Fox in the Birdyard

From Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins. One of my very favorite children's books.

That's our best guess anyway... no evidence, except for missing birds and a barking dog. We heard some squawking on Monday afternoon, and upon investigation found that Rutherford Domingo was nowhere to be found. Jake crowed around the yard to be sure. He probably swaggered right up to that fox, ready to fight. His last act was protecting his hens, which is what roosters do, but a fox with a family to feed was not impressed, apparently. I was a little sad... but the yard has been quieter and safer in the days after Monday.

On Tuesday, Jake came home to a missing duck. Maude. Our last runner.

This same Tuesday I rendezvoused with a friend whose dad had hatched out some Blue Swedish ducks and Chinese geese. The yellow goose is Ryan Gosling. The gray one is Cygnet.

They were just on a supervised field trip here. They're not out and about in the big bad world all by themselves just yet.

Hollyhocks!

Jam and Dreaming of a Long Walk

The sapling and I tackled our first canning project of the season this morning.

Last Wednesday we'd gone to a local pick-your-own strawberry patch with my aunt and I came home with 15 pounds of sweet berries for $18. Such a deal, when the picking is so much fun, too! To these I added the harvest of our own tiny but productive strawberry patch, and a bit of rhubarb.

I always use Pomona's Universal Pectin to make jam, because it requires no added sweetener to jell. It is citrus pectin that it is activated by calcium. There is one extra step involved in using this kind of pectin, but this effort yields fruit preserves that are just that- preserved fruit. I usually add a bit of honey, but nothing close to the amount in typical strawberry jam recipes. One recipe in an old cookbook of mine calls for 2 quarts of strawberries and 7 cups of sugar! If I'm canning, I like to go big. Pomona's works with doubling or tripling recipes - or as I did today, sextupling! Other types of pectin advise against this because they are activated by citric acid, and the ratio varies if you attempt to multiply amounts.
You can also make your own pectin by boiling green apples and lemons in water.

While Birch naps I'm washing a shelf-ful of empty jars in preparation for refilling them. I'm thinking about the rhubarb victoria sauce recipe from the Ball Blue book. Canning begets more canning.

That's a pattern with me... one activity inspires me to do more of the same. I've been getting a lot of reading in these past few days, too... it is so stinkin' hot outside! Yesterday I finshed Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Parts of it could be considered some of Birch's first readalouds! It is an autobiographical account of a summer-long hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada along the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges. I loved it. I am inspired anew... I will do one of those long hikes one day. Around Lake Superior, the Appalachian Trail, the Ice Age Trail, the English Lake District... somewhere. I'm not one for Bucket Lists, but that's a definite goal of mine.

Young Folks

Early summer at TellTheBees... This is the time in which our woodland surroundings are the most vivid. The yards and woods are literally humming with activity!

There are fawns on the driveway,

Baby birds all over the place, in nests and gourds and birdhouses and hollows, like these tiny chickadee babes Jake found in a hollow tree...

The phoebe on top of the railing/branch worked so hard to attach a nest on the quarter inch ledge above Alexander's south-facing bedroom window, and this year found success! For the past several years she's attempted in that very spot, enough times that Jake built her a little platform right under the eaves, but yet again she ignored it to build 3 feet from his crib. I like to think she's the same pheobe that built a nest on the header of what was to become our screen porch five or six summers ago. She seemed pretty tame, hanging around even when we were working right underneath her, and  enough that she let us move her nest to a nearby but safer spot when we needed to close in that area.

Baby raccoons! A few weeks ago this tree on the far side of the garden snapped off about 15 feet up during a particularly strong gust of wind, and a family of raccoons was disturbed. This tree hangs over the compost pile, which had probably been enough to keep these racoons away from our ducks and chickens, so we, and Echo, were surprised to discover their presence. They are our secondary suspects though, in the disappearance of the six banty chicks whom we discovered missing this afternoon on our return from Madison. The mom squawked at us gently from the chicken tractor, those fuzzy peeps nowhere in sight, and a tiny hole burrowed under the fence from one side. Sigh.... lesson learned.

 A human baby popped by for a visit last week too, with her parents who are dear friends who now live far away in Seattle! She was born four days before Alexander, and is already a head or so taller than him! Hopefully this is the beginning of a friendship as special as the one we enjoy with her lovely mom and dad.

Our little guy is seemingly loving life, mostly from inside one of our various packs or wraps, as seen above, or from a supine position, observing ceiling fans or treetops, and more and more frequently making eye contact and smiling. Today, he laughed! Not at us, but reflexively, upon hearing Marco Rubio's voice on the morning news. Those silly Republicans!

Eating with Purpose and the Urge for Going

Last night's dinner was a a beauty of a meal created with and shared among friends. Our good friend came to stay for the weekend, armed with a cooler stocked with foods and accessories gifted to her by friends and family. Beef from her family's farm, rhubarb from a co-worker, a rhubarb cookbook written by a friend of a friend. She also brought a most wonderful cake pan that she and another friend bought for me as a gift!

