a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Sloooooow Food

    SuperSlowFoodA

    My fingers are tingling. The long wait is over. How did it turn out? Is it edible? I’ve been waiting since July 2014 to see how my last batch of miso turned out. Two summers ago, I filled a crock with mashed, cooked soybeans, salt and an inoculation of aspergillus oryzae fungus, and set it on a windowsill to ferment through the summer, winter, and a second summer.

    SuperSlowFoodB

    The weight and lid are off. The miso under the seal looks tempting. I peel the seal off and taste. Fantastic. Slow food at its best. This is real home cooking. After several successful attempts at making miso, I’m prepared to make multiple batches, try different combinations of soybeans and grains, and wait, and wait, and wait.

    SuperSlowFoodC
    SuperSlowFoodD

  • On a Crescent Moon

    CrescentMoonAndVenusSmall

    It’s a sliver of a crescent moon which lights the morning sky today. On today’s list of things to do is to stack firewood in the woodshed. All summer long it has been drying in the sunshine. It’s time to bring it in under roof.

    It doesn’t take long for the chickens to notice what I’m doing. As the stacks of wood outdoors clear, and the stacks of wood in the woodshed grow, the chickens spot the bugs, spiders, and worms thriving at the bottom of the wood piles.

    Hens, roosters, and mothers with chicks come running to enjoy a feast. Chickens are very observant, curious creatures. They know that if I’m doing something, there is a good chance I may be stirring up the dirt. They will come by to check, and if one finds something good to eat, the others will come.

    WoodPileA
    WoodPileB
    WoodPileC
    OnTheWayHome

    At the end of a long day, Tangerine is herding her chicks towards their nest in the chicken yard. She had them out at the crack of dawn and over to the pile of wood for a hearty breakfast. After a full day of foraging she is ready for bed, but the little chicks aren’t quite ready. They want one last run through the grass.

    OnTheWayHomeB

  • Walking on 14 Feet is Tiring

    14FeetA

    Walking on 14 feet all day long is tiring, especially for a chicken. Can you count all the feet under this hen? There are actually 14. Two from the hen and twelve from the six chicks who are snuggled inside her feathers. For a little chick, nothing beats the warmth of a mother’s feather coat on a cool, drizzly day.

    14FeetB
    14FeetC

  • It’s Skunky!

    SkunkyLaysAnEgg1

    Who is the mystery pullet laying eggs in the woodshed? It’s Skunky! I peeked into the woodshed this morning and saw Skunky in the nest. A short time later, she was gone and there was her egg.

    SkunkyLaysAnEgg2
    SkunkyLaysAnEgg3

    A little over five months ago, Skunky was just a tiny chick, trying to figure it all out. Now she’s a graceful hen laying eggs of her own. What is intriguing is that her mother, started incubating another clutch of eggs this week. They are due to hatch September 27.

    SkunkyAsChick

  • The Mystery of the Four Pullet Eggs

    WhirligigInAFence

    Every day something special happens. Is it the amusing whirligig stuck in the fence I found this morning? Maybe it’s the bee having a feast on the sunflower. What goes through a bee’s mind when it finds a sunflower this large? “Oh my god! Oh my god! Look at that flower!” Is that what it shrieks when it buzzes around it? “The bees at the hive will never believe me when I tell them how big this flower is!”

    SunFlowerInSeptember
    BeeOnSunflower
    SpecialOnNest

    Or maybe the special moment of the day is spotting Special on her nest, laying an egg? It’s always special spotting her, but the special highlight of the day was finding four pullet eggs in a nest. I hadn’t checked the three nests in the woodshed for a while, and today when I looked, four olive colored pullet eggs were waiting for me in one of the nests. A hen hatched this spring has started to lay eggs. These are clearly eggs from the same hen. The mystery is which young hen is it?

    FourPulletEggs