Wild Cherries

Near our house are three wild cherry trees.  EG and I have been enjoying picking and snacking on them.  I’m planning on making a Black Cherry Conserve with them.  We can’t get enough.

Yet every time someone sees us eating them and asks if they are edible I get quite strong reactions once they try them.  The taste is a bit on the bitter side.  Someone compared it to a chocolate stout beer, a very robust and unique flavor. Most folks, generally the American born and raised folks, scrunch up their faces and decide to pass on eating anymore.    But a fair number of folks on our neighborhood were born and raised internationally and most of them are as enchanted with the cherries as we are.  Many of them have fond memories of similar cherry trees in their home countries.  I find the contrast in reactions quite striking.  Confirms for me that Americans, in general, have far too much of a sweet tooth.  I have been working on removing the processed sugar from my family’s diet.  We don’t eat a lot of sweets, the only candy is very dark chocolate, and anything I bake I sweeten with honey rather than white sugar. We still enjoy some Ben & Jerry’s now and again.  But I am pleased that EG is able to enjoy these less than sweet cherries.  Makes me proud that she has not gone the way of the typical american sweet tooth.

Working out the kinks

The weekend has been spent trying to work out some issues with the aquaponics system.  The timer we set up seemed to be running appropriately, but we could never see the grow bed flooding.  When we examined it more closely, we found one end of the pump tubing was jammed with with rocks.  We freed it up, but then discovered that the pump is just not working.  Best we can figure is that it strained too much against the rocks and burned out the motor.  Now we need to buy another pump.

We also are still having trouble with the grow bed flooding too much.  We added one bag of pea gravel, which meant removing all the plants and replanting them.  We lost a few plants that way who couldn’t quite handle the stress.  Unfortunately, the one bag of pea gravel still didn’t get it to the right level.  So we’ll need to dig up and replant a second time.  I need to figure out how to do it better this time to stress the plants less.

At least, the fish are still very small so the amount of waste they are producing won’t over run the system while we try to figure out how to get it running appropriately.  I probably ought to start some more seeds on the chance we lose too many more plants in the next round of adding gravel.  This round with the aquaponics is most definitely about working out the kinks.  Hopefully we get to harvest at least a few fish and vegetables out of it.  Either way, it’s good learning and we’ll by pros by the end of it.

A New Arrival

Around noon on Thursday, the mailman handed this box to me as I was headed out the door.  Although I had been expecting them, I immediately freaked out.  Now what do I do with them!

I opened the box to find 25 swimming fish, all alive.  They came with an instruction sheet and some suggestions on how to help the fish adjust to the new tank.  But it felt very scary to think about releasing all these tiny and expensive fish into our huge tank.  Especially with the current, giant resident.

This goldfish has survived quite a journey.  We inherited the aquaponics system from a neighbor who had moved away.  When we picked up the system, after months of it lying unused, we found this fish in there.  He moved into a goldfish bowl in our house for close to a year.  Once we finally got the system up and running, we put him in there as a test fish.  At that time he was 1.5–2 inches long.  He is now probably close to 4 inches in just 2 months!  I decided to take him out of the tank and send him back to the goldfish bowl until our new fish reach a bigger, less appetizing size.  I don’t like him enough to give him a $100 buffet.

The first step was to float the bag in the tank and allow the fish to acclimate to the temperature.  I had to go away for a few hours, so they got a long adjustment time.  After about 4 hours, they were released into the tank.  It is quite hard to spot 25 less than an inch long silver fish in a 150 gallon tank.  Each day since, I have been scanning the water trying to catch a glimpse of them to reassure myself that they are alive.  Every now and then I see a shimmer of silver and figure it must be one of them.  I can’t wait till they get a little bigger and I can monitor their growth a little more easily.

On the grow bed side, at least one creature is enjoying the system! 

Climbing Figs

Our fruit trees having been bearing like crazy for the last month or so.  Once the weather begins to warm, our eyes are always scanning the trees for the ripening fruit – mulberries, service berries, cherries.  With such sweet motivation, EG has become quite interested in climbing trees.  The picture above is her first attempt at climbing in a service berry tree.  I’ve told her I won’t help her get up into a tree because she needs to be able to figure it out herself.  If she can’t get into herself, she can’t climb it.  With the berries calling her name, she usually finds a way!

