Seven Trees

We've Moved!!

2010-01-05T18:36:00.000-08:00

Seven Trees hasn't quite settled into it's new digs yet, but it's time to point your browser to our new blog-site - Seven Trees Farm: http://www.seventreesfarm.com/

There will be plenty of updates as we get used to all the bells & whistles of the new format. Our links & blogroll page needs refilling, and we're not done with the flock profile yet either.

But all future posts will be made at the new site, so make yourselves comfortable, and we welcome any comments regarding the big change.

Blog upgrade delay...

2010-01-05T07:23:00.000-08:00

The plan was for this next post to be at our new home online, but some technical issues have arisen -- hence there will be a small delay. Hopefully we can have them resolved this week, but in the mean time...

Here are several cuts of sirloin from the two dexter steers, salted/peppered and ready to grill.

And here's the entire meal, Seven Trees grown Island sunshine bakers with local bacon/sour cream for topping, Swiss chard that we blanched and froze over the past summer from the garden, a glass of home made wine from some local picked fox grapes and our very own home raised sirloin steak [at long last]. The beef is extremely flavorful and incredibly lean... these below I over cooked just a wee bit, and will make appropriate adjustments next time around. But all and all, delicious. We've since also had some Dexter burgers, meat also quite lean, but I kept them to the medium rare side and they were fabulous. The lean meat is more like buffalo or even game than that of traditional beef and is hopefully packed with omega 3's.

Below is the culmination of a slow oven braised roast in a mixture of tomatoes, home grown dried chilis, and other seasonings. Steamed tamales with fresh made masa and the tender chopped beef as filling. You cannot eat just one.

Hopefully the next post will see us at our new home online, with a new outlook and even more adventures. Cheerio!

Happy New Year and Happy Birthday Seven Trees Farm

2010-01-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

Seven Trees: the Blog is 4 years old today!

Hopefully all our faithful readers are enjoying winter holiday fun.

We're working hard to make our next post hosted at the new blog-site, so stay tuned. You'll have to update your link to Seven Trees blog, but it will be worth the effort.

Beach Store Cafe on Lummi Island

2009-12-28T18:57:00.000-08:00

We decided to take a break from all our winter projects & planning to head to Lummi Island for lunch.
The Beach Store Cafe serves up some wonderful food, our most favorite being the locally-caught salmon & chips. They also have good pizzas & burgers, and a good draft beer selection. A great place to hang out in any kind of weather. Here's a view of the cafe from the ferry dock.

Mt. Baker, the Twin Sisters, and the Whatcom Chief. Lummi Island boasts 816 residents, and still has some working farms, a library, post office, grocery store, art galleries, B&B's, and the Willows Inn.

The Whatcom Chief can carry 20 cars, plus 2 cabins for foot passengers. There is currently a lot of debate between Whatcom County and the Lummi tribe regarding the location and lease of the ferry dock. As lovely as the island is, it would be hard to live in a place where both transportation and water supply are in constant crisis.

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Stay tuned for news about our impending move from Blogger to Wordpress. We're in the process of designing a new blog home with more features and information about Seven Trees Farm.

Year's end...

2009-12-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

Another artful presentation by Magnus. This cat knows how to relax! He also knows how to bring live mice inside the house via the cat door as it's been about 1/2 dozen in December alone [that we know about]. Why not bring the mouse inside where it is warm and dry to chase around the living room when the weather is bad? Or better yet the bedroom! But only when your people are sound asleep at night...

We apple tree wassailed on solstice eve this year... one of the few photos taken below. Apparently we were all too busy wassailing or hanging out by the bonfire to do much documenting this go around. Suffice it to say that judging by the empty cider-mead [cyser] bottles, the trees should grow well and bear well come spring/summer!

This is the bed of the truck filled with our steers, just back from the butchers. We hope to do some weighing as to what we got back meat wise, but Doug was 492 pounds hanging weight, Buddy 393 pounds. We sold 1/2 Buddy to family, and we'll hang on to the 1 1/2 beef for now. Our 2 chest freezers are full-up at this juncture! Tonight is sirloin tip steak for dinner... one from each steer and later we'll post our comparison.

This video might be a better display the quantity of beef... it's a lot!

For hibernation season, it has been one heck of a busy month. Not only were the steers taken care of, all of our seeds, and spuds for garden 2010 are ordered. We are also registered to attend the 2010 Country Living Expo and Cattlemen's Winter School <- click for more information.
We attended last year and it was really a terrific experience. As their website says... "the Country Living Expo and Cattlemen’s Winterschool is just for you. You can attend classes on a multitude of topics, network with other small farmers, enjoy a prime rib lunch and visit with local agricultural businesses offering you service..." There are a number of classes this year on business laws for small farms, incorporating, but also hands on courses like beekeeping, raising grains, butchering chickens, mud mitigation, you name it! It's an excellent program that we recommend any small or backyard farmer in the area try to attend.

We are also making arrangements to be at the 2010 Small Farmers Journal Auction in Madras, Oregon April 14-17, an auction of horse drawn equipment, carriages, harness and horses. Pony seriously needs some better harness, maybe even another cart/wagon, and we have been told this is the place to find both selection and good prices. Also should be an opportunity to network with some other people into pulling horses or ponies!

Looks like we'll be rolling into 2010 with all kinds of adventures to look forward to...

Gemini's Snow Day

2009-12-14T18:42:00.000-08:00

Since we haven't been able to get Gemini out for a cart drive recently, we took advantage of the snowy day to take him for a walk. Here he is getting a mini-lunge session while we wait for a car to go by. Gemini never passes up a chance to eat, so he could use a little exercise....

Pausing to pose with pony near the Pole Rd.

We thought it would be a good idea to take Gem to the pig farm up the road. He doesn't care for them at all, and he needs to be able to take them in stride while pulling a cart.

Look at the face on this boar! We also wanted a closer look to get used to the idea or raising and eating a critter like this.

Gemini thought the wind-spinner was rather spooky as well. He sure gets a lot of attention from traffic when he's out walking. It's fun, and a great way to get him used to different sights & sounds.

At the end of the walk, he was ready to quit hoofing it and catch a ride home. Unfortunately his bus wasn't running today, so he walked home anyway.

Meat with a name - Doug & Buddy

2009-12-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

WARNING:

The following pictures are graphic, and a detailed record of how our two steers were turned from livestock into meat. If you keep reading, you will see blood and dead cows, and also learn where meat should come from (not factory farms).

Disclaimer: Anyone who prefers to eat meat 'without a name' should get to know the millions of nameless animals who are tortured and killed for the sole purpose of providing this country with abnormally cheap meat. Read this article and please go the extra mile to make sure you do eat meat with a face and a name.

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Here's the processing truck from Keizer Meats in Lynden, WA. They had slaughtered 2 steers before our turn, as you can see already hanging inside. The truck is equipped with its own running water and a generator to run the meat saw.

We don't have pictures of Doug (Douglas Fir of Seven Trees) and Buddy (RdoubleD Acres Buddy) actually being shot. To get a good clean kill, the fewer distractions the better. The boys were offered one last pan of grain and an apple, and both went down immediately thanks to the skill of the guys from Keizer. Below is Doug. He was shot in the forehead from a few feet away, and in this picture already has his throat cut.

And Buddy, also with his throat cut.

Buddy was more wild in life, and also in death. I'm sure everyone knows that chickens can flap around quite a bit after having their heads cut off. Well, cattle are no different. It took Buddy rather a long time to let go of this world, and for safety's sake we gave him a lot of room until he was done.

The steers were each rolled onto their backs and chocked into place like you do with a trailer or car you want to prevent from rolling.

Here are both steers partially dressed out. We found out it would cost nearly $500 to have Doug's hide tanned, so sadly we had to skip it. The knacker is taking Buddy's insides out in this picture, and Doug is to the right.

At this point, Buddy is nearly turned into quarters of beef, ready to go into the truck.

This is Doug. You can see how well he ate by all the abdominal fat hanging inside. At the very bottom left are his intestines, and to the right his lungs.

The Keizer employees did a wonderful job, from kill to quartering two steers in only 2 hours. Here is Doug being split into halves with a saw.

They hoist the halves up high enough so that the front quarters are able to be put on hooks hanging from the inside of the truck ceiling, then cut the front from the back quarters.

And here are Doug and Buddy, ready to head to Keizer Meats for 14-day ageing, then custom cut & wrapped for us to bring home.

This has been an incredible experience, not just today, but from the very beginning with bringing Stella (Doug's mom) home as a heifer calf back in November 2006. We will definitely do this again, but probably not with a steer that we bred, birthed and raised all on Seven Trees ground.

This is a clip of Buddy (already well-dead) being dragged across the barnyard to the gambrel hoist.

Steamed Pumpkin Pudding and an Arctic Express

2009-12-06T20:04:00.000-08:00

Magnus is able to annoy Newt, even in his sleep. The kitties spend about 23/7 indoors, now that the woodstove is cooking about 23/7 as well.

We tried a new pumpkin recipe tonight (scroll down a bit for the recipe), and it's a winner. If you don't already have a pudding steamer, this recipe alone is reason to go buy one.

The howling north winds are as tough on the bees as our more common Pineapple Express. The Fraser Valley can sometimes take over our weather in the winter, giving us days of bone dry, frigid gales. At least we're lucky this one isn't bringing snow. We put some old roofing panels to use as baffles, and it seems to help. You can see downed branches from our last windstorm to the left.

Gemini has a thick, soft, woolly coat to keep him warm. The humans, on the other hand, have to dress up in some creative outfits to work more than a few minutes outside.

The hens are keeping their feet warm in the straw while they get some sunlight. There is a heated water bowl in the background, and each coop has a heater on a thermostat. They still don't look very thrilled with this weather. Once Doug & Buddy are gone, we'll be starting on their coop upgrade/move to the barn.

Even the garlic is trying to keep warm! Hopefully the wind will leave the straw in place, if not we'll have to lay some chickenwire over it.

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It's garden planning time...the seed catalogs are getting dog-eared from overuse. The 2010 garden should be lots more productive, and lots less maintenance involved. Fingers crossed!

Pumpkin delivery system

2009-11-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

A new house favorite is this pumpkin coffee cake. Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup butter, softened

3 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup sour cream

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 15oz can of pumpkin (or 2 cups fresh pumpkin)

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 eggs

1/2 cup evaporated milk

Topping:

1/3 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup walnuts

1. Grease or spray the bottom of a 9X13 pan

2. Mix together the first 8 ingredients

3. Spread 1/2 the mixture in the pan

4. Mix together the next 8 ingredients

5. Pour the pumpkin mixture over the batter

6. Dab the rest of the batter evenly as possible over the pumpkin layer

7. Sprinkle the topping on top

8. Bake at 325F for 1 hour (until toothpick comes out clean), let cool & enjoy!

We started the big bedroom makeover in March, but when summer hit it was put on hold for outdoor doings. Now that the rainy season has arrived, we worked a bit more on the drapery.

And below we have Magnus, in stealth mode under the kindling papers. He is very helpful when it comes to getting the fire lit. On a less thrilled note, the much anticipated Uncle David's Dakota Dessert Squash has proven to be rather unsuitable for long-term storage. They grew well, they taste great, but they are going bad faster than we can eat them. We're starting to plan the 2010 garden, and we'll be skipping any buttercup squash varieties this time around. We also didn't care for the Kentucky Wonder green beans. They grew like crazy, but the flavor & texture just isn't as good as the Blue Lake variety we usually grow.

Honoring the livestock

2009-11-19T08:27:00.000-08:00

We spoke with Keizer AA Meats this week and it looks like they'll be out to butcher our steers on December 8th. We approach this day with mixed feelings, because above all we do love our animals and make every effort to ensure they are happy and healthy. Douglas Fir of Seven Trees was conceived here, born here, and will end his life here. He is the only offspring of a purebred Dexter cow, Stella who we no longer own, and it is doubtful as long as we both must work fulltime off farm that we'll have another milk cow again soon. When Douglas and Buddy are gone it will not just be the end of their lives, it ends a cycle here at the farm that will not be repeated again for a long while. It is only appropriate as we close this circle that we make the absolute most of these animals to honor their sacrifice that we may eat meat that we raised with a considerable effort on our own land.

We are keeping Douglas's hide and will be quickly transporting it to Quil Ceda Leather Company in Marysville, Washington where it will be tanned with hair on. We are also thinking of the other products of home butchered animals to make that most people these days never consider, let alone eat or make any more.
One of these is blood sausage or black pudding as it is known in the UK, Blutwurst [Germany], or Boudin Noir [France]. Essentially it is a sausage made with blood cooked with regional fillers like barley, heavy cream, onion, potato, bread, fat, suet or some variation of these items, and then placed in casings to be grilled or boiled in skin and eaten. We'll collect a gallon or two of blood from one of the steers at butcher in a sterile stainless milk pail so we can try making this sausage.

Beef Blood Sausage

1# Leaf Lard

10# Onions, diced

1 quart heavy cream

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

1 Tbsp Pate spice

1/2 gallon beef blood

Pork casings

Nordic cultures, Swedes, Finns, etc. aso make something that is known in Swedish as Blodplattar or blood pancakes - click the link for recipe. These are a savory pancake with fresh blood as one of the main ingredients, and are traditionally eaten with lingonberry jam.

We will also keep the tongues, liver, heart, bones for soup, and whatever else we can for either our consumption or to stew up as homemade dog food, which we pressure can and the dogs adore.
While it is rather unsusual for most people to have a hand in the slaughter of the meat they consume these days, it is something we felt it was very important to do. There was no factory in the raising of our meat. Our cattle have lived good lives, they frolicked in the sun, slept in our pastures of green grass, ate until their bellies were full, had shade and shelter from wind/rain/snow, and were treated each day with care and dignity. We will honor all they gave us in sustenance and the pleasure of knowing the food we eat.

Garlic planting day 2009

2009-11-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

We took advantage of the one nice day this week to get our garlic in the ground. In the PNW, mid-Oct to mid-Nov is the time to plant.
The ground is still soft and lush, and we added quite a lot of nearly finished compost to it. Garlic likes to set down roots before the weather really turns, and it's ready to start growing as soon as the days get longer in the spring.

By next July, the 329 cloves we planted will be ready for harvest. This year we're planting Chesnok Red, German Porcelain, and some generic white variety from California.

Stewart must have learned from Gemini! He's got the drive-thru window figured out.

These Sweet Dumpling delicata squash are cute AND tasty! What's not to like?

Even better with teriyaki-grilled London broil and nettle-wild mushroom brown rice. The shroom is our own Prince that we dried last year. He didn't show up this year, but hopefully he'll return soon.

This kettle of cow parts doesn't look too tasty as is, but chopped, sauteed, mixed with carrots, kale and some odds & ends from the freezer.....

.....it makes dog food! And look at our spiffy new pressure canner! An All American #921 cast aluminum and ready for battle....

Still harvesting!

2009-11-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

First off we need to establish a November benchmark for relaxing. Magnus demonstrates his usual style....
Dinner was this wonderful broccoli, cheddar, potato, ham soup, with fresh-baked bread. A great way to enjoy the flavors of our fall harvests. The recipe is here, in case you'd like to try it yourself - Yummy soup recipe
Here's one view of the garden right now. Pretty grim. All the dead squash, tomato & bean vines will make way for our garlic planting later this week. We'll also be tilling in tons (literally) of compost and manure, so next year's garden should be even better.

