Rooster

This is Dorothy. Dorothy is a rooster.

I got our most recent batch of chickens in Petaluma right before Thanksgiving. At the time, they were very young pullets - coop-ready chicks really - and they’ve been growing and hopping and running and making themselves at home. It’s been an adventure, with all kinds of new experiences, most of which come from having such a big flock (10 - big for me). I’ve really had to step up my game regarding cleaning and providing carbon to soak up all the nitrogen. The food bill has been higher. And yesterday, one (Lois) flew out of the chicken run, which I haven’t had happen since we put up the tall fencing, so I had to do some trimming of wings. This is a process that does not harm the chicken but prevents them from flying too high. I’ve never had to trim wings before, although many folks do it as a matter of course.

Dorothy has been another interesting adventure. About a month ago, I mentioned that she was developing a long, droopy tail, and that I suspected ‘she’ might be a ‘he.’ And just this past week, he has begun showing a very keen interest in the hens and crowing. The crowing was the defining moment. Dorothy is indeed a rooster, a very beautiful one.

It’s interesting because it has changed the entire dynamic of the flock. Mornings, especially, are a little rough, as Dorothy positively hounds the hens, chasing them around the run. He’s relentless, following some urge he doesn’t have any control over. The newer hens are young, too, and so have no experience with it, and my older hens also have no idea what to make of this randy young thing, strutting around the yard. All kinds of idioms that I’ve heard all my life are starting to make sense now (“Cock of the Walk?”).

I love the crowing, and I’d rather like to have a rooster and raise my own chicks. But we live in an urban area where roosters are against code, so Dorothy will be dispatched swiftly this afternoon. We haven’t done this in a while, and since Dorothy is young and healthy, we can eat him. I paid $15 for him, plus countless dollars since in feeding and care. He’s been a very expensive chicken. I will not waste the meat; that would be irresponsible. I’ve done some research about cooking home-raised poultry since the last time, and it seems that even though he is basically free-range and young, he will still be rather tough (not being a breed raised for meat). So I will do a braise with coconut milk, lemongrass, ginger, and garlic. But if any of you have a tried-and-true recipe for this sort of situation, I’d be grateful.

First egg of the year, laid February 1, by one of the old hens

The timing of this really couldn’t be better. Adam’s senior project is about how to eat meat sustainably, and this will tie in nicely. It will be interesting to have him be part of the process this time. I think it’s important for him (and for Rin, and for any meat eater) to know the truth about meat production and what it really looks like. While no killing feels right (and it shouldn’t), a home harvest is a much kinder and gentler process than any conventional one.

We also had another death in the flock recently. Goose, a golden sexlink chicken, suddenly became ill and listless. She died naturally, in a crate filled with soft shavings, which I had put her in to try to help her heal. She was a great chicken and we really liked her. So our flock of ten will soon be eight (and perhaps a little more manageable).

The good news is, our first egg of the year was laid yesterday. So the light is coming back and pretty soon we should have eggs from the older hens. The new hens should start laying soon, too. If all were born at the same time, they should all start to reach sexual maturity at the same time, and since Dorothy has definitely reached his, the others can’t be far behind.

The Winter Garden

The winter garden is lovely in its own way. The flower borders don’t look so great, especially because I’ve been pruning away all the dead stuff, and giving the perennials their annual haircut in hopes of a great spring and summer bloom. But the veg garden - well, it’s abundant, and diverse, and a riot of different shades of green.

Snap peas, broccoli, beets, and kohlrabi are all ready to harvest. Every time I’m out in the garden, I eat a handful of peas or a couple of spears of asparagus or a chard leaf or two. We’ll have broccoli tonight, roasted with garlic, olive oil, and parmesan. We’ll have the beets tomorrow, roasted in foil and peeled, tossed with caramelized shallots, orange slices, and lettuce in a balsamic vinaigrette. I’ll eat kohlrabi plain, peeled and sliced, for a crunchy snack.

