chromedome

Yup. There's an occasional one in there that missed its moment (you never quite find 'em all, which is why I try to go no more than two days between picking) but mostly they're prime. Now that the more-delicate filet beans are hitting their stride we'll primarily be eating those, and freezing the conventional ones.

I mentioned a little way upthread (a few months ago, now) that we'd been losing random adolescents mysteriously, and that I'd blamed it on a shaky adjustment to our new waterers. That proved not to be the case, and I was unable to match the symptoms to a specific disease. We'd even begun reading up on which plants might be in our yard that could conceivably be toxic to the poor bunnies, thinking that this might explain the randomness (and the fact that it hadn't impacted our indoor bunnies). In the event, our last harvest finally provided the "smoking gun." Because they're raised for meat I do - in effect - an ad hoc necropsy on every rabbit we harvest, and I've occasionally seen livers that looked mottled, like the marbling on a good steak. This last batch had several whose livers looked that way, and this is when the penny dropped for me. It turns out to be hepatic coccidiosis, a parasite spread through their droppings (remember me mentioning that they're coprophages?). We can still safely eat the bunnies (phew!) and our dogs won't become ill from snacking on the bunny droppings (these parasites are species-specific) so that allayed our immediate fears. It also tells us our countermeasures, which boil down to improved cage hygiene. That in turn means some tweaks to our cage design, to improve the feces' proverbial ability to move downhill. Mostly these are things we'd already discussed, because on a practical basis cage-cleaning takes time and energy: if it can be minimized, so much the better. And if it protects against coccidiosis (it does), better still. As for the affected bunnies treatment is to keep them hydrated and fed, by syringe if necessary. Many get over it handily enough, and many are asymptomatic (ie, most of the last litter I harvested), and adults are largely unaffected. It's just the adolescents who are really vulnerable, or rabbits who are already suffering from health issues. This was timely information, because this morning when I went to feed the little guys I found one of our indoor bunnies sprawled on its side and showing the symptoms I've come to recognize (floppiness, lethargy, etc). We've not had an indoor bunny get sick before, so this was a new development and an unwelcome one, especially as I'm rather fond of this litter (they're all very personable). So currently the little guy is in a box here in my office, a couple of feet away, and I've just given him his second watering from the syringe. He's starting to perk up a little, but still seems pretty subdued. I've put a couple of dainties in the box, to tempt his* tummy, but if necessary I'll feed him through the syringe as well. For this morning that'll have to be unsweetened applesauce, the only rabbit-friendly thing I've got that can be administered this way, but apparently it's possible to cook up the alfalfa pellets into a sort of loose porridge that can be syringed into convalescents. We'll see about that later, if it should be necessary. More later, but right now I'm supposed to be working. *Not verified, but in my head this one's "Max" after the childrens' books and TV series about "Max and Ruby."

Another 8 pounds of green and yellow beans yesterday, plus a decent quantity of salad greens from the remnants of my first planting and my burgeoning third planting. Bread in the frame because that's where it was cooling, and I couldn't be bothered to clear one of the other flat surfaces in the vicinity to move it (I live with grandkids, things often repopulate the clearing-in-process surface during the time it takes me to drop something in the next available surface. Or, you know... put it away. That happens too.). The bread's a bit misshapen because I was laser-focused on the article I was writing, for once, and it over-rose while waiting for the oven.

Across the border here in Atlantic Canada, lobster fishing closes each year during moulting season. Apparently it's not actually illegal to harvest soft-shells here (which was the impression I'd garnered), as long as it's done during the season, but the limited numbers available just before and after closure (and the lower price for soft-shell lobster) means that they're seldom harvested in practice.

Harvested a first hatful of my filet beans last night, but didn't grab a picture. They were the side with dinner (nothing fancy, just butter on 'em).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/pak-n-save-savey-meal-bot-ai-app-malfunction-recipes

Damn. Nobody ever gives me free eggplant...

It's not as bad as you'd think, unless you're prepping them for a large family. It does take a bit of time, admittedly, and there's no small degree of risk to one's knuckles, but as these things go it's not excessive.

