My Bit of Earth

An Atypical Harvest Lunch

2010-09-07T22:26:09-05:00

The pumpkin is no more. The squash bugs--who multiplied beyond reckoning in just one week of "I'm hot and lazy and pregnant" neglect--were setting up permanent colonies on it's surface. Just looking at them gave me the willies.

Say, did you know that one blast from a weed burner will barbecue squash bugs instantaneously? I imagine it's something like an atomic bomb--a death so fast there's not even half a second to think of pain. Which is much more merciful than they were to my pumpkin.

But, although the pumpkin was rendered inedible, I found a less conventional harvest food tucked away in a back corner of the garden this weekend--several handfuls of edamame.

A few minutes in the steamer, a sprinkle of salt...a perfectly lovely September lunch!

We Have Eggs!

2010-09-06T18:33:09-05:00

A day that shall live for eternity in the annals of Hacienda del Hosta history....today, at 23 weeks old, my chickens became little women....today, my chickens have laid eggs!

Well, two of them did. We think.

This morning we were out doing yard work when I spotted the first one. It was laying in the dusty part of the yard that the girls like to hang out in during the middle of the day when it's hot. A brown, speckled egg, with black and white feathers attached--it has to be Ingrid's.

An investigation of the nest box revealed another egg, the exact same size, but lighter brown and without the speckles. My bet on that one is Tori for four reasons:

It was the same size as Ingrid's--making it more likely to be a chicken egg.
It was light brown--Alanis is an "Easter Egger", so hers should be blue or green or pink.
Alanis is still kind of wiry and lithe-looking compared to Ingrid and Tori's fuller figures.
Also--and I know this is totally crazy--of all the poultry, Tori is the most sensible. It would be like her to figure out to use the nest box from the get-go.

We were gone over the weekend, so those two could have been laid anytime Saturday or Sunday or even early this morning.

Then this evening, Sweet Husband went out to put the girls away and found another dark, speckled egg in the same place as the last one. Ingrid strikes again!

So, we're up to three eggs, probably two from Ingrid and one from Tori.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out if I should keep track of number of eggs by chicken (based on my guesses and conjecture) or just keep a number for the entire flock? And should we weigh them too? Or just count them? (Have I ever mentioned that I'm sort of a whore for record keeping and spreadsheets and the like?)

Eh, maybe I'll go make an omelette while I think about it....

This is What a Luffa Gourd Looks Like

2010-09-03T02:29:00-05:00

And suddenly our plants have become prolific. I counted 15 luffa gourds the other day, and I'm sure there are more--their color camouflages them in the leaves, which makes them hard to see. According to the internets they will soon start to turn brown or yellow, and then we can pick and peel them to get to the spongy goodness inside.

The Rest of the Loot

2010-09-02T03:22:00-05:00

Even before Sweet Husband found the spinning wheel, we were having an awesome day at the River Market Antique Mall.

I have been looking for a copy of this game forever. It's a card game we used to play at my grandmother's when I was little. The idea is that everyone is going on a trip. You play "mileage" cards to progress along your way, but you can stop other people from traveling by playing things like "out of gas" or "punctured tire". (It's a little like Uno, but not quite.)

It was one of those totally cool serendipitous things where I just happened to look down and there it was sitting on top of an old metal trunk. Meant to be, I tell you.

Sweet Husband's big score was a couple of razors. Last Christmas I bought him a double-edged razor (like the one above to the right) and a shaving kit to go with. He loves it, and I've actually been converted too.

So converted, in fact, that I steal his razor when he's not looking. (Seriously ladies, it takes a few days to get the hang of it without nicking yourself, but your legs will be smooth for days!) Not being particularly crazy about having to hunt down his razor all the time, he's been looking for one for me for a bit now. As these razors last forever, an older one is just as good as a new. After this guy is properly sterilized I expect to never have to buy another crappy disposable razor for the rest of my life.

The straight razor--on the bottom--is actually for Sweet Husband. He's been wanting one to experiment with. (They scare me a little, but it's not my face at risk, so....)

