After the leaves where raked...

Terry and I spent the morning raking leaves. Just as the last leaf was raked and piled near the compost pile, the snow started to come down. It's a good thing we got them raked when we did, because it would have been impossible to rake them later in the day...

Pizza for two

Since I have have a long weekend off for the Thanksgiving holiday I'm doing a little extra cooking for the freezer. Yesterday I made a red bean soup with ham and collards and froze 3 quarts. Today I spent the morning making pizza crusts for the freezer.

I learned the secret to good homemade pizza crust a couple of years ago when I was shopping at a little bulk food store. Among the of barrels of flour was a barrel of semolina flour. I had never seen it before, but the yellow grainy flour fascinated me. It looked a lot more like cornmeal than flour. I asked the owner what it was used for. Pizza crusts, he said. He I quizzed him on ratios and recipes and he admitted he really didn't know any thing about baking. The only reason he knew it was used for pizza crust was because the pizza shops in town would sometimes buy the flour from him when they were in a pinch and had run out their supply. I bought a couple of pounds and brought it home to experiment.

With a little experimenting, it seems that about the right ratio is 1/4 semolina flour to 3/4 wheat flour. It makes a crunchy light crust. I'd post a recipe except that I really don't have one. Well, I do sort of, but I have no idea of amounts. I have an idea of rations in my head and just sort of make the rest up as I go. Every now and then my husband will watch me as I mix up bread and comment that it really is amazing that everything I make usually turns out. I am very much an intuitive baker and have a very difficult time following bread recipes even when I try hard to do so. Actually any recipe that has more than a couple of steps is usually a little beyond me.

That said, if you want to make pizza, just take any basic bread recipe (flour, salt, water, yeast, oil, and just a little bit sugar (no more than a table spoon or two) and substitute semolina flour for 1/4 of the wheat flour and olive oil for what ever oil the recipe calls for. You should be able to make a fabulous pizza dough that way. I always use whole wheat bread flour. Because I don't follow an exact recipe mine always turns out slightly different each time. Today's dough was really beautiful--very springy and elastic, the type of dough that is a joy to work with.

I make the crusts small enough to fit in gallon ziplock freezer bag. That is actually just the perfect size for a pizza for two. I bake each crust until it is just starting to brown along the edges. Then they are cooled and popped in the freezer. After a long day at work, all I have to do is thaw the crust in microwave, pour some hot pasta sauce over it, and cover with toppings and put in a 400 degree oven. Five minutes later the cheese is melted and the pizza is ready to eat.

Heck with the laying mash. We want hot dogs!

We feed them...they feed us.

I find it amusing to watch my chickens eat. Their tastes in food continues to surprise me...with the chickens we had when I was growing up it seemed they ate just about anything that was set in front of them with no particular preferences. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention back then. My seven hens have very definite food preferences.

On the very top of their list of favorite foods is bugs. Early this fall I am positive they ate just about every bug in our backyard. When they ran out of bugs in our back yard, they started looking for bugs in the neighbor's backyards. Not appropriate behavior, especially since one of the neighbors had just put in a new flower garden with lots of mulch. If we didn't keep a close eye on them, they immediately headed straight for that mulch.

Next on their list is meat products. Forget laying mash, forget bagels and bread and cracked corn. This morning I gave them a their usual bowl of scraps--a mix of vegetable peels, apple cores, crushed egg shells, bread scraps, and odds and ends from the fridge. I also threw in a couple of old hot dogs--cut up and mixed in with other scraps. That started a major food fight. Everybody wanted a piece of a hot dog and the ones who got a piece weren't interested in sharing. Because I'm such a kind hearted person, I had to go and get a couple of extra hot dogs so everyone could have a piece. The other day I broiled them up some spoiled steaks. They demolished those instantly. I'm wondering what would happen if they were allowed to eat as much meat as they wanted all the time. Would we end up with obese chickens with heart disease and clogged arteries?

Bread and grain products come in next, but they will not even look at these if there are bugs or meat available. They do have their preferences in how there grain is prepared. Bread is better than corn chips, Corn chips are better than cooked cereal. Bagels are better than ordinary bread. Whole grain bread is apparently tastier than white bread. The thing I don't quite get is that while they ignore the bran flakes in raisin bran, they love the raisins. They will carefully pick out all the raisins and turn up their noses (er, beaks), at the flakes. I had a stale box of raisin bran that I thought would be a special treat and well, other that the raisins, it wasn't. I don't get it because fruit in general is on the very bottom of the list.

