Chickens galore

We currently have...lessee...sixteen chickens right now. At least one of those is a rooster. Another four could potentially be roosters or hens. The other eleven are all hens. Six hens and the rooster are about three years old now, our original egg laying group. They're a Speckled Sussex/Ameraucana mix. We have four baby Brahma hens that are now about...a month or so old? They're already getting big, but they'll also be larger than your average bird when they're full grown. We have four Silkies, about three weeks old, that are of an unknown gender for the moment, they could be hens, roosters, or a mix. You can't sex Silkies until they get older because they're really difficult to tell apart. Then we have one little Araucana, Owen's hen Owen, who is only two weeks old, hatched on May 9th. All in all they make a good little group in our chicken coop. I'm very glad now that we separated the two sides of the coop because it allows for us to isolate the chicks on one side without access to the run while not changing to set up for the grown hens. I try to let the chicks out every day to peck in the grass and get some sunshine. Today I fed them a big fat army worm that I found while weeding my berry patch, and the Brahmas proceeded to fight over it and run around the gated area I let them outside in trying to play keep away. It was hilarious.

Grass, it appears, is the bane of my existence. I agree with my mother's sentiment, which is that a weed is something which is neither pretty nor edible. I would also add medicinal to that list, as I use many supposed "weeds" as herbal teas for various ailments. Just the other day I discovered the weird leaves I used to pull up as a child are in reality broadleaf plantain, which is edible.

Yummmm...

I don't care for it, it's very bitter (anyone who has grown their own lettuce knows that homegrown lettuce can also be bitter due to its high tannin content). I don't like bitter, hence me not ever being attracted to coffee or alcohol, but the kids had no problem with it. They happily ate all the plantain leaves I picked with their lunch! I never would have thought that plantain could be edible. I'm debating going on a search for lamb's quarter to use in a salad because I know I like lamb's quarter and it's easy to find. I have a book on foraging that I hope to make use of this summer. I mostly need a good spot to go in the woods where I can find all this without trespassing or illegally harvest on government property. Hrm...

Adventures in foodstuffs

I've been adventuring with making a greater variety of cheap, good for you foods. Lately it's been beans, rice and lentils. I made a lentil and veggie tostada recipe that was well received by the adults in this family but the kids turned up their noses. Then I made a veggie stir fry with brown rice that was at least eaten by the children with minimal prodding. Then, I made a black bean burger that everyone loved (well, Jon only got to eat one reheated patty because he was gone the two nights I made it and no other burgers lasted). It was a great improvement over the chickpea burger that was all right in taste but kind of dry in consistency. This burger was just perfect. Nice and moist inside with a crispy cornmeal coating (say that ten times fast). Add tomato, lettuce and onion and a whole wheat organic bun and voila! Dinner perfection!

My burger with homegrown snap peas on the left (cooked from peas I picked and froze last year, Maine hasn't been that good to me yet)

So tonight was my second ever try at making homemade hummus. I tried years ago using canned chickpeas and a recipe that for some strange reason did not include tahini/seasame seeds. The result was a lemony chickpea nastiness that no one in the house liked and it scared me off of making hummus again for quite some time. But since we eat hummus like it's going out of style, I figured the time was ripe for me to give it another shot with my super awesome blend-anything machine and with a new recipe. The result was an excellent hummus recipe that only lacks a bit of seasoning, probably because I used garlic powder and not actual garlic.

Here is my recipe:

- 2 15oz cans of chickpeas, one drained, one undrained (I used fresh cooked chickpeas, so 3 cups of cooked plus 1/2 cup or more of water for consistency)
- 1/4 cup raw sesame seeds (I used toasted and it was fine)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 garlic clove, peeled (here I used garlic powder and it was quite garlicky enough)
- 1 tsp cumin
- salt

You puree everything but the salt until it reaches the consistency you want (add water gradually to make it thinner). Then you add salt to taste. You can easily make this into different flavors by adding things such as pureed roasted red pepper, pureed spinach and artichoke, extra garlic or hot pepper powder to the base hummus. I highly recommend using fresh cooked chickpeas. A 1lb bag of dry chickpeas yields about 6-6 1/2 cups of cooked chickepeas, which is enough for two batches of hummus. This recipe makes about 3-4 cups of hummus depending on what else you add to it, how much you can get out of your food processor/blender, and whether your husband and/or children eat some of it when you're not looking. Cost wise, this recipe is excellent. On a good day, when the big tubs of hummus are going on sale, I can nab two for $5 or $2.50 apiece. On a bad day they cost me $3.49 per tub. This recipe, even with super expensive sesame seeds ($3.99 for a little container), only costs me $1.65 per batch which makes more than I can buy in the tub. Win!

