Fiftieth

this moment i sit on my back porch balcony, having concocted this adult beverage.  it's a fancy affair of orange juice, grapefruit preserves made by a good friend and traded for eggs, organic strawberries, and local vodka.  _lovely._ as is the weather, warm and breezy and greensmelling.

i won't lie to you, Dear Reader.  i've been holding out.  holding out for that most holy of theoretical days, the Five Egg Day. i've got five hens a-laying, and i really wanted to mark the Fifitieth Post with a Five Egg Day.  i also realize that april 10th marked the anniversary of my very first silly post, and i kind of wanted all these stars to align, you know?  fiftieth post, five egg day, year of TUF.   how poifect would that have been?

but nothing is ever perfect, which is exactly how everything should be.  the ladies and gentleman have the full run of the yard now every day, and seem absolutely thrilled.  we will occasionally leave them in their orignal run for a day, which they dearly loved at one time, but now they spend the whole time in there looking exasperated, as only chickens can.  so these days they are pretty much as free-range as it gets for a Totally Urban (chicken) Farm.

i can't believe i ever thought
he was a girl.

tumblr, while nearly intolerably loud, appears to be a fine czar of the yard. he is vigilant and watchful, and often puts on a showy, strutting, clucking display for the benefit of his hareem.  all the ladies have accepted his leadership at this point, and he seems to do a good job of attending the whole flock while devoting some individual attention to each hen.  i know that sounds ridiculous, but i swear he takes them on dates.  and he makes a variety of strange dinosaur noises: various forms of alarm or annoyance, surprise, his odd clearing-the-throat-while-howling crow, and the occasional elongated string of rythmically delivered clucks punctuated with bwak-KAWS turned up to 11.  i have decided this particular sound is the chicken mantra, actually....they all do it, though tumblr does it at a spectacular volume, and when they are at it, it is unstoppable. bok bok bok bok BWAK bok bok bok BWAK KAW bok bok bok BWAK etc.  happily, it doesn't happen THAT often.

the ladies have discovered that the yard is large and harbors many delightful nooks and crannies for surprise egg laying.  i have had an easter egg hunt every day since easter, and now i completely understand where the tradition originates!  why lay 'em in a logical place like the coop nesting box when you can lay them in grassy corners, between slats of leftover lumber, randomly on the ground...

so i sought to create some cozy egg-laying spaces in the exciting (to chickens) area under the porch/balcony in the back yard, with the intention that i could facilitate fun egg-laying practices while somewhat reducing randomness.  we also stashed the haybale dan brought home the other day under there, since we have graduated beyond the $4 bag of hay days (and the bales are only $15!).  we logically put it in the wheelbarrow, which we logically wheeled into the under-porch area for easy coop access.  WELL.

the very next day i discovered this very ILLogical egg placement.  spurning my delightful boxes, ninja and sammo laid their eggs right smack dab on top of the  haybale!  i guess no one ever accused chickens of being especially logical.

today, however, i found two eggs nestled in the big blue box.  twitter and pearl seem to get it.  oh well, as long as we're getting two and three eggs a day, i don't much care where i find them.  the ladies take turns being the super egg champion!

sometimes we get weird ones.

bolo

sammo

pearl

ninja

twitter

per usual, i have been enjoying some delicious egg dishes...

poached eggs perched over quinoa over refried black beans over organic salad greens, drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette....fast and fabulous!

migas (scrambled eggs/leftover salsa/bottom of bag tortilla chip crumbles) and toast!

more soon, Dear Reader, i promise!  because i have many more pictures of food and adorable pets to blither on about.  i can hold out no longer.  

and yet-the theoretical Five Egg Day  awaits.

Spring Break!

with the spring comes warmth and rains, so trees begin a-budding
and fowl, freed from coop constraints, go merrily a-mudding
to seek and ingest grass and seeds with eager scratch-and-pecks,
while drunk on pollen from the weeds are slow-flying insects.

the sun climbs back from southern climes a little more each day,

giving light for longer times, inspiring hens to lay.

finding four eggs in the nest is common happenstance;

the rooster preens his feathered breast and struts his mating dance.

the coop was scrubbed, vinegar-spritzed, and stuffed with brand new hay,
we held a household/closet cleaning blitz the other day.
springtime zephyrs whistle by and tease all windows open;
out the doubts of winter fly to make way for new hoping.

yesterday's experiment was mini pita bread.
puffed pocket bites were what i meant to get; i got instead
a kind of tender flatbread, small in size, and good with dip--
i cannot escape hummus and its culinary grip.

and that's the word from 'round the TUF. happy spring break all!
here's hoping hope and weather hold; we'll spring it up 'till fall!

