Quieting Life

Chickensitting

We don't have chickens of our own. Yet. It's in the Ten Year Plan: start keeping chickens. It only makes sense. We eat a lot of eggs; we buy a lot of eggs. We have plenty of room for chickens. Unfortunately, we also have a large garden and a dog who is a Known Chicken Killer. And many predators. None of which recommends our place for free-ranging chickens. Any birds that come to live with us will have to be penned. I'm sorely tempted to save up my shekels for an Eglu Cube with extended run; given the steep slope of our property, it would be nice to have a coop we could move around easily. But, you know – that's alotta shekels.

Fiddleheads

We have an impressive patch of fiddleheads down by the flood brook, but because I don't often walk in that direction, I'm apt to forget about them until the season's gone by. So last spring I put an event on my electronic calendar for April 20th, with an email reminder: Check Fiddleheads. And when I did, on April 23rd, they were just starting to explode.

I alerted a couple of fellow foragers and, baskets in hand and dog leading the way, we went a-collecting.

Dinner by the Seat of My Pants

We had a casualish dinner party last night, sort of a welcome at long last to the young couple that opened the lovely SoLo Farm & Table here in town last summer. I'm a competent and confident cook, but cooking for a chef of some stature was a little stressful. I'm pretty sure I had an out-of-body experience while putting together a fairly simple meal – watching myself nervously over my shoulder while I cooked as though it were my first time in the kitchen (or so it felt to me).

Over and done. We all had a great time, and dinner was eaten with gusto all around. Today was a quiet Sunday recovery day; too cold, raining out, and me sporting a little bit of a hangover. I transplanted a few seedlings, brewed a batch of beer (a Chinook IPA) and spent a little too much time surfing the internetz. Suddenly it was dinnertime, and I hadn't even thought about what to feed us. A quick shopping trip to the pantry turned up a can of Italian tuna in oil, a jar of marinated artichokes, and half a bag of ditalini pasta. The fridge coughed up a chunk of parmesan and a bag of flat-leaf parsley. Ding! Dinner:

Wildlife Hazards

Our dog Macy got 'quilled' the other night. I'll spare my readers the discomfort and my dog the indignity of displaying pictures (which I don't have anyway, since only a heartless freak would have spent critical minutes documenting such a thing), and instead give you a picture of herself on a happier day.

The woods that surround us are full of the usual characters; I've personally witnessed deer, moose, bear, mink, fox, hawks, owls, groundhogs, and porcupines, and I've heard coyotes close enough to raise my neck hairs. Macy patrols the grounds freely – untethered, no fence – and her mere presence (her bark, scent, and lightning speed) is mostly enough to keep the wild things from encroaching.

Starting Seeds

This threatens to be a long and rambling screed, but I promise it will be full of useful information. It may be a little late for some types of plants and some locations, but my hope is that it will be a resource to be bookmarked and returned to over time. Note that you can get a bigger view of any photograph here just by clicking on it.

There are plenty of good reasons to start your own seeds: to take full advantage of the vast selection of plant varieties available; to save money (in some scenarios); to ensure you're not bringing disease home to your garden (as was the case a few years ago, when plants infected with blight at a large commercial greenhouse were distributed to the likes of Lowe's and Home Depot, and a cool wet summer provided perfect conditions for the spread of an epidemic). For me, the number one reason for starting my own seeds is that I get about a 2-month jump on gardening season. Instead of waiting until the conditions are right for planting out starts from a garden center, I'm busy grinding dirt under my fingernails and nurturing little green babies while it's still snowing outside.