Chickens Have Curb Appeal

For years I wanted chickens.  Mostly I wanted them because I like being around animals, but I also wanted fresh eggs and access to chicken manure for the garden.  After we bought our house, which came with a yard, I started a chicken campaign in order to convince Brandon that he wanted chickens too.  Because, you know, it's not enough that I get what I want, I also want him to want what I want.  He needed to be invested in chicken ownership too, so he could build a chicken coop to my specifications, lug heavy bags of chicken feed at my will, and feed, water, and care for them when I don't.  That's not too much to ask, right?   

The photo above is Rosie on the left, and Egret on the right.  They are getting old enough now that they are starting to look less like teenage dinosaurs with feathers, and more like real hens.  

So, after about five years, Brandon either came around to my way of thinking due to my persuasiveness, or his will was broken and to get me to shut up about it he finally agreed that we should get chickens.  Only two, and they must be in their coop at all times, right, Rain?  In the coop always?  Promise?  Rain?  Oh yes.  

Mrs. Hall, above, is still a good looking hen, especially for her age.  Now that I have young hens I really notice how old her feet look.  They're all knobby and wrinkly.  I notice the same thing about my own hands as I age.  I bet if Mrs. Hall put her feet under one of those super powered hand dryers at the mall she would see her skin blow around in ripples just like I do!

In the beginning, we stuck to our self imposed chicken ownership rules.  Helen and Mrs. Hall went straight from the brooder to the coop, and I diligently moved the coop every day at least once.  See Brandon, no chicken poop on the porch like you feared.  Then we started letting them out in the evening when we were there to watch them, which made us realize that they really prefer being out of the coop.  It wasn't long before Brandon would see them in the coop and let them out, all on his own.  He was hooked.  

That's Mrs. Hall facing the camera, and Rosie and Egret on the right side of the photo.  Mrs. Hall is shorter and rounder than the young hens, but she's still the boss and they don't dare to get within pecking distance of her.  

There's a great thing about having chickens that I didn't consciously consider when I was staging my chicken campaign - chickens are pretty!  It only makes sense that an animal bred by humans over thousands of years would have a certain curb appeal, especially to the human eye, but it wasn't until I had Helen and Mrs. Hall roaming my garden that I really understood the decorative benefit of a few well placed chickens.    I particularly like the pose Mrs. Hall is striking in the photo above.  She looks so fluffy, and the turn of her head is very graceful.  

As you can probably tell from the many photos I take of my chickens, I find the proportions of the small base, round body, and tapered head and tail to be quite pleasing (hence, the long winded post of me bragging about them which is an excuse to post pictures, which is an excuse to take pictures!). I like the heart shape that two chickens create when facing each other.  And they are far better than my neighbors goose statues, since I like to watch my chickens enjoy the sun, get excited about food, take a dust bath, and there's nothing funnier that watching a chicken run.   Running chickens are the least graceful thing I've ever seen!  

Chicken poop on the porch is gross though.  

13 Hop Beer

Jamie and I bottled a batch of home brewed beer that we titled 13 Hop.  Not because it has thirteen kinds of hops, but because we used all the hops that we harvested in 2013.  All of it, which was two quart jars cram packed with dried hops!  We also used left over bits of grains and malt, so this is a completely original beer.  It can never be recreated, because we have no idea what we used since we didn't take any notes.  I like the lazy inventive nature of our recent home brews.  Whenever we talk shop with our brewing buddy though, he always asks what kind of beer we are making and rolls his eyes when he finds out we didn't follow a recipe.  Recipe shmeshcipe, I say.  

The photo above is of the hydrometer that we use to check the sugar/alcohol content of the beer.  Basically, when there is lots of sugar in the beer the hydrometer floats higher, and when the yeast have turned the sugar to alcohol is sinks further into the beer.  If you notice it has some numbers and colors on it, and we try to start out with the surface of the beer hitting in the middle of the orange part, and end with the surface of the beer hitting in the upper green part.  It's all very scientific.    

It's sometimes hard to tell where the surface of the beer is as the hydrometer is floating in sudsy beer foam, but as you can see in the photo above, we started out right on target.  Once the fermentation was complete, I should have been able to float the hydrometer in the beer and then do some fancy math that would tell me the alcohol content of the beer.  Unfortunately, this system only works if I remember to actually use the hydrometer before we bottle, which I frequently forget to do, like this time.  It's not a problem though, since I've found that my favorite test for alcohol content is to quickly drink a bottle on an empty stomach.  Measuring the efficiency of the beer in this way is way more fun than math!   

But, before we get to the fun part, there's the waiting part.  The beer sits in a bucket with an airlock for a week or so.  Or, as is the case with 13 Hop Beer, if we get too lazy busy to rack and bottle the beer, it sits in the bucket for over a month and a half.  Oops.  

