Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Dear Farmers,

Today I write my last Farmer Ladybug post for the school year.  What a wonderful and unexpected journey we have had together!  I know and trust that your home gardens are growing well, that you've learned a little from me about what plants like and what our animal allies are telling us about our gardens.  I know for sure that if you keep gardening and keep your hands in the Earth, that the plants and animals will continue to teach you many things, just as they have taught me.

At dinner one night, Mosquito read a card that asked, "What can you do to help the Earth?"  And while we came up lots of answers the one that felt the best to me was - to just be with her and play with her.  I think that is true.  Mother Earth wants most of all for us to be outside and play with her.  I hope you get to do lots of that this summer.

I planted the corn at the garden today with Mr. Stagnaro, Ms. Naccarato and Ms. Eichhorn.  It was nice to work with friends again in the garden.  I taught them our verse, "One for the gopher, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow." We used the beautiful red corn you all collected from our fall harvest. Our corn seed has been passed down like that from class to class every year.  Next year's class will harvest the seeds from the seeds you collected, and pass them down too.

I continued to work after everyone had left.  The baby jays came out to see what I'd dug from the compost.  A baby crow begged for food while I worked.  I've been working alongside their parents all Spring.  You can see the Scrub Jay parent in my latest garden video and, if you're listening well, you can also hear the crying crow in the background.

Garden class 23 video- The Last Gardening Class

The chickens and bunnies will go to their new forever homes this week and I too, will not be returning to Monterey Bay Charter School as a garden teacher.  Not to worry. Like you, I will still be gardening at home and also will continue to teach many classes and lead camps in the community.  It's not hard to find me- just see the Contacts page.

A goodbye gift to you

I would like to gift you on your way into the world with the corn and fava bean seeds collected from the plants you grew this year.  If you would like me to mail or deliver you seeds for your home garden from the plants you grew in the school garden, please email me using the link on the Contacts page.  Be sure to include your address in the email. I will also include a special note just for you.

Happy Gardening, dear Farmers!  May you sow seeds and plant gardens wherever life takes you!


With great love,

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

We worked in the school garden today.  Farmer Hummingbird came with us to weedeat down all the grass, so if you pass by on one of your walks, you'll see it looks very different now.  Without weekly mowing, the grass had grown very thick.  He also took down the barley field. Cob-weaver and Mosquito saved some plump barley heads, but overall it was a poor crop.  While Farmer Hummingbird worked a mama Scrub Jay and her two babies followed closely behind, picking off any little critters left stranded.  The mama sat on the sundial- the spot I've seen her at for many of my visits- and the babies whined and begged and to their credit tried to forage on their own. It was a delight to watch them.  Crow came also and two Western Bluebirds.  Their was quite a feast in all that tall grass.  When we stood in the newly mowed barley field, we could see tiny spiders- little cob and funnel-weavers running in every direction, ladybugs too.  It was a sad sight, really.  The birds were going after snails and bigger prey.

The two big storms that moved through only added up to 0.44 inches of rain by our rain gauge, so we watered.  The fava bean crop is almost done, at least the one by the garden classroom.  The other one, over by the water tanks was slower because it is shaded all winter by the redwood.  Next Tuesday is s fruit day, so we'll remove the fava beans by the classroom and plant it with corn, squash and beans.

Fava beans are a delicious winter crop and they make the most succulent meal imaginable.  But, they are very difficult to prepare.  I only make it once or twice a season and I need lots of helping hands.  Here is may all time favorite fava bean dish.

Fava Bean Ragout

from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables.

3-4 lbs fava beans
1 large clove garlic
1 sprig rosemary
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
½ lemon
Gnocchi, cooked to package directions

Shell fava beans.  Bring pot of water to boil and add favas, simmer for 1 minute.  Drain and cool immediately with cold water. Pierce outer skin with thumbnail and squeeze each bean out of its skin. Chop garlic fine and strip rosemary leaves and chop fine.  Put fava beans in a pan with ½ water and ½ olive oil, enough to barely cover. Add garlic and rosemary, season with salt and pepper as desired. Bring to simmer, cover and cook until beans are tender, about 5 mins. Finish with a squeeze of lemon juice. Serve with gnocchi.

Farmer Ladybug🐞

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

We visited the school garden today and harvested lots of fava beans.  The fava beans are covered with aphids.  They are also covered with ladybugs.  Ladybugs, ladybugs, everywhere ladybugs.  Ladybug eggs, ladybug nymphs, ladybug chrysalis, and loads and loads of adults.  Did you know that ladybugs have 4 life stages?  They are like butterflies that way. Many insects do this, but butterflies get all the credit.  Can you recognize the ladybug in all her forms?  Mosquito took these photos for you.

Adult ladybug and aphids

Ladybug eggs on fava bean leaf

Ladybug nymph

Busy ladybugs

Beautiful ladybug with heart spots

When we came home we found that Cob-weaver's Underwing moth had hatched from its chrysalis.  We had buried the chrysalis in soil in a jar.  We let it go at dusk.

Farmer Ladybug🐞

Thursday, May 7, 2020

When I water the flower bed this morning, I notice an underwing moth crawling away.  It is big.  It is bigger than a quarter and very helpless in the cool of the early morning. It must have just emerged from its underground cocoon.  It finds a safer spot in the grass to warm up.  Like all moths, it flies at night.  I wonder what it eats?  This is the second underwing in two days.  The first we rescued from Bisbis. We put it in our insect cage for the day and let it go at dusk.

As we sit on our front porch for our morning snack, the two crows come and sit right above us on the roof.  The peek at us over the roofline with their heads upside down.  It looks very silly and makes us laugh. They are hoping for their share, I think.

It's a flower day, so we decide to plant the sunflower bed and record a video for Garden class 22.  We learned on Cob-weaver's Daisy journey that sunflowers and geraniums clean the soil of lead (thanks to Girl Scout troop leader and mom of LUDA).  I think we will grow more than usual this year.  I've also started some under the grow lights for the school garden's sunflower patch.

In garden class at school, this is the time of year where the students tell the stories.  They stand at the chalkboard and tell everyone what they have learned about their garden animal.  They tell us their animal super powers and also, what the farmer learns from them. I have three stories from you to share on my video today.  Thank you to Millipede (NAES), Scrub Jay (LUDA), and Rollie Pollie (EPMA) for your stories from the Garden class 20 assignment.  What are those letter codes with the animal names you ask?  Check out the Garden Animal Partner Puzzle here to find out who is telling these stories of their garden animals.  I look forward to sharing more of your stories about garden animals.  If you'd like me to read your story in my video, simply turn it on on Google classroom and give me your OK to read it.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

It has become a routine for us to have Sara out playing in the front yard while we enjoy the morning sun.  She stays very close by.  We never worry.  Even when I'm in the chicken yard, she is so constantly underfoot that I have to be careful not to step or trip over her.  If I am standing next to the hen house, she will get up higher so she can be at eye level with me.  It is both endearing and annoying.  What was funny today, was as we were basking about pulling weeds in the front yard, our neighbor who walks by daily with her old black lab, Samantha, was standing and staring.  It took me some time to notice.  She finally said, "Do you see something strange, Samantha?"  Samantha was staring intently at Sara, not blinking, with drool dripping out of her mouth.  She was as still as a statue.  It was then that it finally occurred to me how strange a sight it is to see a chicken freely walking around in a yard.  Samantha stayed staring and drooling for quite some time before her owner gently urged her on with her walk.

Crow has a partner.  There are now always two who come.

We finally got an egg from Popcorn today.  The first in two weeks.  I hope this means the comfrey is helping.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!

I have been really puzzled by the seedlings coming up in my big pot.  This is the pot I planted in the first video and showed again in the second.  It has yard soil in it. I suspected at first they were tomatillos.  But as they grew larger, I quickly realized I was wrong.  It is not like me to be so stumped by a seedling, especially one from my own yard.  What a mystery!  But this morning, my brain finally clicked. You know that feeling of a lightbulb going off?  That is what happened. And it is no wonder I didn't recognize this plant because I have not seen it as a seedling for 20 years!  It is cleome.  Lots and lots and lots of cleome seedlings are filling my pot and outcompeting everything else.  I still have my 2 wild lettuce and 2 chickweeds, but in this battle, its the cleome that is winning.  How did cleome get into this pot? 

