Chicken Trouble - a note about hybrid breeds

We recently got a hard blow: Henny Penny is dying. We suspected she wasn't laying eggs for a little while -- though not that long, because I would see her in the nestbox each day and just assumed the eggs were hers. She started getting heavy around her middle and became disinterested in anything other than the store-bought feed we give her. No kitchen scraps, no vegetation, no bugs. This is not the bug-eating Henny Penny we know and love! We started keeping a little bit of an eye on her, the noticed that she was laying down a lot. One day she started closing her eyes = not good in the chicken world. We started doing research. It turns out that after two years of age this breed (Red Stars) are particularly susceptible to something called "internal laying." Simply put, the egg remains in the chicken and fluid builds up (hence the heaviness) until they die. There is no cure. It is common among all hybrid breeds and hatchery-born chicks, which is a very serious reason to find a heritage breed from a local source.
We went to the feed store and got some medicine that helped her get a little more comfortable. We had to give her injections for 4 days. (Aaron said he couldn't give her a shot so I had to every time!) She is now walking and eating and trying to lay eggs, but it won't last. She will eventually end up back where she was and then she will die.
I am preparing myself for the fact that, come autumn, I will have to kill a chicken. I think about it for a little while every day so that, when the time comes, I will have thought out every angle and I will be able to find the peace within to come to terms with the task at hand. But I can't kill her. She doesn't deserve to live on in pain, but I can't do it. We've been trying to find a vet that will put her down for us, but we haven't had any luck so far.
My dear, sweet HP. She is just the nicest little chicken there ever was.

Illumination Night

Knitting: Tessellation Cloth
Reading: Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman

This cloth has been such fun to knit! It's almost like a lace pattern. I've been knitting it while watching the hours and hours of recorded material that I need to watch for class. Shhh...don't tell!

I just finished Illumination Night by Alice Hoffman. A teacher had recommended it years ago and I finally got around to reading it. A hard book to put down, it's the story of a Martha's Vineyard couple and the people around them. And there is a giant in it. I liked Hoffman's approach to the story, but there were large portions of the book where she used second person and I don't think it was 100% successful. However, it was a perfect summer read!

English Muffins and Eggs Aaron

Over the weekend, Aaron and I decided to try our hand at making homemade english muffins. We used Mark Bittman's recipe from this book, of course. I really only need one cookbook in my life and this is it. I have loved this book for well over 10 years and it is the go-to for things like this.


These were so easy and turned out beautifully. I highly doubt we'll be buying englishes anymore. They are hardier than store-bought muffins and pretty delicious, too. Sometimes working with yeast makes me nervous. It just seems so apt to fail. I need to get over that, though, because things like this are just too good to pass up.


Of course, we used the homemade english muffins as part of one of our favorite recipes: Eggs Aaron. Once in awhile Aaron will make this incredible, eggs benedict-like breakfast. He uses sun-dried tomatoes in the sauce, but that is all I know about his secret recipe!

Aaron has also become an expert egg poacher, which is such a gift. I have to admit that I am not there yet.

Clematis on the front porch

Sigh. There are many things I will miss about this little house. My beautiful clematis is certainly one of them.

Local Meal

As we were sitting down to lunch recently, I realized that the meal we were eating was almost entirely made of local ingredients. I snapped a few pictures for an obligatory and probably boring "this is what I had for lunch" post.

The Menu:
Quiche
Roasted Radishes
Pickled Ramps

I'll admit that the crust on the quiche is not local. I have yet to find a local flour source. It is homemade, however, so that counts for something! The eggs, of course, are from our two favorite chickens on the block, so they are ultra-local. The quiche also contains some sausage that we got from a local farmer.

We bought the radishes at one of the first farmer's markets of the season. They were only $1.50 a bunch and so beautiful. We bought a few bunches and decided to experiment with some, so we roasted them. I know it sounds weird to roast radishes, but they are phenomenal. Just put them in a casserole dish, use a little butter, salt and pepper, and some balsamic vinegar and let them broil for a few minutes. They come out really caramelized and sweet, not at all strong like a raw radish.

I talk about the ramps here, but this meal was prepared a few weeks later, when our pickles had had enough time in the brine for us to try them. They were REALLY great! Wow! The coriander in the brine produced a nice lemony taste.

So, there you have it. A pretty quick and painless (mostly) local meal. If we all ate this once a week, we would save 1.1 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL PER WEEK. And it was all so delicious.

