Late afternoon, evenings are grazing times for the chickens. There is a distinct ripping sound they make as they tear grass with their beaks. Sit quietly on the grass and they will come over to see what you’re doing. It’s impossible to be sad or upset when they are milling about.
Out of the Ground Today – June 5, 2014
It’s egg and salad delivery day. In the cool, early morning, the produce in the vegetable beds is awake and succulent. Picking the greens in the quiet of the morning is almost a meditative exercise. It’s an opportunity to clear the mind and think of nothing as I snip, snip, snip away. It’s much better than toiling away in a corporate cubicle, staring into a monitor for hours on end.
Once washed and stacked, the fresh produce has a beauty all its own. If you’re eating at Tweets this weekend, you may be lucky and enjoy some of these fresh greens. Currently, I’m making a single delivery on Thursdays, but in the near future I will be making deliveries of produced picked that morning on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You’ll enjoy salads at Tweets made from greens picked just hours before. You can’t get that Mickey D’s or most any restaurant.
Peaceful Evening
So what is life like for chicks being raised by a mother? It’s nothing like growing up without one. Chicks this small would never be safe darting about in the evening. But with a mother looking out for them, they are free to run about without a worry. Watch the video and you’ll get a good idea how important mother hens are for chicks.
[wpvideo IvhZtuBY]
The Joy of Weeds
Play the bird song above and you can experience what it is like to spend an afternoon weeding here at a man and his hoe®. That is the song of the Black-headed Grosbeak, one of the more colorful birds that are in the woods this time of year. The weeds have such beautiful flowers, even if some are tiny, that it’s a shame to dig them up … but I have customers who want their fresh vegetables, so the weeds will have to be satisfied with blooming on the sides of the vegetable beds.
Tourists from all over the world make pilgrimages to Tweets Café, and they are expecting to savor fresh, local produce. Some of it will come from this special spot where the Black-headed Grosbeaks sing. When you’re at Tweets having a salad, close your eyes and imagine those salad greens listening to the singing of wild songbirds.
On the Board Today – June 3, 2014
This time of year there is an endless supply of fresh greens to eat. I’m not even sure what the first green is. I found it growing amid the garlic. Besides the mystery green, there are dill and onion scapes, kale and mustard blossoms, oregano and sage and lovage, and finally garlic scapes, the first of the season.
Recently I read, in disbelief mind you, that some consider cooking and eating such a nuisance, that they have developed a powder you mix with water to make a liquid meal so you don’t have to fuss with getting food and cooking. According to their website, solvent.me, creator Robert Rhinehart and team developed Soylent after recognizing the disproportionate amount of time and money they spent creating nutritionally complete meals. Their catchphrase is what if you never had to worry about food again? Hmm, now wouldn’t that be a boring life.
I’ve never considered the amount of time I spend growing, gathering and preparing food a chore. Going out into the vegetable beds to see what is good to eat is pure pleasure. Watching apple blossoms turn into buds turn into small green fruit turn into ripe red apples is living.
Gathering food, preparing meals, and eating are so much fun, I can’t imagine subsiding on quick, liquid meals. To each their own I guess.
Free Food
For many years we had a clear pond. Then last summer some ducks, at least that is who we think were the culprits, flew in with some duckweed attached to their feet. In a short time it quickly spread and covered the pond with green from shore to shore, making the pond look more like a putting green than a pond.
In the winter time it died back significantly and during windy days, the remaining duckweed was blown to the edges and all but disappeared. It is growing again, but now it has turned into treasure. I scoop it out with a net, and remove ten to twenty pounds of it at a time, piling it into a wheelbarrow. Along with the duckweed come pond bugs and tadpoles. It’s like I have my own feed store which doesn’t charge anything no matter how much feed I take.
I wheel the load and dump it for the chickens to devour. It doesn’t take long for them to snatch up all the bugs and tadpoles and feast on the duckweed, which is very high in protein. If I could only teach the chickens to swim, they could snack on duckweed anytime they wanted.
