Chickadees leave the nest

Eight babies hatched. You can't see them all here.

Peeping in through the hole.

This week the baby chickadees flew the nest. Although we watched closely, we missed the launch. Yesterday morning they were gone. Eight babies seems like a huge family for two little birds. By the end, the parents were looking very haggard. All day long they played tag team coming with bugs and wiggly, green worms and dee-dee-deeing one another.  Every other day we climbed the ladder, lifted the lid and looked inside to see their progress. We tried to do it when the adults weren’t around, but sometimes they caught us and by the sound of their scoldings they would've liked to thrash us to death.

They are fledged out. Note the bits of green moss at the edges.

From inside our screened in porch we could watch the parents flit in and out.

After they left, I took the house down to clean out the nest. It was clearly the work of artisans and professionals. It had at least three inches of green moss padding the bottom and a finely woven nest on top. Wool snatched from the clothesline, hair, downy feathers and bits of shredded bark were some of the materials that made up their cunning little home.

My mother once told me that the Ojibway Indians, who lived on an island near her parents when she was growing up, used to line their babies’ cradle boards with moss. Later, I learned that moss is very absorbent and has antiseptic qualities. I’m guessing our baby chickadees did not get diaper rash. There is so much knowledge like this that we’ve lost to modernity. I miss them. It’s possible another pair will raise another family yet this summer.

If rabbits ran your farm

Becca of Heartbeet Farm brings the tractor in from the field.

Greenhouse shared by Heartbeet and Easy Yoke Farm.

      Last night we saw a local showing of Greenhorns – a documentary about young farmers around the country who are trying in unusual places and ways to bring nutritious, pesticide-free food to the table and earn a living at the same time. I’d recommend viewing it. These young people are energetic, innovative, educated and very thoughtful about what they’re trying to do. (Is that a little excessive, Margie?)  They are building greenhouses on empty lots in the middle of urban mission districts, reclaiming broken farms, and setting up small shops to sell true artisan foods in the midst of cities. They face enormous financial hurdles, relentless labor, and discouraging government policies. We admire them because we’ve witnessed how they love what they do and we’ve eaten their crops as fast as we could shove shitake mushrooms and potatoes into our mouths.

This was a full-grown rosebush complete with yellow roses sitting on top of the stand

Eaten down to nubbins.

She looks slightly evil as she ignores the radish tops.

     While we were busy watching the film and listening to the discussion that followed, Honeysuckle was busy at home. We had a small rosebush sitting on a stand on the porch. She decided to harvest it before we could transplant it. We never imagined she’d pull it down and eat the whole thing, thorns, yellow blossoms and canes right down to nubbins. On a tiny scale this is proof of what animals can do to your investments if you allow them to run the business. Turn your back for a second, leave the gate unlatched...  just another hazard to factor in if you farm animals.

The way of poppies

      It is the nature of poppies to be fleeting. Here for a few hours, day or two perhaps, then, gone.
For that reason I didn't used to like them. Wasteful, I thought. Now perhaps I'm wiser? Last year we allowed three poppies. This year, so far, I counted seventeen. When you see a miniature orange volcano pressing through the swelling green bud, it's about to burst.

                     Two days ago there were two, now there are five. The weather has been perfect for them, but still, they will not last long. So I go out to look at them several times a day to watch their blazing careers. They nest among the black iris - which is only called black. It is more a very dark purple.

 

Their petals are so delicate the slightest rain or windy weather carries them away.

     When the sun is directly on them, they are almost too bright to look at. But I do. I am filled with both joy and sadness. Our lives - on a stem.

Simply Water

These days, nothing tastes better than this water. (I’ve been drinking heavily during my absence from this blog.) I think it really could be called artisan water. Artisan –  meaning hand-made in small batches – another word hi-jacked by marketeers and ad-people.

It’s simple enough, and maybe everyone else already knows to do this or isn’t interested. Our niece, Mary Blount Lapp, served it from large glass jars at her beautiful outdoor wedding reception in Lancaster County, PA. In one hour I drank twice the recommended daily amount. Couldn’t stop. Still can’t. The combined flavors are so refreshing they stir memories of cold, sweet water drank from a spring near a lake on a hot day years ago.  

Mary’s Water

1 gallon filtered water

3-4  thin slices lime

5 thin slices cucumber

2 small sprigs of mint

Refrigerate til icy cold.

Obviously, adjust to taste. 

      Mary & Ernie's outdoor wedding reception on the hillside of their friends' farm.

Ticks are edible

     This year with spring arriving about a month early we’ve wondered if the population of ticks sneaking around our yard are silently exploding, those creepy little killers. Sure enough just a few days ago, Anita pulled a full-bellied deer tick off Blackberry’s ear.  (He is Honeysuckle’s remaining son, a messy teenage boy, finally ready to leave next week for his new home as a surprise birthday gift to a seven-year-old.)

