Chicken tales

According to my garden journal, in February 2018 I had 21 chickens (including four roosters). Last month, I had six. Well, that’s sobering.

Of those, two I sold and two I gave away. The others, well...pine martens, cats, eagles and old age all took their toll. 

Gramma, who was slated to become christmas dinner 4 years ago, finally died of old age. She had been ill all winter, but we thought she had perked up again in the spring. That was just a artificial perkiness; she soon recovered her droopy self and then died. Mian undertook to butcher her out of scientific curiosity (she was probably the oldest hen in the subcontinent) and told me “We are not going to let our chickens get this old and ill again.” I won’t get into the details, but there was far too much wrong with her. She got a funeral pyre, not the stock pot. 

Gramma in the centre- note her slumped posture and 'off-colour' comb

But six chickens in that large coop seemed rather lonely. 

Thankfully, Red hatched 5 chicks two weeks ago. Right now they are housed in a separate room, but will join the main flock in maybe a month’s time. 

Chicks and Red enjoying watermelon

 And we caved in and bought two pairs of chicks from a travelling vendor. Looking at them, I was again struck by the difference between our freerange backyard flock and a commercial flock. Our chickens are if not tame, then atleast not fearful. They are not afraid of us and exhibit all sorts of chickeny behaviour. 

The new poults. Four are ours, we are fostering the other four for a while

The new poults are terrified of humans, do not know how to scratch or bathe. Just today, one poult tried scratching in her litter for the first time, and now they are all practising it. But they are not healthy and active enough to compete with the two-week chicks yet. Hopefully, they will perk up soon. 

The poults when they arrived yesterday. The one in the front only has one wing. =(

Grampa, you will be pleased to hear, is still going strong. We gave away the younger roosters so he is still reigning supreme and happy about it

Foxglove madness!

"Seedlings exhibit some variations, often pleasing" says my RHS guide to propagation of foxgloves. As usual, they are right.
I started with two foxglove plants given by a friend. And now I have this

But here are the variations, all pleasing, that I have.
1. The light mauve with BIG dots:

Behind it is one of the originals.

 2. The little closely spaced dots.

3. The one with a curious yellow-red shading at the back

4. The incredible pure-white one! I do want to keep this..is there a method for vegetative propagation of foxgloves?

5. The one with prominent splotches at the back

6. And this is cheating, but here is a cross-eyed dog. He was hunting a bumblebee

The 'six-on-saturday' meme is hosted by The Propagator. In his words, it's "Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a pest, a success, a project, a plan, an abject failure – anything at all!" So if you want to find out what's happening in other gardens, do go on over to his blog!

It's all gone

It was nearly an hour of terror. I knew the deafening pounding on the roof was 'just' a hailstorm. My lizard brain was not having any of it. The dogs were a panting, quivering mess and my own heart was pounding hard. On top of this primal fear and the worry that every crack I heard was the sound of our solar pipes breaking was the sorrow for our plants.

The morning justified my grieving. The rose petals had been stripped and lay in a thick blanket on the ground. The kiwi- our first 'real' harvest- had tattered leaves and several of the promise-laden blooms had been torn off. The vegetable seedlings were tattered, several lay prone and broken. I got a message from a friend who lives at the top of the hill, " I am crying, my veggies are so damaged from the hail." "Hang in there, they will come back if the tips are okay" I replied as I continued with my melancholy accounting. Maybe half of the other fruits- the plums, peaches, pears and apricots- had fallen, the others were still okay. Or so I thought.

We are having some work done, and when G came with the workmen, I was all ready with my quip. "Was that a hailstorm last night, or did China shell us?" G and Hem laughed, Ragbar Da was beyond a smile.

Ragbar Da is one of a  fast disappearing breed of people in the mountains. He is a Renaissance man, an expert mason, tinsmith, weaver and horticulturist. He knows the ways of the plants and the animals, he knows to read the land and the rocks. He had never seen anything like this. A few years ago, Ragbar da had set out a new plum orchard. Being the man he is, he had done it excellently. Home-grafted trees, carefully set out and diligently tilled, manured and pruned. This year, they were going to repay him. Despite the hailstorm we had already endured, the plum trees bore about 400 cases of fruit.

 

Today, the fruits are gone. This is when I learnt that the fruit I had thought was okay because they were still on the trees were doomed. Apparently the hail bruises the fruit and it begins to rot at the point of impact. With time, the rot increases to the point where the fruit is unsaleable. 'Everything in Chatola and Sitla is gone', said Hem. "All we are going to harvest this year are mosquitoes and flies from the rotting fruit.'

There are a few people who have insured their fruit. For the vast majority, the premiums are high enough that gambling on the weather is worthwhile. With climate change, this is an increasingly loaded bet. And with farmers in the area almost entirely dependent on the fruit crop, they have indeed lost everything.

Flower time

It is wonderful how things change quickly at this time of the year. Here is what my garden has been up to. It's Saturday, which means it is time for us all to gather at The Propagator's blog, and present our Six things.
As he says, "Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a new plant, a job to do, a success, a failure, anything at all. Join in!"


