The Chicken Haircuts

(This story was part of an email to my sister, in mid-Spring of 2006)

Now seems like a good time for a little poultry update:

The chickens got haircuts a few days ago. This will be explained in a moment but first I have to get something off my chest. It's nearly incomprehensible how dumb chickens are. On the intelligence scale, they seem to lie somewhere between a less-evolved plant and a worm, except that worms can learn to avoid dangerous areas.

Over the last few weeks, Daisy has exercised her svelte and youthful body by responding to eons-deep instincts to great advantage by chasing down chickens. These would be the ones who flew out of their carefully fenced in paddock area, which is to say five of them. The other two, now husband and wife, have been cooped up in a private hotel recently built by me. This sequestration was the solution to incessant chicken fights, engendered understandably and predictably enough by there being six roosters and one hen on the premises.

(Above: the six suitors and the hen of their dreams in happier days)

Or so we thought. Chickens had been squawking and flying out of the paddock at all hours and we thought it was due to male competition. After picking a suitor for the lady and putting them in the coop, we thought the loser boys would just settle down and peck in peace.

Not so. They continued to explore the joys of flight, and spent most of their time outside the safety of the paddock. Daisy's first success resulted in a chicken who sat frozen as she started to eat into it's back. I had to kill that one immediately out of mercy using a handy rock to the head method. Not elegant. Next she got a gay blade who again ventured out of safety and got cornered trying to walk through chicken wire. He was dispatched by yours truly who "seized" the opportunity to practice the "twirl-em by the neck" method of killing a chicken, as related to me by Mom, recalling her grandmother's technique.

We became better at knowing when a chicken was caught, by the sounds they make (a kind of contented-sounding chuckle), and were so able to get to the next bird as he lay between the paws of the slavering beast.

The next time that happened, I was able to pick up the distraught fowl, by this time with wet feathers all awry, and toss it over the fence into safety. I mentioned to Nancy that surely this ought to imprint positively on the chicken - having been literally saved from the jaws of death by a benefactor who thrust it to safety one would think that the chicken would never, ever go outside the safety zone again. But within hours three of them were strutting about on the grass outside, chortling and clucking happily as Daisy slunk again forth upon them.

After enduring sudden, alarming feminine hysteria ("Eric, come quick - she's got another one!") several times one morning as I attempted to clean the barn, I thought hard. Ransacked the mental library for ideas and finally had the brainstorm. Clip their wing feathers! That way, they can't fly out of the paddock! I proposed this to Nancy, who promptly and complacently said, "Oh, I know about that one. It's in my chicken book!"

The answer to my question, "WHY didn't you mention it before?" brought forth no satisfactory reply, and I began to think that the chickens were not the only ones having difficulty applying knowledge to life circumstances.

Nonetheless, Nancy and I went out early in the next morning and started catching chickens. This episode will make an entertaining tale by itself, so I''ll leave it to your imagination. Despite much effort and ingenuity, we had little success. My chicken catcher, a bit of wire attached to a long pole was fashioned after an antique model I'd seen in Raymond's garage, failed to function in any sense of the word. Suddenly in a brainstorm no doubt stimulated by the genius of my ancestors, I lit upon the obvious answer: use the dog. Who else is better at chasing down chickens than her?

Working as a 3 person team, we soon rounded up most of the miscreants (except for the ones looking on, eleven feet up in the branches of a young walnut tree). I grasped each one by the legs and held it upside down as Nancy gingerly stretched out each wing. Following the line of tiny inside feathers, I cut off their large wing feathers, making a pile of white detritus on the ground that any casual observer would interpret as the site of a major killing frenzy.

How we got the high-flying burrito brothers is the subject of yet another story. Suffice it to say that after 3 breathless hours of chase and drama we got them all clipped and contained. You have no IDEA how hysterical a chicken can get if it thinks you are trying to save it's neck, whereas it will lie down and let itself get eaten alive by a dog.

I keep thinking there is a life lesson in this but cannot quite grasp what it might be. However, the chickens have been safe inside the paddock and enjoying their daily struts, and Daisy has gone on to advanced hunting adventures, such as trying to catch rabbits.

All I Wanted Was Toast...

I am making bread at the moment. Trying to, anyway. This started because I belatedly noticed this AM that the normal butter-tinged and browned crusty component, i.e. toast, was sadly missing from my otherwise fine breakfast of still warm eggs from the coop and nicely browned potatoes with bits of fresh tarragon. The balance was off.

