Barbed wire can be beautiful.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
More Wild Mushrooms
Wild mushrooms drying on towel after being washed. I picked eight quarts of Mouse Ear mushrooms today. I'm sure there is more out in the woods. We have lots more pines and oaks to look under and I only covered a small area. If I get home from work tomorrow before it is dark, I'll got and explore a little more. Mushroom soup and sourdough bread for dinner tonight. I think tomorrow it will be pasta with wild mushrooms. I'm going to need to look up some more wild mushroom recipes!
I'm happy to have added another mushroom to my small list of wild edible mushrooms that I can identify (in the past the only mushrooms I have dared to pick are the morels and puffballs). I'm even more happy that this one grows abundantly in our woods.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Mouse Ears
There is a portion of woods on our land that is red oaks and white pine. The forest floor is carpeted with a thick layer of decaying pine needles and oak leaves.
(The chickens love scratching in the soft pine needles.)
A friend of ours who is something of a mushroom expert, told me that this makes for an ideal growing environment for one of his favorite wild mushrooms. Today I was hauling rocks out of the woods to border a new flower bed when I unearthed a pale gray mushroom. With a bit of investigation I found many more like it under the pine needles.
As luck would have it, our friend was here working in the wood shop he is building in our of our barns. He confirmed that the mushroom was indeed the mushroom he had been referring to--Mouse Ears--or in more scientific terms, a member of the tricholoma family. They grow under the pine needles so in order to find and harvest them, you have to carefully rake away pine needles.
The caps are quite fragile and I quickly learned that needed to be very gentle as I sifted through the pine needles.
It didn't take long to harvest enough for a couple of meals.
(I did show my harvest to my friend prior to cooking them, to double confirm that yes, this is the mushroom he was talking about. Yes, he says he harvests these every fall, and just this week gathered a bunch from a woods near where he lives.)
Dinner was ribeye steak covered with mushrooms sauteed in butter with onion. And I also made a pot of wild mushrooms soup. It is so good and full of delicate wild mushroom flavor.
(Disclaimer: This post is for entertainment purposes only. The above photos and description is not meant to help anyone identify wild mushrooms. Check with a trusted resource prior to eating any mushroom that has been harvested in the wild.)
(The chickens love scratching in the soft pine needles.)A friend of ours who is something of a mushroom expert, told me that this makes for an ideal growing environment for one of his favorite wild mushrooms. Today I was hauling rocks out of the woods to border a new flower bed when I unearthed a pale gray mushroom. With a bit of investigation I found many more like it under the pine needles.
As luck would have it, our friend was here working in the wood shop he is building in our of our barns. He confirmed that the mushroom was indeed the mushroom he had been referring to--Mouse Ears--or in more scientific terms, a member of the tricholoma family. They grow under the pine needles so in order to find and harvest them, you have to carefully rake away pine needles.
The caps are quite fragile and I quickly learned that needed to be very gentle as I sifted through the pine needles.It didn't take long to harvest enough for a couple of meals.
(I did show my harvest to my friend prior to cooking them, to double confirm that yes, this is the mushroom he was talking about. Yes, he says he harvests these every fall, and just this week gathered a bunch from a woods near where he lives.)Dinner was ribeye steak covered with mushrooms sauteed in butter with onion. And I also made a pot of wild mushrooms soup. It is so good and full of delicate wild mushroom flavor.
(Disclaimer: This post is for entertainment purposes only. The above photos and description is not meant to help anyone identify wild mushrooms. Check with a trusted resource prior to eating any mushroom that has been harvested in the wild.)
Friday, November 6, 2009
My sick chicken and the little animal barn
As fun and entertaining as chickens are, they have no compassion and no mercy when it comes to their fellow chickens and can be downright mean to newcomers and those who are hurt and weak. Not that I am faulting them for it, that is just how chickens are, and as chicken owners we have to find ways to work with them and keep everyone from getting hurt.
One of my hens hurt her leg a few weeks ago and lost a lot of her strength and the ability to scratch for worms and dig in the dirt. It soon became evident the the other hens were picking on her, stealing her food, and chasing her away from the feeder. It got to the point where she would just cower in the corner or limp in the other direction if the other hens even came near. When she started loosing massive amounts of feathers, and was getting weaker, I realized that if I kept in her with the rest of the hens, she would never get the nutrition she needs to heal, and might even starve to death.
New feathers coming in!
So I fixed her up a cozy little spot in the animal barn to sleep at night and let her free range all by herself for several hours each day before letting the other four hens out of the chicken coop to make sure she gets some peace and quiet and the first choice of bugs and kitchen scraps. She perked up in a couple of days after being separated, new feathers are growing in, and her leg has healed enough for her to start doing some minor digging again. She is still terrified of the other hens and runs in the other direction when I let them out to free range.
The little barn. It doesn't look like much on the outside, but it is warm and cozy on the inside.