Spring Chickens?

today was a beautiful day! texas weather has an erratic personality, and it has been fickle about cold vs. warm of late.  if today was any indicator, it seems that warm has won out and spring is springing earlyish!

i know the air is a perfect temperature when it simply doesn't occur to me.  we ran errands and went to the dog park today, and at no point was i like, oh man, i'm sweaty! or, oh man, i shoulda brought my sweatshirt! or, gah, i'm going to drown in humidity! i spent all my outdoor time enjoying my family and my great town.  HOWEVER,  i worry that i'm going to be thinking about the air  A LOT come summertime.  which at this rate is going to show up in mid-may.  so we've got to revel in these rare weeks of perfect air.

today we had an exciting chicken adventure....the ladies and gentleman got to spend some supervised time in the yard at-large, outside of their normal corner enclosure!  while the chicken run proper is scratched down to the dirt for bugs and dust baths, the recent rains and sunshine have filled the rest of the yard with chickweed and grasses and bugs.  it didn't seem fair that the girls and boy should have to look at the grass all day and not be able to get up in it!  so, we opened the chicken-sized door at the base of the coop and they took a back yard jungle journey.

they stayed together most of the time, going to town on all the grass and weeds and flying insects.  tumblr kept his hareem under close watch, and would sometimes call them all together with funny high-pitched baby clucks.  the dogs were also present, and though confused by the sudden proximity of these strange creatures, they were quite polite. it was a significant step in backyard TUFness!

as they clucked and fussed and scratched around the yard, i wondered if their homing instinct would kick in at dusk and they would put themselves to bed, per usual--or if i would be running around in the near-dark, chasing and plunking panicked chickens back in the safety of the coop.  impressively, they maintained a mental map of yard geography and took themselves home, crops FULL of tasty yard goodness.  chickensperiment success!

this will not be an unsupervised practice, i think...the flock shall stay in their spacious corner run during the normal week. but i think weekend yard excursions will become part of the weekend TUF traditions, and perhaps future enclosures will be informed by the impressive efficacy of the homing instinct!

in other news, here are two delicious ways to prepare the eggs that these lovely birds provide.  you, Dear Reader, will be the judge as to which is the more creepy......

on the left we have a goatcheez omelette alongside a tomato leafy salad (with goatcheez sprinkles), all drizzled with some good balsamic vinaigrette, for dinner.  on the right we have classic poached eggs poaching, to be served over a slice of buttered whole-grain toast, for breakfast.  (one of these kept looking at me until it was done cooking. STOP LOOKING AT ME EGGS!!)

they ended up looking just fine on the toast though.  WHEW. i do love poached eggs; i crack 'em into shallow water boiling in a skillet, to which i have added a dash of white vinegar.  i let them boil for about a minute, then turn the heat down to a simmer and cover them loosely with whatever pan lid is nearby that mostly fits.  it takes 5-7 minutes for them to cook until the white is set and the yolk is barely solid on the outside, but perfect fondant runny on the inside.  kind of fussy, and they might stare at you, but. SO TASTY.

and finally, i scored a red ram's horn snail from the not-for-sale aquarium at the exotic pet store for the price of a mere superworm! ($.12) i put him in the buddha betta tank, and though quite small, he is growing quickly and is WAY MORE than twelve cents' worth of entertaining.  he is not a chicken or a recipe.  but i love aquatic snails.











anyway, more as things develop!  keep pulling for the theoretical 5-egg day!  thank you for reading as always, Dear Reader. stay tuned.......

TUFiatus Ending II: Chickenry

january was a hiatus for everyone here at the TUF, including our five lovely chicken ladies and one pretty/loud rooster.  well, i guess the rooster never goes on hiatus, if you know what i mean.  but the laying ladies took a couple weeks off in january, which i discovered has more to do with the amount of daylight available than anything else.  who knew?  chickens lay best when there are 14 hours of sunlight in which to scratch around.  so as the sun comes back, so do the eggs.  and lately we've been back to our pre-january 2 and 3 eggs a day rate, but i am still waiting on the theoretically predicted but as-yet unmanifested 5 egg day.  that, my friends, will be....well, it'll be a 5 egg day!

the egg in the middle up there is twitter's first viable egg...the tiny gray chick is all grown up!  as she came into laying age, she had a couple "miss-eggs--" two were broken to bits before i could collect them, and one intact one had a distinct beak-shaped hole in it. i can only imagine the surprise a chickendividual might feel when one day one's body produces and then pushes out an ENORMOUS hard-shelled ovoid object. i would probably peck it too.

anyway, they are beautifully dark chocolate brown, and of course delicious!

something a bit odd happened, though; twitter laid about 3 beautiful eggs, then this extremely strange egg, and now has stopped laying anything for a couple weeks. i'm thinking she may still be getting over the shock of having these strange objects emanate from her being.  too bad there's no way to have an honest conversation with chickens re: the ins and outs of poultry puberty.

