How it works:

We anticipate this part of the event to last about an hour.  Starting at 5:45pm you can begin setting out your items to trade.  From 6pm-6:30 you will be able to walk around and see what items others have brought.  If you see something you like, write down your name and anything you’d like to include about the items you’d like to trade for.

We’ll start the actual social trading around 6:30pm where you’ll take your own trade sheet, select your favorite items from those that others indicated they were willing to trade and find the person who owns them to work out the details of your trade.  This is meant to be very casual – barter however you like.

What to bring:

Any number (5-10 is a good amount) of small homemade items in  4-16 oz serving sizes that you think others might like to swap for.

Some ideas include jams and preserves; homemade granola; homemade cheese; infused oils, liqueurs or vinegars; syrups; home brewed wine, beer or spirits; baked goods and candy; tea; home canned foods; pickles, sauerkraut or kimchi; salsa or chutney; charcuterie; herbs or other produce from your garden; honey from your hives…you get the idea!

Gifts don’t necessarily have to be edible – you might consider including handmade soaps, body scrubs or tonics, hand-poured candles or other good that you make at home and can be packaged up to share.

Just remember that the higher perceived value of the items you bring, the better the loot you’ll take home with you!

Some pointers:

• Consider bringing an extra jar of each item to let other traders sample – you’ll be much more likely to find a taker if they can taste your delicious goods first!
• Be sure to bring a box or bag to carry your loot home.
• Don’t forget to bring a card for each item you’re trading which includes the name of the item and ingredients plus your name and email address in case they want to contact you later with questions, recipes requests, compliments, etc.  You might even consider including the recipe if you’re open to sharing.

If you haven’t yet RSPV’ed for the party, please do so here.  If you have RSVP’ed and you can no longer make it please let us know so we can open up your spot for someone else.

Thanks especially to those of you who posted comments and photos to Twitter – the social media love was spectacular and let’s face it- we were way too busy to do our own tweeting!

Here are some photos posted by some of our Twitter followers along with the results of the raffle:

Twitter Photo by @SaidbyLaura

Twitter Photo by @LisaSaysLook2

Without further ado….

DRUMROLL PLEASE….

The winning numbers are:

436571

436596

If one of those numbers is yours, please email us at info@farmcurious.com or call us at 510.410.3761.  We’ll ask you to send us a photo of your raffle ticket or to mail it to us as proof.  You’ll have until 6pm pacific on Tuesday, September 27th to let us know you’ll be claiming your prize – a mozzarella making kit or a copy of the book Barnyard in your Backyard.

If the prizes aren’t claimed by the deadline, we’ll draw two more numbers on Wednesday, September 26th and try again for a winner so be sure to check back if we didn’t choose your number this time around!

Twitter Photo by @spotsfordates

There are three ways to enter:

1) Visit our booth at Eat Real Fest this weekend and spend money!  For every $10 you spend you’ll receive a raffle ticket for a prize.

2) Visit our booth at Eat Real Fest and take a picture of any part of the booth, us or our products.  Post the picture on Twitter or Facebook and tag @FARMcurious to be entered into the drawing.

3) Can’t make it to Eat Real?  That’s okay!  Comment on this blog post about why you wish you could come visit us at Eat Real and we’ll enter you into the drawing too.

So what’s the prize?

We’ll be giving away a 30-Minute Mozzarella Making Kit and a copy of Barnyard in your Backyard.

How do I know I won?

The winner will be announced on our website on Monday, September 26th so be sure to check back to see if you won!  We’ll mail your prize to you if you’re not local.

As it turns out making wine at home from grapes is a huge endeavor.  You generally have to make it in large batches because you order the wine grapes by the pallet load when they’re in season. 

You then make giant batches of wine, starting at five gallons and up.  That’s all well and good if you already know how to make wine but if you’re a beginner the prospect of having to buy an expensive kit, order tons of grapes to end up with five gallons of wine that may not even be any good is not that appealing.  Considering you can get a pretty great bottle of bordeaux crafted by an expert for about twenty bucks right now, I would leave it to the pros.

