ingrid

No, I’m kidding.  I actually applied for a license to keep more than 3 chickens within city limits and I got inspected today.  Being a sort of nervous, want-to-do-good-paranoid-about-getting-in-trouble sort of person, my heart just about went through the roof when I saw the pickup (with lights–but not on of course) pull up in front of our house.  And of COURSE the chicken door was open because Francis did the chores this morning and the kids can’t seem to go in the door without letting chickens get out.  That is a no-no in the city.  If you have chickens wandering around your yard, you are suppose to be with them, which I obviously wasn’t as I answered the door for the inspections guy.  We didn’t have time to put them in again because we were super late for school.  Luckily for us, it is cold as hell around here and even with the door to the fenced area open, the chickens were huddled together in the coop.  I hurriedly confessed that we let them out accidentally this morning and that I knew I wasn’t suppose to.  ”No problem,” Mr. Super Nice Inspector said.  ”We are pretty laid back as long as we can’t hear or smell them when approaching the property”.

The inspection was great though.  The guy was completely nice, not upset that I had EIGHT chickens (by the way, did I mention that I now have EIGHT chickens?!  That is for another post.), and quite complimentary about my coop.  He said that I obviously had room for more and I should just let them know if I want to get more.  No thanks, I said.  Even I know when enough is enough.  He also said that he could tell that I take care of them, that the area is clean and looks free of stink or rats, and that he is glad that I have names for all of them.  That is a sign that I care for my chickens well.  So, all in all, a really good experience, and I should get my license within the week.

It is interesting to me that the City of Portland is fine with chickens, and my hometown of Sheridan is not.  I have my theories that people in Sheridan, being country people, are only familiar with TONS of chickens so they have no real idea of the miniscule sound and smell present with less than 10 chickens.  When they think “chickens”, they think of fifty chickens, or one hundred and fifty chickens.  The Sheridan Sun recently quoted a city counselor as saying that a neighborhood with chickens would be “unlivable”, which is about the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, especially as I live on a block with more chickens than people.

Did I mention that I love Portland, Oregon?

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I know it has been a long time.  Believe it or not, I am nearly done with ONE of my two classes.  Right on target.  I was going to give myself all of October and here we are with a week to spare!

Even though I have not been writing here, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything.  That is, I am mostly working on my classes, but I have managed to squeeze in some fun little projects here and there.  Here is an update:

I canned.  A lot.

The kids love tomato soup, and as I felt sort of weird about the amount of soup boxes we go through and I grew a LOAD of tomatoes this year, I thought I would try canning it.  My mother in law hooked me up with a new pressure cooker and good directions and I kicked out these puppies.

I don’t want to be a braggart, but damn this stuff is good.  It really is awesome.  My complaint about tomato soup from the stores is always that it is too salty, even the reduced stuff.  Mine is perfectly tangy, tastes like real tomatoes and has these lovely little chunks in it.  Now if we don’t get botulism, all is well.

My friend Lindsey worked (like a galley slave) one Friday helping me make applesauce.  We made a ton of it.  It is pretty lovely too.

Here is the complete list of canned stuff this summer:

• 14 pints strawberry jam
• 6 pints raspberry jam
• 22 quarts applesauce
• 14 quarts pears
• 8 pints pear chutney
• 5 half pints pear plum chutney
• 24 pints tomato soup
• 7 pints blueberry syrup/jam

I had a funny experience with the blueberry syrup.  This whole canning thing is pretty new to me and I am just making whatever I can get my hands on for free or think we might use.  A few weekends ago, my mother in law, preserving goddess, serves us some blueberry syrup with our pancakes.  ”It didn’t turn out” she said.  She had tried to make blueberry jam.  She then said that she didn’t know why but her blueberry jam never turns out.  I loved the stuff just the runny way it was.  Of course, I go home and try to make blueberry syrup, but it sets up all firm… like jam.  Shoot.  Maybe she will trade with me?

And here are our tomatoes.  Yes, there are more of them.  Maybe I will have fresh tomatoes until December, but I am not convinced.  For now, we have to duck these in the kitchen, which is goofy.  It will make the room seem so big when they are gone!