One of the stalls inside the barn with a warming light.
I thought she might try to roost in the coop at night, but no, she heads off to the little barn instead of going to the coop with the other chickens. And that is just fine with me.
One of my hens hurt her leg a few weeks ago and lost a lot of her strength and the ability to scratch for worms and dig in the dirt. It soon became evident the the other hens were picking on her, stealing her food, and chasing her away from the feeder. It got to the point where she would just cower in the corner or limp in the other direction if the other hens even came near. When she started loosing massive amounts of feathers, and was getting weaker, I realized that if I kept in her with the rest of the hens, she would never get the nutrition she needs to heal, and might even starve to death.
New feathers coming in!So I fixed her up a cozy little spot in the animal barn to sleep at night and let her free range all by herself for several hours each day before letting the other four hens out of the chicken coop to make sure she gets some peace and quiet and the first choice of bugs and kitchen scraps. She perked up in a couple of days after being separated, new feathers are growing in, and her leg has healed enough for her to start doing some minor digging again. She is still terrified of the other hens and runs in the other direction when I let them out to free range.
The little barn. It doesn't look like much on the outside, but it is warm and cozy on the inside.
One of the stalls inside the barn with a warming light. I thought she might try to roost in the coop at night, but no, she heads off to the little barn instead of going to the coop with the other chickens. And that is just fine with me.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Home Sweet Home
It is good to wake up in the morning and be HOME. I never felt at home during those 9 years I lived in town. When we closed on our new land back in July, it wasn't excitement I felt. It was a sense of deep peace and relief. I finally had a HOME. Not that the home we had in Ann Arbor wasn't nice place to live. We had a nice little house with a big beautiful kitchen and a half acre lot that I turned into flower and vegetable gardens. It was a place that a lot of people would have loved to live. And I did truly appreciate that we lived in a quiet place in town and had a big lot and was able to grow a big garden and raise my little flock of (illegal) hens. If you had to live in town, Ann Arbor was certainly the town to live in. But my heart was not at home there, and I knew it would never be home there. I felt crowded in and claustrophobic and as if I could barely breathe. My heart ached for space and sky, woods and stars. And hills. My heart is at home here, though I know a part of me will always be ache for the hills of upstate New York. But at least I have a few little hills on my 13 acres!
Wood smoke from the chimney on a chilly November morning.
The tree house woods.
The gate to the garden meadow.
My kitchen. This is going to get some major remodeling, hopefully sooner then later. The house has two kitchens. We are living downstairs (it is actually a walkout basement). The downstairs has the nicer bedroom and view, this tiny kitchen, and a tiny bathroom. It also has the woodstove, which was the detemining factor in which level we wanted to live in at least for this winter. (Well that and the fact that the bedroom was a lot nicer then the two bedrooms upstairs!). The kitchen upstairs is bigger and actually nicer, but is very dark and narrow and would be much harder to remodel because of the way the house is laid out. This one at least has a sense of coziness, and should be quite nice when we are done with it.
The pantry. I'm still working on getting it organized.
Because it is a bi-level, the house has some identity issues. This is really the front of the house, and if we were living in the upstairs this, this would be the front door.
But since we are living in the in the walk out basement, the back of the house is the front of the house for us. This can get really confusing when Terry and I are trying to talk to each other about the front yard and the back yard!
We still haven't given our little home and farm a name. I will probably have to live through all the seasons here before I come up with the right name, but I am open to suggestions!
Wood smoke from the chimney on a chilly November morning.
The tree house woods.
The gate to the garden meadow.
My kitchen. This is going to get some major remodeling, hopefully sooner then later. The house has two kitchens. We are living downstairs (it is actually a walkout basement). The downstairs has the nicer bedroom and view, this tiny kitchen, and a tiny bathroom. It also has the woodstove, which was the detemining factor in which level we wanted to live in at least for this winter. (Well that and the fact that the bedroom was a lot nicer then the two bedrooms upstairs!). The kitchen upstairs is bigger and actually nicer, but is very dark and narrow and would be much harder to remodel because of the way the house is laid out. This one at least has a sense of coziness, and should be quite nice when we are done with it.
The pantry. I'm still working on getting it organized.
Because it is a bi-level, the house has some identity issues. This is really the front of the house, and if we were living in the upstairs this, this would be the front door.
But since we are living in the in the walk out basement, the back of the house is the front of the house for us. This can get really confusing when Terry and I are trying to talk to each other about the front yard and the back yard!We still haven't given our little home and farm a name. I will probably have to live through all the seasons here before I come up with the right name, but I am open to suggestions!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Little Country Graveyard
A wistful soul well at ease
A humble resting beneath the land
An entrance to a kingdom grand
So is the destination after death
The final thought gone with breath
Here they lie beneath this earthen sea
The flesh and bone of memory
(poem by Morgan Carlson)
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