Cleome is a beautiful ornamental, annual flower.  It has large, complex pink and white blossoms. In good conditions, with lots of rain, it can grow almost 10 feet tall.  It is not native to California and it does not grow here without lots of care and attention.  I don't really know how it is coming up in my pot.  I have a few hypotheses, but first need to tell you a bit of back story.

Cob-weaver is always collecting flower seeds. We carry around envelops in the car for this. When we go hiking in the fall, we come back with lots of seeds in our pockets. She collected cleome seeds almost 3 summers ago when we visited the grandparents in Maryland.  We tried to plant some last summer, but only a few came up under the grow light.  They were weak and spindly.  Most did not come up.  The ones that did flowered but they were tiny, under 6 inches tall. As is my usual practice, I dumped the old potting soil out from the seed pack and saved it for replanting something else. 

Hypotheses:

1. Could that soil have been dumped into the big pot and these are seeds sprouting from last year?
2. Did I dump out the rest of the cleome seeds from my stored envelope of seeds, thinking they were too old, into this pot, and forget about them? 
3. Did the cleome seeds mix with the marigold seeds that Cob-weaver collected at the same time, and when I dumped all the rest of the marigold seeds, I also unknowingly dumped in cleome seeds?  That would mean cleome seed is a lot hardier than marigold.
4. Do you have a hypothesis?

I love watching aphids almost as much as I love watching ants.  Ants are often with aphids and there is a good reason for this.  If you have aphids in your garden, I invite you to go and find out what the ants are doing with them.  You'll have to watch for a long time to figure out this puzzle.  I'll be writing about it soon here in my journal, but I wanted to give you a chance to discover it first on your own.  It's really cool, I promise.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Sunday, May 3, 2020

The corn and squash are up in the medicine wheel.  Today we planted the pole beans to climb the corn.  The poppies have germinated.  They are so tiny and delicate!  Their leaves are like fine hair.

Popcorn has been laying the bad eggs.  I thought it was Isabella, but for sure its Popcorn.  We have found broken yolk on her feet a few times.  Also, she is the only one who has white eggs.  White chickens lay white eggs.  We haven't had a white egg in a really long time.  When we do get a white egg, they are the biggest of all of the rest.  Popcorn is a Leghorn, I believe, which is the breed of chicken most used in egg laying operations.  They lay the most of any other breed.  Another thing about Popcorn... she is always STARVING in the morning.  She is the smallest, hungriest chicken of the flock.  She really is breaking a fast at breakfast, as if the long night sleep was a real hardship for her.  I think I was misled about the leathery eggs being hers because they are light brown instead of white.  I wonder if the hard white shell forms after the leathery one?

Because Ant wakes up first, he lets out the chickens.  I feed them after I get up. This morning before I gave them breakfast, I found all the chickens suspiciously gathered in a circle eating.   In my experience, that always means they are up to no good.  Our flock in Missouri did this once. I discovered that day that chickens are cannibals. They were all eating the rooster.  Yuck!   Luckily, no one was dead today- although that did cross my mind.  They were eating a leather egg laid on the ground.  Its not a good thing when chickens start eating eggs. The may turn around and eat them right after laying them, or you'll have a few bad apples in the flock that peck the eggs.  Once this bad habit is learned, its hard to break and can ruin a flock of good layers.  On a farm, the egg-peckers are the first to enter the soup pot.  But, this is not a farm and we are not dependent on the eggs to feed us. These are town chickens and pets.  We will have to outsmart them.  Even though chicken brains are notoriously tiny, outsmarting them is harder then you might think.

We have put Popcorn on a comfrey and eggshell diet.  The eggshells need to be ground fine so they don't look like eggs; otherwise, this just reinforces the egg pecking behavior.  We named Popcorn, "The Miracle" in the Cast of Characters.  Here is her story:

Popcorn's story

Popcorn was born 3 years ago in the Spring of 2017 in a class incubator.  What was so miraculous about Popcorn is that she came from store bought eggs.  Yes, that's right.  The 3rd grade teacher that year, Ms. G, walked into a grocery store and bought a dozen fertilized eggs.  She put them in an incubator and Popcorn, and only Popcorn hatched.  The other 11 eggs did not hatch.  That makes Popcorn a miracle to me.  It's also a miracle because she was supposed to be eaten and her life was spared. Yes, you can hatch fertilized grocery store bought eggs.  Make sure you read the date on the carton and get the freshest ones.  They will probably be Leghorns.  Because of Popcorn, I now love Leghorns.

Since Popcorn had no siblings, the teacher, Ms. G., went and bought another baby chick to be her sister.  That chick was Diamond, originally named Penny by the class.  So Popcorn and Diamond have been together since they were chicks.  They moved into the school chicken pen with Ol' Big Red and Speckles (both now deceased, RIP). They lived a pretty uneventful life- besides their wonderful luck of being school chickens.

Popcorn is tiny but mighty in the pecking order.  She is very bossy and picks on Sara relentlessly.  Although she is not the leader, she has also taken a pretty high position mixing into my flock.  She is not afraid of attacking anyone.   Only the home chickens Roxy and Penny are higher up in the pecking order than her.  She is also a very funny and has big, bulging eyes.  It makes you laugh to watch her and her floppy comb.  She loves cameras and is quite photogenic.  Maybe she has a future as movie star, who knows?

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Thursday, April 30, 2020

We now have a crow.  I know you can not claim a wild crow as your own.  It might be more accurate to say we belong to it. I'm sure we have had it for longer than I realized and it is only now making itself known to us.  How?  Because it is now talking to us.

This one crow was invisible to me because all crows look alike, but then it started doing something to be noticed.  It started barking.  Not really barking like a dog, but more like a chicken sound halfway between a chicken sneeze and bock- a single loud, short "BOCK" but with the accent of a crow.  I have never heard a crow do this.  After it barks, it sometimes caws.  In an earlier post, I told how crows come into the chicken yard in the morning when I let out the chickens, and come flying in anytime we call the chickens, but now because of that bark, I know it is around the house, nearby.  Anytime we walk out of the house, it flies over and lands near on the powerlines.  Now when I walk outside, I wait and look for it.  I cannot see it anywhere, but in a few seconds of me stepping outside, it comes flying.  It is watching us.

It is also watching our cat, Bisbis.  As I worked in the yard today, I heard the crow bark and then caw, caw, caw aggressively.  It then started swooping and cawing. I saw the cat slinking away, body low to the ground. She was complaining.... mrrrrowrowrowrow.... the way cats do when they talk to birds.  Good.  She must have done something to get on this crows bad side.  Its not hard to imagine what that was.  I often see her hiding in the chicken yard in the morning before I let them out trying to hunt. I don't want her hunting birds.   The crow also chases hawks away.  Most of our chickens are too big for a hawk.  All of them except Popcorn.  She would make a nice meal.

When I am weeding the crow comes down to the ground near me.  I threw it snails and other goodies I found. I am happy with our new friend.

The spittlebugs are finally out and everywhere.  They seemed to have emerged around the same time as the aphids.  The spittlebugs like my lavender plants and set up their homes of spit in the forks.  They surround and protect themselves with spit.  You can pick up these little spit balls and gently uncover the tiny bug inside.  Take care to cover them back up again when you put them back.  What a great strategy to keep a away predators. Sometimes when I want to be invisible, I feel like a spittlebug, except not all covered with spit.  I hide in my room instead or go for a walk alone or hide by being quiet.  Like to crow, we can also hide by looking like everyone else.

How do you make yourself invisible?

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Monday, April 27, 2020

Ever since the school chickens came to live with us, Coco has been complaining.  Our chicken yard is in the side yard of our house.  One gate leads to the front yard and one gate leads to the back yard.  Coco stands at the back yard gate, looks through the slats and yells. ALL.....DAY.....LONG.

"Braaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwk, braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwk, braaaaaaaahhhhhhaaaaaahhhhhwwwwk!!!!!!!!!"  

She starts yelling as soon as I open up the coop in the morning.  I say to her, "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh, quiet, shhhhhhhhhhhhh, Coco!  The neighbors!"  Sometimes I use the brush I clean the water containers with and sling it so it gives her a little spray of water.  That just gives me a few seconds of peace.