We have never left a bucket of beer to ferment for that long before, so we were very nervous about what we would find when we pulled the lid off.  Isn't it weird looking?!  I guess the yeast sort of bloomed on the top of the beer and made a semi dry crust.  Is this bad?  Who knows.  I guess we'll find out when we drink it!  

As you can see, the beer we siphoned from under the yeasty crust was a nice dark color, and the taste was actually very good.  I let Jamie take the first drink and monitored his vitals (i.e. waited for him to die) before I tasted it myself though.  

Why did we wait so long to bottle the beer?  Not only have we been very busy, but Joe is on farmers hours these days and he has a new baby, so he's worthless really busy, which means were are missing one third of our enthusiasm, which is significant when it comes to washing over forty bottles. 

Look at it!  Aren't they lovely.  Cross your fingers that they carbonate.  I hope we didn't starve our yeast to death by waiting so long to add some sugar and bottle the beer.  

Pigs Love Pears!

Pigs love pears so much, that just observing them enjoy pears makes everyone watching want to eat a pear too.  They snort and snuffle with satisfaction as they crunch with their teeth and smack with their lips.  I am sure I've never enjoyed any food as much as these pigs enjoyed spotty pears!

Yesterday, as Brandon was installing insulation in the kitchen wall of the tiny farm house and I was doing the same upstairs, I took a break to fill a couple of buckets with pears from the giant pear tree in the front yard.  The pears are still hard, but I can tell they are ready to for harvest because all I have to do is change their angle on the branch and they pop off into my hand.  This means that a stiff breeze causes a cascade of pears, so sitting under the pear tree is dangerous.  And even though we've never been stung, walking through the fallen pears seems dangerous as there are wasps, bees, and yellow jackets feasting on the rotting fruit.  

Every time I see all the pears on the ground, I think that it is a shame I don't have a pig to feed.  Then, as I was filling my buckets with pears from the tree, I remembered that Farmer Joe has pigs, but isn't it a shame that he can't bring his pigs over to eat all these pears?  Wait a minute, I can take the pears to the pigs!  Doh!  Sometimes I amaze myself at the rapidity of my thought process.  

As the setting sun was reflecting off the clouds in the eastern sky, Brandon and I filled three giant buckets with spotty pears.  The sun set was fantastic on our short drive to visit the pigs, and when we arrived at Joe's farm, Ashley was out taking a stroll with the baby and her good camera so she could photograph the brilliant colors in the clouds.  

Since Joe was still using the last of daylight to do work in the pastures, he directed us to find the pigs down by the old silo.  Brandon and I carried our buckets and stopped near the fence where we could see dark lumpy shapes sleeping under a shed roof.  We called all the appropriate piggy calls, "Suewee!  Heeeere piiigg, pig, pig!  Oink oink!  Sueweeee! Piggy, pig, piggy!" and the dark lumps didn't even move.  Apparently, Joe hasn't taught his pigs to speak proper pig language, or they don't respond to strangers, which is rude.  

Finally, tired of being ignored, Brandon chucked a pear into the shed where it bounced around on the pavement and caused a chorus of grunts and piggy snorts as the dark shapes roused and began to take on the shape of pigs, curly tails and all.  The pigs quickly forgave the rude awakening when they realized we were pitching tasty pears and we weren't just jerks they could ignore, and they came out of the shed so I could coax them to the fence.  

There are four pigs, and they have big pastures to graze, partitioned by electric fence so Joe can rotate their grazing.  The area near the shed and the old silo, where they were sleeping and where they have access to water, doesn't have a lot of grass, but it wasn't filled with giant holes and wallows like some people are afraid will happen if pigs aren't kept on pavement.  And, it didn't stink!  I was most curious about the smell, as I like to have accurate olfactory information for my own pig ownership day dreams.  Not that there wasn't a nice dirt and organic farmy aroma, but it was nothing like the super stink that comes from the confinement pig buildings I have had the pleasure to visit when working on other farms.  

Soon, it was too dark to see the pig's pear eating joy, but before we left we discussed which of the pigs looks the tastiest, since Brandon and I have committed to buying one of the pigs once they are butchered.  Brandon thought one of the black pigs had the hammiest looking rump, but I was partial to the pig with the smaller spots.  I'm not sure how spots affect the taste of bacon, but I feel like they may be the key ingredient to the perfect BLT!  

Going Home

Just a few weeks ago, on Byron's birthday, I was searching through some old photo albums looking for a baby picture of him to remind myself of our advancing years.  Why I like to remind myself of this on birthdays, I'm not sure, but nothing brings the passage of years to my attention better than comparing the youthful images of  myself and my loved ones to our current aged state.  I remember when Byron was the baby in the photo, and now he's solidly in his thirties, and even his babies aren't babies any more.  Whoa.  Time really is real.  If my baby brother is all grown up now, how old does that make me?!

