Squirrels… those $@*#&@$!!!

The squirrels here are relentless. To be more specific, they are the anti-christ with bushy tails.

The hole in my kitchen screen, the trail of compost scraps across the counter, and the peach lying in my front yard (that used to be sitting in my kitchen) bear witness to the incredible lengths they go through simply to drive me to madness. Out of 12 strawberry plants I planted last year, they ate 10 of them. They plucked them out, ate the tops and threw the rest off to the side. My neighbor, in adoration of these creatures, proclaimed that she couldn’t believe they would ever do such things. I know. I saw the devils pluck the strawberry plants, I saw them strip each kernel of corn off all of the corn cobs that were growing, I have seen them perch on the bird feeder and chew a hole through the top, I saw them steal tomatoes off my plants (just to take one bite from the tomato, drop it on the ground and start over again with the next) and I have seen the aftermath of them eating the entire back off our compost pile just to get to the hot, rotting pile of slop… and I now have a hole in my kitchen screen window proving they are capable of not only invading my garden, but my house as well.

My husband has been vying for the day I would allow him to buy a pellet gun to rid us of their cute, smiling, havoc-wreaking little faces. But despite my despise of these creatures, my pacifistic nature lives on. So there must be a solution, right? Any good environmentalist would say there are other solutions. So now I’m calling for all those good environmentalists to speak up. Share with me your answers, teach me your squirrel-loving, vegetable-protecting ways. Or perhaps, no one has ever met the likes of these squirrels and the great multitudes that have been squatting in my neighborhood.

Should I set up rows of squirrel feeders on the side of my house to direct them away from the garden? Or would this simply call all the other squirrels to my yard and allow them to start their own little squirrel rave in my garden? Tell me your ideas and maybe this year I can stop grinding my teeth at night while I sleep.

Bees are on the horizon.

I’ve made the first steps.

I joined the Denver Beekeeping Association, I went to my first meeting, have read several books on beekeeping and have found the guy I want to buy my beekeeping supplies from.

Next steps: purchase my bee hive and my bees.

To begin beekeeping, at least if you’re not hunting for bargains, one will find it to be rather expensive. It all starts adding up: a couple hundred dollars for a beginning beekeeping class, a few hundred more for a beehive, a little less than a hundred for my fashionable beekeeping attire and over a hundred for a colony of bees-not to mention the gadgets and accessories for taking care of my bees and the hive. Thanks to luck, or fate, or the universe, or God, or whatever name you want to give to whatever intervenes in our lives for the better, I have found a beekeeper that is excited to share his knowledge, able to give people good deals on equipment, and happy to talk your ear off as long as one will sit and listen. My picturesque beekeeping life is almost complete (minus the actual bees and the hive).

So, despite Bill Turnbull’s book, Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper, I believe this is my year! This is the year I become friends with honeybees. I’m attending a free beekeeping class this Monday, put on by the excited, knowledge-sharing beekeeper himself (that I mentioned above) over at dakotabees.com. And this week, as long as the snow that’s falling today in Denver doesn’t kick up a few notches, I will be buying my hive. Thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog and sharing support in this adventure! And as for blogging, I will continue to update and continue to apologize about being inconsistent with my posts, until one day, when I become competent in the practice of habitual blogging.

As soon as I have more space to play…

Fainting goats. Fainting goats?!?!?

When my urban farm grows larger and I have more space to play, I will have a fainting goat. Unfortunately, I believe it will all play out as follows: Sage will see the goat in the distance and start to chase it, the goat won’t notice Sage until Sage is upon him, the goat will freeze up, fall down and become paralyzed with fright and Sage will begin gnawing on its leg. Poor goat. Seriously, how did they make it through centuries of natural selection? But more seriously, these goats are a necessity for my future, larger urban farm.

The question of bees.

I am tempted again this spring to set out on a new adventure and start a backyard bee hive. Now, when I went to the bee keeping shop last year, they made it sound fascinating, easy and foolproof. So, I was determined to do it. This winter, as I planned where I was to put the beehive, I began reading and absorbing books by the dozens from the library.

