Bad Carrots

September 5, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 6 Comments

This year Stephen maxed our garden spot to capacity. For weeks we were loaded down with lettuce, carrots, butter peas, brown peas that I don’t have a name for, green beans, tomatoes, and peppers – and this year we wanted to try and save some of our favorites items to use throughout the fall and winter.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Lots of lettuce ready for the picking

There were some successes and failures….we’ll start with the successes because the failure story is a little rank.

All form of beans were nicely blanched, bagged, frozen, or dried. They are all safely stored in the pantry or freezer.

Onions and garlic were harvested, dried, and hung in the barn loft. Now that most of the hay is gone, it is pretty easy to get up there and move about.

And then, there were the carrots. Our carrot crop didn’t do very well this year, but we still had a good plenty to store up. We had heard once that you were supposed to store carrots pretty much the same way that you store potatoes – and I still have no idea how true that is.

Most people around here just store potatoes under the house. Well, to successfully get under our house you need to be about the size of a small child…and since I wasn’t too confident that my cousin would jump at the chance of volunteering her three year old for the job…we decided that another solution needed to be found.

Stephen and I thought about it for awhile, and figured we’d try using an extra styrofoam cooler. After all, coolers are dark, dry, and are easily sealed up. Looking back, I think it was the easily sealed up part that got us in to trouble.

A few weeks later I’m in the kitchen fixing supper and I smell this horrible stink – and I mean unbelievably horrible. Then I notice this toxic brown slime dripping to the floor – where the heck is this coming from!

The carrots…

Carrots can not be stored in a cooler. They will rot and mold beyond belief – colors and stink that you did not know existed! The toxicity of the slime will be great enough to rot through a styrofoam cooler. I thought styrofoam could not be biodegraded!

Stephen was heartbroken. I promptly sent him outside to get rid of the carrots; he was still speaking out in denial between dry heaves and gagging at the deadly stench radiating from that box.

So friends, what have we learned about food storage and life in Pleasant Hill in today’s post?

Carrots cannot be successfully stored in styrofoam coolers, just stick to the under your house method or preferably whatever a legitimate carrot farmer suggests.
Stephen’s hair really is like mad Bob Ross hair when it hasn’t been cut in several months….and yes his eyebrows are just as big.
We may have discovered a solution to the problem of non biodegrading styrofoam in our nation’s landfills – just seal it all up with some fresh carrots and let nature do it’s thing….if you can handle the eye watering odors that it will emit.
Onions and Garlic in the barn are really nice…plus you feel all old timey when you go cut one down to cook with. Good idea Stephen!

If you’re a chicken, then why does your box say “police”?

August 30, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 5 Comments

In a day and age where Tour d’ Coops are not uncommon events in chicken communities….I have to admit that our coop is strictly functional – built purely for the shelter and safety of our flock.

262614_858197892631_683688_n — Our unassuming, functional coop.

Today, My Pet Chickens unveiled – in my opinion – their coolest, most awesome coop yet. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you My Pet Chicken’s The Hobbit Hole.

Totally awesome, and ridiculously cute beyond all imagination. I mean who doesn’t want this in their backyard? If this doesn’t convince you that having chickens can be life changing and fabulous…nothing will!

But – deep in the fathomless pits of nerd-dom….another type of coop exists – and believe me, it may be even more awesome that the Hobbit Hole.

It is a TARDIS.

With its own Dalek. What!

Well, if you didn’t already know that I’m a fan of Doctor Who, you know now.

In theory, I think having a TARDIS coop would be crazy fun; but I know that I would fall victim to a contagious disease that strikes even the most vigilant of chicken keepers. That disease is called Chicken Math.

tardis-tennant — The 10th Doctor and the TARDIS

Chicken Math is a disease that hinders your ability to properly count the number of chickens that you own or plan to own at any given time. You plan on only having 6 chickens and one day you wake up and you have 10…a year later you have 56 and you are not entirely sure what happened except that you somehow became a chicken hoarder.

If I had a TARDIS coop, I would spend all of my time constantly opening and closing the door hoping that my coop would suddenly be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. I’d make an excuse that we needed at least one chicken named Ameilia or Martha or Rose….and before you know it, we’d have all three of them, plus Donna, Wilfred, and Sara Jane Smith!

Nope – in Pleasant Hill we’ll just stick to our functional coops and leave the Tour d’ Cooping for everyone else. After all, Stephen and mine’s carpentry skills are not that advanced – but we still enjoy looking at everyone else’s creative cooping!

Living in the White House

August 26, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

Living in a white house is like wearing a white shirt to a cookout….its going to get dirty, something dripped on it, and eventually things are going to start looking dull.

The White House has been quite dull for quite a while, its last paint job being well over 10 years ago. After countless storms, winter slush, and a particularly nasty hail storm – that really did a number on our cars – it was in desperate need of a touch up.

So this summer, we scrapped and painted the old white house, and let me tell ya – it’s looking good these days.

My Poppaw is a firm believer that everything – and I literally do mean everything – can be done with the aid of a tractor. So instead of using a good old trusty ladder….we used a front end loader.

Just beam me up Stephen!

I, however, found a much more suitable use for the tractor. It’s surprisingly comfortable and cozy….as long as you don’t mind getting red dirt all over your clothes.

In reality, I only spent about half an hour making myself at home in my new favorite nap spot. While Stephen and Poppaw were busy painting the back side of the house, I worked on scrapping the front bannisters.

Let me go ahead and say….any paint scraping by hand ends up being a lot of work with very little benefit to show for your efforts. Plus, you end up with a load of paint chips stuck in your hair and on your face.