Om nom nom...homemade hummus.

Green and growing.

I joined Pinterest which may or may not be to my detriment (depending on how much time I spend pinning and repinning things...ok, let's face it, this could get ugly...) so you can find me on there. I've been slowly going through my links and pinning things up that I find useful. One thing I found was the website of the Thrifty Mama which has a lot of good suggestions on living a natural life on a smaller budget.

That is definitely one thing we're struggling with right now. I really believe in the benefits of organic food and whole food and local food, but it is so hard to buy it without it costing an arm and a leg! One thing I've found is that good staple meals like beans, lentils and brown rice go a long way for making a lot of cheap but good for you meals. Also, spices are a huge part of it, in my opinion. Just adding spices makes boring brown lentil mash much more interesting. I cooked a lentil and veggie tostada meal recently and the spices really made it a lot better.

The other difficult thing is finding good proteins without overloading on milk, cheese and other dairy products, or eating too much meat. Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly an herbivore but I try to limit my meat consumption to two meat dishes (where the meat is an accompaniment, not the main course) or less for the family a week. But that means that I need to make sure we're upping our protein intake from plant sources, in particular making sure we get enough complete proteins which is difficult with a mostly vegetarian/vegan diet. Well, I suppose it isn't that difficult. Nuts and grains make a complete protein. So do grains and legumes, legumes and veggies, or veggies and nuts. So it isn't impossible or even really all that hard, but it's more difficult than, say, grilling a steak or drinking some milk.

Mostly I'm a traditionalist. If our ancestors didn't eat it in the 1700s, we probably shouldn't eat it now. GMOs, antibiotic and hormone treated everything, high fructose corn syrup, refined flour and refined sugar. It all inundates our culture to the point where we just don't even see it. It can be hard to break away. By far the most difficult thing is buying organic, which (sad to say) is the lowest on my priority list. My first priority is to buy healthy foods, and if I can find organic so much the better, but if now I'll buy conventional. Luckily we're involved in the Heron Pond CSA this year as well as growing a garden for the fourth year, which will help with our veggie sources. I'm also hoping to make use of the various farmer's markets that are around to buy the staples like maple syrup and honey. Hopefully Jon will have some hunting success and we can get our meat from that. I've also ordered a book on Amazon about foraging in New England which will help supplement our food intake. There is a lot of good foraging that we already take advantage of. My blackberry and blueberry jams last year were entirely foraged stock, the blackberries from the road next to our property and the blueberries from Kennebunk Plains. I plan to get even more blueberries this year because the blueberry jam was quite popular. Our rhubarb patch is prolific as always and I will be looking for more sources of good rhubarb recipes so I can use it as it grows. I might also start selling it along with our extra eggs.

Sad, sad day...

Of the 30 duck eggs we acquired, one was cracked to begin with. So we were down to 29 from the get go.

Of those, only 3 made it to a point with a moving, living embryo.

Of those 3, only 2 started pipping (peeping and tapping at the shells) on Monday. They were still tapping yesterday.

Apparently they took too long to hatch and died, as we have two fully formed otherwise healthy ducklings who are dead in their shells. The saddest part of this is that tomorrow is my son's fifth birthday. We've been hoping to have ducklings in time for his birthday, but now it seems he'll be helping me bury them tomorrow.

I still have a faint glimmer of hope for the third egg (a Cayuga duck egg), but not much. I'm done with ducks. We gave away our pair that weren't laying because there wasn't any point in keeping them. I really wasn't terribly keen on having ducks anyways, but I'm so sad that our poor little peeping ducklings have died. I wish I had known that I could crack their shells for them or I would have done it yesterday to help them along. Sadly, I had no idea how to hatch a duck and now they've died. I'll move on I'm sure, I have chicks to take care of and animals to feed and life to do. But I'm a sucker for baby animals, I tell you what. I cried like a baby when I cracked their shells and saw two perfect little ducklings that weren't moving an inch.

I've determined now to never, ever, EVER do this again. I am not putting myself (or my kids) through this. I just hate incubating eggs myself. So we got four Brahma pullets in the hopes that at least one will go broody (and the rest can lay eggs and produce fertile eggs that don't come from inbred siblings). Then I can let Mama Hen do her thing and stay the heck out of trying to hatch another animal's baby. Ain't gonna happen!