Another view of the garden, showing how much is still going gangbusters. Broccoli, carrots, chard, lettuce, kohlrabi, soup celery, parsley, green onions, spinach....It's so nice to be eating fresh at this time of year!

The last of the carrots are out of the ground, except for the experimental late planting I did. The apples are from next door, saved from the cider press to be lunch treats. There was one last delicata squash hiding in the garden. I think we've finally gotten them all.

The busy tiny kitchen at Seven Trees. Who knew such a small space would end up being the stage for so much good food. Here are eggs getting dozened-up for customers, canned cider, dried broccoli, and other evidence of harvest activities....

We'll be busy the rest of November, getting ready for Doug & Buddy to go to freezer camp. Lots of goodies to process out of the freezer....blackberries to turn into jam, beef offal (liver & hearts) to turn into dog food, and we'll be buying a 2nd small freezer as well.

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P.S. Does anyone have any tips for what kind of stuff we can collect when they come to slaughter the cattle? I know people make sausage out of pig blood, but does cow blood work? And how do we process it? We want to make use of anything we can, but I really have no clue what the knackers will leave that is useable. We are planning to have Doug's hide tanned, but haven't found a local tannery yet.....

In-cider information

2009-10-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's cider season in Whatcom County! Our neighbors had 33 crates of apples from their trees this year, so we pitched in to help turn them into cider.
Check out this clever work table! The top is made from wood slats, so you can dump your apples or other produce on it and hose them right off. We are definitely going to build one of these for Seven Trees.

Running the crusher is a two-handed job for some of us....a good upper-body workout.

There are little metal teeth inside the hopper that break the apples down enough to make extracting the juice easier. Once the press is full, a wooden board goes on top and a giant screw is turned to force all the juice out. The disk of apple-squishings is called a cheese. The cows got to eat a few wheelbarrows full of the spent apple pulp, which is also known as pomace.

Naturally, we filled a couple of carboys to start some hard cider brewing. We added campden tablets to kill off any wild yeast first. The old-fashioned traditional way is to let the yeast already present on the apples do the fermenting, but this can be unpredictable. We didn't want to take any chances, so we'll use Nottingham ale yeast on one batch, and a wine yeast on another. The ale-yeasted batch we'll bottle carbonated, hopefully with none exploding while they finish fermenting.

We also canned up quite a few quarts to have over the winter. The short processing time pasteurizes the cider, but it still tastes a million times better than anything from the store. Below is a short movie of the crusher in action.

Congee and critters

2009-10-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

Look at this lovely use of an old laying hen! The soup above is called congee. Also known as jook and chao ga, it's an Asian version of comforting chicken soup. My personal recipe is this:

One soup chicken

One 'stalk' of lemongrass

Three 2" pieces of fresh ginger

1.5 cups Jasmine rice

Cilantro

Lime

Salt & pepper

Put an old laying hen (previously butchered) into a soup kettle and cover with water.

Chop the lemongrass into 1.5" pieces.

Scrape most of the peel off the ginger and add.

Add salt to taste, maybe 1 tablespoon.

Simmer 24 hours on the back burner, not letting it come to a boil.

Take out the chicken and remove meat from bones.

Strain out lemon grass and ginger.

Put chicken meat back in pot and add rice.

Bring to a quick boil, then simmer until rice is porridgey.

Salt & pepper to taste.

Garnish bowls of congee with chopped cilantro and squeeze a wedge of lime into it. Heavenly!

This kind of soup can't be canned, so I freeze it with a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of cilantro in each container.

Magnus is taking advantage of chilly nights by the woodstove. The squash are in curing before being stored in the pantry for the winter. They like a week or so of warm temps, then they will last for months in the cool dry pantry on a wire rack. The Uncle David Dakota dessert squash are all they're cracked up to be. Highly recommended!

Gemini is obviously starving to death, and needed to come up on the back porch to beg for dried apple slices through the kitchen window.
After a hard day's work at Seven Trees, humans and critters need to relax.....Gemini doesn't really like beer, but he can't help being nosey.

Puca time!

2009-10-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Our berry patch out front usually gives us the first sign of the end of summer. For weeks straight, we're able to pick more berries than fit in the freezer. But eventually a day comes where the berries look good from a distance, but on closer inspection are all funky. Some have slug tracks, some are already rotten and dropping off, and some never really get ripe. We call this "berries gone puca". What the heck is a puca, you ask?

The Puca (also spelled Pooka, Puka, Puck) is a supernatural creature mostly associated with Ireland, West Scotland and Wales. It can take a variety of shapes, dog, rabbit, goat or goblin, but a large black horse with glowing golden eyes is the most common form. It has the power of human speech, and legends abound in Ireland of people seeking advice from a Puca, which are probably remnants of pre-christian religious rituals. Pucas are also known to abduct unwary nighttime travellers, taking them for a wild ride, then leaving them unharmed where they were found.

An ancient agricultural custom was that any crops left unharvested after Samhain (Oct. 31/Nov. 1) belonged to the Puca, and anyone gathering them would also gather the ill-will of the Puca. Parents would warn their children not to eat these crops by telling them they would make them sick. In many areas people would proactively leave a small portion of their crops in the field, called the Puca's share.

If you'd like to read more about this creature, including how one was tamed by Irish high king Brian Boru, check out these links:

The Pooka

Taming the Pooka

Our garden is just about done for the year. We left plenty for the Puca, and still have a lot of broccoli, chard, lettuce, kohlrabi & carrots planted for winter harvesting. Sitting on the gravel pad where the greenhouse used to be is about 20lbs of carrots, and a kohlrabi the size of a bowling ball. Doug & Buddy had fun gnawing on it. After 4 years of trying to integrate the greenhouse into our food production, we decided we could do without it. Four-season gardening is a wonderful thing, but we'd really rather take winters off and eat canned, dried & frozen harvests. The back porch will be mostly enclosed soon and will be an excellent place for seed starting, which is pretty much all we used the greenhouse for. The greenhouse has gone to its new home with our Endorean friends.

Last of the peppers! We pickled all of these, using a fridge-pickle recipe. We noticed that canning them in the hot water bath makes them not keep as well, and with a 2nd fridge in the shop, we have room for them.
Some of the squash have made it inside for their pre-storage heat treatment. They keep longer if they get a week or so in warm temps. When they're done by the woodstove, they'll go on a metal shelving unit in the pantry.

A persistent visitor to the sunflower feeder. I'm not sure if this woodpecker was after seeds or bugs living in the seeds, but it spends a lot of time at Seven Trees.

Getting ready for winter

2009-10-06T06:14:00.000-07:00

It was a breezy weekend in Whatcom County.
There were power outages all over, mostly due to downed trees like this one across the road from us. Our power didn't go out until they turned it off to get rid of the tree, but we still had fun chatting with neighbors and a couple of friendly police officers.

This weekend I also experimented with making roasted vegetable stock that went into a batch of black bean veggie soup that I canned. Here are the raw stock ingredients, ready for roasting. The recipes I used are here: Roasted veggie stock and Black bean soup.

We got a nice pile of maple rounds from one neighbor we bought firewood from, and it's so hard that we had to call for reinforcements to split it. Here's our neighbor to the north, who brought his tractor-driven hydraulic splitter over to help.

And a bit of video showing how powerful the splitter is. We're keeping a couple rounds intact for splitting on, the old fashioned way. We also use a splitting round for peening the scythe on, and killing chickens. Funny how important a chunk of hardwood is to farm functions....

Cabela's Expedition - Lacey, Wa

2009-09-28T08:01:00.000-07:00

We undertook the ultimate Sunday expedition yesterday, a pilgrimage to the monumental Cabela's store in Lacey, Washinton. It's at the opposite end of the Salish sea from us about a 2.5 - 3 hour drive one way. We were undaunted, especially with the addition of a friend to accompany us who prefers to be known only as "Ka-Jo Nes".

From the history of Cabelas: "Cabela's, the World's Foremost Outfitter of hunting, fishing and outdoor gear, was born somewhat inadvertently in 1961 when Dick Cabela came up with a plan to sell fishing flies he purchased while at a furniture show in Chicago. Upon returning home to Chappell, Nebraska, Dick ran a classified ad in the Casper, Wyoming, newspaper reading: "12 hand-tied flies for $1." It generated one response.
Undaunted, Dick formulated a new plan, rewriting the ad to read "FREE Introductory offer! 5 hand tied Flies....25c Postage....Handling" and placing it in national outdoor magazines. It didn't take long for the orders to begin arriving from sportsmen and women around the country."

Back to our story... a nice aside is, it wasn't too far from where J's brother lives, so he and his two kids popped over to meet us for lunch. Here they are checking out our new family member "Big Blue". [J's brother also drives a gorgeous Dodge Ram.]

Upon entering the store we were awe-struck, so much so all we could do was immediately find something to fortify us. Here K and J enjoy a 1/2# Buffalo Burger, and a Venison Kielbasa. I opted for the deli sandwich on wheat with thin sliced Wild Boar, provolone, lettuce, tomato, onion and jalapenos. Mmm-mm, fabulous. Really great fries as well. They had a selection of exotic game meats on the menu, which made it especially interesting to eat here.

To shake off the lunch slump, K and I had a friendly competition on the Big Buck Hunter Pro game. Here we are deciding where and what to hunt.

And here we are shooting up the Montana wilderness trying to bag some elk... "shoot the Bucks, not the Does!" K seemed always ahead of me until he removed his sunglasses, and there went his mojo.

K decided this was, "Man, returning the favor," to the rodent population, in this case a Prairie Dog. Did we ever really shop?

Apparently not. Escalators and levitation.

Here I am checking out a New Holland Tractor out front before heading out and enjoying a frosty treat.

What frosty treat you might ask? Snow Ka-Jo Nes!!

Stay tuned... for more riotous shopping adventures!

Fall has fallen

2009-09-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

The image above is is of Persephone, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite painter.

In Greek mythology, the start of autumn coincides with the time the goddess Persephone returns to the underworld to live with her husband Hades. Persephone was abducted by Hades who fell in love with her and took her to the underworld. Persephone's mother, Demeter, goddess of grain and the harvest was so distressed by the loss of her daughter that in her grief, she withdrew her nurturing presence from the earth. Flowers wilted, and crops on earth died and became dormant. The earth became cold and barren.

It was eventually agreed that Persephone could return to her mother for two thirds of the year but would spend the remaining months with Hades. While Persephone is with her husband in the underworld, seeds lie hidden in the barren ground and when she returns to her mother, Demeter celebrates by resuming her divine duties and restoring fertility to the earth. Seeds burst forth in crops and fruits and life reborn.

We're still madly harvesting and putting up food for winter here at Seven Trees, but things are starting to wind down. Check out Newt, taking a break in a wheelbarrow of hay.

What are these two looking at? They were watching the mini-rodeo as we wrestled with Buddy.Buddy in the stanchion, getting his halter adjusted. Not long before Buddy & Doug will do their part in the cycle of farm life and feed us for a good long time. For now, we're giving them lots of treats and all the hay they can eat.

Make Millions Farming!

2009-09-17T20:19:00.000-07:00

Warning! Adult language, as in swear words. But we may have stumbled onto the secrets of striking it rich at Seven Trees.....enjoy!

Visits as summer wanes

2009-09-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

Brother drove up again to go shooting at our favorite, roomy spot. Another old friend, Dave, was also visiting and as a professional photographer gifted us with many pictures of our outing. Notice Joanna showing off her beloved 10/22.

Here Dave fixes the AR-15 to suit him. My brother has it adjusted so well that it's hard to miss the target.

Just point and shoot. The day was in the mid-80's and proved to be quite toasty down in the gravel pit.

The new truck held all our gear quite nicely as J takes a moment in the shade it created. Next time we've decided we'll bring the BBQ and just make a day of it.

The world's most powerful handgun... well not quite.

But J still practices her Clint look.

We had a great time with our visitors, including the trip shooting, and look forward to when next we all meet. In the meantime, harvest carried on back at home. The Centennial Hops were very ready and needed attention. Notice the cat foreman, Crichton overseeing this task as he does most all tasks inside and out.

Another bonus from our kind neighbors as our young Italian plum trees aren't yet producing. These will either be eaten fresh or dehydrated... the jar contains dried exactly what the bucket does fresh.

And speaking of buckets... I'd no sooner set the pick bucket down on the back porch after emptying it, when I next passed by it was already occupied. At first glance, I thought I missed a leaf, but it was a small tree frog who decided it was a nice place to hang out.

Once noticed though s/he headed to points "up".

Not sure if you can tell, but high up at the top of the back porch is a second frog who our bucket frog joined. Did froggy go a-courting??

The back porch now appears to be a favored frog hang out as we either hear or see them there these days. Maybe they like that we replaced the leaky porch roof this summer.

It gets dark earlier and light later now, so we have installed lights on timers in both of our mini coops for the chickens. Today was an egg record with a total of 21 laid!

Harvest frenzy continues...

2009-09-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

We procured a lovely steel shelving unit for our harvest drying rack this weekend that was quickly put to use for curing veggies.

But right about the time we thought things were settling down Monday the neighbor stopped by. Seems he'd gotten a call from a friend about a shipment of grapes that weren't able to get where they needed to, so they were looking for someone that would use them. Since he has grapes already, we got a delightful special delivery... wow!

Lots more than we expected! A closer view of the beauties. We'll juice them and use some for jelly. If there are no takers on sharing some of this bounty, then we will start a batch of zinfandel wine as well. Good neighbors... well they make good neighbors!!

In the meantime, Newt, who always tries every object out as furniture... gives this drip hoses a test for comfort. She lays on them often, so maybe they retain heat or something to that effect. She's an odd cat, if we haven't said so before.

While Newt goes experimental, Magnus, the intrepid house-cat, "lols" on the living room floor. He seems to have no penchant for testing anything uncomfortable, preferring to lounge on soft things like fluffy rugs, fleece blankets or his human's bed.

Smart kitty!

And an update. Neither of us got a call about winning that draft horse filly. Sigh...

Visit to the Draft Horse Show!

2009-09-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

At the Evergreen State Fair. And just below is Dixie Valentine, an 18 month old Clydsdale filly that is being raffled come Thursday this week. J is pretty darn sure she bought the winning tickets, but that's hard to believe since I was the one who bought the winners.

The sights and sounds were overwhelming to us northerners, with the place being packed, hawkers yelling, rides roaring with associated shrieks, smells assailing from roasted meat to cotton candy, and the sun beating down on all. We finally escaped to the barns where I shared ice cubes from mango/lemon ice tea with one of the draft horses in the cool, far more quiet confines.

Finally 5:00 PM rolled around when the draft event started. This was the winning wagon in one of the senior driver competitions. This 60 year old gal below made driving her team look effortless, but truth is it's just that she'd been doing it all her life. Her percheron team was also in top form and well trained which certainly helped as well. Blue ribbon!

Another shiny wagon competing with black percherons, and from Bellingham none-the-less! We stayed on through the pulling competition, but finally had to depart for home when it started getting late.

Speaking of horse power...