She is definitely complaining.  When we open the gate for her to come in the backyard, she just stands there and keeps yelling.  When we bring the young chickens out of the chicken yard and into the back yard, she stops screaming. She wants them gone and the chicken yard to herself.  When they are gone, she and Roxy lie around taking dust baths.  They look like they are at a dirt spa. Coco is our oldest chicken.  It's because of her that we have a chicken yard, a chicken coop, and her sister Roxy. So I guess she has a right to complain.

Coco's story

I don't know how old Coco is, but I think she is 7.  She's too old for laying eggs.  I think she lays once a month and only in the summer.  She is very beautiful, a Silver-laced Wyandotte like Diamond, but her toenails and feet are very ugly.  You may remember that I have been clipping her nails nightly after she goes to roost.  They are finally normal length, but they are still ugly.  I guess that is what happens to some old chickens.  She was raised from a chick with her sister-who-died, Rosie. Coco raised Roxy as her chick a year later.  They were not raised by me.   I came into their lives when Coco and Rosie were 3 and Roxy was 2 and their human mom needed to move.  She was moving to a very hot part of California, and also, could not have chickens where she was going. She needed to get rid of her coop too. She was a friend of a friend.  It seems where we live, everyone is either a friend, or a friend of a friend.  That is one of the things I love best about living here.  So Coco, Rosie and Roxy came to live with us, bringing their coop with them.  They had been lovingly hand-raised, so although not as friendly as Sara, were still used to people and don't mind too terribly being handled.  Since moving here, Coco's life has had its ups and downs.  Her beloved best friend and sister Rosie died 2 years ago of natural causes and she has put up many more chickens coming and going.  Her temperament is easy going.  She is tolerant of newcomers in that way. She has never aspired to the top of the pecking order and rarely chases or pecks anyone. But neither is she at the bottom of the pecking order.  I have not seen her be pecked.  That is why we gave her the nickname "Old Softie."  She is the kind, well-respected elder of the flock.  So I will try to be more like her, I think, and tolerant and understanding of her loud complaining. We will also give her some breaks for the youngsters when we can.  After all, she deserves it, right?

Garden Math: If Coco is 7, what year was she born?

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Thursday, April 23, 2020

They are gone. I have been waiting for them to leave.  I watch them every morning foraging with the chickens.  They act like chickens when they forage, scratching at the Earth, looking, scratching, looking, scratching. Every day their crowns get brighter yellow and the black outline around the yellow gets bolder and wider. Every day there are less of them until finally, three days ago, there were none.  I was waiting to be sure before I told you. What am I talking about you ask?  The last of the Golden-crowned Sparrows have left for their summer grounds in the North.  Its time to plant the garden.

As I mentioned in a previous journal page, our wintering White and Golden-crowned Sparrows quickly eat up any and all garden seedlings.  I like to have my winter garden planted and strong before they arrive and I wait to plant in the spring until after they have gone.  Luckily, in our area, we don't have to worry about frost, so late plantings are fine.  Even planting as late as June, we can have tomatoes in November and December.

Since the sparrows are gone, and the medicine wheel is ready: weeded, turned and full of compost, and the moon is in Aries, making it a fruit day, we decide to plant it with corn and squash and make another garden video.  We will also plant beans to climb the corn on the next fruit cycle of the moon.  I want the corn to start first so there is something for them to climb.

Garden class 21

In this 14 minute video, we check our plantings and I tell a true life story about ladybugs.  I want to hear your true life story about your garden animal. If you are having trouble finding your animal in nature, use the labels in this journal to find what I have written about them.  In my next video, with your permission, I will share your story with everyone.  If you already have sent me a story, I invite you to write a ninja story, like the one I told about Jaraiya and Princess Tsunade (story told in Garden class 20, video 1, see assignment 5).  They were ninjas who used their animal superpower to transfigure or shapeshift.  The only catch is that your ninja powers must come from your garden animal, ones they already possess in real life.  Lastly, I am working on a puzzle for you to find out your garden animal partner, the other person that shares your animal.  For deeper learning about the teachings in this video, see the I Wonder Questions page.

Enjoy!

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Happy Earth Day!  How do you celebrate the Earth?  I tell Mosquito and Cob-weaver that everyday is Earth Day and we celebrate her by listening.  Remember our story about listening to the plants?

Today, we are listening to flies.  Lots and lots and lots and lots of flies.  Flies of all sizes, shapes and colors, inside the house, and outside, everywhere flies.  Why?  Because chickens and flies go together like mustard and ketchup.  Remember this before you get your own chickens. Flies love poop and chickens, especially 8 chickens, poop A LOT.  Flies do us a great service in that way, cleaning poop, and dead and rotting things. Someone has to. On hot days like today, they are everywhere.  We are trying to clean the poop before the flies lay eggs in them.  We are raking, we are mulching, we are cleaning the coop daily... and still flies.  Our house is like that character in Charlie Brown, Pig Pen, next to all our neighbors.  I tell myself these adult flies are from eggs hatched before we were cleaning the chicken yard daily and that no new fly eggs are hatching.  I hope that is true.  I wonder how long an adult fly lives?

Mosquito and Cob-weaver are fly experts.  This is not the first time we've had lots of flies. We've had our home chickens for quite some time.  They have discovered at least 5 kinds and given them names.  There are the barn or manure flies I wrote about before, which are tiny and fly in circles in still areas, like inside the house, at the front door and the back door.  There are also greenies, blueies, zebras, and mini zebras.  The thorax of a fly is beautifully iridescent, a color hard to describe and hard to capture in a drawing.  We found a that Crazy Aaron's Super Fly and Super Scarab Thinking Putty matches their amazing colors.  Zebra and Blueies are the biggest.  Their buzzing flight is louder than a bee.  Mosquito and Cob-weaver know the flies so well because they've been catching them for years.  They make frozen treats for the chickens with them and put them in observation jars among other things.  They have nets but now can catch them by hand.  In the last year they've begun marking their backs with our queen pen.  This is a special red pen used to mark the queen bee in the bee hive to make her easier to find. They put red dots on the flies backs and then let them go.  We often find red-dotted flies around.  From this evidence, we can tell that adult flies live for quite some time- at least a month or more.  Although we aren't doing this scientifically, scientists often use this technique to study animal populations.  It's called mark-recapture.  I used it when I was a scientist banding song birds and tagging monarch butterflies.  Using mark-recapture you can find out how old an animal is, it territory or migration path, how long it stays in an area, how much it eats, and many other interesting things.

Flies have incredible eyesight and because of their metabolism, or the rhythm of their bodies, they live in accelerated time, or hyper-motion compared to us. This is why its so hard to catch them.  Our movements are in slow motion. We move like slugs from their viewpoint.  Their eyes can see in all directions using a greater color spectrum, including heat-sensing and from multiple vantage points. By the time we even think to start moving to swat them, they are gone.  Now that is what I call a super power!

Garden Math:  Chickens poop, like all birds, is a mixture of poop and pee, called urea.  Because they are birds, their bodies are designed to move waste very quickly through their digestive tract to make them lighter for flight.  Conservatively, a chicken will poop 10 times a day.  I have 8 chickens, each pooping 10 times a day.  How many total chicken poops do I need to clean each day?

Mosquito and Cob-weaver still want to have a party for Earth Day, so we bring our sleeping bags to the trampoline and watch the bats and stars come out.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Monday, April 20, 2020

Cob-weaver came in the house, saying "Come quick, there is a big circle of crows in the sky!"  We all went outside and high, high in the sky were about 100 or more black dots.  Mosquito said, "Those aren't crows, they're ravens!"  And it was true.  High, high in the sky circling were over 100 ravens, cawing and spinning.  They call the formation they were in a kettle because it looks like a kettle of boiling water in the sky.   In the case of birds, mostly raptors, it can be used as a verb, as in "They are kettling," which is what I said.  When raptors kettle they are using thermals to move over long distances, typically during migration.  Vultures and condors will kettle over a carcass, but when you see large numbers, it is definitely during migration.  The ravens were using a thermal to move to a higher elevation, then moving out of the thermal and gliding over to the next one.  This saves flight energy.  Our ravens flew off to the east.  Maybe they will settle down in Salinas farms for the summer.