I had a rough day with the kids today, and instead of my first instinct which was to put them in front of a movie, we pulled out the art supplies and made a royal mess.  It was exactly what I needed.  We made these fun skulls for Dia de los Muertos, and most thrilling to the kids, we got everything hung up and looking awesome by the time Brad got home from work.  He was suitably enthusiastic and the kids were super happy.  In addition to the skulls we made today there is

• pumpkin by Zephyr from preschool,
• candle holders from Mexico from Kendall
• mariachi skeletons in paper mache by Brad (!)
• precious paper skeletons from Italy that my parents carried back
• Virgen de Guadalupe candle
• Good Shepherd holy cards
• Sacred Heart metal pendant
• crucifix
• a picture of my cousin Maria who is dancing in heaven.  She liked Latin American culture, so I know she would like to be part of this scene.  And all my canning stuff was from her, so I have been thinking about her a lot lately.

And the front door:

Zephyr’s skulls are so funny!  HE did the one on top and the one on the lower right with blue eyes (it looks sort of like a decrepit lizard).  I took these pictures in the dark, and I know that was not a fantastic idea, but hey, the kids are asleep, so it IS dark.  I don’t see an alternative really.

I’ll post again soon.  Maybe I will include a picture of my chickens.  They are all molting and look awful.  I think they are cold as they are barely coming out of the henhouse!

Good thoughts!  Happy October!

6 Comments | In: Awesome!, food, projects, urban farming | | #

I felt accomplished this year that I had such a successful summer garden.  It is still sort of successful, if those 13 tomato plants ever decide to ripen.  They are ripening, just not all at once like I imagined.  It is somewhat inconvenient as I intended to can those tomatoes.  I’m not going to be able to can one at a time though.  Ripen, ripen, ripen!

The weather is weird around here.  The season is changing.  The mornings are cold, but then midway through the day, you are sweating in your wool socks.  I put on a sweater, take off the sweater, contemplate turning the furnace on but then see that it is still 67 degrees.  Fall is here, but it is sauntering in.  We’re having showers in the morning, heavy clouds and then bursts of sun.

In the garden, the snow peas and beets gave way to lettuce, chard, and cauliflower.  We’ll see what makes it.  The napa cabbage is looking troubled.  I see that maybe I do have slugs after all.  If you can believe it, I have seen very few slugs on our property here in Portland.  I don’t actually think that is a good thing.  I think the soil is just so dry and poor that it doesn’t support egg growth.  So even though I don’t miss the suckers, I do sort of mourn their absence.  I think our soil sucks so much that even the slugs don’t like it, but anywhere I put down chicken manure, straw, leaves and mulch there are now signs of tiny little slugs.  That’s okay.  There is enough to share for now.

And what is this?  Peeking around the side of a tomato plant, these buggers looked me in the eye.  Begone deadly nightshade!  I love that it has “deadly” in its name.  Makes you think, “Now wait, should I eat this?”.  I think I should have deadly in my name.

I had an ill-fated couple weeks for all things coffee and tea.  Just when the weather changed and I wanted more of both, I broke my coffee pot (knocked it on the sink), broke the spout of my teapot (dropped it while washing it), and suffered the loss of my milk frother (Zephyr swept it off the counter and then imbedded a piece in his foot for good measure).  Sigh.  Ill-fated.  This tea pot was so cute and useful.  Brad’s aunt gave it to me along with this excellent little tea cozy.  I couldn’t part with it,even though the spout is broken down the back in a quite irreparable way.  You can’t see the break from the front, especially with the plant in it.  I’m going to keep it on the front porch to announce my priorities to the world.  I planted a corsican mint in it.

Yes, at the big purple house, things are indeed growing well.

7 Comments | In: My super freakin' cute kids, food, projects, urban farming | | #

Friendless.  See, that’s a joke.  Get it?  Get it?

The other night the ladies of my gospel choir were discussing zucchini.  Specifically, they were comparing notes on how to best use it and trying to pawn some off on me.  I didn’t fall for it!  I HAVE my own one zucchini plant that produces about 5 lbs more zucchini than I need, thank you very much.

I did take some notes though.  Here are the top 4 uses of zucchini:

• Grate it up and sneak it into everything:  gumbo, lasagna, manicotti
• Grate it up and make sweet good stuff:  zucchini bread, muffins, chocolate zucchini cake (which everyone agrees is super good)
• Lightly saute it with olive oil and toss with pasta, basil, fresh tomatoes from the garden
• Beat grated zucchini in with potatoes and fry in a hash of sorts.  Mix with eggs and scramble.

