Novella Carpenter is Coming to Boston

I really had fun reading Novella Carpenter's new book Farm City. It is probably not a big surprise that I enjoyed it and found it so interesting. After all, someone who writes a blog called Urban Agrarian is kind of already sold on the idea of urban farming and has probably already slaughtered a chickens or two. In addition to my love of her subject matter, I think that Carpenter is also a talented writer.

Novella Carpenter is coming to Boston MA. That's my neck of the woods (er um pavement) and I'm really looking forward to meeting her. I think she makes those of us who have raised and slaughtered our own chickens feel a little less strange, or perhaps it just lets us know there are more kindred spirits in the world than we imagined.

Here is the link for the Slow Food Boston event where you can meet her and here is a link to her farm in Oakland. Hope to see you all at Slow Food Boston. I'll be the one with the live chickens for show and tell!

Grilled Chicken Hearts

This fall I raised some broiler chickens again with my community garden cooperative broiler group and I also raised some at home in my backyard. Not only does this mean lots of chicken for my freezer for the winter, but it means I have ALL the parts of the chickens including giblets and feet. After raising and caring for an animal, I don't want any parts of my chickens go to waste. That just wouldn't seem like the right thing to do. That means finding tasty ways to prepare parts I don't often eat, such as the hearts and gizzards.

Recently, I thought about ways to use the hearts. I've seen them used in a giblet gravy. I've also had giblets in stuffing and in rice. However, I was thinking of having them be a little more front and center so I decided to try grilling them.

I started with some store-bought Thai Peanut Sauce. Just buy your favorite brand or make your own.

The chicken hearts were from my garden raised chickens

I cut them each heart lengthwise in two the long way. There were two reasons for this. First, to have more area for the sauce and second so they didn't look so much like hearts and scare people off from trying them.

I then added some of the peanut sauce to the bag , put the hearts back in the fridge and left it to marinate for a good hour. After that, it was simple, just skewer and grill. Add a bit more peanut sauce for the table if you want.

They were really fantastic. Much better than I would have had guessed. I've been really craving them since I made them and may have to actually go buy some more chicken hearts becausee mine are all gone now. I am starting to eye the package of frozen gizzards in the freezer. I'm not sure if want to go with the sure thing with the peanut sauce or try some thing new for the gizzards.

If you don't raise your own chickens and want to try this and you happen live in the Boston area then try Pete and Jens Backyard Birds. They raise fantastic tasting chickens the right way. Hopefully they will still have a supply of chicken hearts left.

If you live outside of the Boston area try localharvest.org to find a farmer that raises their chickens on pasture.

My Backyard Meat Chickens 2009

Community Garden Meat Chickens 2009

Community Garden Broilers

For the last two years I've raised broiler chickens in my community garden plot. This year I'm doing it as a cooperative project with 3 other people. We're growing 20 Cornish Cross together in the community garden. They are 7 weeks old and when I weighed one today. It weighed 7.25 lbs. We won't be processing them for 2 more weeks. Too bad because they are plenty big enough right now. We may have to change the slaughter date.

Bees Building Comb

I got 2 hives last year and 3 this year for a total of five. In one of my new hives the bees are building their comb in the wrong place. It's all my fault. I was short an inner cover and they built up up up. This is going to take a while to clean up and probably neither the bees or I will be totally happy with the process.

Back to blogging

Well... After a year an a half of no blogging, I'm hopefully starting again. There are many reasons blog posts can dwindle, but for me it was a good reason. After the birth of my new grandson, I was helping my daughter and son-in-law out with day-care for Nicholas about 20 hours a week while they were both at work. It was lots of fun, very fulfilling and exhausting! He is quite attached to me from all our time together and is now a fun-loving toddler of almost 18 months and the apple of my eye. Hopefully he will soon start to "help" me in the garden and tend the chickens.

Cold and Frost

Lately it's been cold. Cold enough that my car window has frost on the inside, as does my house and many other places that have breathing beings inside creating moisture on very cold windows. Frost seems to form in many patterns. Here is the feathery type as seen below on my bedroom window in the morning.
There is also a swirly type as seen on this chicken coop door. It's not my chicken coop door, but I wish it were, because I think it is a beautiful door with character. As always click on the photos if you want to enlarge them.

Nicholas

Nicholas, one day old

I'm now a grandmother. My daughter and son-in-law are now parents and my mother is now a great-grandmother. Meet Nicholas, born December 19th, 8 pounds 14 ounces, a health baby boy

Nicholas, home with Mom by the Christmas tree

hatching chicks

About three weeks ago I got a new incubator. I'm planning on doing some hatching in the spring. The incubator, a hova-bator 1588, holds 42 eggs, but I thought I'd give it a little test run with 8 eggs. Because I have no rooster there would be no point in using eggs from my hens, so I headed over to Codman farm where I volunteer, and collected the 8 eggs you see below. They are all shapes, sizes and colors and I think they are a photogenic bunch of eggs. I discovered that one was cracked a bit at the pointy end. All of them went into the incubator anyway.
Three weeks later 6 of them hatched, including the cracked one. Below you can see a chick emerging from an egg. This is actually the egg that was cracked. I really didn't think it would make it, because early on it appeared that the egg leaked a very tiny bit. I can only assume that the leak got plugged very soon and things progressed. I had heard of repairing cracked eggs with wax or clear nail polish, but I decided to just let it be and see what happened.
Below you can see the 6 chicks that hatched. The yellow one in the back corner is the one from the cracked egg. The other egg that I wondered about was the very small egg. It did hatch a small chick. I think it may be a bantam and is kind of cute with feathered legs.
Below is a close-up of the cracked egg after I took it out to candle. It was then that I discovered that it was developing so back in it went. After the hatch was over,I checked the two eggs that didn't hatch. One was not fertile and one had stopped developing after about 8 days. I'm quite happy with the new incubator and look forward to hatching more in the spring.