Next is greens with wood sorrel and Swiss chard on top of the list. They love arugula. I love arugula when it is less than two inches tall. They love it regardless of how tall it is. This fall when I was giving them bunches of overgrown arugula, the pungent aroma would hang over the coop for hours afterwards. Kale, lettuce, and mustard greens get eaten quickly too. They are not so keen on collards or broccoli leaves, but will eat them if there is nothing else. They will not touch spinach though. I don't know what I am going to do when the greens in my garden are gone (which will be within the next week probably). Maybe I will get up the courage to ask at Plum Market or Kroger's if they will save spoiled produce for my chickens.

Vegetables and fruit are on the very bottom of their list. Which is probably a good thing, because I could let them free range in the garden and they never once touched a tomato, cucumber, or pepper. (I grew enough greens that what they ate while free ranging made little diference.) Their real interest while free ranging is worms, spiders, and bugs. They do eat fruit and vegetables in a pinch and generally seem to prefer them cooked.

We are currently getting 2 to 4 eggs a day. Two brown eggs and one to white ones. The white eggs mean that one or two of my California whites have started laying. They are five months old. The amount of eggs we are getting right now is plenty! I'm not sure what we are going to do when all 7 are laying! My only problem is that one of the hens is eating her eggs. I'm not sure which hen it is, but I am pretty certain it is one of the brown and white hens, because if I don't collect the eggs right away one of the brown eggs disappears and I see remnants of yolk in the nesting box. She only seems to eat her own egg. The other brown egg and the white eggs don't get touched. If any one has any ideas for preventing egg eating by chickens, I would appreciated it!

Eternal hope

"Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was there is always next year. Experience doesn't count. Just because the carrots have been knobby, misshapen, and somewhat bitter four years in a row doesn't mean that they are going to be knobby and misshapen next year. No, sir, next year you will (1)work in twice as much compost and peat; (2) plant a new improved variety: or (3) get lucky. Or even better you can forget carrots and plant something exotic like blue cauliflower. Because each year starts with a clean slate, and because of the phenomenon I call garden amnesia, the garden ensures eternal hope."

William Alexander, quoted from The $64 Tomato

Red Russian Kale in Snow

The temperature dropped suddenly last week and we haven't had a day above freezing since. I still have a lot of greens out in the garden. They have been under snow since last sunday. Today it is finally supposed to get up to 40 degrees and I will go out and assess the damage. I'm suspecting the lettuce is probabally done for. Hopefully the endive and spinach survived. I know the kale and what is left of the collards will still be just fine. In fact I have been picking kale under snow all week. Frost and cold only makes it more tender and sweet.

I usually just saute my kale with in a little olive oil with garlic. I also love it in soup. This is one of my favorite kale soup recipes. I modified it from another recipe. It seems that most kale soup recipes call for lots of sausage and while I have no objection to sausage in moderation, I perfer low fat recipes for everyday use. Please note that amounts are approximate. I usually just make things up as I go and never measure anything.

Kale White Bean Soup
1 cup cooked white beans
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 medium onion (chopped)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups stewed or crushed tomatoes plus one cup water, chicken broth or vegetable broth (More if needed)
1 can of corn (not drained)
4 cups chopped kale
Garlic to taste (minced)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a pot, saute onion and celery.
Add cooked beans, tomatoes and water or broth. Bring to a boil.
Add corn, kale, and thyme and simmer until kale is tender (about 20 minutes).
Add minced garlic during the last five or ten minutes of simmering.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Spring bulbs

Late fall used to be my least favorite season. My memories of it growing up is lots of hard work and being cold and wet all the time. We heated our log cabin with a fireplace. There are some people (I won't mention any names!) who believe that if it isn't a foot of snow on the ground, you shouldn't be wasting firewood. As a result we rarely had a real winter fire until late November. I never could see the logic in that. When the weather is damp, that is when you need a fire more than any other time. As a result I spent a lot of falls shivering. The only redeeming thing about that time of year when I growing up was the apples and apple cider.

Fortunately I married a man who has the good sense to realize that a fire in the wood stove is appropriate as soon as there is a touch of frost in the air. Now that I am warm and can come inside and get warm if I have been outside all day, I have come to appreciate late fall. In fact, I almost like it as much as I love my favorite season, early spring. The growing season is over, the leaves have fallen and plants have died back. Nature is drawing back into itself, to prepare for a long quiet winter's rest.

Two weekends ago I spent the day outside in the cold and rain and mud (and a couple of snow flurries) planting hundreds of spring bulbs. My spring, summer, and fall project this year was getting rid of the ugly yew bushes that overwhelmed the front of of our little house and putting in flower beds. It has been a long slow project. But today I can happily say, that the project is done. Yes I will need to plant some annuals and perenials next spring. But at least the front of the house will be pretty in April and May. It was a lot of work, from yanking out the tangled stubborn yews (we broke two chains and beat up our Explorer in the process), to shoveling a couple of tons of soil to build up the beds, to building a little rock wall to contain the soil.

