Playing with Tommie Toes

I say "playing" because a serious gardener wouldn't buy combo packs of plants simply labeled "Heirlooms".  There was a nice posted list of what they *might* be but it was a wait-and-see-what-you -have grab-bag kind of situation.  It got more complicated the minute I decided to buy singles of several plants and then got the labels mixed up. Perish the thought of saving seeds from this motley mix!

But, of course, I did....We'll see if we can even get them to sprout.

Time to Harvest Japanese Beetles

Japanese beetles have moved into my grapevines and begun turning the robust leaves into skeletons.  These little goblins are relatively new to the area and a quick internet search did little to assuage my fears. They will indeed eat the whole plant and move on to the next. (See article Japanese beetles have finally hit KC 7/8/14)

Ever the Polly Positive, I have decided to think of these shiny green beasts creatures as value added extra special chicken treats.  Last night I came up with the following two collection protocols.  

WARNING - BEETLES DIE WHEN YOU FREEZE THEM AND/OR FEED THEM TO YOUR CHICKENS AND/OR DUCKS.  

To Harvest for Later
1. Select a beverage of choice from the refrigerator and drink up - you'll want a narrow neck bottle. 
2. Pick the beetles off of the leaves one or two at a time and place them in the bottle.
3. Place the contents of the bottle in a ziplock bag & put the bag in the freezer for a chicken treat next winter.

To Harvest for Immediate Use
1. Place a bucket of water (or filled baby pool for free ranging animals) next to the affected grapevine.
2. Get your hand wet & begin picking off the beetles and putting them in the bucket of water.  I have gone to all out grabbing whole leaves - completely disrupting their little beetle orgies.
3. Either dump the bucket in a shallow container of water inside your run OR call over your birds to chow down.  

Alternately: scoop the wet & immobilized beetles & stick them in a bag in the freezer. They make cool treats for birds on hot hot summer days.

(PS: My oh-so-sensible husband has pointed out it would be less work to collect them at dawn when they are covered in dew. He doesn't realize how satisfying it is to watch our ducks splash around in their their baby pool looking for beetles!  Also, a narrow neck bottle works infinitely better than a coffee cup ;)  

Gallinas Urbanas - Urban Homesteaders in Puerto Rico

I found these very cool folks who helping people get started keeping backyard flocks in PUERTO RICO! I'm really enjoying the fact that people are doing the same thing there as we're doing here....simply trying to stay connected with our food supply.  

 Love the logo, love their site :) 

  http://www.gallinasurbanas.com/   

(when you get to their website, right click & you'll have the option to translate the page - it's worth it) 

Gallinas Urbanas

 

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Chicken Soup Magic

An ad I wrote last spring for our processed chicken..... at the time we were getting $6/lb on the regular birds and $9/lb on the dark birds.  -AR

Free-range heritage breed and dark flesh chickens locally grown and processed for your culinary creations. This will not be a typical grocery store eating experience! 

These are extra roosters from hatches last fall. We've been tinkering around with ways to increase carnosine (ie chicken soup magic) in meat birds. There's a relationship between darkness of flesh (melanin levels) and carnosine levels but the challenge is the birds with the highest (by far!) carnosine levels also happen to be small....as in silkies. While we're waiting for the research to tease apart all the different aspects to fibromelanism, we're exercising a bit of homegrown selective breeding - on behalf of chicken soup lovers wherever they may be 

Dark flesh chickens have a slightly different flavor and have high levels of taurine and carnosine - ie "chicken soup magic".  Information about cooking heritage meat is below.

We hatched these birds and then fed and watered them daily for the last 5 months - trudging through wind and sleet snow, pouring rain and deep mud. They've slowly grown eating a diet of hand blended whole grains through the winter and wandering about eating tender grass and dandelion greens (and the occasional tasty worm) this spring. When the time was right the birds were taken to a small USDA inspected, family operated processing facility in Garnett, Kansas

I typically squeeze 3 meals of of each bird - baked chicken for meal 1, pulled chicken for casseroles for meal 2, and a rich soup made from thick chicken jelly for meal 3, plus several quarts of high quality broth for comfort food.  

Cooking traditionally raised chickens is different from cooking with industrially raised hybrid broilers. Recommendations from Heritage Chef Steve Pope. 

The US Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure they remain in production and on our plates. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/ark_of_taste/

Slow Food KC http://www.slowfoodkc.org/