Step One: Cut a watermelon into slices and separate from the rind. Set aside the rind.
Step Two: Puree the watermelon pieces and strain the puree.
Step Three: Pour the watermelon juice into a glass of ice and cut with water or soda, to taste.
Step Four: Pick a spring of mint, for garnish.
Step Five: Toss the rinds to the chickens.
Step Six: Put your feet up and enjoy the chicken mayhem in the yard while sipping a cool drink. Follow the Farm Diva on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PonderosaPlains/ #farmdiva
It seems like just yesterday we were taking down the Christmas tree for kindling and placing orders from seed catalogs. Then I got sick and struggled through a very snowy spring to put in the garden before we left for vacation. There were a million things to do before vacation and being flat on my back or snowed in did not help. There were seedlings to nurture and plant, beds to prepare, repairs to make and an irrigation system to reset. In a flurry of activity, we managed to get everything ready the night before we hopped on a plane to get away from it all.
It was a busy spring indeed, and a vacation was well
deserved. So where does a diva farmer and her dashing handyman go for
vacation? Of course, we chose a
homestead in Alaska. Before I go much further I need to explain that “homestead”
has a specific legal meaning and then there is a more colloquial sense of a
self-sustaining farm. I am referring to the latter.
View from the Homestead
While I don't know how tourists find a homestead to play at sustainable living for a week in Alaska, I just visit my family and add in some hiking
and horseback riding*.
Yes, I have family in Alaska; and yes, that is a fantastic
conversation starter at cocktail parties. I often stand around sipping pear martinis
telling droll stories about the amazing things people do without wireless internet
access. As you know I am not and have never been a self-sufficient frontierswoman despite my familial link to the quintessential pioneer experience, so much of my life was spent hotfooting it away from such foolishness.
I come by my ineptitude at all farm related activities honestly. The rural communities of my youth were by far
more civilized than Alaska. Even though I was frequently at my grand parents’
farm growing up, I considered myself a visitor, proprio.
Now that I am by far more impressed by sustainable living than I was at sixteen, I am quite keen to go somewhere out of cell phone range and dig around in a garden. Fortunately, my step-mother, a proper homesteader, lets me express my new found zeal by watering her plants between excursions. I would honestly have been content to spend the whole vacation tending her garden and fishing had I not been intent on giving Salt his first real Alaskan experience.
We hiked, we watched birds, we rode horses, and we drove a four-wheeler on what we think was the guide's hunting trip. We caught halibut and collected rocks.
My Halibut
Our rock collecting was certainly a great amusement to the Alaskans. Being used to the Outside -- the Alaskan term for the lower 48 -- and all of its rules about not collecting rocks in parks or reservations we were continuously asking with trepid curiosity, "Can we take a rock?" At first the Alaskans wouldn't understand the question. They would look across the vast expanse of rock beach, then back to our innocent faces, before it occurred to them that we were dead serious. They refrained from openly laughing at us, but the mirth was in their eyes as they explained that we could take as many rocks as we wanted. I am sure that they are still slapping their knees over those tourists who paid to ship back two boxes of rocks. Rocks! But the joke is on them, because we would have gladly paid good money for those rocks.
On one night of our vacation, my indomitable relatives gathered for a party. Alaskans are a special kind of people, whom I won't pretend to know well enough to characterize here. But they know they are different and they know how they are special. If you want to get a real look behind the rhubarb thicket into their lives, I suggest a memoir written by my Aunt Joan called "Cow Woman of Akutan," about homesteading in the Aleutians in the 1960s. (Understand there was no indoor plumbing.) Unlike many memoirs I have read, it doesn't bore the reader with navel gazing. It's a real page turner with every chapter leaving the reader wondering, "What will happen next?" Obviously she survived, which is one of the unifying traits of Alaskans, but I will not spoil the book further other than to say that indoor plumbing is much more common now.
Head of the Bay
Another highlight of our trip was horseback riding to the head of the bay. We watch a lot of "Alaska the Last Frontier" here, because the subjects of this reality show live a few miles from my family. On the television show they are always riding to the head of the bay to tend their cattle and having to swim the horses across the tidal rivers because someone neglected to check the tide charts. We did both of these things. Riding a swimming horse was not on my bucket list, but it should have been, because it was fun... for me, but not for the horse.