This is a small portion of the harvest that we dropped off at mom's yesterday. The garden is winding down, although J has some nice winter starts going that will hopefully keep us in veggies for a good while longer.

Happy week to you all!

Shiny!

2009-08-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

Check out this big blue addition to Seven Trees' workforce! It's a 2007 Dodge Ram 1500 SLT 4x4 V8 from Dewey Griffin in Bellingham.
We started out looking for a Toyota Tacoma, but after test driving (and pricing) them, plus a Tundra and a Nissan Frontier & Titan, we realized we could get a lot more use out of a full-sized truck, and that the Dodge Ram is a lot of truck for the price. It's going back to the shop this week to have a bedliner and some running boards added. You wouldn't believe how high those seats are off the ground!

We harvested all our onions this weekend. Quite a pile, and that's not including the ones we've already eaten.

They have to cure for a while before we take the tops & roots off and store them in the pantry.

A wheelbarrow of beets (and the not-quite-finished painting project in the background). This is about 1/2 the harvest, since the first 1/2 is already pickled & jarred.

We left them in the ground longer than usual, but they should still be good pickled. Luckily the cows like them, so any we don't eat will be put to good use. All the critters loved the pile of tops we took off, leaving around 50lbs of beets in the basket.

And for the exciting finale, this year's garlic harvest, ready to get cleaned up and brought inside for storage.

Busy bountiful summer!

2009-08-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

The new pullets have just started laying. We had to hurry up and add some nest boxes to their coop, since the older hens don't share their house too well.

Coop with a view! This Welsummer was a little perturbed by the sudden appearance of 'air conditioning'.
Much better! The young gals are getting the hang of laying now, but we did find a few eggs in the barnyard this morning. Practice make perfect!

Here's a bit of the squash patch. You can just make out the yellow yardstick in the middle of this jungle. The vines literally grow more every day, and we have to chop them back from the melons, cukes, beans, maters & peppers that are trying to hold out against the onslaught.

The warm summer is good for the few melons we're growing this year. Not quite ripe yet, but close. This is a Blacktail Mountain watermelon, developed in Idaho and good for cooler summers.

We totalled up our harvests so far this year, just to see how we're doing....

1lb asparagus
27lbs assorted lettuce
3lbs mint/lemon balm/catnip
3lbs nettles
15lbs chard
27lbs kohlrabi
14lbs carrots
6lbs onions
15lbs tomatoes
32lbs cukes
17lbs broccoli
116lbs taters
25lbs blackberries
20lbs green beans
50lbs beets

1340 eggs
59 heads garlic
4 heads cabbage
28 pints pickled beets
21 quarts green beans
5 pints relish
5 pints sweet pickles

Still to come:
-onions
-carrots
-squash
-beets
-maters
-peppers
-melons
-chard
-berries
-apples
-cabbage
-broccoli
-kohlrabi

-lettuce

We're frantically watering, harvesting, processing, and even starting some veggies for a late fall harvest. Maybe we should follow Newt's example and find a hidden nook to relax in. Here she is, tucked behind a stump in the barnyard. When the cows noticed me taking pictures, they came over to ham it up. Newt high-tailed it for some other hidey-hole.....

The Blue and the Gray

2009-08-10T05:59:00.001-07:00

This weekend we time traveled back to the civil war era, and all it took was a fairly quick drive over to Hovander Homestead Park in Ferndale where a reenactment group, The Washington Civil War Association, was camped for the weekend. They had several events throughout the day, but of course the battle was the most dramatic.

The encampment was very authentic, and soldiers moved all about the area as we walked around.

The artillery officer moving to his position with the canon.

Civilians were also bystanders at this conflict. The scout below talks to a woman near the battle field.

The great thing is that there were men and also women fighting this day in uniform at Hovander, which many people do not realize was what truly occured in reality. The farther rider in this shot below is female. At least 250 women, and probably more, served on both sides of the war, disguised as men. "They Fought Like Demons" is a fascinating study about women soldiers in the American Civil War, and attempts to reconstruct the reasons why women entered the armed forces during this era. Some women followed loved ones, some wanted the freedom mostly denied them in normal society as females, and others were simply patriotic. Unlike their male counterparts, female civil war era soldiers were denied medals, pensions, benefits or any public acknowledgement of their contributions. The official stance was simply that women did not serve, despite any evidence to the contrary. The irony that we still today debate whether or not women can be soldiers is deafening. Women have always served, so I think people should just hang up that tired sexist notion.

The battle lines formed up much as they might have in the day with the smoke from canon fire drifting the field.

Drums and bugles sounded, and a drummer is seen marching below with the troops. I would think this red uniform would have made the young boy drummer here a considerable target.

Across the field those fighting in gray formed up as well.

There was an array of union uniform styles represented by the ranks.

And as the fire continued to be exchanged, casualties mounted. We had a pretty decent taste of what a real battle like this might have been like, but with live munition, screams of the wounded, and dieing, hell on earth was probably not an exaggeration about how it really was.

The canon was quite impressive in person! Louder than it appears in the video I must say.

All and all a very entertaining and educational day.

We have much left on our plate here at Seven Trees before snow flies, and sadly the days already grow shorter as it gets dark a little sooner now in the evening already. Still, it was well worth losing a day off to have enjoyed this.

Pease, porridge....bread?

2009-08-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

Lammas means harvest season is underway, and a very important group of crops being harvested now are grains. Whenever possible, our ancestors transformed these grains into bread. And bread often wasn't soft squishy white stuff we see at the grocery store. Depending on one's station in life (and during times of famine), it could be rather "hearty", with pea, bean & acorn flour added for bulk.

Look at this "meadow" in the French Alps. It's actually an old wheat field. Medieval agricultural methods weren't terribly precise, and crops often had other plant species mixed in. Sometimes the mix was intentional. Rye, oats & barley might be sown along with the wheat, the resulting blend of grains called maslin.
Here's a modern wheat field, in contrast. Pretty boring, but easy to cultivate with giant expensive machinery. Bread made from mono-crops like this may be cheaper, prettier and more uniform, but not necessarily more nutritious. Agriculture on this scale also removes individual humans from the ability to grow, process and bake their own bread. A wonderful author and garden-farmer, Gene Logsdon, has just written a new edition of Small Scale Grain Raising that just might inspire you to reclaim your peasant past and grow your own bread. We're planning to give it a try at Seven Trees next year.

Please excuse the watermark on this picture, it's the only one I could find showing a variety of grain seed heads. From left to right: oats, spelt, wheat, barley. Rye, not pictured here, was another very important grain crop, mainly because, like oats, it could grow under conditions too harsh for wheat.

These loaves were baked by a member of the SCA for a period cooking competition, recreating medieval recipes. On the top is wastel, period "white" bread made from sifted wheat flour. It was sometimes called manchet (more info & recipe at link). In the middle is maslin, a whole-grain loaf made from mixed rye and wheat flours. On the bottom is horsebread, a recreation of the mixed-grain breads eaten by peasants, workers, and servants. All are sourdough leavened, and baked them inside an enameled cast iron Dutch oven.

Horsebread was a very coarse loaf, baked with roughly milled grains, pea & bean flour, with a ratio of 2 parts pea/bean to 1 part grain flour. The loaves were baked until very hard, like modern-day biscotti, so they would keep a long time. They were used as concentrated horse food, as the name suggests, but also eaten by poor people and during times of famine. Bread was the main source of calories for a medieval laborer. Records kept at Peterborough Abbey Manor at Kettering, Northamptonshire in 1294 shed some light on a farm servant's daily rations:

- 1/2 oz. cheese

-1/4 oz. butter

-2 3/4 oz. oats

-less than 1 oz. peas & beans

-5 1/4 lb. rye bread

All this comes to 6,035 calories, with the bread making up a whopping 5,440 of them. The first 4 items most likely went into a pottage or soup with kale, onion, garlic and/or wild greens gathered & grown by the worker, one can hope. Otherwise this would be a depressingly monotonous diet. Meat and eggs were not commonly part of a peasant's diet, unless it was a holiday and provided by the manorial lord.

It gets worse.

This is bark bread from Finland. It's now a traditional food, baked to keep alive the memories of harsh famines of the past. One of the worst occurred in 1596-1598:

"Spring and summer brought a lasting wetness. Day after day the heavy rain fell. Clothes rotted on the farmers' bodies as they worked in the wet weather. No dry hay could be brought in. It rotted and turned moldy in the barns. And the cattle, affected by the ruined fodder, sickened and died by the hundreds. The meat could not even be used to feed dogs and cats.
As autumn came and supplies ran out, no new grain could be harvested. The bins and pork barrels were empty. People looked for every possible substitute for their normal diet. They ate bark, buds, leaves, husks, nettles, hay, straw and roots. They ground up bones for flour."

Sounds awful! But people being people, they used what they could find to survive.

Not everything about medieval bread was so indigestible. This article, Early Period Grains and Their Uses, has more information about grains, and also some historically authentic recipes that don't sound too hard to try at home.

More medieval bread recipes at Gode Cookery, plus all kinds of period cookbook translations in case you find yourself wanting to recreate an entire medieval menu.

The bakers at Seven Trees have attempted historical cookery, with varying results, and will no doubt keep trying. As seen in our Smokin! post, an outdoor bread oven is on our hotlist.

Stay tuned for an update on Uncle David's monstrous rampage over, under & through the garden. This squash has even suborned the pie pumpkin and delicatas into its world-domination attempt.

Hot weather cooking - Dutch oven style

2009-07-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

House painting... will it ever end? Actually we are approaching a milestone as J is almost done with the second full coat and we can then concentrate exclusively on the trim. And call for a few gutter estimates... yay!

We wanted to cook a roast this weekend, but Sunday was the start of a week of record high temperatures here. We decided outdoor cooking was the only way to go, but since we hadn't used the dutch oven in forever, we first had to sweeten it.

After a good scrubbing, I filled it with water and a healthy handful of sweet, second cutting hay. From what I'd read, this is a good way to take away any bad tastes from a long idle oven. Boiled with the lid just ajar about 30 minutes, then I put it over medium hot coals open side down to burn out any old residue and finish the job. Another good scrubbing with just water, back to the coals for a heat up, and a good coat of cooking oil. Now that it is cleaned up, next time it'll be a lot easier!

Since it is so hot, having a big fire to cook in was not very appealing, so we opted for the charcoal/grill method this time around.

Some of the recipe idea came from scanning Dutch Oven Cooking and this Dutch Oven Pot Roast.

Our version went something like this... sprinkled the meat with about 1/2 package onion soup mix and black pepper, then set it aside. In a bowl mixed tomato paste with water [beef broth would have been better - lazy].

Placed about 12 coals on bottom of the grill, oiled the oven, and placed it right on the coals. Sauteed home grown onion then garlic in the kettle until starting to brown and added the tomato mix. After that was well stirred, added the meat with more small quartered onions. Placed on the lid with about 11 - 12 coals on top, 9 on bottom and let that simmer 3o minutes. By then it looked like this...

On top of this seasoned meat and sauce, I added a slew of potatoes and carrots right from our garden with a few sprigs of fresh thyme then replace the lid with coals.

About an hour and a half with the lid on the weber and vents full open, and this is what you get.

Roasted fire beef calls for BBQ Bread, so we grabbed the cast iron skillet, and last of the bread dough I'd made that was waiting in the fridge.

I turned this once every 15 minutes and it took about 30 -40 total. A fresh garden salad, glass of wine and bon appetit!

Whenever grilling there are always some eager bystanders.

One never knows if the cook might drop a meat morsel or provide other handouts!

And last, but not least... his nickname isn't "Possum Road-kill" for nothing! No matter how often we catch him laying like this, it still shocks and amuses.

Weekend Harvest

2009-07-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

This weekend as well as more house painting, we did some garden harvesting. The vegetables are very happy this year, especially our Uncle David's Dakota Dessert Squash. It's muscling out everything near it as you can see!

Squash blossoms closer up. The plants seem picture perfect this year.

Got beets? We sure do! This week we'll be processing and pickling many beets. Estimate is about 40 pounds worth this particular harvest.

First storage potato crop brought in as well, and curing before going in the back pantry. One of these days we hope to add an old fashioned cold cupboard to better preserve things and for longer storage life.

Pickling onions, cukes and dill as well as some carrots not shown all went into a batch of fridge pickles.

We used this Refridgerator Dill Pickle recipe and in as little as 2 -4 days this jar of goodness will be ready to eat... Mm-mm!

The tomatoes appear to have a new resident... can you spot her/him in the picture?

Here Fergus is trying to figure out if he should be jealous of "Tame Chicken". She's one of our new hens and seems to love people, running over whenever we are in the area. Naturally she gets special privileges, such as hanging out with us in the yard.

Or even better, lap time with hugs.

Strange Ordinance

2009-07-15T02:50:00.000-07:00

While on vacation we visited a local gravel pit in order to do some shooting. There we found this strange ordinance... someone's bottle rocket special with a shotgun shell finish. Just hope no one was below if it really went off!

We also ran into this melon bandit...

Guess he tried to rob the wrong bunch of hombres.

Returning to life on the farm... this is the 2nd best of the two barred rock roosters we have from the spring chicks, also known as "Number Two". We placed an ad in the local Craigslist for him [there can be only one], and he went to a new flock elsewhere for the tidy purchase price of $10.00. Who says a farm can't be profitable! We just probably won't be quitting our day jobs anytime soon... sigh.

And the painting project continues. Here J is at the midpoint on the front exterior wall. At this point we now have the house competely washed, calked and nearly the entire first coat on the outside walls... second soon to follow. After that it's just the trim paint. New gutters are also on the horizon, when the budget allows as we'd much prefer a color that matches the darker trim over the current white ones. The old gutters will probably get recycled for use on our run-in, and the remainder are spoken for by a neighbor who'll use them on a shop.

Here D screws off the last flashing on the renewed back porch roof. We tore off all the aged, badly installed panel roofing that leaked, reinforced then painted the framing, and installed clear polycarbonate "Tuftex" roofing. The rain was just starting to fall, so job was finished not a moment too soon. Eventually, the back porch will be enclosed to be a bit more user friendly in the winter months. You can see more old white guttering here that simply has to go, especially once the fascia has the darker bronze paint.

We took enough time out from house repair to do a garlic harvest. This year we managed almost 60 plants at harvest, so we could nearly go the year if we didn't use too much over a full bulb per week. Not too shabby. Some of these plants were, simply put, huge! We placed them in an area manure was piled during the winter, then left to compost all summer. By last fall when we sowed garlic, the pile had turned into some dark uber-rich soil. We'll definitely have to use this method again.

Of course no post at Seven Trees is complete without some kind of critter pic. Here Crichton demonstrates the proper form of "sleeping in". Thanks, Crichton!

All kinds of busy!

2009-07-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Ruby chard is one of our go-to veggies here at Seven Trees. It makes a nice salad green when young, and cooks up tasty once it matures. It grows well in cold weather and is slower to bolt than spinach in warm weather. Usually we freeze the surplus for winter after a quick chop & blanch. But those crunchy, juicy red stems are also excellent made into relish. Here's a recipe we found online that is well worth trying if you have a lot of chard in your garden....