As of Monday, it makes me thirty-seven!  Now, thirty-seven is really old if I were a horse, but if I were a bowhead whale, who can live for a couple hundred years, I would just be getting started on life.  So I'm trying to keep my age in perspective.   

While perusing one of the photo albums that belonged to my grandmother, who kept albums for all the grand kids to inherit (she also kept a journal, so I like to think she would appreciate a blog), I was struck by the photo compilation on the page above.  That's me, in the month I turned four.  The page is titled, in my grandmothers hand, "Going Home" and on the page is a photo of the little house my parents built in the woods where I grew up, our flock of chickens, the mamma goat, Heidi, with her rambunctious baby billy goat, and me, running down the long gravel driveway through the woods to the house.  

My first memories are from my fourth year.  I even remember when the baby goat was born, which I'm sure is such a vivid memory because I stepped on some after birth with my bare feet!  The arrival of the baby goat was very exciting, I'm sure, which is why someone, presumably my dad, carried the new baby goat over to the front door of the house to show me even though I was already in bed.  I stumbled, bleary eyed and in my pajamas from my bed and down the stairs to see what the commotion and excitement was about, and as I approached the tiny gooey looking goat on the rug by the door, I stepped on something wet, pink, and gross.  Shudder.  This is not a sensation easy to forget, and even now, thirty-three years later, I can feel it between my toes when I think about it.  Maybe I was awed by the wonder of  new life, but my sleepy little brain was permanently grossed out too.  This doesn't stop me from day dreaming about having goats some day, but in my dreams I'm always wearing shoes!  

The Going Home pictures make me wonder if it's possible that my garden, my chickens, my tiny farm house with a long gravel driveway, and even my desire for goats are all semi-unconscious attempts to recreate my four year old life.  

Sunshine and Rocks at Cape Enrage

The photo above was taken early this morning from the back door of my room. Look! A sunbeam and a blue sky!

On our way to breakfast we stopped by the wharf to see the sunrise over the bay.  After days of fog and rain, it was extra exciting to see the sun.  

After a half day of lectures, we said goodbye to our classmates, and headed toward Cape Enrage, which is about twenty minutes outside of the town of Alma.  The tide was out as we neared the point of land with the light house, and we walked way out on the sandy bottom of the bay.  The water carves little ripples in the sand, and ours were the only foot prints on the entire beach.  

On the air plane on the way to Canada, my seatmate told me that we should visit Cape Enrage since we were going to be in the area.  Once we got to our chalets, the guy at the desk suggested Cape Enrage as a place to see.  A local lady in the class also said we should make sure we get out to Cape Enrage.  After all those recommendations, we were intrigued, and as soon as class let out today, we grabbed some sandwiches and cookies from the bakery in town, and headed for the little light house on the jutting cliff that is Cape Enrage.  Everybody was right, it was worth the visit.  

The light house has a fog horn that started sounding while we were there.  The lady in the gift shop told us that the light house has sensors on the outside that detect foggy conditions and sound the horn.  Strangely, something about the bright sun on the side of the light house also triggers the horn, so even though there wasn't any fog, we got to hear the fog horn.  I appreciated the authentic ambiance.  

Without even trying, we timed our trip perfectly.  Not only did we have lovely sunshine and bright blue skies, we arrived as the tide was out, and could leisurely explore the stony shores while we watched the tide reclaim the stones.    

The tall vertical rock cliffs are impressive, and made me feel very small.  

The pools of water in the rocks left by the retreating tide had lots of snails.  The snails left on the dry rocks were closed up tight, waiting for the waters to return. 

The large boulders were draped with long strands of sea weed and covered in small white barnacles.  

It looked to me like there were two species of sea weed.  The one in the photo above was short, had wide leaves, and the puffy air sacs on the ends of the branches were bumpy, and shaped like little hands.  

The other kind was long, with smooth oblong air sacs and little round leaves.  The air sacks feel like little rubber balloons when I squeezed them.  I'm glad there weren't any locals around to see me squeezing the sea weed.  

As the tide came in, these long mats of sea weed, which are anchored to the rock, would float and swish violently back and forth in the waves.  

If I remember correctly, Charles Darwin was a barnacle man, and his observations about the different barnacles at different locations on ships hulls helped him understand the adaptation of species.  Darwin must have had a more delicate barnacle extraction technique than mine, which involved banging on one with a rock, because I don't think he would have been able to tell much about the smooshie glob I managed to extract with my technique.  I hate to say it, but I am now a barnacle murderer.  