That said, a lot of people, homesteaders in particular, end up with a glut of backyard or neighborhood fruits during certain parts of the year and you can only make so many jams, dried fruits and infusions before you start looking for something else to do with those fruits.  If you’re like me, wine has likely crossed your mind at one point or another but you don’t have the slightest clue of where to begin.

As I mentioned in my earlier post the more I spoke to the beer experts, the more I realized what I was looking for wasn’t really out there yet and I needed to create my own product.  With a lot of help from the amazing guys at Brewmaster in San Leandro, I finally ended up what they and I think is an excellent beginner’s kit.  I learned a long time ago that I can’t sell anything I haven’t tried myself so I hope you enjoy my post on how easy home wine-making can be with a little direction and some tasty fresh fruit!

If you’re interested in ordering the kit for yourself you can find it here or read more about using it on this blog post.

I’ve recently been toying with making fruit wine using the kits that I carry in the store.  The Backyard Fruit Wine Making Kit includes everything you need to make a delicious batch of just about any type of wine.  It’s not limited to fruit either – recipes range from currant wine to watermelon wine and everything in between (including corn and onion!!)  All you have to add is sugar and produce (fresh or even dried).

I found myself with tons of strawberries at the peak of their freshness so I decided to try out the strawberry wine recipe. 

The recipe booklet included with the kit just happened to include a recipe for such a wine using nearly exactly the amount of fruit I had on hand!  I ran through the directions quickly to make sure there would be no surprises then jumped right in.

After washing the strawberries (I recommend organic for something like this since anything on the strawberry will be in the wine) and hulling them, I put them in a basket and weighed them to insure I had the correct amount.  I laid out all the ingredients from the kit and compared them to the recipe to ensure I had enough of everything it required.  Then I then measured out the sugar – yep, lots of it, but don’t worry the yeast consumes much of that sugar and converts it into alcohol.

The recipe called for putting 3.5 lbs of strawberries into a steeping bag (included in the kit) and then mashing them within the bag inside of the jar to release their juices.  As you can see from the photos, this part was pretty fun and I was surprised at how much juice they actually yielded.  Next you tie up the steeping bag and tuck it down inside the jar.

You then pour in 2 lbs of sugar and add the rest of the ingredients except for the yeast:

• 1 tsp acid blend
• 1/4 tsp tannin
• 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• 1 Campden tablet, crushed.
• 7 pints water

I found the ingredients combine more easily if you add the water last.

All of these ingredients except the sugar and water are found in the kit in enough quantity to make about six 1-gallon batches of wine. 

Mix the ingredients thoroughly then put the lid with the airlock on the jar and let it sit for 24 hours.  The next day you stir the mixture, making sure to mash up the strawberry pulp that is still in the steeping bag inside the container.  Now you can add the wine yeast, stirring it in well before putting the lid and airlock back on.

From this point you’ll want to stir the mixture and mash the pulp inside the steeping beg every day.  The strawberry mash will continue to release juices and after a couple of days you’ll start to notice some yeast activity in the jar.  The airlock will start bubbling and the mixture inside the jar will begin to churn as the yeast feasts on your sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.

You’ll want to start measuring the specific gravity (SG) after three or four days using the hydrometer which is included in the kit.  A hydrometer measures the weight of a liquid against that of water and measuring is easy.  You fill the hydrometer’s tube (the container it comes in) about halfway with wine liquid and then drop the hydrometer into the tube.  After locating the specific gravity measurements (they look like 1.100, etc) check the number that sits right at the surface level of the liquid.  It might be somewhere around 1.070] and you’re aiming for 1.030.  The number will get lower (though further up the scale) as time goes on so if it’s not there keep checking day by day.

You’re actually measuring the weight of the liquid because alcohol is lighter than water.  As the yeast turns the sugar into alcohol, the liquid is becoming less dense.  The percentage change from when you first mix the ingredients to the final reading is a fairly decent way to tell the amount of alcohol you ended up with.

Once the specific gravity reaches 1.030 you’re going to siphon the wine out of the original container and put it into another container where it will begin it’s clarification process, during which the strawberry particles will settle to the bottom of the jar.  The best way to siphon the liquid out is to place the full wine jar on the counter then place the entire tubing (included in the kit) into the jar, leaving one end outside.  Submerge the tubing coil deeply into the liquid and allow it to fill with wine.  After it has filled completely, use the included clamp to clamp one end shut.  Lower the clamped end of the tube below the bottom of the jar toward a second container.