Duckweed – a potential high-protein feed resource for domestic animals and fish
Eat the Weeds – Duckweed
Duckweed nutritional composition
The Promise of Good Things to Come
This is how nature’s grocery store works. There’s no marketing, no glitzy displays to lure you in. It’s all up to chance. The thimbleberries (rubus_parviflorus) and salmonberries (rubus_spectabilis) get closer to perfection each day.
According to Practical Plants, leaves of the thimbleberry are used to line baskets for carrying soft fruit or other delicate items, and a soap can be made by boiling the bark.
The leaves are antiemetic, astringent, blood tonic and stomachic. An infusion is used internally in the treatment of stomach complaints, diarrhoea and dysentery, anaemia, the spitting up of blood and to treat vomiting. An infusion has been taken by women when their periods are unusually long. A poultice of the dried powdered leaves has been used to treat wounds and burns. The leaves have been crushed and rubbed over the skin to treat pimples and blackheads. A poultice of the leaf ashes, mixed with oil, has been used to treat swellings. The young shoots are alterative and antiscorbutic. The roots are appetizer, astringent, stomachic and tonic. An infusion has been used by thin people to help them gain weight. An infusion has also been used in the treatment of stomach disorders, diarrhoea and dysentery. A decoction of the roots has been taken in the treatment of pimples and blackheads.
Natural Medicinal Herbs, states that the shoots of thimbleberries can be picked while they are still young and tender, and cooked like asparagus, and are rich in vitamin C.
Hansen’s Northwest Native Plant Database lists quail, grouse, partridge, thrushes, thrashers, towhees, cardinals, grosbeaks, bears, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, foxes, opossums and skunks as all lovers of thimbleberries.
And yet the fruit is too delicate to package and sell in supermarkets. Which means that there are just a few lucky folk who get to eat these delicious berries. If you have space and live in an area where thimbleberries grow, plant a few and enjoy a fresh treat in midsummer. They are simply divine on ice cream or with a bit of heavy cream.
Taking Her Chicks Home
The dogwood is getting closer and closer to blooming. On this beautiful evening, a mother hen with eight chicks is leading her chicks home for a good night’s sleep. She’s had her chicks on the move much of the day, taking them into the woods, through the garden, around the pond, and a long evening walk by the dogwood. Maybe she enjoys looking at the dogwood as much as I do.
Double Delicious
There seems to be a hen laying double eggs. I’m getting one of these two to three times a week. It does take a bit of an effort for a hen to lay an egg. Maybe I should be on the lookout for a hen who is having trouble walking.
Shirohana-mame – White Flower Beans
This is one bean you probably won’t find in your store. The white beans are huge and delicious. Called Shirohana Mame 白花豆 in Japan, the name means White Flower Bean. The beans get that name from the beautiful white flowers of the bean plant.
I’ve been growing this bean for a number of years, and this year I am planting 3,000 of them. I may even have some left over this fall if you would like to try them. The beans are a runner bean, Phaseolus cockiness, and grow on long vines. They are originally from Central America. In Japan they are cultivated where summers are cool in the mountain valleys of Nagano, Gifu, Tohoku and Hokkaido.
They aren’t a bean whose cultivation can be mechanized, which means they require a lot of hands-on work to grow. You have to grow them on poles and pick them by hand. This isn’t the type of food normal food channels want to deal with. So you’re left to find small farmers growing them with a lot of love. I don’t know of anyone in the US growing them on a large scale. By the time I have my 3,000 beans growing, I may have the largest Shirohana Mame field in the country. I’ll let you know this fall how mine did.
- 花豆 ~ 豆種協会
- 玉ねぎ 白花豆 北海道農業 『森谷ファーム』
- 白豆きんとん
- 白花豆の甘煮
- Shirohana Mame ~ Kitazawa Seed Company