It’s going to be above 40 the next couple of nights, as we’re expecting some rain, so I’ve taken off the row covers so the plants can soak up the moisture and sun. It feels good to uncover everything and revel in all the varieties of green. There are no bugs to worry about (a very nice side effect of winter) and it helps me to see where the holes are, and where I can get a quick crop in. I pulled some bolting arugula today and seeded in some rat-tailed radish, which you do not eat for the root, but for the swollen seed pods. I might try to get a quick crop of tennis ball lettuce in before spring. It just depends on the temperatures, and whether we get warm enough to germinate anything.

I’ve seen several native bumblebees on the manzanita, so they are out of hibernation for the most part. The local Bewick’s Wren is building a nest. The peppers have begun to germinate on their heated mat. It’s the time of year where we’re all starting to feel a bit restless, but there’s still a lot of winte left. Ours has been warmer and drier than usual - how about yours?

California Rare Fruit Growers Annual Scion Exchange

My teacher, mentor, and friend Lawrence invited me to go with him to the CRFG scion exchange today, but first, we met at my house and spent some time swapping seeds. This has become a regular event for us; every packet has between 10-100 seeds (depending on the veg/fruit), and no one needs that many, so why not share? This way, everyone gets more variety and everything gets used. Lawrence has quite a collection, some of which are from his personal collection, and some of which are for the classes he teaches at Merritt. You can see the incredible imbalance here, as Lawrence brought three flats whilst I only have one or two little boxes of seed. We have a good time, looking up different varieties, and comparing notes, and our swapping is always capped off by a tour of the garden. Lawrence was particularly impressed with our brassica collection (I’ll share with you in the next week, it’s looking great!) and the alliums. He gives me good advice and we share experiences and I’m so lucky to have developed this friendship with such a learned plantsman (and all-around great guy).

Then we went off to the scion exchange. Holy Moly.

This particular exchange takes place at Diablo Valley College’s horticulture department, in Pleasant Hill. Their greenhouse space is just amazing, and today it was full of scions. This event is sponsored by the California Rare Fruit Growers, who began in 1966 to meet and learn about how to grow fruit in our coastal climate. The way it works is, you pay $5 to enter the event, and then you can pick up as many scions as you need or want, for free. The scions are donated by various growers (and you can bring your own to share), and there is an extremely wide selection.

There were scions from all kinds of fruit trees and canes - there must have been 200 varieties of apple here, and nearly as many of fig, but there were many of every kind of fruit tree you can imagine. The hardest thing about the exchange is figuring out how to mark them so you remember what you brought home. Lawrence spent a good deal of time teaching me how to pick a good scion, which will be helpful for the future.

Do you know what a scion is? It’s a cutting, basically of a young tender branch, which can then be grafted on to an appropriate rootstock and grown out to provide a fruit tree. All fruit trees are created this way; you can see the grafting point between rootstock and cultivar at the base of most of them, about six inches above soil level. This is how you get those monster trees where there are four different kind of apples growing on the same trunk. This can be handy if you have a small space and want a staggered harvest, however, they are difficult to maintain. But also regular fruit trees are grown this way, not from seed. This is why you buy bare-root or potted fruit trees to plant on in your garden. Seed rarely comes true, so they are grafted. This is also called ‘cloning.’

I have not yet learned how to graft, so I didn’t pick up any scions, but I enjoyed being Lawrence’s wing-man, bundling and tagging his choices for his classes. I loved hearing folks sharing information, exchanging ideas on how to grow certain fruits, or which variety was best, or how different varieties grew in different places. All ages filled the greenhouses, from babies in front-carriers to older folks with a lot of experience. It was a real gathering of kindred spirits. Lawrence seems to know everyone, and I even saw several folks I knew from different classes I’ve taken, as well as one of my previous bosses! On this sunny, chilly January day, everyone’s thoughts were tuned hopefully to Spring and Fruit!

Check out the CRFG webpage to see if there is a scion exchange coming up near you. Next year, I’d like to go again, and next time I’ll be more prepared to try out some grafting of my own.