A balanced appraisal of "hydration" mania, something that's been a head-scratcher for me for a long time (like the current fixation on protein). https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/08/drinking-water-hydration-amount-importance/674926/

Looks good. My ex's (Mennonite) grandmother made a "zummerborscht" that's very nice at this time of the year. Use a ham or chicken broth, some new potatoes, baby carrots and beet tops, then finish it with about 3 times as much fresh dill as you think necessary (I'll often put in a whole stalk of dill, then fish it out at the end and sprinkle some chopped dill over the top as a garnish). At the table, add a splash of buttermilk if desired (it's good!). Can also be served chilled with the buttermilk already in it, if you're a cold-soups person.

I use it for one type of potato pancake, shown to me by the German mother of a close friend. Turns the potatoes into - basically - mush, as opposed to shreds.

So much more elegant than "bangers and mash," no?

Gravensteins are a local favorite here on this coast, too. Sadly none of the orchards in my area grow them, but I sometimes pick up a bag when visiting my daughter in Nova Scotia.

So today's harvest was roughly 10 lbs of beans. I think it's fair to say they've hit their stride. The greens were just a handful to go to my father-in-law, along with a bag of the beans. Not seen: another half-dozen cherry tomatoes. I'll do a proper pick of the greens again tomorrow or the next day; today I had a time constraint because many stores here still close early on Sunday and we had a couple of things we needed in town. My first planting of salad greens is largely spent and my second was washed away by an ill-timed heavy rain, but my third planting is coming along nicely (those are little nursery-bought cukes on either side of 'em). There's one row of Grand Rapids lettuce, and one row of the local seed company's mesclun mix. Our moribund apple tree is having a last hurrah, with a bumper crop of apples on board. The poor thing's been through the mill: a former owner cut away one of its main roots for reasons I'll charitably say must have sounded good at the time (???); a colony of ants has been hollowing it out assiduously for years; and of course for the past few years it's had a couple of small children using it as their monkey bars and gym set. The first pic shows how badly it's listing; the second is a closer look at the apples it's bearing. This photo doesn't do it justice, sadly. It's the most fruit I've seen on the tree in the...I dunno, 6 or 7 years I've been coming out here. As recently as this spring it was still standing vertically. We have a sapling ready to plant as a replacement (at a spot where it won't shade my garden) but of course it'll be some time before it's full grown. Fortunately we have no shortage of orchards here where we can U-pick to our hearts' content.

I haven't delved very far into my playbook at all, because my poor sweetie (on top of the chronic illnesses, etc) has had a lot of dental issues this summer. So they've mostly gone into the IP and been cooked to a pot roast/pulled pork consistency. I've served them pulled-pork fashion on a bun, and in rabbit stew and rabbit pie, and have also cooled the cooked rabbit and then grilled it with her favorite brand of sauce nicely caramelized onto it. She loves cutlets and has asked if it's possible to do that with a rabbit, which after some thought I decided should be possible. The loin muscles are long enough to butterfly and pound out, and the thighs of the hindlegs are big enough as well. So that's on the agenda for sometime in the coming weeks. I eat the "giblets" myself, since nobody else cares for them, and those I usually just pan-fry with onions, garlic, mushrooms, soy and Worcestershire. If I'm having them over potatoes (rather than rice or noodles) I'll make a quick pan gravy. Of course cooking a tender young rabbit that way is a bit wasteful, but... extenuating circumstances and all that. I'll go for some quicker-cooking options now that her mouth is back to normal, and will be a bit more adventurous, but probably won't have the time to really have fun with 'em until winter.

Harvested my garlic the other day. About the same number of bulbs Senior Sea Kayaker grew, something in the 50-ish range (I haven't counted, but I'd started with 48 and added on a few more to fill out the beds). They're mostly a pretty good size. The one I'd clumsily pulled the stem out of, while tugging it out of the ground, checked in at 88g or just over 3 ounces. ...and this is why I'd snagged those decommissioned bread trays from the local buy-sell page when I saw them. I knew right away they'd be super-handy at harvest time for things like garlic and potatoes. I haven't been in the garden yet this morning, but will post some more photos (in situ and post-harvest) later in the day.

