This was the first chick to hatch. It's an Old English Bantam and is such a tiny little chick. But he's fluffy and healthy, eating and drinking already. I've had 4 more hatch since then with more expected overnight and tomorrow.
Archives for April 2011
Cobbler’s Window
Posted by on April 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
I love this shot. It was quite hot here today, and the cobbler threw his windows open to get some air. You can see him in the background working. We did not go in to meet the cobbler this week, as my friend Justine had warned us that he was, um, rather opinionated, and not afraid to hold you hostage and share his views with you. I chose to admire his handiwork from outside the window.
Plantation Slaves
Posted by on April 20, 2011 Leave a Comment
Our Slave Historian for Workin' the Soil, Healin' the Soul
Yesterday we had tickets for “Workin’ the Soil, Healing the Soul”, which was a tour to discover the life of slaves on plantations, the laws they lived with, and how they survived.
As it happened, I was about 3 pages away from finishing Wench by Dolen-Perkins-Valdez, a historical fiction book chronicling
the lives of four slave women—Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu—who are their masters’ mistresses. The women meet when their owners vacation at the same summer resort in Ohio. There, they see free blacks for the first time and hear rumors of abolition, sparking their own desires to be free. I learned a lot about slavery that I didn’t already know from this book and I found it difficult to put down every night.
I found this Workin’ the Soil, Healing the Soul tour here at Colonial Williamsburg covered a lot of information that I had just learned in this book, but was certainly information that I would not have known if I hadn’t read this book. There were a lot of facts about slavery you didn’t learn in history class. The dark, dirty truth about slavery and how they were treated. The tour was not “recommended” for children under 10. However, there were lots of kids there, and many were younger than Evan and Maia. The twins had studied slavery this year and were very interested in taking this tour, so I took the twins with me of course. They will be 11 next month.
Now there was one scene in this book where one of the women slaves gets beaten in front of everyone by her master that is quite brutal. The fear of things like this permeated the lives of these slaves. As the tour was winding up one of the two tour leaders took out a whip that was something similar to what a slave master would have used to demonstrate what a normal beating would have been like for a slave being punished.
The slave master's whip was a horrid looking thing with many strands of leather
The law said that a slave could be whipped 39 times.
He beat that whip up against a bare tree only 4 times.
The noise was horrendous.
And, being the emotional basket case that I am, I started to cry.
The tour guides had warned us at the beginning that often people had to walk away from things that were being said. I did not expect this to bother me as it did. Not that it shouldn’t! As that whip was falling on that tree I just couldn’t believe that we actually used to do that to other human beings.
You can see where the bark is stripped away as he whips
I discreetly lowered my sunglasses while a few tears rolled down my cheeks. The tour guide went on to quote pages from a slave master’s journal where he was writing of some new methods he’d found more useful in getting slave cooperation than the law-prescribed 39 lashings with a whip. He passed around a metal curry comb, which, being a horse owner I am quite familiar with. This man wrote how he’d gotten “very good results” by currying a slave’s back until raw, having another slave rub hay into the wounds and then pouring salt over his or her back and sending them back into the fields to work, while the salty sweat mixed with the salt in the open wounds and baked into his back.
Unbelievable.
Now I probably could have gotten away with this little emotional breakdown of mine had Maia, who was standing next to me, not noticed. She proceeded to kiss my arm like a love-struck peppy le pew, calling attention to me from the entire crowd at her bizarre and sudden infatuation with her mother’s arm.
Geesh.
The Animals of Colonial Williamsburg
Posted by on April 19, 2011 1 Comment
While I can’t post about my farm because I’m not there, I can post about some of the lovely creatures I have met down here in Colonial Williamsburg.
Ducks Looking for Dates. Evan ran out into the street the first night here to help direct three male mallards across the street. They'd heard there were hot babes in the Colonial area.
Doesn't this mama look like she's smiling? She's so proud of her new baby she can't contain herself.
This young pig had the most expressive eyes!
A handsome chicken at the Plantation
A "Corn Flakes" Rooster! I've got one of those chicks in my brooder coop! I cannot wait to see him full grown!
This was an incredibly beautiful horse. He was only 4 years old and the carriage master was training him.
There were about 6 different carriages around Colonial Williamsburg. The one we took actually was the same carriage that Queen Elizabeth had ridden in!
A Handsome Cow in a beautiful field of green and flowers
These Giant Runt heritage breed pigeons are raised on one of the estates. They are the largest of the domestic pigeon family. The guy who raised them was so interesting and informative.
These Giant Runt pigeon babies were only 7 days old. They go from hatching to full grown in something crazy like 2-1/2 weeks.
Cows plowing the fields at the plantation.
And lastly this adorable baby lamb. Isn't he just the cutest!