This past week some figs have started coming ripe.  It just feels wrong to eat fresh figs in May, but not so wrong we aren’t up there in the trees grabbing all we can.  The ripe ones right now are way up in the canopy of the trees.  I’m rediscovering how much fun it is to climb trees.  EG and I are like a couple of monkeys chasing each other up the limbs after the best fruit!

Still, some of the fruit is just beyond reach.  HB has been working on a fig picker for us.  So far we’ve only been able to knock down the ones out of reach which results in a few bruises, but no less sweet of a fig.  But she’s working on a system that will knock loose and catch the fig.

Foraging

This Saturday the farm in our community hosted an event for Slow Food Atlanta.  It was a fabulous country fair with lots of good food and entertainment.  The highlight for me was the foraging walk.  Chris and Isa from Crack in Sidewalk Farmlet led us around the property identifying wild edibles.  Some of them were the obvious like mulberries and blackberries, but many of the plants they identified were new to me – or, at least, I’d never known they were edible.  They showed us things like wild lettuces, elderberry, briars, cat tails, mimosa flowers, and sassafras.  I was most excited to learn we have an elderberry shrub here.  I’ve been studying it so I can find more around the property.  I really want to make elderberry syrup to help ward off colds this winter.  We took plenty of good notes and I have already re-walked our path to study the plants they identified to us.

Sustainable Eats is hosting a foraging challenge for the month of May.  The challenge entails making a meal where all the main ingredients are foraged.  I’m planning on posting a foraged meal here soon and maybe I’ll head out and take some pictures of the plants Chris and Isa showed us.

Just Milk the Damn Goat

Last night was my first solo milking night.  I was really only nervous about finishing one of the goats.  She is generally milked first, so my hands were fresh.  In reading about milking technique I saw someone write, “Just milk the damn goat!”  In other words, don’t get hung up on all the specifics, just milk.  I tried to let that be my mantra.  I’m proud to say I milked her all the way through and only had to give her a couple extra handfuls of food to keep her entertained.  It was quite nerve wracking as she came to the end of her food, knowing that she can get “kicky” when her food runs out.  I squirted myself quite often in my haste to finish her off.  In fact, one leg was almost drenched in milk.  I might have gotten another half a cup of milk if I hadn’t missed the bucket so much.  But I milked the damn goat!  Her milk is now a nice batch of chevre in the fridge.

We got a gallon of milk last night from the 4 goats.  Three are still nursing kids, so the majority came from one goat.  Once the others have weaned their kids will be getting something in the range of 2-3 gallons per milking!  Not sure what we’ll do with all the milk, but I look forward to finding out.

Polyculture

For Christmas I got the book Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and gleaned a lot of good ideas for use on our garden.  I decided that this year I would take half of our 8 x 28 plot in the community garden and use some of the principles in his book.  The other half of the plot will be gardened as usual.  I started with sheet mulching the space in early February.  I slashed down the weeds in place and covered with a layer of manure and bedding from our rabbits.  Next came a covering of newspaper and cardboard topped with finished compost and topsoil.  I emptied a few bags of leaves as the final layer.  The whole things was pretty tall and even after a thorough dousing with water the wind stripped most of the leaves away.

Ideally I would have done the sheet mulching in the fall so it would have a few months to decompose in place and really enrich the soil, but my gardening is always about making compromises.  So, after it sat a month, the weather here in Georgia declared an EARLY spring and I decided to proceed with planting seeds.  I decided to follow the outline for a polyculture planting found in Hemenway’s book.  Simply put, polyculture is plant

Milking

For the past month or so we have been learning to milk goats.  Who knew it could be so hard!  The actual milking is not hard so much as gaining the speed needed to finish milking before the goat gets finished eating.  With the four goats we milk, only one of our goats is a leisurely eater.  I can almost always beat her to the end.  The other three, however, plow through their meal like it might be their last.  Two of them are nursing kids, thus give less milk on the stand, so I am usually able to finish close to when they finish eating.  The oldest milker in the bunch, and the one with the most milk (no kids nursing), is a super fast eater and tends to be testy once she runs out of food.  I have yet to be able to milk her all the way through; one of the experienced milkers has to finish her for me.