     Just today the Huffington Post published a warning I take to heart. It is enough for any situational hypochondriac to repeatedly Google Lyme disease and be certain you’ve had it at least  twenty times in the past year. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/global-warming-lyme-disease-west-nile_n_1400692.html?ref=email_share

     You can’t be smugly indifferent just because you don’t live in the forest. No. Even we urban dwellers are targets for lyme disease and other tick borne plagues. (If you don’t believe me just go ahead and Google ticks.) I hope the following helps you: it turns out that guinea fowl love ticks! Some reports claim a single hen can clear a two acre area clean of any tick that dares crawl through her territory. But you can’t think in “ones.” These animals thrive as flocks, in communities, not as singles. So if you take my advice get at least two. Three. Perhaps ten. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/global-warming-lyme-disease-west-nile_n_1400692.html?ref=email_share

We would love to own guinea fowl, but I doubt our neighbors would tolerate them. Maybe we couldn’t either, when it gets down to it. They have one tiny little unfavorable characteristic.

  

      We have grandchildren who live on ten wooded acres surrounded by hundreds more, who lie on the ground and play in the dirt.... Perhaps it is our duty to protect them from tick-borne illness? Perhaps we should gift them with a little flock. Perhaps Guinea fowl cries could be considered musical if you thought of them as tick-eaters rather than something that makes you scream SHUT-UP OR I WILL KILL YOU THIS INSTANT.

     What do you think, Micah? Jerem?

Cookie Rabbits

      This weekend we were busy making and decorating sugar cookies for kids. There may be one or two left to share. Denis mixed up black icing to reflect, what? Lent? Black crosses, bunnies outlined in dark. Blackened hearts.

Sadly, there were also a few rabbit injuries in the Toad Hall kitchen.

One of them was heard to say:

“My butt HURTS.”

The second one replied:

“What?”

They required immediate attention.

      Here’s a recipe for a glazed icing that hardens to a lovely shiny surface. Many of you knew how to do this, but no one told me until recently. I love how it works.

Cookie Icing

1 c. powdered sugar

2 t. milk

2 tsp light corn syrup (this is the secret ingredient, a must)

½ t almond extract

Stir together the sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and extract until icing is smooth and glossy. If too think add small equal amounts of milk and syrup. Divide into separate bowls and add food coloring to each to desired intensity. Dip cookies or paint with a brush. Allow the cookies to set out for a few hours before storing them in layers separated by wax paper.

Cast-iron versus nonstick

There are now more reasons, my friends, to cast out your nonstick cookware and begin using my favorite kitchen colleague: cast-iron! I know. Giving up expensive wedding gifts and throwing away the Cuisinart nonstick set purchased with blood money won’t be easy. But after the following information, in good conscience you may not even be able to give it away. So fair warning, you can stop here. Sorry, sorry, sorry. On the bright side cast-iron is such a fabulous way to cook. And it may support more healthy living than we imagined.

      Baked squash ready for the oven in my large 12 inch cast-iron skillet

A few years ago I was surprised to learn that pet birds die when exposed to the fumes produced by heating nonstick cookware. Did you know that? Birds are easily poisoned by PFOA and PFOS – the compound that is vaporized when the cookware is heated. The poor canary in the coal mine only this time it’s in the kitchen? Lucky thing humans aren’t quite that sensitive. I occasionally wondered about the surface that wore off into the food we ate and if it was good or bad for us. No matter how careful I was someone was always throwing away a groady old pan and buying me a new frying pan for Christmas.

Apparently, the compounds which go into making plastics are hard to get out of the system once they’re in, and the medical community is finding more concrete data about the effect on humans.

JAMA published an article  (this link is slow to load) in January reporting research on PFOA and PFOS and a related compound PFHxS  (I have no idea and am only parroting) – they are used to make nonstick surfaces in cookware and fabric, like in the trade names Teflon and Scotchguard)  Following a group of Faroese children from birth to age 7, researchers at Harvard Public School of Health found that the more exposure children had to these compounds “the less robust their response to vaccines.” ( I know. Some of you don’t believe in vaccines, but this is about immunity not vaccines.) Children with an “inadequate response to vaccinations was particularly common;” they were not showing sufficient levels of protective antibodies. Philippe Grandjean of Harvard and his colleagues who led the study called the results shocking. (They noted that the blood levels of the pollutant in the participants were, on average, lower than those found in American children.)

The findings are leading them to raise questions about whether the immune deficiencies point to more vulnerability to allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disease. Science News Magazine reports that Toxicologist Margie Peden-Adams of U of Nevada calls the study impressive and “Those of us in the field will be excited to see it.” (My emphasis. Exciting? Understandable irony when your passion is poison.)

     Simmering mixed lentils with dried apricots and cranberries using Dutch oven on stove top.

I’m not saying that cooking with cast iron is the answer to all our ills. Maybe you or your child’s margins are adequate to handle more pollutants from the environment, no problem, I can’t say. Personally, we’ve seen more allergy, ear infections, strep, and other immune issues in our family than we’d want. It can’t hurt to gradually move from using nonstick pans and aluminum to glass, stainless steel, enamelware and cast-iron. Maybe it’s a little piece of the puzzle? If there is a connection between PFOAs and immune deficiency, it’s easy to project that the manufacturing industry will vigorously protest and deny any links to ill health.