Fortunately Nancy was out of town to attend a conference, so the suffering was confined to only one person. Unfortunately, that person was me. I thought of delaying the proceedings until Some Bread could be made, but thought better of it. Base hunger and a thrifty desire not to waste the succulent taters and eggs forced me to eat immediately. But as they say, there is always tomorrow. And on that inevitably upcoming morn, some dern tasty toast would be lovely.

Motivated after downing my otherwise delicious but breadless breakfast, I mixed up a nice dough, added the granular yeast and a bit of salt, and some savory marjoram to make a nice herbal loaf. I attentively worked the KitchenAid to make the dough satiny and full of gluten. I even warmed a small crock for the little yeast cells to grow in cozily with warmth and moisture. I came back several hours later to check progress, expecting to find a satisfyingly expanded mass of yeasty, glossy dough ready for firing.

Nuthin! The dough was supple and satiny as it should be but had not grown a bit. It was like flaccid pizza dough with flecks of herbs. It felt good to the touch but also seemed to lack that live quality that characterizes good bread dough.

Clearly the yeast had not activated. Could the yeast be dead? One of the intricacies of bread-making is to calculate the amount of salt to put in the dough. Too much and the yeast dies. Too little and the resulting bread tastes flat. Dreading the result, I tasted the dough, expecting to find a salty mess. Nope. It seemed nicely doughy but not too salty. Hrrrm...

In the old days, bakers would "proof" the yeast to make sure it was working before committing it to their hard-worked dough. But nowadays, with industrial quality controls, impervious packaging, safe storage methods etc., we don't bother with that step. We count on our yeast to be lively and ready to kick ass right out of the gate. But perhaps this yeast in some way had seen the end of it's productive days. Heat and light can kill yeast cells. Maybe mine had a case of sunburn.

To test this theory, I put a little warm water in a glass, sprinkled some of the brownish grains into a glass of warm water, and added honey as a culinary incentive to the little cells. Normally, the organic sugars and nutrients in honey are like the feast of Valhalla to the tiny but voracious and vigorous vikings of yeast. Modern quick yeast is quick to imbibe sugars, resulting in rapid multiplication of the colony and plenty of carbon dioxide bubbles as the useful waste product. But this stuff merely sat in the bottom of the glass in a glum mass. Well, I thought, maybe this is tired yeast and just needs a bit of a kick start. It certainly had all the incentives for a vigorous comeback. I checked back 10 minutes later, expecting to see a fine crop of bubbles. Nuthin'.

Puzzled, I concluded that the yeast was dead, and got out the vacuum pak of Red Star Yeast I've been saving in the refrigerator against just such an emergency. Bypassing the lackluster yeast, I thought I’d just mix in some fresh troops and save the loaf. But something wasn’t right.

Still flummoxed, I pondered the jar containing those granular particles that had so totally failed to rise or make bubbles even when encouraged. It seemed a shame to waste all that dead yeast, so I began to sprinkle it onto the scraps of potato peelings and vegetable scraps being saved for the chickens. A little waft of smell came into the nostrils. A mellow, sweetish smell. I tentatively tipped a wet finger into the stuff and tasted. Sweet!

Oh for crying out loud. This was not yeast. It was that granular and weird form of brown sugar designed not to clump up. Ye gods. No wonder it didn't rise. It couldn't. It was fuel for yeast, not the magic substance itself. But it looks EXACTLY like dry yeast.

I'd like to say that I laughed at myself indulgently for this error but that isn't true. I was in fact chagrined, ticked off and feeling quite stupid. These sentiments gave rise to some philosophizing about how all true learning is accompanied by failure and pain. At the moment, the failure and pain part was apparent, but not the learning part. Feeling a bit mystified and blue, I made myself a little compensatory beverage which involved ice cubes. One cube made it off the countertop and into the wild blue yonder.

Having just cleaned up the entire kitchen, I got out the flour and mixer and set out to incorporate the trusty Red Star yeast into the perfectly satiny but flat dough. Bakers revere that satin look and I knew that adding water would make the dough sticky and yucky. And I was fairly certain that a faint coating of flour would appear on all the newly cleaned surfaces as a result. But there was no recourse. I added warm water, flour to absorb it, and new yeast.

Nicely, after some KitchenAid whirrings and a bit of hand-kneading, the new dough was ready for re-rising. It was even satiny! I lifted my glass and savored a bit of conquest, hoping that a sturdy well-risen loaf would soon be ready for baking.

