sparrowgrass

My mother has been known to take those dull as a wedge knives outdoors and hone them on the nearest hunk of stone.

Could you 'splain this to someone who never worked in a commercial kitchen? I get the "behind" thing, I know what "in the weeds" means, but this has me confused.

I have an MS in agriculture. (Which is why I am hauling in the big bucks. ) I have never, ever heard of anyone spaying a pig--it would be expensive, it would stress the animal, and (most importantly, from the farmer's point of view) it would not increase profit at all. I did a google search on the term, and the only references I found for spaying pigs are for pets, or are very old references from a book published 100 years ago. All males, except a few selected boars for breeding (maybe that is where the 20% comes from), are castrated when they are tiny. They squeal the whole time you are holding them, and stop when you put them down. It takes about 30 seconds for a skilled person to castrate a piglet. They are castrated both to improve the taste of the meat, to make them easier to handle and to make them grow faster. (Human babies are circumsized without anesthesia sometimes. ) Nose rings are just about the only way to keep pigs confined, or at least the least expensive way. Hogs quickly dig their way under the fence without a nose ring. Hogs in confinement are not ringed--they are kept on concrete and can't root. Ear tags are generally used to mark animals--they are numbered, so the farmer can keep track of individual performance of the animals--number 10 was bred on July 1, number 14 didn't breed this time, numbers 100-200 need to go to market. Before ear tags, animals had their ears cropped or notched to identify individual animals, or animals belonging to a certain farmer. There are also ear tags for fly control, with insectide in the plastic.

I have a huge patch of poison ivy mixed with mint just across the fence from me. They do seem to peacefully coexist, unfortunately.

I am not a cereal eater, but my dad ate cereal as a late night snack. Strictly bacon and eggs for breakfast, however.

You can use a piece of paper towel or a coffee filter to keep the soil from washing out. Yes, it will rot away, but by that time the soil will have settled and roots will be holding it in. My asparagus is about done. This time of year it begins to have a grassy, bitter taste, so I let the ferny fronds grow. I have most of my tomato row mulched with newspapers and cardboard. Between my bum knee and the incessant rain, the weeds have gone unfought, and they are totally winning everywhere except under the cardboard. I can protect the tomatoes, but the rest of the garden may just have to fend for itself. And next year, when I am tilling, maybe I will listen to myself and cut the garden size in half. I really am not feeding the whole western hemisphere, just me. I wish I could find a gardener who doesn't have space for a garden--I would happily share mine with someone who could help with the weeding and tilling.

A bottle of bleach, a thingie for mending a garden hose (a brass coupling and a couple of hose clamps), a salt shaker, a basket of eggs that I need to put in cartons, the cordless drill, and a pair of glasses that I have been hunting for 2 days. Good thread!!

Chickens love eggs, boiled or un. They alse eat mice, little snakes, frogs, and pretty much anything that doesn't eat them first. Mine don't break their own eggs to eat them, but let me drop one as I walk out of the chicken house--it is gone in a wink. And if a hen is injured or killed somehow, her sisters will cannibalize her without any apparent remorse.

Mexchef, are you in the US? If so, call your local extension offce. Google "your state, your county, university extension". If you are in Mexico, you might try looking on line at extension in Texas, Florida, California, Arizona, or New Mexico, whichever one is closest to your area.

zoe b, I was going to suggest the same thing, in sugar cookies. Of course, the green flecks would have made my children retch and recoil--more cookies for me, then.

Well, I know I posted this somewhere else, but here it is again. In order to peel easily, fresh out of the henhouse eggs need to be washed in warmish water, maybe a drop or two of dishsoap if they are really dirty. Then, put them in a carton, and keep them for at least a week--two is better. (It sounds wrong to wash them in warm water, but cold water causes the shell to contract and soil/bacteria on the surface may be drawn into the egg. So sayeth the USDA.) If you don't wash them, the eggs have a "bloom" on them that keeps them from drying out--the potential chicks need all that moisture. You want them to dry a little, to allow that tough membrane to recede from the egg white. So--unwashed eggs won't peel well even if they are a bit old. Commercial eggs are all washed, and SOME, not all, get a coating of oil to replace the natural bloom. The oiled eggs won't peel well, either, unless they are washed.