...which brings me to tumblr, our other feathered pubescent.  at 7 months he has come into his own as a testosterone-laden, crowing, wing-dancing, hen-tackling cockerel.  he is the most dinosaurish thing i've ever seen; weird- and awesome- and creepy-looking!

his comb has really started to stand up, and he struts amongst the girls with such self-importance.  he also REALLY likes to hear himself crow.  often at the most random of times.

in fact, during an overnight thunderstorm recently, he crowed ALL NIGHT. 1 am, RR-RR-RRRRRRR. 3 am, RR-RR-RRRRRRRRRRRRR. to the point where i was imagining being the neighbors and changing his name to "soup."  the next day, we brought eggs to the 3 sets of nearest neighbors and took an informal survey of rooster annoyance.  it's unclear whether the egg bribe influenced their responses, but they all either said they didn't notice (!?) or that it wasn't bad enough to detract from their quality of life.  we left the door open for honest rooster complaints, but so far none have come up.  for the moment, tumblr stays tumblr in all his colorful, noisy glory.

a word on eggs: i have not noticed any difference in the taste or appearance of the eggs that have been laid since tumblr started getting eggy with the ladies.  i can only assume some of them have been fertilized, but there hasn't been any strangeness/grossness associated with this fact.  and as long as he stays this side of fatally annoying, i would like to dabble in chicken genetics perhaps....especially around growing fancy colored eggs!  ambitious? yes, and not for the near future.  but i am having a boutique egg farm fantasy....

at any rate, these are the newest developments from the TUFlock. we're glad to be getting eggs again, and i look forward to spring, where i believe an egg bonanza may be had! 14 hours of sunlight, 5 laying hens, here we come! chicks? gardens? a new coop? so many possibilities await in 2012!

wait, that's not a chicken!

TUFiatus Ending I: Cookery

i realized the other day that i COMPLETELY SKIPPED JANUARY.  i just missed it!  zip, bam, january good bye.  so i guess it's accurate to say that we have been on hiatus a bit here at the TUF, working on schedules and jobs and life and growth.  there's much to catch up on from the kitchen and the yard! so here is part one of the two part "End of TUFiatus."

happy 2012, year of the water dragon, by the way. late but sincere!

the original goals of the Totally Urban Farm still stand, though cooking has become a less frequent activity since eating together is less common of late.  we tend to fend for ourselves during the week due to our different schedules, and when we do have our weekly common nights off, it often results in some dinner adventure out on the town! i may have to do a run down of these local dinner adventures in a near-future post. but, we have been making an effort to shop and cook more at home, as such excursions get a bit rich on many levels. and of course cooking together is a rare delight anymore!

the deliciousity pictured above is a butternut squash home-made turkey-helper concoction.  a pound of lean ground turkey was browned, then combined with penne pasta, chicken broth, seasonings, and the diced flesh of a medium sized butternut squash.  all this, brought to a boil, covered, and left to simmer for 30-45 minutes, rendered a delicious pasta dish.  but then it got ridiculous.


as demonstrated in a previous discussion of the butternut squash, dan has traditionally viewed the gourd as decorative rather than edible.  having discovered the butternut goodness, however, he resolves this decoration vs. real vegetable problem by doing stuff like this:

squashman, as he came to be known, hung out while everything was simmering. he then was stuffed and surrounded with his own flesh, now transformed into turkey penne tastiness.  wooden skewers helped to keep his head on during the (about 30 minute) baking process.  in retrospect, it would have been good to have given squashman a pre-bake, as he himself was still a bit overly firm when the casserole was heated through.  but i tell you what....with a green salad on the side and a sprinkle of goat cheez over all, squashman was MOST delicious.

i've been trying to cook more just for myself lately, since when left to my own devices i tend to be a snacker and grazer in the evening, which is really not the best way to go.  i have been exercising quite regularly, and have been enjoying the benefits of that.  let's hear it for wii fitness games!  EA sports active! if you have a wii and won't exercise unless it is SO convenient that you have absolutely no excuse not to, get that game.  it's fabulous. but i digress.

naturally, i am drawn to dinnery egg dishes, as we have quite a few eggs from the dear ladies in the back yard. they are delicious and quick!  this was my first attempt at a single-egg omelette; i received a tiny perfect-sized cast iron skillet for xmas in a "skillet chocolate chip cookie" kit, and i am determined to make the tiniest, most delicate silkie-egg omelettes with it.  this one ended up being mostly just scrambled egg.  but with goatcheez (my favorite) and a spinach/mozzerella/cherry tomato/balsamic vinaigrette little salad, it was a perfect and nearly instant evening repast.

another night, i tried two small over-easy eggs over quinoa and black beans, made spicy with salsa!  with a salad once again alongside, it was super delish and rather healthy. and quinoa is quickly becoming my favorite grain.

finally, sometimes you have to have pancakes for dinner, as dan and i did one night recently.  nearly instant comfort food.  i like to make them small and light...one should have to glue them to the plate with syrup and butter, lest they fly off! dan likes to arrange his artfully, with a cascade of syrup:

and that's pretty much it from the TUFkitchen recently!  stay tuned for TUFiatus Ending II: Chickenry.  as always, thank you for reading, Dear Reader.