Nico Killed by Coyote

My sweet baby Nico kitty.

My sweet little Nico was killed in the yard sometime last night. He didn't come in when I called him for bed but that's not unusual on a nice night.  He never left the yard and liked to sleep either on the back porch or under it.  I found his body about 30 feet from the back porch this morning.
The body was stiff and there was a look of terror on his little face - his teethed barred for a fight.  There were two puncture wounds on either side of this backbone on his sides and one little scratch on his head. I think a coyote's jaws grabbed him and crushed him. There was very little blood. It had all been just for sport.
I buried him in the flower bed out by the garden under the butterfly bush and put a large flat stone over the spot to mark his grave. He liked to sniff the flowers there. I will miss him terribly as he was my lap kitty who liked to snuggle and  who wanted nothing more in life than to have me pet him. He showed up in the yard during the summer of 2005, just a tiny frightened kitten,  so I judge that he was seven years old.

Venus is having a good year.

Here's a reprint from the Old Farmer's Almanac. Read the whole thing to be amazed.

Transit of Venus

The year’s celestial highlight, visible in the afternoon in the United States and Canada, is the transit of Venus across the Sun on June 5.

A transit occurs when a planet passes between the Sun and Earth, so that we can see the planet’s silhouette move across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus are exceedingly rare. After this June, the next one won’t occur until the year 2117. (See “The Sky Is Falling!” in The 2012 Old Farmer’s Almanac, page 96.)

See our Sky Map showing the approximate path and size of Venus as it slowly makes its way across the Sun. The entire event lasts more than 6 hours.

Venus transits once made headline news around the world. Costly multinational expeditions were dispatched to observe them in the 18th and 19th centuries. No transits occurred in the 20th century, and 121½ years elapsed prior to the last one, in 2004.

Careful observation of transits allowed the first reliable determination of the distance from Earth to the Sun, and consequently of the scale of our solar system. Imagine a scientific experiment that required 243 years and several generations of dedicated astronomers to complete! There is no story quite like it in the history of science.

But here’s the rub. Under no circumstances is it safe to look directly at the Sun. See our Sky Watch page for Web sites that will show the transit live.

Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor, is certainly having the best year it will have in our lifetimes. Enjoy gazing at the “goddess of love.”

Sincerely, The Old Farmer’s Almanac

New Nest for Mom and Baby

Tonight when I went to close up the chicken house and check on the baby chick, mama hen left the stinking nest and moved to the box next door.  I noticed only three eggs left in the nest and an empty shell, so I have a suspicion that mama hatched a chick and ate it!  I hate to say that's what definitely happened but the shell was empty and I didn't see a chick anywhere.

I put the little chick that was still in the nest in with the hen and refilled its little water dish. Then I took the remaining eggs out of the stinky nest and threw one on the ground. It bounced, so I am thinking there is a viable chick in there.  I put the three remaining eggs under the Buff Orpington hen that sits and sits but never has any eggs under her. We will see if she can hatch them.

This isn't the Buff Orpington that is sitting on nothing - but one of her sisters.

Baby Chicks and Sorting Cows

BTAP ZZ Tom and Zeke the cat. Tom chased Zeke around the woods for a bit. He's very curious about cats and wants to play. Zeke on the other hand sees no point in engaging Tom in anyway.

It's been a busy week with work and work and farm life.  Sunday we spent six hours sorting cows, vaccinating, worming, installing ear tags and tattoos.  All this activity is in preparation for AIing (artificial insemination)  nine of the cows and heifers.  The rest of the herd, much to BTAP Thor's delight, has been turned out with him for natural breeding. He's only 17 months old and not as tall as most of the cows, but he's game.  It will take him a month or so to get the hang of the process, but I have no doubt he'll do just fine.

Bobby, the yearling Black Angus bull has not been left out of the game.  He remains in the bull pen but BTAP Bramble and Burn's Misty have joined him for the summer.  Bramble is Thor's half sister and so she goes to Bobby.  Misty is a big, leggy, Limousin Shorthorn cross heifer.  Her calves will benefit from Bobby's shorter, stockier genes. Both are yearling heifers born last March, same as Bobby.  Bobby also insures that their calves will be black and polled, which makes them more valuable - though not necessarily better. 

Broody hen on her stinking nest.

The chickens roost on top of the interior chicken cage. They have to fly up to the top of this wire enclosed six foot cage, but they do it every night. It gets very hot up in the rafters of the chicken house in the summer, but they feel safe up there and so brave the heat.  Even though the sun has been up and hour, they stay in bed until I bring them feed and water each morning  The brown hen on the right is a Speckled Sussex.