1. We got chicks! We have five chicks, of a clutch of nine eggs. Here are two, posing rather adorably.

And here is one, heroically swallowing a bee. Look for the smugly dissipated expression at the end..

2. One most beautiful and most perfect peach rose, gently scented with tea and borne on purple stems.

 3. Our first cheddar pink. These are easy enough to grow, but this first flower has been three years and two location shifts in the making- thanks to my chickens.
Totally worth the wait.

4. I have always let my Edward rose grow as it likes, with the result that I had long bare limbs with roses at 8 feet high. Till I took Ms.Jekyll's advice. Tying the branches horizontally does ensure that they bloom all along the length. Take a look

 5. More roses. I did not think the red and yellow will play nicely together. But they do! Please do ignore the pipes..we plan to disguise them with rope. Some day.

6. And finally, a 'weed' which I love and do my best to spread. The pink evening primrose

Spring is here!

Finally. And with my garden waking up, my garden blogging has too.
So here we go. It's Saturday, which means it is time for us all to gather at The Propagator's blog, and present our Six things.
As he says, "Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a new plant, a job to do, a success, a failure, anything at all. Join in!"

1. Summer light. Long, warmish evenings with that magical low golden light. And my favourite corner in the garden with the iris patch, the bench under the pear tree, and the roses

2. Spiraea. Not something I am too fond of, but everyone in the village is. I think I have mentioned before how all the village paths are lined with it.

The flowers are called Aprilia here, for obvious reasons. It is not till I took a closer look at them that I began to like them. My discovering that the flowers are lightly scented might have something to do with my new tolerance for them. 

 3. A new rose arch. A gift to me from the Mian. He's a keeper, that one.

4. Lady Banks' Rose. Rosa Banksiae. Such a pretty little thing, with that luscious butter yellow colour! It took me three years, but she is finally blooming.

5. I may have mentioned last year that we had eight fruits on our kiwi plants. Of those, we got to eat three. But this year, it appears that we might get a wee bit more. One of our two female plants and the male plant are all over buds, the other female is trying.

6. Coriander. Mian does not like it. I do. And so of course, we have a field of it.

An easy swarm

I spoke about our heroic attempt to capture a swarm last year.

This year, we thought we will be ready. I have been lusting after a top-bar hive. Rather than the hole-in-a-wall system that we have, the top-bar makes it easy to separate brood and honey cells and to access them with minimum disturbance. At present, to access the honey, we need to remove all the new combs, which is distressing and wasteful.

Life got in the way though, and we still have not gotten around to building one. The bees got tired of waiting and took matters into their own hands. Remember that  old Langstroth hive I had 'borrowed' from A and cleaned last year? They all moved into that.

Mian and I were having coffee, and I noticed a lot of activity. The bees were swarming! It was a short move- just 10 feet away. And they were settled down in just a half hour.

And now for the top bar hive, which Mian still wants to build. As I now have on record.

The deluxe life

Here she goes again, you think, boasting about her riches.
But listen to this story and why I am so exultant.
When I lived in Pune, and had just started cooking, 'foreign' vegetables were just coming into the market and priced to reflect their novelty. I didn't mind so much about asparagus and zucchini (yes, even zucchini was 'gourmet'!), but I did mind the parsley. At nearly 80 Rs for a couple of stems, parsley cost more than meat and so was never bought. A green-fingered friend did try to grow some for me, but the seeds never sprouted for him either.
When I came to Chatola, I discovered that a local organisation was selling herb starts. I bought garlic chives and rosemary and sage and of course, parsley. They all thrived. The parsley especially self-seeded as if it wanted to make up for the disappointment of a decade ago. Today, I need to just stretch out a hand to get parsley, but I still feel recklessly indulgent when I make a parsley-heavy dish like tabbouleh.
And today, G took me hunting for these.

Riches indeed. They have been lovingly cleaned and simmered in butter supplied by a neighbour.

Mian comes home soon. Dinner will be homemade pasta (made with our eggs) with morels, parsley and garlic- all from our garden.
Wallowing in luxury, we are.

The feeding tree

Life before chickens was simple. All I had to do was scatter grain on the ground, and the birds would visit. When the chickens arrived, they would not get a chance to eat the grain unmolested. And so I needed alternatives.

 Our lovely apricot tree provided the solution. It is aging now, and dying in parts. THe trunk is almost completely hollow, and I began to put grain into the hollow of the larger branches, and also scatter a little along the craggy trunk.

It seems to have worked.

Sparrows cluster to eat a roll of dough

White-cheeked bulbuls wait for their turn

A slaty tree-pie eating rice

The only real Vindaloo

The five stages of grief are a lie.

For me, grief is like the beach holidays that we would take when I was a child. Amma would sit on the beach while her daughters played in the water and watch us. The rule was that each time one of us got knocked down by a wave, we were to stand up. The idea was that Amma could know we were okay.

Of course, in practice that meant that I would get knocked down, flail wildly, manage to stand up spluttering, and get knocked over again by the even-bigger wave that had been rearing up behind me all this time.

