if I had a million dollars

even samples couldn’t sell all our cucumbers today.
Today at the Windsor Market, we had the fine fortune of experiencing an accidental double-booking of musicians. So the market was forced to put one group where they always do, at the far opposite end of the market — and one group in an entirely new location, [...]

chicken update (again!)

the pudgy rooster, who — when he isn’t eating — is sleeping in his food.
I promise this will be my last consecutive post about chickens.  But the reason I haven’t posted lately is because, well, my life has been taken over by chickens…  so I need to throw at least one more post on the [...]

the challenge of chickens

Emmett’s hands, and the new babies.
It has been a challenging week with the chickens. Quick update on the survivors: Hope’s doing really well. She’s now sufficiently recovered so as to utterly hate spending time in her “infirmary,” a little cardboard box with food, a hot pad, and medicated water (i.e., water with [...]

a new start, a miracle, and a funeral

Above: red roses for the Reds, a white for the Leghorn, and an orange for my Buffy.
After listening to some advice that we get back in the chicken-keeping saddle, yesterday I made a call to Belt Hatchery to order more chicks. They happened to answer the phone when I called (which doesn’t usually [...]

unbelievable tragedy

Above: my babies.
One month to the day after they were hatched out into this world, twenty four chicks lost their little lives to a marauding fox.
Last night, as I was getting into bed, I had a bad feeling. This happens a lot to me, though, so I dismissed it as simple overworry. [...]

of beans and forgiveness

After writing a post about how much I hated beans — and after thoroughly hating beans for the past couple of weeks — yesterday, I found myself strangely at peace with them.
Now don’t go thinking that I’ve gone all mushy and overly optimistic and glass-half-full-y.  What I am about to describe is one half-hour of [...]

stretching their wings

I was always perplexed by the way a bitch (as in, female dog) will eventually turn on her pups — snarling as the little ones (who are, by then, not so little, with not so little teeth) try to continue nursing from her. Some dogs, it seems, will simply run away to leak milk [...]

fall’s a-comin’ on — and we’re a-sleepin’ in

At this morning’s farmer’s market, the vendors were petering out.  Gone is Lou, the tomato, melon, and pepper man; only one more week for the wonderful pear lady.  The berry vendor’s time is short, too.
Pumpkins and winter squash are starting to appear alongside peppers and tomatoes.  And suddenly, for the first time since we started [...]

of beans and vitriol

(Above:  Emmett, plucking the last handful of yellow wax beans.)
At what point do things stop being fun?
When you have to do them every single day, in the exact same way, for diminishing — not increasing — benefits.
So it has become with the beans.  The once-treasured beans, the once-poeticized beans, the once shake-your-moneymaker gourmet beans now [...]

a day to preserve

Emmett and I reserved today as Pickling/Canning/General Preservation day — little did we know that we’d find ourselves pickling late into the night!  It’s 11 p.m., and the last jars of applesauce are finally filled and sealed — but still boiling away on the stove.
Today, we harvested apples (=applesauce) and blackberries (=jam).  We pickled market-leftover [...]