We do see an occasional raven over our house, but they don't live here.  Their close cousins, crows, live here in abundance.  They are the morning chorus, and our evening lullaby.  They live in our yard with our chickens. They sometimes act like chickens.  They come too when I call the chickens.  They also tell me what is happening outside.  I know when there is a hawk nearby and when its time to put up the chickens for the night.  They live together in families, helping and protecting each other, also arguing a lot with each other and with outsiders. I know they recognize me, even if I cannot tell them apart.

Garden math: Try to estimate the total number of individuals in a flock of birds by just looking at it.  Scientists often use estimates like this for counting large numbers of things, but if you want to use it in science you need to be accurate.  That takes practice.  You can estimate the number of insects in an area, or the number of seeds in a seed pack.  Check after by actually counting them to see if your estimate was close, or better yet, right on target.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Some days Founds and Mackenzie dig really big holes and run all around the chicken yard and some days they do nothing at all.  They are hard to catch and can hide in small spaces. They dig on sunny days and stay indoors in the fog.  They like fresh grass, but in general are pretty shy.  They let you pet them if they are really hungry and you are holding their food.  Mackenzie digs more and is more active and more hungry than Founds.  They both like to be out at night, and are outside when I come to close up their pen for the evening. They are super soft to pet.

My gardening gloves got wet in the rain. I hung them on the top of garden fence by putting them over the rebar fence stake. The rebar stuck up through the middle finger.  They were like that all week.  When I went to put them on, slipping my hands inside, they rained down earwigs, baby earwigs. We call these pincer bugs in our home because of the big pincer-like back ends. I shook them out and was amazed as hundreds poured out onto the ground.  Before shaking any more, I took my gloves to the chicken yard.  What a wonderful snug home my gloves had made for all of those earwigs, hundreds and hundreds of earwigs.  It took me quite a while to shake them all out.  The chickens were most helpful and excited.  Earwigs do really well in our area, and if you are not careful, in large numbers, can do damage to a young garden.  They like to live in and under things, in the dark, and under garden litter, so I keep my garden free of wood, pots, stones, bricks and I rake out the rows between plants.  I use oyster and abalone shells in my paths and around new plantings because earwigs, rollie pollies, slugs and snails won't cross the sharp shells.  In other parts of the country, I would routinely mulch my paths with plant material, or use wood, bricks and stones to line my beds, but not here, not in earwig country.

Tonight was soup night. I made black bean soup using the bone broth from the rack of lamb from Tuesday night's dinner.  Bone both not only gives the soup lots of healthy vitamins and minerals, but also gives the soup richness and umami.  You can make bone broth from any bones.  It's easy to do, but it takes a while and is smelly.  After Tuesday meat night, it takes 2 days for me to make bone broth for Thursday's soup night.  We have to close off the kitchen at night so the smell doesn't fill the house.

Bone broth

1. Collect bones after eating and extra bits of meat and fat in a large pot or crock pot and cover with water.
2. Add a few tablespoons apple cider vinegar.  The vinegar helps to break down the bones, and release the collagen.  Any acid will work.
3. You can add onions, salt, garlic or other spices here if you like.  I leave mine plain.
4. Bring to a boil, then simmer 6-8 hours or overnight.
5. Add more water as needed
6. When the bones are soft, crush them with a potato masher.  Chicken bones soften quicker than beef or lamb.  I find I need to cool and then crush the larger bones by hand before returning to the pot.
7. Simmer for several more hours.  I simmer my broth for days, but some people make theirs in one day.  I have heard also some people who have a pot always simmering on the back of their stove to add bones to as they get them and to use as stock base for all of their savory dishes requiring water, like rice, soups, and mashed potatoes.
8. Strain while hot; otherwise the collagen can get strained out when it cools.
9. Freeze in ice cube trays and store in the freezer.  Using ice cube trays, you can easily add 2 tbsp of frozen, concentrated bone broth to any dish. Because they are concentrated, these cubes need not make up your entire stock, but just your stock base.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

We went to the school garden today and checked the rain gauge.  It read 3.0 inches from the last big rainfall.  We watered deeply and harvested mustard greens and artichokes.  The fava beans are taller than me, but only gave us a handful of beans.  I sing "Inch by inch, row by row," as I work.  If I don't, I don't know where to begin.  Sometimes its helpful to sing a song when you have a really big job to do.  As I work, I hold in my mind a picture of the fall garden, not all the grass taking over.

I made mustard greens, southern style and artichokes with rack of lamb for dinner.  It was delicious. I also made mustard greens, middle eastern style.  That one will be ready in a few days.  I have lots of school garden mustard greens to share.  Would you like to schedule a pick up at the school garden some Tuesday afternoon?

Southern style mustard greens

Ingredients
• 2-3 bunches Mustard Greens, about 2 lbs.
• ¼ lb Bacon, Ham, Hog Jowl, or seasoning meat of choice (I skipped the meat)
• 1 Onion, small
• 1 teaspoon Sugar
• 2 ½ cups Water
• Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Wash greens in cold water, 2 to 3 times, as needed, to remove any dirt, sand or bugs.
2. Adding salt to your water will kill any bugs that might be attached to the greens.
3. Remove any large tough stems from the greens and discard. Drain
4. Place greens in a large pot over medium heat on your stove top.
5. Add one cup water.
6. Continue to add greens as they cook down, until all greens are in the pot.
7. Add sugar.
8. Cook greens, stirring often, for about 20-30 minutes.
9. Drain greens in a colander to remove water.
10. Dice the seasoning meat into about ½ inch cubes.
11. Chop the onion into small pieces.
12. Place a large skillet over medium heat on your stove top. Add the seasoning meat.
13. Fry meat until lightly browned.
14. Add the chopped onion to the skillet. Sauté until soft and tender.
15. Add drained greens to skillet.
16. Add 1½ cups water.
17. Cover skillet. Reduce heat slightly and let simmer for 10 minutes.
18. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir well to combine.
19. Cover skillet. Simmer greens for about 20 more minutes on Medium-Low heat until greens are tender.
20. Serve warm and Enjoy.

Hebron Yogurt with Mustard Greens

Makes a great, spicy side for rice dishes or part of an antipasto plate.

• Wash 1 bunch of mustard greens with salt water, drain and roughly chop, removing course stems. 
•  Sprinkle with more salt and rest for about 10-20 minutes to sweat/draw out the water.  
• Squeeze by the handful to remove as much water as you can and 
• mix with 2 cups whole milk plain yogurt.  
• Place in jar and refrigerate for at least 2 days before serving. 

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Monday, April 13, 2020

My sourdough starter overflowed pushing up the lid of its tiny crock and bumbling and spilling down the sides.  I'd overfilled it. It's nice and healthy now, and strong enough to put in the refrigerator, so I only need to feed it once per week.  Sourdough is not as hard as most people make it out to be.  In fact, its really easy.  I figure if the California gold miners made it in the dirty conditions they lived in, basically camping in pop-up cities of 10's of 1000's of people, I can handle it too.

Mosquito likes weeding with Sara.  She pulls the plants and Sara searches the roots for goodies, like grubs and bugs.  They work together every day.

There is no hay for the rabbit litter or the hen house, but luckily my neighbor, Farmer Hummingbird just rebuild his fence.  He has given me 2 huge garbage bags of redwood flakes. They are fine and dark reddish brown.  Wood is not my preferred bedding because it contains so much lignin and cellulose, woven together in a tough carbon matrix that make tree trunks, houses and fences so strong.  It doesn't break down quickly enough in the garden to be used by plants and can even smother and kill them.  It is indigestible to most animals (termites can handle it) and plants and needs strong helpers like fungi to decompose it.  That means the rabbit's dirty litter has to sit for much longer before its usable by the plants.  Still, I am grateful for these beautiful flakes.  They make for a pretty hen coop.

We now have 3 bees hives in the yard.  Mosquito and Cob-weaver are not happy.  They say the bumblebees are gone now.  As I was taking out the compost, I saw the strangest interaction: a honeybee and a bumblebee face off.  They were flying face to face, little legs outstretched offensively circling.  They were so absorbed in their battle, they didn't seem to notice me. Finally they came together, grappling and tumbling to the ground, rolling and disappearing into the grass.  I tried to part the grass to find them, but ended up disturbing the battle.  They both flew off in different directions.  I wonder who has a more powerful sting?  I know that both kinds of stings can kill their insect predators, like preying mantids.  I also know that honeybees only have 1 sting in their ammunition, then they die.  They use this sacrifice judiciously  I like to believe honeybees only use their sting if they feel they have to for the protection of their hive.  Still, honeybees are European, non-native interlopers.  The gentle bumblebees were here first.

