On a day like today, it’s easy to imagine this place is high in a mountain valley. The clouds are rolling in off the ocean and hanging low. The air is misty, with big drops of cool water collecting on the leaves and flowers.
Young roosters often like to hang around older roosters. Lately, young Daisuke has been spending a lot of time near Billy. Roosters don’t start competing with each other until they get closer to being a year old. After their mother is done rearing them, if the roosters have brothers, they will stick together. And those that don’t have brothers, may seek out the company of an older rooster.
This is Cognac, a Wheaten Maran, one of my special hens. Marans lay some of the darkest eggs of all. You can see the dark egg she laid below.
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On a Wet April Day
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Spring Deepens – The Lovage Has Sprouted
This morning I noticed that our lovage has sprouted. Potato soup isn’t potato soup without lovage. A few leaves of lovage brighten up any salad. Not only is the plant delicious, it has a celery like taste, with many medicinal uses, it is beautiful and grows easily. Since it is a perennial, it comes up every year so once you have it, you have it forever.This is one of those many, incredible vegetables that you never see in a supermarket. One of the downsides of our modern food distribution system is that it is based on handling huge volumes of products. The big box stores will only handle things that are produced on a vast scale, will travel great distances well, and keep on the shelves for a long time. This drastically limits the variety of produce they carry. This is why cities need to have hundreds of neighborhood food gardens, so that everyone can savor the full gamut of fruits and vegetables that nature provides. Imagine being within walking distance of a garden where you could stop, on your way home from work, to pick the vegetables and herbs you need for supper. So many vegetables taste best when eaten within an hour of being picked.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of The Guardian posted a number of lovage recipes here.
According to Wikipedia:The leaves can be used in salads, or to make soup or season broths, and the roots can be eaten as a vegetable or grated for use in salads. Its flavor and smell is somewhat similar to celery. Lovage tea can be applied to wounds as an antiseptic, or drunk to stimulate digestion. The seeds can be used as a spice, similar to fennel seeds.
- Lovage on Wikipedia
- Lovage on Botanical.com
- Washington Post – Lovage: A big plant with an even bigger flavor
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Egg Yolks from Paradise
I try and describe how rich the eggs are that my chickens lay. But it’s impossible to describe them with just words. It’s like the hens manage to stuff miniature suns inside their eggs. Can you roll your egg yolks like the video below? You can do so many wonderful things with egg yolks. You might as well use the best.
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So that’s what a rich, healthy egg yolk looks like. It’s not hard to imagine that it can nourish a growing chick. -
Lucky Lays an Egg
It’s a fresh, Sunday April morning. When I fed the dogs this morning, I saw that Lucky was already in one of the dog houses. So while the dogs were eating, I closed the gate to their kennel. A few minutes later while I was making coffee, I heard Lucky clucking. She’d laid her egg.
Getting Lucky’s egg before the dogs do is a game I play nearly every day. Lucky insists on using one of the doghouses as her nest. Some mornings, she lays the egg before I even get up, and the dogs get a pre-breakfast snack. This Sunday morning, I got her egg.
There used to be more hens who liked to lay their eggs in the dog houses each morning. Now, Lucky is the only one. Most hens change their nesting spots from time to time. They’ll use one nest for a month or two, and then switch to another nest. I suppose it’s an adaptation to hide their nesting spots from predators. -
Svenda in the Woods
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So what do chickens like to do? One thing they really like is to go hunting in the woods. The underbrush is full of good things to eat. Chickens evolved from red jungle fowl of southeast Asia. So it’s not surprising that chickens enjoy spending so much time in the woods. This is what chickens like to do. So why pack them by the tens of thousands into chicken houses where they never see the outdoors?Here at a man and his hoe®, what the chickens want is paramount. It’s not about trying to produce the most eggs and meat at the lowest cost as possible. It’s about providing a farm where chickens experience the maximum amount of happiness. And after observing them for eight years, one of their favorite things to do is to spend hours in the woods. This is what humanely raised chicken look like. You can’t raise them humanely in a densely packed chicken house.