Swiss Chard Relish

2 lbs (4 cups) swiss chard stalks only
1 lb (2 cups) onions
1 lb (2 cups) celery
1/2 lb (1 cup) red peppers
2 cups vinegar
2 cups sugar
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup salt

Finely chop vegetables, mix together and set aside. Bring to a boil vinegar, sugar, mustard, turmeric and curry powder. Remove ¾ cup of liquid and mix with cornstarch. Set aside. Add salt & vegetables to remaining liquid and simmer until tender stirring often. Add corn starch mixture and stir continually until thick. Place in prepared jars and seal. (We do 10 minutes in a water bath canner.)

And now for the 'busy' part.....

We've gotten a first coat of paint on most of the house now. Funny how painting always takes much longer than you plan for. But it looks great and will do wonders protecting this 89 year-old tiny farmhouse.
The prep work is half the battle...brushing off webs & yellow jacket nests, a soapy scrub down, caulking any gaps or holes... Lots of people pressure wash their houses, but with one this old, and cedar sided, pressure washing can drive water up into the siding and cause rot inside the walls. It's also important to leave the bottom run of siding uncaulked so the walls can breathe. Old houses have their own needs, but when you do it right, they far outlast new construction. The last time this house was inspected, it was said to have an effective age of only 15 years!

Here's rooster, known as #1. We're hoping he outgrows his teenage rowdiness and has some manners with the ladies. Right now he's still a bit uncouth, but so handsome we'd like to use him to breed our next batch of chicks from. If he doesn't turn out to be a gentleman, he'll go in the stockpot and we'll keep trying. He's fairly friendly though, and likes cuddling. You can tell Stew would much rather have him as broth....

Our painting vacation got rained out a couple of days. Almost every house critter is in this photo. Cats, dogs & parrot make for a lively household when they're all in the same room, not to mention the humans!

New visitors to Seven Trees are a pair of cedar waxwings. They aren't rare to the area, but we've never seen them here before. I think they're trying to nest in the apple tree behind this maple, but our painting activity is making them nervous. Hopefully they will stick it out til we're done. It's always nice to know we're making good habitat for native birds. We also have a pair of swallows which are most likely violet-green swallows nesting in a birdhouse on one of the front fir trees. They eat flying insects, so they should help keep the pest population down this summer.

The garden is coming along great. So far we're harvesting carrots, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, chard, onions, garlic, kohlrabi, a cuke and one tasty Stupice tomato. The squash are going gangbusters, with the Uncle David Dakota Dessert squash doing its best to take over the garden. We are also growing our old favorite, Sweet Dumpling Delicata. So tasty, a great keeper, and one squash makes 2 nice serivings. We snuck a few Sugar Pie pumpkins in, and they are starting to ramble all over the garden as well. Looks like a good summer for warm weather crops.

Summer Vacation!

2009-07-06T18:40:00.001-07:00

We at Seven Trees are enjoying a very rare and all-too-short summer vacation. Stay tuned for updates, but for now Fergus pretty much sums it all up....

Summer projects & rotten rooster remedy...

2009-06-30T05:25:00.000-07:00

Summer is underway! We kicked off with a parental anniversary party on the solstice. Here's parents & "kids" in one of many pictures taken that day.
We aren't really supposed to start painting until this coming weekend, but couldn't resist seeing how the color looked. Fergus definitely improves any household project by his mere presence.
Another much-needed project is replacing the wavy panels covering the back porch roof. The fir trees overhead are constantly raining needles, pollen, and little brown dingles on it, and it wasn't installed properly in the first place. So we'll just reuse the framing to make it easier, and someday enclose it a bit more for additional outdoor workspace.

..........................................................

Warning!! A lot of the pics following aren't for the faint of heart (but there's a video of Fergus & Stew at the end). Out of 25 hatchery chicks we got this April, 3 have turned out to be roosters. The red rooster was turning out particularly mean to the hens, so we decided his higher purpose was chicken stock. Not much fat or flavor on a younger bird, but still way better than store bought.

Unfortunately, we didn't take a before picture of him. By the time we were ready to process him, we didn't want to prolong things any. So he got his head chopped off, and hung over the firepit to bleed out. The dogs are always very interested in any "crime scenes" so doing this part here meant we could light a fire later so they couldn't mess around with the blood.

The obligatory rooster head shot. The way we kill them is really quick. A loop of twine around their neck, twine hooked over a nail in the chopping block, hold legs with one hand and pull just enough to keep him steady. One big whack of the hatchet and that's it.

Another streamlining practice is to skin out birds that aren't going to be made up nice for roasting. You do lose a tiny bit of fat & flavor, but not having to deal with smelly wet chicken feathers more than makes up for it. And usually it's older laying hens that get butchered for stock, and they have plenty of flavor in them.

With this method, you nip off the wingtips once most of the bird is skinned. No sense trying to save those for the pot. Then you take him (or her) down to finish processing.

Nearly done here. The trickiest part is cutting around the vent (hiney) so as to avoid contaminating the meat. But once that part is cut, the innards come out in a package. Mostly.

Here are the parts we saved. As you can see, not much to this rooster at all, but enough to merit taking care of him this way. The dogs got a nice dinner of the parts in the blue bowl, simmered in broth.

And here are the parts we didn't save, at least not for us. This stuff went into one of the compost piles that won't be turned for a while. It will add a nice boost of nutrients to the soil once it's decomposed and ready to go on the garden next spring. We also add wood ash from our stove, and the results are wonderful.

Here is a quick harvest from the garden. A pile of rhubarb and some baby carrots & onion for the rooster stock. I also added some dried soup celery. The curly things are garlic scapes...the flowering stalk that hardneck garlic varieties grow. They need to be removed so the plants energy can go into making a big bulb. There are a lot of recipes online for using the scapes, but the few we tossed with oil & seasoning and roasted weren't my favorite. I think in the future we'll use them for soups (and stock) and not a featured table veggie.

And here's one nice ending for a naughty rooster. Nine pints of stock. We also had rooster salad for dinner, and the last bit of stock & meat will be turned into soup for tonight's dinner.

.....................................

Here's a video of my silly family. The party theme was bacon (our family favorite), so that's what we're yelling....(I'll share more pictures next week)

Last, but never least, Stewart & Fergus enjoying beef bones as bis as their heads. After a few months of treats like this, we have to rake up the yard before it starts to look like a medieval knacker's yard!

Smokin!

2009-06-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

Look at this lovely playground for meat-lovers! There is a firepit, big enough to enjoy sitting around and roasting a few hotdogs or marshmallows over. But this firepit has a higher purpose....a conduit from the left side channels the smoke to a tower-shaped smokehouse, and residual heat also fires the bake oven behind the black metal door. The whole thing is completed by a nice wood storage area, and topped by a handy and handsome work surface. This looks like it took a lot of time, and involves masonry skills we at Seven Trees haven't perfected yet. So we're looking at simpler smokehouse designs to keep us busy until we can build one like this.
The basic principal of cold-smoking (hot-smoking involves direct heat and higher temperatures) is to generate smoke far enough away from the food being smoked that it flavors the meat without cooking it. Moving the smoke from fire to smokehouse is usually managed by making the fire lower than the smoker and having an opening at the top to draw air. A smoker can be as simple as a metal drum with top & bottom removed, a covered trench in the ground, and a campfire.
Why smoke food? Here's the opinion of one aficionado:

Smoking offers many improvements for meat. Besides enhancing the taste and look, it also increases its longevity, and helps preserve the meat by slowing down the spoilage of fat and growth of bacteria. Smoking meat longer leads to more water loss, and results in a saltier and drier product, which naturally increases its shelf life. Man discovered that in addition to salting and curing meat with nitrates, smoking was a very effective tool in preserving meats..
The advantages of smoking meat are numerous. Smoking:
Kills certain bacteria and slows down the growth of others
Prevents fats from developing a rancid taste
Extends shelf life of the product
Improves the taste and flavor
Changes the color; they shine and simply look better
Smoked fish develops a beautiful golden color. The meat on the outside becomes a light brown, red, or almost black depending on the type of wood used, heating temperatures, and total time smoking. Originally, curing and smoking was used solely for preservation purposes; today it’s done for the love of its flavor.

For a more technical treatise on the art of smoked meatses, check out this online publication Curing and Smoking Meats for Home Food Preservation
from National Center for Home Food, University of Georgia.
Here's an above-ground, all-metal smokehouse set up. There are lots of pictures and inspiration at this website, including a a smoker made from a trench and tree stump that has been in use for 20 years.

Here's the one we're thinking about building. You can see the designers took the easy way out and built theirs to use a propane burner as the "fire".

But the size and shape of it, not to mention easy construction, make it a winner. It will be simple to add whatever height "foundation" we need to get the right angle for channeling smoke, but we need to decide just where it will go so we can build a new firepit in the right place.

Here's the smokehouse in action. Reason enough to get a weaner pig next spring! The plans for this smoker, plus pictures, instructions, ideas, recipes, etc. are here - Build Your Own Smokehouse courtesy of the
Connecticut State Department of Agriculture.

Until we get our own smokehouse though, we'll keep enjoying the tasty efforts of our favorite butcher, Silvana Meats. If you're in the area, definitely stop in and peruse their wares. So far everything we've tried has been wonderful (they also do the slaughter/butcher for Hemlock Highlands).

Blogger troubles....

2009-06-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

For some reason Blogger & Vista aren't getting along on my home computer, so this week's post will be slightly delayed. In the meantime, check out the smartest dog in the world - Stew!

Don't worry, Bees happy!

2009-06-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Here's part of the garden so far. This is the cooler side, that gets a little less sun than the other, so we planted onions, beets, carrots, chard, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi & potatoes here. For some reason, the carrots got off to a slow start, but they are kicking into gear now. There is also a very fragrant rugosa rose in the background, and a clump of rhubarb, both of which need to be moved someday.
We're growing less beans this year (and canning all of them) so decided to try the old-fashioned teepee method. We used bamboo, which is relatively smooth, so the bean tendrils take a little longer to start climbing.

Reddale potatoes in flower. When all 3 kinds are blooming, it looks more like a flower bed than a potato patch. It's just about time to start sneaking new potatoes, but hopefully we'll manage to save a few to get bigger.

Some of the mixed greens we harvested this weekend. I think we ended up with 5 or so pounds of red & green oak leaf lettuce, romaine, and baby-leaf spinach.

See if you can spot the honeybee working over this mound of thyme flowers.

Here's another bee checking out valerian flowers. Valerian is NW native plant that usually grows in mountain meadows. One variety is domestically grown for its roots, which are used in a calming tea. The flowers have a lovely fragrance too, and the plant self-seeds into a bit of a privacy screen. Our front border bed is about 2ft wide and over 70ft long. We're constantly adding plants that we think the bees will like. Luckily they like herbs, so the thyme, valerian, sage, lemon balm, mint, oregano, etc. are very popular.

The blackberries are just starting to flower, and the bees are taking full advantage. This is their main nectar supply, and they're no longer using the sugar syrup we've been supplementing them with. Our blackberry patch is about 40 x 50ft, and buzzing with all kinds of pollinators on a sunny day.

See if you can spot the bumble bee visiting a sage flower. We planted the sage for cooking use, but they are very striking when they bloom. And also very popular with the bee crowd....

If you have lots of clover in your lawn, you have a great excuse not to mow too often. Mowing the clovery parts of our yard takes longer because we try to go slow enough that the bees have time to move away from the mower's path.

On our hive check this weekend, we were lucky enough to see some baby bees hatch. With all the activity in this picture, it's hard to spot the newborns, so I circled a few. there are more hatching, but kind of obscured by the nursery attendants. It was also time to put the honey super on, so as it fills, the bees are making honey for us to harvest. A very exciting milestone!

And here's Stew, showing off his incredible talent!

Planning for Martinmas

2009-06-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

Doug & Buddy are about as tall as they're going to get, so this summer they will be filling out on nice green grass, beautiful local hay, grain treats, and later this year, apples and garden gleanings. Then, right about Martinmas, November 11th, they will be slaughtered for our freezer. One thing about rural life is that you have to plan ahead. Right now at Seven Trees, we're enjoying the beginning of summer at the Highland Games and hiking and brewing, but we're also working to make sure we have hay and firewood and food laid in for the long winter ahead. It's incredibly satisfying to spend our time and energy on something that feeds us and keeps us connected with our ancestors.
In Britain (and northern Europe) people couldn't afford to winter over much stock besides the family milk cows and prized breeding animals. So in November "spare"animals were sent to market. In country areas, families would go in together on a cow to butcher and eat immediately. These markets eventually became known as "marts" after St. Martin's day (also known as Martlemas), when the markets took place. Martinmas was also an important day in the rural legal calendar.

Hiring fairs were held at this time, with their opportunities for agricultural labourers to gain better employment and the chance of a holiday. It was also called Pack-Rag day, because they carried their possessions with them to their new homes. The hiring fair was also called a statute or mop fair, the latter because people for hire wore a mop or tassel as a badge - carters wore a piece of whip cord, grooms a piece of sponge, shepherds a lock of wool, and so on. Those wishing to be hired stood in rows for inspection by employers.

Quarter Days such as Martinmas (February 1, Lammas and Halloween were others) were also times in which feudal taxes were collected. Until the 1920s, Martinmas was the high point of the farm labourer’s year in the north of England and was also known as 'Rive-kite’ or ‘Split-Stomach Day’ (or, Tear-Stomach Day), firstly because food was generally more plentiful than usual, and because labourers got their holidays at this time and might return home, often to a family welcoming feast. Animals were slaughtered for Martinmas feasts as well as for salting as food for the Winter. In an old Celtic custom, some of the blood from the slaughter was spilt upon the ground or on the threshold as a protection for the year ahead, and after the slaughter the feast began. On Martinmas nothing involving a wheel, spinning wool, carting, plowing, was to be undertaken before midday.

Since the offal was the most perishable, people quickly made blood puddings and sausages from the butchered animals. Some choice parts were sold to butchers, who then sold them on to wealthy townspeople. The rest of the beef was often salted and smoked, much like bacon. Mrs. Beeton (of the famous cookbook) has a recipe for salt-beef, which we might try this winter:
TO PREPARE HUNG BEEF.
630. This is preserved by salting and drying, either with or without smoke. Hang up the beef 3 or 4 days, till it becomes tender, but take care it does not begin to spoil; then salt it in the usual way, either by dry-salting or by brine, with bay-salt, brown sugar, saltpetre, and a little pepper and allspice; afterwards roll it tight in a cloth, and hang it up in a warm, but not hot place, for a fortnight or more, till it is sufficiently hard. If required to have a little of the smoky flavour, it may be hung for some time in a chimney-corner, or smoked in any other way: it will keep a long time.

Salt beef was never at the top of anyone's menu choice, but in the middle of winter, when nothing was fresh or plentiful, having any kind of meat was a bounty. One proverb of the time says:
When Easter comes, who knows not than
That veale and bacon is the man?
And Martilmass Beefe doth beare good tacke,
When countrey folke do dainties lacke.