I've been putting cleaned, crushed egg shells out for the chickens and seem to have solved the alligator egg problem.  We finally decided they were coming from Isabella because of their color. Isabella pecks me gently on the back of my legs every morning.  She is a sweet chicken.  This is her story, as best as I know it.

Isabella's Story

I know very little about Isabella.  I do not know when she was born. I cannot tell what breed she is. She came to the school midway through the fall last year, just after our school chicken Speckles died.  A girl in 5th grade came in carrying her and said, "Please take my hen, Speckles. She is the last one left of our flock.  The raccoons have eaten all of them.  They come into our yard night and day.  We cannot keep her safe."   And, so, we adopted her and she moved in with Popcorn and Diamond (Penny).  I have never heard of raccoons coming out in the daytime to eat chickens.  I often think how terrible it must have been for Isabella to live through that, and how wily and smart she must be to have escaped.

What breed do you think Isabella is?  Find her picture on the Cast of Characters page.

Farmer Ladybug🐞

Friday, April 10, 2020

While we were doing our afternoon lesson, Mosquito saw a swarm.  It was surrounding our tiny house.  I ran out the front door to see it better.  There's nothing so wonderful as standing in the middle of a swarm of bees.  It's like standing in a hurricane, only safer.  Swarming bees are not protecting anything, so they don't sting.  They are only interested in staying with their queen. I also have the special ability to not get stung by bees, even though for the last 20 years we've always had bees nearby.  When you stand in a swarm, you can feel the wind of all of their tiny bodies, thousands of bees swirling and whirling.  The buzzing sound vibrates you.  And as quick as it forms, it is gone.  If you aren't watching for it, you wouldn't see it happen.  My neighbor across the street was weeding, his back turned to me.  He never saw it.  The bees moved into our backyard, into an open super.  We are happy to give them a home.

In the morning, I worked more on the new sundial medicine wheel garden.  I finished weeding and then moved onto the dirty work: compost.  We have two composters.  One is supposed to sit and break down while the other gets filled.  When one gets filled after 3-6 months, we empty the finished one into the garden beds.  Somehow, this time, there was confusion about which one to add to, so it turned out that both had raw compost. That was why the work is dirty.  Raw compost stinks and the smell gets into your skin.  It takes many, many washings to remove.  Also, its wet, gloppy, sticky and hard to spread. You also cannot spread it on top of your garden, not only because it stinks, but it can attract unwanted visitors, like rats and possum, but it will burn your plants.  You have to bury it.  To make it easier to work with, I decide to make compost tea.  I empty the composter into a wheelbarrow, add water and mix.  It's like a witches brew, stirring it with my shovel, and the smell!  Mosquito and Cob-weaver don't come near.  They stay indoors and close all the windows to the house.  After mixing all the composts chunks into a tea to make a slurry, I pour this over the new bed, then turn it in.  I then take the wheelbarrow to the vegetable garden and side dress all of the rows.  While I work, a looper moth lands on my leg.  She stays with me the whole time I work in the garden.  After, I have to change my clothes. Cob-weaver comes outside to take care of the looper moth.  Then I scrub and scrub my hands and shower.  I use a wonderful lemon sugar scrub Mosquito made for me in last year's gardening class.  It leaves my hands and arms soft and clean.  Still it takes the rest of the day for Cob-weaver to come close to me.  The smell finally left after I washed the dinner dishes. When I walked outside in the setting sun, the whole yard smelled like a cow pasture, fresh and fertile.

As I work, I see lots of animals.  Bisbis has caught another gopher from the garden.  This was the one that had been eating my parsley.  Skipper butterflies dance together on the grass.  One sits on the ground, flapping, while the other flips and spins and performs above it.  We have several kinds of skippers that use our lawn.  These are woodland skippers.  I dig up a Jerusalem cricket.  I carry him gently and bury him in another part of the yard.  Cabbage-white and Painted Lady butterfly float by.  And, then there are ladybugs.  Lots and lots of ladybugs.

Chard seedlings are growing from the plantings I did last week.  And there a lots and lots of seedlings starting in the big pot that I planted in garden video.  This is the one I put the entire pack of marigold seeds in.  I am not sure I have any marigolds at all, but for sure there are other plants coming up.  I can tell because the seedlings look a little bit different from one another.  I did use old soil for this pot, some of it dug from the yard. By watching the seedlings grow, I will learn to recognize them.

Lemon Sugar hand scrub

1/4 cup coconut oil
1 cup white sugar
juice of 1 lemon
lemon zest (optional)
Note: you can also use lemon essential oil in the place of lemon juice, or other essential oils, like lavender.  I always like adding the real product to my scrubs, like dried lavendar or lemon peel.

1. Melt the coconut oil.
2. Add the sugar. Mix.
3. Add the lemon and lemon zest.
4. Pour into a jar with a top and let cool.
5. To use, after washing with soap, get a teaspoon to a tablespoon of scrub and work it into your skin for as long as you like.  Rinse off.

Farmer Ladybug🐞

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

A wonderful way to celebrate Spring is to make a Spring basket.  Try this as an optional assignment for gardening class.  A Spring basket makes a beautiful nature table decoration and a nice place for your decorated eggs.

Assignment 4 (optional): Make a Spring basket

Find a plastic container that fits into your Easter basket.  You can also use a plastic bag.  Poke holes in the container or bag and fill with potting soil.  Alternatively, you can fill an egg carton with soil in place of your Easter basket.  Seed the soil with a whole grain, grass seed, or sprouts.  Wheat berries are wonderful, but you can also use rice, millet, corn or sprouts, like alfalfa, lentil, mustard seed, chia, or sunflower.  Put in a single thick layer on top of the soil, then dust with a light blanket of soil over top. Set your seeds in a sunny location and water daily.  Mist gently. Do not flood.  You will have a nice green basket in time for Easter.  Here are pictures of the ones Cob-weaver and Mosquito started a week ago using wheat berries. 

Ant brought home some honeybees and more bins of wild honey and comb.  They were living in the walls of a house in Salinas.  He says they are the nicest bees he has ever met and they don't sting.  He is trying to get us to keep them.  We will see....  He has finished cleaning and jarring all of the eucalyptus honey from the last job and just in time because we have this new honey to strain.  I wonder what it will taste like.

Tonight I made soymilk.  I've been working on it since yesterday, since the beans need overnight soaking.  It's easy to make.

Soymilk

adapted from The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook

1. Soak 1 part of soybeans overnight in water.  
2. Drain and grind the beans in a hand grinder (this way releases more protein), or add 2 parts water and blend.  If using the hand grind, you can add up to 13 parts of water.  
3. Put the slurry in a pot or double broiler and bring to a boil, making sure to watch carefully, as it will scald and boil over if you are not careful.  Once to a boil, then low boil for 20 minutes, keeping watch so it doesn't scald.  
4. To strain, pour over a colander lined with cloth.  Twist the cloth, or press with a spoon to squeeze out excess milk.  Rinse the pulp with water and squeeze again to strain out more milk.
5. Cool and store in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.  
6. Soymilk is not naturally sweet like animal milk, so you may like to add a sweetener, or vanilla, cocoa or salt. 
7. The leftover soy pulp still contains a lot of protein.  You can use it to replace rice in your recipes or in baked goods.  You must cook it longer, like you would brown rice, to make it digestible.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

The spring storms did bring a new migratory bird to the yard, one of the most special kind, Selasphorus hummingbird!  We call them Selasi's. Several were using our bottlebrush and Echium flowers all day.  They were hungry!  There are two species of Selasphorus, and they are almost identical. It's hard to tell them apart even when you hold them (which I have been lucky enough to do, since I spent many, many, years banding birds before I was Farmer Ladybug).  The two species are Allen's and Rufous.  The Allen's spend their summer here, but Rufous flies inland off of the coastal highway to breed where it it warmer.  Many Rufous will spend some of the spring on the coast to refuel before moving inland. Both are bright orange and in certain light can look golden. The male's and older female's have a gorget (throat patch) that is ruby red.  They are smaller than Anna's hummingbird, our year-round resident hummingbird, and their wing whirr sounds like an insect buzzing- bzzzzzzzz.  You can usually hear that high pitch buzzing before you see them, if you spot them at all.

