Our Maker's Acres Police Blotter

A crime has occurred on our homestead farm.  We've got to get to the bottom of it.  Earlier this week I planted a 40 foot section of the garden in the side yard with Irish Potatoes.  I had them cut up and they scabbed over and 1/4 growth from the eyes of each section began growing.  The soil was just right, and I got them all planted in one afternoon.  It was one of those times where you put your hands on your hips and look over your handiwork with satisfaction, thinking about seeing the fresh green growth of potatoes peering out of the soil and leaf mulch I had covered it in.

The next day, I noticed one of our white chickens outside the pasture fence in the side yard.  Upon seeing me, she ran and found a gap in the wire that separates the pasture from the yard and wriggled through, scurrying back to the barn.  As I walked back by the potato patch, I saw that this hen had scratched up where I had planted the potatoes.  Several of the seed potatoes were exposed and this one in the photo below, in particular, had a peck mark in the bottom from her wicked little beak.

It made me angry.  It seems every time that you try to do something, there is an equal and opposite reaction of something trying to destroy what you attempted to do.  Such is the state of our fallen world.  But you don't give up.  You keep trying.  I went looking for the perpetrator and encountered a gaggle of hens by the barn sitting on a rail.  It was almost as if this was a police line up where, from behind one-way glass, you pick out the perp.  I notice that 3 of the 4 hens face me in the line up and look innocent.  But there's this one hen, who has a guilty look about her.  She won't even face forward for identification.

As I looked her over closely, my stare provoked her to hop down.  She looked down in shame for the devastation that she had wrought over our potato patch.

What should I do?  I'm not going to lie and say that capital punishment wasn't thought of.  She would make a mighty fine chicken gumbo and our profligate poultry potato perpetrator would have her career of mischief nipped in the bud.  It would satiate my need for vengeance.  However, she lays eggs.  I had to take a long view of the situation.  I did a quick cost-benefit analysis and determined that she is more valuable to me alive than dead.  The hen was brought before the courtroom for sentencing and received a pardon.  She is on probation, however, and if other misdeeds are found, we'll deal with her swiftly. 

So how do we keep her honest?  The hog wire on the perimeter fence of the pasture is approaching 18 years old.  It's rusty in places and will eventually have to be replaced.  That is a costly job and just too big of a job for me to tackle right now.  So I did the next best thing.  I got some electrified poultry netting down from the rafters of the barn and strung it around the potato (and garlic and lettuce) patch.

Will it work?  We shall see.  Can the hen be rehabilitated?  Or will she be a recidivist and lapse into her former criminal deeds, resulting in re-arrest, conviction and incarceration?

Our electric netting will attempt to keep her honest, but it's up to her.  If she falls off the wagon, the big pot is waiting near the stove, and the weather is still cool enough to make a roux and get some sausage and green onions and make a big chicken and sausage and okra gumbo!

Gumbo Season!

Believe it or not, our high tomorrow will be 81 degrees and our low will be 53.  Now we're talking!  I think it's time.  Most people call it Fall.  Some call it Autumn.  We call it "gumbo weather."  First, you make a roux.  We had four blue-winged teal in the freezer from a recent hunt and some good locally made smoked sausage.  That'll be some proteins for a good teal and sausage gumbo to bring in our favorite time of year.  Don't get me wrong, gumbo is good any time, it's just so satisfying when there's a chill to the air.  It warms the heart and soul.

Tricia browned the teal on all sides and then patiently browned her roux a good long time, constantly stirring, until it was the color of dark chocolate.  With plenty of trinity (bell peppers, onions, and celery) cooked down and stock added along with seasonings, you've got a good meal coming right up.  It makes the whole house smell so good.  We enjoyed a bowl after church on Sunday and have been working on it each day since.  Gumbo gets better day after day as the flavors get deeper and richer.

I almost forgot to mention the rice.  I like a lot of rice in my gumbo.  We add green onions to the top for flavor and color.  We usually enjoy a big dollop of potato salad added to the bowl but didn't make any this time.

With four of us eating Sunday lunch (Tricia, me, Russ & Benjamin), we each got a teal in our bowl to eat.  It's a little messy to eat, but delicious.  It's important to have a plate nearby we call "the bone plate" to put your teal carcass once it's been cleaned up.

That's the first of many gumbos to come this fall.  We have plenty of okra put up in the freezer in ziploc bags, so for sure shrimp and okra gumbo will be on the menu.  The old standby, chicken and sausage gumbo, will certainly be made numerous times this fall.  Hopefully, we'll kill more ducks during 'big duck' season so we can have more duck gumbos, too.

