Roast chicken

I used to be really into dating bad boys.  It wasn't because I liked the danger or was trying to piss off my mother, it was because I liked being considered the nice one in the relationship.  I wanted people to say, "JoAnn is really nice, why is she with that guy?" So, fifteen years ago, when I started dating a 30 year old guy who still got into the occasional fist fight with strangers who pissed him off, I figured I was a shoe in for the role of  "nice one" in the relationship. Unfortunately, recent events have forced me to admit something I have known for a very long time:  The husband is really much nicer than I.

He is the one who captures raccoons and groundhogs in the Have a Heart trap so he can drive them to the middle of nowhere and release them, while I would probably opt for the guillotine style trap.  He is the one who saved a baby rabbit from the jaws of our cat and then pleaded with me to take it back to New York City with us in the van the cat and dog were also going to be in.  I refused and the next weekend the cat finished the job.  He is also the one who tried to nurse a baby bird back to health who had fallen out of its nest and the one who sat by Itty Bitty Kitty's side and played midwife as she birthed her kittens.

While one of my favorite sports is sarcasm laced gossip, the husband rarely has an unkind word to say about anyone.  If you cut him off in traffic however, he will get out of the car and pour a soda down your windshield as he unleashes some colorful expletives.

Given the husband's kindness and love of little animals, I was really surprised by the zeal he had for raising meat birds, but I figured he was a committed homesteader now and ready to butcher his own food.  The fact that he doesn't even like to carve the Thanksgiving Turkey probably should have made me doubt his resolve for cutting a chicken's head off and pulling out its feathers.

Last Friday was the big day.  We were all set to put 15 birds into our freezer.  Two days before the event, we separated the meat birds from the layers and after we pardoned a few of the favorolle hens because they were really sweet so we deemed them too small, we were down to 12. Most of the chickens destined for the roasting pan were roosters.  Note to anyone who wants to raise their own meat birds: choose roosters.  They are bigger and they are such little fuckers that you will be dying to slit there throats.

My mother-in-law thankfully arrived at high noon on Friday.  The husband had his killing cone (a metal cone you nail to a tree which you place the chicken in so that only it's head is sticking out.)  This gives the chicken some comfort and makes for a lot less blood splatter since chickens really can run around with their heads cut off.  My MIL also brought her cone since she had recently butchered some of her own meat birds and she quickly got to work slitting the throat of the first one.  The husband tried to do the second one and got, shall we say, a little squeamish, so his mom offed that one too. The two of them then got to work scalding the birds to make the feathers come out easier.

The birds were supposed to go into the chicken plucker contraption so we wouldn't have to pluck by hand but there was a glitch in the design so this group needed to be plucked by hand.  After the first couple of birds, I could tell the husband wasn't going to last.  He took over the job of boiling water and I joined his mom in the plucking and gutting.

I was kind of surprised by how unfazed I was by the whole process.  The feathers were soft and pulled out easily after the bird was scalded. Removing the innards reminded me of junior high school biology class when I had to dissect a rat.  It was fascinating seeing its heart and intestines.  I was starting to worry my lack of empathy for these chickens I had just fed the day before, meant I may have sociopathic tendencies.

By the time I cleaned and bagged the birds for the freezer and prepared the three I roasted for dinner that night, the chickens just looked like the chickens I buy in the grocery store, except with longer legs and much skinnier bodies.  I do NOT want to know what Purdue does to get its chickens to grow two pound breasts.

That night there were seven of us for dinner including my five, a friend of the boys and my mother-in-law. We all sat down and gave thanks for the meal we were about to eat and for the chickens that gave their lives to sustain us.  (Obviously I had this speech all written in my head months before.)  I really thought I would tear up or get a weird feeling in my stomach the first time I ate an animal I raised for meat, but again, I was feeling slightly sociopathic.  Prince, James Dean and my mother-in-law all dug in despite the the husband's declaration that he didn't like it.  Scrappy and our friend were a little reluctant to eat the birds they had just helped carry to the killing cones.

I felt a little disappointed that we didn't all have a spiritual kumbaya moment when we tasted our first Farmette chicken, but as I looked around the table and saw three generations enjoying each other's company and experiencing this newest family adventure, I realized this was a popcorn bowl moment none of us will soon forget.

the nice one in our relationship.

Farmer vacation?

Seriously, how the hell do farmers go on vacation?  The President is on Martha's Vineyard.  Why is it so difficult for me to go away?  I know, he is on the phone dealing with Egypt blah blah blah, but he got to GO AWAY.

Granted, the President and Vice President don't go anywhere together, so technically I suppose Joe Biden could hold down the fort, but I am taking my VP along with me.  Sorry honey, you are the VP in this scenario because ever since you claimed, "Mommy tax" (a term I coined for when the kids have to give me a bite of ice cream or other decadent food I don't want a full serving of) was originally "Daddy tax" (a term you stole from me) I cannot help but remember Joe's plagiarism of Neil Kinnock's speech.

Anyway, it is hard enough going away on vacation, but when you have two dogs, five cats, a bunny, a horse, a cow and a whole bunch of chickens, not to mention a garden and a greenhouse, it is damn near impossible.