Not all of our winter birds are gone. There are still quite a few Golden-crowned Sparrows hopping around the chicken yard, acting like chickens. They, along with their cousins, the White-crowned Sparrows, who flock alongside in winter, will eventually fly to Canada and Alaska to breed.  I used to have these two on my garden animal list because they can make winter gardening very difficult.  They travel in big packs and eat all the seeds and emerging seedlings.  There are a lot in our winter garden at school.  I cover our winter beds with chicken wire to keep protect our seedlings from these large mixed flocks of sparrows. Sparrows aren't really noticed much though because they are brown and hide in the bushes, so students had a hard time talking about them in the Spring.  They also leave pretty quickly at class time with so much activity and loud voices around.

In the spring of Cob-weaver's 3rd year, when I told her our sparrow friends would leave for the summer, she cried and cried and was inconsolable for days.  Mosquito did the same when she found out for the first time, at about the same age, that the monarchs would leave.  We do miss our winter garden friends, but also can look forward to their return in the fall.  But, that is a hard thing to understand when you are only 3.

We harvested our first home fava beans today.  They are ahead of the school garden beans because they were planted lazy-style, that is, by themselves, so they came up earlier.  We had only 10, so I added them to our dinner, which was a Southern-Middle Eastern mash-up, chicken and biscuits.  The chicken was spiced Middle Eastern style, from Ant's side of the family, and chicken and biscuits are definitely Southern, from my side.  When I was making the biscuits, I realized I had no milk, so I quickly whipped up some oat milk.  There are many ways to make oat milk.  This style is last-minute, lazy.

Oat milk

1 part whole oats
2 parts water
1 date or handful of raisins (optional)

Blend not more than 30 seconds.  Strain through cloth, or if in a hurry, use without straining.  You can eat the solids, ferment them or add them to pancakes, breads, or other baked goods.

Garden math: If I used 1 cup (1 part) of oats to make oat milk and I need 2 times (2 parts) the amount of water for the recipe, how much water do I use?

Farmer Ladybug🐞

Monday, April 6, 2020

In the morning, Sara was cooing in the dog kennel.  I removed the blanket I had put over the top, said "good morning," and went to make coffee in the kitchen.  Then, at the top of her voice, she started singing what we call the "egg song."  It's that loud rhythmic hen song that all the hens sing to announce to the whole world that they are going to go and lay an egg.  It echoed and bounced all throughout our tiny, sleeping house.  Since Cob-weaver and Mosquito were still sleeping and I still hadn't had my coffee, I quickly carried Sara in her kennel out to the chicken yard and let her out.  When I came back in the house, Cob-weaver was awake and rubbing her eyes.

Ant wakes up really, really early.  He has farmer's hours, but with no farm to tend to, so at 4:30 am, he goes outside to listen to the world waking up.  He told us that he heard lots and lots of birds chirping, tweeting, and pipping high in the sky. Swallows, especially.  It's spring migration and we are right on the Pacific flyway.  This is the major bird super highway that follows the coastline.  During migration, birds use the strong storm winds to help push them over large distances and in spring, everyone is going north. They usually come in waves in front of storms.  In between storms, there can be fall-outs, where they literally fall out of the sky, land and refuel.  When you are in the middle of a fall-out, the trees are dripping with birds, a lot of them are warblers, tanagers and orioles, the dazzling and bejeweled ones.  It's a good time to year to look for fall-outs.

Cob-weaver's caterpillar has made a cocoon.  It's a moth, for sure.  She was right, as always, it's not a cabbage-white butterfly.

Sunday, April 5, 2020

There was a big, reddish brown millipede curled under the bunny litter box this morning. I left it alone. Do you remember the story about millipede?

So much rain today!  About dinner time, Ant came in and said, "you have to do something about Sara, she's soaking wet."  Cob-weaver and Mosquito chimed in, "help her, please help her, she doesn't know how to stay out of the rain."  I said, "she's fine, she has been in rain before and lived.  Remember all the rain we had last week?" But Ant insisted, and so did Cob-weaver and Mosquito, so I went out in the rain and got out an old dog carrier from the shed, cleaned and dried it and put fresh newspaper and an old flannel sheet inside.  Meanwhile, Cob-weaver had separated Sara and was making her stand under the eaves of the house because as she said, "she doesn't know to stand under cover in the rain."  She was indeed soaking wet. I also noticed that the other younger chickens, Lula and Penny, were pretty wet, but no one was worried about them. So, we put Sara inside the kennel and I carried her in the house and put her next to the heater.  And she got to sleep in a house once again.

Sara's story

All of us have a story and all of our lives are interesting.  This is Sara's story, as best as I know it.  Sara was hatched May 28, 2018 with 6 other eggs in a classroom incubator.  Ms. Anjo*, the teacher, got the eggs from a friend of hers.  The class lovingly raised all 7 chicks, but Ms. Anjo loved them most of all.  She earnestly cared for them, taking them home every night, on weekends and over the long summer break. All the chicks were given names, of course, but as they grew older, it become apparent that only one was a hen, and only one could be kept.  That one was Sara.  You can still see a picture of Ms. Anjo and Sara together in last year's yearbook.

Baby Sara

Sara having storytime with Ms. Anjo

Over summer break, Ms Anjo with the help of friends and parents bought, delivered and built a coop for Sara and moved her outside into the garden.  The coop is palatial compared to the one already in the garden, which already was home to 3 other hens.  Why did Sara get her own coop?  Well, because Ms. Anjo thought she would have more than just one hen and then when it was apparent there would be only one hen, Ms. Anjo didn't want Sara to be pecked by the other hens already in the garden. Besides, she'd already built the second coop.

So there Sara lived in the new coop, all alone, until Spring, when she started showing signs of being broody.  The students could no longer gather her eggs, so we decided to let her raise her own chicks.  I got 6 fertilized eggs from a friend and Sara brooded them.  Did you know only fertilized eggs can hatch? She sat and sat.  She was so protective.  You would not even recognize her, her personality changed so much. One egg disappeared. We didn't understand, until much later the fierce battles Sara was having at night to keep her eggs protected. For 21 days exactly she sat and just after Easter, the 5 remaining eggs hatched.  There were five fluffy baby chicks! Sara was a good mother and really fierce.  Only Ms. Anjo and I could go into the pen to feed them.  Not because she liked us or let us, but because we could withstand her blows and attacks.  We noticed rat droppings in the coop, and then for the first time I looked at that coop and understood her fierceness.  Ms. Anjo and I quickly got to work adding finer gauge chicken wire all over the roof and adding a door to the coop to close each night.  We also added wire to the steep, steep ladder, so the chicks could easily walk it.  So Sara and her chicks were safe and she raised them well.  The garden students voted and named them Jack, Mango, Moonlight, Skittles and Experiment #1.  Here is our garden chalkboard from that vote:

Broody Sara

At the end of the school year, Mosquito, Cob-weaver and I took the chicks back to the farm where their birth mothers and father lived and Sara was once again left alone.  Then Ms. Anjo moved to the big city.  She wanted more than anything to take Sara too, but she could not move her into an apartment, so she left her in my care.

Now Sara's story continues here, at my house, where she is learning finally to be a part of a pecking order.  She continues to have new experiences, like walking around the neighborhood and sleeping in my house.  The rest of the story, you can read here.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞


*my new codes to puzzle out.  I will be sending out a puzzle soon on the Garden math page with more decoding for you.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

This morning when cleaning the chicken coop I found fresh blood and another crocodile egg.  They were in different parts of the coop, so I don't think their appearance was related.  The egg was older too, with all the insides eaten.  I know there are no crocodiles, alligators, turtles or snakes in the coop.  The egg is definitely from a chicken.

I ground up finely the 12 washed egg shells I'd collected over the course of the week and put them out for the chickens.  They gobbled them up.

We notice our cat, Bisbis, hunting in the garden. She pounced and ran off with a gopher.  She spends the day snacking on it.

I spent the rest of the morning drawing in my journal the possible cabbage-white butterfly caterpillar we found yesterday.  Here it is:

I then decided to pick out new seeds to plant for the next video.  Mosquito picked poppy seeds. These come from a seed pack, but you can also plant poppy seeds from your spice drawer, or other seeds like coriander (cilantro), cumin, fennel, sesame seeds, whole pepper, and so on.