The heathen calendar's entry for November says: "The name of the eleventh month, Blotmonað (blood month), which means the Month of Sacrifice, arises from the fact that without modern methods of fodder storage it was not possible to keep more than a limited amount of livestock through the winter. The surplus animals were therefore killed and the flesh smoked or salted down. The keeping of this as a sacrificial occasion, and devoting the killed animals to the gods, was perhaps an economical way of making a virtue of necessity. " There are a lot of parts of animals like organs, brains, feet, bones, that most people don't eat today that our ancestors made full use of. The painting above is of a butcher's stall from the 15th century.

Martinmas was also the kickoff of the winter feasting season. Farmwork was done, rents were paid, nothing much to do but make it through the winter without going stir crazy. Another proverb from Scotland says:
"Tween Martinmas and Yule
Water’s wine in every pool."
Meaning pretty much people were partying from Martinmas (November 11th) through Yule (mid-January). Not a terrible way to get through the cold barren months of winter, provided you had the foresight to put up enough beef at Martinmas.
One last bit of Martinmas cheer comes from this verse of an old English ballad:
It is the day of Martilmasse
Cuppes of ale should freelie pass;
What though Wynter has begunne
To push downe the Summer sunne,
To our fire we can betake,
And enjoye the crackling brake,
Never heeding Wynter’s face
On the day of Martilmasse.

Read more about Martinmas here -
http://www.uab.edu/english/hone/etexts/edb/day-pages/315-nov11.html
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/st_martins_day.html

Also at Seven Trees, we got so tired of losing tomato crops to the blight, we decided to try a few plants in this warm, dry, sunny corner of the house. So far thay are very happy and making little maters like crazy. We have more plants in the usual garden space too, which is great considering how warm the spring has been so far. Our cold weather greens aren't as happy as they could be, but we're already having a tough time keeping up with the lettuce & spinach. Kohlrabi is coming on strong too. The warm-weather crops, like beans, peppers, squash & melons, are going gangbusters already. And we splurged a bit on some strictly pretty plants for our front herb/flower bed. Lots of pretty perennials and a fragrant pink rose too. The bees are already in love!
The pullet flock is doing great. They should start laying in mid-August, and not a moment too soon. They aren't quite big enough to have free range of the barnyard, so they get lots of garden trimmings and grass hand delivered to the hen run.
A pause for breaktime in front of our July project. We'll be painting the house finally, and the chicken coops to match. New gutters will complete a task that's been on our list for a few years now.
Below is a sight & sound that isn't too common these days...peening a scythe. Scythes are incredibly versatile tools, once you get the hang of them. But they do require periodic sharpening while you cut, and peening the blade too. Sharpening involves a stone and water, which keeps the finer edge of the blade sharp. Peening involves hammering the blade to a fine edge that can be further sharpened when cutting. Long before tractors, and long before horse-drawn combines, hay was cut by people with scythes, and tedded by people with rakes. We've cut loose hay at Seven Trees, but mostly we use the scythe as a low-impact tool for getting rid of weeds. No electricity, no gas engine, and no chemical poison. Not to mention how soothing it is to find the rythym of scything and work while listening to birds and cattle.

Hay Day 2009

2009-06-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

Friday night, after work, we decided to drive to the Gorge power station at Newhalem. There is a waterfall behind the powerhouse (reached by a sturdy new footbridge) called Ladder Creek Falls that is supposed to be backlit by colored lights after dark, and also a really strange rock garden full of water features. Unfortunately the lights weren't operating when we got there, and the garden is being rehabbed. It was still fun to poke around the tiny company town and the interpretive "Trail of the Cedars" as night fell.

Here's one of the old water features, not running, but still funky. Some kind of miniature waterwheel/mill that looks like a gnome hut.

In the background is a remnant of an old cedar tree with a cave-like area in the stump. The hanging moss & vine maples lended a spooky feel to our walk. The trail has all kinds of interpretive signs, but sadly describes a much wetter forest than is the case today.

Right beside the highway through Newhalem is this impressively restored locomotive engine. It was used in the 20's to bring supplies and workers up from the Skagit Valley during construction of the dam & power station. Newhalem is one of the country's last true company towns, with a lot of history and fun things to do and learn, including a boat ride up Ross Lake, tour of Diablo dam & chicken dinner!

Saturday was all about getting our hay in for the year. This place is only a few miles from us and the owners took advantage of the lovely weather to make hay. Here it is, freshly mowed and drying in the sun.

The big tractor-looking thing to the left is the mower, and the green and orange machinery that looks a bit like mechanical spiders are hay tedders. They are attatched to a tractor, and spin through the downed hay, turning and fluffing it to get it thoroughly dry before baling.

And all the nice little bales in the field, as we headed in to pick them up.

The trailer can take 25 bales with ease, more if we stacked it crazy-high. Since we really liked the quality of this hay, we decided to get 95 bales, which meant 4 trips. Each bale was around 50lbs. so after the first couple trips, the sun felt hotter and the bales felt heavier.....

But we persevered, knowing a few hours work would mean good food for cows & pony until next season. Here we are, toasting the hay castle we built in the garage. We still might pick up more hay later in the season, but this is like money in the bank as far as livestock are concerned.

Another weekend chore was a hive check. They still aren't ready for the honey super, but you can see the queen busily inspecting new cells to lay eggs in.

A well-earned dinner...chicken grilled over applewood, with Stew hopefully hovering in the background.

And below is a movie of the busy busy hive. Even with Mark yiping and a neighbor's car in the background, you can still hear the buzz of all those bees coming & going.

Pony Power!

2009-05-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

We took Gemini out for 2 drives this weekend. Even though he's middle-aged, he still has the potential to have an active working life well into his 20's....assuming we can get him in shape! Just like any athlete or manual laborer, being fit goes a long way towards reaching top physical performance. We've been driving him about 2 or 3 miles, and he's not really breaking a sweat. We're also working on getting him to keep his mind on his job and not the scary roadside distractions like flagging tape, mailboxes, plastic bags, sheep, and most terrifying of all, the giant hog down the road. He's getting much better, and so are we. The more we work with him, the more everyone's confidence level goes up, and we can look ahead to fun stuff like driving him all the way to Everson and going through the coffee stand drive-thru.
Here's a peek at what Gemini's career might have been if we was alive 100 years ago - a Pit Pony. Small ponies, especially Shetlands, were used to haul coal tubs from the rock face to the larger tunnels. Children and women used to do the work, but labor laws changed in 1842, and ponies took over the work. They were stabled underground, fed underground, and in most cases only went 'topside' for an annual 2-week holiday. They worked an 8-hour day, and were reportedly well-cared for.
Shetland ponies are actually one of the strongest equines for it's size, even compared to the large draft breeds. It can pull up to 2-3 times its weight where some draft breeds can only manage half that. A large-ish Shetland can also carry a small rider. There are 2 main "styles" of Shetland pony, the old-fashioned stocky drafty British type, and the sleeker, lighter, more horse-shaped American type. We chose Gemini because his conformation looked a lot like a miniature draft horse, as opposed to a "dwarfy" mini-horse or "racy" riding pony.

Here's the shiny "roadster" coming up on our shopping list this summer. It's called a forecart because it comes before the cart (or other farm implement) and gives the farmer a place to sit and steer the horse from. This is the one piece of equipment that will let us put Gemini to some much-needed work around Seven Trees. The beauty above is made by the Pioneer company and comes in a variety of sizes. It's also tricked-out to serve as a road cart when it isn't pulling anything, complete with brakes, lights, cargo tray, etc. if you're willing to pay for all the options. There is a hitch on the backside that enables us to hook up pretty much anything that an ATV or riding mower can pull.

Here is a larger horse harnessed to a forecart and pulling some kind of 2-wheeled cart. We often use the scythe to cut areas outside the critters' grazing area, and a cart like this would be handy for bringing the cut grass back to the barnyard for them to eat.

A lovely team of Belgians harnessed to a forecart which is pulling a blade. This setup could also be used for road-grading. Gemini isn't big-enough to do this kind of work, but you can see how handy the forecart is for a variety of chores.

The funky thing above is called a chain harrow. It can be used to smooth out rough garden soil, help seeds get down to dirt level when overseeding an established pasture, and our favorite - breaking up cow pies out in the grazing area. Gemini should have no trouble pulling this along.

Here's another dandy farm implement - a manure spreader. Most of the farms around here use a giant motorized one, or spray a liquid slurry on their fields. This itty-bitty one is just the right size for us, and Gemini. As it rolls over the ground, gears in the hopper turn, breaking up manure and spreading it evenly over the ground so it can fertilize the grass. Being able to utilize pony power and manure this way will help us close the loop of inputs and expenses while helping grow more/better food for the critters.

Can't have a cart without the harness. The diagram above is of a driving harness. We have a simple version of that now that we use for light driving. On smooth surfaces without much weight, this is a cheaper way to go. It's crucial to adjust & fit all the little straps and buckles just right so that Gemini can work comfortably and safely. We'll probably invest in a fancier parade style driving harness at some point, just because he will look so cute in it!

This is the kind of harness we'll need to do farm chores with Gemini. It's called a draft, work, or pulling harness. For light work, such as horse show competition where light carts are used, a harness needs only a breastcollar. It can only be used for lighter hauling, since it places the weight of the load on the sternum of the horse and the nearby windpipe. This is not the heaviest skeletal area; also heavy loads can constrict the windpipe and reduce a horse's air supply.
By contrast, the collar and hames harness places the weight of the load onto the horses shoulders, and without any restriction on the air supply. For heavy hauling, the harness must include a horse collar to allow the animal to use its full weight and strength.

Finding pony-sized working harness ready-made is nearly impossible, so we'll be looking for harness-makers at an up-coming draft show in our area. The Washington Draft Horse and Mule Extravaganza is set for August 31 - September 3 during the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe.

Here's poor Gemini, after a long cart drive, putting up with a human on his back. He needs some work, but it won't take much to get him saddle-trained. We won't be able to ride him more than for training puropses, but it will be nice to have him ready in case visiting kids want to hop on.

And below is Gemini in cart mode. The noise in the beginning of this clip is a tractor that just passed him. He's getting used to all kinds of road traffic, and it didn't faze him a bit.

Slipping into summer.....

2009-05-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

Another busy weekend, and the weather finally cooperated! Here's Doug & Buddy, lounging in all the grass they haven't eaten yet. Looks like they are both headed to 'freezer camp' in November, but we won't be cow-free for long....
The bees are doing great, but not ready for the honey super yet. This is one of the outer frames of the upper deep hive body we put on last week. No eggs in it yet, though they are drawing out comb and filling it with honey/nectar/pollen as fast as they can.

Check out the girl-next-door! Isn't she cute? This is a couple-week-old Shorthorn/Galloway cross heifer, who might just end up moving to Seven Trees when she's a bit older. This coloration is a newer one for the Galloway breed, but Shorthorns & Galloways are old Scottish cattle that do well in our climate, put on good weight on grass, and if you're lucky, still have some milking ability left in them (though they're mainly used for beef these days).

These precocious little bean plants are now planted outside and getting ready to tackle their bamboo pole teepees. The other pots are full of cuke, squash, melon, pepper, tomato & herb starts. It doesn't look like it in this pic, but in one warm sunny day, nearly everything sprouted at once. Hopefully all these plants will keep at it once they hit the dirt so we can have a bumper crop of good food.

Here's the genius himself, with his lack-legged sidekick. Nothing says love like a fresh tennis ball...

Gemini took us for a nice long drive this weekend. There were all kinds of 'scary' things going on, like motorcycles, pink flagging tape, hay trucks, tractors, kids, mailboxes, chickens, his own shadow....but most terrifying of all was the giant pig at the hog farm down the road. Who knew that pony-boy has hog-phobia. But we spent some quality time walking him close to all the spooky things, and he's really getting the hang of being a reliable cart pony no matter what is going on around him. After we got him home & cooled off, I just had to see if he'd hop in our utility trailer. No problem! He's pretty willing to try anything if you ask him nicely.

Last, but never least, Stewart demonstrates proper chewing technique on his tennis ball. We have to buy these by the case because it doesn't take him long to shred one with his monster grizzly-bear jaws.....

Weekend Doings

2009-05-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

Weekends go by way too fast. While we got a lot done, seems like there was a lot more we'd have liked to do. At least the sun was out, which made a hive check that much easier. Here's the intrepid beekeeper inspecting a frame.

We were both excited to see that the brood were starting to hatch! The open cells on this frame are where baby bees recently emerged.
This is in contrast to the second super where the bees are just starting to draw out comb. The mostly empty frame below has a few bees getting started on this.

Contrast again with another frame showing signs of hatched bees. Under closer inspection we could see some very young bees who must have just recently emerged! Despite the cool temperatures all last week, looks like we added that second super at the just the right time to make room for all the new babies hatching.

The grown chickens and babies here. Babies are at the waterer, while the grown lady hens are under the house watching them. After this weekend, the older hens are now only able to access their coop or in the barnyard, while the babies get most of the actual chicken run. They love the larger space and tear around it most of the day chasing bugs or each other.
Here the boys are hanging out after a lovely grass lunch. The paddocks have greened up nicely and the animals are glad for some new spring grass.

But we still serve hay at least once a day for those that want it... even if they prefer to lay on it over eat it.

Pony is napping under the old apple tree while being tethered out for a bit. He no longer gets the run of the house yard owing for his goat like tendency to eat fresh growth on fruit trees or other landscaping. He seems to have a particular fondness for the front yard's Rugosa rose! Fortunately we caught on before the damage was too bad.

And last but not least the garden, looking a tad scruffy yet. Many things were either started in the green house or planted out this weekend. Potatoes are up and the onions look quite good!

Presenting her majesty, the Queen!

2009-05-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

The bees are already so protective of their hive that when we went to refill their food Thursday night, we both got stung. No more skipping the veil & smoke!
Most of these cells are filled with babies, and being capped off. Some of the perimeter cells have honey & pollen in them.

And here she is - the queen! She looked really active and healthy and was in one of the outer frames, hopefully getting ready to lay more eggs.

We added another deep hive body so they can stock up enough honey to see them through the winter. The shallower box on top is where the food goes right now, and later this summer it will hopefully be filled with honey that we get to harvest. You can also see our most important tool, the smoker, on the ground to the left.

As usual, Magnus shows how classy he is. No shame.

And a little home movie of the hive, doing their thing on a Saturday afternoon...

Hive check: check!

2009-04-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today was the big day to do our first hive check. It's been a bit over a week since we installed the bees, and the weather was cooperating. This is the inner cover, which goes under the outer cover and feeder, and directly over the super with all the action. You can see a bit of the burr comb on it that we had to scrape off.
Here's the lower deep super with the queen cage still in it, and more burr comb. If the frames aren't spaced right, they will fill in gaps with comb that has to be removed before they glue things in the wrong places. There was honey in it that was light and clear and tasted lovely. It might have been made mostly from the sugar syrup we're feeding them now though.

Here's one of the frames pulled out for inspection. We use a smoker to puff smoke at them which calms them and makes them go lower in the hive. But as you can see, plenty hang around for the inspection.

Check out the intrepid beekeeper peeking over the top of the frame, through her handy dandy veil. The bees are actually pretty calm right now, since they're busy making comb and stocking up lots of honey, nectar & pollen.