Friday Flying Feathers

Teal season usually opens in late September.  It's always a tough hunt.  Most times it's hot.  Nine times out of ten you donate about a pint of blood to mosquitoes in the blind.  But all the time, it is a memorable experience whether you bring back ducks for the first gumbo of the season or not.  Dad called me up and asked me to meet him at the shop at 5 AM sharp.  I'll never turn down an opportunity for a teal hunt on the farm.  So I set my alarm for 4:25 AM and boogied to Oberlin.

As the sun slowly made its way up peeking over the eastern horizon, it painted a glorious canvas.  Herons and grosbecks flew overhead announcing a new day.  We sat in the blind and talked in hushed tones as we anticipated the first flyover.  Teal don't play around.  They fly fast and furious.  When they see the decoys and cup their wings, it's time to shoot.

Shortly after sunrise we heard shooting coming from blinds far away.  We kept our eyes peeled and soon, teal became visible heading our way.  It was our turn to open up on them.

Dad in the foreground

Flooded rice fields are crawfish ponds make the perfect environment for ducks.  It's a short season this year, one that ended this weekend.  Normally, any ducks we shoot have to be found by walking out, but this time, we had an assistant who ran out and brought them back to us.  Raven did an excellent job!

We killed six and found five.  I hate it when you lose a bird, but sometimes a wounded one is able to crawl off on a levee and hide in the weeds.  Sometimes, they'll regain their wits and fly off, getting a second chance.  Blue winged teal are named for the distinctive markings on their wings.  Pretty birds, for sure.

I set the water in the pot to scalding so that I could get them plucked and cleaned.

In anticipation of the kill, I had harvested some okra the day before, cut it up, and cooked it down with onions to be used in the gumbo.  Teal are pretty small, so once you get them plucked they're easy to clean.  Doesn't take long at all.  I put 5 cleaned teal in a gallon ziploc.

As much as we'll enjoy that gumbo, the memories of teal hunting with Dad is where the real enjoyment lies.  What a great morning!

The Scales of Justice

Proverbs 21:15 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

15 The exercise of justice is joy for the righteous,

But is terror to the workers of iniquity.

Image Credit

The Lady of Justice is a depiction of our legal system.  Ideally, she represents fairness.  She is blindfolded because the law is supposed to be free of bias or corruption.  She's holding scales to show that she's weighing the evidence.  She's holding a sword to show that sometimes justice can be swift and final.  Let's be frank with one another and go ahead and say that, for the most part, there is no justice on earth, and we won't see it until Heaven.

I was thinking about scales after weighing in the Meat Birds last night using our kitchen scale.  I always have to adjust a little knob to zero it out so that I get an accurate reading.  It is important for the scale to be right.

Our kitchen scale borrowed from my Lady of Justice

We were eating a delicious bowl of Shrimp and Okra Gumbo tonight.  Tricia was digging in the deep freeze and pulled out the last quart bag of shrimp and decided to make a gumbo on maybe the last cool night in many months.  We began discussing the shrimp and it brought to mind a great story I'll tell you.

Several years ago we were outside working in the garden and a pickup truck came down the drive.  Often, people will drop in to purchase eggs or visit.  This person wanted neither.  She was selling fresh Gulf of Mexico shrimp.  She opened her ice chest to show us what she had.  They were beautiful, big, fat shrimp.  I forgot how much she was asking for her shrimp, but it wasn't unreasonable and we bought some.

As the lady selling shrimp was weighing them out, I don't know what prompted this, but my wife walked in the house and came back out with an unopened 5 lb. bag of flour.  She put that in the lady's scale and what do you know?  The scale was showing that the 5 lb bag of flour weighed 5 1/2 pounds.  We were getting cheated due to unjust scales.  I don't know if the lady was trying to cheat us intentionally or if it was just a mistake.

When caught, the lady apologized made our shrimp purchase amounts whole.  She repeatedly told us she felt so bad about everyone she had sold shrimp to earlier and shorted.  We got a good laugh while eating those same shrimp tonight, remembering that story.  My wife is a shrewd businesswoman!  I don't know how she thought of the bag of flour calibration method.  I would have never thought of that.

There is a moral to the story:  Don't try to cheat Tricia out of shrimp.  Her eyes aren't blindfolded.  They are wide open. She's watching your scale and she's carrying a sword!

We Caught the Egg Eater!

"Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences." - Robert Louis Stevenson

We posted several times about a chicken that has been eating eggs in the hen house.  This has been going on for quite some time.  Aggravating, yes.  Not only was this chicken eating eggs that WE could be eating, but when eggs were cracked and eaten, the yolk would get on uneaten eggs, making them difficult and quite time-consuming to clean.  Countless hours over the past several years have been spent cleaning eggs.

We tried several tactics and remedies to try to resolve this issue - all to no avail.  The best thing we could do in order to save the eggs and ensure that we had some to eat, was to go out to the hen house numerous times a day and pick up eggs and put them in a basket out of reach of the beaked bandit.  By doing this, we were somewhat successful, but oftentimes, we were too late.  

It has been said that if you play with fire, you're going to get burned.  Well, Tricia walked out one day week before last to gather eggs and lo and behold, she spotted a Rhode Island Red Hen cracking and eating a just laid egg.  Tricia quickly grabbed the egg eater and put her in solitary confinement.

We kept her here for a few days while checking the egg production.  The next day there were NO broken eggs.  The day following - no broken eggs.  And so forth and so on for a week.  In fact, where we were previously gathering no eggs to 3 or 4 eggs each day (and those eggs were dirty, sticky, yolk-covered eggs), now we began collecting 14 to 17 eggs a day!  Beautiful, clean eggs at that!

A trial was held and due to proof beyond reasonable doubt, the perpetrator was tried by a jury of her peers and found guilty.  She was transported out of her cell in general population and into her new cell on death row while she waited out the appeal process.  During the next week, there continued to be no broken eggs.

The sentencing phase of the trial took place on a sunny Saturday morning.  The egg eater was found guilty of numerous counts of... (gasp) cannibalism.  Stern justice was meted out by the judge/executioner so this time of crime would be abolished from the hen house, thereby sending a message to other copy-cats that this would not be tolerated.  The egg eater was hung by her feet, bled out, scalded and plucked, while the barnyard inhabitants watched.

The egg eater was pronounced dead at 11:28 am.

She was not buried.  Instead, she was put into the deep-freeze and will become the main protein source in our next Chicken and Sausage Gumbo.  The eater will become the eaten.  Poetic justice, indeed.

The Blue-Winged Teal's Final Flight To Louisiana

This past weekend was the closing weekend for teal season.  Teal are ducks that migrate south for the winter.  They enjoy dabbling in rice fields for seeds leftover from the harvest.  They are generally the first ducks south and the last ducks to leave in spring.  Teal season opens on September 15th and runs through September 30th.  There is a 6 bird daily bag limit.  We have to wait for "big duck" season until later.  The trouble with teal season is that it is still hot.  Mosquitoes are in abundance.  In fact, last weekend we didn't kill any ducks, but we got more than our legal limit of mosquitoes!

Here is a look at our pond with the decoys in the foreground.  We sit on the levee camouflaged by tall weeds 

We arrived at the pond at 6 am, before the sun rises.  We walked quietly out to the blind with our guns and a 5 gallon bucket to turn upside down and sit on.  We load our guns and while slapping mosquitoes, we quietly talk and wait patiently for the ducks to come swarming in.  You can hear them before you see them, their wings rapidly beating through the thick, humid air.  They fly fast and furious, ducking down, rising up, circling before they cup their wings and commit to landing among the decoys.  That's when we let 'em have it.

The flights usually slow down or stop around 7:45.  We trudged out and picked up the birds.  We ended up shooting eight, but one was wounded and crawled away, hiding himself in the tall grass.  I hate to lose a bird!  They were all Blue-winged teal.

Here is a photo of my hunting buddy, Gary.  Gary and I grew up together and have hunted together for as long as I can remember.  Gary has keen eyesight and can spot the birds flying in wayyyyyy before I can.  He told me to go ahead and take all 7 of the ducks home to clean.  I'm not gonna argue with that, but I agreed to give him all the ducks we killed the next morning.

Here I am with a handful of teal.  They aren't heavy.  Teal are small ducks.  The male weighs a pound and the female slightly less.

Now's time to pluck, gut and clean them, but first, something shiny caught my eye.  One of the birds has a band on his leg.  See it?

So what you do with a band is you get on the Internet and go to www.reportband.gov.  When you get to that sight they ask you many questions about your encounter with the bird.  They ask you to drag a 'push-pin' to the exact spot on a map where you killed the bird and the date of the encounter.  Finally, after submitting answers to many questions, they send you a certificate to let you know interesting information about the bird you harvested.