Rose in Bloom

I just had to take some pictures of our rose bushes, which are currently in full and beautiful bloom. When my mom was here the yellow rose bush in the front yard was just beginning to bud and she couldn't believe how big it was. You see, she got me this little rose bush a few years ago and it was no bigger than my two fists put together. I didn't even take very good care of it and here it is, just bursting with roses at least twice a year. I really want to transplant this bush and take it with me but I am also terrified to uproot it.



In other rose-related news, today Aaron built a couple of quick trellises for the backyard rose garden. Of course, we do not deserve to enjoy such things ourselves, we only do them when we are poised to move. The roses were literally falling into the pathway, thorns sticking into any skirt or petticoat that came near. I think that they will enjoy their new support and train up the trellises very nicely. Plus, it makes the yard look all the more Secret-Gardenish for perspective buyers, so $10 and a couple of hours seems worth it.

Fallingwater

My mother came to visit a couple of weeks ago. We had marathon house cleaning and packing sessions, which was such a huge help. Sometimes you need someone there to help you get started on such a huge project. We did find a little time to take the drive up to Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, two houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Both are only about a 30 minute drive from our house, so it was nice to go one last time before we move.


Fallingwater is an incredible piece of art. If you are driving through Western Pennsylvania, I highly recommend seeing this. I love going there and imagining what it was like to live there. I think going there a few times in different seasons is one of the best things we've done since we moved here. You see new details each time you visit.


It was our first time seeing Kentuck Knob, another Frank Lloyd Wright house just a few minutes from Fallingwater. It was really neat, as well. The kitchen is an octagon in the middle of the house and the hallways are narrow. I kept imagining what it would be like to live there in winter and decided that it wouldn't be a bad place to hibernate.

Delays

I meant to (finally) upload my pictures from our trip to Sweden and Finland yesterday but halfway through my computer decided to crash and I couldn't bring myself to start all over again. So I apologize for taking so long...thank you for the emailed requests...

We have been SO BUSY here. I got sick (probably caught something in Finland, actually) and then my mom came to visit just a few days after we got back from our trip, my summer semester started, and then we had someone interested in looking at the house so we had to rush to get things ready and in "showable" condition for that. Yes, we are trying to sell our house. We hope to move from WV as soon as Aaron hears word about a job prospect. I am really looking forward to being closer to family and friends. And perhaps more significantly, the place that I have learned to call home. When we moved here I was pretty tired of Boston and yuppie snobbery. However, good and bad, it is where I see myself most happy in the years to come. I am looking forward to being close to the water, near good restaurants, immersed in culture.

On the needles, on the nightstand: Catching Fire

I am on to Catching Fire, the second book in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. It is not as good as the first one, but I'm going to have to finish the series out.

I am also knitting a wool soaker. I can't seem to find the pattern I used, but that's okay. It is a quick knit but maybe not the best soaker ever. I plan on knitting more using different patterns and can't wait to try the pattern that my friend Jayna recommended as her favorite. I love knitting up quick little things in wool. They feel so good and so rewarding.

On the needles, on the nightstand: gnomes and goblins

I made this little gnome with some scrap cotton yarn and stuffed him with wool roving that I bought at a local farm. Here is the pattern. He was my first little knitted toy, really, and so much easier than I thought it would be. I will be making many more of these with all of my little scraps. I really want to knit one up in a pretty silvery colored wool to make a Gandalf the Grey.

Early in the morning
When the first cock crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night.

-Christina Rossetti

I recently read Rossetti's "Goblin Market," a long poem published in the 1860s. It's about two sisters who live a perfectly simple life until goblins attempt to sell them tempting fruit. It's one of those pieces that I somehow missed reading in college and always meant to pick up. It has been cropping up a lot in my research for the gingerbread paper, so I thought now might be a good time to take a look. Boy, is it good. I know that most say it is about feminism, but as I was reading it I couldn't help think about our current food situation in the U.S. (big shocker, huh? I'm always thinking about it). The sisters lead an idyllic life until the merchants tempt them with abundance and exoticism, altering the sisters forever. I think that parallels can be drawn between this and crop subsidies, GMO seeds, federal regulation, certain seed/poison producers, and what has become of the American diet. I always think of Poptarts. They are so cheap to buy and so easy to get...but what do they provide for you, really? Why can't fresh foods be as accessible and affordable as Poptarts?

I was really struck by some similarities between our current food problems and Rossetti's poem.

Their fruits like honey to the throat,
But poison in the blood