Here's a close up of a frame showing what else is going on. We never did see the queen, but you can see lots of babies in the brood cells if you click on the picture for a bigger version. Toward the bottom are bigger larvae, little curled up white things. The darker cells in the middle have yummy pollen snacks for the bees-to-be, and the upper cells have teeny tiny eggs. Next week we'll look again and hopefully see the brood cells capped and waiting to hatch. Bees only live about 3 weeks, so it's critical to have a healthy productive queen to keep new workers growing.

Spring Update

2009-04-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

The weather is finally warming up at least a little. Had a few days of sunshine albeit cool out still, but enough that the dandelions are popping out as are tree buds, grass is finally growing... all signs it just might really be spring! I have mowed 2x this week alone, if that is any sign of the long awaited thaw.

Honey Bee update. About all we have done besides gawk at them while they are working whenever we have a few moments, is change the entrance opening from the smallest to the slightly bigger 4" opening, and refill the feeders located inside the top honey super. This picture is looking down into the honey super at the feeding jars. A few bees get in here and spend the night, and you can see bees that were feeding on the jar that is being removed. The feed is a 50:50 mix of sugar to water, and some Honey B Healthy a feeding stimulant with essential oils that is supposed to aid in hive "build-up" with new honey bees. It is also supposed to calm the bees when used in a spray bottle in lieu of smoke or in addition to, during honey season when the bees are more protective.

Baby chick update. The new laying flock is rapidly feathering out, likely thanks to the cool spring temperatures. They often act like little raptors, rushing at each other and leaping as if to spur their opponents, and generally practicing at other grown up chicken behaviors, even roosting on the perches. Sadly the cute little peepers are growing up, but we can look forward to some healthy new layers.

Dog update. Stewart will do anything for a tennis ball, even twirl like a ballerina. Fergus has teeth, will bite ankles.

Cat Update. This is what goes on while we are at work. As a matter of fact, this goes on when we are home as well. No doubt about it, these kitties know how to sleep.

Except when Magnus is having play time. The two older cats are only minimally interested in play any more, but Magnus waits for me to get home from work each day, and rushes to find me so we can play. Here's a creative cat hide out of box and newspaper with some old New Years beaded string that he loves to attack. Two paws up!

Here's Newt having a little break in the grass out back. Notice the sour expression at the photographer? Newt is about as happy to see a human wielding a camera as the Brangelina clan!

Coming soon: Photo montage of the Honey Bee hive check to make sure we still have a queen!

Honey Bee Installation Day

2009-04-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here's the hive in place with everything painted. We took a few days to observe and see what kind of sun it would get in this spot and it seemed the right amount from all we'd read... best sun/shade mix with appropriate wind breaks, via our trees.

Of course as soon as you get anything built these days some pesky job site inspector shows up, in this case, Newt. She scented some plants in the area with a few face rubs, then pawthorized the new structure and moved on. Whew!

While the hive has been ready for a bit, today was actually Honey Bee installation day! Carniolan honey bees to be specific. Carniolan's are the second most popular honey bee after the Italian. We went with Carniolan because they are more cold hearty, are good at defending themselves against insect pests, are resistant to some bee diseases, and are very gentle with bee keepers. Latter being very important to us newbies! The first thing we did was prep the hive zone, above.

We brought the box of bees with their queen home in the back of the subaru, and left them there to stay warm, but out of the direct sun while we got setup. Here Doug is close to the fence checking out what we are doing. I am pretty sure he wanted to know, "What is all that buzzing???"

Next we sprayed the bees well with sugar water, so they'd be full and happy when we set them free.

One last thing before we released them was to change the cork holding the queen in her excluder to a mini-marshmallow. The queen and bees are shipped together, but with the queen in the excluder, so the bees will be exposed to her pheromones and accept her prior to release. If they don't have some time to get to know her first, then they might kill her. The bees actually eat through the candy plug to release her, taking a day... even two, or so we'd been told. The delay also gives the bees some time to draw out comb, so the queen can get right to laying when she does get eaten free.

This is 3 pounds of honey bees in a shipping box.

This is 3 pounds of honey bees, in the hive, on the hive, in the air, on the ground, in and on the shipping box, and on the photographer. The lighter color stick like object is an entrance reducer, which we had opened further so the bees could better find their way in the hive. After dark when the bees settled we put it in the opening to make it smaller for a time. This helps keep the new bee colony safer from pests and warmer, until they get established.

Here's a video of the bees getting poured into the hive. The queen is in her excluder already hung in between frames as we pour them in. Please note that within a couple hours of installing the bees, we discovered the marshmallow [that should have taken the bees at least a few days to eat through] intact, discarded about 18 inches in front of the hives opening. Apparently the queen was released TODAY, and with author-i-ty! We have to wait almost a week, until we get to peak again to see if our queen made it out alive. Stay tuned!

Last, but not least, some pictures of our baby Magnus, after his own tail. This is best done hanging upside down while on the cat tree. See that pesky tail... I'm getting you!

Getting a bit plump these days, he soon lands with a thump on the shelf below. Usually not head first. Usually.

That tail was probably sour anyway...

Dances with eggs

2009-04-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

We don't celebrate Easter at Seven Trees, aside from taking advantage of Hempler's ham being on sale. But we're always interested in some of the oddball ways our ancestors observed the holidays, so I'll share a little bit about the Egg Dance....

The picture above is The Egg Dance, by Jan Steen c. 1674. The Essential Vermeer website describes it thus: "To the hypnotic music of the fiddle and a bagpipe peasants dance wildly around an egg lying in chalk circle drawn on the floor of sordid inn. In front of rustic tavern, villagers and their children listed with rapt attention to a beggar playing a hurdy-gurdy while the reek of cheap drink and tobacco hang over the scene. Even the innkeeper has been lured to the doorway to listen to a few notes of music."

In the dance pictured above (Pieter Aertsen, 1552), green leaves and early flowers were strewn on the floor. A circle was drawn with chalk in which one or more eggs were laid, sometimes in a little dish. The participants were allowed only to dance on one foot, with their hands on their sides. While dancing they had to move the egg out of the circle and back into it again with their feet, leaving the egg intact. In some areas, the dance had to be performed blindfolded!

Another version of the Egg Dance, this time painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.

So why in the world were these partying peasants fixated on this ancient style of bunny hop?
Consulting the all-knowing wiki oracle sheds light on the question with this historical anecdote:

"An early reference to an egg dance was at the wedding of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy on Easter Monday of 1498. The event was described in a 1895 issue of The American Magazine as follows -
“Then the great egg dance, the special dance of the season, began. A hundred eggs were scattered over a level space covered with sand, and a young couple, taking hands, began the dance. If they finished without breaking an egg they were betrothed, and not even an obdurate parent could oppose the marriage.
After three couples had failed, midst the laugher and shouts of derision of the on-lookers, Philibert of Savoy, bending on his knee before Marguerite, begged her consent to try the dance with him. The admiring crowd of retainers shouted in approval, "Savoy and Austria!" When the dance was ended and no eggs were broken the enthusiasm was unbounded.
Philibert said, "Let us adopt the custom of Bresse." And they were affianced, and shortly afterward married.”

So it seems the age-old association between Easter, eggs, springtime and fertility came together in an amusing display of marital interest called the Egg Dance. Another term for this celebratory jig was the Hop-Dance, which made its way into everyday slang for a certain kind of dance party.

Streetswing says:

"The first known Hop dance was the 'Egg-dance or Hop-egg' dance, as it was also called. It was a dance generally performed by women, who, in much the same manner as of a version of the Scottish sword-dance, who performed their figures with eggs placed Around the floor. This practice has also been described by the writer 'Chaucer' (1340-1400) in his 'Canterberry Tales'(1387,) who says " the performers are called hoppesteres." Also the eminent antiquarian named Strutt, in his "Sports and Pastimes," written about 1790, mentions that the so-called slang phrase, "Going to the hop tonight?" (which appeared to have been old even in his time) evidently came from this get together dance!
Later, the Hop was a term used for many different styles of dance as well as a term for a get together with dance. These "Get Togethers" were very popular in the early 1900's and
were called "Hops" by the College kids. The Hop (get togethers/ dances) which again resurfaced in the 1950's were called Record Hops and or Sock Hops."

So as you celebrate the return of spring in whichever way suits you best, take a moment to be thankful that modern wooing and Easter observances no longer involve this kind of shenanigans. Gorging on baked ham & hard-boiled eggs is tough enough without having to hop around with a bunch of drunken peasants....unless of course you're one of the drunken peasants!

Bee-ing ready for bees!

2009-04-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pieces of the beehive that we purchased at Beez Neez apiary supply in Snohomish, WA. with most of the primer coat of paint.

These need to be ready to go in just a short few weeks when our bees arrive, a variety called Carniolan which are supposed to be very gentle. Let's hope so!

Above are the deep supers. Just below is the outer cover.

The cover is insulated, made special for our climate, to help the bees winter over.
Below are the deep supers, a shallow super and part of the base assembly.
These are painted the same color the main part of the house will be, if all goes as planned this summer. This is the same color that our small barn and run-in are painted.

Hive stand and bottom board as well as the lid are all painted to the new trim colors our house will be painted this summer.

This is the painting supervisor. Newt made sure I did a proper job on everything for the entire painting project.

And like any job the bedroom has taken us longer than intended, but should be worth the wait. This weekend most of the trim got finished up. Painting the top trim was slow and arduously completed with a small artist brush and a steady hand. Also in this picture you can see the new light fixture/fan. This'll be handy come summer!

Last, but not least, Magnus demonstrates his patented tail chasing abilities in the kitchen!

What a cat!!

The peeps are here!

2009-04-03T09:18:00.001-07:00

It's that time again....baby chickies!
We're still not done with the big painting project. Funny how things always take way longer than you plan for. One of us just switched to night shift for the next few months, so we're adjusting to that schedule. It means we can't really work on any projects until the weekends.

Not much new news at Seven Trees this week. Just finishing up the first big chore list of spring so we can start on the next big chore list.
I'm hoping to try a really unhealthy recipe this weekend, basically a giant casserole made of ham & cheese sandwich layers, with egg/milk poured over and baked. I'll share the recipe if it turns out, and we don't have heart attacks ;)

Weekend project runs amok!

2009-03-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

Re-doing the south bedroom was supposed to be a 3-day weekend thing. Install a ceiling fan, replace all the switches & outlets, shampoo the carpet, paint & make new drapes.
It took most of Friday just to get everything out of the room. Gemini was doing yardwork, when he wasn't busy chasing chickens, cats & dogs all over.

Here's a look at the entire bedroom, spewed out all over the living room. Chaos!

The minty-celery green was just too pale for that room. It gets full sunlight, even in winter, and needed something dramatic.

Same corner with partial paint & new ceiling fan. The trim, including the tiny bit around the ceiling edge, will be a dark bronzy-brown.

Another view, partially done. The room is so small that it's hard to get a picture showing perspective. The closet will stay the light green color, as a memento, and because it's a pain to paint it. There was a spiffy beaded curtain with a bright yellow sunflower painted on, but we'll replace that with a plain dark wood beaded one.

Painting done but for the trim. We just got the bottom trim done so we could shampoo the carpet and start putting furniture back in. We ran out of weekend, so we'll finish the trim painting and get the drapes done hopefully this coming weekend.

The kitties enjoyed a slumber party during the mess.

We also secondaried our first-ever batch of grape wine. A neighbor gifted us with buckets & buckets of grapes last fall, and we made jam with some and wine with the rest. Wines made from North American wild & hybrid grapes are often said to have a "foxy" quality. Whatever they call it, it's pretty darn tasty! We'll try more in about 6 months.

Our batch of chicks should arrive this week, and the bees not too long after. The garden is underway as well. Busy times, but we're planning to check out opening day at the Bellingham Farmer's market April 4th, and seeing Dan Savage at WWU later that evening.

Meatloaf a la Spring

2009-03-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

Couldn't resist sharing a picture of our tasty Sunday dinner. Equal parts ground beef & pork, chopped green olives, onion, egg, cracker crumbs, salt, pepper & A-1 sauce. The mashed potatoes are from last year's Island Sunshine potatoes (so far the best variety we've ever grown) with plenty of sour cream mashed in. Leftovers are just as tasty as the original dinner!
The picture above is of Copra onions, a popular storage variety that we're trying out this year. Last year's onions finally ran out in mid-March, and these should be even more prolific with an early start and heavily compsted soil. We started seeds under a lamp in the house, then moved them to the greenhouse, and finally out to the garden last weekend. Hopefully they will settle in enough to weather late frosts, but we can always start more if need be.

Territorial Seeds says this about them:

"When all your other stored onions have turned to powder, you'll still be enjoying Copra. Our best storage onion and the unequaled leader in hard storage types. Adapted to long-day areas, it is a medium-sized, round, dark-yellow-skinned onion with ivory flesh. The thin necks dry quickly. In storage trials, Copra was as sound and flavorful in the spring as when freshly harvested in the fall. High in sugar and moderately pungent, Copra makes excellent French onion soup. "

Those pretty spuds above are a brand new variety developed by Wood Prairie Farms called Prairie Blush. It has won a Green Thumb Award from the Mailorder Gardening Association as one of the top six introductions for 2009. It is a mutation of Yukon Gold with a little denser, moister texture, aside from the lovely pink blush. If you want to read just how this tattie was discovered and developed, check out this fascinating article, One potato, two potato, three potato ... SCORE , from the Portland Press Herald.

We've pretty much decided on our favorite spinach variety after a few trials - Baby Leaf Catalina, from Renee's Garden seeds. The flavor stays sweet, they don't bolt as fast as the other varieties we tried (Bloomsdale), and so far they aren't bothered by any pests. We've got some starting under the lamp indoors, along with the first chard & lettuce seeds of the season. As they sprout, we'll move them to the greenhouse to grow more before planting them out. Then we'll keep starting more veggies as the weather warms up. Next on the list after greens are white and purple kohlrabis, broccoli & beets.

And as usual, the cats of Seven Trees are incredibly excited by the whole gardening experience...I don't know how Magnus gets into those pretzel positions!

NOW it's spring!

2009-03-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

The hummingbirds are back! We've had the feeder up for a few weeks, anticipating their return, and today the Rufous hummingbirds showed up.

Bird Web says this about them:

Rufous Hummingbirds are highly territorial, defending feeding territories not only while breeding but also during migration. Rufous Hummingbirds do not sing but make warning chips in response to perceived threats. Their wings make a whine much like the sound of a cicada.

If you live in Washington State, be sure to check out Bird Web for wonderful pictures, info & sound clips of all kind of local birds.

Gemini is learning how to use the pony drive-thru to get treats. Smart guy!

The hens are enjoying some yard time. The garden is off-limits again, since we'll be planting onions & potatoes out soon. Kohlrabi, broccoli, chard, spinach & lettuce next.

Waste not, want not - beef tongue

2009-03-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

This unnattractive chunk of cow muscle is a raw tongue. When we gave instructions to the butcher for our chunk of Highland beef a few months ago, we requested any of the so-called offal. This time we got heart, liver & tongue.

After much research, we decided to go with pickling it before cooking, but I didn't take any pictures of it bobbing in a purply-brown vat of brine. Just a bit too odd-looking. The pic above is the tongue slow-cooking in broth with assorted veggies, taste buds & all.