Number One Clever Idea for Zucchini was something that I had done sort of before, but leaving out a key element. This smart woman suggested that extra zucchini be grated and frozen, but not just randomly.  She said to check the recipe that you always use for zucchini bread and freeze the grated, wrung out zucchini in that exact amount, so that you can easily make zucchini bread in the winter without defrosting more or less than you need.  Ye Gods!  How clever!

And what a great job for a 6 year old!  I cut the zucchini up into the right size and let ‘er rip with the food processor.  I also showed her how to measure 2 cups of fruit, pour off the excess liquid, and shake the whole lot into bags for freezing.  Good work, kitchen wench!

7 Comments | In: food, urban farming | | #

Well the coop is only two years old, but some bright person (me) had this idea that making it completely of recycled materials would be a great idea.  It was a challenge that I latched on to, and perhaps admirable in intention, but not necessarily practical.  Completely recycled materials START old and don’t weather well, thus, my coop is in okay shape inside, but looking a bit shabby.

Now that I know that I want to stay in the chicken bizness, I am ready to build something beautiful.  I have this sneaking suspicion that many of my chicken problems of late (egg-eating, picking, etc) were because there isn’t enough space in that old kitchen cabinet that I made into a hen house.  And I am tired of my yard being ugly (as I might have mentioned before), so I am making something larger that they can stay fenced in year round.  So now I am building something beeeeeautiful… with the help of my dad.  Or is it the other way around?

The next two weekends I am going to be out in Sheridan banging out this Chalet Poulet.  Wish me luck y’all, and I will tell you when the coop de grace is done.  Maybe we will have a coop-warming party take two.

Dad had this huge pile of wood to cut up for the studs.

Hey! That's a floor!

I'm smiling big, but really I am terrified of the nail gun.

This makes Brad look helpful, but really this was the only thing he did. Sorry Brad! He kept the kids out of the way. Good job, man!

The guy who was really in charge around here....

That's the third wall. And I love this drill.

The team looking out the front door. Next week--- the roof and nesting boxes!

Yeah! Chickens!

6 Comments | In: Awesome!, chickens, projects, urban farming | | #

Holy shit!  It is hot out.  Why I picked this day of all days to cook and pre-cook, I don’t know.  I guess it had to be done though.

What do you get if you take this

this

this

and this?

Pesto man.  And it is freaking awesome!

I threw you off with that photo of the walnut tree, didn’t I?  It isn’t pine nuts, but what the hell is a pine nut anyway?  And where could I get one?

It is so great to make something out of the stuff that you grew (or finagled) yourself.  I made a huge mess of pesto this morning and froze it in a bunch of sandwich bags.  Now when I am dying for a shot of garlicky goodness, I can just grab the bag and toss it in some pasta.

Along the lines of gleaning, the family and I went for a little berry-picking jaunt this weekend.  I was so busy getting sun-burnt that I neglected to take any pictures until we were ready to go, but you can see that we were successful:
Brad says so.

And we got this, which was eight pounds of blueberries.  Woa!  It all got popped in the new freezer in the basement.

Speaking of that freezer, I love it!  It is a new addition which we decided to invest in last week when our refrigerator officially gave out.  I am ushering in a whole new era of “convenience foods”, which to me does not mean corn-dogs, it means preparing healthy and beautiful stuff way ahead of time so that I can go fast when I need to.  I’m am thinking more and more about my urban gleaning goals, which include taking stuff no one else wants and begging, borrowing, picking and canning things that no one else has time for.  I got these suckers given to me:

That is two pounds of potatoes, a little worse for wear.  No problem.  I’m just trimming out the brown bits and cutting these guys into slices for freezing.  That will make a super easy meal addition some evening when I am crazy busy with the kids and need to make dinner.

And I grew these!
I hated beets as a child, but I would like to think that my palate has matured.  I’ve found that beets are best roasted in their jackets.  To do so, cut off the tops and root of the beet, cut the bulb in two and place on a pan or baking sheet doused in olive oil.  Roast until dark.  The skin of the beet should slip off.  Super good stuff, especially with goat cheese, walnuts and chicken in a salad.

