in my kitchen, around the farm
in my kitchen, around the farm
chickens/gut health/good ice cream/healthy hamburger/asparagus glut
It was a big week for this year’s chicks and goslings. They finally made their way into the great, wild yonder. The goslings, in typical goose-like superiority, show me nothing much more than disdain. The chicks, however, are a friendly lot that have come to associate my boots with their salvation from the grumpy old hens that give them a frank peck when they get too close.
I added the last of my chicken breeds to my mix this year. I haven’t bought any chicks for awhile because I was able to get to that sweet spot of my birds hatching out their own. I’ve got a thriving barnyard mix now and I’m really happy with them. Let’s see, what goes into my eclectic chicken assortment? I pretty much have everything except the commercial layers. So there’s Australorp, Brahmas, Cochin, Orpington, Wyandotte, Ameraucana, Jersey Giant, Marans, Welsummer, Chantecler, Barnevelder, Bielefelder, and maybe some breed somewhere over the years that I’ve forgotten. This year I added the Bielefelders so I’m done. I wanted the Bielfelders because they’re from a climate similar to ours (Germany), they’re a dual purpose bird (meaning laying and still with a big enough carcass to be worth the plucking efforts), they’re sweet and big and lay a beautiful dark chocolate egg that’s worthy of admiration.
Some of the things I look for when picking laying birds is first, their size over their egg production capacity. I think a lot of people go for volume of eggs/year. On our little farm, there are bigger things to consider than volume of eggs. I would rather keep a few more chickens and get the eggs I need and have birds that are resilient, well adapted to our climate, hatch out their own, and when the time comes, have a nice carcass size. You really haven’t experienced the depth of chicken delights until you’ve eaten a mature, heritage breed laying hen. You have to know how to cook it, yes, but wow, what a revelation! Who knew chicken breasts weren’t meant to be white? Me.
The other new addition this year are the two pairs of American Buff geese. These geese won’t be kept at the pond with old Harold and Maude, our Pilgrim geese, who are presently hatching out their own goslings. Harold and Maude have been with us for years now. Every year they hatch out their goslings and we keep them until November/December and then they go into our freezer. Understandably, Harold and Maude are suspect of us and always have been. No, these geese, the new pairs, will live in our fruit and nut orchard. It’s where they are now. Their job is the cleaning up in between rows of berries and fruit.
Our fruit orchard is surrounded by a ten foot deer fence. Within the orchard there’s another fence around our raised bed garden. But in the rest of it there are saskatoon, blueberry, raspberry, currant, elderberry, strawberry, haskaps, and cherry bushes. There are apple, Chinese pears, heartnut, and pear trees. I’m missing some things. But you get the idea. There are also areas for the garlic, potatoes, melons, and squashes that need to spread out. The chickens roam free in there and so, too, the new buff geese. The ducks are hatching out their ducklings. I’ve spied six so far. Next week our Ridley Bronze fertilized eggs will be arriving. They will be crossed with the Beltsvilles. And that will be that.
We’ve been diligently working on trying to recover my husband’s gut health since his bout with Lyme and antibiotics. He’s continuing on with herbal tinctures I have him on for the Lyme symptoms. In many ways I wish he hadn’t taken the antibiotics, but it was ultimately his choice. He was very sick and crippled and I have to step back sometimes. So here I am now, stepping in to help him heal from not just Lyme, but the antibiotics, too.
In this endeavour, homemade raw milk kefir and kvass has been a staple. Don’t buy kefir, it’s all fake. They just use a single, powdered culture, nothing at all like the real stuff that is complex and wondrously healing. It may be different where you are but here they sell fake kefir in plastic jugs. Nothing worse than enzymatically alive foods in plastic. Anyway, yes, he’s getting the real stuff - raw milk cultured with kefir grains in glass by a loving and devoted wife.
There are other things we’re doing to let the good bacteria know that there’s an open house and they’re all welcome and none of it has to do with taking probiotics. A lot of it is stuff we normally do, but I’ll list it anyway: not washing our hands after working outside, getting soil on our skin and under our nails, lying on the ground every single day and exposing our bodies, especially our tummies, to the sun, moving and exercising, spending as much time as possible under the sun including the mandatory