Here it is fished out of the broth and partially peeled. It's not as gross as you'd think once it was cooked, but still kind of strange. The dogs got the skin bits with their kibble, and I used the leftover broth as a base for a giant pot of heart & liver stew. I pressure-canned the stew to use as gravy on the dogs' food. They love it!

Cooled tongue, roughly sliced. It was so tender and flavorful, we kept eating slices of it, dragged in mustard, right off the cutting board. It also went great on leftover biscuits we happened to have around. The next day, we chopped the tongue into dices, gave them a quick sautee to crisp the edges, and made tacos lengue to die for! The pic below is a reenactment (courtesy of the internet) of our tacos, since we ate them too fast for documetation.

The recipe for the pickle and the slow-cooking is via the blog WasabiBratwurst

Pickled Tongue Recipe
adapted from the River Cottage Meat Book

The brine:
5 quarts of water (Stay away from using tap water!)

1 pound light brown sugar

1 pound kosher salt

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

1 teaspoon juniper berries

5 cloves

4 bay leaves

A sprig of thyme

2 tablespoon of saltpeter **optional: Sole purpose is to prevent the meat from turning gray. Helps to preserve the meat’s bright pink-red color.

Add all brine ingredients in a large pot over low heat, stir well until the sugar and the salt has dissolved completely. Take off heat and let the liquid cool down.

Place the beef tongue in a plastic container (with a lid), or an over-sized zip bag and pour in brine liquid being sure to submerge completely. If using a zip-top bag be sure to extract as much air as possible, seal and lay flat in the refrigerator for about a week flipping the tongue daily. If the tongue weighs in over 6 lbs, you can go up to 10 days.

After patiently waiting for 7 whole days, it is time for you to remove the tongue from the brine. Rinse well under cold running water.

Place the tongue back in the container/zip bag and soak it in fresh cold water, submerging again completely for 24~48 hours, changing the water every 12 hours. (The recipe calls for a 24-hour soak, I left mine for 48 hours and it was perfect seasoning - not too salty).

Cooking Pickled Tongue
1 whole beef tongue (pickled)

1 bouquet garni (sprigs of thyme, small bunch of parsley, bay leaf)

1 small carrot, chopped

1 onion, peeled and halved

1 leek, halved lengthwise

½ garlic bulb, outer skin removed

Move the tongue to a dutch oven with all ingredients, cover with fresh water and bring to a simmer. Poach gently on the stovetop over low heat or in the oven at 275 degrees for 2½ to 3 hours. Tongue will become very tender and yield when pierced.

Remove the tongue from the poaching liquid, place on a cutting board and peel away the outer ’skin’. It should come away from the meat fairly easily, just make sure to get rid of all of it. Carve the tongue into fairly thick slices and serve over lentils with quality grainy mustard or creamed horseradish.

It's all about the oysters, baby!

2009-03-09T05:19:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when we let the fire go out overnight. I think it got down to about 53, which won't kill anyone, but the dogs get a bit whiny.

We drove down to visit our friends in Endor (in a geodesic dome, in the rainforest, on the banks of the Skagit River) this weekend. We took the scenic route, down Chuckanut Drive, so we could pick up fresh oysters on the way.

This sign was so odd, we actually turned the car around so we could take a picture. There is a giant arrow pinning the sign to the phone pole. I have no idea who did or why, but apparently this part of Skagit County is patrolled by Robin Hood. Better mind your P's & Q's!

Here's the gateway to delicious shellfish at Taylor's. We got some mussels, a crab, some Totten Inlet oysters, and a dozen extra-special super-delicious Kumamoto oysters, pictured below.

Right before we hit the oyster store, located right on the water of Samish Bay, we passed this crumbling old house. Not sure the history of it, but on closer inspection we noticed some neat tribal artwork.

One last look at the entrance to Taylor Shellfish. We let Stewart & Fergus out where it was safe, down by the beach, and they chased us up hill to burn off a little cooped-in-the-car steam. We bought our own oyster knife too, so we can properly process the little packages of delight. I can't wait to get more, right out of the water!

We're getting another little snowstorm, and some below-freezing weather. Looks like the garden will wait a bit longer. Good thing there are always more indoor projects. Later this week we'll share the pickled beef tongue recipe, complete with yucky pictures. It turned out delicious though, and made great tacos. We'll do it again next time we have a steer butchered.

Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore!

2009-03-01T20:08:00.000-08:00

While looking for some pictures of life in "ancient" Whatcom county, we stumbled across a fine collection of beer and brewery advertising from the pre-prohibition era. What was surprising was that beer was marketed as a health drink. Our brewing and historical farming research has turned up mention of certain beers (mainly porters and stouts) being intended for nursing mothers and invalids.

The ca. 1880-1889 trade card above uses Hygeia to advertise "The "Best" Tonic" which was a "Concentrated Liquid Extract of Malt and Hops" which claimed (on the reverse side of the card) that it "Aids Digestion, Cures Dyspepsia, Strengthens the System, Restores Sound Refreshing Sleep, Priceless to Nursing Mothers."

We also have some vintage cookbooks from various English counties with recipes for ale gruel, touted as the perfect dinner for an exhausted worker, home from the mines, with no energy to sit down for a formal meal at table. But somehow, seeing familiar brand names, combined with the smarmy Victorian-era art, exhorting mothers to use beer as a nutritional aid for their children and old folks just seemed hilarious.
So we did a little more poking around on the topic of beer as medicine and meal-replacer.

The advertisment below, c.1907, for Seattle icon Rainier Beer, is one of my favorites. Not only are the children happily doing a Maypole dance around a giant bottle of beer, but in the scenic outdoor background, a mother is setting the picnic table with yet more beer, presumably for those rosy-cheeked little tipplers.

From BeerHunter.com:
The notion of specialising in strong brews dates from the time when these beers were regarded as "liquid bread" to sustain the body during Lent.
Even in the rest of the year, beer was once "absolutely necessary to balance the diet", a brother at one of the Trappist monasteries told me recently. "Trappists would have died without it."
Traditionally, Trappists did not eat cheese or fish. Those rules have now been relaxed and several of the monasteries make their own cheese, usually in the style of Port Salut, but the Trappists still, in mock derision, dub their Cistercian cousins "meat-eaters."
For their daily consumption, with meals, some of the Trappist monasteries make a beer of relatively low strength, perhaps 3.5 per cent by volume. For liturgical holidays and commercial sale, they may produce a stronger "double" and a "triple," with strengths ranging from around 6 per cent to more than 11 per cent.

Another hilarious ad from Rainier Brewery, c.1906. Somehow seeing a little girl drinking to Grandpa's good health just seems wrong, but history shows our current, relatively tee-totaling ways are a but an anomaly.

During Prohibition, the government often went out of it's way to make medicinal beer (malt tonic) unpalatable.

From a Time Magazine article c.1926:
Stacked in cases in what is left of the Pabst brewery (Milwaukee) have been thousands of bottles of medicinal malt tonic. Last week permits to make and sell the tonic were issued by the prohibition section of the Treasury Department to Pabst of Milwaukee and AnheuserBusch of St. Louis. Professional Anti-Saloon League furor ensued, and thus the names of two firms, once household words, flickered in U. S. minds which had almost buried them in subconscious limbo. Except for the two classic names. there was nothing to warrant excitement. In the first place, the malt tonic is unpotable. While it contains 3.5% alcohol, it also contains 25% solid. One slimy gulp of it is unpleasant, two are unspeakable, three unthinkable. In the second place, the permits granted were only temporary, and if U. S. ingenuity finds ways of using the tonic as a base for soul-satisfying beer, the permits will be, according to General Lincoln C. Andrews, speedily withdrawn.

Above is a page from a hospital dietary guide, Medical Lexicon: a Dictionary of Medical Science 1854, click on it to see how much beer and ale gruel was considered part of a patient's recovery diet.

..........

A Victorian-era regimen for a new mother:
Women remained in hospital for three weeks on average after delivery. For the first ten days they were fed on brown caudle [thin, warm gruel mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced], sago or panado [bread boiled to a pulp and flavored with sugar and spices], with a little wine. For the remainder of their stay they received meat, bread and beer, and as much brown caudle as they chose. - Walking London's Medical History pg. 22

.......

In An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy's chapter on Cooking for the Invalid, c.1855, we find yet more ale being offered in a heartier form as well. You can hear a hint of the budding temerance movement in hoping this remedy might keep the sick person from stronger medicine:
Ale Caudle.—To a quart of thick groat gruel add a pint of home-brewed ale, some allspice, and sugar. Boil all together for the space of five or six minutes, then strain it, and put it in a cool place till wanted. This caudle is frequently made for poor country neighbours in their confinement. It is useful as a nourishment for them at that period, and sometimes prevents them from resorting to stronger and more stimulating liquors.

....................
And beer wasn't only good medicine for people. The 1903 edition of Horses and Stables has this home remedy for an exhausted horse:

Good gruel is made by putting about a double handful of oatmeal into a pail and pouring on it a little cold water. After being well stirred, a gallon and a half of hot, but not boiling, water must be added, and the whole stirred again. Boiling water should not be used, because it produces a more starchy compound than is suitable for the stomach of the horse in an exhausted condition. The temperature should be reduced to that of new milk before it is given. If the horse is very much overtasked, it may be advisable to add to it a wine-glassful of spirits or a pint of ale.

Moving from the strictly medicinal uses, and into the culinary, we have a little history from Cakes & Ale , c.1900 (a fun online book to rummage through):

"A free breakfast-table of Elizabeth's time," says an old authority, "or even during the more recent reign of Charles II., would contrast oddly with our modern morning meal. There were meats, hot and cold ; beef and brawn, and boar's head, the venison pasty, and the Wardon Pie of west country pears. There was hot bread, too, and sundry ' cates' which would now be strange to our eyes. But to wash down these substantial viands there was little save ale.

The most delicate lady could procure no more suitable beverage than the blood of John Barleycorn. The most fretful invalid had to be content with a mug of small beer, stirred up with a sprig of rosemary.
Wine, hippocras, and metheglin were potations for supper-time, not for breakfast, and beer reigned supreme. None but home productions figured on the board of our ancestors. Not for them were seas traversed, or tropical shores visited, as for us. Yemen and Ceylon, Assam and Cathay, Cuba and Peru, did not send daily tribute to their tables, and the very names of tea and coffee, of cocoa and chocolate, were to them unknown.
The dethronement of ale, subsequent on the introduction of these eastern products, is one of the most marked events which have severed the social life of the present day from that of the past."

There were other ale-based drinks. Aleberry was ale boiled with spices and sugar and sops of bread. One writer praises aleberry “made with groats and saffron and good ale” and recommended it for men who were sick or afflicted with weak digestions (groats here is hulled and crushed grains of wheat, barley or oats; the word derives from the same root as grits and means “a particle; a fragment”); in Scotland it was common to make aleberry with oatmeal. There is some dispute about the origin of the term, though the “berry” part is certainly just mistaken etymology and has nothing to do with fruits or seeds.

Another word for the same drink was alebrue and Brewer says firmly that it derives from the older form ale-bree, where bree is Old English for “broth”, but the OED does not confirm this. A Scots variant was ale crowdie — uncooked meal and ale, fortified with treacle and whisky and consumed at harvest homes.
Another celebratory ale-based drink was lamb’s-wool, mulled ale with added spices, sugar and the pulp of roasted apples, which was a traditional beverage for Halloween, Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, and no doubt for those pleasant moments back in the warm after wassailing was over (the name presumably derives from the smooth softness of the liquor).
From the World Wide Words entry on possets (lots more interesting info here).

...................
Here's a recipe for a posset (similar to ale gruel, but with milk added) -

Ingredients
1/2 pt milk (8 fl oz)
1 tbsp oatmeal
2 beaten eggs
1 tsp sugar or honey
salt
nutmeg or mixed spice
whisky, ale or white wine

Method
1. Heat the milk in a pan with the oatmeal and a pinch of salt. Stir well and bring to the boil, then simmer until it starts to thicken.
2. Stir in the eggs, sugar and spices (added according to taste), and keep simmering for at least five minutes - stir well to make sure the mixture doesn't burn or stick to the pan.
3. Remove from the pan and add in as much whisky, ale or white wine as you prefer.
4. Serve immediately, either on its own or poured over bannocks or a dessert.

Cookery Reformed: Or The Lady's Assistant c.1755 has more caudle and posset recipes.

I saved another favorite ad for last. Looks like Whatcom county's interest in good health, good beer and buying local goes way back.

The beer ads are part of a collection hosted by the University of Washington. This link will take you to a search page for "Rainier Beer", but you can check out the collection home page to find old pictures of farming, logging, houses, advertising, etc. involving Washington State and more.

Surprise snow storm!

2009-02-26T08:35:00.000-08:00

Not that snow isn't to be expected in February, but generally we get a bit more warning than we did with this one. The rain/snow mix that started mid-morning turned into a full-on snow storm by evening. Nothing too terrible, but the north winds brought the temperature down to the low 20's rather quickly, and we spent the evening making sure all our critters were warm & cozy.

Speaking of warm & cozy, Magnus has the newspaper basket staked out for his naps. Somehow he convinced a human to make a privacy screen, since he's constantly hassled by photographers.

The picture below is a preview from this weekend's upcoming blog post about beer as food & medicine. I came across some amazing and hilarious advertisements from Rainier Brewery from the early 1900's. Further research uncovered a lot of information about how important beer has been in terms of health & comfort over the years, and how motivated modern breweries were to find loopholes in the Prohibition laws.

On the gardening front, we just ate the last of our onions, garlic, Reddale potatoes, and buttercup squash from last year's harvest. This year we should be able to grow and store a lot more, though we still have plenty of Island Sunshine potatoes, canned green beans, pickled beets, pears, dill pickles, dried apples & pears and applesauce to tide us over.

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I'm sure most folks have been following the recent economic headlines with all the failing banks, bailouts, TARP plans and so on. With so much information coming at us so fast, it's easy to tune it out, even when we need all the help we can get to make decisions for our households.

One blog has made a world of difference for us at Seven Trees. If not for the explanations and analyses I have read at Calculated Risk over the past few years, we would have never been able to do what we needed in time to finance the new garage (and get a better loan) before lending rules were tightened. Those rules have changed many times since, as have a lot of other economic factors, and I highly recommend giving Calculated Risk some of your time. And don't forget to check out the comments with each post. The people there manage to have a good time while contributing even more worthwhile information about the nitty gritty of what is happening to our money.

Photo interlude #387

2009-02-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

Life at Seven Trees is starting to get even busier now. We are part way done with adding an electrical circuit to the barnyard, have onions & chard sprouting in the greenhouse, some just-delivered firewood to stack, a beehive to paint before the bees arrive in April, and so on. Here are a few random pictures of goings-on this week....Homemade pizza again, always a favorite.
Newt has decided to be boss kitty of the house. She beats up the other two cats, bullies the dogs, demands treats, and hogs the best chair for her naps.

Magnus just wants to relax & enjoy life. All he needs in this pose is a clam on his belly to crack, and he'd be a land otter!

Can't do anything outside without proper inspection. For some reason, digging the trench for the power line is fascinating to all the critters. Gemini even got in the trench and walked along the whole way. I guess he wanted to make sure it was up to code. Here's Crichton, Fergus, Stewart, Doug & Buddy, keeping an eye on things. BTW, this shot is from our front stoop. I love being able to stick my head out the front door to check on the animals, or just to ring the front bell and call pony over for a treat when he's in the yard.