Thursday will be my first time milking on my own – no experienced milker as back up.  I’m not worried about handling the goats; I think I’ve got that down.  I know the routine for milking and feeding.  I can certainly get 3 of the goats milked with no problem.  It’s just the one fast eating goat I’m nervous about.  Right now she’s giving 10-12 cups of milk at a time and with my slowness that’s a lot of repetitive squeezing.  Here’s hoping she eats slowly and my hands have enough endurance!

If you’re interested in how to milk a goat, here’s a great page with step-by-step instructions.  I’ll be studying up before tomorrow!

Goat kids

We have been getting to know some goats, learning to milk and how to care for the animals.  Each of the goats has a unique personality.  The does are all quite friendly, enjoy the human interaction and are generally cooperative with the milking.  I am enjoying getting to know each of the four milkers.  I’ll write more on them and learning to milk another time.

Today I want to write about their kids and one kid in particular.  As we think about having our own goats someday our goal is to be able to get enough milk to provide for all our own dairy needs.  I always knew the goat had to have a kid in order to start lactating, but I guess I never really thought about how that played out in reality.  Each of the four goats we milk has kids.  One had her kids a year ago, was milked through the winter and will be dried off before next winter.  Her kids are not with her.  She will not be milked in the winter, but will be bred and hopefully have kids next spring and  move back into the milking rotation.  The other 3 have given birth in the last few months.  Two of the goats had twins and one had triplets.  So in addition to the 4 milkers, 7 other goats live in this place.  The person who owns the goats started with one goat not too long ago, but you can see how quickly that number can grow.  Theoretically the goats will stay in milk as long as they are being milked, but it is better to “freshen” them every year or two – which means more kids.

Here comes the harsh reality of farm life – something has to be done with the kids.  One option is to keep them and add to your herd, but at some point you reach a limit of how much milk you really need and the financial cost of providing food,  space, and care for goats that may not be producing something for you in return.  A second potion is to try and sell the kids.  American Dairy Goat Association registered doelings can fetch a fairly good price, a doe in milk gets an even better price and each have a fairly good likelihood of finding a new home.  Bucklings, however, are a harder sell.

The third option, then, for animals who can’t be kept or sold is to raise them for meat.  This is what recently happened to one of the bucklings we have been getting to know.  He was never named and we knew from the beginning that would be his fate.  By all accounts he was treated very well.  He stayed with his mother, nursing from her his entire life.  He was not subjected to being disbuded  or otherwise altered like some of his counterparts.  He was quite wild and lived a fairly natural, happy goat life.  He was with his mother until only moments before he met a swift and painless end.  The farmer who “harvested” him approaches the job with a great deal of reverence and gratefulness for the life being taken.  When we saw the farmer later that night, a tenderness and vulnerability permeated the work; it is not an easy thing to take a life.

This weekend we ate some of that goat.  It is the first time I have eaten an animal that I have known.  HB harvested our turkey for Thanksgiving a couple years ago, but I didn’t meet or know that turkey.  It was certainly sobering to be served goat and then to recognize where that goat came from or, rather, who that goat was.  I did feel more grateful; I was more conscious of not wasting.  And yet, it did not feel wrong.  This is the way it ought to be.  If we are to eat meat (and I think we are), then we ought to be more in touch with how that meat comes to us.  Eating meat always means a taking a life.  We don’t like to think about it, but our squeamishness only leads to less humaneness in the process.  Embracing the reality of  killing and processing an animal for meat can lead to a greater respect for the animal and a greater sense of responsibility.

Aquaponics set-up

When a neighbor moved last year, we inherited his aquaponics set-up.  It’s been sitting on our front porch unused since then.  We finally got a new liner for the fish tank, painted both sections, and got the flood and drain system (mostly) working.  We need to wait until the temperatures are consistently warmer before adding the fish, but, for now, our goldfish has moved into the tank.  He’s loving all the space!  Yesterday I put some seedlings in the grow bed – tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and basil.  They probably won’t really thrive until we get some fish in the tank, but at least they are getting a start.

For those who don’t know about aquaponics, it is a hybrid system blending hydroponics and aquaculture (or fish farming).  Fish are raised in a relatively high population in a tank.  Water from that tank is pumped into a grow bed – basically a raised bed filled with an alternative growing medium like perlite, rock wool, or gravel.  Although the plants do not have soil to support them the water pumped in from the fish tank contains valuable nutrients.  The plants roots, in turn, filter and clean the water.  Once the grow bed floods the water begins to drain back into the tank – freshly cleaned.