I often leave mine alone for a weekend. I have a big feed hopper that holds about 25 pounds of feed, and a large rubber water tub. I don't even worry about the eggs--if I am gone 3 days, I feed them to the dogs or back to the chickens, but the eggs are perfectly edible even after two days in the nest. (After 3 days, if they have been fertilized and incubated, they begin to develop blood veins, and look yucky.) MagicTofu, if you want to raise chickens in a cold climate, get heavy birds with small combs. Chickens can stand a lot of cold, but their combs might freeze at below zero temps. Some people put vaseline on the combs to help protect them. Check out the catalog at Murray McMurray to figure out which ones are heavy. The most important thing about keeping chickens in the winter is to make sure their house is not damp. They actually do better in a slightly airy house than one that is sealed tight against the cold. Dampness will make them sick. You also need to make sure that they have plenty of food at all times, so they can keep themselves warm. A thick layer of straw on the floor of the house helps, as does having a house sized to the number of chickens you have--if you only have a couple they need a small house so their body heat doesn't get lost. You can buy a water heater for the water tub for about 30 bucks--worth every penny.

I am getting ready to do some major investing in my chicken raising enterprise. I want to fence my garden (50' by 50') which adjoins my chicken yard. I will put a gate into the existing chicken yard, so that I can allow the chickens to run in garden during the winter. I have tried letting the girls run free, but it just doesn't work well for me. They do too much scratching to be compatible with a pretty yard. I have a lot of elevation changes in the yard and they seem to find the places to dig that will cause the most soil to wash into places I don't want it. I am tired of shoveling and sweeping soil and mulch back into place and replanting uprooted perennials. Having the chickens in the garden in the winter will allow them to eat weeds and weed seeds, and take care of the bugs and bug eggs. I also put every leaf I can collect into the chicken yard in the fall and winter--with the new setup, they can compost even more leaves into nice soil. Folks here still burn their leaves--I could put an ad in the paper offering to collect bags of leaves, and maybe the air would be a little cleaner. This won't happen til fall, but in the meantime, I will be thinking about all the viney, twiney plants I can put along the fence next year--clematis, black-eyed susan vine, scarlet runner beans. . . . . .

Corn is wind pollinated, and needs to be planted in a block in order to grow ears. I would think that you should probably plant at least 16 plants, in a 4 by 4 block. Some folks interplant squash or pumpkins with their corn--I have heard that raccoons don't like to climb thru scratchy pumpkin vines to get to the corn, but I think that might underestimate the evil powers of raccoons.

Not being skilled with a pastry bag, the best I could do was uneven "blops" that looked like fried eggs.

Just an April Fool's note--I made "fried eggs" one year with meringue and lemon curd. The kids loved them.

It has been a long time since I have had rabbits, so take this with a grain of salt. Rabbits are not kept in a group like chickens--they are kept one to a cage/hutch, and mama only meets daddy when babies are wanted. We usually had one buck and two or three does, and never were we overrun with rabbits. I might do it again one day, for meat, because they are so much easier to deal with than chickens--I bet I can clean rabbits 3 times as fast as chickens. The cute bunny thing only applies til they are about a month old, when they are weaned. By the time they are ready for slaughter at 8 weeks, they are fully capable of scratching your arms off, and, unless you treat them like pets, are not cuddly. At all.

There is another option for urban carnivores--rabbits. They are quiet, not smelly, can be confined in a small area, even in a garage or basement. The meat is lean, white and tasty. When I was in college, I lived in a trailer park, and raised rabbits behind the trailer. I don't think any of my neighbors ever knew. Rabbits have the additional advantage of being very easy to process, once you get over the whole cute little bunny thing.

I think a doghouse would be fine for a couple of hens, with one caveat. They like to roost up high, and might not like the dog house unless you put it up on posts. That would have the added benefit of not making you get down on your hands and knees to gather eggs. Make one side of the roof hinged, and put the house about waist high. Remember in the cartoon, the chicken house always had a little ramp with cleats nailed to it? Use one of those to make it easy for fat old hens to get in and out. Having the hen house at least a foot off the ground means rats won't nest under it. My chicken house has a remnant of vinyl flooring on the floor--keeps the floor from getting wet and rotting, and makes scooping litter out easier. I thought about making a chicken tractor out of PVC and poultry wire--it would be much lighter than using 2x4s. PVC is really easy to work with. There is actually a book about chicken tractoring--I used to have a copy but I lent it out, and can't remember the author. I think the title was just "Chicken Tractors:.

I have some asparagus peeking up thru the dirt!!