And a couple of Dr. Seuss books for the kiddo rounded out the lot!

Thirteen Going on a Hundred

2010-09-01T20:26:23-05:00

Ms. Porter House (pictured here in her puppy days) celebrates her thirteenth birthday today. By the traditional 1 year=7 dog years formula, that makes her a very respectable 91 years old.

A Wheel Of My Own

2010-08-31T02:29:00-05:00

Sweet Husband scored major brownie points this weekend. Like, a year's worth. Here's how it happened.

Having nothing else we wanted to do on Saturday afternoon, we decided to drive over to the River Market Antique Mall and have a looksie. The place is pretty awesome in and of itself--four floors of curiosities, all fairly well-priced. We had already had awesome luck finding a few little goodies (more about those later this week), and were on the third floor when Sweet Husband said, "Hey did you see that spinning wheel down stairs?"

"What?!"

"Yeah, there's a spinning wheel. I think it was, like, fifty bucks."

If you will remember, I took a spinning class about a year ago and loved it. But after trying several wheels in class, the two I liked (the Traditional Ashford or the Ashford Traveller) were sadly out of the budget. Although I'd been keeping an eye out for a used wheel on Ebay, I had just about decided it wasn't meant to be.

So, trying not to get my hopes up--because I was sure that something had to be wrong with it for that price--I frog-marched Sweet Husband back to the second floor where, with just a little hunting, we found it.

A pretty little Traveller, who knows how old. (It has a single treadle, which I've discovered they don't make anymore, and l-shaped flyer-hooks, which are also, apparently, quite out-of-date.) Although with my limited experience I couldn't say for sure, it looked like everything was in working order...or, at least, working enough that it wouldn't take much to get it back into ship-shape. I may have done a little dance right there amidst the antique furniture!

A quick trip to my local yarn store Sunday afternoon confirmed that this was indeed a steal. There's a slight problem with the knob that adjusts the brake tension (some fool varnished it in place), but a) it looks like it might be possible to get it out with a bit of work, or b) if not, the nice lady who looked it over for me showed me how to do makeshift adjustments. Otherwise, a little oil in the joints and it's ready to start making yarn!

The Kitchen Reader: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

2010-08-30T03:55:00-05:00

This month's Kitchen Reader book--chosen by Karen of Shortbread South--is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

The plot was not terribly new for me at this point--urban family moves the the country and eats local for a year--but I liked this book the most of any I've read in this genre, because the author is very practical about it.

A lot of the time authors turn eating locally into an endurance contest. (In Plenty, for example, the authors picked mouse poop out of their locally sourced wheat so they could make bread--ewww!) In much the way I admire people who run marathons, but would never actually want to run a marathon myself; I admire that sort of dedication to eating locally, but it's not for me.

Throughout this book, Kingsolver's family eats locally where they can, takes the time to consider whether they really need things that can't be gotten locally, and then buys sustainably where they must. This strikes me as being much more realistic for the average person.

But the most fascinating part of this book is the turkeys!

According to Kingsolver, almost all modern, domesticated turkeys are hatched in incubators. Like chickens, they're raised until a given point where (meat) weight vs. food consumption makes economic sense, and then they're slaughtered--usually before they're even a year old.

In one chapter of the book, Kingsolver decides to see if she can make her domestic turkeys self-perpetuating--in other words, could her turkeys hatch and raise their own young? While the underlying concerns are serious (we've screwed with Mother Nature so much that these birds can't even reproduce without human interference), the story of how one turkey eventually figures it all out is hilarious.

All in all, a very good read!

Duck (and Chicken) Tales

2010-08-26T22:04:04-05:00

Every morning I let the ducks and chickens out of their coop before heading to work. I coax them into the front of our yard (away from the garden) with their morning breakfast. The chickens will keep eating and ignore me as I leave, but the ducks always follow me--quacking loudly and in "V" formation--to the gate. The other day, just to see what they would do, I purposely walked in a zig-zag line to the gate instead of a straight line. In unison, all three stopped moving or quacking, tilted their heads to the side, and looked at me like I was drunk.