Pink Dogwood Against a White House
Posted by on April 19, 2011 Leave a Comment
It is just so lovely down here in Virginia with all of the trees in flower. The pink flowers of this dogwood against the white house looked picture-perfect to me.
But then so did these yellow roses blooming against this white outbuilding. I loved that roof!
Spicy Peanut Sesame Noodles
Posted by on April 19, 2011 Leave a Comment
Spicy peanut sesame noodles is one of my favorite meals to eat in the summer, and my kids love it too. As soon as it started to get warm here my craving for sesame noodles came back. Of course it doesn’t seem to stay warm here this spring, so luckily I jumped right on my craving while the weather was, briefly, still nice. I like to serve this warm, but not hot. You can eat it cold, but the sauce gets a little coagulated — even that word is unattractive — and you don’t want it hot or the vegetables will get wilted. I’ve reworked and tweaked this recipe over the years. I think it’s finally just about perfect.
Sesame Noodles
Recipe by Crafty Farm Girl, 2011.
Yield: 6-8 servings
Ingredients:
For peanut sauce:
1 (16 ounce) package linguine pasta
6 tablespoons soy sauce
1/4-1/3 cup chunky peanut butter
6 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
4 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons chili sauce or hot chili oil
6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
2 tablespoons minced or grated ginger
4 tablespoons sugar
For Chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cleaned of any fat and skin
32 ounces low-sodium chicken broth
1 garlic clove, sliced
3/4″ ginger, peeled and sliced
a few stems of cilantro
4 carrots, peeled and thinly julienned
6 green onions, sliced
1 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted
Directions:
Place the garlic, ginger and cilantro into a medium pot. Add the chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Drop the chicken breasts into the simmering broth, cover and poach the breasts until cooked through, 15-20 minutes. Slice into the thickest part of a breast to check for doneness. You do not want them raw, but you do not want them to cook longer than necessary or they will get tough.
Remove chicken from the pot and discard the poaching liquid. Cool breasts until you can handle them and then slice them into thin strips. Place sliced chicken in a bowl and set aside.
Prepare all of your other ingredients before you cook your pasta.
Mise en Place all of your ingredients prior to cooking pasta
Bring a pot of lightly salted water to boil. Add pasta, and cook until al dente, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain, and transfer to a serving bowl.
While pasta is cooking whisk together the soy sauce with the sugar and peanut butter; it will look awful and then will come together to form a paste. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking, then whisk in the rice vinegar. Drizzle and whisk in the sesame oil and chili oil or chili paste. Finally whisk in the garlic and ginger.
Pour sauce over linguine, and then add chicken, green onions, chopped cilantro and julienned carrots and toss to coat. Garnish with sesame seeds.
Serve warm. Delicious!
Sugar Cookies – Batch 2
Posted by on April 18, 2011 1 Comment
In my continued efforts to pursue perfection in regards to sugar cookies I made another batch last week.
Chickens with gold sprinkles everywhere
Plain brown chickens
White chickens with brown tail feathers. I called these my fluffy butt chickens because I put the gold sprinkles on only their bottoms and wing feathers.
Gnomes with sparkly red sugar on their hats
Sparkly White Sugar Sheep
Plain White Sheep with a Black Outline
Generally speaking I learned from this that I like the sugar used in moderation. I liked the sugar on the fluffy butts of the chickens, not all over. I loved the sugar on the red gnome hats, and I didn’t like it on the sheep at all.
Just wait until you see the next batch. I found the most awesome cookie cutters on-line that I ordered. I will achieve sugar cookie perfection before the twins’ birthdays.
Green, Green, Green! (plus a bonus)
Posted by on April 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
A Field in Colonial Williamsburg. Everything is green and blooming here!
And, since I don’t have the energy left to do a post on our day in Williamsburg tonight, I’ll add this photo:
And then as a special bonus I’ll include this one of Evan. We had to run to Target this afternoon because we’d all forgotten one thing or another — deodorant, socks, sweater — and I caught Evan doing his favorite thing in these stores; trying on the biggest bra he can find.
And here’s him frantically trying to rip it off over his head when he heard someone coming that might actually see him in it.
Folk Art of Colonial Williamsburg
Posted by on April 18, 2011 1 Comment
In the lobby of our hotel there is a gift store that the kids and I were browsing through yesterday after dinner and they had this amazing rooster weathervane that was something like $850.00! I figured it must be an antique. I took a picture and promised myself I would go home and make one. In my spare time. At 2 a.m. some day when my kids are grown. No, really, I’m going to give it a shot.
Rooster Weathervane by artist Steve Chabra
Today we went to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and in the gift shop there was another one of his pieces. This one was marked with a little bit about the artist so I put two and two together. This piece was $850.00 too!