I find it easiest to set your full container on the counter while draining it into your second container on the floor.  Once the opening of the tube is inside the second container remove the clamp allowing the liquid to move into the second container.  Keep the back end of the tube which is inside the wine near the surface of the wine so it doesn’t suck up the sediment at the bottom of the wine jar.  As soon as the liquid level is close to the bottom of the jar, nearing the sediment, remove the tubing so it doesn’t pull up the sediment.  You don’t have to worry about removing all of the liquid – it’s more important to avoid pulling up too much sediment.

The reason you use the tubing is to avoid aerating the wine too much.  Just pouring it would introduce too much air.

Now that your wine is in the secondary container you’ll replace the lid and airlock and let it set for another two months or so to further clarify before bottling.

The best part is that you can get the kit from FARMcrious.com for only $39, which we think is a steal.  Buy yours today and use up that harvest glut of produce in no time!

If you have time, read this blog post about why I built this particular wine kit.

Is anyone else out there making wine at home from backyard fruit?  I’d love to hear your tips and tricks or any recommendations of things to include in the kit. 

Me...trouble??

I’ve lamented plenty of times about the difficulty of finding a willing and able person to farm-sit while our modern lifestyle takes us to other exciting places.  You might have even read my last post about what has happened in the past when we left the farm for a bit.  Well, it’s happened again.  A few weekends ago, Jared and I went up north for some river rafting relaxation and after some desperate pleas for help a good friend of ours came to the rescue.

We sent a long, descriptive list of do’s, don’ts and dares and she accepted the challenge.  We warned her that the chicken door needs to be propped just so with a stick and that the ducks are stinkers to get into their house at night if it’s not quite dark yet.  She wasn’t quite prepared for the formidable challenge those quackers presented.

She generously taped her adventure so we could all laugh at her good-natured expense.  Be sure to listen with the sound on because her commentary is half the fun!

Our ducks are Indian runner ducks, after all, originally bred to train herding dogs how to do their job.  Looks like they were trying to train poor Lina to herd!  My favorite part has to be when Pato, our brown duck, jumps into the pool for a quick swim.

Do you run into any particularly trying experiences when attempting to explain to people how to care for your animals and crops while you’re away?  Please share!

We’re proud to introduce an exciting new partnership with Jeremy Ogusky, potter extraordinaire!  Jeremy is making the most beautiful fermenting crock I have ever seen and FARMcurious is lucky enough to be able to carry it for him.  If you think the crock is gorgeous in the photos, just wait until you see it in real life.  Jeremy is also one of the few potters actually recommended by Sandor Katz, the fermenting master himself.

Jeremy is a studio potter in Boston, Massachusetts, producing unique & functional ceramics.  His studio practice is influenced by his work with potters in Southern Africa & South America and background in public health & social activism.  Jeremy understands that the decision to buy handmade objects is more than just an economic decision, but a political one.  By creating durable kitchenware he is creating compelling objects for use in the home and building a more just economy and appreciation for craft.  Visit his website & see more of his work on his website or on Facebook.

If you’re interested in purchasing the hand-thrown fermenting crock Jeremy is making for us, please be advised there’s a waiting list as long as 8 weeks due to the hand-made nature of this exquisite piece.  Now would be a good time to place your order before the waiting period gets too long though!

Click here to place an order (your credit card won’t be charged until the crock ships to you).

We’ve been busy fermenting everything from rat-tailed radish to kimchi and kefir here at FARMcurious.  What do you have bubbling away in your kitchen?

My secret organic produce-wielding friend showed up at my house a couple of weeks ago with a lovely little surprise – a little bag of morello cherries. Morellos are the tiny sour cherries that are traditionally used to make kirschwasser, the german cherry liqueur (literally translated it means “cherry water”).

I have to admit that, though I love the idea of cocktails with their sexy names, their vibrant colors and their seasonal variations, not to mention the adorable glasses they’re served in, it’s not actually what I prefer to drink. I want to sip cosmopolitans but I’m much more in my comfort zone with wine.