Around the corner came the Rocket Dog, yelping and pirouetting. In her mouth was the errant ice cube. She dropped it provocatively in front of me, then as I turned to meet the challenge, she picked it up and raced away. Obligingly I gave chase. We went around the living room and over the sofa in a series of circles and dodges. It was no contest, as usual. She has four legs to my two.

It's great fun to give chase to my diminutive canine companion, but it’s always a bit sobering. She weighs 11 pounds and is in top form, from having chased rabbits and squirrels all winter. I weigh over 230, and can only lumber about. The contrast is embarrassing. Needless to say, I never indulge her when anyone else is about, save my ever-tolerant wife and a few very good friends. The Rocket Dog got under the table, where I cannot go without suffering bruised knees, and demurely dared me to go after her. I was tempted to attempt a trump of her feminine wiles, but I am wise to her tactics and walked away. Brains over brawn, I thought fuzzily, in a bit of a metaphorical mashup. Put simply, this didn’t work.

Eventually, she found a place of attack. The ice cube ended up in a corner and with much growling and precise stalking technique, she re-captured the ice cube. It was by this time much diminished, and Dog conquered all with a lick and a chomp.

She went to sleep, I did things on my computer. As you have surely intuited, time passed. I checked: the dough had risen! (rose?)

Optimistically, I set the oven to 500 degrees. Now for the final forming of the dough.

In the forests of France many years ago, peasants found a nice way to contain rising dough. They took reeds and formed them into round baskets, into which to place dough to rise. When the dough was ready, they would invert the baskets, plopping the dough onto flat wooden shovels (called, oddly enough, peels) and slide them into the community oven to bake. This method makes intriguingly spiraled patterns on the surface of the bread, and is an honorable and classic method.

I have one of those reed baskets. I thought it would be craftsmanlike and attractive to make my own intriguingly spiraled bread. However, no one had told me how to keep the dough from sticking to the basket when you try to "plop' it over onto the peel.

As you no doubt infer, I've had many difficulties with perfectly risen dough that totally collapses when trying to pry sticky dough out of that infernal basket. I've studied "The Bread Baker's Apprentice," by Peter Reinhart, and other expert sources for a solution to this problem,to no satisfactory conclusion. In the end, I just load up the basket with flour and hope for the best.

Thankfully, this time it worked. Plopped the dough over onto the peel. No problem! Nice spirals of flour on the surface. Slid the dough into the oven and onto the stone. I say “stone” as if I have a purpose-built wood-fired stone floored hearth oven a la Poilane, but it’s really just a very large square ceramic flooring tile I got from a discount building supply warehouse for $3.95. But it works pretty well, especially if the oven is heated up for 30 minutes prior to baking.

Threw some water into the oven to make steam. This is a great trick: the steam makes the crust crisp and toasty.

Time again passed. Nothing with bread is fast. Eventually, the oven began exuding a delicious yeasty and slightly acrid aroma, an olfactory signal that I’ve learned means that the bread is becoming ready.

Rocket Dog jumped into my lap for a bit of connection and love. While she licked my face caringly, I asked myself the eternal question. No, not one of those why are we here in the universe questions, but the bread baker's question: Is the loaf done?

In Reinhart's charming description of the boulangerie of Lionel Poilane, arguably the best bread baker in Paris and thus the world, we learn that their bakers use only wood-fired ovens, and determine the correct baking temperature by tossing bits of parchment into the hot oven, and counting the seconds until the paper explodes into flame. Given the correct temperature, it is only a matter of a given number of minutes to baking perfection.

Lacking parchment and the correct second-count, I had no idea how long to bake the loaf. It smelled great, but I’ve been fooled before into taking out the loaf before it’s time, only to end up with a soggy mid-section. There's only one way to really know if the loaf is done: take it's temperature. It should be at least 205.

After throwing out 3 cheap digital thermometers after each one unexpectedly ceased working properly, I asked Santa for a professional temperature gauge. Santa answered and now I own a marvelously accurate and sturdy tool, lab-tested and guaranteed accurate from -58 to +572 degrees. I inserted the probe into the loaf and watched the little digits race upwards until they steadied and stopped. Ah! 205 degrees internal. Perfect.

Moving from modern technology to that of ancient peoples, I used the wooden peel to bring the loaf out of the oven and reverently placed it on a rack to cool. It smelled wonderful, and looked even better. When I say, “reverently,” it's not an abuse of the word. Breadmaking is a mystical art, and when one gets it to work well, it's a somewhat religious experience. Just try it without using a bread-making machine or a loaf pan, and you’ll see what I mean.