One of the things they said was, "Bird banding is important for studying the movement, survival and behavior of birds. About 60 million birds representing hundreds of species have been banded in North America since 1904. About 4 million bands have been recovered and reported."

Check out the certificate they sent me:

How cool is that!  So my teal hatched in 2015 and was banded on August 16, 2016 near Fairmount, Saskatchewan, Canada!!!  That little bird did some powerful migrating, right?  Since he was banded in 2016, this is likely his second trip down.  I did a search to see how far it is from Fairmount, Saskatchewan, Canada to Oberlin, Louisiana.  It is 2,033.7 miles.  How's that for some frequent flier miles?

I plucked and gutted all the birds and packed into a gallon-sized ziploc bag.  The cleaned birds weighed only 3.75 pounds.  It is exceedingly less expensive to just go the the store and buy some meat, but then you miss out on all the fun.
 

Tricia put them into the deep freeze and promised that she'd be making a gumbo with them soon.  The first cool front should be approaching in the next couple of weeks.  I cannot wait.  It was 95 degrees today.  When it gets cold, we call that "gumbo weather!"

It was a lot of fun going out and hunting with my buddy, Gary.  It was also very interesting to kill a banded duck and learn about the long trip that he flew.  Unfortunately for him, he won't be making the second leg of his journey back to Canada in the spring.

Blanching Okra and Freezing for later use

With the onset of rains, the okra is producing again.  Okra is a very easy crop to grow.  You do have to harvest it every day, though.  If you don't, the pods become 'woody' and aren't good for anything other than throwing them in the compost pile.  We have both Clemson Spineless and Burgundy okra planted and they make a nice visual feast when harvesting.

A colander full of fresh picked okra

We eat all we can.  Primarily we'll cook down the okra with some tomatoes and onion with a little lemon juice to cut the 'slime factor.'  Tricia has also begun to cook a Tomato & Okra Curry recipe that is quickly becoming a family favorite.  Each year we also can a bunch of jars of pickled okra.  What a great snack that is!

When the harvest exceeds our ability to eat them all, we'll start blanching and freezing them for winter (or for what we call Gumbo Season!)  Here's how we do it:  First we wash the okra.  Put a pot of water on the stove and get it boiling.  While you're waiting, cut the stems off of the okra pods.  You don't want to cut the stem all the way to where it exposes the seeds though.

Ignore the green beans on the left.  I was prepping both for blanching

Once our water comes to a boil, drop the whole okra pods into the boiling water.  When the water returns to a boil, set your kitchen timer for 3 1/2 minutes.  The unfortunate thing about the beautiful burgundy okra is that cooking it fades its vibrant color.  Oh well, it was pretty to look at while it lasted.  It tastes exactly the same as traditional green okra.

Adding okra pods to a pot of boiling water

Once the timer goes off, immediately remove the okra from the boiling water with a slotted spoon and add them to a container of iced water.  This shocks the okra and immediately stops the cooking process.  Leave in the ice water until they are completely cool.  Now we can freeze the okra.

Icing down the okra

Before bagging them up, we'll cut the pods into slices.

Slicing the okra

Then we'll bag them up in individual quart sized freezer bags and label them.

Bagging them up

Here is a close-up shot of the sliced okra that has been bagged and will soon be stacked in the freezer.

Chop Chop!  It's in the bag...

Some might just see okra, but me?  I see the beginnings of a chicken, okra, and sausage gumbo that will be served up with rice on a cold day to satisfy your hunger and warm your bones.

Gumbo!

One of the additional benefits of the cooler weather that Fall and Winter brings to South Louisiana is that it is "GUMBO WEATHER," although I have to admit, we eat it all year long.  Gumbo is a hearty meal that is flavorful, nourishing and is a true comfort food.  Who can't be comfortable eating a big bowl of delicious gumbo?

Gumbo is a dish that originated in Louisiana in the 18th century and it is thought that the word gumbo comes from from the African name for okra, which is used as a thickener for the dish.  Gumbo is so versatile.  We primarily eat chicken and sausage gumbo, but there is seafood gumbo, duck gumbo, dove gumbo, and shrimp and okra gumbo, among any other combination you can imagine.  It merges cooking styles from the African, French, Spanish, and Indians into one unique bowl of deliciousness.

We raise and butcher our own meat chickens.  We'll normally butcher 50 to 100 birds in a day and we process them here at home into an 8 piece cut-up and freeze them individually in gallon Ziploc bags.  When we're ready for a meal, we simply pull one out of the freezer and thaw.  That's what we'll do today to get things hopping for our chicken and sausage gumbo.