Ultimately, though we had to pack up our halibut and fly home to catch up on our own chores at home. Over a month later, we have not caught up on our chores... but then I somehow doubt we ever will. We need a vacation.
Things to Do:
Trails End Horse Adventure --(907) 235-6393
Alaska Adventure 4-Wheeler Tour -- (907) 235-6393 (Read the signs. Don't touch the dog.) Rainbow Tours -- (Ferry to Seldovia, wildlife tour, and halibut fishing.) Grewynk Glacier Hiking Trails -- You'll need to book a water taxi round trip, so try Mako's Water Taxi.
A typical Easter up on the Palmer Divide includes snow. It's difficult to believe that a week ago the grass was green, the trees were starting to bud and I was closing up the chicken coop at night without even bothering to don a jacket. That was the day before the blizzard dumped 18 inches of snow on us. The subsequent four days of overcast and snow have finally given way to the sun, which is why I bundled up and headed out to the paddocks to dig a path for the chickens.
I looked great, by the way, wearing my fancy galoshes, my burgundy barn coat and my new brown felt slouch hat. Admittedly, I can still be seen in the yard wearing some highly unfashionable get-ups that result from a single mindedness to get to work that makes me all too absent minded about my appearance. On those days I appear as a diminutive, firebrand hauling my cumbersome wheelbarrow to and fro with great determination, while dressed as a wild eyed bohemian. Most likely my attire is what I pulled out of the laundry that morning so I wouldn't get my good clothes dirty. Often, I realize half way through the morning that I really should do Salt the favor of reminding him that I am still the fashionable sophisticate he married.
Fashion aside, I need not have bundled up this morning, despite the fact it was 29 degrees out as I chipped away at the densely frozen snow. The plastic snow shovel wouldn't cut the icy pack, so I cut small blocks with a garden spade and pulled up blocks that would have been excellent material for an igloo. This was a hot and sweaty job laboring in the sun. I took frequent breaks to catch my breath, enjoying the sparkling glint of the eastern sun reflecting off of the crystalline lake that is a pasture in warmer weather. The ponderosas were still tufted with snow, and the sky was bright blue and cloudless. The crisp air smelled faintly of mesquite, which is how I knew that Salt had put a brisket on the smoker.
After freeing the chickens and airing out their coop, I headed inside to reflect a little on the day and, obviously, to blog. Salt, who could make a profession of reflection if he chose to publish his writing, had already concluded the sitting silently portion of his contemplation time. He had moved on to practicing the harmonica. And so, my appreciation of life continues as he plays the blues with the dogs sleeping nearby and watches the temperature of his brisket. It feels a little like Easter in a roadhouse, which has its charm.
So here is wishing you all a happy Easter. We are having a day most worthy of celebrating with gratitude: warm sun on our faces, cool breezes in the smoke scented mountain air, dogs at our feet, dinner and family on the way and music all around. Happy Easter!
This morning while I was making the bed, Calicocoa -- my diva-dog-in-training-- lumbered
into the room and upon seeing me she sat down to wait. An expectant look was on her
happy face. I continued arranging the
bedspread and setting the pillows in place.
As I was putting the cover over the last pillow I looked at her and said
brightly, “Good girl!” At that she leaped onto the bed and collapsed onto the
cushioning comforter and pillow top.
Once settled she turned her face to me, waiting for more praise and
petting, which she received.
It was a gratifying moment to see how far kindness has brought our old girl. She didn't always know that she could trust herself, much less trust us.
I recall when she first came to us nearly two years ago, she
would return to bed in the mornings to take a post-breakfast nap. Since I
needed to make the bed, I would quietly, but firmly, say “Get down.” This simple,
calm statement would inspire fear bordering on terror, as she scrambled off of the bed and out of the room with her tail between her legs. This wasn’t the
only clue we had that our sweet Calicocoa had been brought up in an environment
where commands accompanied violence.
For weeks, when I told her to get down from
the bed, I tried to say the words “Good dog” before she could rush out of
earshot. Eventually she slowed down enough that I could pet her and praise her
properly for getting down from the bed. Always, when I finished making the bed,
I called her back so she could resume her rest. Finally, she began lingering
long enough to watch what I was doing, until she could anticipate when she would be called back.