To these ingredients and components we added some of what was in our pantry and what is ripe for the picking in our garden and woods, and the makings of a seasonal feast were thus assembled. Our purpose was to ring in summer and provide a delicious layover meal for two other friends who were passing through on their way from Minnesota to Memphis.

Oh, the things we ate!

Fried Hen of the Woods

Fresh bread baked by an aspiring member of the St. Paul Bread Club

Pickled rhubarb and grilled kale salad with goat cheese
inspired by a recipe in Kim Ode's Rhubarb Rennaissance

Peterson Farms Beef burgers

Honey cake

Frozen honey cream

Rhubarb sauce

Oh, good gracious.

After dinner, Alexander snoozed while the travelers perused routes to Tennessee.

With full bellies and a thermos of coffee, the roadtrippers drove off into the sunset, leaving the rest of us to enjoy the fireflies from the screen porch. It was delightful.

Today, old friends who live in Seattle came by for the afternoon and evening. The two of them, their two dogs, and their 7 week old baby are on the last leg of their epic three week long cross-country road trip.

I've got the itch to see some new places myself, but we'll see how far I get this summer.

Its nice here, too.

Chicklets!

As we sipped coffee on the screen porch on Saturday morning, we could hear peeps from underneath the porch. The dog and cats snuffled the crack in the floorboards.
We crawled underneath to peak. One shell, and one chick!

Later, there were two. Then four. More? We kept the cats inside all day and night, and kept the other chickens in their coop until we were sure all the hatching was done.

This morning, the hen (either Bonnie, Billie, or Barbie- they're indistinguishable) had crept out within reaching distance. We wanted to put her and the peeps in the chicken tractor, where they'd be safe from cats, pullets, and raccoons. Jake held her and handed me all the chicks. Six! They're tiny- each about the size of a pingpong ball!

They're now safely installed in their temporary home. The other chickens spent some time crowded around the edges of the chicken tractor this morning observing their new coopmates, clucking their congratulations, it seemed.

And... there are not one but TWO buff ducks sitting on a big nest of eggs in the duck house! They mean business. It was kind of scary trying to take a picture.

Hopefully they'll be more successful than Agnes last spring!

Still she sits...

This little banty has been faithfully sitting on her nest of eggs underneath the screen porch's floor joists for days upon days. We're not sure quite how many, since we didn't know she was under there for a few, we just thought she was missing, but its been at least 17 days. 

My books say that a banty's incubation period is 19-21 days, so at any moment now I'm hoping to hear peeping from under the porch or little fluff balls skittering about! I'd love to have some homegrown chicks.

Better Burgers

Due to the amazing fortune I have to be a stay-at-home mom for the summer to a long-napping baby, I've had a lot of home bound free time which I've been spending in the kitchen. 

Jake and I have been trying to eat a lot less meat lately, and to make sure that we know where the meat we do eat comes from. Chicken: check. The odd duck: check. Our friends are raising 5 free-range pigs this summer, one half of which will end up in our freezer later, so future pork: check.
There are plenty of farmers around here from which to buy quarters or halves of organic grass-fed beef, but we haven't gotten around to purchasing any yet. You can buy small packages of ground beef and other meat cuts at the coop in town, but its really expensive, and its still meat, of which, as I said, we're trying to consume less.

But still, its summer now, and burgers on the grill are so good. Not only in themselves, but as vehicles for all that great garden produce. A slice of fresh tomato, adorned with new pickles, horseradish, and onions. Yum.

So today, I set out to create a recipe for vegetarian burgers that aren't too mushy, too bland, too spicy, or too full with obscure ingredients. Success! I used inspiration from several recipes I found online, and added and substituted freely. Basically, you need a filler and a binder and some spice for flavor.

I used red wheat berries and a mix of black and pinto beans for the filler, and duck eggs and bread crumbs for the binder. I soaked and cooked equal amounts of each, then mashed up the beans and fancied 'em up. I tossed in some scallions and green garlic from the garden, along with some grated carrot, and then some pinches of cayenne, some brown mustard, a liberal amount of nutritional yeast, and some tamari. I stirred in the wheat berries, and made patties, then baked them on parchment at 350 for 20 minutes.

They're so good! Flavorful with a good "meaty" texture. Even the dog likes them. I made 10 big burgers, most of which I'll freeze for future grilling enjoyment.

Loosey Goosey

Marsh the Goose has been a little sick this week. Last Sunday he was a little floppy, kind of flapping his feet as he walked, and even falling over a few times. We thought he was dehydrated since it was such a hot day, but even after some forced drinking he didn't improve. To the books.

The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals suggested botulism of all things.
"Signs of botulism poisoning appear within 8 to 48 hours of consuming the toxin. In mild cases, the only sign may be a brief bout with weak legs before the birds return to normal. In severe cases, the birds may appear sleepy and unable to hold their heads erect, due to paralysis of the neck muscles. The wings and and legs may become paralyzed, too, causing them to lie on their sides."

Marsh hasn't developed any symptoms beyond the weak legs, but even so we've kept him in his own little pen for the past few days and have given him water with some diluted antibiotics for waterfowl. He's still got a little hitch in his giddyup, but is noisy as ever.

Hopefully he'll be back to his rude self soon.