Frozen fryer cut up in 8 pieces

In the morning, Tricia will put the chicken in a large stockpot with some water and bring to a boil, she'll cover and turn the heat down and let it cook for 2 - 3 hours.  Then she turns the heat off and lets the bird sit it the warm water for the rest of the afternoon.  This makes the flavor great not to mention the fact that a good bone broth is sooooo healthy and good for you.

Cut up chicken in the pot

Next, it is time to make the roux.  In a lot of Cajun cuisine, the recipe starts with: "First, you make a roux..."  A roux is simply flour and oil that is browned.  We try to make ours as healthy as possible.  Tricia uses coconut oil because coconut oil is good for heating at high temperatures.  In the photo below, you can see she's added 1/4 cup of oil to a heated cast iron dutch oven.  Coconut oil will solidify in cooler temperatures - that's why you see the white lumps melting in the pot.


Heating the oil to make the roux

Once the oil is heated, add 1 cup of flour and stir up the mixture with a wooden spoon.


Adding the flour to the heated dutch oven

Now would be a good opportunity to turn your vent hood on as this process generates a little smoke sometimes.

You'll want to be real attentive making roux.  There is a real fine line between a perfect roux and a burned one.  The secret is to stand by the pot and keep stirring.



The roux is getting close

The roux is closer.  See the smoke?

Now the roux is done.  I like the roux to be a very dark brown.  To me it adds to the color and rich flavor of the dish. 


I like it with almost a dark chocolate color

Now we cut up some vegetables in the gumbo.  Here we will cut up some homegrown peppers from the garden, some onion, and garlic.  The holy trinity of vegetables used in gumbo is celery, bell pepper, and onion.  We've also added garlic today.


Chop these up

Add the chopped vegetables to your roux and stir until the vegetables have cooked down.  This will start smelling real good and will entice everyone in the house and the yard to ask you when supper will be ready.  Remind them that "Patience is a virtue" or "Good things come to those who wait."


Stir in the vegetables and cook

Meanwhile, take your cooked chicken out of the stockpot.  Leave your broth right where it is.


Removing the cooked chicken from the simmering broth

Now we'll add a quart of okra.  In the summer when the okra is producing copious quantities, we blanch, cut up, and freeze okra specifically for winter gumbos.  (It's good to plan ahead!)  Here Tricia has removed a quart from the freezer and is preparing it for adding to the stock.  Okay, add it to the stockpot.


Fresh frozen cut up okra

We try to purchase locally as much as we can for the items that we don't grow ourselves.  Here Tricia is adding about a pound of smoked sausage.  There is a family owned specialty meat market in Jennings that we patronize.  They make sausage to our specifications, with no artificial preservatives.  We see that as serving at least two benefits: we support a local family operated business and consume a healthier product.  Add the cut up smoked sausage to the simmering broth and okra mix.


Adding cut up sausage to the pot

Go ahead and add your roux to the stockpot now.


Adding the roux to the pot

Now Tricia will de-bone the chicken and add to the simmering pot.  Lots of people leave the bones in for flavor.  We've already simmered the chicken for most of the day, so the flavor is already in the broth.  De-boning it just means we can wolf it down quicker.  Yum!  We save the neck and backbone and skin for Promise, the dog, and incorporate the rest of the bones in with the compost.


De-boning the Bird

Finally, at long last, it is time to eat.  Many people put a spoon of potato salad in their gumbo.  We've recently started doing something that I hear people in North Louisiana do - putting sweet potatoes in gumbo.  We like it.  Of course start off your bowl with plenty of rice.  Gotta have rice.  Then ladle the hot gumbo on top of the rice.  I might add a word of caution here.  Watch out for the person with the heavy hand.  You know, the one who dips his or her ladle down to the bottom of the pot and tries to pick out all of the good stuff, the sausage or chicken or shrimp, etc.  Don't be shy in scolding them for this behavior, but I digress.  Then, add a dollop of potato salad or sweet potatoes.  Top with some green onions or fresh parsley.  Some people eat gumbo along with saltine crackers or some good French bread.  Add some gumbo file to it as well.  Gumbo file is made from the ground up leaves of the sassafras tree and adds thickness and a good earthy flavor to a dish already bursting with flavor. 



Dinner is served!

Say Grace as you'll want to thank the Almighty for this meal and sit down and enjoy your gumbo.  The best part is leftovers.  Tomorrow, the gumbo will taste even better - if that is possible.