Now then. Here we are. The Rocket Dog is asleep, there's some nice stew in the crock pot. The aroma of just-baked bread fills the kitchen. A bit of stew, a break of bread and a glass of wine will make a satisfying little dinner.

















As Emeril LaGasse often says on his cooking show, I wish you had Smell-o-Vision. This loaf with it's "intriguingly spiraled pattern" is alive with rich aromas of herbs and wheat. If you could only smell it! Alas, a picture will have to do.

Bad Weather and Scavengers

(note: the following was written several months ago as autumn was fading)

FARMING IS AN INCESSANT GAMBLE with the weather. Recent weather reports have been forecasting a lot of rain on the way, and we've had many wet days of overcast, with a few glorious, revitalizing sunny charmers thrown in.

To me, this variety is interesting, even beautiful. But for other people around here, the coming rain can spell difficulty, if not disaster. As in many things, timing is everything. Trying to get a harvest in quickly can scatter leavings that attract pestilential scavengers. Like grackles.

Yesterday in the blustery cold wind, Dan the farmer who works our neighbor farmer's land, harvested his feed corn in the field next to ours. He worked all day, driving his old red tractor and equipment steadily up and down across the swath of dried corn. And he worked well into the inky blue night, harvesting by headlight.

Dan had left the corn out for a long time, trying to get it dry enough so it won't spoil in storage. He uses this corn to feed his beef cattle during the winter. With rain coming he had to scurry to get as much in as he could. He didn't get it all. The field next to ours, out by the farm road, is still full of thousands of whiskery tan stalks, each with 6 or so cobs, each cob with 800 kernels dried hard and saffron yellow.

It was a lot of work to grow that corn. I've often seen Dan tending those fields. He drives his tractor, bareheaded and shirtless, white hair flowing in the wind as he turns in his seat to watch his machines. He's five years younger than me, but looks ten years older. Like most people raised on the land, he presents a genial, cheerful visage, his face crinkled into a friendly snaggle-toothed grin as he imparts savvy and sometimes inscrutable points of wisdom or opinion. But I've also seen him distracted and anxious, impatient with the questions of a greenhorn neighbor. His concerns are not minor.

Dan uses very old equipment, all he can afford. His combine, used for harvesting wheat, cost all of $3,000 and was built in the mid-40's. It uses a fortune in gas but he can repair it himself. It's a nightmare of exposed wheels and belts. His corn harvesting gear takes up the corn cobs and chews up the stalks for silage. But it leaves quite a bit of waste on the ground.

Corn kernels left in the field.

Five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie...

Had I a shotgun, and a yen for grackle pie, I would have scored a lifetime supply today.

By dawn after Dale's harvest, there were scores of grackles sitting in the trees and on the fields, picking everything clean. By this afternoon, it was like the days of carrier pigeons - the tree down by the bottom of our land was full of them and they rose like a black cloud off the cornfields.

The sheer chittering racket of them a hundred yards away made the 17 year cicada infestation of two years ago seem like soothing background humming. It was loud and evilly weird enough to scare Daisy. The chickens not unwisely (if I can use the word with respect to the judgment of chickens) stayed huddled inside their coop.

In the late afternoon the grackles were all over our place, sitting and fluttering in the walnuts and forest trees, more than anyone could count, like black stars in the grey sky. I walked out and flushed the whole crowd. Stood in the grass up by the barn shooting with my camera upwards as they swarmed from trees up in the forest overhead, in an incessant flow lasting more than 40 minutes, thousands and thousands of them.

I ran out into the neighbor's field hoping to catch the incredible vision of them flying through the skies and over the fields. They would rise and swirl, settle then rise again like a bizarre animated swirl of soot particles over the simple scene. It began to rain but I stayed out, shooting in all directions like a maniac. But the light and my excitement worked against me and most shots didn't work. Too dark, out of focus, everything wrong. but perhaps one of over 150 images will turn out.

I went through the fence that divides our land from next door, stalking the black avian mass pecking corn on the ground, hoping to flush them in a rise over the land. They rose reluctantly from their gorging, a grumpy fluttering mass lying, a malevolent low cloud over the land until I retreated.



---------------

They have disappeared. All of them. It's evening now, almost dark. A flash of light low on the horizon to the East forsages a thunderstorm and the land is quiet. Not a bird in sight.