Maggie, my brother's next door neighbor has some hens--shall I send a couple of the girls up to you next time I see him? I do on occasion murder a chicken. My neighbor took his little girls to the feed store on the wrong weekend last spring--the weekend that all the little chickies and duckies come in. They bought 6, and when they got big and dirty and straggly looking, the little girls lost interest and James asked me if I wanted them. Of course, they were all roosters, and anything more than one rooster in a flock of 30 hens is overkill--the girls were getting more attention than they wanted. Sooo, one day the time came to dispatch the extra roosters. There are good instructions on line for butchering chickens, so I won't regale you with the details. It is a little bit hard--I wouldn't want to do more than 3 or 4 at a time. I kind of have a feather phobia--I don't mind any of the process except removing the feathers. Home grown chickens taste as much like store bought chickens as home grown eggs taste like store eggs. The flesh is much firmer, and much, much more flavorful. AND, most importantly, I know where my chicken comes from, what it eats, and what kind of antibiotics (NONE) they have ingested. Right now, I have 40 some eggs in the incubator, and I will be raising those chicks for meat. (I will probably get about 25 chicks out of the 40 eggs.) They will hatch about Easter, and they will be butchered 10 or 12 weeks after they hatch. If you do have chickens, you should probably be aware that you might have to kill one someday. The first one I ever killed had been mauled badly by a raccoon--so it was a mercy killing. Funny thing--my mom, who was raised on "home-made" chicken, does not like the meat from a home raised bird anymore. She doesn't like the "strong" flavor and the firmer texture. I also have a friend who is absolutely grossed out by my eggs. She says they smell bad. Chezcherie, I do use extra light in the winter, and my girls also live long lives. Barring encounters with raccoons and the neighborhood dogs. Chickens have been the best thing ever for my garden. I use a deep litter method, to keep down the smell and to increase the amount of good stuff for my garden. I use a foot thick layer of straw in the house. I sprinkle a little scratch feed on the straw a couple of times a week, so the girls keep it loose and dry. When the straw starts to get dirty or smelly, I add some more. The straw and manure actually compost in the house, which keeps the girls warmer in the winter. Once a year, in the spring, I empty all the litter out and spread it on the garden. Because it has a lot of straw in it, and because it has composted somewhat, it does not burn my plants. I also, very cleverly (actually, totally accidentally ), situated my chicken house upslope from my garden, so the surface runoff runs right where I need it. I gather all the leaves I can find in the fall, and fill the chicken yard. The girls scratch and poop and turn all those leaves into compost, ready to use when I need it. And the leaves in the yard help to keep the mud under control in wet weather. Wet chicken feet mean dirty eggs. I told you I could talk your ears off.

I have chickens, too. A great source of info is your county Extension office--we (here in Missouri) have a guide sheet for the home chicken flock. Do the google--Extension, your county and state. You can probably find the guide sheet on line. Four hens will get you 2 or 3 eggs a day, starting when they are 4 or 5 months old. Feed them chick grower, until they are 4 months old, then switch to layer feed. They are great garbage disposals, and will eat all the table scraps you have, along with lawn clippings and other garden waste. Chickens are omnivores, like us--they eat grain, vegetables, and any meat they find--mice, for example, or each other, if one dies. If you are a gardener, be warned that 4 chickens can make your landscaping look pretty shabby. Chickens scratch, they think mulch is a gift from the chickengod for them to scatter all over the place. They eat any tender greens they can find, and that means roses and nasturtiums, too. A chicken yard is a necessity, but they can come out once in a while. If you let them out an hour or so before dark, they can't do much damage, and they will return to their coop when the sun begins to go down. Snakes won't hurt the chickens, but they can and will find the eggs and eat them. Dogs are more of a problem--make your chicken yard dog proof by burying the wire a foot or so below the surface. I suppose a really dedicated cat could catch an adult chicken. Raccoons, on the other hand, are minions of the devil. I have about 30 hens, a chicken yard that is about 30 by 30. My fence is not high enough (only four and half feet) to keep the girls from flying over, so I keep netting on top. My hen house is 6 by 8. I can talk chickens till your ears fall off--don't hesitate to pm me with any questions.

So far, I have planted peas (snow, snap and "English"), lettuce, spinach, onions, potatoes, carrots (purple, white and round little orange ones) and kohlrabi. Of course, as soon as I planted, three chickens got out of the chicken yard and scratched around all day while I was at work, so I will just have to wait for sprouts to see how much damage they did.

Sliced mushrooms. Half again as expensive as whole 'shrooms, and I will bet you a dollar nobody brushed the dirt off before they sliced 'em.

Snowangel, I keep my ginger in the freezer, and grate it with the microplane. I don't bother to peel it or cut it into chunks. *The bigger the pieces, the less chance I have of adding finger to the mix.