I like to keep some homemade liqueurs on hand because I love pulling them out at parties and Sean Timberlake over at Punk Domestics is unintentionally doing his best to convert me to a cocktail girl. That aside, I normally wouldn’t be quite as excited as I was about the prospect of making a liqueur as I was about kirschwasser and that’s because kirschwasser has so many uses beyond the chilled glass.

I first became familiar with the wonders of kirsch, as it’s called for short, when I started throwing fondue parties in New York. Inspired by the gift of some fondue pots from my mom and aunt. The first cheese fondue I ever made called for the liqueur and mentioned its traditional use as a flavor enhancer in gruyere/emmental-based fondue.

It took a few liquor stores to finally locate one that had one very crusty bottle of kirsch hidden on a top shelf. The label was yellowed and crumbling and the bottle was covered in greasy dusk like so many things that have lived in NY too long. It had seen better days, but it seemed like my only option so I shelled out what seemed like a ridiculous amount of money and convinced myself that dust on the bottle was a sign of maturity.

I wasn’t to be disappointed. The kirsch really accentuated the flavor of the swiss cheese and gave the fondue a wonderful taste that you couldn’t quite place. I was sold – for the next ten years, every fondue party I had – and there was a time when they were quite frequent – showcased swiss cheese fondue with kirsch.

Fast forward all those years and a mere two bottles of kirsch later, thanks to its longevity and the small amount required in cooking to make a difference, and I’m still loving the kirsch. Apparently I’m not the only one. In searching for kirsch recipes I found this article by David Liebovitz expounding the virtues of using kirsch to accentuate flavors.

Anyway, back to the kirsch-making. Recipes I could find online disagreed on whether the cherries should be pitted, crushed or left whole, but the basic idea was generally the same. You fill a water-tight container, in my case a quart-sized mason jar with alternating layers of cherries and sugar then you let it mellow in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning you fill the jar with vodka.

What happens after that varies greatly from recipe to recipe as well. Some recipes, such as this one at eHow suggest storing in a closet for 6 months and shaking daily. This one at Buzzle suggests storing for a year and shaking only every few months. Who knows which way is best. I stored my in a dark spot in my dining room where I’ll see it and be reminded to shake it most days. I suppose I’ll taste it in six months and see what I think! (My version of the full instructions below)

After only a few weeks the liquid is really starting to turn pinkish and the cherries, which I left whole, are starting to crack and float. I can’t wait to try it – it sure will be a bummer if I shake it for six months to find I don’t love it!

If this still sounds like too much, Liebovitz does recommend brands of kirsch so you can simply hand over $40 and let someone else do the hard work. If you’re not sure what do do with the kirsch when you’re done, Buzzle offers some suggestions.

Making Kirschwasser….err..cherry bounce

(see comments below about how this recipe is really for a cherry brandy even though I was “tricked” into believing it was kirschwasser!)

Ingredients:

1 lb morello cherries

1 lb granulated or pastry sugar

Pint of vodka

Quart jar or other water-tight container with a lid

Instructions:

Rinse cherries and remove the stems. I found removing the stems to be the most tedious part of making kirsch since the cherries are so tiny and there seem to be so many stems! The easiest method I found was to grab a bunch of cherries by the stems with one hand then pluck the cherries off with your dominant hand.

Put one layer of cherries in the bottom of the container.

Pour a layer of sugar over the cherries to cover them.

Continue layering until the jar is full.

After the jar is full, place it in the refrigerator overnight to “mellow”.

In the morning, pour the vodka over the top of the cherries and sugar until you can’t fit any more.  You can see I didn’t use a fancy vodka (Vodka of the Gods from Trader Joe’s).  We’ll see if I regret it, but I suspect I won’t.

You’ll see bubbles coming up as the vodka settles into place.  Keep filling until you can’t add any more.

Now,  shake it really well to combine the mixture as best you can.  It will start to look grainy, though not yet syrupy – that will come tomorrow.

Place the jar out of direct sunlight but where you’ll still remember to shank it.  Continue to agitate the jar every day or so (I suspect you can skip a few days here and there and be fine) without opening it.

After a couple of weeks, the liquid will be turning pink and the cherries will be floating on the top.  They’ll begin to crack open eventually too.  I’ll be opening and tasting mine in six months!