I had thought that the nights of waking up because I was unable to inhale were past me. But then our wedding anniversary came up. I realised that Amma would not call me up to wish me that day or ever again. I bought a new pressure cooker and automatically reached for the phone to tell her and got punched one more time by the realization of loss.

Yesterday I decided to cook pork vindaloo for myself in that brand-new pressure cooker. Mian had been gone for a few days and I was tired of eating leftovers.  I made it properly using Amma's handwritten recipe; when I opened the mixer jar in which I had ground the masala I burst into tears. That was the smell of most of the happy times of my childhood.We had a lot of fun times around pork vindaloo- a special treat for us.

But here is her recipe.

As far as we are concerned this is the only authentic pork vindaloo recipe.  Make it and enjoy. If you don't eat pork, the masala paste is a great rub for any oily fish. If you are a vegetarian, I suppose you could try it on potatoes for a Goan version of patatas brava. But please, no chicken or 'mixed-veg'- that's just wrong.
I follow the recipe as she wrote it in my copy of Thangam Phillip's book, with one exception. Mum would cook the pork before cutting it small. I cut it into inch-or-smaller cubes before cooking and then pressure  cook everything together.

Pork vindaloo

Cut 1 Kg pork into small pieces. You need some fat in the pork, and we also keep the skin on.
Soak 15 kashmiri chillies in vinegar for two hours  (or you can just use kashmiri chilli powder)
Grind together- garlic cloves from one big head (or more) + 2 heaped tsp cumin+ 15 peppercorns + 5 green cardamoms + the soaked chillies + 3 nos of 2" long sticks of cinnamon + 10 cloves + 1/2 tsp turmeric + 1/4 cup of a dark vinegar (sugarcane or malt) + the pulp from a lemon-sized ball of tamarind (about 3 Tbs)
Slice 5 onions and maybe two or three fat pieces of pork thinly.
Heat a pressure cooker and 'dry fry' the thin slices of onion and pork fat. You don't need to add oil because the fat will render.
When it begins to brown, add the pork, the ground masala, salt, two bay leaves (the Indian kind, the leaves of cassia cinnamon) and just enough water to barely cover (less if your meat is very tender).
Let three or four whistles go, and then simmer for 20 minutes or so till tender.

Eat with rice or soft white bread. And beer. It's V.good, as Amma wrote.

Winter warmth

It's winter. The entire garden (not just the north slopes) are covered with a crackly layer of frost every morning, the bird bath has a layer of ice on it, and the chickens have morphed into little plant-destroying terrors. But here is the surprisingly warm round up of what's happening:
1. Strawberry! The first fruit on our alpine strawberries. Hopefully, this spring will bring many more.

2. Cotoneaster. This is not in my garden. This is along a path the dogs and I walk often. I have tried taking cuttings indoors and outdoors, in winter and the monsoon, hardwood and softwood, and failed each time. This winter, I plan to sneak down and take a plant. A crime, I know. But look at it!

3. Tilling. The winter is the time when I resist local ecological knowledge. The thing to do here is have nicely tilled beds around fruit trees and in the kitchen garden. So every year, G hires minions to dig up the terraces. To me, it is a waste of topsoil and microorganisms to expose the soil to the frost. And so, after they are done tilling, I go around the garden like an evil gnome undoing all their stellar work and dumping leaves and sticks (to keep the leaves from blowing away) around the plants. Why do I not use compost instead? One, I do not have that much compost and two, the chickens will eat it all.

4. Wildlife refuge. I do not cut back my salvia and chrysanthemums all winter. They do look a mess, but I am rewarded when I walk out in the mornings and see the little thrushes that roost there. So the mess stays.

5. On the other end of the scale, this bare and sad dug up patch will be a new garden soon. It is in the square courtyard near Mian's bakery where the Kiwi trellis is. And I want a yellow and white garden here. The area is very shady and so the rose will be happier moved. There I will plant ferns and the lovely Hedychium spicatum which grows wild here. But first comes the adding compost and the mulching.

 6. Mullein: My seed scattering experiments failed this summer. (Or maybe they didn't. Maybe I just need to wait till spring). But now I am eager to try taking root cuttings. Gardener's World, to which I have become a trifle addicted during these long winter evenings, assures me that nothing could be easier. Well, let's see.

As always, Six-on-Saturday is hosted by the very talented Propagator. Do head on over to his blog and check out the other gardens!
 

Honey, I strained the wax

The last time Mian and I processed our honey, we did it the hard way by squeezing the combs through a ricer. Not only was it a very difficult and messy process, but we also lost a lot of honey.

This time, I asked G how people here managed it. "I have never done it", he replied. "But my father just boils it all together and then removes the wax."

Genius! And that is what I did.
Here are our combs

And here they are being gently melted down using a double-boiler setup.

Once it was all melted down, I put the bowl into the fridge overnight. In the morning, the wax and sludge had risen to the top, with fairly clean honey at the bottom.
Here it is:

What was left was some very sticky wax with honey in it. I put that out, along with the bowl and spatula.

The bees seemed happy to reclaim atleast some of what had been stolen from them.Here are closeups