots. They are fermenting on the counter right now.

And for snacks at 4-H, the kids got deviled eggs and raw milk. Such a far cry from the girl scout experience where snack time was like a food dare. My favorite example was the "fat free/sugar free pudding" cups washed back with a Capri Sun juice bag that will forever remain in our environment. Much like that "pudding" that will forever remain in the body as there is no way some of that stuff can ever break down. Okay, enough. I must let this go. Talk about attachment!

Hey, speaking of food issues, I ordered my butter from a farm in Petaluma recently. I got a big old 10lb block of the stuff. Check this out:

Of course, the cooking class was inspiring to me to get preserving all that fall harvest! I made jars of lactofermented jalapeno peppers. I didn't have any whey to put in the jars so I broke open a probitic capsule and put a bit in each jar along with salt and well water. I'll see if those guys are bubbling in a couple of days.

So, from this:

 

 

To This:

I also made some jalapeno poppers. Mmmmm! We'll be having those tonight with some home grown butternut squash soup.

Last night I took our bounty of anaheims and made chile rellenos. The rest I strung up and hung out with our autumn garden decor.

Here's Amira with her friend Madelyn showing off the decor.

Now, the eggplant was a little tricky. How does one preserve eggplant so that one will want to eat it later? (This is a Thai green eggplant I grew from seed started last winter).

Pickled eggplant doesn't sound great. Neither does canned, dehydrated or frozen. Blech. But, I found a great recipe for the old fashioned Italian way of preserving it in oil. Here is the recipe I used.

Eggplant Preserved in Olive Oil

Eggplant
Garlic Cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
Sliced, seeded peppers
Apple cider vinegar
fresh basil and oregano leaves
Celtic Sea Salt

1. Peel and slice eggplant. Salt it and layer it in a collander over night with weights on it so all the liquid comes out.

2. Soak eggplant in apple cider vinegar one hour.

3. Layer eggplant, sliced garlic, oregano, basil in several layers in glass jar. Push down to get liquid to rise and pour off liquid.

4. When jar is pretty full, top generously with olive oil and use a spatula to get air bubbles out. Put the top on and let it sit on the counter a few days to let the flavors meld. Then you will want to store in the fridge. I guess historically there hasn't been a risk with oil preserving. But garlic, these days, apparently poses some sort of risk. You can bring to room temp. and serve like an appetizer. Yum!

 

 

So, for now we tuck our garden in for the winter. Get the onions, garlic and brassicas going and just appreciate what we've pulled from it this year. Aerial view courtesy of Michael's pet iPhone on the roof.

 



Barbies, Bees, Botanicals

Some of you may have heard me go on about the cute little displays of fairy gardens, gnomes, dinosaurs and Barbies at Magnolia Gift & Garden. Last year I really wanted a "Barbie Bathtub". But, they sold out. Alas, Barbie is back! And she's on my front porch table now:

I'm sorry I didn't have my camera with me at the nursery. I have to say I was a little envious of Valerie's friend, Gwyn, who snapped off loads of pix at the nursery while playing songs on her iphone. I keep saying I don't need an iphone because I'm not really a phone person. But I do like to play music and take pix. My friend Caryl says calling an iphone a "phone" is like calling a garage a hammer. A phone is such a small function of what it can do. I must resist the dark side! Help me Obiwan Kenobi! You're my only hope!

Okay, so last weekend my friend Kimberly and I attended another Biodynamic bee keeping class at the Steiner College in Sacramento. This is the third one we've attened together. It is out tradition that no matter who is driving, we must get lost. But by some miracle we arrived on time! Well, we were 5 minutes past ... but class hadn't officially started yet. We pretty much spent the rest of the day high fiving eachother regarding this success.

Well, that is until we got lost on the way home. At one point we were stuck in traffic in a suburban town when we expected to be on a highway in the middle of agricultural land. "Where are we?" I interrupted our conversation to ask. Kimberly looked out the window, "I don't know." Suddenly a fire truck raced up next to us with sirens and lights blazing. "Ah, Lincoln. We're in Lincoln." Kimberly stated matter of factly as the large engine with "Lincoln" emblazoned on the side navigated its way through traffic. That was a bummer. Lincoln wasn't necesarily on our way home. Another long cut. No more high fives. I really am losing it in my young old age.