Has anyone else tried making actual kirsch?  I’d love to hear how it turned out!!

UPDATE: Or, if you have a good recipe for using cherry liqueur which this apparently is, let me know!

We’ve all heard the phrase but I can’t really tell you that I’ve ever sat down to truly ponder what it meant.  I haven’t had to truly want something since I was a kid; in fact, I’ve lived quite comfortably within my means for years with a well-paying job, few obligations and no debt.  It’s not necessarily that all that has changed now, but some significant changes have gotten me thinking about what it means to really tighten our proverbial belt.

First, we got married.  With both of our families in, shall we say ‘transitional’ stages, if we wanted a wedding we were going to have to cover it ourselves.   We did want one and we did pay for it.  As if the wedding weren’t enough, I had amassed a sizable collection of hotel points and airline miles, thanks to the travel heavy job, that were begging to be used so of course we had to spend two weeks in Italy.

You would think that having free airline tickets and most of our hotels covered would make a very affordable vacation but a terribly unfavorable exchange rate blew that idea to shreds.  Twenty Euro antipasti plates become $30 in the blink of an eye.  It all would have been fine had our lovely hotel in Positano, one of the few we paid for out of pocket, accepted credit cards.  Imagine our surprise on the final day of our vacation to find that we needed an emergency stash of cash pronto on a Sunday!

None of this is to make you feel sorry for us; let’s face it – so many people could hope to have these problems, but rather to frame the situation.  We were feeling awfully broke upon the return from our honeymoon.  Cash reserves spent, credit card debt for the first time in a very long time and no more lavish gifts arriving by mail.

While we certainly weren’t feeling rich in cash, if there were one thing we were flush with it was eggs!  Jared’s father who was caring for the farm couldn’t come close to eating the number of eggs our ducks and chickens produce and instead of sharing them with friends and neighbors like we normally do, he collected dozens of them in the crisper at the bottom of our fridge.

Two weeks worth of eggs amounted to nearly 70 altogether!  I set to work putting them in cartons for friends and mastering the art of angel food cake.  Three hours, two angel food cakes, zero visits to the grocery store and 24 egg whites later and our ‘egg crisper’ was looking a little tidier.

Luckily some friends were coming over during the weekend to make homemade pizza (free meal – woohoo!).  Since they were supplying the pizza ingredients I decided the dessert I had to offer along with leftover wedding wine and beer would make a good trade, keeping us out of the store.  Now, what to do with all those leftover yolks?

A couple of months ago I was at an urban homesteader potluck party thrown by Rachel of Dog Island Farm and met one of her regular guest bloggers, Jessa, the Sunday Recipe Gal.  She had brought lemon curd to the party and was joking that she needed to find something to do with 24 egg whites.  I laughed as I had brought an angel food cake to the party and needed to figure out what to do with all my leftover yolks.  This chance visit inspired me to turn my post-honeymoon yolks into lemon curd.

Because I’d never made it before, I began researching lemon curd like I do most things before I make them.  I look at some of my favorite food blogs and recipe websites, try to find articles about preserving the food, etc. Many of the recipes I found called for the whole egg, though I finally found a few, including the Food in Jars one I used that use just the yolks.  There also seems to be a lot of confusion about whether it’s safe to can curd because of the eggs and butter.  I finally found this article by a Food Safety Specialist claiming you can in fact process curd, though it doesn’t have the normal twelve-month shelf like you can expect from other items, more like two months.  This all jived with what our friends at Food in Jars claimed so I decided to go for it.

Then there was this little issue of lemons.  I had all the egg yolks I could ever need but the Food in Jars recipe, which I planned on quadrupling, called for three lemons.  Not a problem in California right?  Citrus hangs on trees year-round in nearly every  backyard in our neighborhood; heck, in our own backyard, we have 16 fruiting trees and vines.  Not a lemon to be found though.  Safeway had them for $1 a pop but I was not about to spend $12 in the aftermath of our pricey honeymoon just to keep from tossing my leftover yolks in the compost.

Someone had to have lemons.  I started out into the neighborhood to find someone who could help.  I ran into two neighbors who were able to contribute six lemons – only six more to go!  Another 15 minutes found another neighbor who generously climbed into his garden to rustle up the remaining fruits.  I skipped away promising delicious lemon curd over my shoulder.