We found a really great deal on straw on craiglslist, so the kitties just had to check it out for themselves. You can barely make out Newt in the shadows, and Maggie is enjoying the smell of fresh straw.

We'll be working on the electrical project this weekend, stacking wood, canning chili, and hopefully having dinner at the Beach Store cafe on Lummi Island Saturday evening. We also have a cow's tongue in brine in the fridge. It will pickle for 7 days, then soak 2 days in plain water, then be slow-cooked. If it turns out tasty, we'll post the recipe. Getting beef fresh from the butcher and raising our own, means we can get every last bit of the cow to eat. I'm sure some things we won't like, but we can share that with the dogs.

And speaking of dogs, Stewart got to help round up cattle the other night. The barnyard gate wasn't latched, and the steers got out into the backyard right about bedtime. We tried rounding them up ourselves, but it wasn't working. So we brought out the specialist. Stewart has a knack for knowing how to circle around and drive them in the right direction without spooking them. It is so cool to see him work. German Shepherds were originally a herding dog, and Rottweilers are derived from an old Roman cattle-herding protection dog. Stew must be channeling his ancestors, since we've never trained him to herd cattle.

Kailyards and Plantie Crubs, oh my!

2009-02-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

The picture above is of a kailyard c.1936, on the island of Foula, a part of the Shetland Isles. The climate in parts of northern Scotland is so harsh that even today gardening is a challenge. One way early crofters dealt with the cold and salt sea air was to build walled gardens. Even so, not much would grow but hardy plants like Shetland cabbage (kale) and more recently, potatoes.
These two pictures are of the Ham Doon kailyard (also on Foula) in spring and summer. The word kailyard literally refers to a small plot of land or kitchen-garden where cabbage (i.e. kail) and other vegetables may be grown. The word kail is recorded in Scottish sources from the late fourteenth century onwards and derives from Old Norse kál. Kailyard has been in use since at least the sixteenth century, and is attested in official documents such as the Edinburgh Testaments, e.g. 'Ane littill hous and cailȝaird' (1586). Widespread use of such plots of land is noted by John Sinclair in his General Report of the Agricultural State and Political Circumstances of Scotland (1814): 'Those who work as day-labourers, in the capacity of hedgers, ditchers, dikers, village-shoemakers, tailors, wrights or joiners, and the like, have now almost universally little gardens, called kail-yards, attached to them'.

Before potatoes came to Shetland towards the end of the 18th century, people
preserved kale in barrels of salt, similar to sauerkraut in Germany. They also fed it to livestock
through the winter. Shetland kale/cabbage is the only Brassica that can withstand the winter salt blasting in Shetland. It was fed mainly to lambs (called “settnins”) over their first winter, though outside leaves would be given to the cows in autumn and some hearts would be used domestically. Above is a modern-day kailyard, post harvest, with a few remaining cabbages. Shetland kale grows its heart on a 12-15" stalk.

Plantiecrubs (also plantiecrues) were turf and stone walled enclosures, used for growing cabbages and kail. They were a feature of the Shetland and Orkney landscape, like these examples on the remote island of Foula, in 1902. The walls have a stone foundation, with turf above and further stones laid on top. Additional height is provided by a fence. The space within gradually rose above ground level with the accumulation of manure. Plantiecrubs were used by tenants and could be built anywhere on the common grazings. A few were still being used in the 1960s. In much earlier times, enclosures like these were also found on the Scottish mainland. A very few planticrubs are still in use in 2005. They are used for protecting Shetland Kail seedlings through their first winter. The seeds are sown in late July/August and the seedlings are set out in kailyards the following spring.

The plantiecrubs are covered in netting to prevent birds from getting in and ruining the seedlings.

Most gardeners in the US today take advantage of relatively modern (and convenient) technology in the form of greenhouses, cold frames, heating mats for seed trays, grow lights, etc. But it's always a good idea to check out what methods people have used to grow food (and to check out food plants that can survive extreme conditions) in other times and places. You never know when the information might come in handy, or inspire a better way to grow something in your own garden. Many garden manuals mention growing tender plants near a south-facing stone wall. The stones catch heat from the sun during daylight, and radiate it to the plants after dark. Most of us don't need a plantie crub to ward off winter salt winds, but if you have a lot of rocks handy, it sounds like a low-tech way to gather some free heat for the garden.

Spring project kick-off

2009-02-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

At the Cattlemen's Winterschool last weekend, we got some info about the Western Washington Fruit Research Foundation. It was formed to fund tree fruit research at the WSU Northwest Research & Extension Center in Mount Vernon, WA. They are holding their annual winter field day on March 7th, with seminars on pruning, grafting, pests, and general fruit and berry growing. Looks like we won't be able to make it, but the websites of the 2 groups have some very helpful tips for fruit growing in the Pacific Northwest.

There were over 700 people attending the Winterschool. We took classes on barnyard drainage issues, beekeeping, cider-making, composting, and chicken processing. We took a lot of notes and got some great handouts from the teachers and exhibitors. Looks like we may be getting a beehive this spring after all! We're really looking forward to next year's workshops, since you can only take 5 classes, there were a lot more we missed out on. And we're hoping they add an intro to draft animals, so we can get some ideas on putting Gemini to work at Seven Trees.

Magnus is teaching his own winterschool in advanced sleeping techniques. I love his method of falling asleep in the rocking chair while doing his laundry. A real professional!

We got the spare coop moved this weekend. We need to paint it before we put it up on pier blocks, and start getting it ready for the new chickies in March. Sometime this summer we'll insulate it and add a layer of plywood inside, so it's as warm & cozy as the smaller coop.

It was quite a workout, walking it across the barnyard. The steers are happy to have a little more room for roughhousing, and now we can enclose both coops in a varmint-resistant run. We're getting ready to start the next project, which is running power to the coops and barn. What a treat to get rid of extension cords and have a real electric light to work by. We'll also add a security light near the end of the drive, since the front porch light doesn't really make it out that far.
We're still eating last season's onions, garlic, squash & potatoes fresh from the garden, but not much left. We'll be planting even more this year. Plenty of canned goods left, green beans, pears & applesauce especially. I'll be making jam out of the blackberries & strawberries left in the freezer, to make room for upcoming harvests. Always something tasty in season here, once we figure out what to grow when, and how much to preserve.

Here's Doug & Buddy showing how excited they are about the coop-moving project. Doug definitely takes after his mom when it comes to being bossy and yelling for food....

Springing into February

2009-02-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

Check out this before & after picture of Hidatsa Shield Figure beans! They really plump when you cook them, and taste great. Hidatsa is the name of the tribe that originally grew these beans, and the dark part of the bean is supposed to resemble they way they painted their shields. I haven't seen any Hidatsa shields, so I can't verify that ;)

These beans were recently boarded on Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste. (Be sure to check their site out for all kinds of amazing foods in danger of disappearing.) We've grown Hidatsa beans for 2 years, and will keep them in rotation as a house favorite. Dry beans take up a fair bit of garden space, and take a long time to mature, but it's worth the trouble to find out for yourself just how tasty heirloom beans can be. You can buy your own Hidatsa bean seed here, or check out Local Harvest to see who's growing them near you.

Finally! Paychecks, days off, and end of road restrictions all aligned so we could have a load of gravel delivered. It was a fun day of being local. The gravel came from the pit nearly next door, then we drove 3.5 miles to our local Breckenridge Dairy for milk (check out this picture of the dairy drive-thru during our recent floods), ran into a neighbor who had just seen a friend/coworker/neighbor coming down the Pole Rd. on his tractor to spread the gravel for us. He brought his cute little dog, Roxie, with him, and took some of our homemade goodies back with him. We had to leave for grocery shopping and traded our hard earned cash for more local delights - fresh oysters from Taylor Shellfish farms. We grilled the oysters on the BBQ and ate them with lime wedges, hot sauce & melted butter.

Stewart, doing his lapdog impression. He's going on 3, but still a puppy at heart.

And as usual, Magnus, demonstrating how stressful his life is.

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We also attended a day of classes in assorted farm & livestock management called the Cattlemen's Winterschool. Here's this year's class schedule, so you can get an idea of what is offered. It is a program of the Washington State University extension, and they have an incredible amount of useful information on their website alone, not to mention all the classes and publications available through them. More about our day of agricultural fun later this week!

Winter weekend

2009-01-25T15:57:00.000-08:00

It's been a quiet week at Seven Trees. Seeds are ordered, chicks are ordered, paint colors picked out. Now we just have to wait for spring. So we decided to make some bread. It's a great recipe that only takes a few minutes of work, and no kneading. Goes great as a loaf, especially with butter and homemade grape jelly. And it works as pizza crust too.
The recipe is from soon-to-be-gone Seattle PI - "Here's how to make artisan bread with just a few minutes of work".

Here we have Magnus Cat (who now has his own Facebook page), investigating the laundry.
Since it's been too dang cold to take Gemini out for a drive (and he may be too woolly for his harness anyway!) he got a workout on the lunge line. He doesn't care for being made to exercise ;)

Here he is, after blowing off a little steam, with a quick peek at Doug & Buddy, who were fascinated by the whole thing. What sounds like traffic in the background is the north wind which has been blowing steady for a long chilly time.

Almost forgot!
The big "demand" button in the upper right corner is to request Marc Gunn to play in the PNW. He's a very entertaining musician and podcaster, and we'd love to see him play at one of the Highland Games or a local pub. His home page with more information is at http://www.marcgunn.com/about.shtml
If you like cats, Irish music and drinking, then check out Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers
And if you want to hear a well-chosen mix of Celtic & Irish music, try Marc Gunn's Irish & Celtic Music Podcast

Today was Burns Night, the annivesary of poet Robert Burn's birthday. We didn't celebrate it this year, since we didn't procure a haggis in time, but maybe next year...

There are a lot of customs and rituals surrounding this observation, most dramatic of which is the Entrance of the Haggis. Here's a step-by-step video guide and more great information, plus recipes, from the BBC Food site.

Chicken choices - 2009

2009-01-19T07:16:00.000-08:00

Now that we've figured out what we're planting in the garden this year, it's time to choose some chicks for this year's laying flock. Hens will be productive for a few years, but as they get older eggs will be less in number and get much larger. We call the eggs laid by our veteran hens "tennis balls", since they seems to be about that size. Our current flock, which consists of Barred Rock, Buff Orpington and Cherry Egger hens, is in their laying prime right now. But we want to ensure a continued supply of eggs, as well as have some hens to sell. So we'll order another batch of chicks in time to mature right when we plan to sell our current flock.

This year we're trying a few new-to-us hens. The picture at the top of the page is a Welsummer hen. Cackle Hatchery says: "The Welsummer is a Dutch breed named after the village of Welsum in Holland, developed in the 1900's. It was first imported into this country in 1928 for its large brown egg. The Welsummer is a large, upright, active bird with a broad back, full breast, large full tail. and a single comb. They are a fast growing bird and a very rare breed here in the United States. Admitted to the American Standard of Perfection in 1991."

Check out the beautiful spotted brown eggs they lay (all but the top row in the picture below)!

The hen below is a color variation of the Plymouth Rock called a Partridge Rock. We're ordering from Stromberg's hatchery this year (since Cackle Hatchery doesn't offer the Welsummers pre-sexed), and they have a 25 chick minimum for shipping. So we have an opportunity to try out some new flock members to make up the minimum amount. Some websites say they are a little smaller than the Barred Rocks (we're getting more of those too), but as long as they are happy layers, we'll like them just fine.

The hen below might look a bit familiar to our readers who remember Del the rooster. We want big cold-hardy hens for our flock, that lay big sturdy eggs. Delaware hens should fit the bill, and also be good eating birds once they are done with their laying career. They are also on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy list as critical. We don't plan to breed them this year, but eventually we'll breed our own replacements. It would be nice to help bring back a breed that is part of our heritage, but only after we give them a trial run.

Another repeat performer for 2009's flock will be the Buff Orpingtons. They are a nice solid sturdy cold-tolerant layer. Though we like the Cherry Eggers just fine, the Buffs and Barred seem more laid back & friendly, and worth keeping as regular flock members.

How do we go about choosing chickens when there are so many breeds out there? One handy tool is Henderson's ICYouSeeHandy-Dandy Chicken Chart. It's an Australian site, so they call chickens "chooks", and it's really helpful when you have specific criteria in mind. You can scroll down and see egg size & color, winter layer or not, breed origins, broodiness, etc. There are also other pages on the site with more information on all aspects of chicken-keeping.

Another helpful site (if you're interested in chicken nutrition, and maybe making up your own chicken feed) is one called Chicken Feed. Some great ideas for raising worms as protein for hens, also calculators to see if your home-blend has what chickens need to be good meat birds and layers. A good resource as store-bought feed prices keep going up.

Is it spring yet?

2009-01-13T19:59:00.000-08:00

It's that scary-licious time of year when we have to put down the seed catalogs and place our orders. Time to commit to a list of plants, and hope to get a year's worth of produce from them. Most of 2009's veggies are return visitors, but we're adding a few we've never tried before.

The picture above is Detroit Dark Red Short Top from Fedco Seeds, who say:

"Introduced 1892 and still the standard late variety for home gardeners and canners. Globular smooth uniform beets with tender oxblood-red flesh. This short top strain had the best roots in our evaluations."

Beets seem pretty happy here, especially with all the compost we add to the garden soil. We've grown Early Wonder Tall Top, which was good for fresh eating & pickling, but the greens were a bit iffy. Bulls Blood was a red-leafed variety we tried too. The "greens" were wonderful, with a deep purple-crimson color. The roots themselves were good, but stayed small. Since we get lots of wonderful greens from chard & spinach, we're going to concentrate on beets for pickling this year.

Most gardeners in the PNW were challenged by the cold spring of 2008. Plants just didn't want to grow! We ended up replanting more than one kind of veggie because the seeds rotted in the ground. Everything eventually got into gear, but by then there just wasn't much time to set and ripen fruit. We would have had a bumper pepper crop judging by how many green ones we managed to pickle. But I really wanted to try those candy apple red Jimmy Nardello's or have some Cayennes mature enough to gring into red pepper flakes.

This year we decided to hedge our bets and look for short season peppers. After hearing good things about the Czech Black hot pepper from Fedco and a few friends, we're giving this black beauty (see picture above) a try. Fedco says:

"Black when immature, the 21/2" long conical fruits ripen to a lustrous garnet... Mild juicy flesh runs with a cherry red juice when cut. The heat, a tad less than a jalapeño’s, is in the ribs and seeds... 2-1/2–3' bushes bear very early, setting about 20 pointed thick-walled peppers per plant."

Now that the only plants left in the garden are these topless mangel beets, the hens can get to work tilling in all the compost piled on the garden rows. They really look forward to it and it's a big help working in all that raw material.

Warning! Gratuitous critter pics below.

Crichton assembled a hoard of catnip toys and proceeded to beat the crap out of them. As you can tell by the rest of the pictures, no one was impressed....

Rain keeps falling...

2009-01-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

Smith road between Everson Goshen and 542...

Doggy depth checkers...