I was stoked. Bees. Honey. Buzzing.

I picked up a book the other day called, Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper by Bill Turnbull. I figured, I might as well learn from his mistakes instead of my own. Well, at this point, 100 pages in, perhaps beginning to read the book was a mistake I should not have made. I am sure that this book will have a redeeming end, willing me to continue on my adventure to keep bees in my backyard. However, right now, he makes this undertaking seem like a large mountain to climb. Is this really an all-consuming project? Will it be more agony than it is worth? So far, his adventures sound like a hell inhabited with bees.

I’ll keep reading, hoping and expecting the end to lure me back into my once all-consuming desire. Perhaps I’ll go back to that little bee shop that I once visited, surrounded by Subarus and the hum of excited urbanites wanting to start keeping bees of their own. Perhaps I will have these bees in the spring. But, at this point, my determination seems, at best, wavering.

Life. Life. Life. And hand soap!

Well, here’s a cheers to the new year…

I made some liquid hand soap! Now, whenever I tell people I made liquid hand soap out of a bar of soap. Usually they crinkle their eyebrows, cock their heads and ask, “why would you make soap out of soap?” Well, now… the answer is because it is going to save me a fist full of money and I can still feel good about where my soap came from.

Right now, I pay about $7 for a bottle of certified fair-trade, USDA organic, all-plant based liquid hand soap. By making my own soap, I am getting all the same qualities at about $4 a gallon. Yeah.

The completed product.

So why did I make soap out of soap? To save some cash and so my hands could smell like eucalyptus with a clear conscience.

All you have to do is…

1. Grate a bar of soap (of your conscientious laden choosing).

2. Add the soap shavings to a pot with one gallon of water.

3. Add 2 tablespoons of vegetable glycerine to the water and soap shavings.

It will look just like soapy water.

4. Melt all the soap shavings.

5. Take it off the stove and uncover.

6. Add essential oil until (optional).

7. Let it cool for about 10 hours (when it is done, it will have the consistency of snot).

After it has cooled, you may transfer it to a container to store until you want to use it. I would highly recommend using a funnel. Unfortunately, being that I have never seen the utility in owning a funnel, I used a gallon ziplock bag with the corner cut off. Somehow in the process of pouring the liquid soap into the bag, the side of the bag folded over and a huge glop of eucalyptus smelling soap slid down between my kitchen cabinets and the oven. Now I have a eucalyptus smelling oven crack. I also see the importance of owning a funnel.

Chickens… the unmeat.

In anticipation of Terry Hope Romero’s new vegan cookbook… I have been testing out some recipes. It makes me appreciate once again the fact that my chickens are not my meat. Pictured below is one of Terry’s amazing new recipes!

Chicken-less, egg-less pad thai

To get ready for the winter, Nate has built two hoop houses over our raised beds in the front and we’ve let the chickens eat the rest of my garden in the back. The chickens are happy and I feel a tad like Martha Stewart, minus the jail time. Despite the fact that I am feeling very much like Ms. Stewart, during the the first snow storm of the season (we are now on our second today!!) I killed the basil, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes that I was hoping to extend through the fall season. Lesson learned. Even with Christmas lights in the hoop houses to provide warmth, it was not enough to keep them from freezing. A few minor adjustments to the hoop house and the appropriate plants should make all the difference.

My new hoop houses glowing in the snowy night.

I have planted some more cool weather veggies. Too late? Maybe. I guess we will see.

The kitchen floor is sticky…

The smell of grains and hops floats through my overly-heated humid house today. Thanks to Living Social, we just brewed our first batch of beer, a red ale, after buying a home brewing kit from a local brew shop in Aurora. Sweet. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. I am waiting with baited breath for the day we can pluck our own hops straight from the vines crawling over our pergola and toss it into the brew. Now, the sweet smelling brown muck sits in our spare bedroom’s closet as to hopefully achieve the precise temperature for fermentation.

Hopefully between the “Basic Brewing” DVD, written instructions, and our supremely honed skill for drinking amazing beer, it will all come together in a complex, crisp chilled glass of decadence on these sizzling hot summer days.