Finally, she knows that she isn’t bad for being on the
bed. She is good for waiting patiently
until I am done with whatever it is I’m doing every day. Now that she understands the rules, she can
succeed and it seems to make her happy.
A few months later we trained her to use the dog door. She senses a trap in every puzzling training moment, so it was slow going for her. It took a few days to teach her to use the door, but even longer to teach her that the door was there for her to use when she desired it, as opposed to when she was told to use it. Part of the delay was that it took me a few days to surmise that she was afraid to make an independent decision to use the door. Once I understood the problem, I began by showing her a treat, then walking outside with it and calling her. If she came through the door she received the treat. After a couple of days of this, I stopped calling her. I could see her big nose poking through the door as she tried to decide if it was worth the risk. Eventually, she took the plunge and received her treat. Three repetitions later, she knew the back garden was her domain.
Calicocoa has made other improvements. As much as she detests
little Griffin she tolerates his proximity and even takes a defensive posture
when “strangers” get too close to him.
She is still wary of strangers herself,
but quicker to accept their presence and with certain rare visitors she warms up
enough to be friendly. Last summer she met my cousin and within minutes adopted the demeanor of a cuddly 60 pound lap dog. Most of the time, we have to send her to her special spot until she is calm enough to assess the situation rationally. We may be working on Calicocoa’s
stranger issues until the old girl is gone, but her definition of a friend
keeps growing broader as she feels safer and trusts herself more. All she needs is love and praise. All she wants is to succeed.
Our downstairs is completely torn apart. The items in the storage closets have been
housed in the garage since July. The
furnishings are stacked in the center of the room, covered in dusty
plastic. The hallway and bedroom closets have no walls. Long channels have been cut through the
ceilings to expose the floor above.
The reason for this catastrophe is the installation of the
first ever central heating system in our house. We paid dearly for the
privilege of nearly freezing last winter. The $400-$600 /monthly electric bills
moved that gas furnace right to the very top of the list of renovations. The
new furnace needed a place to be, so we had to expand the utility closet. Salt,
being an architect, naturally decided this would be a great time to change the
configuration of the downstairs guest rooms, because architects decide stuff
like that with the same ease that I decide to buy a new comforter set for the
bedroom.
In short, our basement is a construction zone, but let me
tell you a little about the do-it-yourself experience from the perspective of a
novice.
You know those reality shows where the homeowners help with
demolition and finish the job in what the show purports to be the same day with
enormous grins on their faces? The homeowners always start out energetically
heaving sledgehammers and gleefully tossing large fixtures into a dumpster.
They laugh as they kick down walls like they were made of papier maché. It
looks like so much fun.
Now that I’ve
done a demolition, I know those happy-go-lucky, dust covered homeowners really spent
the day in the craft services tent munching on muffins, while day laborers
ripped the studs out and painstakingly removed every last remaining nail
head. Oh, I’m sure someone occasionally
calls those homeowners away from the break table to get a shot of them helping
the host lift something heavy, but there is no way they do a full day of
demolition and have the energy to smile.
My first day of demolition went something like this. . .
8:30 – 9:30 a.m. – I remove the
baseboards from the hallway and closets, scraping my hands on the floor with
the pry bar.
9:30 –9:40 a.m. – Find my gloves
and begin tackling the trim around the doorways.
9:40 – 9:50 a.m. – Push and pull
with all my might on the trim around the doorways. Try to think of ladylike sounding curse words
and settle on growling in gibberish, until Salt comes to remove the trim from
around the door.
9:50 – 9:55 a.m. – Try knocking out
dry wall in the hallway. The sledgehammer bounces off of the wall several
times. Salt demonstrates how to find the
sweet spot with one’s foot.
9:55 – 10:00 a.m. – Miss the sweet
spot. Spend a few minutes trying to extract my foot from the wall. In the meantime, Salt finishes removing the door
frames and begins removing drywall surrounding one of the closets.
10:00 -10:30 a.m. – Remove the dry
wall from the hallway. Begin tackling
the nail heads from the studs that will be remaining in place.
If we don’t have a craft services tent, we should at least have a production
assistant bring us lattes. Note
for next demolition: hire a personal assistant (PA).
10:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. – For three and one half seemingly endless
and unrewarding hours, remove nails that were put in by an OCD contractor who
was clearly afraid the linen closet would fall down if the dry wall was not
secured every three inches by a nail. I have two blood blisters on my
thumb from pinching it under the hammer and have hit myself in the face twice when
stubborn nails gave way suddenly.
2:00 – 2:10 p.m. – Take a break
from removing nails to take out a stud. Pound on the stud for a couple of
minutes, then look helplessly at Salt. Salt rips it out with his bare hands. I
explain, “I could have done that, but I have these blood blisters.”
2:10 – 2:15 p.m. – It’s time to
assess the damage. I’ve been up and down the step ladder so many times, my
thighs and gluts are screaming. My shoulders and neck are stiff and sore. My
blood blisters need bandages. The joints in my hands are completely swollen and
bruised from pounding against the pry bar. I can no longer close my right hand.
We’re not even half way done with the demolition. House 10, Diva 2.
2:00 p.m. Time to tear out a stud.
2:15 – 3:30 p.m. – I decide the
house is mean and endeavor to remove more nails just to show it who is boss. Trip up and down the ladder a few more
times. Hit myself with the face with the
hammer handle pretty hard this time.
3:30 p.m. – Officially exhausted to
the point where I am more of a danger to myself than the house. Note for next
demolition: hire day labor in addition to a PA.
4:00 p.m. – My last ounce of energy
is spent lifting my arms to wash my hair. It’s time to lie on the sofa and
die. Salt is still downstairs working. Shouldn’t
the camera crew be taking the victory shot of us high fiving each other in the
rubble by now? I couldn’t lift my arms anyway. I dare the DIY Network to show
up on my doorstep. I’d give them a piece of my mind. On second thought, I’m
too tired for that too.
In summary, it took three weekends to finish the demolition,
and I probably only did a quarter of the work. I’m not as fast or able as Salt.
Partly it was because I didn’t have a PA
to raise my beer bottle in a toast to success at the end of the day, so I had
to conserve my energy. Mostly, it was
because I try not to be in the same room with a sawzall for a variety of
reasons related to me being klutzy menace to myself and others.
After the demolition, it took three more weeks for Salt to
install the duct work, and six painful weeks for the furnace company to
complete the installation of the furnace.
This last was only made possible by the heroic efforts of the company’s
salesman, who spent weeknights at our house for three weeks. Ultimately, the furnace was fired up just in
time for the first cold snap of the season. We received our first gas bill after a
full month of heating which was $80. .
and the entire house is warm.
Central heating is an amazing invention. It is now my second
most appreciated household convenience, after running water. Someday, we’ll get
the downstairs put back together again, hopefully before the satisfaction of
being warm wears off.
Autumn is the cold and damp season here at 6600 feet above sea level, which gives us the unusual experience of waking up to a yard socked in by clouds. The days are getting shorter too, so we go to work in the dark and come home to a few fading minutes of light to work by in the evening. On a particularly cloudy morning last week, I made my way to the chicken coop in the dark through a dense cloud obscuring my vision for all but the few feet in front of me. In the beam of my flashlight, I could see wisps of mist shifting in the air like sodden ghosts.
Yes, it is the season for ghost stories, but instead I have a monster story. It is a true story of something that occurred last October. I've been saving it to tell you now.
It started with the snow. We'd been getting light, but frequent snow for the previous couple of weeks, which is not unusual in the autumn. There is also nothing strange about finding deer tracks in the fresh snow around our house each morning, but earlier that week I had also seen paw prints on our deck and around the yard that looked like those of a cat.
One morning walking out to the chicken coop in the dark, flashlight in hand, I noticed as I rounded the garage that there were larger paw prints intermingled among the deer tracks. We hear coyotes every night and see them frequently tracking the deer from a distance. I was suddenly wary.
Approaching a deer in the dark is dangerous enough, but running into a coyote is even more troubling. Besides my own safety should I startle one in the dark, I am not particularly keen for the coyotes to be on the property taking notice of the chickens. With a flush of concern, I tightened my grip on the flashlight. I swung the beam around to make certain there was nothing else in the area as I made my way to the safety of the barn. At least, I thought it was safe.