The curd was really a breeze to make if you disregard the knuckles I nearly lost on the microplane grating the peel from the pith.   Even easier if you ignore the fact that I juiced the lemons after grating them wincing as the acid founds it’s way into my injured hands.

I quickly canned the curd (yes, quickly – it turns out I’m getting quite proficient at this preservation business!) and ran out the door to deliver a finished jar to the neighbors who had volunteered lemons.  There was enough left to serve atop the angel food cake for dessert that night, send a jar home with my friend and have a few left in our canning cabinet.

Nothing was wasted and even the leftover lemon rinds found a home in our compost pile, helping to heat it up.

After the stress of knowing our credit cards were nearly maximum capacity, it felt really great to know I could make use of what we had on hand and turn it into food and trade.   Our friends were blown away by both the angel food cake and the curd and a side bonus is that ever since I gave one of the neighbors a jar of lemon curd, she’s been stopping by a couple of times a week to leave her overdue produce for our chickens and ducks.  She also thinks I’m a master of the kitchen, noting that my lemon curd was better than Trader Joe’s, which I take as a compliment.  All in all I think we win.  Again.

What ways have you found to use what you have on hand to make something delicous and avoid a pricey trip the store?  I’d love to hear your ideas?

Farm help is hard to find these days

One of the biggest dilemmas for an urban farmer is how to properly care for your garden and animals when the demands of an urban lifestyle inevitably present themselves.  I’ve heard more than a few farmers, urban and rural alike, lament that they couldn’t take a proper vacation because no one else could possibly figure out  how to coax their persnickety goat into being milked, water their plants properly, perfectly lock up their various strangely rigged animal enclosures and the list goes on.

Part of if must come from our feeling that this monstrous responsibility of caring for plants and animals is our own self-imposed duty and no one else’s; and part of it could stem from the fact that we make the best of what we have and that isn’t always a perfect system.  For example, when someone comes over to take care of our ‘farm’ we have to explain that the drip irrigation only covers these plants and these others must be hand watered, the chicken coop door doesn’t close perfectly so we lean a big rock against the outside to keep predators out, the ducks like to go in about an hour after the chickens do and they must have food to eat the moment they come out in the morning or you (and the neighbors) will regret it.  This is all a lot to ask of someone who was hoping that house-sitting meant refreshing your parakeet’s water.

All of the complication aside, we’ve miraculously found neighbors and family members who are open to going through the crazy motions to keep our wacky ‘farm’ going when then urban lifestyle calls.  Between our recent wedding, the Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend Festival and our honeymoon, I find I’ve been explaining our complicated process ad nauseum to anyone who will volunteer to help out.

Our little "Skunkworks"

First was the wedding.  Because we were married locally we were really only away for the wedding night.  No big deal right?  My mom was in town and was happy to stay at the house to make sure the dog was okay and to let all the animals out in the morning.  We arrived outside our house the morning after to fine the entire neighborhood reeking of burned rubber, a sure sign of a skunk in our midst.  It was with extreme dismay, however, that we realized the skunkiest part of our entire neighborhood was actually INSIDE our house!  The dog had been sprayed.  Several baths later he was just as skunky as before with a hint of green tea layered on top.  We stopped short at bathing him in tomato juice – anyone who’s canned 100 lbs of tomatoes doesn’t take out-of-season tomato products lightly – and resolved ourselves to living with a smelly little dog, newly christened “Skunkworks” (or “Doggy Le Pieu”).    I might add that was three weeks and five baths ago and he’s still a tad on the skunky side.

FARMcurious booth at Sunset Magazine's Celebration Weekend

Next enter Sunset Magazine’s Celebration Weekend.  Because it was in Menlo Park, about 45 minutes away from us and because I’ve worked at events like this before and know how exhausting it can be to work a booth all day (especially the weekend after your wedding!), I had booked a hotel room for myself and my three trusty workers (including my new husband!) to stay Saturday night.  That meant there was yet another night for the farm to be cared for.  My amazing next-door neighbors said they’d be happy to care for the ducks and chickens while we were away and we dropped Skunkworks off at another friend’s house for safekeeping (I have to mention that friend tried fruitlessly to bathe him too!).

