Hen, His Wife

Still on the subject of poultry, this little gem from my favourite animation film maker, Igor Kovalyov, can now be viewed (not in best quality to be sure) on youtube - part 1 & part 2.

The Chicken

As I was walking down Stanton Street early one Sunday morning, I saw a chicken a few yards ahead of me. I was walking faster than the chicken, so I gradually caught up. By the time we approached Eighteenth Avenue, I was close behind. The chicken turned south on Eighteenth. At the fourth house along, it turned in at the walk, hopped up at the front steps, and rapped sharply on the metal storm door with its beak. After a moment, the door opened and the chicken went in.
From 'True Tales of American Life' edited by Paul Auster

What I like about keeping hens is if you get waylayed, at the pub for instance, they will just put themselves to bed.


The Great Aunts after whom our hens have been named, here on a picnic with Uncle Clifford, Gramma Colwell and Uncle Frank.

And The Winner Is...

Hey! My little film has just beaten out the competition (of one) to win the first ever Agricultural Biodiversity Film Awards. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Working Girls II

We installed another gynocracy in the backyard this week - the egg production unit - and they established their pecking order straight away. Doris the Buff Orpington is bossy boots, then Gladys the Speckaldy and they both pick on Ethel the Maran. It's disturbing to watch. I'm going to have to sign Ethel up for some self assertiveness coaching before she starves to death. That, or I'm going to eat Doris.

Working Girls I

CHAPTER XVIII MANIPULATING
Appliances Required - Before opening a hive for manipulation, be careful to have to hand everything that you may require. A smoker, a carbolic cloth*, a small table that can be carried from hive to hive, a comb box, a dinner knife, a goose wing or soft brush, a pot of petroleum jelly are all useful articles.
*The Carbolic Cloth is also a subduer of bees and by some is preferred to the smoker. Ticking, calico or muslin, 20" x 18", may be used, with (if preferred) a hem on one 18" side to take an 18" lath. A solution of Calvert's No.5 Carbolic Acid, one part to ten parts of water, is prepared, and with it the cloth is thoroughly saturated. If the cloth, when not in use, be kept in a close-shut tin box, it will retain it's objectionable smell for a long time.
From The Practical Bee Guide by The Rev. J. G. Digges


It looks like we have managed to successfully perform the 'Shook Swarm' last Sunday. Although we couldn't find the queen during the operation, we carried on and brushed everybody into a clean brood box. They haven't absconded yet and they look to be busy drawing out new comb. So I can breathe again. If it all worked, the queen will be laying again soon and the varroa mite population will have been cleansed.

The Cupboard is Bare

Yesterday I pulled up the last leek. I guess that's it until sometime late October. The kale is all in flower now and we're down to two (rather large) squashes. But still a few potfuls of pink fir apple potatoes. Frank @ Hooting Yard sent me this link for Sydney Smith's A Recipe for Salad. A fine way to see out last year's spuds.


It's fate was risotto.

Man With The Hoe

"I had never really wanted a photograph of a picture before I saw Millet's Man With The Hoe. I was about twelve or thirteen years old, I had read Eugenie Grandet of Balzac, and I did have some feeling about what french country was like but The Man With The Hoe made it different, it made it ground not country, and France has been that to me ever since. France is made of ground, of earth. When I managed to get a photograph of the picture and took it home my eldest brother looked at it and said what is it and I said it is Millet's Man With The Hoe. It is a hell of a hoe said my brother."
Gertrude Stein Paris France

Weights & Measures

Click on picture to enlarge
From 'The Horticultural Notebook' A Manual Of Practical Rules, Data, and Tables for the use of Students, Gardeners, Nurserymen, and Others interested in Flower, Fruit, and Vegetable Culture 1914 (price 4/6 net)
You can still listen again to the Food Programme when they pay a visit to the 'New' Covent Garden Market. Over the past couple of decades the big supermarkets have set up their own distribution networks and Covent Garden became a dumping ground for the stuff they didn't want. It is now trying to reinvent itself as a source of locally grown quality produce for the catering trade.

Spring Greens

St. Columba's Broth - Pick young stinging nettles before the end of June, when they are 4 or 5 inches high - one 'handful' for each person. Boil, drain, chop and return to pan with water and milk. Reheat, sprinkle in fine oatmeal or oats, stirring until thick.
Richard Mabey's Flora Britannica


Nettles, Sprouting Broccoli and Wild Garlic all ripe for the picking now.