Little Clover

So tonight, I sat in my garden. As the night darkened and started to cool, I sat in the middle of my garden with our new little chicken perched on my fingers, asleep, the two of us illuminated by only the alley lamp light. I continued to sit in my garden for hours, as the night grew darker, trying to decide what to do.

One might wonder how I ended up sitting in the middle of my vegetable garden with a chicken perched, snoozing, on my fingers. It seemed logical leading up to the point. But now I sat torn between promising Sage we’d go for a walk and trying to make sure our new little one would be next to someone as she slept.

When we first got Clover, our light brown Minorca, she was 6 weeks old. As usual, Lola decided that she didn’t belong (just as she has with all the other chickens when they first arrived) and began pulling Clover’s feathers out. With Lola’s incessant bitchiness, we’ve been having to keep Clover seperate for the time being until she learns to run and hide a little faster. We have a large dog kennel that she stays in, up next to the chicken run so that the other hens get used to her. The problem is that chickens are very social creatures and Clover cries and wants out of the kennel so badly. So, I pick her up and take her out.

Tonight, I picked her up, but when I went to put her back she jumped back on my arm. So I put her down again and then jumped up on my shoulder. I tried one last time to put her back, but then she jumped on my head. Have you ever tried to wash chicken poop out of dreadlocks? Neither have I. So I tried desperately to get her out of my hair. Luckily I was successful. So then I sat with her. And that is how I ended up in the middle of the garden, in the middle of the night.

Luckily for me and for Sage, (since I still had energy to take him for a walk) after sitting with Clover for hours, she had gone into a deep enough sleep that she didn’t notice me stepping into the chicken coop and slowly sliding her off my finger. And there she slept soundly, until the next morning when I came out to find her hiding behind the watering container.

Squishy Eggs??

As if eggs weren’t gross enough for me, knowing that they are formed inside the hen, coming out basically as a chicken period. Or rather, hen menstruation, to put it more correct terms. Now one of our chickens is laying squishy eggs. Uggh.

Why is she laying squishy eggs, or rather, soft shelled eggs? After much research we have found that it could be one of many reasons. 1#: The problem could be genetic, 2#: she might not be getting enough calcium, or 3#: it could be that she is just new at laying eggs and is still working the kinks out. I’m hoping for reason #2 or #3.

In trying to fix the problem, we will up her calcium intake. Which means, either mixing in more eggshells with their food or buying oyster shells and mixing those in. And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it’s not the first problem mentioned above. Because although soft shelled eggs are okay to eat, it just makes egg-eating more disgusting.

So, in the spirit of not eating squishy eggs, here’s a vegan recipe that is yummy! Minus the hen menstruations.

Basic Scrambled Tofu (from Isa Chandra Moskowitz)

Serves 4

Spice blend:

2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed with your fingers
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced (or more, to taste)
1 pound extra-firm tofu, drained
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
Fresh black pepper to taste

First stir the spice blend together in a small cup. Add water and mix. Set aside.

Preheat a large, heavy bottomed pan over medium high heat. Saute the garlic in olive oil for about a minute. Break the tofu apart into bite sized pieces and saute for about 10 minutes, using a spatula to stir often. Get under the tofu when you are stirring, scrape the bottom and don’t let it stick to the pan. Use a thin metal spatula to get the job done, a wooden or plastic one won’t really cut it. The tofu should get browned on at least one side, but you don’t need to be too precise about it. The water should cook out of it and not collect too much at the bottom of the pan. If that is happening, turn the heat up and let the water evaporate.

Add the spice blend and mix to incorporate. Add the nutritional yeast and fresh black pepper. Cook for about 5 more minutes. Serve warm.

Honeybees, my friend?

Good day.

Almost completely finished planting my flowers and vegetables for the summer, let the chickens out of their run to play in the dirt, went for a run, made a huge batch of pinto and black beans to freeze, made a quinoa dish from all my herbs growing out front, and convinced my husband that we should raise honeybees. Yes, did you catch that? We are going to be adding honeybees to our little urban farm.

Yes, good day.