So, for those of you who have not visited the amazing Steiner College, it is part of a biodynamic farm that is just too beautiful to imagine. We went seed collecting on our breaks. Check out some of these amazing flowers:

Not only are there amazing plants, but animals as well. We could hear the tinkling of bells around the necks of the sheep as we strolled through the gardens.

And while Keith Gelber was giving demonstrations at one of the hives, I saw a cow come up in the bushes behind Kimberly.

It was very exciting until I realized there was a fence between the cows and the hives. Probably a good thing.

Only one person got stung during the whole event this time (usually no one gets stung). But Keith got one on the side of his nose. No swelling but it sure made his eyes water. Here he is not long before the event.

So, yes, the bees are always exciting. But we gave ourselves a farm tour and did a little seed collecting. In order to get plant starts like this:

You need compost like this:

I believe the secret ingredient is this:

The college also has a beautiful water feature. This is surrounded by shade trees and little places to sit. We chose to stand and laugh. I aspire to do this some day:

They also have a big old bird house. I wonder if this is actually an owl house? I guess it's difficult to get the scale of this since there are no people in the picture. But, unless they are harboring pterodactyls, I'm guessing it's an owl house.

Well, after a day of bees, seed collecting and food dares (Kimberly and I had the macho Thai food lunch. She definitely beats me. And I like spicy. I'm pretty sure my mouth wrote a few checks my butt shouldn't cash though)it was back home to chores. All laundry and wood stacking and what not. At least Valerie has a friend to help out with the laundry:

And here is what my "helper" was up to:

Thanks, Mr. Whiskers. Thanks a lot.

Killing Snakes, Chickens, Minuets

I feel like I should start with a snake update. While I was delivering a sick chicken to the UC Davis lab last week, I brought in the remains of the dead snake in a jar to be identified. Turns out it was not a rattler, but we killed a gopher snake. OOoops! We actually need those gopher snakes. Aside from eating gophers, they also eat rattlers ... should one appear. (Let's hope they don't!) Alas, no new boots for the fam. Although, I feel like I would like another pair so I can go stomping around in all the brush/weeds/poo and whatnot of the yard. Too often I do my work in sandals and my feet are just caked with ... organic material. So, yes, I was bringing a sick chicken down to UC Davis to have them do a "look see" follow up to a dead chicken I'd sent in the week prior for a necropsy. The results are in: I killed my chickens by accident. (Just two of them ... so far). Here's how it happened. I looked at my flock of birdies and thought to myself, "Well, they are getting table scraps and treats, but not so many greens." It being a hot summer here with no rain (typical of our summers here) the baked earth was not pushing up the greens in the chicken yard. But, as we were watering the compost and some plants out near the orchard, I had a bumper crop of very tall bermuda grass. Because I am oh-so-clever, I thought I would just rid myself of the bermuda grass and provide greens to those birds. Lesson learned: Long ropey strands of greens thrown to chickens turn to long ropey greens that bog up the crop and entire GI tract of chickens causing a very painful and miserable death. I'm lucky I've only lost two ... so far. I'll be right back. I've got to go pick up my farmer of the year award. Really, does this person look like a trustworthy farmer to you?

Okay, I'm back! Yesterday Blue Oak (the girls' school) was invited to perform choral, recorder and strings pieces at the Chico World Music Festival. With little notice, the music teachers hastily put some pieces together and our kids totally did a great job. Here they are warming up in the grass behind the stage.

And here they are on stage just before the performance:

Although Rex has moved on to the junior high school, he still comes back to play in the community orchestra at the girls' school. Our fantastic strings teacher pulled together a small group of students to play Minuet 2. They did a great job! They killed it! Here's a few moments from the actual performance:

We thought we might pop down just for the performance, but we ran into so many people we knew and wound up seeing come concerts put on by local artists too. Rex spent most of the day playing games offered by Blue Oak near their booth. Here Rex and his friend Kieran are trying to knock eachother off the balance beam with padded boffers. I'll be they are both tired today!