The broody white hen has hatched one tiny little brown and gold chick. It is obviously not a chick from any egg she laid but it is very cute.  It hatched Tuesday night and was still a little wet ball of peeping baby Wednesday morning, but when I checked on them yesterday evening it was all dry and fluffy and peeking out from under the hen's wing.  The hen had gone to sitting on a nest of eggs that had been deposited by a variety of chickens in just one day.  I think she may have added one or two of her own, but somewhere over the last three weeks she broke an egg and the nest stinks. She doesn't seem to mind. Anyway, we hope a couple more eggs hatch soon and that the new little one survives. It's very, very cute.

Left to right, Big Chicky head rooster and Booster Rooster who was hatched last August, Chloe the Aracana hen that lays green eggs and one of the Buff Orpington hens.  I suspect Booster is the father of the new baby chick.

Cattle Breeding Begins

It's getting on into May and time to start the process of artificially breeding the cows.  Artificial insemination has become very popular for a couple of reasons.  AI'd cows will have a definite due date for calving and that can be a big plus in planning ahead for the births.

The other major reason is the availability of a wide variety of bulls for little cost.  A straw of bull semen costs from $30 to $50 on average.  You can purchase one straw of any one bull and so you might purchase straws from half a dozen bulls for any one breeding season.  If the bull has a national reputation for good calves, then your calves by that bull will be more valuable.  The trick of course - like picking stocks - is to pick the right bull - both for the cow and the timing of the market.  There are hundreds of bulls to choose from at any given time.

C L Burbank

 

Here's a picture of the bull I'm thinking of using - that is - purchasing straws of semen.  He is homo-black and homo-polled, which means all his calves will be black hided and polled (no horns). Black hides are popular because of Certified Angus Beef.  Polled is popular because its a lot less dangergous to deal with polled animals.  His numbers or statistics are off the charts and he produces very productive and profitable calves. He's also very pretty don't you think?

Sleeping it off.

L to R Jasper and Little Joe
   

All the cats are now neutered, which makes life a lot less troublesome, but that doesn't keep the boys from wanting to spend the night out hunting.  I let them go each evening, wondering if they will make it through until morning. Owls, coyotes, wild dogs - any number of dangers might befall them.  The alternative is seven cats in the house, so I let them take their chances.  Pictured above is two of the four brothers, Jasper and Little Joe.  Joe is the sweetest of the two. He's skinny and sleeps a lot. this is his favorite chair. They have all come in this morning and had their breakfast. Now they will nap until I'm ready to go leave for work. Most of them will choose to go outside for the day - unless its raining. 

Jasper, Little Joe and Nico on his favorite sleeping spot.
  

In the picture above, Nico appears to be watching the other two cats. In reality, Nico is dozing. I know that because he is also snoring.  Eventually he will relax enough to curl up and sleep.  It doesn't matter where I place this stool, Nico will claim it for his spot.  I've noticed that since the other boys are all neutered, Nico has quit peeing in my shoes.  I am careful to keep my shoes off the floor, but now and then I forget and leave a pair in his way.  He also seems to have quit peeing on the floor registers. Let's hope the trend continues.

Clover and Multifloral Roses

Difficult to see in this picture but the grass is spikey but the asparagus seems just fine.

I walked back through the property checking cows and fences after a night of heavy rain.  The air was softly sweet with the multi floral roses that invade the pastures and fence lines everywhere.  They don't smell like roses exactly but they make the air lightly sweet. 

The pastures are full of white clover blooming for all they are worth. I stop in the middle of a field and listen. The buzzing of honey bees is everywhere. Darn!  Why didn't I get it together to put up a hive this year!  I would have had locust/clover/multi floral rose honey and I bet it would have been delicious. The orchard next door has bee hives, but I imagine their honey is mostly apple and peach blossom -  which doesn't sound bad at all.

My new string trimmer.  I've been saving up all winter for this. It has an automatic starter on it and a 4 cycle engine so its powerful enough to cut through weeds.  It's kind of heavy so I only use it about 20 minutes at a time.

Last week when it was rather warm outside and the asparagus was bolting and knee deep in grass, I was despairing that it would be gone much sooner than usual. In an effort to keep it coming, I mowed down the patch.  Then I waited. We had another good rain and some cooler weather and -- it came back. It came back strong.  I've been picking both morning and evening.  I always eat a stem or two of raw asparagus as I pick.  I'll admit its not as tender and sweet as it was a month ago, but it's still very good.