Where did the grackles go? Where did they come from?

Not all the corn is in and the rain is coming. I fear that the standing corn, and the months of work required to plant, protect and harvest feed corn will be wasted in hours by the rain. But Dan's a very tough, determined man and has been farming since he was 11. He's got more than a few tricks up his sleeve.

No farmer, I feel blessed and grateful to be warm and secure after this day, and not worried about feeding my livestock.

Suddenly, it's Skunks

They seem to be everywhere all of a sudden. Skunks are not often spotted in day light unless they're sick or wounded, so their increased presence is evidenced mostly by the ones that didn't make it. One ended up as roadkill on Route 75, and I spotted another casualty on the lane that connects us to that road. There was another one on the road near our mailbox a few days ago. This always makes me feel a little sad. Skunks are truly beautiful animals.

Darrin came over a few days ago to check on the flying squirrel traps. He'd set them to catch the little invaders that occupy a narrow space between the first and second floors, which is another story all it's own. In the back of his truck was a cute and very alive little skunk he'd caught for a customer who badly wanted the li'l darlin' out of her basement, and fast.

Here's Darrin getting ready to pull the towel off the trap. In his hip pocket is a tool I crave - a foam gun that lets you use only the amount of rigid expanding foam you need, and doesn't let it set in the barrel. I go through a lot of cans of foam, trying to plug leaks and block critter routes.

I wondered why we seem to be seeing skunks everywhere. “The deep freeze is over now, so they're coming out to feed and breed,” he related.

To show me the skunk, he carefully, gently, peeled the towel away from the trap. Crouching inside, the small animal was still, quiet as a mouse, seemingly almost asleep. She seemed kind of resigned and glum. I'd feel that way too, surrounded by a bars like a prison. But better days lay ahead for her.

Noticing with a sudden jab of alarm that the business end of the skunk was aimed at me, I quickly but smoothly moved to Darrin's side of the truck. He grinned, as if to say, "Now you're getting smart!" He explained that a skunk will usually give plenty of warning before it sprays. “He'll stamp his feet, turn around, try to escape. Spraying is almost a last resort for the skunk. Most people don't know that,” he explains.

Skunks supposedly make make good pets, if they are de-scented, and I asked if he thought that was true. A smile came over his face, and he said, “I'd love to have a skunk as a pet. They're gentle and affectionate, especially if you get 'em young and can hand-rear them. But I don't know of any vet who will de-scent them. I can sure find the skunks, though. If you ever learn of a vet who can do it, let me know!”

What if your dog gets a good dose of skunk? "Wash him real good, and call me," advises Darrin. " I've got a commercial grade ionizing air cleaner that works wonders. You just put the dog in the same room as the air cleaner and wait a few hours. You'll notice an amazing difference. And by the way, tomato paste doesn't work. It just makes your dog gummy and smelling like tomatoes in addition to skunk."

Darrin knows the habits of all kinds of animals. Bats, among other things. He's an expert at ridding belfries, attics and other places of bats.

He's also a son of the land, and has many skills of observation, experience and insight. Such as where to find morels by the hundreds, or wild leeks, and wild raspberries and blueberries. I'm hoping he'll let me tag along for mushroom hunting or berry picking some day. Especially after his story about seeing a black bear in the berry patch he'd just finished foraging in.

After we discussed the flying squirrels, he left down the dirt road, only to come barreling back up in reverse to announce that there was a skunk down in the lower field, and did I want him to shoot it?

Darrin is a gentle man, who despite his work as an animal control specialist truly loves living creatures and does not harm them if it can be avoided. But, as he pointed out, skunks can also carry rabies and this one was walking a bit wobbly. This skunk was in the hunting range of the Rocket Dog, so we decided with a bit of regret that the skunk's time was up. He went back down the road and I put R. Dog in the house.

I heard a series of pops and then he came walking back across the field to his truck. “Yeah, I got 'im,” he said with a touch of regret. “I think he was sick though, so it's probably just as well. Sick animals don't last long out here and can spread disease.” He put away his large silvery pistol.

A lot of guys carry pistols around here, 22's mostly. It's not a macho thing or for “protection.” You don't see men flashing guns around or walking around with surreptitious bulges. It's just part of how one lives here. For example, my neighbor shot a copperhead with his pistol a couple of years ago, while riding on his tractor.

We chatted a bit more, then he took off to find a place to release the little skunk.

This one will make it.