So why waste all that time scraping away? Why not just use a common heat and chemical paint remover? Well, there are two really good reasons.

One – we didn’t want to light our house up like a bonfire on a chilly October night. After much research, we discovered that quite a few common chemical paint removers are highly flammable, and solid wood homes of a certain age – like ours – tend to catch on fire.

Two – our chickens do not, sadly, lay golden eggs. The non-flammable water based paint removers are a bit pricey, and were way outside of the budget. We loved our house enough to spruce it up and make sure that we didn’t burn it down in the process, but not enough to go broke on.

The old white house looks a world better these days – almost like a new. There are still some needed repairs to the front porch, but its nice knowing that our major summer project is out of the way and that we are no longer embarrassing the neighbors.

oh honey, honey…

July 10, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 4 Comments

We spent a hot, happy July 4th doing something entirely new and different.

This year we extracted honey from two of our three bee hives. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect…beyond getting sticky…but it ended up being a lot of fun.

Stephen began the morning suited up in his bee suit and retrieved two hive supers from hives Barney One and Barney Two. Being terrified of the “Barnies,” I faithfully stayed inside and ate a bowl of cereal and watched an episode of Leave it to Beaver.

We set up our honey extracting operation on the back porch, using a honey extractor from our local agricultural extension office. As Stephen brought in the honey frames, I would cut the wax cappings off of the honey comb.

Two frames at a time are loaded into the extractor, which is turned until all of the honey has been pulled from each side of the honey comb. Extracted honey then pools into the bottom of the extractor where it is allowed to drain into a bucket strainer system.

Wax cappings are left to drain over cheesecloth for the afternoon. Once they are sufficiently drained we will run the extra honey through the bucket strainer and the cappings will be rendered into refined bees wax.

Once the honey has been strained of any impurities (extra pollen, dead bees, and honeycomb) it is ready to be bottled. Stephen attributes the dark color of our honey to the local yellow poplar trees, clover, and sour wood trees that his bees have been frequenting.

As far as taste goes, its good. The honey has a mildly floral scent and a pleasant sweetness. Its not overpowering or sickly – its just nice. And this assessment is coming from someone that doesn’t really like honey all that much.

We spent from nine in the morning until nearly midnight to complete the entire process – but it was time well spent, once again carrying on a Pleasant Hill bee keeping tradition. We did a lot of hard work, had a lot of good fun, and ended the day with a final product that we can be proud of.

Don’t forget to remember

June 9, 2012 ~ sanebishop ~ 2 Comments

As spring moves on to summer our chores seem to be piling up, up, up. And over the course of the last few weeks we have experienced much change in the white house.

For starters, the white house is now white again. After two weeks of painting the old place looks somewhat new…sort of. The baby chickens have graduated up to the big coop. We have been on “nesting box duty.” We’ve adopted a new hive of bees, and said goodbye to a familiar face around the barnyard.

Penfold, my little American Game, has decided to go broody, and she is going to sit on her nest come hell or high water.

The box is empty. Penfold doesn’t care – she’s sitting there anyway. I stick my hand in with treats trying to tempt her out of the box. Penfold doesn’t care – she’s sitting there anyway. Andy comes in to oust her off the nest and join the others foraging (Penfold’s favorite activity). Still, Penfold doesn’t care – she is sitting there anyway.

SAM_2536 — Penfold attempting to reclaim the eggs we took from her nest.

So, several times a day Stephen or I tromp across the soggy pasture to take her out of the box and shoo her away to do something, anything else. It’s taken a few weeks, and there have been occasional set backs, but we think Pen is over this spell of motherhood, which is really better for all of us.

The little chickens are slowly integrating into the big flock, and things are going much better than the last time. Zillah has proven herself to be an adventurous and brave soul – venturing forth to eat with the big chickens, taking a shot at finding her place on the hen house roost, and taking up for her much more timid sisters.

Danger

Quigley and Danger are doing pretty good through this whole process, though they are much more cautious. Flannery, our head hen, has been quite kind to the little girls….offering them a safe place to perch next to her on her self made throne. Most of the others ignore the little girls, unless food is involved. The current flock shake down is that Charlie hates Zillah, and Penfold despises Quigley….and somehow Danger has managed to fly under the radar.

One troublesome thing that has arisen over the last week has been Mini’s behavior. We’ve been surprised at the amount of aggression that he’s shown towards the little girls, and it has had both Stephen and I concerned. Over the last few months we have observed that Mini’s behavior has often left the hens stressed out and grumpy. We’ve questioned our decisions with our flock management, and have been seriously considering what the best options for the overall flock dynamic might be.

Last night as the chickens went to bed Mini kept repeatedly pecking Zillah in the head. Tonight, Stephen witnessed the same thing and in our minds a firm decision was made. With a heavy heart, we’ve said goodbye.

Mini is gone.

Stephen wrote this to me tonight. I want to share it, because it reflects the reality and pain that comes along with being a chicken keeper.

It was horrible. Mini deserved a much better death than he got. It took me a long time, it was awful. If we ever have to kill another chicken, then we are taking it to the processing plant. I can’t stand to see them suffer like that and know it is my fault. I hope this fixes many of the problems with the flock, so that Mini didn’t die for nothing.

It may be weird to apply Mill’s ethics of the greater good to flock life, but it is part of the cruelty we face as their keepers. We are part of that flock whether we think so or not, and we are responsible for their lives and well being.

I still love Mini, and maybe his end deserved its own entry; but I felt that his story was so entwined with the changes and upheavals of the flock that it should be told together. He was Penfold’s closest friend, he was Zillah’s biggest fear, he was Andy’s nemesis. He was a good chicken, but a mean rooster.