After exploring the shores at Cape Enrage, we had a short drive to visit the Hopewell Rocks, which are cool sandstone cliffs sculpted by the waves.  The tide was coming in fast, so we couldn't walk under all the arches, but we got to observe the tide swallow their bases.  

Tucked under one of the rock pillars were a little family of rock sculptures.  

Someone dedicated some time to rock collecting and rock stacking, and somehow got the rocks to defy gravity and perfectly balance.  

At our last lookout, we could see the setting sun shimmering on a river flowing to the bay.  I'm glad we had a day with a sun, and I'm glad we had days with mist and fog so we could really appreciate the sun shining on the water.  

As a grand finale for our trip, we had lobster for dinner, again, and this time we decimated our lobsters like real pros, as you can see from our discarded shell basket.  The first time we had to ask the waitress for directions, but not this time.  We had our bibs on and our tools at the ready, and as soon as they arrived at the table we went after that lobster meat like we meant it.  Lobster number two was even more delicious than the first one! 

Cloudy Day in the Bay

After breakfast this morning, and before class began, we drove to the top of a hill so we could look out onto the Bay of Fundy.  It was the first time we could see a horizon line, and discern the sea from the sky.  

We had high hopes that the clouds would break apart, and we would see sunlight today, but it remained cloudy all day.  It didn't rain, and it wasn't foggy, so the views were different from the day before.  

Today, I sat near the front of classroom so I could hear the instructor better, hoping it would help me stay focused during the technical parts of the presentation.  I was doing pretty well until the coffee break when they supplied warm sticky buns from the bakery across the street.  They were delicious, but even coffee can't counteract the sleepy power of sugar coated pastry.  

During our sticky bun break, I swapped insect stories with a fish biologist from Manitoba.  She shared the horrors of biting black flies at her research station, and I tried to explain the misery of chiggers.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in the world without having ever heard of chiggers?!  Over lunch, a consultant from Nova Scotia explained the trials of trying to do research on tidal flats when the tides catch him unawares and washes all his gear away, and I tried to explain having to work into the wee hours catching bats in nets.  People are doing strange things all over the world.   

Fortunately, part of the day was spent outside looking at a stream restoration project.  Finally, we were getting to see real examples of the practices we've been hearing about.  Because the stream project was on a golf course, the entire class had to wear hard hats to protect us from golf balls.   

This might make sense if there were actually people playing golf at the course, but they didn't have a single golfer, and didn't expect any, since it's the off season.  The hard hats were some crazy park regulation meant to protect visitors.  Surely golfers don't have to wear them?!  No wonder they don't have any customers!  But, it's nice to know that other countries besides my own can take safety to such extremes. 

Growing along the stream banks were these lovely shrubs with bright red berries.  I think it's a type of Viburnum, but it's not a species I'm familiar with.  In our class, besides myself and my two coworkers, there are two other Americans, but these guys are from Arkansas.  As I was admiring the red berries on the bush, one of the Arkansas guys walks up and picks some of the berries and starts to eat them.  I asked him if he knew if they were edible, and he said someone told him they were cranberries.  Uh, those are not cranberries!  Maybe you shouldn't be eating them?   If you hear of an international incident that involves the unexplained death of an Arkansas man in New Brunswick, you'll know what happened!  

While there aren't cranberry shrubs growing on the golf course, there are lots of apple trees.  All sorts of apples - green ones, tiny ones, red one, small pink ones.  This must be a great climate for apples, because they grown along the roadsides and stream banks.  

Before our field visit, we were given some background information about the stream restoration on the golf course, and one of the challenges of the project was that the top soil was contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals from the years of chemicals used on the golf course turf.  As the entire class is picking and eating apples from the trees on the course, I asked if anyone was uncomfortable eating fruit from a place that we were told had contaminated soil.  Everyone just shrugged and kept munching their apples.  One guy who seemed to know a lot about apples, said all old apple orchards have soil with arsenic and lead, because they used so much pesticides, and that it's an environmental concern.  Great.  Not to be left out, I tried a few bites of apple myself.  My Arkansas friend said I shouldn't worry since we would get a stomach ache before we got arsenic poisoning.  I wonder if he will be able to tell arsenic stomach ache from "cranberry" poisoning?   

After class, with our remaining day light (if you can call it that), we headed into the national park and hiked down as short trail to a beach.  

The beaches are course red sand and small gravel, and they are littered with snail shells and sea weed.  

We hiked along the top of the cliffs to see the bay from above, and watched the tide take over the beach we walked only moments before.  

Even with all the hiking, I don't think I exercised enough to earn the seafood casserole that I had for dinner, since a seafood casserole is a giant pastry topped pot pie filled with a creamy sauce, shrimp, lobster, and scallops, and served with a baked potato, coleslaw, and a tall beer.