I always promptly forget what I planted and even if I label things, I usually end up losing the the labels. So, I am making a list here of what I planted. Maybe in the spring when the flowers bloom, I will remember to come back and look them up.

100 tulip bulbs in every shade of pink, white and purple. This was a mix, so even though the names where on the packages, for most of them I am not sure which ones are what...but maybe I will be able to figure it out come spring.
Shirley
Purple prince
Jan Reus
Don Quichotte
White Dream
Menton (dark pink)
Queen of the night (purple, almost black)
5 greigh tulips "Quebec" (clusters of pink tulips with white on the edges of the petals)

50 grape hyacinths
10 muscari "Blue Spike"

50 tete a tete daffodils (grow six inches tall with single golden trumpet flowers)
5 specie narcissi (5 inches tall with clusters of tiny white blossoms with little yellow trumpets)
5 tezetta narcissi (6 inches tall with clusters of pale yellow trumpet flowers. Somehow I have it in my head that these smell really good. We will find out)
5 triandrus narcissi (14 tall, with clusters of delicate and graceful yellow trumpet flowers)

50 ixiolirion (16 inches tall, with blue flowers and bloom in late May/early Jun. I don't have a clue what these are, but if they bloom in late spring, when the other flowers are done, I'm all for them!)
25 Dutch iris (22 inches tall and bloom in shades of yellow, purple and white in late spring.)

When I go out from the garden in autumn...

A garden that never died eventually would weary. The garden winter doesn't visit is a dull place, robbed of springtime, unacquainted with the extraordinary perfume that rises from the soil after it has had its rest.That promise, the return every spring of earth first freshness, would never be kept if not for the frosts and rot and ripe deaths of fall. I don't think I want to stand in the way of this. (As if I could!). So when I go out from the garden for the last time in the autumn, I leave the gate open behind me.

Quoted from Second Nature, A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan

Tucking the chickens in for the winter...

I haven't been blogging much because I have been on the computer so much for work. I've spent the last four weeks trying to master the massive amounts of documentation that is required of home care nurses. I'm spending half my day staring a tiny laptop computer screen. I come home with aching eyes and the last thing I want to do is spend any more time on any kind of computer. Quite frankly, I am surprised home care nurses aren't all blind. I've only on the computer for four weeks and I have decided that this Monday I am going to call an eye doctor and see if I can get glasses to use while I am working on the computer. I never realized before that I might have an eye problem. In spite of the aching eyes, I am thankful that I don't have to chart on paper. I am all for computer documentation. Besides not having to shuffle lots of papers around and getting them all mixed up and lost (something which I seem to be an expert at!), there is so much better continuity of care and much better communication between clinicians when patients' charts are on a computer system.



Anyway, this post was meant to be about chickens. Last weekend we spent most of Sunday getting the chicken coop ready for the winter. We took the "upstairs" and lined it with insulation, then put a floor in so that they will have a warmer place to sleep come freezing temps. Then we dragged the whole coop inside the portable garage, so that they are more protected from winds and snow.
Here they are snuggled up for the night. We also bought them a heater that we will put in the coop on those really cold nights.



I find it comforting to come home from work every day and care for the chickens. Whichever one of us is home earlier lets the chickens out so they can run around and scratch outside until dark. I fill their feeder with laying mash and a little cracked corn (to give them a little extra fat to keep them warm), pick them greens from the garden, and fill the water pot with fresh water. In return they give me two brown eggs everyday.

This is one of the brown and white hens taking a dirt bath in her favorite place---under a tomato plant by the back steps. Even when it is wet, rainy, and cold the chickens still love to take dirt baths...mud bath, dust bath...they love any kind of dirt bath!



And this is the alpha hen. She is bigger than the other California whites and I keep thinking she might actually be a rooster because she is more aggressive and has that glint in her eye...but no crowing yet. I would think by 5 months if she were a rooster, I would have heard some thing by now.

The garden on November 1st

My fall greens came in splendidly this year...

I wasn't expecting much from the endive, as I planted it in July while it was very dry and only a few seeds germinated, then the baby plants just kind of sat there, but after those Septembers rains it perked right up and grew and grew...Now I wish I had paid more attention to it and thinned it before it was too late. It should be good anyway.

This lettuce mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds is so pretty...

Dead, gone tomatoes and greenbeans still need to be cleared out and added to the compost pile. That is on the list of things to do today.