We have been borrowing a dissecting microscope from our biology teacher neighbor for at least 6 months for Mosquito's botany lessons.  It's so cool to look at the seeds close up.   Poppy seeds are so tiny!  We measured them, 1 mm X 1 mm.  Their seed coats look super strong though.  Here is the poppy seed, and here also is the marigold seeds I drew on March 25th in my journal.

Garden math: Using a ruler, find the measurement for 1 millimeter (mm).

Mistakes are great for new discoveries. After my failed marigold seed germination, I am still led to wonder and learn more about about ancient seeds and to share what I've found with you.  I remember a story of some being recovered from clay pots that had been stored underground by ancient people.  I found a few more articles:

• After sitting in a clay pot for 850 years, ancient squash seeds are bearing fruit. In 2008, archaeologists uncovered a sculpted clay ball used to store seeds at a dig site on the Menominee reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Within this seed ball, seeds from a previously unknown variety of squash were found. Squash-growing pioneers successfully germinated these ancient seeds and produced the first Gete-okosomin squash crop in centuries. The seeds of this squash are now being distributed to indigenous communities throughout North America. Source
• I found the story about the buried seeds that I remembered.  They are 10,000 year-old squash seeds that were buried under a floor in Peru.  These seeds were not viable though, but its still a cool story.  Archaeology magazine

After lunch I weeded some more and mowed the back yard, putting all the yard waste in with the chickens. It's good to mow right before it rains. 

We have caught some bees.  They are not in the supers that we baited though.  They moved into our fairy house.  We call it our fairy house, but it is actually an cute piece of yard art shaped like a house the size of Cob-weaver that Ant removed from someone else's house because it was full of bees. Even though he removed the bees inside, and blocked the holes and cracks, it still smells of old comb and safety.  After sitting in our yard, new holes have formed and now it is once again a bee home.

While I was working our backyard neighbor brings by a gift of toilet paper. Another friend walking by told me our bunnies were a breed called English Spot.

Also while I was working, Mosquito and Cob-weaver decide to take Sara for a walk.  She follows them like a dog, but like a good dog who walks with their owner off leash.  They take her for a walk in the street. Maybe they'll have to start carrying poo bags for her.

In the evening, I set up a plant nursery under my indoor grow light.  I start seeds at my house instead of the greenhouse at school so I take care of them daily.  I planted basil, catnip, kale, chard, spaghetti squash, leeks, cilantro, sweet pea, more marigolds, and yarrow.  Maybe tomorrow I will draw the seeds in my journal.

After dinner, a former farmer, now in 4th grade, writes me to see if I know where to find seeds.  I have heard that stores are empty of gardening supplies.  I think everyone is cooking, baking and gardening just like we are.  I have lots of garden seeds donated generously by Botanical Interests Seed company to our school garden.  As we've learned, seeds don't last long, so I tell her I will bring her some.  So I offer to you the same, what would you like to plant? 

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

Friday, April 3, 2020

Coco is so loud!  Every morning she comes out and bock bock bock bock bock bock bock.  What is she talking about?

Cob-weaver and I made berry muffins again this morning. This time we used baking powder and baking soda.  They were much yummier.

Mosquito and Cob-weaver raked the chicken yard.

For lunch we made spring greens soup.  I love soup.  It's on my menu for Thursday nights, but last night Mosquito and Cob-weaver groaned so much, I gave in and Ant made them hamburgers.  They don't appreciate soup night.  That's OK.  They used to groan a lot about hiking, biking, gardening, and journaling too.  But now they love these things as much as I do.

It helps if they make the soup.  This one is especially fun because we gather all the spring "weeds" from the yard to eat and our spring garden leafy vegetables.  Mosquito and Cob-weaver love to forage from the wild, so were eager to help. This soup is different each time because it depends on what is growing.  Our early spring greens are mostly too old- I can tell because flower buds are forming, but there was plenty to cook with.  We collected for our soup: nettles, chickweed, sourgrass, crane's bill, New Zealand spinach, fava bean shoots, asparagus, kale, parsley, arugula, and wild lettuce. It was delicious! Everyone said so. Miner's lettuce would also be a good addition to this soup, but we don't have it growing in our yard.  If you decide to wild forage, make sure you know your plants well.  As one of my teachers, Paul Stamets*, says, "Mushrooms can heal you and they can also kill you."  This goes for plants too.

While cleaning the arugula, I found a caterpillar.  It's our first caterpillar of the year.  It looked like a cabbage white butterfly caterpillar to me, but Cob-weaver (who is a caterpillar and butterfly expert) says that it had an extra stripe down its side.  We are going to raise and find out what it turns into.  We do this with all of the caterpillars we find and have figured out how to identify everything in our yard that way.  There are no good field guides to caterpillars that I've found, and even when we do find the caterpillar in a guide, its hard to compare a caterpillar picture with real life.  So we raise them.  We put the caterpillar in a glass mason jar with the plant we found it on and poke holes in the metal lid. We have found that all our caterpillars eat comfrey, so we always put comfrey in it too. It's best if you can find a fat caterpillar because they quickly will make their chrysalis or cocoon and you don't have to feed or clean up their poop daily anymore.  We find underwing moth crysalis' in the soil, so we put them in a jar and bury them in soil.  We've raised cabbage-whites, painted ladies, underwing moths, and looper moths.  The chrysalis of a painted lady is so beautiful, trimmed with gold.  Did you know that moths make a cocoon and butterflies make a chrysalis?

Cob-weaver found aphids on the fava beans today.  Then I spotted them on the kale.  I wonder if they are at the school garden too?

Spring Greens Soup

1 medium onion, halved and sliced
1 tablespoon cooking oil
3 cups bone or vegetable broth
Salt
3 medium potatoes, quartered  ( I used 1 a huge sweet potato because I didn't have potatoes)
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (optional) (I didn't have any)
2 tablespoons butter
10 cups fresh spring greens (spinach, parsley, arugula, kale, chard and anything wild you can find), cleaned with stems removed.

Garnish:
Fresh arugula
Yogurt
Lemon
Green onions or wild onions

1. Cook onion in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes.
2. Add potatoes and saute 2 more minutes turning them to brown
3.  Add broth, pepper, and salt to taste. Bring to boiling, then reduce to simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. If using mushrooms, saute in a separate skillet with butter for 6 to 8 minutes or until tender and liquid has evaporated; then set aside.
5. Remove soup from heat. Use an immersion blender to blend onion-potato mixture until almost smooth. 
6. Add greens. Return to heat. Bring to boiling; remove from heat. 
7. Using blender (I have to do this step with my Vitamix blender because my immersion blender can't handle it), puree soup again until nearly smooth and flecks of green remain. 
8. Season to taste with salt. Serve immediately topped with sautéed mushrooms, fresh arugula, lemon, green onions and yogurt.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

*My mentor and teacher, Paul Stamets (his work is the reason I studied mycology in graduate school) is featured in the newly released documentary, Fantastic Fungi.  This one didn't make it to my recommendations list because it contains content about hallucinogenic mushrooms.  I do recommend it highly for adults and for kids whose parents have pre-screened it and are comfortable with this topic, or are prepared to fast forward the part not appropriate for kids.  I have watched it with Cob-weaver and Mosquito.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

This morning we made blueberry muffins with the sourdough starter.  I've been better about the daily feeding of the yeasties since I started cooking with them.  The muffins were really dense and needed a lot longer to cook without the baking powder and baking soda I typically put in the recipe.  So, for quick breads, just like I did the biscuits, I'll keep my baking soda to help rise the dough.