I absolutely love folk art. It is my favorite form of art. I don’t have any antique pieces of folk art, but I have a bunch of pieces by artist Jim Lambert in my family room s well as a few smaller pieces by other artists, and it’s part of what makes it my favorite room in the house. Last year when I was on the Crafty Farm Girl’s Great Plains Road Trip we saw some really great folk art at the Milwaukee Art Museum. What a beautiful building that was.
Here’s some of the great pieces we saw at the museum today.
This was one of the most extraordinary pieces there. A very large carved folk art hippo with a latch in his back that revealed a phonograph player. When the music played, his tongue moved to the music. It was in amazing shape.
And there were the signs for the shoemaker, the boot maker, the optition and the farrier.
Then there were the requisite weathervanes.
And then there was just plain cool stuff.
Maybe I’ll try to make that windmill too one day; it looks like a tire rim and a bunch of old pie plates were used to make them. I have those!
Seriously though, if you’re a fan of American folk art and are in Virginia you should stop by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum to check some of this stuff out.
Predator Attack
Posted by on April 17, 2011 4 Comments
Yesterday I was out with the kids for a few hours. When we left we let all the chickens and goats out to free-range, as I usually do during the day. When we pulled back in the driveway I immediately noticed an abudance of white feathers floating around the yard.
This can only mean one thing…
PREDATOR ATTACK
Now over the years I have lost countless chickens to hawks, fox, raccoons, opposum, weasel, raccoon and neighborhood dogs. You do begin to have what I’ve termed “a farmer’s mentality” about this. These animals eating chickens has been going on since they both landed on this planet. It’s the cycle of life. However, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Plus, as I have mentioned before, an unexpected side-benefit to having my goats is that when they are together, I haven’t lost a SINGLE chicken to predator attacks. That is extraordinary. Now when I went to Wyoming for the summer and took the goats on their “goatcation” to my friend Keely’s house, within a week of their leaving my entire flock was killed.
Or so I thought. When I returned from Jackson I immediately started getting calls about a chicken running around in a certain yard down the street. Sure enough when I drove by there was Chow Mein, my little Japanese bantam chicken that my friend Sue gave to me! That teeny tiny little chicken had been living all alone for 2 months in a neighbors yard and somehow managed to survive! We tried unsuccessfully to try and catch her a few times. She would literally fly 30 feet up onto a tree branch. Now this in itself is unusual because chickens as a rule cannot fly. They can “catch air”, as I call it, but really cannot get very far off the ground for more than a few feet. This little chicken was flying. However, I knew she would just leave again if I caught her without any chickens at home, so I waited until I got some adolescent chickens from Weir Farm in Wilton to go and catch her. It took me and 3 of my kids to successfully catch her the day after I got the new chickens, and much to my surprise Chow Mein was delighted to be back in a flock. She barely left the coop for days and didn’t fly out of the enclosure for weeks. Content to be among her fellow peeps again and have food thrown at her on a regular basis. She is one tough chicken and she’s become a bit famous in our home. She also became broody early this spring and was determined to hatch unfertilized eggs, rolling as many as she could under her tiny body. I adore her.
I also got an early-September order of chicks in the mail. They’ve grown over the fall and winter and are now wonderful, happy, healthy, laying chickens. I’ve had 27 chickens since September and haven’t lost a single one. I’ve grown unusually attached to these girls.
So back to the beginning of the story. I pull into the driveway and saw all of these feathers. Now I have have 4 white chickens right now and 2 that are a very light grey. We flew out of the car to see what had happened and try to find the flock. The goats were standing by the open gate door looking very upset and lots of the chickens were milling around. In the coop I found Chow Mein huddled in her favorite small nesting box looking scared out of her mind. I’m sure whatever attached them brought back awful memories of her entire clan being killed last summer. I held her for awhile as the kids continued to search for chickens. I inspected her for blood but she appeared unharmed.
Evan discovered one of my white Buff Cochin’s hiding way underneath the chicken coop. It was starting to rain, but Evan jumped right under there and didn’t give up until he had that chicken. She, also, appeared to be frightened but unharmed.
It wasn’t until a little while later when India was in the coop trying to ease Chow Mein’s fears that she noticed the large hunk of feathers that had been ripped out of her rear. While she wasn’t bleeding, I’m sure she has one sore backside. But the worst part of it is her beautiful stand-up tail with the black tips is now rather pathetic looking.
Before
After ( she did not want her picture taken like this)
I know they will grow back and am thrilled that she’s alive. I just cannot believe what a tough little cookie she is.
We gathered up every chicken that we could find and locked them in the coop. I went out a while later when it was really raining to check on them and found two more chickens madly circling the coop. I let them in and settled them down. As dark was falling I went out again and everyone was safely settled on their perches. Miraculously all 27 were present and accounted for and, except for a disgraceful-looking tail, appeared to be unharmed.