Eat up folks!  The world is full of food.  Let’s go find it!

3 Comments | In: food, urban farming | | #

Little brown chick

Many a thing is growing around this place.  I am pretty busy this week, but I thought I could throw some photos up to at least keep my reputation up.

The little brown chick (Helen?) is really huge now.  Or maybe the little black chick is small.  Helen might need to become “Helmut”.  I still don’t know if I have roosters here.  That will be another few weeks.  Helen is super fast though.  It took me about 10 minutes to catch her to get this picture.

Agnes, Helen and Frankie

This is not a fantastic shot, but it is the best one I have to show the size difference between Helen and Frankie.  Remember, one was born one day and the next chick came on out the next day.  Obviously Frankie has had a hard start in life.  S/he got stuck to her momma’s underbelly with rotten egg, I had to wash her off and tore most of her butt feathers off in the process so her rump is bare and weird looking, plus she is just sort of weakly and small.  I hope she will bounce back, but she hasn’t had a promising start on things.  Oh yeah, and she has lice.  I’ve got to figure out how to take care of that issue, as most likely all of the family has it.

Trellis in the front

I was so stressed about this plant just a few months ago.  Spring had started and the dang thing hadn’t done a thing.  I bought this scarlet trumpet vine because the tag promisingly said that it was hardy and liked “poor soil”.  It sounded like a winner to me.  Then it proceeded to languish for a good year and a half.  I should have been smart enough to remember that vines put down roots the first year and then growth the second.  This one is growing about 2 inches a day by my reckoning.  I have to tie it up again every week.  It’s amazing.

Lavender hedge

I moved these once-puny lavenders over last year (?).  I think they like it here.  I had thought that I needed a short fence in the front of the house to keep kids from running out of the front yard.  Now I think that this hedge might suffice.  There is no going through this thing, and what with the profusion of honey bees in there, it looks a little threatening to little eyes too.  It looks beautiful to me though.

Flowers, beats and peas in the kitchen garden

Where once the yard debris pile stood is now our kitchen garden.

This is the second year of a garden in this spot, and I am mostly happy with it.  I attempted to enlarge the space and that sort of worked.  It worked over towards the neighbor, but didn’t do anything back towards the north side of our property.  I underestimated what the walnut tree would do when it leafed out.  What it did was shade a whole row of plants.  I have peas, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, tomatoes, basil, and beets in here.  The greens in the final row didn’t make it, so no pak choi, spinach, or lettuce.  Man!  Bummer!  I have thirteen tomatoes so I am thinking of canning them this year.  Fun!

Day lilies from Angella

Dependable roses

Okay, I’ve got whining children on my lap.  I gotta scram.

6 Comments | In: chickens, projects, urban farming | | #

Hi There ! Yes, eggs eating IS a nasty habit for a hen. I can cure her of that by putting her in a curry pot. If you don’t mind, do reply. I could stop by to pick her up asap.

I’m feeling a little sad about Atilla.  I just sent her off on a motorcycle with a nice Vietnamese man.  He was driving, not her.  She was in a little box on the back of a mean looking machine.

She isn’t going far, just St Johns.  And even though his initial e-mail sounded like she was destined for the “curry pot”, he says that he would actually like to keep her if she can lay worth anything.  Problem is that I don’t think she can.  She dropped two malformed eggs last week, and then I haven’t seen anything decent from her since.

So now I am sad.  Sort of sad in that way where you wonder if you made the right decision.  Poor Atilla.  Maybe I should have kept her and just tolerated her worthlessness.  I remember her as a baby.  She has been in our flock the last two years.  She has sort of ruled the roost, and that isn’t just a figure of speech.  Now she is going to have to join someone else’s flock and scratch and claw her way to respect in a new environment.  Man!  Life is hard for a chicken!  I hope I did the right thing.

Atilla as a chick. She is the black one.

But life goes on, doesn’t it?  And Atilla is going to fend for herself just like she always (thinks she) has.

In other news, we introduced the two new babies to the flock today.  I was worried about this as on-line discussion groups were full of horror stories of adult hens pecking babies to death.  But that didn’t seem to agree with my general feeling that these animals should know best.  Surely in nature a hen just trucks back to her flock with her babies when she is ready (or she never leaves it in the first place).