It's been a while since my last update, partly because of busy-ness and partly because there was relatively little to relate. I have a bit of time this morning, though, and have some random things to share, so this will be something of a sprawling, meandering post. One thing I was surprised to learn when we first started with rabbits was that they're really, really deft at handling objects with their mouths. A couple of our does have the amusing habit of stacking their food and water dishes once they're emptied, and if I'm late bringing up the rations a few of 'em will start banging their dishes against their cages or shelters when they hear me coming (in the approved tin-mug prison movie style). The funniest example of this came about a month ago. I've mentioned in previous posts a couple of our younger bucks, black-furred Pepper II and blue-eyed Frank. In the course of things, as our bunny population ebbed and flowed, we found ourselves short on cages and were forced to put the two young bucks together for a while (if they were older they'd fight, but juveniles generally get along okay for a time). I mentally thought of this cage as the "bachelor quarters." One day, as I came up to feed the rabbits, I watched in surprise and delight as the two bachelors took turns tossing and flipping their dishes one after the other, for all the world like a couple of bored teenagers playing "football" with a coin or tossing bottle caps. They'd retrieve their dish, bring it back to the back of the cage, and then toss again. I have no idea whether they were competing on distance or style, but it was impressive. ...and speaking of those "bachelor quarters," something happened a few mornings ago that made me raise my eyebrows. I came into the lean-to as usual for the morning feeding, topped up the water and pellets, and gave them a big bundle of hay. Frank immediately pounced on the hay, but instead of chowing down on it he began gathering it up in big mouthfuls. Now this is not at all unusual behavior, I've seen it many times in the past year. In does. Who are about to give birth, and feeling the nesting urge. Ummm. So I separated them and placed Frank (or "Frannie," as I'm now calling her) into the adjoining cage, with a nest box full of straw, which she wasted no time arranging to her satisfaction. You can't leave the buck and doe together in a cage at birthing time, because the buck will kill the newborn kits and/or toss them out of the cage (this happens in many species; the male knows he's not getting any until the youngsters are weaned and therefore Takes The Necessary Steps). Unfortunately this cage has had an unsatisfactory roof all along, because we'd run out of the proper wire and used range fencing over top (4-inch squares, meant for larger livestock) with various patches meant to keep the rabbits in place. You can see where this is going, right? Yup... next morning I went up early to feed the bunnies and see if Frannie'd had a litter, and she was back in Pepper's cage and there were 10 kits on the ground. Two of them were dead but the other eight were still warm and lively, so I put them back in the nest box and returned Frannie to her duties (she wasn't happy, as the scratches on my forearm can attest). I found more and better materials to patch the roof temporarily, and fixed it properly with a sheet of chicken wire that afternoon, so it won't happen again in future. The eight survivors are all lively and vigorous, so clearly Frannie has settled into the mothering role (a lot of does don't do well with their first litter, so this wasn't necessarily a given). I'd been meaning to get a pic of "Frank" so you could see those beautiful blue eyes, but it hasn't been easy. These are the best I've managed so far, while she was arranging the nest box to her satisfaction: As a followup to our previous discussion of coat colour and genetics, I'll note that all of the kits are black like their father. We're considering how large an establishment of rabbits we'll want to carry forward to next year, because currently we're raising more than we need. My stepdaughter and the grandkids are not at all keen on eating rabbit, so I'm only feeding two of us rather than six. Also, we've found that having them out on grass over the summer hasn't meant as much of a saving on feed as we'd anticipated; the impact has essentially been negligible. In witness whereof, here's what happens when they get their pellets: We like the idea of having them on grass - emotionally it's satisfying - but in practice it's been a real complication with few benefits and some notable downsides (the mysterious deaths I'd mentioned earlier weren't happening inside). We may opt next year to limit ourselves to just the number we can reasonably keep up at the barn. I've been brainstorming ways to make the tarped sides of their enclosure roll up and down, to give them more light and fresh air when the weather permits. We'll see how it all shakes out. Presently we have 30-odd rabbits in the freezer and 40-odd kits in various stages of growth. That's going to be plenty for our purposes, and a few left over for barter and for gifting family and friends. On that note, and in the spirit of back-filling useful information for planning purposes, when we harvested our last batch of 14 (the ones you see clustered around the bowl in the above pic*, plus a few from another cage) I kept track of the time required. From start to finish - wrangling them from their cage one at a time, doing the deed, skinning, gutting and cleaning, prepping for the freezer, and then salting down the pelts - took 6 hours, though that includes time spent feeding the other rabbits and stuffing a few pieces of (delivery) pizza into my own face. It works out to about 20 minutes/rabbit, which seems reasonably efficient. At our first harvest we processed only 6 rabbits and it took me the same length of time, though in my defense it was the first time I'd skinned and gutted a bunny in 50 years or so. That's useful information to have for planning purposes, and I'm rather sheepish that it took me this long to quantify it. It'll be a big help though the fall, because now I'll know how much time to block off (and how early to start!) for any given batch. On another practical note I've been putting the rabbits into regular freezer bags (the twist-tie kind) initially, but will allocate time to transfer the now-frozen bunnies into vacuum-seal bags for longer-term storage. Freezing them first in the other bags means I don't have to worry about blotting them scrupulously dry before putting them into my FoodSaver (and no, before anyone says it, a chamber vac just isn't in my budget for the year). I'm not sure how much more I'll have to say about the bunnies going forward, but I may occasionally post a pic or two just because - let's face it - rabbits are cute. *The runty white one with the dark ears that you see in roughly the 5:00 position got a reprieve, and is now sharing the grow-out cage with a younger litter who are roughly the same size. ETA: I should clarify on the Frank/Frannie thing that a) it's really hard to sex rabbits accurately when they're small; and that b) "he" was a throw-in when we picked up our grey breeders. That was a cash-and-trade deal that saw our white doe Salt go home with the other woman, but she brought along the blue-eyed (ahem) buck on spec to see if we'd want him because of those blue eyes. And we did, and we did take a quick look, but... see a). The grey ones got a much closer scrutiny, but "Frank" was younger and smaller, and well, these things happen.

