Summer’s Bounty
This time of the year is wonderful for eating fresh veggies from the garden. On Tuesday I went to my mom’s and we harvested a few of those Yukon Gold potatoes that we planted back in March. I harvested the rest of the peas, they’ll come out to make room for winter cabbages & broccoli. I also harvested some basil, a pepper, a head of broccoli and some Egyptian walking onions from my mom’s garden. I added all this bounty to the plate on my table where I keep all the harvests, which was only one cucumber and a few peaches I bought at the farmer’s market.
What a lovely sight it is after a long season of nothing fresh on the table! I think summer is my favorite fresh vegetable season, soon enough I’ll have some ripe tomatoes on my table! Hope this summer finds lots of fresh fruits and veggies in your kitchen!
What’s your favorite season for fresh fruits and vegetables?
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Dark Purple Columbine Seeds
The first year we moved in here at Chiot’s Run, I planted seeds for this dark purple columbine, it’s bloomed beautifully each year since. It seeds itself freely about the gardens, but not to the level of being invasive. I have little purple columbines that grow up all over the place, some where I want them, some where I don’t, like in the driveway. Mostly I don’t bother pulling them up, since columbine blooms so early in the spring I enjoy every plant I have.
Columbines set seed in these interesting little pods. They sound like little maracas when you touch the plant. They’re quite interesting, even when they’re no longer blooming.
On Sunday afternoon I spent some time cutting all the seed heads off of my dark purple columbine. I ended up with thousands upon thousands of seeds, way more than I need. I sprinkled some along the edges of the woods where I want to get them started and I saved a few for my mom. Since I have so many extra seeds, I figured I’d give some away. I have 5 packets of seeds available, so comment below and I’ll pick 5 winners.
Do you save seeds from your flowers from year to year?
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Beauty in the Garden
It seems like every week something new catches my eye in the garden, a new combination of plants, or perhaps the way a few plants are working together as they mature. Often it’s the free-seeding plants that tend to plant themselves in the most wonderful places. Nature does a wonderful job of coming up with some beautiful combos. This week I’m really loving the way my liatris and nicotiana look together.
Both of these plants are volunteers, meaning they seeded themselves down in this location, I did not plant them here. Neither were planted here originally or together on purpose. You’d never know it though the way they work together. The funny thing is that the nicotiana seeded itself around my gardens and everywhere it comes up in different shades that perfectly coordinate with the plants around it.
I noticed that the pollinators are loving this combo of plants as much as I am. The bees and butterflies love the liatris and the hummingbirds really like the nicotiana. They’re always abuzz with activity.
I love volunteer plants, especially ones like this that aren’t really invasive and are easy to remove when they crop up in unwanted locations.
What are you loving in your garden at the moment?
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Freshly Ground Flour
I’ve been grinding my own flour for several years now. Up until last week I was using a hand-me-down KitchenAid Grain Mill Attachment. It’s a oldie, and has been passed around through many hands. My dad’s cousin bought it back a long time ago and after she quit using it she gave it to my mom who used it for a while. My sister borrowed it and used it until she bought a NutriMill Grain Mill. Back to my mom it went. She used it for grinding up lentils and other grains to make her own dog food, but never used it for homemade flour. When I bought some grain with my sister, I borrowed it from my mom and started using it to make flour for baking. I had an old Kitchenaid that I attached it to and that one finally died, so it was time to upgrade to a real mill.
After doing a lot of research, I decided to purchase a Komo Grain mill, or a Tribest Grain Mill. I chose this one because of it’s quality, it’s made in Germany, has a powerful motor and ceramic grinding stones. It’s housed in a beautiful beech wood case, not plastic like most grain mills. It’s powerful, quiet and very quick.
After making a few loaves of bread, a few batch of pancakes and a few batches of scones, I must say I’m very impressed with the quality of flour this mill creates. It’s very fine and very evenly ground, unlike the Kitchenaid grinder which produced a very uneven grind that contained fine flour with lots of large flakes of bran in it. My scones are so delicious, you can’t even tell they’re made with 100% whole grain flour. Grinding the flour fresh means that there’s no bitterness with the whole grain as there often is with preground whole grains.
I’m quite excited, especially since I also just received my copy of Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor. I made the basic bread yesterday and was very impressed with the texture and flavor of the bread. I have never been able to get the right level of gluten development with my 100% whole grain bread to get the kind of crumb I wanted. Yesterday my dough passed the windowpane test perfectly and it baked up into the most beautiful loaf of 100% whole grain sourdough sandwich bread!
I’ve been using three different kinds of wheat for my baked goods, soft white, hard red winter, and white winter wheat. I’m looking forward to experimenting with other kinds of grains as well, like barley, spelt, buckwheat, millet and more. I found a local farm that grows wheat and a few other grains, hopefully it’s good for bread. I’m looking forward to making my diet a little more local and healthy with my new grain mill!
Are you a whole grain bread person, or do you prefer white?
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A Series of Unfortunate Events
Last Saturday morning found Mr Chiots and I standing in our local veterinary hospital with a small black kitten with a nasty wound on it’s neck. We weren’t sure what news we’d hear after a series of unfortunate events that started the previous Saturday morning. We’d had “the talk” the night before, and had decided on the monetary limit for this visit. We love cats and are always willing to help any out when find their way to Chiot’s Run, but setting a limit is necessary when dealing with animals, especially outdoor ones that don’t have a long life expectancy because of the environment they live in.