Wild Blackberries

From the looks of the blossoms this week, I think we will have a bumper crop of wild blackberries.  Those you  buy in the grocery are sweet and good for just eating fresh, but if you want blackberry pie (heavenly) or blackberry jelly or jam, you need to get out there and brave the thorns to pick wild blackberries. Picking blackberries has been a summer tradition with our family for over 50 years.  We've picked gallons of them.  This year I've a really large patch at the east side of the yard at the edge of the woods.  They weren't really there last year - but they are out in force this year.  That's one of the things about blackberries, they just seem to pop up a different place all the time.

Blackberry patch blooming like crazy this year.

Harvesting the first of the spring lettuce.

Spring mix of lettuces and spinach.



I've been cutting the first of the spring lettuce in my garden.  Oak leaf, baby romaine, deer tongue, bibb and red leaf lettuces are all growing in a colorful mix along with some mint, sage, chives, and parsley in my raised herb bed.  The leaves of the lettuce are very soft and tender and very delicate in flavor.  The lettuce I cut this evening will grow back in a few weeks and be stronger in both flavor and leaf structure. Hopefully I'll get at least two more cuttings before I need to pull these plants and sew something else - probably beets.

Creeping Charlie flowers.

I also weeded out the strawberry bed - again.  I weeded it once about six weeks ago and then let it go. The strawberry plants are getting pretty big, blooming and setting little tiny berries. Creeping charlie, chickweed and several other weeds whose names I don't know had taken up residence in the bed, crowding the berry plants and it was time weed them out.  By far the worst infestation was the creeping charlie.  This weed sports very pretty vivid blue flowers.  I hated to pull out all those pretty flowers, but it was going to make it impossible to put straw down in the  bed to keep the strawberries up off the dirt where the slugs and earth would destroy the fruit. It was also robbing the strawberry plants of vital nutrients and space to grow and expand. They had to go.

The management of my strawberry bed made me think about the strategy of the upcoming political campaigns.  My strawberry plants are like a politician's followers.  They are perennial but need to be cultivated and cared for regularly.  When you leave them alone too long, weeds start to take them over. They may be pretty weeds but they will undermine your ultimate goal, which is picking delicious fruit. You can let the weeds go just so long before they begin to crowd out your strawberry plants. So, tonight all the creeping charlie and the chickweed and other weeds went on to the compost pile.  Now I need to find some straw and use it to put down a thick mulch to cradle the fruit high above the dirt.

Buttermilk Egg Bread

I took the Lemon Rosemary cookies to the family dessert get together last night and they were a hit! I served them with strawberries and blackberries (Kroger again) over a little lemon/strawberry ice cream (a new flavor from Kroger and half the cost of Hagaan Das lemon ice cream). I used ice cream, not sherbet.  Yummy.

The museum where I work is closed on Mondays, so I am at home most Mondays.  I spend the morning finishing the articles I write for the local newspaper. But first I put together a bread recipe for my bread machine, then start of load of laundry. Nothing is more pleasant than hearing the washing machine and dryer chugging along in the basement and the bread machine rattling through a ball of dough.  Domestic bliss! 

I've tried a variety of bread machine recipes lately and my favorite, until yesterday, was the Buttermilk Rye.  But yesterday I was in the mood for white bread and had buttermilk on hand, so leafing through my bread machine recipe guide I decided to take its Egg Bread recipe and substitute some of the milk in that recipe for buttermilk.  It worked really well! I took half the loaf to my parents for their supper and they raved about it. So, here is the recipe.

Buttermilk Egg Bread for Bread Machine

Put all ingredients in the 1 1/2 pound loaf bread machine pan. Make sure they are all at room temperature. This is very important. Cold of any kind will retard the yeast.

3/4 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons milk

1 egg

1 1/2 tablespoons soft butter

3 cups bread flour (I only had 1 cup bread flour left, so used two cups all purpose with that one and it worked fine.

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons Active Dry Yeast - I just had the regular kind, not the self rising, and it raised nicely.

Set your bread machine for the sweet setting.  It will take about 3 hours and 40 minutes. The loaf will be soft and buttery tasting. Very good.