We saw 2 monarchs flying by today.  It's late for monarchs.  It must be the winter males that don't migrate to the breeding grounds in the coast ranges, Central Valley and the Sierras.  Before I was Farmer Ladybug, I was one of the scientists that tracked and tagged monarch butterflies. Monarchs are protected. It is illegal to catch, touch or even disturb monarchs without a permit. Did you know that our monarchs are called western Monarch butterflies and are only from the land west of the Rockies?  Many people don't know that the monarchs that migrate to Mexico in the winter are not our monarchs.  Those monarchs are from the Eastern US. population.  So there are two monarch populations, separated by the tall Rocky mountains that can't be flown over by monarchs.  The western Monarch butterfly wintering grounds are right here and extend in a very limited range in coastal California to our north and south.  So, we are smack dab in the middle.  Monarchs depend on shelter in their wintering grounds for survival of the entire species.  The wintering monarch is the longest lived, living up to 6 months!  They arrive in September and leave in March.  The population peaks at Thanksgiving and every year there is an annual Thanksgiving count to count all the monarchs in the western population. It is usually only the female that flies to the summer grounds to lay eggs on milkweed and other host plants. Milkweed is not important on the winter grounds because there are no caterpillars here, but trees are, like Monterey cypress, Monterey pine and eucalyptus and also a variety of good nectar plants.  Why do you think monarchs use our school garden? The males die here after breeding. There will be 4-5 generations before they return again.  That means that it is the great-great-grandchildren that return in winter.  How do they find their way?

I mowed the front yard and put all the cuttings in the chicken yard.  It looks so green, soft and beautiful, covering all the dirt.  The chickens had fun spreading it around.  This will help with the flies I hope. Mysteriously, I also mowed a chicken egg.  It was on the opposite side of the house of the chicken yard.  It looked like Sara's egg.  We sometimes let her run around the yard away from the other chickens while we play. We never noticed that she laid an egg.

The bunnies were out and digging again today.  They dug up a blue, plastic Easter egg from deep underground.  Mosquito said they were Easter bunnies.

My marigolds still haven't germinated.  I looked again at the package and it says they were from 2014!  It's important to check the packaging date before you plant. Some seeds can last a long, long, long time and still grow.  Seeds are amazing little packages, dormant and waiting but still very much alive.  Wild seeds sometimes can can wait years until conditions are perfect.  Some must have fire, or frost, or some other environmental condition to break their dormancy. I was interested, so I looked it up and found out that:

• The oldest mature seed that has grown into a viable plant was a Judean date palm seed about 2,000 years old, recovered from excavations at Herod the Great's palace on Masada in Israel. It had been preserved in a cool, dry place, not by freezing. It was germinated in 2005.  Before discovery, this tree was extinct!*
• The oldest seed that has grown into a viable plant was Silene stenophylla (narrow-leafed campion), an Arctic flower native to Siberia. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed an age of 31,800 ±300 years for the seeds. In 2007, more than 600,000 frozen mature and immature seeds were found buried in 70 squirrel hibernation burrows 125 feet below the permafrost near the banks of the Kolyma River. Believed to have been buried by Arctic ground squirrels, which had damaged the mature seeds to prevent germination in the burrow; however, three of the immature seeds contained viable embryos. Scientists extracted the embryos and successfully germinated plants in vitro which grew, flowered and created viable seeds of their own.ᐩ

Many cultivated plants, like marigolds, do not have special protections in place or requirements to break dormancy.  This is because they've been cared for by humans for so long, and humans have selected those seeds that are easy to germinate, while throwing out the others. Humans also provide perfect conditions for their plants, like water, sunlight, soil, and help their plant outcompete others by weeding around it. So over time, seeds of cultivated plants have lost the ability to survive without humans. You can tell by looking at a seed how long it may last: thin-coated lightweight seeds like marigolds can last 1-3 years while harder-coated beans and corn may last 5-10 years.  I once had mustard green seeds from my grandfather that germinated after 10 years. My marigold seeds came from my own seed collection.  There may be still a few hardy seeds in that pack of several hundred that will germinate, so I will plant all of them. Your seeds were donated this year from Botanical Interests Seed Company.  They are at most 1-year old. To be sure, though, see if you can find the packaging date.

Garden math: Farmer Ladybug's  marigold pack says they were packed in 2014.  How old are Farmer Ladybug's marigold seeds?

Berry Muffins

from Lean, Luscious and Meatless, vol 3 by Bobbie Hinman and Millie Snyder
Although this is my basic muffin recipe, I often modify it by types of flour, types of berry, sugar (usually none), extract type and even replacing the curdled milk with yogurt or water, whatever I have on hand.  I have even made it without the egg if I don't have one.

1- 1/2 cup flour (you can mix whole grain and white)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup sugar (optional)
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp lemon extract
1 cup berries

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Oil muffin tins
3. Mix flour, baking powder and baking soda.
4. Put mil in another small bowl and add lemon juice and let stand for 1 minute.
5. Add remaining ingredients, except berries, and curdled milk to flour and mix well.
6. Fold in berries
7. Divide into muffin tins and bake for 15 minutes.

Farmer Ladybug 🐞

*Newsweek and Archaeology magazine
+National Geographic

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Today, I called our garden animals, the rats, flies and their friends to come help me to clean the house.  Mosquito caught it on this 3 minute video.

Rats and flies are such great helpers! April Fool's!

What are great helpers, though, is yeast.  Isn't it amazing that yeast in the air all around us can be farmed to help to rise dough?  Tonight I used my new sourdough starter, now 8 days old, to make the pizza dough.  I also baked arabic (pita) bread.  I made 3 pizzas.  Two are cheese and one is parsley pesto.

Garden math: I made 3 pizzas.  Each pizza had 8 slices.  How many total slices of pizza were there?  There are 4 people in the family.  How many do each of us get?  Do you think we ate it all?

Cob-weaver loves math problems like this.  Her favorite operation is division.  Equal division.  Fairness.  She says that is why she needs to make so many cookies, so she can practice division.  My favorite operation is multiplication.  Multiplication is magical to me.  It makes me think of fairies with magic wands, or plants and seeds.  Mosquito loves addition.  What is your favorite operation? I learned today that our favorite operation relates to our temperament (a fancy word for personality).*  That's neat.

Pizza Dough

1. Use about 1/2 cup of sourdough starter. Add flour and water to make a sponge.   A sponge is the consistency of really wet batter. Cover the bowl with a clean towel.  Make this in the morning and let rise, all day if possible (or set out the night before to work overnight for cooking in the morning).  This is the no-knead method where you let the yeast do all the work. Do not let go more than 12 hours.  I did mine at the last minute (of course), so it only sat for an hour before I made the dough.
2. Add enough flour to make a dough that can be handled.  Add a pinch of salt and other herbs you like rolled into your dough, like oregano, basil, or powdered garlic.  You can also put in cornmeal for a heartier crust. Roll out into a pizza dough.
3. Bake at 425°F for 8 minutes.  
4. Add toppings.
5. Bake at 425°F for another 8 minutes.
6. Slice and Enjoy.

Arabic Bread

1. Using the same dough. At step 2 above, after making the dough, form it into balls, bigger than a golf ball, but smaller than a tennis ball.  What kind of ball is that?  Place on a well floured board and cover.
2. Roll out each ball. First pressing down from the center with your hands.  Then roll out from the center making sure your rolling pin does not go over the edge of the dough and pinch it.  Keep it thick than a quarter inch.  Roll out to a small plate size.
3. Cover the unbaked pita with a clean towel.
4. After cooking your pizzas, heat the over to 500°F with a baking pan on the bottom rack (the pan must be hot).  Remove any upper racks, or put them at the top setting to get them out of the way.
5. When the oven is hot, quickly and gently toss your bread onto the hot baking sheet. I can fit 2-3 at a time.  They should not touch one another and hopefully will land flat (this gets easier with practice).
6. Close oven quickly and bake for 4 minutes.
7. Quickly remove your puffed arabic bread with tongs and cool.  
8. Add more dough until you've finished cooking all of them.  Make sure to keep the oven hot by closing it quickly each time.

Parsley pesto

This is made just like basil pesto.  You can use basil or substitute parsley or arugula.  We have lots of parsley, so I usually make pesto like this.  As always, my quantities are relative to taste.  Sometimes I use bone broth with the oil to help blend the pesto.  This cuts down on the amount of oil used.  I often omit the parmesan if I don't have any.

1. Use a big bunch of parsley, removing thicker stems.
2. Add olive oil, pine nuts or walnuts, garlic clove to taste, salt to taste, and small chunk parmesan cheese to taste.  Use just enough olive oil to make it blend.  If you want to cut down on the oil, used bone or vegetable broth.
3. Blend until smooth.
4. Freeze leftovers in ice cube trays.

🐞Farmer Ladybug

*The Four Temperaments by Rudolf Steiner