We let the fowl out of their enclosures earlier in the morning than usual on Saturday and headed off to Menlo Park for the weekend with the neighbors in charge.  We returned on Sunday evening and closed them all up for the night.  Monday morning around 6am Jared let the chickens out through the back door of their coop, but didn’t collect the eggs, meaning he didn’t open the front door of the coop.  Around 10am I went out to collect the eggs and make sure their food and water was full.  I opened the large front door of the chicken coop to find what appeared to be an enormous ferret curled up sleeping between the water dish and the laying boxes!!  (Side note: It didn’t make me long to realize it was an opossum but since I grew up with ferrets, that’s where my brain went – it’s actually a little shocking how similar they look when they’re curled up.

Oh! Possum!

I ran into the house, shouting for Jared to come out and see it, sure the little critter would run away as soon as it realized I was encroaching on his newly found straw bed.  Jared, who was halfway through a beard trim on his day off, faithfully threw on a robe like a champ and ran out to see what the commotion was.  I slowly swung the coop door open to show off my find.  Curled up in the straw, my little marsupial cared much more about getting his beauty rest than seeing what I was all about.  He raised his head long enough to show me he had some rather pointy teeth and clearly looked like he hoped I’d just go away.  I did – long enough to run inside for the camera!

Armed with my camera, I stood about 10 feet away and zoomed as closely as I could to get a good shot.  It didn’t seem clear enough so I slowly slunk closer and snapped some more shots.  My little friend barely seemed to notice, making me braver.  I moved closer and closer, snapping pictures until I was just a couple of feet away.  I did finally get more teeth baring but this opossum clearly wanted to be left alone much more than he wanted a run-in with me.

Wanna see my teeth, lady?

It was slowly dawning on me that this guy didn’t intend to go anywhere.  He’d found a nice warm bed with plenty of food and water nearby and was going to camp there until someone kicked him out.  As much as his little character was growing on me, I realized my first responsibility was to care for the domestic animals I had taken into my care – the chickens.  I assumed, and have since confirmed, that opossums are omnivores and wasn’t sure whether they would be a danger to the chicken or not.  This slow-moving sleepy head didn’t seem like much of a menace in the daytime but his teeth were roughly comparable to those of a dogs and I sure didn’t want to take any chances letting him get comfortable.  He had to be kicked out, but how?

After a few failed attempts at startling him out of the coop, I ended up going through the opposite end of the coop and pushing a nest box toward him until, cowering, he fell backwards out the door.  I felt horrible, but it had to be done.  The little guy then just hovered near the door, not sure where to go.  Jared and I ended up corralling him behind a pile of stacked wood, where he seemed to feel much safer.  He ended up camping there for the rest of the day.

The next day we were off on our honeymoon to leave the farm in yet another person’s care – Jared’s father.  A recovering farmer himself, he’s no stranger to the various and sundry needs of plants and animals.  That said, it would be dishonest of me to say we didn’t worry a tad.  With all the chores and rules, it would be very easy during the span of two weeks to forget to close up the birds one night, a guaranteed fatal error.  We were put at ease by the following email we received halfway through our trip:

“I hope Italy is as fun as it sounds and that you’re having a fantastic
time. Life here on the farm is good, the ducks are a bunch of absolute
brawlers, they remind me of English football hooligans. The chickens
on the other hand are very endearing and I’m growing to actually love
them; they’re quite affectionate, as you know.”

One of our gardens June 22, 2011

I couldn’t have put it better myself.  Where the ducks are quacky and loud and easily spooked, the chickens are docile and more likely to sit near you and coo.

All was well upon our return.  The garden was a monster, including such highlights as an eight-foot sunflower (Gigantus) and huge tomato plants.  There were some losses, naturally; the chickens learned to escape their run and feasted on all my cole crops.  I’m just not meant to grow broccoli as it turns out.  In fact, since we returned, Jared’s father has been talking about our ‘next’ house – something on good land with its own water source and an in-law unit, of course.  He returned to his own home reluctantly, but not until he has purchased a pair of finches at our local feed store.  I guess he was going to miss the responsibility.