Trying Something New

Despite the fact that I have numerous seed packets in cold storage (leftover from last year, and even the year before that), I still ordered a few more because I like to try new stuff every year, along with my tried-and-trues. The new seeds arrived yesterday. I’m excited to try these new varieties, including a tomato that is good for hanging baskets (‘Silvery Fir Tree’)! I don’t start tomato seedlings until March 1, and usually I start my peppers then, too.

But I recently read a book by Monty Don of Gardener’s World fame (a show on the BBC that we absolutely adore), in which he strongly suggests starting peppers in January, to give them plenty of time to germinate and grow, before they go in the ground in May. This requires a little extra fuss because they’ll probably need potting up twice before then, but because peppers are tricky to get started, this allows you earlier harvests when they do eventually get in the ground. To me this seemed sound advice. My peppers always set fruit later than I would like. Why not try it?

So, I got out my trusty seed table, single light set-up, heating mat, and seed blocker, and got to work planting up peppers. I seeded 50; I expect not all will germinate, but it would be lovely if they do. We always grow plenty of both hot and sweet peppers, as well as paprika peppers, in order to have lots for fresh eating and for preserving and making into spice mixes.

A bright sunny day (though chilly) encouraged us to get outside and get a lot done. The highlight was digging up a Douglas Iris clump that was about four feet in diameter (no small feat with our heavy clay!) and chopping it into about six pieces which then got distributed about the garden. You know it’s time to do this when the greenery forms a ring, with nothing in the center, telling you that the bulbs have increased so much that they have crowded out the middle. Winter is a great time to split native Douglas iris, as the roots are growing like mad and will not even notice that you’ve changed their position.

Starved for Green

We Californians have an interesting climate. Like west coasts on many countries (the west coasts of South Africa, Australia, and Chile; the Mediterranean basin), we have what is called a ‘Mediterranean hot-summer climate’, which features dry summers and mild, wet winters. The influence of the ocean tempers things a lot with regard to temperatures, and we have very low humidity most of the year, which keeps things pleasant for humans. The plants that have evolved to live here are summer-dormant; they shut down in the warm months and burst into bloom in the colder months. For native plants, January is spring, and July is basically winter, to put it in terms anyone else would understand. If you do what I do, which is grow things year-round, you can see that I have to manipulate my environment, which isn’t all that great a thing to do. It requires work and water. The rage ten years ago (and frankly maybe it should still be the rage; it’s certainly the responsible thing to do) is to plant with only shrubs and flowers that would follow this pattern, i.e. native. I do have a lot of native plants in my yard, because I think it’s important from an ecological and historical perspective (I want to support the creatures that evolved with these plants), but I also include things from other places, since I’m watering for the vegetables anyway. This is probably not sustainable in the long run, and it’s something I’m thinking deeply about, and need to find a solution to, with regards to growing food.

However, I didn’t come here today to talk about anything as serious and pressing as climate change. I just wanted to note that the eyes of Californians are simply starved for green by the time January rolls around.

Shell Ridge

Over the holiday break, Tom was great about taking walks every day, and I joined him on several occasions, and have vowed to get in the hills as often as possible before my classes start up again. What we have noticed is how our moods change instantly when we get up to a place where we can fill our eyes with green. Local farmers are grazing their cows there, and I spent an entranced fifteen minutes watching them find the new grass with their lips, tear it out, and chew slowly as they made their way to the next verdant patch. I swear I wished that I could eat the grass, too, somehow get that beautiful green goodness into my body. We Californians have been looking at brown hills (golden, my ass) since May. Some of them were charred black from fires. It’s a cliche, but the green is a rebirth and a promise. I imagine this is how folks in other climates feel when the first crocus pokes its head over the snow. Our promise just happens to come in winter rather than spring. Where others might have eyes hungry for pink or purple or yellow, ours are starved for green.

moss on a shady rock on Acalanes Ridge

We’ve had very little rain this winter, and I’m running the drip system right now as I write. Who knows if we will get a deluge in the next few months? I’m hoping so, but if not, I’m trying to fill my eyes and my soul with green right now, to store up for the dry months.