Spudnik

Progress. I've buried alive all of my seed potatoes in the new bed at the back of the yard. They're on their own now. And through the mail flap this week came a clipping sent by friend Ren. A review from the Guardian of a new book celebrating the über tuber and it's place in our history - Propitious Esculent by John Reader. It may cover a lot of the same ground as R. Salaman's The History and Social Influence of the Potato but brings the role of the spud into the 21st century. Apparently plans are afoot to take potatoes on a mission to Mars in 20 years. Reader reports that a stand of potatoes large enough to provide an astronaut's daily nourishment will also supply all the oxygen he/she needs and mop up the CO2 as well.

(Sob) I miss the 15th Century!

Daniel Clowes pines for the last century. Click on it to read.

Rhubarb & Custard

"To make a Custard. Breake your Egges into a bowle, and put your Creame into another bowle, and straine your egges into the creame, and put in saffron, Cloves and mace, and a little synamon and ginger, and if you will some Suger and butter, and season it with salte, and melte your butter, and stirre it with the Ladle a good while, and dubbe your custard with dates and currans." (or rhubarb)
Medievalcookery.com


Rhubarb time! (Not fruit but leaf petioles actually)

Anguish...Turnips...

"Mr.Earbrass stands on the terrace at twilight. It is bleak; it is cold; and the virtue has gone out of everything. Words drift through his mind: anguish turnips conjunctions string parties no parties urns desuetude claws Antipodes mush glaciers incoherence amputation tides deceit mourning elsewards..."
The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey

Sonic Horticulture

"In a room near Maida Vale there is an unfortunate carrot strapped to the table of an unlicensed vivisector. Wires pass through two glass tubes full of a white substance; they are like two legs, whose feet are buried in the carrot. When the vegetable is pinched with a pair of forceps, it winces. It is so strapped that it's electric shudder of pain pulls the long arm of a very delicate lever which actuates a tiny mirror... Thus can science reveal the feelings of even so stolid a vegetable as the carrot."
A report in the British publication 'Nation' 1916 on the pioneering experiments of Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. He claimed that plants feel pain and understand affection and wrote papers on 'The Nervous Mechanisms of Plants' and 'Researches into the Irritability of Plants'. Among other things he was able to show that they grow faster and healthier when played pleasant music. Anyone who has ever read 'The Secret Lives of Plants'* or 'Secret Life of the Soil' will have some inkling about the published research in psychobotany. So, I'm going with it. Trying to tailor my playlist around what I imagine my little seedlings would appreciate. Resonancefm is always the radio of choice - no disturbing 'news', ads or traffic updates but I'm also giving them daily doses of Django Rheinhart, Glenn Gould and Thomas Tallis. What are your plants listening to?


*The 1979 documentary on this book is now available on youtube in bite-sized installments. Check out part 5 in which the cabbage correctly identifies the murderer of it's mate!

Crystal Palace

We've just been down to the workshop where they are making our glasshouse (see below). Yes, the intent was to self build and we got as far as laying the brick wall - 2 years ago... Now it looks like we'll be taking delivery of the pieces this weekend and all we have to do is reassemble it. Ulp. And not a moment too soon as all the tomato seed that I sowed 7 days ago has germinated - Yellow Ruffled, Omar's Lebabese, Golden Queen, Pineapple and Tondino di Maduria. After having been plagued by blight 4 of the past 5 years and looking on in horror as hundreds of tomatoes blacken and rot, I'm hoping that the glass will create a cordon sanitaire for this year's developing fruit.


C.H.Whitehouse Workshop (today). A very happy-making place. Click on the picture for a better look at the pin ups.

Tricotyledon?

I've just noticed that one of the hot pepper seedlings is a mutant. Is this like finding a four-leaf clover?


And speaking of mutants, Michael @ Articles & Texticles has just sent me a link to the artist Uli Westphal's 'MutatoCollection'. Scroll through the pictures along the bottom for a laugh.

Resurrected

Lost & Found Dept.

Culture Shock

I'm just acclimatizing after 10 days in "The True North, Strong and Free" (minus 14° and 2 feet of snow). In my absence Aubergine 'Slim Jim', Sweet pepper 'Aconcagua', Hot pepper 'De Rata' & 'Jwala' have germinated. And this grew in the fridge.

The Acrobatic Fly

"I love only the cleanest flies, super-gay, dressed in little grey alpace suits from Balenciaga, glittering like a dry rainbow, precise as mica, with granite eyes and with bellies of noble Naples yellow, such as the marvellous little olive flies of Port Lligat, where nobody lives except gala and dali. These little flies always have the grace to sit on the oxidised silver side of the olive leaf. They are the fairies of the Mediterranean." Dali 1966
Dali said that he was only happy in the sun, naked and covered with flies. And he would wax his moustache with sticky date juice and pour anchovy oil over his head to attract them.
Whatever your feelings toward flies you've got to be impressed by the dexterity and strength of 'The Acrobatic Fly' from 1910.


Click on picture to enlarge.