Frozen Chicken

The last week or so it has been extremely cold, at least for us here on the wimpy west coast. I love snow, but only when it promptly goes away after a day or two after I have enjoyed the novelty of it. After a few days it starts to become a bit of an inconvenience and I want my dark, wet, 30 - 40 degree days to return.

Now here I sit in my warm house complaining about the cold, when the four girls get to actually be immersed in the white stuff freezing their feathered butts off. I am hopeful that temperatures moderate for them soon, but for now we change the water daily and provide an extra abundance of scraps to bump up the calories. And despite the frigid temperatures the egg factory continues to stay on production.

I have new appreciation for their endurance in this cold spell.

Eagle and Chicken Can Co-Exisit

I love watching birds in my yard, in fact for years I have kept bird feeders with the goal of attracting as many species as possible. I once had the pleasure of witnessing a large hawk take a Pine Siskin (sp?) after it gorged on seeds while sitting underneath the feeder. It's nice to know that nature balances itself so nicely - feed yourself to full of seeds, risk getting eaten by large predatory raptor. I assume our country's obesity problem would take care of itself if we had large predators that hung around fast food joints and took out the masses as they waddled back to their cars.

Anyway, today I had a special sighting which has never happened in the years of me keeping black oil sunflower seeds to attract wild birds. It seems without really trying I have placed a new larger, and more protein filled "prey item" to attract much larger birds into my yard. The new larger bird feeder seems to be the four chickens that sit rather helplessly (a sitting duck if you will) in their chicken ark.

This morning I was getting dressed and saw a very large bald eagle fly into the yard and perch in a tree directly above the chicken yard. I was thinking "cool" a bald eagle in the yard. It didn't really occur to me what the bird was doing in the yard until I saw it directly above the girls who were happily clucking away. It would be a chore for the eagle to get into the chickens, but who wants to find out for sure. In fact I don't think I would have the same reaction to the eagle taking one of the girls that I had when the poor Pine Sisken met its fate.

I quietly crept out the front door to get a closer look and the large bird decided the restaurant was closed for the day and flew away.

-George

No More McDonald's?

When I was young my Pop had a tradition of bringing me to McDonald's for a treat when I would visit him in Chicago. This created a very clear associated memory for me with respect to this restaurant and spending time with my grandpa. This tradition probably nestled many warm fuzzy memories of eating hamburgers with my Pop in the recesses of my brain.

Over the last few years of my son's life I have perpetuated this association through to the next generation by taking an occasional trip with him to the golden arches. Although these trips have become increasingly rare over the years.

Lucky for my daughter she is older and has already classified McDonald's into the "gross" part of her brain escaping the brainwashing bestowed upon my son.

Now new reason to distance myself and my family from all forms of fast food- like we needed a new reason. The past reasons included: very high calorie, very high fat (and scary fats at that), very wasteful packaging, evil corporation!, globalization, etc. Now we have added to the list new data from a recent research report which clearly links the hamburger and chicken protein to the diet and environment the animal experienced during their life.

Sorry Pop!


-George

Food Storage As Grandma Knew It

I have been thinking quite a bit about storing food, preserving, canning, freezing. We were successful this year in picking blueberries from a local organic farm and storing away about 25 pounds in our freezer for use until into November. We also picked and stored apples from our trees in a plastic bin in our storage room, and we are currently enjoying fresh apples. However, my dreams of canning large amounts of fresh tomatoes didn't pan out, and I really would like to grow and store more of the food we eat. Today I ran into an interesting article in the New York Times with the title of this entry and it peaked my interest again in learning more practical applications of food preservation and storage. I have attached the link to the article here.

-George

Michael Pollen to the Next President

This is an interesting paper published in the New York Times Magazine regarding issues facing the next president. The premise is that even though the topic of food is not a part of the current campaign, you can link all the big issues being talked about back to the issue of food and more specifically our industrial food chain. The industrial food chain that demands tremendous energy to produce food, and also creates health problems that ultimately cost the population tremendous resources to care for the sick. The article is linked at the right, and I am going to embed the video as well.



-George

tiny carots (from toys and organic produce)

Hey kids lets tell vegetable stories do you love to eat Nash's organic carrots? Do you love to play with toys? We"ll i have a special blog entry for you.At that farm store they're selling carrot toys they look so silly you want to laugh all day do you think? Also organic carrot news you saw the egg came 10/17/08, today 10/18 /08 when it was almost winter our garden changed into a disaster but the tiny carrots rose since the beets did also thanks again to ORGANIC.
-Mac

Scenes from Summer

To reflect a bit as we now enter our dark days here in the Northwest, I have included some images from the garden this year. It was work, but well worth it especially during August when we were able to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The big successes have to be the cauliflower and broccoli which we had in abundance. We also really enjoyed the yellow squash once it came up later in August. I would say that buying the starts mid to late April for some of these veggies and then moving them outside May-June was a good plan. They probably could go out earlier, but this year it was quite cold during the spring.

Apple and pear trees seem to do well despite the cold spring due mostly to a well timed warm spell during the flowering of the trees and some nice pruning over the winter. We are really enjoying the apples right now.

Enjoy the pictures.