A new neighbor moved into the house behind us recently. Last weekend she stopped Sweet Husband and asked, "Are those ducks you have in there?"

"Yup"

"I love to hear them quack in the morning. They're always so happy, it just makes my day."

Tori the Chicken hopped into my lap the other day and let me pet her. There was bribery involved--a precious, garden-fresh cherry tomato--but she didn't seem to hate it too much once she was there. The other five birds are much more suspicious of me. They'll all come up and greet me in the afternoon. And they're happy to accept any tidbits or scratch I might offer. But if I make a move to touch them they quickly scamper out of reach.

No eggs yet, although we're checking every day. I know they'll all start producing on their own time, but I wish that time was now. Each morning I go out and open the nest boxes hopefully, thinking "Today is going to be the day!" And each morning so far, it's not. The little freeloaders!

But alas, the girls aren't the only ones getting a free meal around here. We're about to declare war on all rodent kind.

They can't get into the food that we store in our shed--it's sealed up tightly--but once we put food out for the girls it's fair game for mice and squirrels. The mice just leave droppings, which is bad enough, but the squirrels are getting eerily bold.

The problem is making sure the chickens get enough food while the other critters get as little as possible. Traps and poison are just as likely to hurt a bird (or a terrier) as a mouse, so they're of limited use. Right now, we're thinking the solution is to be scrupulously clean, giving the girls only as much food as they can eat in a day and putting all food away at night. I know there are a few other chicken keepers who drop by occasionally--what do you do to keep the rodents away?

Big Butt Baby Pants

2010-08-25T04:15:00-05:00

There are only so many times in your life that you can get away with wearing a garment that is designed to make your butt look big. I don't know how long the window is (3 years? 5 years?), but it's very small. And I think the Peapod should get to take full advantage of it. Hence, the Big Butt Baby Pants.

(Digression: I was at the Gap the other day when I saw the first sweater dress of the year. I love the idea of sweater dresses, but their lack of structure tends to make me look pregnant. I was gazing at the dress longingly when the light bulb clicked on....wait a second, I am pregnant! While that particular sweater dress was not for me, I'm officially on the hunt. I will buy a sweater dress this year and I will wear the hell out of it! But anyway....)

The first pair of these was a little bit fiddly, and I'm not sure I ever got the bit right where the butt panel and the crotch intersect. However, once I got into the rhythm, they were...maybe a half an hour each from start to finish? Not as easy as regular pants (which, to be honest, I'll probably stick to in the future), but not much harder.

And the little contrasting butt panels are pretty cute. A fitting "end" to my flurry of making-things!

T-Shirt Factory

2010-08-24T04:08:00-05:00

One summer when I was ten or eleven-ish, I had the nicest babysitter. In addition to a daughter my age, she had a petting zoo of farm animals (I remember the ferret and the pot-bellied pig, in particular), an unlimited supply of Disney movies, and a trampoline. Also, as long as the messy parts were done outside, she was very encouraging of our art projects--I believe that was the summer I learned what a hot glue gun is.

One of our favorite art projects was a game called "T-shirt factory". A box of puff paints, as many of my Dad's white undershirts as he'd let me steal, and we were in business for a whole afternoon of t-shirt decorating fun. So when a co-worker gifted me a box of her son's outgrown clothes, I knew exactly what to do with them.

I decorated these with freezer paper stencils. While you could easily draw your own, I used some from the Lotta book. Although you can't see it in any of these pictures, it's very important that you put some sort of barrier (cardboard, a grocery sack) inside the t-shirt, so that the paint doesn't bleed through to the back.

I was super-happy with how these turned out. Sweet Husband even commented that--with more grown-up stencils, obviously--he might like a few new decorated shirts!

I also sewed and stenciled a few tiny hats. They're made from the Soulemama old-shirts pattern used for the wee Haitians, although I did hem the bottoms to make them a bit neater looking.

The colors were totally accidental, but in retrospect, a few pink ones were probably wise just in case Nice Mom and Ms. Redhead are right and the Draino is wrong.