We brought Agnes and the babies out into the fresh morning sun and let the older girls watch them through the chicken wire for a bit.  They were curious, but not agitated.  When it seemed time to bring the older ladies out, they came near but didn’t crowd in.  Agnes raised her feathers and spread her wings, signaling that she would not tolerate any nastiness with her babies.  The older girls backed off fast.

I tried to encourage the kids to sit still and just watch Agnes and her chicks as it is truly fascinating to see them explore.  It is hard for Francis and Zephyr as they want to grab those babies and just hold their sweet fluffiness.  Francis is sure that she needs to mother them.  She has no faith in Agnes’ abilities at all.

I love watching them doing their own thing though.  You can REALLY hear Agnes saying things to them.  I swear I can totally understand her as she instructs her babies.  ”Right here is where you dig for bugs.  OH!  I found some!  Get over here babies!  Bugs!”.  And then she said, “And this is how you drink from the watering can.  Now you try.”  ”Okay, we are going to scratch at the dirt now.”  And they did it.  It was wonderful.  Agnes is a very good mother.

And what about those other eggs, you ask?  I brought the chicks out because one of the eggs had EXPLODED in the nest during the night.  I needed to wash the little black and yellow chick off because she/he was covered in rot.  Thinking that maybe it was too late to get much from the other eggs, I decided to toss them all in the compost.  It was a risky bet as I knew there might be other chicks (although this was unlikely as the hatch date was to be the 20th and we were 4 days late at this point).  Okay so this was GROSS.  Two eggs just cracked and were obviously just unfertilized, but two others were rotten.  They made this bizarre “pop” when I tossed them in the compost.  And the stink was horrible!  It was so bad that I had to go take a shower.  I kid you not.  I felt like I could smell it everywhere.  Yuck.  It was a Templeton moment.

That is a lot of chicken drama around here.  I think it was worth it though.  Here are our pretty babies:

4 Comments | In: Current musings, chickens, urban farming | | #

I just moved Agnes to a box in the shed (quieter and private quarters that she can stay in when the chicks hatch.

Here is a mystery….

There were only 10 eggs.  I put 12 under her last week.  I am SURE of that.  Where did 2 go?

I cleaned out the whole hen house and even raked around the ground below trying to find any telltale signs of those eggs.  Nothing.  I dug around the edges for holes showing rodent paths.  Nothing.  I shook out the straw.  Nothing.  There is a foul smell in the henhouse which could come from rotten egg innards, but unless the chickens ate whatever parts of the egg remained, I can’t figure how there would be no trace besides the bad smell.

Because I can’t think of any better ideas, I am espousing what I call “The Templeton Theory” which is that a rat came in and rolled the eggs away in the night.  It seems unlikely actually, but it is all I can come up with.  I also liked that scene in the book (and the cartoon!) where he goes rolling the egg off under the pig trough and all the animals are completely disgusted.  Let’s hope this doesn’t end in sorrow-orrow-orrow (anyone get that joke?).

Meanwhile, I need to pick up my Chicken Health Handbook at the library.  Problems are getting more advanced for this novice chicken keeper.  What to do?  What to do?  I might hire this sentry to keep watch over the girls this next week.  She looks trustworthy.

6 Comments | In: How strange, chickens, urban farming | | #

Okay, prepare yourself for awesomeness!

Ready?

Okay!

I bought a jar of “innoculated” mushroom dowels this weekend.  Yes!  I did that!  I actually paid $10 for a moldy jar full of dowels coated with mushroom stuff.  Before you make any Jack and the Beanstalk jokes, check this out:

Here are my moldy dowels.

I drilled holes in this rotten stump in the front yard and hammered the dowels in.

In the fall, this will be covered with mushrooms that we can cut and eat!

And to think that I got a quote to have this stump removed!  The mushrooms I am growing are called “Chicken of the Woods” and they are suppose to be meaty and wonderful.  I gave the other 25 dowels to my dad to put in out in Sheridan where the stumps are plentiful.  I have wanted to grow mushrooms for so long, and now I have my own precious stump of possibility.  Is this not awesome?

5 Comments | In: Awesome!, food, projects, urban farming | | #