Lemon Rosemary Cookies

One of my favorite authors is Susan Wittig Albert who writes the China Bayles mysteries, the Robin Page mysteries, the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter mysteries and now the Darling Dahlias mysteries. I do love an author that writes lots of books! 
Ms. Albert is also a herb enthusiast and has a website called www.abouthyme.com with all kinds of wonderful herb information.  She posted this recipe last month as a rosemary cookie.  I always think rosemary goes so well with lemon (lemon and rosemary roast chicken is one of my favorites) so I added lemon zest to the recipe.  This makes a delicate cookie that is lovely with fresh fruit. It's perfect for a spring tea or just a light cookie with iced tea for a summer refresher.
My rosemary plants have spent the winter indoors in a south facing window. The new growth is soft and fine so the rosemary flavor in the cookies is very delicate.  You can use dried rosemary as well, just limit it to about a teaspoon finely minced.

Lemon Rosemary Cookies

Lemon Rosemary Cookies

½ cup butter at room temperature

½ cup canola oil or other light tasteless salad oil

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup powdered or confectioners’ sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

Zest of one small lemon

Put all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl with the mixing attachment and beat slowly at first and then increase speed until the mixture is thoroughly mixed, about a minute. Fold in the rosemary and the lemon.  If the dough is very sticky stir in a couple more tablespoons of flour, one tablespoon at a time.

Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 10 or 15 minutes while you preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

With a teaspoon,  scoop chilled dough and form into balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheets (or parchment lined) and with the bottom of a glass dipped in granulated sugar, press the cookies flat.

The cookies will spread a bit so give them room.  Bake in a 375 degree preheated oven for six minutes, turn the cookie sheets around and bake another six to eight minutes or until cookies are just starting to color around the edges.  Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire racks.  When cool, store in an air tight container.

Tea, Lemon Rosemary Cookies and a rosemary plant ready to move back out to the herb garden.

Iris and Lettuce and Apples and Blueberries

Before my morning asparagus picking (better than 2 pounds  a day right now), I walked through the garden to see how everything else is coming along.  The lettuce and spinach looks great and if the heat doesn't get it I'll be picking a few leaves this weekend. 

With the recent frosts I've noticed the roses have no buds and I see no fruit on the plum tree. But this morning I found the first ever apple on one of my apple trees and amazingly my one surviving blueberry bush is covered with green blueberries!!! This is so incredibly exciting and inspires me to go buy a couple more blueberry bushes.  I got this one from Marvin at Marvin's Organic Gardens. My garden club visited his store about three years ago and he presented a talk on organic gardening. When the talk was finished he gave us each (20 some ladies) a plant. I got the blueberry.

Marvin is a great source for all kinds of plants. He's also a very good citizen who donates thousands of dollars worth of plants to various good causes.  His prices are in line with the good mail order companies and you don't have to pay shipping!!!

Luminous blue iris  when you see it in person.

My thrifty soul likes to forage for plants whenever possible.  My brother gave me some red raspberry plants from his garden last fall.  The variety is easy to grow and has huge delicious berries in late summer.

I've always admired a huge stand of these blue iris in a friends yard and when I noticed she was digging them up to divide I asked if I could have a few. She gave me a good start of them and this is the result.  Blue color doesn't photograph true so you can't tell how luminous the blue color is from the picture, but trust me, these are a really beautiful flower in the garden.

The carmera washes out the color. In the background is a butterfly bush that stayed green all winter and poking into the picture at the bottom left corner are hollyhocks budding out. I grew these from seed last summer and this will be thier first year to bloom. They already have some disease on them which is a hollyhock problem. Time to go see Marvin and find out what to do about that!

Storms and Rhododendrons

My garden club, Town & Country, meets the first Tuesday of the month. For May we scheduled to visit a local gardener's rhododendron garden just south of Maineville off Rt 48.  It was touch and go with the rain but still about a dozen of us managed to see the garden in between huge cloud bursts.
I was so glad I risked the rain and storms to go. It was a bit crazy for a while with the tornado sirens sounding, but we managed a inspiring tour and saw some beautiful plants.  We also learned how to grow them here in Ohio's alkaline soils - pine bark mulch!   Rhododendrons must have an acid soil or low ph.  Our soils are usually too high ph - perfect for asparagus for example.  The gardener explained that a mix of 1/3 garden soil, 1/3 pine bark mulch and 1/3 of those little water holding bead things they sell at Lowe's and Home Depot is just right for rhododendrons. They also need dappled shade and prefer an east facing exposure.
The Lebanon Council of Garden Clubs' annual plant sale is this Saturday at the Lebanon Station (home of the Lebanon Council of Garden Clubs). There will be loads of great perennials plants there (they come up year after year so you don't have to keep buying them). It starts at 10:00. You'll get some great bargains on some wonderful plants. Come on down!

If if hadn't been raining and everything soggy, the garden would have looked a lot like this one. I was very impressed.