It all started a month ago, when mama moved four tiny kittens into our garage. We were happy to have them and were planning on fixing them and finding them homes if they survived. A few days after moving in, we got up one Saturday morning to discover the mama and the kittens gone. There was long orange fur all over the garage and male cat urine everywhere! Since male cats often kill kittens that aren’t their own, we figured a big orange male cat we’d seen roaming around occasionally was after these little furries. We didn’t find any dead kittens, but we weren’t sure if they’d survived. After this happened I did some research and found out that feral mama cats move their kittens around often to keep them safe, especially from male cats. (this is another good reason to neuter your male outdoor cats, they’re less aggressive)
Mama kept coming around so we knew eventually she’d bring them back if they had survived. Sure enough, a week and a half later, last Wednesday morning, we spotted her and three little furries on our back porch. She brought her babies back and proudly called them out of the garage every time we went outside to show them to us. We were happy to have them back, and sad that one of the little gray ones hadn’t made it, most likely it perished in the male cat attack a week and a half earlier. The kittens spent their days entertaining us playing around in the driveway and running in and out of the garage. We made sure to check under the cars every time we went somewhere so we didn’t accidentally find a kitty pancake upon our return.
Last Saturday morning, I was headed to the farmer’s market and went out and checked under the car as usual. We’d seen the kittens playing around outside earlier that morning, so we knew they were still around. On my way home from the market, a mile or two from home, I noticed a dead kitten in the road that looked just like one ours. At first I didn’t think anything of it, here in rural Ohio it’s a common sight. Later that afternoon, I realized I hadn’t seen the kittens since that morning. I knew then that the one I had seen was ours. We looked and looked and sadly couldn’t find any kittens in the garage. We figured the kittens had crawled up into the car and had all perished. Of course this was on Saturday afternoon and we were headed to a Fourth of July celebration, only we were no longer in any kind of mood for celebrating. This is the very reason I had never gotten a garage cat. I knew that their life expectancy was short and the risk of coming to a sad end by car was very likely. I love cats, so I prefer to keep mine indoors where there are no cars, dogs, foxes, coyotes and other dangers.
After shedding of a few tears and a few days of sadness, I was feeling better. I was glad that mama was still around, following me around the gardens and rubbing on my legs trying to get some attention whenever she could. I made plans to take her to get her fixed since there were no longer any nursing kittens. I was glad that she had a healthy fear of things like cars and the garage door and seemed to be a very smart outdoor cat.
Late Tuesday evening, around eleven thirty, I was looking out our back door and noticed a tiny black streak running across our porch. At first it didn’t register. Then it hit me – it was one of our kittens. Amazingly it had survived the ride under the car, the fall or jump out of the car, the car itself, a three and a half day journey, and had somehow found it’s way back home. This is quite an amazing feat considering that the kitten is only about 7 weeks old, was still nursing when it disappeared, and had to travel through woods and very busy roads to get back here (and it was 4th of July weekend which is especially busy here in our lake community). We went outside to find it so we could reunite it with it’s mama. At first we couldn’t locate it, little black kittens can hide very well in the dark, but finally Lucy sniffed it out for us. We called mama cat (she is now sleeping in our garage at night) and she came. As soon as the kitten heard her meow, it started crying and came running out of the bushes to her. It rubbed back and forth on it’s mama, clearly very happy to see her. The entire next day the little black kitten did not leave mama’s side. Wherever she went, it was right behind her. By the second day it started feeling more comfortable and would spend time alone sleeping in the garage.
I noticed the kitten had a small wound on it’s neck, but I could never get close enough to see it. The kitten is still very wary of humans. On Friday I took my camera out to get a photo of the wound, I figured that would be my best option to get a good look. It wasn’t pretty, so Mr Chiots and I decided it was time to catch the the kitten to put some Neem Protect Spray on it. (we love this brand of neem spray, it works wonderfully for any pet skin problem we’ve had and helps keep fleas away naturally, I’d highly recommend this product!). Upon inspection, the wound looked pretty bad, so I ran inside to call the vet. We’d hoped to get in yet that evening, but early the next morning would have to do. We placed the kitten in a pet carrier with some food and water. This way we wouldn’t have to catch it the next morning, since it had taken us a few tries and quite a while to catch it that afternoon.
Saturday morning found us up early and off to the vet, wondering what news we’d hear about this little kitten and what kind of a decision we’d have to make. Luckily, the wound wasn’t life-threatening (although it had a huge fly larvae in it, gross, but nature’s way of cleaning up wounds). We came home with a kitten in a crate and of smiles on our faces. The kitten will be spending the next couple days in the crate, we want to keep it contained to make it easy to administer it’s twice daily antibiotic treatment. I think this will work in our favor as it’s taming the kitten quite nicely. She even purred and rubbed on my finger later on Saturday. She’s getting more active and her appetite is coming back, and she’s really enjoying her diet of raw organic whole milk mixed with egg yolks and fermented cod liver oil.
I may still take mama in this week to get her fixed, and we talked to the vet already about when we could get this little kitten fixed as well. We’ll also be trying to trap the orange male, we don’t see him very often so that may prove difficult. If all continues to go well for this little softie, it looks like after all these unfortunate events, we’ll still have two garage cats here at Chiot’s Run. I think this little black kitten has already used up a few of her nine lives.
Have you ever had to deal with the harsh realities of outdoor animals?
