“No time for words, dude.”
We had more wind and more rain and then we woke up yesterday and discovered that summer was over; we all wore socks for the first time. Otis even wore two pairs. We fretted about our lack of winter plans and got batteries in the thermometer and talked about firewood and pre-warmed our coffee mugs before adding the brew.
It was … maybe 60 degrees, and it might seem we were over reacting, but nature is on the same page. The bracken ferns in our woods have all turned brown, and I’m pretty sure I heard a flock of geese honking southward.
The vegetable predator was caught on game cam in the high tunnel, and revealed to be not the woodchuck, but a rabbit. A motion alarm was set, and after several attempts I managed to catch it in the act amongst the peppers and tomatoes and end its reign of terror – and used the body as bait in an effort to bring the poultry slayer to justice.
The chicken predator, however, remains uncaptured, unkilled, and unidentified, and so our count of surviving chickens has fluctuated endlessly for two weeks – down by 2, then they reappeared. Then down by three, but one returned, shell shocked and not right in the head. Then up by 8 – while working far from the coop I hear a faint peeping, recognized as the reassuring motherly mutters of a hen to newborn chicks, and discovered that another of our hens had stashed and sat upon a clutch of eggs.
These, we moved immediately to safety – whatever our local killer is, it is relentless and the joy of having the chicken clans milling about has been blunted by the fear of when death would next come ripping through the flock.
Foraging this week has turned toward mushrooms; the lobsters keep coming, and the shrimp of the woods have started popping as well.
In the beginning of the week, we all thought it was too cool, too soon. By the end of this week, we were steamed into eagerness for fall. So the storm came and the temperature dropped twenty degrees whilst the wind tore apart the mosquito gazebo and felled dead oaks pell mell through the chickenyard.
With a headlamp, predawn, I surveyed the damage and noted a rain covering askew upon the Playhouse RV, fetched a ladder and leaned it up and ascended to yank the roofing home. The storm I’d thought I’d dodged before bed came upon me unannounced in a deluge, as if a bathtub had been upended above my head, and I had literally to laugh aloud through the waterfall.
A day that starts with such a baptism feels good to live.
The vegetables were into it, too.
PS – Did you find the hidden toad up top?
The predator came back this morning and found where mama and the dozen had bedded down near the bird feeders. The chicks escaped while mom sacrificed herself to save them. It was not a great way to start the day and it wasn’t until the end of harvest that I stopped feeling gloomy. Hmm, I tried glossing over the Part 2 of the Bad Morning Blues I see. Well I was raised catholic so let’s do confession; when I tried to herd the 10 baby chicks to safety at dawn this morning, I fatally injured one of the chicks. A metal wall I was using to corral them tipped over on him (I’m gonna pretend to know it was a rooster to take the edge off, ok? and I had to end his life by hand. You might not be a baby chicken massacrer but perhaps you have made poor decisions that you regretted vehemently and you understand how it goes. Ugh.
But then there were ten, and after harvest was done we had a comical time trying to corral them, finally succeeding in capturing half the Orphans (as that generation are now collectively known), enabling us to box them up and send them to their new home at CSA shareholder Cody’s house – where they will grow up adored by her two children and spoiled as the only poultry people present. So that was nice. The remaining five will be bravely facing life and the lurking predators and the dangerous Gabe Guy with the rest of the flock.
There is also a vegetable predator marauding in the greenhouse – a woodchuck, so with the aid of a motion sensor alarm I send him running with a warning shot from the .22, but if he returns and continues to evade the live trap while making an absolute hog of himself on our produce, we might get to find out how his species tastes.
The deer, however, are no problem at all this year and it’s relaxing not having to worry about them – especially since we finally finished the amazing new deer fence yesterday (that last part was unlikely to be breached, but the possibility of being proven wrong had kept your farmer up at night worrying about the tender little fall crop seedlings growing up just inside there).
Foraging continues: this time of year is all blackberries and wild mushrooms – this week we brought a load of chicken of the woods over to Neighbor Marcia’s to refrigerate for the market, and found a hoard of far superior quality and quantity when we were driving away up her driveway looking into her woods! All rejoiced, and the abundance helped make the farmer’s market our most successful ever!
And in happiest news, mighty enough to counterbalance the chicken problems; the cat has officially adopted us and its name is Ranger and the boys love it and it purrs when we pet and pick it up.
Farm Life taketh away but it also giveths … so, so much.
I’m not going to dwell or bemoan or wax forboding but it is just a science fact felt in the bones of all life local that summer has peaked and is now on the slow opening slide into the wintertimes. Trees know it, we know it. This part of the ride is really pretty. We’ll strive to remember to look up, and look out(ward).
We foraged lobster and chicken if the woods mushrooms, said forever farewell to the last O.G. Ginger chicken, and picked 10 pounds of chokecherries and a nice little pile of blackberries … we missed the opening salvo of these but are ready to ride the rest of the wave.
This week,
, which of course means that we mulched, and weeded, and welcomed the white and grey kitten to hang around if it wanted, and a chick got munched by a larger wild bird, and the pole beans got weeded. Wwoofer Margaret joined us, speaking of pole bean weeding.
TOMATOES – Prime tomato sandwich season is upon the land (and there was great rejoicing.) The green ones are likely almost peak ripe, as are almost all of them. If you don’t eat them within a few days, maybe move them from the counter to the fridge … or eat them. Eating them is a popular and correct path, with much potential for creative expression and joie de vivre. Tomatoes!
(PS do you need to buy a new jar of mayonnaise?
Cherry Tomatoes– like the other tomatoes, but little and adorable, in the manner of babies.
Purple Potatoes – If you’ve been mindful of how beets might color a dish, you’re equipped to handle the potential of the purple potatoes to dye a soup in an unpleasant direction (light colored soups become murky gray. Boiling them removes their color, but roasting is pretty purple preservative.
Red Onions – they are like the white onions, but they’re red. Pretty on a sandwich raw, if you swing that way.
They also stay pretty pickled.
Shishito Peppers – usually left whole. best blistered by high heat; grilled or on hot oil. Sprinkled with a little sale, and some garlic when you’re almost finished cooking them,
Sweet Corn – just a couple ears, and rather smallish. The corn is not having it’s best year. We have theories
Zucchini
Slicing Cucumbers
Summer (?) Savory – it might go well with your roasted potatoes, or in a compound butter. Use fresh or dry some for a later soup or something.
a Melon – either a cantaloupe or a sunjewel, or the one Yellow Canary Melon if you are that one box.
Arugula Microgreens – They have some spicy zip.
Maybe Ground Cherries – the hand of farmer fate is handing out a pint of ground cherries to the half of our members who missed a melon last week. So it be. Don’t worry if you miss them today – there will be more.
