After five hours in the oven at just 190ºF, and a short time under the broiler to brown the skin, here is the result – a juicy, tender roasted bird. This is real slow food, and worth the nearly half year it took to raise the bird and the many hours of slow roasting. You’ll never find a bird like this, even at WholeFoods.
In the Pot Today
The young rooster is in the pot, resting on a bed of oregano and garlic leaves. After adding some sake and whiskey it’s in the oven at just 190ºF (88ºC). It will slowly roast the rest of the afternoon. The great thing about having beds of herbs, is that I don’t have to worry about how many to use. If I want a bed of oregano, it is there for the picking. If the only place to get fresh herbs in your supermarket, you’re limited to small bunches or just a few sprigs at a time.
And yet, cities don’t need to be like that. Many herbs are prolific plants. Urban areas could be designed to grow endless quantities of herbs their citizens could pick at will. Planting strips, park hedges, sidewalk borders, rooftop gardens, apartment courtyards; all could be herb gardens available for city residents to use. Imagine getting off the subway on your way home from work, scissors in hand, snipping fresh handfuls of oregano, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, for use for that night’s salad, soup, and roast.
On the Board Today
On the board today is a young rooster, born in December. When you raise heritage breeds of chickens on open pasture and woodland, each bird is unique. It takes nearly a half a year for these birds to get to butchering size. A truly great rooster takes a full year to raise.
Each bird has a long story. A rich childhood with its mother and siblings. A period of young adulthood shared with its siblings, followed by a more independent adulthood, with plenty of opportunities to explore chicken love.
Modern factory farming is all about denying birds their uniqueness. It is about cutting expenditures to the bone and producing as much meat as possible and making everything the same. It makes fast food possible with its buckets of inexpensive fried chicken. Cheap food demands cheap wages which demands even cheaper food in a never ending cycle of ever decreasing quality and satisfaction. In the end it leaves us all poorer.
It deprives us of experiencing the richness of a hearty meal of slow-roasted fowl. Try finding a year old fowl to enjoy in your supermarket or butcher. I’ll be roasting this bird today at 190ºF. Come back this evening to see how it turns out.
Waiting for Mother
These six week old chicks are resting while their mother is off laying an egg. At six weeks, they are still tiny, and yet some commercial breeds are large enough to butcher by the time they are six weeks old. It will take these chicks all summer to get that large.
Personality
Tora-hime is one of my favorite hens. She has such piercing eyes and beautiful feathers. It’s always easy to spot her when she is on a nest.
The bark I stripped off the alder trunks when I made posts dried and curled into these beautiful shapes. These strips of bark were flat when I peeled them off the alder trunks. In the sun, they turned red and curled.
A little sanding, trimming, and waxing could turn these into interesting dishes for appetizers, chopstick holders, or flower vases.
Everyday there are surprises waiting to be discovered. This is an abandoned Stellar Jay’s nest. And below are the flowers of a barberry bush.
Chickens in the Blueberry Patch
On a sunny day when the peonies are blooming, it’s time to weed the blueberry patch.
This year, the blueberries are loaded with flowers. Weeding, hoeing, and digging quickly draws a gang of chickens eager to help. I didn’t even realize Lucky was trying to tell me something until I looked at the photos I had taken.
Billy stands guard, making sure the hens are safe.
The hens do a thorough job stirring up the dirt. They are after earthworms and bugs, but do a great job aerating the top few inches of soil. They will destroy anything you’ve planted, so they are of no help when you are trying to seed a vegetable bed.
It’s impossible to be bored when there are chickens and chicks around. Spending fifteen minutes with a hen and her chicks beats following Twitter feeds or looking at Facebook.
Bees
[wpvideo 0Pboe7t9]
All it takes is a little sunshine and the bees are out in force. There are thousands of wild bees here. On sunny days, the rosemary, mint, oregano, lavender and other herbs are buzzing with them.
There are 200 species of bees in this area, some 4,000 species in North America, and nearly 20,000 species of bees worldwide.
According to Lisa Arkin, director for Beyond Toxic, “Without bees we would lose a third of the food that comes to our tables every day.”
If you look closely, you can see one of the mother hens in the background.
A Diversity of Bees Is Good for Farming—And Farmers’ Wallets ~ Smithsonian
Clouds Don’t Obscure Beauty
Cloudy weather can’t obscure beauty. The ground is wet, very wet. Puddles are everywhere. And so is verdant green. The vine maples are in bloom, their red and yellow flowers flutter like butterflies.
First Day of Summer
For parts of the world, today is the first day of summer. After torrential rains this morning, the sun came out this afternoon. The sky can be so blue here. I feel sorry for those living where the skies are polluted much of the time.
Water is pouring off the hill. The drainage ditch alongside of the road down to the post office, is a cascade of muddy water.
I’ve been by this barbed wire fence hundreds of time, but didn’t notice until today that when they strung the fence, they left loops of barbed wire. The wire is rusted so it was left a long time ago. What happened? Was it just left there in case repairs were ever needed in the fence? Did the person stringing the fence forget it? Was it their contribution to rural art?
Rikka
According to the traditional Japanese calendar, May 5 is the start of summer this year. The traditional Japanese calendar, based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar, divides the year into 24 solar terms, which mark each 15 degree movement the earth makes around the sun. The term which just passed, April 20 through May 4 this year, was 穀雨 – Kokuu, which translates to “rains which help the grain grow”. It marks the time when the rains arrive to make the grain grow.
The six terms of summer are:
- 立夏 – rikka, the start of summer 5/5~5/20
- 小満 – syoman, small fullness: the time when everything is growing well 5/21~6/5
- 芒種 – bousyu, heads of grain: the time when the heads of grain are forming 6/6~6/20
- 夏至 – geshi, summer solstice 6/21~7/6
- 小暑 – syosyo, little heat: the time when it gets hot 7/7~7/22
- 大暑 – taisyo, great heat: the hottest time of the year 7/23~8/6
Not a great deal of warmth to mark the start of summer here. The rains which helped the grain grow won’t stop falling.
The mother hens are as busy as ever.
And there is always more planting to do. Looking at a bed of freshly planted soil, it’s hard to believe that in a short time, there will be nothing but vigorous green growth here.