On Amazon.ca 80% of the ratings are 4 and 5 stars. Criticism mostly seems to revolve around its relatively low power. I have to say, it feels weird to see a self-described multi-cooker that doesn't pressure cook. It's been a while.

Beano helps break down the indigestible oligosaccharides in legumes. That's probably not of much use with bell peppers. I don't have that same issue with bell peppers (of any colour) but some brands of hot dogs will give me those recurring flavour-burps for a full day afterwards.

The official GI database at the University of Sydney used to list it with a GI of 54, but it's not currently on the database. Usually when that happens, it's because there's some question of accuracy/reproducibility in the underlying research. Other sources claim even lower GI, but they're mostly of the self-interested variety. It seems reasonably safe to assume that its GI is in fact somewhat lower than conventional sugar, but an exact number may take a little while to stabilize. Of course everybody's system is different, and the GI recorded in one or another test subject won't necessarily correspond to the same food's impact on your own body. You could always eat 100g of it and then test your blood glucose, I suppose, but that's going to be a bridge too far for most of us.

Yeah, shouldn't be long now. It was Monday night when I took the photos of my last bean harvest, which was every bean I could find that was ready to go. Last night (ie, 48 hours later) I went back through the beds and picked 3 pounds of them, just about exactly (a smidge over, at just under 1400 g). I expect to do that every other day or so for the next several weeks, which should fill my freezer pretty nicely. My snap peas are also about done, but my shelling peas are on the verge of being ready. Greens are still going well, and I harvested my first small head of broccoli last night. Garlic is due to come out tonight. Will probably post more later, with some fresh pics.

You need to get them when they're dead-ripe, past purple and almost black. They'll still be tannic, but sweet enough to balance it out. Even at that stage they're not to everyone's taste (as, indeed, is the case with big red wines), and there's a lot of variation from one tree to another. On our favorite walk in the old neighbourhood we'd pass hundreds of chokecherries, but a few trees were much better eating. They do make very nice not-too-sweet jams and jellies, and surprisingly good wine. ETA: There's a lookalike which has its berries spaced out a little further on individual stems, as opposed to chokecherries which tend to hang in clusters. Those are seriously bitter/astringent, though apparently some people still make jam out of 'em.

I'd suggest cutting off a small piece, once it's thawed, and cooking it quickly in a pan or the microwave so you can perform a taste test. If it was well sealed and the bags were of good quality, there's a reasonable possibility that the fish is fine (I've had some that old, or older, and it was not at all freezer-tainted). Obviously each case is different (freezer temp, what was stored alongside, etc) but I wouldn't leap straight to a "mask the flavor" scenario without checking first. Why limit your options until you have to?