Luckily, we have some friends from the city who are willing, I mean DYING to come play farm so the whole family gets to go away for an entire week! (Note to city friends: If you want a free summer vacation at a farm, read a couple of books about farm animals and then put an ad in some high end horse magazine as a "farm sitter." I bet you get to stay at a really swank horse farm in Virginia or maybe even the farmette.)

Going away has always been hard for me because for some reason I need my house to be ten times as clean as it usually is.  This means instead of just packing clothes, I have to go through everyone's drawers and throw out tattered old clothes that were just fine to wear the day before, not to mention the fact that I always have to clean the refrigerator for the first time in six months.

So here is my "to do" list of things I need to do by Saturday morning:

1. Catalogue all of my saved seeds from this year. (How could that possibly wait another week?)

2. Finally make blueberry bacon jam √ (Did it this morning. Hope the pressure canner worked!)

3. Launder every article of clothing in the hamper.  (Don't think this will ever be possible unless I force the boys to be naked for a couple of days.)

4. Spray squash plants for powdery mildew. ( Tomorrow.)

5. Clean out chicken house. √

6. Shovel out horse and cow stall. √ (Now I need to keep them out of the barn until we get back.)

7. Exercise every day for a week and not drink wine or eat bread so I can wear bikini.  (Doing sit ups while I type.  Really.)

8. Wash nasty dead animal smell off of dog. √ (I will kill her if she rolls in it again.)

9. Spend quality time with my cow. √ (I love that beast even though she has no manners.)

10. Brush the horse's mane. (I am thinking the Rasta look suits her.)

11. Download all of the "This American Life" podcasts available. √

12. Bring those two books I was supposed to read this summer to the beach with me. (Just bringing this one:)

13. Butcher 20 chickens the day before we leave even though we have never butchered chickens before. (Yeah, this should be interesting.)

I guess I should end at lucky 13.  I am sure there will be some interesting stories next week.

Grow a Row

Gardening is much like golf.  Well, at least I think it is.  I don't golf. There is no such thing as a perfect garden.  While we have been eating carrots and broccoli out of the greenhouse on a daily basis for the past two months, the recent hot spell has made my salad greens bolt up the hill. There is no telling from year to year what is going to happen with crops.  One year it is cool and rainy and the arugula grows like crazy while the squash rots on the vine.  The next year you are eating zucchini bread for breakfast lunch and dinner while you crave a nice salad.  It can be very frustrating.

The greenhouse helps tremendously with the cool rainy weather, but 90 degree days spent under plastic can be difficult even for the heat loving tomato.

I was a little worried about a week ago that I was going to have to write that I failed for the fifth year in a row to produce more than a dozen tasty tomatoes.  The fact that we spent hundreds of dollars and countless hours building the greenhouse, creating the richest soil, and procuring a wide array of exotic heirloom seeds,  in the never ending quest for the perfect tomato weighed heavy on my mind as I watched several of the delicate yellow flowers that hold the promise of  big juicy tomatoes, turn brown and die.

A few well placed fans in combination with a healthy dose of sea kelp fertilizer and my frantic shaking of the plants to help with pollination seems to have done the trick and we have eaten the first of the sweet little black cherry tomatoes this week.

It is funny how sublime the first taste of the first ripe tomato, first leaf of lettuce or first sweet berry  is every season.  The peas are usually the first things up and are eaten right in the garden.  Ditto for the asparagus that gets snapped off and chowed down without the hope of ever being bathed in a butter sauce.

Diminutive zucchini are sliced and eaten raw in salad and the entire family eats two blueberries for every one that goes into the bucket.  This culinary merriment seems to always come to an end a few weeks after that first taste.

This year was a bumper crop for blueberries.  I would like to attribute the bounty to my careful pruning and mulching but I am pretty sure it was just dumb luck and the fact that we didn't have a really warm winter followed by a freak frost in May like last year.

The husband and I eagerly awaited the first ripe berries watching the branches hang to the ground under the weight of so much fruit.  Prince had his recipe for Blueberry Dump Cake all ready to go and with the addition of the pressure canner, I was going to be able to avoid killing anyone with my blueberry bacon jam.

The first day of blueberry picking, we filled our bowls and bellies without making a dent in the number of berries still on the bushes.  By about the tenth day of picking, the boys revolted and Prince announced that they were striking unless they got paid.  The labor dispute was settled with an agreement I think would make many farm workers jealous, but the berries just kept coming and by the time I canned the 100th jar of jam, I was not really enjoying the blueberries quite as much.

There are still many blueberries ripening on the bushes and every time I pass by on my way to the garden, I realize I need to buy even more pectin and canning jars to keep up with the harvest.  The freezer is also full and I don't think anyone is too keen to eat another blueberry dessert for a while.

Today,  it hit me.  The way to reinvigorate our blueberry picking mojo is to change who we are picking the berries for.

A couple of years ago I heard about an organization started in New Jersey called "Grow a Row."  They encourage farmers to grow a row of fresh produce to be donated to those in need.  The boys cannot comprehend why we need more than 20 gallons of berries in our freezer but they can get behind the idea of picking them and giving them to a food pantry.  So now, I don't have to worry about wasting all of those nutritious little blueberries AND I get to cross "have the boys do some volunteer work" off of my summer bucket list.

Anyone who wants to come help us pick or if you know of a great food bank in the Oneonta area, please get in touch.  I am really hoping I will be able to do this with the tomatoes as well.  Fingers crossed.