The entrance to the chicken coop is inside the barn. As I opened the outer barn door that leads to their inside run, I noticed that they were unusually quiet that morning. Usually, they are at the coop door clucking and pecking in anticipation of freedom, but not on this particular morning. The coop was still and eerily silent. Expecting a sense of relief when I entered the barn, my concern about the tracks outside was quickly renewed. Could an animal make its way into the coop somehow?
I called out my usual song. "Hey, hey, hey, chicka-bay-bay-bays!" Silence answered.
Trying to shrug off the mounting tension, I stayed on task. Ignoring the fact that there were no chickens waiting impatiently on the other side of the coop door, I unlocked it and swung it open before making a perfunctory turn to drop the flashlight on a shelf nearby so I could have both hands free for the scratch bucket.
As I was shifting the flashlight to the shelf I saw something in the narrow beam of light, something huge and grey. It registered in my brain just as I settled the flashlight into place. The shaggy, grey mass was crouched low to the ground, lumbering slowly toward the doorway, exiting the coop.
I started and cried out. What could this be? A possum? A raccoon? How? Had it chewed its way in? These thoughts flashed through my mind in the millisecond it had taken me to jump away.
I had no time to regain composure as I recoiled in horror. Even in the darkness, my unaccustomed eyes could make out the dark mass of the grotesque monster relentlessly plodding toward me. My poor hens! Poor me! What deadly, sharp teeth and powerful jaws it must have in its terrible maw. And claws... Did it have claws? My mind raced. My heart pounded.
I took several slow steps back. My eyes were wide with horror and I could not look away from its lumpy, headless, misshapen body...
In the dim, indirect light provided by the flashlight I had just set aside, my eyes adjusted and I realized that its bulbous body was the same shape, size and color of our rooster, Javier. His down-turned head had been outside the pool of light during the instant I saw it. His feathers had been fluffed out to insulate against the cold, making him look even larger than usual. It might have helped to have worn my glasses too.
The hens were slowly rousing from their deep sleeps on the frigid roost. And after hearing a few coos from the room, I knew everyone was safe.
It goes to show that our minds can make us see the things we expect. On this particular morning I expected to find a monster in the chicken coop rather than chickens.
Typical for me it was a lot of drama about nothing, but there were consequences. Once Javier had sensed weakness I had to put up with two days of him posturing and threatening me when I came in the coop. We worked it out with lots of petting to show him I'm not scared. He detests, but tolerates, being petted. My little monster.
Now, I just have to remember my glasses and hope I don't mistake a coyote for a chicken another time. Happy Halloween!
I love my rooster. From a human perspective he's a little stinker on his best days, but as roosters go, he's pretty great. He keeps his flock in order. He pronounces his reign at the top of his lungs frequently enough to keep the other roosters in their own yards. He protects the girls from predators and each other. He calls them when there is food. His frequent mating keeps the egg production up.
He can be pretty brutal with the girls. He believes in his testosterone-bathed, cashew-sized, bird brain that it's all for the best... and they believe it too. If one considers that he is the vanguard between the girls and predators, their survival role is simplified to coming when called or getting out of the way when he sounds the alarm. Whether the girls like him or not isn't relevant. Some cling to his side seeking protection from the other girls and a prize spot when he finds a treat he wants to share. Others steer clear of him, as though they were polarized magnets. It's a working system and he knows how to run it.
If hens are ambivalent about roosters, imagine how rare it is for a farmer to love a rooster. I'd heard so many horror stories of aggressive, attack roosters that I was a little nervous about bringing one home. Javier certainly is an intimidating size, and he was not happy about being taken from his home by complete strangers.
We were lucky, though, that he had been handled a lot by his previous owners, so he wasn't completely terrified of humans. Still in his early days here he didn't trust us and was intent on being in charge. Or at least that is how the rooster whisperers might have described his dilemma.
I've found the rooster whisperers on various blogs and message boards about chickens. They are a highly controversial group of chicken farmers who are usually shouted down for their recklessness and blind admiration of all demonic poultry. Most of the whisperers say they've never met a bad rooster. All of them say that neither threatening, nor assaulting, nor running in terror will induce a rooster to behave with any semblance of rooster-civility. Based on my limited experience I have reason to believe the rooster whispers are right.
The trick, they say, is to think like a chicken. In chicken-think, humans are potentially threatening, a status that garners the aggression of roosters protecting their flocks. Brandish a stick in any direction, wave your arms in the air, talk excitedly and the rooster will think one means to hurt him. This triggers an aggressive response from posturing to outright attack. Given this, one would think the goal would be to be non-threatening, but roosters tend to read that as submission. They also sense fear and read that as submission too. Roosters react to submission by being more aggressive in order to establish dominance. A rooster, as I have observed, will almost certainly jump at anyone he thinks he can bully.
The rooster whisperers focus on creating a balance between exerting dominance over the rooster, being benevolent toward the rooster and being a predictable element within the flock. An easier way to think about it is establishing mutual respect in which the flock keeper respects the rooster as the head of the flock and doesn't disrupt his order. The rooster in turn is taught to treat the flock keeper as a peer, which is not a friendly relationship in rooster-think. Peers are competition, but not necessarily subject to attack. A good peer relationship among roosters is more like aloof acceptance.
When I first got Javier, I was very intimidated by him, but I tried not to let him see it. That was easier said than done, because he was prone to making sudden, skittering sideways runs at me, which almost always made me start and gasp. I usually managed to stay firmly where I stood, and eventually recover the presence of mind to take a couple of sideways steps back toward him. We would square off in our side-facing crouches studying each other with one eye, until I would relax my shoulders and calmly walk away with my chin held high as if my point had been made.
One rooster whisperer I follow espouses picking them up when they get ornery. The difficulty here is catching them. Salt can catch Javier every time, but even if I catch up with Javier I often fumble the hold. Fortunately in those early days Javier was just as uncertain about my abilities as I was about his, so he didn't make a serious advance on me.
It was during that time that Javier began his current practice of taking scratch from my hand. I used it as a means of getting him to approach me and of gaining his trust. The old food bribe worked, but there is a price. The little stinker bites. Fortunately, he doesn't bit hard.
To this day, the girls race for the scratch I throw on the ground, while he stands perfectly still glaring at me insistently, waiting for his handful. When I put my hand down his beak dives into my hand and begins biting. Sometimes he eats, but usually he just bites me as he calls out excitedly, "tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck!" This is his rooster-speak for "Look here, girls! I've invented food! Come look! I'm amazing!" And they do come running to eat out of my hand, while he steps back to look on in pride. When the scratch runs out, he starts glaring at me again. We repeat this until I'm bored with it. For his part he is never tired of insisting I serve him so he can bite me and claim credit for the tasty treats he gifts to the girls. Stinker is definitely the best description for him.
Once I got used to being bitten by a rooster, I stopped being frightened of Javier. I've learned, however that he never lets his guard down and neither should I. The first time he really squared off with me, worked out spectacularly in my favor because I didn't even see it coming. I was leaning over feeder, pouring in some fresh pellets, when I felt something solid hit me hard on the back of the leg. It didn't hurt because I was wearing galoshes and I was too busy concentrating on not spilling the feed to be startled. I didn't even react.
I realized what must have happened in the couple of seconds it took for me to finish filling the feeder. When I was done, I calmly stood up and turned around. The guilty scoundrel was alone with me in the coop, still eyeing me with raw disdain.
I thought, "I'm still bigger." I took two measured steps toward him then swiftly leaned down and grabbed him around his body, catching his feet in my hands, pinning his wings with my arms. I stood up and pulled his body toward mine. As soon as his wing contacted my chest, he leaned his head into me and his body relaxed into mine. I stood there stroking him for a moment as though soothing a baby.
Then I held out my arms to let him go. He leaped to the ground and barked angrily at me. His eyes flashed daggers before he turned to stalk away. Boys don't want to be hugged by their mamas, especially in front of girls. Roosters are no different, so we don't have these sorts of confrontations often.
Indeed, nowadays, I enter the coop looking for him. We look each other over in silent acknowledgement and then I carefully step around him to go about the chores. He follows me, I think partly to make sure I know he's still in charge, partly to show the girls he's on guard for them, and partly to make sure I don't suddenly drop a watermelon rind or other treat that he needs to distribute to the girls. With only one rooster to my account, I can't say that I'm a rooster whisperer, but Javier and I have found our way to mutual respect. He may be a stinker, but he's the the stinker in charge of my chicken coop.
